Do abilities have a priority ranking?
While in the training tower, I came across an odd situation involving my Hector and the opponent's Niles.
As this is the training tower, and enemy Heroes can have a large assortment of abilities they do not normally have when the player owns them, this Niles had a level 3 Axebreaker ability.
Level 3 Axebreaker states:
If unit's HP ≥ 50% in combat against an axe user, unit makes a follow-up attack and the foe cannot.
My Hector has an ability built into his mighty axe, Armads, which states:
Unit makes a guaranteed follow-up attack when attacked at HP ≥ 80%.
The situation was as follows:
Niles attacked me with his bow, thanks to Hector's Distant Counter I was able to counterattack, then Niles attacked again and that was the end of combat.
At first I was really confused as I know when I am attacked at full health Armads allows me to counterattack twice.
Then I noticed Niles had Axebreaker and thought it made sense that I did not get the second attack.
But then I saw that Armads has the word "guaranteed" in it's ability text, so I am now even more confused.
Is there a specific ability priority, so we can know when one ability will trump another in situations such as this?
Skills that prevent/guarantee doubles cancel each other out, and thus will use the default to determine if a unit doubles, check to see if one units Speed stat is 5 higher than the other.
In your example, Armads allows Hector to double, but axebreaker cancels out the followup.
Niles is able to double regardless of his speed since axebreaker allows a follow-up on axe users.
There are many skills that prevent or 'guarantee' doubles, here are a few:
- Prevent Doubles: wary fighter, the breaker skills and wind/watersweep (but only yourself).
- Cause Doubles: breakers, bold/vengeful fighter, brash assault and quick riposte.
Skills in opposing categories will cancel each other out. You can also have multiple of either category but only one skill will cancel one other skill. So if you have Armads, wary fighter in the B slot and quick riposte in the seal slot, Armads and wary fighter cancel each other out, but quick riposte will still allow a follow up.