Today I wanted to talk about a mechanic within the game that only very few people know about that answer the following questions: Why does Water Main with Neurotoxin not control fail? Why are the Elemental Puppets in Ninja Exam sometimes affected by Poison Tai but seem to be not affected at all towards the end of the match and why does King of Hell always poison them?

First of all I need to tell you this: There are 2 ways a unit in this game can get hit with a debuff. The first way is to directly use a ability that specifically says it "causes" a certain debuff. For example Ino's mystery directly "causes" chaos and Neji will "cause" Acupuncture to the selected unit. These abilities are also affected by the Control stat (and will also always cause interruption but only if those debuffs are either chaos, immoble or acupuncture).

But there is another way a unit can get affected by a debuff. For example anyone who hits Fu Yamanaka's puppet with a ninjutsu attribute ability will "receive" chaos. This type of debuffing can't control fail.

The reason why Water Main's Neurotoxin can't control fail is because she herself doesn't directly "cause" the chaos debuff. Instead anyone who gets hit by a crit will "receive" the chaos debuff. It is also the reason why Tsunade [Sannin War] and Pakura can't control fail because their abilities don't "cause" the debuff but instead anyone who gets hit by a crit will "receive" it.

Now let's talk about how this mechanic works with debuffs that don't control you like Poison. Have you ever tried Poison Tai on Guy and let Guy hit Founder Madara with his standard attack? What you might notice is not only will Founder Madara not receive any damage from Guy, but he will also not get poisoned by Poison Tai. The reason for that is because the Poison Tai doesn't actually "cause" poisoning to anyone who gets hit by a Taijutsu attack. Instead anyone that gets damaged by a Taijutsu attack will "receive" the Poison debuff and since Founder Madara can't be damaged by full Taijutsu attacks he will also not get poisoned. And now here is the the real killer: The same way Founder Madara is immune to full Taijutsu damage, the Elemental Puppets from Ninja Exams are also immune to any daamge that isn't their exact chakra nature element. So therefore the Elemental Puppets can't receive Poison Tai if you hit them with an attack that doesn't damage them.

Testing for my Madara example can be found here: https://youtu.be/G7m1UHuM90Q

To poison the Elemental Puppets you need something that "causes" poison like Karin's mystery, King of Hell or Water Main's Poison Fog Wave. Also keep in mind that abilities like Edo Sasori's standard attack can still poison Founder Madara since even though Founder Madara is immune the Edo Sasori's standard attack, Edo Sasori "causes" poison instead of making others who get damaged "receive" it.

This knowledge doesn't come in handy very often but if you ever wondered why Water Main doesn't control fail or why the Elemental Puppets don't seem to get poisoned by Poison Tai now you know why. Thank you for reading through this, have a good day