QQ: Do the status resistance debuffs from Sundered defense and Sundered resistance stack?

[Sumshine]

Sundered defense gives -1 defense and -1 status resistance, and sundered resistance gives -1 resistance and -1 status resistance. Do the two -1 status resistances stack, or does it take the higher of the two maluses? I'm specifically looking at the hero trait sundering curse if that matters, but I'm also curious about how the interaction works in a more general sense.

[アンジェル]

Originally posted by Sumshine:

QQ: Do the status resistance debuffs from Sundered defense and Sundered resistance stack?
Sundered defense gives -1 defense and -1 status resistance, and sundered resistance gives -1 resistance and -1 status resistance. Do the two -1 status resistances stack, or does it take the higher of the two maluses? I'm specifically looking at the hero trait sundering curse if that matters, but I'm also curious about how the interaction works in a more general sense.

They do stack as they do not stack.

Rule of thumb: if two boni/mali of the same type applies, and they are not meant to be stacked, then the higher value overrules the lower value, if a boni/mali can stack, then the information will be given accordingly and applied as addition of items, if two different types of boni/mali applies, both will exist alongside each other unless they negate each other.

[Sumshine]

Thanks for the reply! I am confused by what you mean by "They do stack as they do not stack" I am reading that as "They do stack" and "They do not stack" which is not possible unless the two uses of "they" are referring to different things. Could you clarify please?

Follow up question: how do you know if boni/maluses are intended/meant to be stacked?

[アンジェル]

Originally posted by Sumshine:

Thanks for the reply! I am confused by what you mean by "They do stack as they do not stack" I am reading that as "They do stack" and "They do not stack" which is not possible unless the two uses of "they" are referring to different things. Could you clarify please?

Follow up question: how do you know if boni/maluses are intended/meant to be stacked?

The first sentence is directly referring to your question, since you ask about sundered defense and sundered resistance. You asked whether they would stack. Since they are of different types they cannot stack. So both are applied together, which, by your phrasing, would sound the same as they would stack. Consider it food for thought for the follow up I wrote.

Boni/mali which stacks are indicated as such. They have it in their spell description that they can stack, if they do.

[scrimbul]

I would have figured it would have just been faster and more accurate to say 'if a given spell applies a debuff, the same name spell doesn't stack, just resets the duration'

I've seen games where a Materium focused AI makes it almost impossible to harm them by anyone using physical damage, but that was because they were stacking different def buffs with the same function. Which is usually intentional when you dip heavily into a single affinity but once in a while can overlap different affinities for the same effect.

So you can have several different buffs stack that all give bonuses to resistance but not the same effects from different characters. Likewise, if you're not going to exploit the weaker def stat on a target (defense or resistance) then you need several spells or effects that all apply the same debuff.

In fact Materium is probably the easiest way to test this, but you can get a lot of resistance buffs stacked as well from different effects and spells and then try to be a target of magic damage and watch the results.

Total Warhammer 3 had a mirror of madness function implemented to sandbox these interactions and compare units, AOW4 could benefit from a small mod that uses console commands and a custom map to accomplish the same thing I suppose.

TL;DR just don't stack the same buff from different units with the same spell/effect name. Use different spell/effect names to stack the same stat.

Frost has a single target -5 stat resistance spell Blizzard for a single army, but also Flash Freeze which is -2 stat resist to every enemy in the province. Provided you don't let the AI cure this, it can be a devastating stacked debuff from two differently named spells to apply status effects that normally have a very low success rate such as insanity, freeze or mind control.

[Howell-Barrex Soldier Ja'kala]

Just tested it in-game and the -status resistance from both is applied so you can get -10 status resistance from getting 5 stacks of both on something

[scrimbul]

Originally posted by Howell-Barrex Soldier Ja'kala:

Just tested it in-game and the -status resistance from both is applied so you can get -10 status resistance from getting 5 stacks of both on something

Yeah, I think there's a few effects that tell you in the text that you can stack things up to five times but it's kinda easy to miss even if the tooltip exists.

[snuggleform]

What are all the ways I can enchant my units with the ability to debuff the enemy with sunder defense and sunder resist? I think the gladerunner from t2 nature tome has an ability that can do that, but what else?

[Sumshine]

Thanks everyone!

@snuggleform, I am not sure. I started making an excel sheet to try and sort all the data for the different tomes, but I am not very far into it yet. That's where my question came from.

[snuggleform]

There's a spell from astral tier 3 tome called mental mark that does sundered resistance (not defense).