As a new player, it might be confusing how stats like effectiveness and effect resist work. It took a year for the developers to reveal officially how this mechanic works!
Effectiveness in a way increases the chances of causing a debuff on an enemy, by penetrating through effect resist. It does NOT increase the initial debuff effect chance.
Effectiveness and Effect Resist
The formula is as follows:
[chance of inflicting debuff] = [debuff effect chance] * ( 1 + [attacker’s effectiveness] – [target’s effect resist]); important note: chance to inflict debuff can’t exceed 85% (source)
Let’s say your hero has a skill has a 75% chance to decrease defense (this is “effect chance”). Once you use the skill on an enemy, the first check is to see if the debuff actually lands. Then, if it lands, it will calculate effectiveness versus effect resist.
Here are three cases with the same skill:
If your hero’s effectiveness is 30% and the enemy has an effect resist of 70%, the enemy will have a 40% chance of resisting your debuff after it lands.
If your hero’s effectiveness is 80% and the enemy has an effect resist of 60%, the skill will have an additional 20% chance to inflict a debuff, so that’s a total of 95%. But remember that chances of inflicting a debuff can’t exceed 85% so it’s lowered to an 85% chance to inflict a debuff.
If your hero’s effectiveness is 50% and the enemy has an effect resist of 50%, they both cancel out, and your debuff will have an 85% chance to land.
Bear in mind that lower limit of 15%. No matter how much effectiveness you have, the enemy will always have a 15% chance to resist a debuff. Bosses also tend to have a decent amount of Effect Resist. Enhance your gear accordingly. It’s not too bad, considering it would be overpowered otherwise. People could just build pure effectiveness to perma-debuff enemies to breeze through the story or opponents in Arena. Imagine your heroes being stunned for a whole battle!
How does combat readiness and speed work?
Combat readiness and speed can easily be mixed up. Skills increase combat readiness, while your gear has a speed stat. Combat readiness is the position in the timeline, while speed determines the rate in which your combat readiness increases.
In combat, you’ll notice a bar on the left side that determines the turn order, as a turn gets closer it’ll move down the line. When you use a skill that decreases or increases combat readiness, you’ll notice the target(s) will make a jump in the turn order either up or down.
The faster your hero (more speed), the sooner their turn will come. Sometimes the combat timeline is deceiving because fast heroes will be able to completely lap your allies or enemies.
How does team positioning work?
Let’s talk a bit about positioning. When I first started, I had an inkling that positioning your heroes in your team did have something to do with how much aggro they take. But I was not too sure. The AI does in fact follow a sort of rule. The hero in the front position will be targeted 40% of the time, while the rest of your team will be targeted 20% of the time each. It’s smart to put whoever you want to be taking the attacks up front!
Arena
In Arena, the AI follow a different pattern. In Arena, an AI attacker will ignore positioning altogether and target for elemental weakness first and foremost. If there are multiple targets with elemental weakness, the AI will choose the lowest % health, or randomly between if the targets have the same % health. Then it will move onto neutral weakness and lastly element resisted all following the same rules.
There are exceptions such as moves that are neutral themselves like Luna’s S3.
Memory Imprint
When you have a hero with Memory Imprint, the team slots that can be augmented are shown. When you place heroes in the respective slots, they gain a boost in their stats. Some to keep in mind is that you CANNOT place a hero into their own memory imprinted slot for them to gain the stat bonuses themselves.