Tough

Tough grants the elite enemy 1 stack of Brace, which reduces all incoming damage by 1 per stack. This applies to every source of damage including abilities, status effects like Poison, and environmental damage. The enemy has a dark grey tint to signal its increased durability. Minimum damage remains at 1, so Brace cannot reduce hits to zero, but it significantly diminishes the effectiveness of multi-hit and low-damage attacks.

Tough is most punishing against teams that deal many small hits rather than fewer large ones, since each hit has 1 damage subtracted. A multi-hit ability that deals 1 damage per strike is reduced to the minimum on every hit, cutting its effectiveness dramatically. Tough on already-tanky enemies with high health pools creates walls that take an extremely long time to chew through. Poison and Burn damage-over-time effects also lose 1 damage per tick, reducing the value of attrition strategies.

High single-hit damage attacks are the cleanest counter, since losing 1 damage from a 10-damage hit is much less impactful than losing 1 from a 2-damage hit. Focus on abilities with high per-hit damage rather than multi-strike attacks. Percentage-based damage or effects that deal true damage bypass Brace entirely. Status effects that scale well per stack, like high stacks of Poison, still deal meaningful damage since only 1 point per tick is reduced. If your team is multi-hit focused, consider buffing damage per hit with All Stats Up or similar effects to keep each strike above the Brace threshold.