Buffs and curses are the same machinery wearing different hats. Both are bundles: a named package with a duration, a category, and a list of effects inside it. The poison ticking on a boss is a bundle, and so is your healer's blessing. Learn the rules once and they apply everywhere.
The rules that actually bite
Five behaviours cause almost every "why did that happen" moment in a stage.
- Same category never stacks. Every bundle carries a category and a level. If something in that category is already on you, a new bundle of equal or higher level replaces it outright, and a lower level one is refused. Two people casting the same blessing does not double it. The stronger cast wins, the weaker cast is thrown away.
- Buckets have hard caps. Bundles are filed into separate buckets and each one has its own limit (see the table below). Passives are the exception and are not capped.
- A full bucket drops the oldest bundle, not the weakest. If you are sitting at cap and something new lands, the thing you have had on you longest is silently released.
- Only one transformation at a time. Applying a morph removes any morph you are already wearing before it applies.
- Roots break in the air. The root effect checks your height every frame and removes itself the moment you leave the ground. Freeze does not check anything, so it holds you until it expires.
| Bucket | Slots |
|---|---|
| Normal buffs | 15 |
| Cash buffs | 10 |
| Curses | 10 |
| Item buffs | 5 |
| Buffs from a pet or other summon | 8 |
| Passives | no limit |
Curses and debuffs
Durations below are the full range that appears in the game data across every source, from a trash mob's cheap slow up to a raid boss's signature. Individual casts sit somewhere inside that range.
| Effect | What it does | Duration range |
|---|---|---|
| Damage over time | Ticks damage once per second unless the effect specifies its own interval. Carries an attribute, so your resistance to that attribute applies. | 2 s to 600 s |
| Freeze | Your character is fully paused. No moving, no attacking, no skills. | 0.3 s to 5 s (one 30 s outlier) |
| Root | Pinned in place. Breaks instantly if you leave the ground. | 0.5 s to 15 s |
| Slow | Movement speed multiplier. Slows in the data run from -5% to -110%. | up to 7200 s |
| Blind | Blinds the target. On a mob it also wipes its hate list, so it forgets who it was chasing. | 1 s to 10 s |
| Skill block | You can still move and swing, but no skills fire at all. | 5, 10, 15 or 20 s |
| Reversed controls | Your movement inputs are flipped. | 1 s to 20 s |
| Zombie | Healing spells do nothing for you. Regeneration effects are unaffected. | 5 s to 30 s |
| Weaken | Cuts your defense by a multiplier. Values in the data go from -25% up to a full -100%. | 15 s to 60 s |
| Choke | Ticks a percentage of maximum HP rather than a flat number, and it can kill you. Values run from 0.1% to 8% per tick. | 0.3 s to 121 s |
| Disease | Maximum HP cut by half. | 20 s |
| Mana burn | Drains 15 MP per second and keeps draining at zero. | 20 s |
| Morph | Replaces your model and often your stat line with something else. | 0.1 s to 6000 s |
A few concrete examples of who does this to whom:
| Source | Effect |
|---|---|
| Tia, Applying Poison | Poison ticking 6 to 28 per second for 15 s, scaling with skill level |
| Krieg, Disturbance | Reversed controls, 2 s to 14 s in stages, 1 s to 7 s in PvP |
| Yuki, Ultm. Snowstorm of Queen | 3 s freeze |
| Dark Eir's curse line | -20% movement speed plus up to -189 poison resistance, 10 s to 32 s |
| Arta, Freezing / Confusing / Slowing Hammer | A 60 s self buff that procs a 2 s root, control reversal or -50% slow on hit, at 2% per rank up to 24% |
Buffs
| Effect | What it does |
|---|---|
| Deadly blow rate | Sets a flat chance for your physical or magical hits to become deadly blows, up to a guaranteed 100% on the strongest versions |
| Critical rush | Every physical attack becomes a deadly blow for the duration |
| Free casting | A chance for a skill to cost no MP at all |
| Damage minimise | A chance for incoming damage to be reduced to its minimum |
| HP / MP regeneration | Restores either a flat amount or a percentage per second |
| Hide | You become invisible. Arien's version also adds +30% damage while hidden |
| Invincible | You take no damage at all |
| Immune | Immunity to specific attributes, described as a mask. The full-cover versions block all eleven |
| Immune to immobilisation | Knockdowns, stuns and lifts stop landing on you |
| Divine shield | Blocks physical damage until the first attack lands, then it is gone |
| Deadly blow dodge | A chance for an incoming deadly blow to count as a normal hit |
| Life / mana drain | Converts a share of damage dealt or taken into HP or MP |
| Pass through | Enemies no longer block your movement |
| Stat, resistance and attribute damage boosts | The bulk of ordinary blessings, potions and passives |
Berserk is worth calling out because it is a genuine trade rather than a gift. At its highest tier it grants +95 flat attack but costs you 25% of maximum HP, 25% of maximum MP, 60% of your defense, and bleeds 0.8% of your HP per second for the full 60 s.
Resistance and cleansing
Two separate mechanics, and neither is a simple percentage.
Curse resistance subtracts directly from a curse's chance to land. Almost everything in the game applies flat and ignores this entirely: only eleven bundles in the whole table roll a chance at all, with base chances between 12% and 30%. Where a curse does roll, your curse resistance is subtracted from that chance, and if the result reaches zero the curse can never touch you.
Cleansing compares the strength of the cleansing effect against the resistance value baked into the bundle. Cleanse strength minus bundle resistance gives the chance to strip it; if that is zero or less, nothing happens no matter how many times you try. Most bundles carry zero resistance and come off easily, a large group sits at 0.5 or 1.0, and a small handful of boss effects carry values in the hundreds and are simply not removable. Cleansing also cannot touch passives.
Elemental resistance works on the damage-over-time tick, because those ticks carry an attribute like any other hit. Poison is by far the most common attribute for damage over time, followed by fire, so poison resistance is the most useful line to have when you are taking chip damage you cannot outrun. See Damage and Defense for how resistance converts into mitigation.
What is not covered here
Skill tooltips carry the exact numbers for the rank you have learned, and those are what you should trust for your own build. This page covers the rules and the shape of the effects, not every one of the several thousand bundles in the game. Browse skills and the bestiary for per-source detail.