Ability damage is one of the game's archetypal damage types, and is the damage type dealt by most abilities. Ability damage is the pre-requisite for applying ability effects, such as and Spell Vamp. Dealing ability damage will also generate aggression from turrets but, by contrast to basic attack damage, does not trigger the Call For Help AI on minions.
Ability damage is never described as such in-game, instead being listed as physical, magic or true damage. However, those typings can be attributed other archetypal damage types (e.g. basic attack damage can be physical and magical, too) and so knowing whether or not an effect deals ability damage can be hard to intuit.
The basic rule is: all damage-dealing abilities, excluding attack effects, deal ability damage.
Below lists exceptions.
Non-Damaging Abilities
The following non-damaging effects actually deal 1 ability damage, inflicted as true damage. This is sufficient to trigger spell effects, such as , although will not incur any noticeable healing from Spell Vamp.
- This list may be incomplete.
Non-Abilities
The following non-abilities will also trigger spell effects:
- Items
- Summoner Spells
- Runes
Thess lists may be incomplete.
On-Hit Ability Damage
The following attack effects deal ability damage, meaning they will trigger ability effects. The triggering basic attack will still apply other attack effects.
- and (passive)
- (active)
- (passive)
- and
- (activation effect)
- This list may be incomplete.
Abilities that trigger on-hit effects and ability effects
The following abilities apply both on-hit effects and spell effects:
- and
- , , and
- and
- and
Note that, however, the damage dealt by these abilities is not classified as ability damage, except in the case of spell vamp. It is possible with Non-Damaging Abilities (above)—the implementation of this change could have been to have these abilities deal an additional 0 spell damage.
and the magic damage portion of . Except in those cases, the damage dealt by these abilities will not benefit fromTrivia
- An effect that applies both attack effects and ability effects allows a champion to trigger items like , , and all on a single instance of damage - e.g. a single or . It also allows them to trigger twice, since it applies on both the attack effect and the ability effect.