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Crowd control and breakbars

At a glance

Use crowd control skills when the bar below an enemy’s health is teal. Depleting this breakbar can interrupt a dangerous attack or disable the enemy. The result depends on the enemy.

🟠 What is a defiance bar?

Some enemies have a defiance bar, also called a breakbar, below their health bar. It is common on bosses, but can also appear on ordinary enemies in expansion maps.

Enemies with a breakbar are immune to the normal effects of stuns, knockbacks, and similar control effects. When the bar is teal, those effects reduce the bar instead. Breaking it may interrupt an attack, stun the enemy, or increase damage taken, depending on the encounter. Hover over the bar to see what breaking it does.

💡

A Defiance Break value in a skill’s tooltip shows that it affects breakbars. Check which of your skills have one before a fight.

📊 Bar colors and states

🔵 Teal: active

Crowd control reduces the bar in this state. Coordinate your skills with the party to deplete it quickly.

⚪ Gray: locked

The breakbar is locked. Control skills cannot reduce it; wait for it to turn teal.

🟤 Brown: recharging

The bar is recharging after being broken. Crowd control cannot reduce it or slow its recharge. Watch for it to turn teal again.

⚡ Types of crowd control

There are two main ways to reduce a breakbar.

1. Hard control: immediate breakbar damage

Stun, Daze, Knockdown, Knockback, Pull, and Launch deal their breakbar damage immediately. The amount scales with the effect’s duration.

Control effects Defiance damage
Stun, Daze, Knockdown, Pull, Knockback, Launch, and similar effects 100 × duration in seconds
* Since the January 2026 update, the minimum is 25 points.
2. Soft control: breakbar damage over time

The conditions below deal breakbar damage each second while active. Different conditions contribute together, but applying the same condition repeatedly does not multiply its damage per second. Fear and Taunt also work this way against breakbars.

Condition Defiance damage per second
😱 Fear, 😤 Taunt 100 / second
⛓️ Immobile, 🐢 Slow 50 / second
❄️ Chilled 33 / second
👁️ Blinded, 💧 Weakness 20 / second
🦵 Crippled 15 / second

⚠️ What happens if you do not break it?

Some enemies briefly unlock their breakbar while preparing a powerful attack. Breaking it in time can stop the attack. Other bars stay active, so watch the teal state and follow the encounter’s mechanics.

💀 Attacks that can wipe the party

Failing a crowd control check can wipe the party in some encounters. In Shattered Observatory, Arkk uses Force of the Nightmare if you fail to break his bar after a reactor phase. Prioritize crowd control over damage at this point.

🛡️ Damage immunity remains

Some bosses are immune to damage while their breakbar is active. You must break the bar before you can damage them and continue the fight.

⚡ A dangerous attack goes off

Other failures can cause heavy area damage, lengthy control effects, or a disadvantage for the party. Even if you survive, recovering costs damage uptime and puts pressure on the group.

⚠️

Crowd control matters in the open world too. Breaking Vinetooth Prime’s bar, for example, creates a major damage opportunity and makes the event timer easier to meet. In fractals and raids, both damage dealers and supports should know their control skills and use them when needed.

💥 A possible reward: Exposed

Breaking some enemies’ bars applies Exposed, increasing the damage they take. When Exposed appears, concentrate your strongest attacks.

⚡

Exposed: a burst damage window

The standard Exposed effect increases damage taken by the amounts below for 10 seconds. Duration and values can vary by enemy.

Strike damage +10%
Condition damage +20%

* Soo-Won in Dragon’s End uses different values: +30% strike damage and +100% condition damage for 30 seconds.

🎯

Practical tip: learn when the boss opens its breakbar and save strong control skills for that moment. If you miss a brief window, the bar may lock again until the next opportunity.

🎯 Coordinating crowd control

For a large bar or a short window, using crowd control together helps the party break it quickly. Agree on who will use which skills before the fight.

📋 Prepare: know your control skills

Look for Defiance Break in your tooltips before combat. Damage dealers should also keep suitable control skills ready for the bar.

⏱️ Timing: use skills together

When the bar turns teal, concentrate the party’s control skills into the available window. This is more effective than spreading them out over a long period.

💬 Communicate

Groups commonly call “CC!” or “Break!” in chat or voice. For demanding fractals and raids, they may assign specific control skills in advance.

Portable United Legions Waystation

Unlock this through the Icebrood Saga’s United Legions Waystation Synchronization mastery track. After training Portable Waystation, buy the item from a waystation in Drizzlewood Coast for 25 War Supplies. Place it in an open-world PvE map; it lasts 15 minutes. Each user can choose one of the skills below that their own masteries unlock, for 10 War Supplies per skill.

Skill Effect Defiance damage Uses / cooldown
Electromagical Pulse 2-second Stun within radius 360; 5-second Slow within radius 900 300 3 uses / 12 seconds
Remote Charge Throw a bomb up to range 1,500 and detonate it remotely; deals damage and Burning - 5 uses / 8 seconds
Medizooka Rocket-jump into the air, deploy a parachute, then fire healing and boon missiles for allies 150 (rocket jump) 5 uses / 30 seconds

Training the final United Legions Waystation Mastery unlocks upgraded 2.0 versions. Choose Electromagical Pulse when you need crowd control. The table shows the base versions; EMP 2.0 increases the number of uses to five.

A waystation provides additional crowd control alongside your profession’s skills for open-world meta events and world bosses.