![]() |
This article or section may require clean-up to meet League of Legends Wiki's quality standards. Reason given: none. Please help improve the article if you can. |
---|

Damage is displayed as a red section on a champion's health bar.
- 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 ) are triggered whenever your champion deals a source of basic damage.
Engine level
Wiki Name | API name | Description | Example(s) |
---|---|---|---|
![]() |
raw | Damage that ignores shields. It is hard-coded to ignore ![]() |
![]() | , and
N/A | internalraw | As above, but also ignores ![]() ![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
periodic[s 1] | Ability-based procs with no interactions. Effects without a proper damage type default to this category, including most splash damage. | , , , |
![]() |
proc[s 2] | Attack-based procs with no interactions. Proc effects are triggered whenever you deal basic damage. | and |
![]() |
reactive | Damage type dealt by Thornmail. Similar reflection effects (e.g. Annie and Rammus) are classified as area damage. | Only | and
![]() |
attack[s 3] | Damage dealt by any unit(s), which includes turrets, neutral monsters, and minions ![]() |
, , |
![]() |
spell[s 4] | Damage used for single target abilities and some basic attacks. | , , , |
![]() |
spellaoe | Damage dealt by most abilities capable of damaging multiple units. | , , |
![]() |
spellpersist | Damage dealt through DoTs | , |
![]() |
pet | Damage dealt by most pet basic attacks. Other pet damage is classified as Spell/SpellPersist. | , , |
- ↑ The League of Legends Wiki decided that the word "periodic" would be too easily misunderstood due to the implication of 'bleed' or 'over-time' behaviour.
- ↑ The term 'proc' refers to a mechanic that has a chance of triggering, which is common in games such as World of Warcraft (e.g., "Your attacks have an x % chance to cause [...]" effects). League of Legends originally featured 'true' proc effects (e.g., "your attacks have a chance to slow.") However, the design philosophy of Riot Games' over-time grew more towards preferring 'on-hit' or "every nth attack" to purely random mechanics. Despite this: the engine-level label persisted. The term 'proc' now describes all additional effect triggers even if they are not guaranteed, 'proc' is used as a verb when triggering such an effect.
- ↑ The League of Legends Wiki elected to use the 'basic' portion of basic attack to refer to this damage type to avoid confusion between 'attack damage' the damage type and attack damage the statistic.
- ↑ Some abilities such as Karthus' Lay Waste are capable of dealing either spell damage or area damage depending on the number of targets hit.
Before our editors determined the above damage types from the game files, the wiki's damage type documentation was based on observation. The wiki previously grouped spell, spellaoe and spellpersist as a single 'ability damage' type, with 'single target,' 'aoe' and 'dot' being noted as subtypes. The wiki also used pure damage as a conjectural placeholder for the now-termed raw damage. While the described functionality was usually correct, the previous documentation included many 'special cases' for abilities that did not behave consistently with the observed rules.
Despite having distinct use-cases, proc damage and
default damage are almost indistinguishable in terms of their gameplay functionality. 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 : Instances of default damage do not disable passive movement speed, while instances of proc damage will. 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
- Item
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) |
---|---|---|---|
![]() |
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 or omnivamp) trigger the reduced healing, while script-level effects (such as ) trigger the damage-over-time cooldown reduction. | , , |
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. will trigger on anything with the magic damage subtype, including abilities, basic attacks and on-hit effects (i.e. 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 |
---|---|---|
![]() |
A damage type thematically associated with making physical contact, such as fists, swords and the physical projectiles of bows and guns. ![]() |
Most basic attacks; most AD-scaling abilities; some item effects. |
![]() |
A damage type thematically associated with non-physical, such as magic or the supernatural. ![]() |
Most AP-scaling abilities; some item effects; basic attacks. |
![]() |
A damage type thematically associated with bypassing the target's defenses. Not to be confused with ![]() |
A select few sources, such as | , , and .
Critical damage
Critical damage is an additional tag applied to critical strikes and some abilities. Critical damage will be reduced by , triggers impact text, as well as the highest instance of critical damage being tracked in the post-game stats.
Note that there also exists cosmetic critical strikes that trigger the critical strike impact text, but don't otherwise behave like critical strikes.
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:
- Magic damage's damage multiplier:
Additionally, damage reduction can exist in forms other than armor and magic resistance (e.g.
or ). 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.
); it is possible for abilities to deal physical damage (e.g. ); it is possible for AD-scaling abilities to deal magic damage (e.g. ); and it is possible for non-magic damage to apply spell effects (e.g. 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
, and ), and spell vamp will apply to anything classified as ability damage (including the physical damage from and true damage from ).