Damage

Note: Not to be confused with attack damage, a champion statistic, nor health costs.

Damage is the deduction of a unit's current health as a result of an offensive interaction.

Damage types

League of Legends utilises two systems for classifying damages: an engine-level system and a script-level system. As the name suggests, the engine-level system is integrated into the game's engine; while the script-level system is a relatively modern addition that allows Riot more flexibility.

Damage classifications modify what effects are triggered when damage is dealt or received - e.g. on-hit effects (such as Wit's End) are triggered whenever your champion deals a source of  basic damage.

Engine level

Wiki Name	API name	Description	Example(s)
Raw damage e	raw	Damage that ignores shields. It is hard-coded to ignore  resurrection, but specific instances are then special-cased to be un-ignored.	Fear Beyond Death and Death from Below
N/A	internalraw	As above, but also ignores  invulnerability.  resurrection is ignored.	Only  Nexus Obelisk
Default damage e	periodic	Ability-based procs with no interactions. Effects without a proper damage type default to this category, including most splash damage.	Umbra Blades, Liandry's Torment and Tiamat
Proc damage e	proc	Attack-based procs with no interactions. Proc effects are triggered whenever you deal basic damage.	Wit's End and Kircheis Shard
Reactive damage e	reactive	Damage type dealt by Thornmail. Similar reflection effects (e.g. Annie and Rammus) are classified as spell damage.	Only Thornmail and Bramble Vest .
Basic damage e	attack	Damage for  basic attacks and some abilities.	Mystic Shot, Lunge, Steel Tempest
Spell damage e	spell	Damage used for most, or almost all abilities.	Disintegrate, Ace in the Hole, Noxian Diplomacy
Area damage e	spellaoe	As above, but with some diminished interactions.	Incinerate, Spirit Fire, Eye of Destruction
Persistent damage e	spellpersist	As above, but with some diminished interactions.	Malefic Visions, Flamespitter, Ignite
Pet damage e	pet	Damage dealt by most pet basic attacks. Other pet damage is classified as Spell/SpellPersist.	Tibbers, Daisy, Eulogy of the Isles

Prior to the above damage types being determined from the game files, the wiki documented a system based on observation. For example, the wiki previously grouped spell, spellaoe and spellpersist as a single 'ability damage' type, with 'single target', 'aoe' and 'dot' being noted as subtypes. We also used pure damage as a conjectural placeholder for what turned out to be called raw damage. While the described functionality was usually correct, the previous documentation included a lot of 'special cases' for abilities that did not behave consistently with the observed rules. We apologise for any misinformation that endures.

Despite having distinct use-cases,  proc damage and  default damage are almost indistinguishable in terms of their gameplay functionality. In fact, differentiating the two damage types without accessing the game files is extremely difficult for some effects. One of the only known ways to distinguish the two types involves Teemo: Instances of default damage do not disable Move Quick's passive movement speed, while instances of proc damage will. Note that this distinction does not apply to other "out of combat" effects.

Script level

The following are the currently known script-tags:

• AOE
• Periodic
• Indirect
• BasicAttack
• ActiveSpell
• Proc
• Pet
• NonRedirectable

For the most part, the two systems correlate and so the League of Legends Wiki has elected to not to document the script-level system separately across all articles. Instances where script-level tags create deviations from engine-level rules will be noted on a case-by-case basis in the ability-details. A notable but consistent deviation is  persistent area damage, as documented below:

Wiki Name	API name	Description	Example(s)
Persistent area damage e	N/A	Abilities classified as area damage on an engine-level, but periodic on a script level. This means that engine-level effects (such as spell vamp) trigger the reduced healing, while script-level effects (such as Arcane Comet) trigger the damage-over-time cooldown reduction.	Darkness Rise, Tormented Shadow, The Equalizer

Subtypes

Resistance subtypes

See also: Armor and Magic Resistance

Resistance subtypes are a secondary typing system that exists to promote champion classes by diversifying the effectiveness of items and champion match-ups. There is a small selection of effects that are triggered by specific subtypes rather than the above archetypes - e.g. Morellonomicon will trigger on anything with the magic damage subtype, including abilities, basic attacks and on-hit effects (i.e. Wit's End will trigger Morellonomicon on a champion with no other source of magic damage). These are the damage types visible to players in-game.

Name	Description	Example
Physical damage	A damage type thematically associated with making physical contact, such as fists, swords and the physical projectiles of bows and guns.  Armor reduces incoming physical damage.	Most basic attacks; most AD-scaling abilities; some item effects.
Magic damage	A damage type thematically associated with non-physical, such as magic or the supernatural.  Magic resistance reduces incoming magic damage.	Most AP-scaling abilities; some item effects; Corki's basic attacks.
True damage	A damage type thematically associated with bypassing the target's defenses. Not to be confused with  raw damage.	A select few sources, such as Smite, Ignite, Silver Bolts and Reckless Swing.

Critical damage

Critical damage is an additional tag applied to critical strikes and some abilities (note that some abilities that use the  impact text only do so with a gameplay clarity intention (usually to signify the enhanced damage of an ability and aren't actually critical strikes). Critical damage will be reduced by Randuin's Omen, triggers  impact text, as well as the highest instance of critical damage being tracked in the post-game stats.

Calculating Damage

Physical and magic damage are first reduced (or amplified) by armor and magic resistance respectively before being applied to target, which is referred to as post-mitigation damage. This can be calculated through a damage multiplier.

• Physical damage's damage multiplier:

$ \pagecolor{Black}\color{White}{\rm Damage\ multiplier}=\begin{cases}{100 \over 100+{\it Armor}}, & {\rm if\ }{\it Armor} \geq 0\\2 - {100 \over 100 - {\it Armor}}, & {\rm otherwise}\end{cases} $

• Magic damage's damage multiplier:

$ \pagecolor{Black}\color{White}{\rm Damage\ multiplier}=\begin{cases} {100 \over 100+{\it MR}}, & {\rm if\ }{\it MR} \geq 0\\ 2 - {100 \over 100 - {\it MR}}, & {\rm otherwise} \end{cases} $

Additionally, damage reduction can exist in forms other than armor and magic resistance (e.g. Alistar's Unbreakable Will, Annie's Molten Shield or Irelia's Defiant Dance). These modifiers are multiplicative with Armor or Magic resistances.

See also: Damage recieved modifier

Capped Damage

Some abilities, scaling with target's health, have a capped amount of damage they can deal to a target. This is made to avoid dealing massive damage to targets with a lot of health, most often against only  minions and/or  monsters.

• If the ability deals enough damage (before damage reductions) to reach the cap, the ability's damage is reduced to the cap and damage reductions are then applied. This means that against a target that has negative armor or magic resistance the ability's post-mitigation damage can be higher than the cap.

Misconceptions

The resistance types—physical, magic and true—are often regarded by players to be the archetypal damage types, which leads to a lot of misconceptions.

For example, some players believe that magic damage, ability damage and AP are all interchangeable terms, with even prominent streamers referring to abilities as dealing "AP damage" and "AD damage". This is incorrect. It is possible for basic attacks to deal magic damage (e.g. Corki); it is possible for abilities to deal physical damage (e.g. Riven); it is possible for AD-scaling abilities to deal magic damage (e.g. Shyvana); and it is possible for non-magic damage to apply spell effects (e.g. Luden's Echo would trigger on Riven if she chose to buy it, although she's discouraged due to her having no AP scalings).

Similarly, many players believe that life steal and spell vamp are specific to physical and magic damage, respectively. Life steal will apply to anything classified as basic damage (including the magic damage from Takedown, Hextech Munitions and Infinite Duress), and spell vamp will apply to anything classified as ability damage (including the physical damage from Comet Spear and true damage from Reckless Swing).

See also

• Damage modifier
• Magic damage
• Physical damage
• True damage