Buffs & Debuffs

Most stat buffs and debuffs in the game — Attack Up, Defense Down, Crit Down, Effect Hit Down, and more — follow the same shape: 5% per stack, up to 10 stacks, for a 50% swing at the cap. Once you know that one rule, you can read almost any buff or debuff icon in the game without needing its exact tooltip.

Damage-over-time

Burn and Frostbite are the common damage-over-time effects. Each stack ticks once per second for 15% of the attacker’s Attack, up to 10 stacks, over a 10-second duration — and the Attack value is locked in at the moment the DoT is applied, not recalculated every tick. Some characters’ signature damage-over-time effects run at their own unique rate as part of their kit, but 15% per stack per second is the baseline you’ll see most often.

Crowd control

Crowd control comes in two tiers:

Strong crowd control fully locks a target — no skills, no Ultimate, no basic attacks, and no moving or dashing. This covers effects like Stun, Frozen, Confused (which forces the target to attack their own allies), and a couple of generic “cannot act” effects. One of these, Suppressed, can’t be cleansed at all — a Stun or similar can be removed by a cleanse, Suppressed has to run its duration.

Weak crowd control blocks only one action class while leaving the rest open: Immobilized stops movement but not attacking, Disarmed stops basic attacks but not skills, and Silenced stops skills but not basic attacks.

Effect Hit vs. Effect Resistance

Every debuff skill has its own base chance to land, and that chance shifts with the caster’s Effect Hit and the target’s Effect Resistance — more Effect Hit on a debuffer pushes their landing chance up, more Effect Resistance on a target pulls it back down. Both stats follow the same 5%-per-stack, 10-stack rule as everything else, so stacking Effect Hit on a debuffer makes their kit more reliable, and stacking Effect Resistance on a tank makes them harder to lock down.

The World Boss carries zero Effect Resistance at every difficulty, so debuffs against it land at their listed base chance with nothing pulling that number down.

Related

• Crit System — Crit Rate, Crit Boost, and Crit Resistance.
• How Damage Works — where buffs and debuffs sit in the damage pipeline.
• Fighting Styles — the six class passives, several of which ride these same buffs.