Example of a locked defiance bar, found on a Legendary Wyvern

The Defiance bar, also known as a break bar, is a mechanic used by some enemies that restrict the use of control effects against them. Throughout Central Tyria, it is most often (though not exclusively) found on champion or higher ranked enemies, but is commonly found on creatures of all ranks throughout the Heart of Maguuma.

An enemy's Defiance bar may be locked, completely preventing control effects from working, or unlocked, allowing control effects to reduce the Defiance bar in the same way that damage reduces their health bar. Enemies may also have different mechanics related to the Defiance bar. Traits, skills, and sigils that apply effects when interrupting an attack will activate when used during an enemy attack.[1] Interrupts will only trigger effects and do not prevent the enemy's attack from being completed (unless the bar is broken as a result of the interrupt). There is a 3-second cooldown after every interrupt to prevent activating multiple effects during the same attack animation. This cooldown is not shared between players.

Appearance [ edit ]

The Defiance bar appears directly below the enemy's health bar when targeted. The appearance of the bar corresponds to its behavior:

A gray, segmented bar, known as a "locked" defiance bar, indicates that the enemy is currently completely immune to any crowd control.

A teal bar indicates that the enemy is immune to the intended effects of crowd control skills (including soft control conditions such as blinded or chilled); instead, these conditions will deplete part of the bar. The amount depleted depends on the effect applied to the enemy. In most cases, the defiance bar will slowly regenerate over time if no crowd control conditions are being applied. Once fully depleted, the enemy's defiance has been broken and a special effect will occur (see Behavior below) while the bar begins to recharge.

A brown bar indicates that the enemy's defiance was recently broken; they are completely immune to any crowd control and the Defiance bar is recharging. Crowd control skills will not reduce the bar or affect the rate at which it recharges. Once the bar has fully recharged, it will turn teal again. The broken state is accompanied by temporary conditions (such as stun), changes in enemy behavior, or both.

Behavior [ edit ]

When players break an enemy's defiance by fully depleting the Defiance bar, one or more of the following will happen:

Interrupts or stops their current action (most common effect)

Applies Stun, causing them to stagger for a few seconds

Stun, causing them to stagger for a few seconds Applies Knockdown

Knockdown Applies Exposed, causing them to take 50% additional damage for 5 seconds

Exposed, causing them to take 50% additional damage for 5 seconds Other effects See below.

Hovering over the Defiance bar with your mouse will display the effect that happens when the bar is depleted.

Recharge [ edit ]

When the bar gets damaged, it will slowly recharge over time. Soft control effects can slow down or stop this regeneration.

When the bar is broken it may sometimes turn ochre and begin to recharge. During this time, it cannot be affected by crowd control. Once the bar is full again, it will change back to teal and can once again be reduced by players. Certain enemies will not have this and will instead have their bar locked until the next time they attempt a powerful attack.

Because the bar slowly recharges over time, crowd control must be steadily applied to keep reducing it; alternatively, players can coordinate their efforts to all apply crowd control at the same time, rapidly reducing the bar to zero.

Window time [ edit ]

In some case the defiance bar is only unlocked for a short period of time, challenging players to coordinate and break the bar as quickly as possible within a short period of time. Failing to do so will most often cause a devastating attack to be released or other unfortunate events.

Many powerful enemies, particularly those found in Heart of Maguuma, have a locked bar most of the time; however when they are about to launch a strong attack or perform an action that highly empowers them, the segmented bar will unlock and turn teal for a short time, becoming locked again after launching their attack. Players can stun the boss and prevent the attack from launching by using crowd control skills to fully deplete the bar before the attack begins.

Examples

Permanent break [ edit ]

Rather than recharging, some enemies that start with a Defiance bar will lose it permanently once it has been broken. These enemies often have powerful attacks or boons that will be lost for the remainder of the fight once their Defiance bar has been broken.

Examples

During the Dragon's Stand meta-event, Legendary Axemaster Hareth receives reduced damage as long as his bar has not been broken. Once broken, the bar locks rather than entering recharge state and his damage reduction is lost for that encounter.

Dynamic scaling [ edit ]

Event scaling affects the Defiance bar strength. As more players join the event it will become harder for any one player to break the bar. However, if distributed between all players, each player will be responsible for a reduced amount. This also causes the bar to recharge more slowly which means it takes more time until the Defiance bar becomes vulnerable again.

The following table shows an example of an enemy with a base strength of 600. Note: Scaling is not the same for all enemies and not all defiance bars scale.

Player count Bar strength Bar per player Time to regenerate (seconds) Time to recharge (seconds) 1 600 600 20 15 2 600 300 20 15 3 600 200 20 15 4 600 150 20 15 5 600 120 20 15 6 780 130 26 19.5 7 960 137 32 24 8 1140 143 38 28.5 9 1320 147 44 33 10 1500 150 50 37.5

Player count Bar strength Bar per player Time to regenerate (seconds) Time to recharge (seconds) 15 2400 160 80 60 20 3300 165 110 82.5 25 4200 168 140 105 30 5100 170 170 127.5 35 6000 171 200 150 40 6900 173 230 172.5 45 7800 173 260 195 50 8700 174 290 217.5 100 17700 177 590 442.5 200 35700 179 1190 829.5

Control effects [ edit ]

Soft control effects [ edit ]

Soft control effects are categorized as effects that hinder an enemy's movement or skill usage. They are mostly non-damaging conditions and are affected by condition duration. As such, they deal damage over time to the Defiance bar. Additionally, these effects will apply to the foe for the purposes of triggering traits but not apply their debuff effect. Fears and taunts are inherently hard control effects, however they act as soft control effects with regards to the defiance bar.

Condition Defiance Bar Damage Fear 100 per second Taunt 75 per second Immobile 50 per second Slow 50 per second Chilled 33 per second Blinded 20 per second Weakness 20 per second Crippled 15 per second

Hard control effects [ edit ]

Hard control effects are effects that can directly interrupt skill usage or displace an enemy. As such, they deal instant damage to the Defiance bar. The damage inflicted is solely based on the duration of the effect. Effect type or tooltip distance does not affect the damage they deal. These effects still trigger traits that apply immediately on interrupted/disabled foes (such as Lightning Rod), but will not apply their control effect so traits like Ancient Seeds will not trigger on following attacks. Damage dealt is based on following formula:

Defiance bar damage = 100 * effect duration

All effects deal a minimum of 100 damage. Traits and sigils that increase the duration of these effects will also cause them to do more damage to the bar.

Skill details [ edit ]

1 Sigils and traits that increase the duration of stuns and dazes will also increase the damage to the defiance bar. 2 Distance does not affect damage to the defiance bar.

Mob-specific defiance bars [ edit ]

Fractal-specific defiance bars [ edit ]

Raid-specific defiance bars [ edit ]

Notes [ edit ]

Defiance bar replaced the Unshakable effect on October 23, 2015 when Heart of Thorns was released. Some enemies in the game, especially in older content like dungeons or the personal story, still have the Unshakable trait. Example : Bria in Hellion Forest remains Unshakable, instead of having a Defiance bar. Some even have latent traits of both mechanics, making the defiance bar malfunction in a multitude of ways. Example : A champion enemy may be susceptible to some control effects as if they were normal ranked, completely immune to others, and the rest causes defiance bar damage as intended.

Initially, some skills and traits were designed to grant a Defiance bar to players. This was removed between the second and third beta weekend events of Heart of Thorns, although players still gain a defiance bar when transformed into an Enchanted Armor during the Battle in Tarir.

The Defiance bar recharges and applies condition damage ticks to itself every 0.24 seconds. This slightly affects the actual effect of conditions. For example, a 1-second fear may tick a total of 4 or 5 times causing 96 or 120 defiance bar damage.

The Defiance bar starts ticking when any control effect is applied. For example, starting with a 1-second fear always results in 96 defiance bar damage.