Your most hated RPG status effect

[Berenzen]

Guild Wars' disease. Holy hell that was annoying, you get hit with it, your entire party then shares it, and it'll last the whole damned battle and for a time afterward as the disease retriggers on people that the person hasn't passed it to.

Nah, backfire was by far the most annoying. Cast a spell, half dead. Wonder why your half dead, heal spell, your no longer half dead. Your now dead. Damn you MESMERS!

Well, if you want to include magic effects, sure most mesmer shutdown skills are annoying, but they can be dealt with easily if you're paying attention, however, with disease, once one person has it, everyone does if you're playing with heroes, and you can't bother trying to get rid of the condition unless you have a mass remove spell, which typically aren't brought in normal builds, otherwise it just gets reapplied.

 

[scorptatious]

Possibly confusion. It can really screw my party up if I don't heal it quickly enough.

I also found some of FF9's status effects, such as zombie and mini to be annoying. Because they are some of the spells you can't resist against using support abilities. Which can make the final boss a real pain.

Regardless, FF9 is still my favorite RPG to date.

 

[Merkavar]

sheeped or polymorph

i hate being turned into things like seacaps in them middle of a boss fight

 

[Mugen]

Silence can go and suck a bag-full of dicks

 

[Kotaro]

Whichever one I happen to be inflicted with at the moment.
What? You know you're all thinking the same thing.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Death Effects.

They never work on the enemy and they always work on you.

I would say this, but then I never use those anyway so I don't care that they never work. In fact I don't use status effects at all really.

No, my most hated would be confusion, nothing is more irritating then watching you and your allies attack themselves or each other. Second would probably be a tie between paralysis and charm esp. in Pokemon where the effect only impacts intermittently.

 

[Shoujin]

Generally, they're all a nuisance, especially when done en masse (see someone's earlier post about Malboro Bad Breath), but generally it's the game mechanics surrounding said afflictions.

In Final Fantasy, it's usually Mute/Silence and Berserk that have me banging my head. Stone and Death are a nuisance and Poison is a "meh" unless things are down to the wire. Unfortunately, there's been too many times when Mute or Berserk have come into play and made a bad situation worse for me.

I've played some other games where the status effects are almost non-existent and not inconvenient at all - thus ruining the point.

I'd have to say that in any D&D games (Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, etc), any status effect poses a serious threat, regardless of how stupid it might seem.

Blah, I've said too much... *uses "Invis Edge"*

 

[darksakul]

1 Sleep/Paralyze/Stone/petrify or other words shit that keeps you from doing stuff

2. Confusion/Berserk/muddle/charm anything that makes your character act like a retard
Worst in Final Fantasy and Pokemon

3. Zombie/ Undead only topped by Vampire in Final Fantasy Tactics (think Berserk and Zombie together)

3. Frog/ Imp/ Mini Pretty Anything that physically changes your character into something stupid or useless

 

[Hosker]

Somebody reminded me of the curse effect from Dark Souls, so I'm going with that. It not only insta-kills you, but you revive with only half your maximum health. Bad times.

 

[Jake0fTrades]

Not necessarily an "effect," but attacks that seem to daze you for about 3 seconds at a time, leaving you completely helpless while the enemy proceeds to tenderize your face with a hammer.

 

[Callate]

I would have said Sleep until I played Shin Migami Tensei: Strange Journey. Death effects in a game where the party leader falling means instant game over? Whose bright idea was that?!

 

[deathspa202]

Freaking Poison in Pokemon. I still flinch when I hear that awful buzzing noise.

 

[DanielBrown]

Curse in Dark Souls.
The bar that fills up and gets you cursed does so in just a matter of seconds unless you run away(good luck with AoE gas clouds) and when you're cursed you die. We all know how much dying in Dark Souls sucks, but when you're cursed you also lose 50% hp until you decurse yourself by spending lots of souls.
Still remember the horror of getting through the Depths, or running back up from the Dragon Covenant area. So much time lost due to that damn curse.

Don't count stun as a status effect, but I saw it mentioned earlier.
If so I'll go with stun after all. Hate mobs that use it in MMOs... all you can do is stare at the screen or spam the buttons like mad and hope it wears off. LOTRO is the worst offenders of the MMOs I've played. The stuns there go all the way up to 15-30 seconds if you're unlucky.

 

[Rainforce]

instadeath and petrify.

although I experienced the battle with 6 NUs that can only either do one damage or reduce your HP to 1 to be far more annoying.
*still not over it*

 

[Fragrance of Mtn Dew]

Charm, had many a battle in Persona 3 cocked up due to this little gem. Instant death is a close contender though.

Yeah, I especially hated when a boss would charm Yukari and then she'd cast Diaharan on the boss...

Although it's even more obnoxious in Persona 1 where status ailments stack for some god awful reason. So you get these enemies that just spam mass charm spells over and over and your entire party will be charmed pretty much indefinitely. I've never lost a battle because of that, but it was SO annoying.

 

[Krois]

It will definitely be Charm/Confuse/Chaos or whatever the hell it is called that makes your unit/character hit ally.

Death, least you know you won't be using that character anymore so the annoyance isn't that high. But for confusion, you're not only unable to control the character, it's hitting other ally and you can't retaliate against it.

 

[Zeckt]

Probably when they do something stupid like charm your healer who is the only one capable of removing status effects while the enemy lays on massive spells on you while your healer hits you with a staff instead of doing a much needed heal. Oh, and the only way to stop the charm is by hitting your healer with a melee attack. So not only is the boss hitting you, your not healing and your hitting your lifeline.

 

[RuralGamer]

Anything that's permanent till you can remove it with a potion/visiting a doctor etc. See the wraith curses in Oblivion and those wounds you got in Dragon Age: Origins

 

[The K-man]

There isnt a specific effect that really bothers me, what i hate is when you get 5+ effects put on you at once, even worse when its your entire party. Marlboros in FF games love to pull this, and bosses in many games over the years have done it as well.