How combat works
A queue of five, exchange by exchange. Understanding the queue order is worth more than any stat.
2 min read
1.It is a duel in a queue, not a pitched battle
Each side has five characters in a queue. Only the two at the front fight. Whoever trades a blow goes to the back of the queue and the next one takes the front.
That is why order matters so much: the character in position 1 takes the enemy’s first hit, and the one in position 5 may never fight at all if the battle ends first.
2.Round and turn are not the same thing
A round is each exchange between the two at the front. A turn is one full pass through the living queue.
The difference shows up in skills: "at the end of each round" fires far more often than anything per turn. A healer with a round trigger heals the whole team several times per turn.
3.Crit
Base crit chance is 8.6%, and a crit doubles damage. Crit runes raise the chance; crit damage runes raise the multiplier.
Because the base is low, investing a little in crit changes almost nothing. Either you commit real pieces to it, or the same resources are better spent on raw power.
4.Execute
Execute skills only count against a target below 40% of maximum health. Above that, the bonus simply does not apply.
That is why an execute team looks weak on paper and closes games in practice: it exists to finish, not to open.
5.Damage over time ignores shields
Burn and poison apply for three rounds and stack. They go through shields, which makes them the natural answer to an enemy that piles on armour.
On the other side, per-round healing and effect cleansing wipe that damage before it adds up.
Damage on several targets is split
When a skill says "on all enemies", the damage is split between them. When it says "on each enemy", every one of them takes the full value.
The difference is enormous and the game text does not draw attention to it. We measured 30 damage where the full value would have been 138 — the skill was dividing across all of them.