Non-damaging "attacks" need to be looked into

Alijar1

In the latest Jawa thread when Crumb brought up the fact that Poggle's special counts as an attack - despite dealing zero damage - it got me thinking. Why is it classed as an attack?
We have plenty other abilities that don't deal damage that aren't classed as attacks; Ackbar's specials, Luminara's heal. So why make an exception for these abilities, when others like Poggle's are classed as attacks?
It's a very strange situation. Is it because he calls allies to assist? It's not just Poggle that suffers from this problem, there are other characters with abilities that deal no damage that are also classed as "attacks". What qualifies these as attacks and others as not?
There needs to be more clarity with these abilities and their classifications going forward, otherwise there's going to be more Jawa situations. Perhaps even a re-jigging of what is an isn't classified as an attack is needed.

Beeblebrox

Alijar1 wrote: »

Why is it classed as an attack?
We have plenty other abilities that don't deal damage that aren't classed as attacks; Ackbar's specials, Luminara's heal. So why make an exception for these abilities, when others like Poggle's are classed as attacks?

The difference with Ackbar's specials or Luminara's healing special is that those attacks do not interact with the enemy squad at all. They do stuff only to your allied characters.
Whereas whenever Poggle uses his Basic he needs to know whether the enemies are debuffed or not so he 'interacts' with each living enemy by checking if they are debuffed and that interaction with the enemies was being counted as an 'attack'

Fauztin

This was a controversial topic back when players had an issue with how Ackbar’s lead Interacts with Ezra’s assist special ability. There was a lot of discussion that ultimately identified an ability as an attack if there was any negative affect(s) imposed on the enemy, including TMR and debuffs. I still find it weird though that Ezra’s ability does NOT count as an attack, since it calls an ally to assist followed by Ezra assisting them. It’s weird.

(This could probably be related to that other thread about “hidden mechanics” specifically mentioning the undocumented 0.02% offense multiplier to Jawa Scavenger’s potency rating when applying thermal detonators)

https://forums.galaxy-of-heroes.starwars.ea.com/discussion/212171/any-convenient-list-out-there-that-reveals-hidden-mechanics-like-this-that-you-can-just-scroll-throu#latest