[2021] Research findings with Baba Yaga on PTS demonstrate weird item interactions

I am here to generate awareness of something I haven't seen talked about enough. Baba Yaga genuinely breaks at least 3 ENTIRE ITEMS coming in season 8. Unless these are patched out from PTS to live, these interactions will render this character insane if people know how to abuse them. I have to make people aware of these findings because These must be fixed ASAP, I've figured making the community aware is the fastest way to let Hi-rez know as well about these strange interactions. For reference, I have played Baba frequently since her release, I've accumulated nearly 1800 worshipers on her and am 100% going to continue to amass even more. That being said, I will not enjoy playing Baba in season 8 as long as I know that she is breaking items to the same level as release Raijin double proccing soul reaver.

The items in question:

1. Sacrificial Shroud
2. Gem of Focus
3. Archmage's Gem
4. Bumba's Hammer (?)

How does Baba break these items?

Simple, Baba's 2nd ability has multiple interactions within it that result in different ways to use the potion. What do I mean by that? To make it as easy to understand as possible, I will break her 2nd ability into numbered sections and refer to them as such continuing onwards for sake of easier writing. Without further ado, assuming you are using default key bindings...

1. Draw the potion (first press of the "2" button)- Baba pulls out a potion into her hand
2. Store the potion (press the Rmb to "cancel" the ability) Baba stores the potion into her free consumable slot
3. Reselect the potion (press the "c" button) Baba takes the same potion out of her consumable slot back into her hand
4. Draw a new potion (press the "2" button while a potion is in the consumable slot) Baba pulls a second potion into her hand
5. Swap potions (press "2" or "c" over and over, fun fact "2" swaps faster for some reason, Ive never understood why) Baba alternates between potions 1 and 2 putting one in her hand and the other in the consumable slot
6. Throw the potion (press Lmb) Baba throws whatever potion is in her hand at the target

Congratulations you have now used 6 different ability casts! Wait what?! Thats right! Each of those actions counts as a SEPARATE ABILITY CAST. On the current patch, this doesn't mean anything, no items available to magicals operates with the condition of ability casts plural, Polynomicon and Obsidian Shard have internal cooldowns that trigger on the first ability cast. here's where the problem comes in, Season 8 is introducing 3 new items without these internal cooldowns. Sacrificial Shroud, Gem of Focus and Bumba's Hammer. Sadly I only tested Gem of Focus and Sacrificial Shroud since Bumba's Hammer Baba only ocurred to me after the fact when I realized the item was actually available for magicals, I was dumb and thought it was physicals only and didn't get to test it once PTS went down. However, I do have extensive testing done from both PTS servers and can say that the issues were present in both, and haven't been addressed by anyone else to my knowledge. Thus I am taking it upon myself now to inform everyone of exactly how these items are broken by Baba and encouraging Hi-rez to change these interactions similar to Bumba's Hammer Yemoja.

To put it simply, each of the 6 possible actions Baba can make with her potion activate the passives of Shroud and Gem and likely Bumba's as well as they all have the same activation trigger. Cast an ability. This means that baba can do actions 1. to proc a Gem stack, 2. to proc another Gem stack, 3. to get the final Gem stack and then throw that potion to effectively FULLY ACTIVATE Gem of Focus with one ability. Even better, this costs 1 ability worth of mana, not 3. You thought He bo or Chang'e with their low cds made GoF really strong? Baba activates it instantly at the cost of 1 ability. In fact She can loop it indefinitely. Simply don't throw the potion in your consumable slot and just use your other 4 abilities with the benefit of GoF. Then when the timer is running low just pull that potion out again to refresh the timer, put it back and repeat again later. Baba can use this item to its maximum effect with no drawback to herself other than, don't use one of her 2 potions. Shroud works exactly the same. Every one of those 6 actions takes away some of Baba's health. Not a broken effect as in "OP" but still broken as in not functioning properly. Baba can potentially kill herself with 1 ability by just cycling through her potions with Shroud. Its honestly pretty funny but I do hope Hi-rez fixes the potion problem as the GoF interaction and likely Bumba's Hammer as well are not so fun for the enemy when she is able to use these strong items to their maximum potential with no drawback.

I mentioned Archmage's Gem before as well... Here's where this issue goes from "weird item interaction" to "This has to be fixed ASAP" Baba can proc Archmage's gem twice and potentially more. but again, I didn't get to test this before PTS went down. I played a match of Baba and planned to build Archmage's Gem because, to me it seems like the strongest overall starter for Mages. I built it, and went into a team fight and noticed something bizarre. I seemed to proc the full bonus damage TWICE one after another. How? Take a guess which ability broke the new item AGAIN. Baba's Brew... I have no clue how this works or why. With the first 3 I can guess that each action Baba takes with a potion counts as a separate ability cast, causing the problem of looping item passives. But with Archmage's Gem? Im clueless. I went into Jungle Practice and tested this new even scarier item interaction and found this was how it worked. When Baba pulls out a potion and stores it, The cool down starts for her 2nd ability letting her wait for another potion to then combo 2 potions one after another. This is a core aspect of Baba's combat. But for some reason, the game will recognize each potion as an ability hit and proc all items accordingly (soul reaver is a notable example) but for some reason, the potion fired from the consumable slot, does not CONSUME the Archmage's Gem effect, instead it is consumed and forced to recharge after BOTH potions have been fired. I haven't fully tested this either but I believe that if Baba were to never throw a second potion, and just leave it in her consumable slot and throw every potion off CD from her 2nd ability, it would loop fully charged Archmage's Gem passive FOREVER. Even if I am wrong with that hypothesis, and I WILL do more testing and encourage others with the ability to actually film those tests for a video to do so as well when season 8 goes live, Baba can still get a free 100% extra scaling on her main damage combo consistently through this item. This is borderline insanity. Nu wa is crazy with this item too, but imagine if she proced it on you TWICE. That is what Baba can do.

Baba on PTS was consistently breaking these new items WIDE open. I suspect that this has flown under the radar as well judging by the lack of attention I've seen. I need this information to get out because simply put, Baba's potion literally cannot function in the game as long as there are "ability cast" requirement items. She breaks them to the point of insanity and that's not touching on her doing her best double Soul Reaver Raijin impression with Archmage's Gem. The part that confuses me the most is the fact that items currently in the game don't have these issues. I tested soul reaver under the exact conditions that I did Archamge's Gem expecting the passive to not get reduced on subsequent ability hits of Baba's brew like Archmage's Gem but found that, no it works totally as intended.

TL;DR Baba's Brew breaks Sacrificial Shroud, Gem of Focus, Archmage's Gem and likely Bumba's Hammer and we need to bring this to light so it can be fixed.