Status effects are beneficial or harmful conditions that affect your Champions in battle. These can be triggered by numerous conditions in the game such as active or passive buffs, debuffs, synergies, and finally local or linked nodes. These effects result in a variety of permanent to temporary buffs, debuffs, and their related immunities. For example, linked and local node buffs in alliance quests and alliance wars provide permanent and challenging buffs and debuffs.
There are four main categories of battle status effects in The Contest, along with associated immunities.
Buff: Describes a generally positive effect, usually placed on yourself (there are some exceptions, like Doctor Voodoo's Loas which do not do anything). Buffs have inherent interactions with Nullify, Stagger, and Fate Seal, all of which will remove one or more buffs from their targets (and in Fate Seal's case, prevent further buffs). Buffs are affected by ability accuracy modification.
Debuff: Describes a generally negative effect, usually placed on your opponent. Debuffs have inherent interactions with Purify, which will remove one or more debuffs from its target. Debuffs are affected by ability accuracy modification.
Active: Describes an effect that is currently on. This is the only specific gameplay meaning of an active effect. For example, an active Armor Up buff is just any Armor Up buff currently affecting a Champion.
Passive: Describes an effect that is neither a buff nor a debuff, but could have either a positive or negative effect. Passive effects have no inherent removal mechanic, and so cannot be removed except by specific interactions cited in their descriptions (e.g. Iron Man (Infinity War)'s Armor Up passive is specifically said to be removed by Armor Break). Passive effects are affected by ability accuracy modification.
Immune: An immunity means you cannot be affected by certain types of status effects. Immunities are usually targeted at specific effects (e.g. Immune to Bleed, which means that Champion cannot have the Bleed debuff affecting them) or specific types (e.g. Debuff Immunity, which prevents a Champion natively, or on a certain node, from being debuffed). These can be combined, as in the effect immune to passive ability accuracy modification. Any effect that meets all of the targeting conditions is prevented.
Example: the Bleed debuff is prevented on a Bleed Immune node (because it is a Bleed) and is also prevented on a node with Bleed Immunity (because it is a debuff). However, while a Bleed passive effect is prevented on a node with Bleed Immunity (because it is a Bleed), it is not prevented on a node with Debuff Immunity, (because it is not a debuff, it is a passive effect).
Viewing Status Effects
You may view these effects as they appear under your Champion’s or your opponent’s health bar, along with a cooldown meter indicating when the effects will wear off, if applicable.
During your adventures within The Battlerealm, you can also pause the battle at any time to get a description of any active buffs or debuffs on either Champion.
Before resuming the fight, make sure you are ready to go!
Ability Accuracy Versus Parry
The interaction between the Parry mastery and ability accuracy reduction can be challenging to notice in the middle of a fight.
Parry works like this: A well-timed block right when attacked reduces damage by an additional 15/20/25%. If contact is made by basic attacks, a Stun debuff will be inflicted for one second. Stun duration increases by up to X seconds with Perfect Block Chance.
When Parry’s ability accuracy is reduced, the damage reduction, Stun, or both, can fail. The Stun debuff is not always prevented even if the damage reduction triggers, and it is also possible to have the Stun trigger without the damage to the Champion being reduced. This is because both halves of Parry are calculated separately.