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.

Subtypes

Damage types

There are three types of damage in League of Legends.

• Physical damage: associated with auto-attacks and attack damage. Armor reduces incoming physical damage.
• Magic damage: associated with champion abilities and ability power. Magic resistance reduces incoming magic damage.
• True damage: damage that ignores resistances. This damage cannot be reduced and always does exactly the value stated, although can be blocked by invulnerabilities and health shields. Health costs are true damage but cannot be blocked by health shields. The Nexus Turret and Sion's Glory in Death's self-inflicted damage additionally cannot be blocked by invulnerabilities.

Critical damage

Critical damage is an additional tag applied to critical strikes and some abilities. 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.

Pet damage

Pet damage is an additional tag applied to the damage inflicted by champion summoned units. This is in addition to any other classifications. For example, the damage dealt by Tibbers' basic attacks and aura are both classified as "pet damage" in addition to basic attack damage and ability damage, respectively. This classification is currently only used by Rylai's Crystal Scepter.

Archetypes

Ability damage

Ability damage is the damage type inflicted by almost all abilities. Fizz's Urchin Strike is noteworthy for applying both basic attack damage and ability damage.

• Ability damage will apply spell effects, including spell vamp.
• Some abilities grant the champion bonus ability damage on their attacks. As a standard, however, most effects that trigger on a champion's basic attacks (including those sourced from an ability) deal on-hit damage.
• Some abilities modify the champion's attacks to deal ability damage.
• Most spell effects inflict ability damage, allowing them to trigger other spell effects (excluding itself).

Basic attack damage

Basic attack damage is the classification for the damage dealt by almost all basic attacks with the notable exceptions being a handful of champion summoned units.

• Basic attacks will trigger on-hit effects once. Some abilities and items can increase this.
• Physical basic attack damage will apply life steal. This means modified basic attacks that deal magic or true damage will not life steal from that damage, except for Corki, who will also life steal from magic damage.
• Some abilities modify the amount of basic attack damage dealt, such as Corki's Hextech Munitions.

Bleed damage

Bleed damage, or damage over time (DoT), is the classification for many of the game's lesser damage over times, which are in most cases attached to a basic attack but is also applied by some spell effects.

• Bleed damage applies neither on-hit effects, life steal nor spell effects.

On-hit damage

On-hit damage is the classification for the damage dealt by on-hit effects, which are effects that trigger when a basic attack hits.

• On-hit damage applies neither on-hit effects, life steal nor spell effects.

Splash damage

Splash damage, or area of effect damage (AoE), is the damage type applied by some area of effects that deals damage in a defined area, either around the target or in a chosen place.

• Note that not all area of effects that occur on basic attacks are classified as splash damage.
• Splash damage applies neither on-hit effects, life steal nor spell effects.

Damage Calculation

Physical and magic damage are first reduced (or amplified) by armor and magic resistance respectively before being applied to target. 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} $

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.

• 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 an ability can deal damage over the cap.

Notes

• Contrary to popular belief, life steal and spell vamp are not specific to physical and magic damage, respectively. Life steal will apply to anything classified as basic attack 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 Spear Shot and true damage from Reckless Swing).

See also

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