The official Steam page calls out Status Ailments, Active Skills, Signal Skills and switching, so these terms deserve a focused guide. The page does not publish a complete glossary, timing table or damage formula. This article gives you a repeatable way to learn the system from the current game. It also explains why a community table can be a useful lead without being safe to copy as a permanent truth.
Begin with the target’s visible state
Choose a low-risk enemy and observe it before trying to optimize. Write down the target’s name, the current party, the action that produced the icon, the icon’s label if available, and the visible change in movement, defense or health. Do not start with a boss whose phases can hide the cause. A clean observation is more useful than a dramatic clip with missing context.
Repeat the same action once. If the icon returns, test whether the timing, hero or skill is the important variable. If it does not, check whether the target was already under an effect, whether the skill missed, or whether the game uses a cooldown or resource condition. The goal is to distinguish a reliable interaction from a lucky animation.
Separate Active Skills from Signal Skills
Read the current interface labels carefully. An Active Skill may be a direct player choice, while a Signal Skill may depend on a prompt, event or team state. Those are reasonable hypotheses from the names, not verified rules. Record what the game actually asks you to do. Note which hero is active, which hero enters after a switch, and whether the target or party displays a new state.
Test a skill in three situations: before an ailment, during an ailment, and after the icon disappears. Compare only the outcome that the interface makes visible. The effect could be control, movement, damage, a follow-up prompt or another state. If the skill description uses a term that is not explained, keep that term intact in your notes rather than replacing it with a familiar genre label.
Use a small experiment matrix
| Test | Keep constant | Change | Record |
|---|---|---|---|
| A | enemy and hero | timing before contact | whether the effect appears |
| B | enemy and timing | active hero | icon, target response and recovery |
| C | enemy and skill | switch moment | whether a prompt or signal appears |
| D | party and timing | enemy type | resistance or duration observation |
Run one row at a time. If you change the hero, food and equipment together, you cannot tell which caused the result. Use the same difficulty when possible. If the game exposes a training area or repeatable early encounter, prefer it to a one-time story scene. A result that cannot be reproduced should be marked as an observation rather than a rule.
How to describe an ailment safely
Use five fields: name, source, target state, duration, and follow-up. “Name” is the exact label or the honest description if no label is shown. “Source” is the hero, skill or event that caused it. “Target state” describes what changed on screen. “Duration” can be a rough visible interval only if you state that it is an observation. “Follow-up” says what happened after switching or using another skill.
Do not turn a visible red icon into a universal “Bleed” claim unless the game labels it that way. Do not declare a five-ailment system merely because a third-party guide lists five terms. The Steam page confirms the category, not the count. This distinction keeps the guide honest while leaving room for a later official glossary or a well-documented in-game audit.
Build an ailment test party
Start with the heroes currently available to you and choose one character whose skill appears to create the effect, one character with a different timing or control tool, and one character that helps you survive the test. The official store page confirms 19 heroes, but it does not publish a verified role table. Use the skills and tooltips in your own build, and record the hero names only after you have checked their current text.
The team’s purpose is learning, not ranking. If a test succeeds, repeat it with one hero swapped. If the result disappears, you have found a useful dependency. If it remains, you have found a broader pattern. In either case, do not publish a conclusion about every boss or every status until you have tested more than one target and checked the target’s resistance behavior.
Switching and the conversion window
The official product language makes switching part of the combat identity. Try switching before the current hero finishes an attack, immediately after a visible status, and when a Signal Skill prompt appears. Compare exposure, animation, target state and control. A good conversion window is not necessarily the highest damage moment; it may be the moment that lets the next hero act safely.
If a switch seems to cancel a skill, write down the exact sequence and test it again. If a switch extends an effect, check whether the extension belongs to the hero, the target or the skill. Avoid using a community term such as “tag combo” as if it were an official mechanic name unless the current UI uses it. Clear language makes future updates easier to audit.
Common mistakes
Players often treat a status icon as a damage-over-time effect, save every skill for a boss and then miss the timing that makes the system readable, or copy a rotation without matching enemy behavior. Another mistake is declaring a character weak because an ailment is resisted by one target. A resistance observation should redirect the team for that encounter, not erase the hero’s role.
When the result is unclear, return to a simple test: one enemy, one hero, one skill, one switch. Check the tooltip again after an update. Keep the date and platform in your note. This is slower than copying a table, but it gives you a combat guide that can explain itself.
FAQ
Does Steam publish the full ailment chart?
No. Steam confirms Status Ailments as a feature, but the public store copy does not list every name or interaction.
Should I prioritize one ailment?
Prioritize the effect that answers the encounter you are testing. Confirm the live icon, target response and follow-up before investing around it.
What if a Signal Skill never appears?
Check the current prompt, active hero, resource and trigger condition. Record the exact UI wording and test one variable at a time.