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Howdy and welcome to the Buffs/Debuffs guide!

 We are going to learn about the system that displays our Heroes’ skills, passives and leaderships into helpful visual and text references.  During battle it’s important to stay mindful of the colorful icons (mostly green/red) above the heroes in battle and how to specifically check these icons in more detail during your fights.  With an ever-growing amount of skills and mechanics added to the game, knowing the right time to use a skill becomes just as important as knowing the skill itself!

We will look at some of our Heroes in game and on the battlefield. Our goal is to learn what buffs, debuffs, passive and leaderships abilities are and how they interact with our heroes during battle. Before jumping into the details, let’s learn how to check heroes in more detail during battle.

How to check buffs/debuffs in battle

Simply click & hold onto any hero on the battlefield to bring up a character overview. This character overview will tell us everything we need to know. We can see active buffs/debuffs, read over character skills and can even see if skills are on a cooldown! You should get familiar with this tool and give yourself the edge in battle.

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Buffs/Debuffs, Passives & Leaderships

Buffs:
Buffs are the positive effects your heroes will gain skills and passives. Buffs show up in green icons.

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Debuffs:
The opposite of buffs, these red showing icons will bring negative effects to heroes.

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Passives:
Passive abilities are active as long as that hero is alive on the battlefield. These passive effects will show up as a variety of buffs and debuffs. Let’s use Azariel as an example below.

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Azariel’s passive debuff is placed on the enemy team. Anytime the enemy heals, Azariel’s passive will trigger healing!

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Leaderships:
Leadership abilities function similarly to passives but require a hero with leader abilities selected to your “Leader” spot to be active. Leaderships remain active even when that leader dies in battles.

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When selecting Abaddon his leadership icon shows up and now I know his leadership abilities will be active.

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Using the full demon team example above, Abaddon gives a 15% damage increase to himself and demon allies at the start of the turn. Since we have a full team of demons, any basic attack from our team will cause Abyss Hound or Infernus to follow up with another random basic attack since they are “melee and ranged damager” heroes. Now keep in mind that only happens if Abaddon is selected first into the leader spot.

How to apply and remove Buffs/Debuffs

Applying Buffs & Debuffs is as simple as using a Hero skill and/or automatically applied through Heroes’ passive and leadership skills.

Apply buffs

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Apply debuffs

It’s important to note when using damaging skills to apply debuffs - missing, dodging and enemy fortitude can cause the debuffs to not be applied.

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Remove debuffs from allies

Heroes that can remove debuffs from your allies are critical, and the more debuff removal the better!

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Sacrif was able to cleanse herself and her archon allies from enemy debuffs and an added bonus, her whole team cannot receive debuffs for 2 turns…that is unless a hero is able to remove buffs!

**Remove buffs from enemies **

Removing buffs from enemies will require the right hero and skills but is a crucial aspect of your battles. Understanding the right time to remove buffs from certain targets will increase your chances to win!

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Bellara has special abilities to remove buffs and apply her own debuffs with Denaya as Leader. In the pictures above you can see how she removed Buffs from Beorn and replaced them with her own debuffs. Notice how Beorn still has a speed buff? This is a Irremovable Buff that Beorn has applied to his faction through his leadership ability,

Buffs/Debuffs - Types, Symbols, Irremovable, etc…

With hundreds of skills in the game there is too many buffs/debuffs to go over every single one. My goal is to provide you with the most relevant ones so you can start to recognize them during your own battles and become the most effective AoM player you can be!

It’s also important to remember some buffs and debuffs interactions may be irremovable before “x” amount of turns and heroes may even be immune to debuffs through skills and passives. The only way to specifically know how these interactions work is through reading the skills themselves!

Buffs/Debuffs

Immunities/ Buff blockers

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Block debuffs is one of the best, if not the best skill, in my opinion. Referred to as immunity, a hero with immunity will not be able to receive any debuffs - game changing!

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Rok’s sleep spell will be blocked 100% everytime against the enemy Cathbad and Dreverad while Immunity is active.

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The block buffs debuff icon is shown as chains and does exactly what it says. Certain hero skills will not take effect while active, so be careful! This debuff can be cleansed with the Immunity spell.

Stuns/Locks

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The sleep spell is represented by the sleeping 💤 . This debuff is where Rok’s sleep spell can shine! A hero with sleep cannot make support or counter attacks.

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Rok’s sleep spell hit and cast on every enemy, that is a whole enemy turn skip!

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Lock will render some heroes useless on the battlefield if they aren’t able to cast any spells! Locking important enemy heroes is key to victory!

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Immortality/Death save

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The Immortality buff can prevent a character from death, this effect usually will have a number of “hits” a character can take before Immortality runs out.

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Azariel’s passive triggered Immortality on Lucky. The number 7 on the immortality buff represents the amount of times Lucky can take damage before the buffs effect wears off.

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The Leaf icon buff will prevent a hero from outright death and will instead recover health.

Anti-Healing/ Anti-Resurrection

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Keep an eye out for the slashed heart icon. Using a healing skill may be wasted you if can’t heal yourself!

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If you find yourself not being able to resurrect an ally, this debuff may be responsible! Some hero skills do prevent resurrections if dealt a killing blow as well.

Counter/Strike back

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If multiple enemies are buffed with strike back, be careful before using multi target (AoE - area of effect) attacks or you may be on the receiving end of multiple counter attacks back!

Provocations/Taunts

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The Provocation Buff acts as a taunt and will force any heroes to attack them.

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The Vulnerable debuff will allow heroes to still be the target of attacks even if an ally has the Provocation buff active.

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Self explanatory, a hero with this debuff is forced to attack a specific Hero.

Hots/Dots & Static charges

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Heal(s) over time will activate at the start of a heroes’ turn, great for long battles and waves of enemies.

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Damage over time (DoTs) and Static work in similar ways of damaging heroes when their turn starts. Dots and Static can stack and can become problematic if not checked, some factions can utilize these stacks to “bomb” the other team, usually causing significant damage.

General

Fortitude

Heroes’ natural ability to block debuffs.

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Speed

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Accuracy

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Be careful if you have the Decreased accuracy debuff before using important damaging skills, they may outright miss!

Armor/Resistances

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If a Hero is able to negate damage through armor, it will show up in blue numbers as shown above.

Damage increase

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It’s important to stay mindful of the dodge buff, if an enemy has a 100% to dodge, your attacks and specials won’t produce damage and the effects with it.

Unique Buffs/Debuffs & Faction Abilities

As you progress through Age of Magic and unlock unique heroes, you will be introduced to unique types of Buffs/debuffs as well. These unique abilities can range in color from your standard green and red buffs/debuffs.

Renegades - Darkness Tokens

Darkness Tokens are exclusive passive abilities of the Renegade faction. Tokens can stack 5 max and offer each renegade Hero a different interaction. Morrigan’s critical chance increases 15% for each token up to a maximum of 75%! Some renegade skills come at the cost of losing darkness tokens but the benefits outweigh the risk.

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Each Renegade gets a different benefit to darkness tokens, be sure to read their passives to understand their interaction!

Knights of the Council - Special Stacks

Knights of the Council (Tristan, Jeanne and Brynhild) have their own special passive stacks and when a certain amount of stacks are achieved, that hero gains a unique buff along with several benefits.

Tristan

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Jeanne

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Brynhild

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**Librarian **

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Librarian also gains stack of magic power but instead of taking on a unique buff at max stack, he uses his stack count to cause an explosion hitting everyone on the battlefield. (With Tristan as leader, Librarian cannot hurt allies of the Knight of the Council faction.)

**Librarian exclusive **

Librarian has two additional ability interactions exclusive to him.

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Librarian can add an instance (2 if awakened) of buff removal protection. If an enemy tries to remove a buff(s) from a hero with protection, Librarians buff protection will be removed and your hero will keep the other buffs.

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Mirror of Darkness - This unique debuff is the only one of its kind that can reflect debuffs back onto an enemy. An enemy using a debuff will hit apply it to themself and the Mirror debuff will be removed from them after.

The Vans of Northern Peaks - Magic Absorb

The Vans have the unique ability to absorb enemy buffs and debuffs. This passive ability will be applied to the enemy as a debuff.

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Each Van has their own individual rate at which they can absorb enemy effects. 5% being the most common but the hero Rei’mund can have chances as high as 60%!

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#Buffs & Debuffs