Buffs & Debuffs

How buffs and debuffs stack in JoJo: Golden Spirit, how damage-over-time ticks, what crowd control locks, and how Effect Hit vs. Effect Res decides whether a debuff lands.

Nearly every stat buff and debuff — Attack Up, Defense Down, Crit Down, Effect Hit Down, and the rest — scales identically: 5% per stack, capping at 10 stacks for a 50% total swing. Learn that one rule and most buff or debuff icons become readable without checking a tooltip.

How damage-over-time ticks

Burn and Frostbite cover most of the damage-over-time effects you'll run into. Each stack deals 15% of the attacker's Attack per second, for up to 10 stacks over a 10-second window — and that Attack figure is locked in the instant the effect is applied, not recalculated on later ticks. A few characters run their own signature DoT at a different rate as part of their kit, but 15% per stack per second is the number you'll see most often.

The two tiers of crowd control

Crowd control splits into strong and weak versions. Strong crowd control shuts a target down entirely — no basic attacks, skills, Ultimate, movement, or dashing. Stun, Frozen, and Confused (which turns the target against their own allies) all fall under this tier, along with a couple of effects that are simply labeled "cannot act." One strong CC effect, Suppressed, resists cleansing outright and has to expire on its own; the others can be cleared early.

Weak crowd control is narrower, blocking a single action type while leaving the rest untouched: Immobilized removes movement only, Disarmed removes basic attacks only, and Silenced removes skills only.

Landing a debuff: Effect Hit vs. Effect Resistance

Every debuff carries its own base landing chance, which then gets pushed around by the caster's Effect Hit and the target's Effect Resistance — more of the former raises the odds, more of the latter lowers them. Both follow the same 5%-per-stack, 10-stack cap as every other buff, so a debuff-focused kit benefits from stacking Effect Hit the same way a tank benefits from stacking Effect Resistance to resist being locked down.

One exception worth knowing: the World Boss has zero Effect Resistance at every difficulty, so any debuff thrown at it lands at its plain base chance.

Related

• Crit System — Crit Rate, Crit Boost, and Crit Resistance.
• How Damage Works — where buffs and debuffs sit in the damage pipeline.
• Fighting Styles — the six class passives, several of which trigger these same buffs.