Targeting

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Targeting input refers to the information relevant to casting active abilities, summoner spells, and items in League of Legends, specified by the cursor's position. If an ability does not have any active components and only has passive components, it is considered a passive ability and requires no targeting input. Most innate abilities are passive abilities.

There are 5 major targeting inputs used on the wiki, based on the ones used in the game files: Auto, Direction, Location, Unit, and Vector.

Auto-targeted

Aphelios and the auto-targeting of Onslaught.

Auto-targeting is a targeting paradigm for abilities that do not require any targeting input from the user upon activation; instead, they automatically select one or more valid targets in range or a valid area of effect when they are activated.

Auto-targeted abilities include any self-buffing abilities, point blank aoe abilities, and other abilities that are automatically targeted at the location of the caster.

Kai'Sa and the proximity-targeting of Icathian Rain.

A few auto-targeted active abilities, such as Death Lotus', require at least one valid target to be nearby to be cast and can be referred to as proximity-targeted. Some of these abilities can be used to detect whether valid targets are nearby, but not visible.

List of Abilities

Main article: List of abilities/Auto-targeted

Direction-targeted

The indicator for a direction-targeted ability.

Zed casting Razor Shuriken in the target direction.

Direction-targeting is a targeting input paradigm. Direction-targeted abilities require an input direction to be used.

Abilities with this targeting type have a fixed length and offset from a predetermined origin, regardless of whether the cursor is within maximum range or not, unlike location-targeted abilities. The origin point is not specified by the player when using the ability, in contrast to vector-targeted abilities.

Most direction-targeted abilities have effects that travel along a line from the origin toward the cursor (in the case of projectiles and dashes), often stopping at the maximum range of the ability. These abilities may interact with each applicable unit hit (referred to as pass-through effects) or with only the first unit hit (collision effects). However, some direction-targeted abilities will affect the entire area at once. The term skillshot is often used to refer to projectile-based direction-targeted abilities.

A direction-targeted ability does not need to originate from the caster, as with the case of Zed's Razor Shuriken's used with Living Shadow. Whether or not a direction-targeted ability deals area of effect (such as Lissandra's Ice Shard's) does not affect the targeting classification.

Direction-targeted abilities can have different shapes for their area of effect. Almost all direction-targeted abilities are of a linear (rectangular, the ones often referred to as skillshots) or a conic shape. A few abilities use combinations of both where two or more linear skillshots are combined to form a cone, such as Ashe's Volley.

Some direction-targeted abilities interact with terrain, including turrets' terrain.

List of Abilities

Main article: List of abilities/Direction-targeted

Location-targeted

The indicator for a location-targeted ability.

Brand casting Pillar of Flame at the target location.

Location-targeting is a targeting paradigm which requires the player to specify a target location within range before being used, with the crux of the spell centering at this location.

If a location-targeted ability is cast while the cursor is out of range, the ability will either cast at the maximum range, wait for the champion to walk in range, or not cast at all, depending on the ability.

Overwhelmingly, abilities using this targeting type have a circular area of effect around the point, with the few exceptions being wall-type spells (such as Jinx's Flame Chompers! and Karthus' Wall of Pain), vector-targeted spells ( Rumble's The Equalizer, Taliyah's Seismic Shove, and Viktor's Death Ray) and certain blink abilities (which do not have an area of effect).

Dash abilities that have neither a fixed length nor a target unit fall under this targeting type.

List of Abilities

Main article: List of abilities/Location-targeted

Unit-targeted

The indicator for a unit-targeted ability. A circular indicator is the most common form.

Veigar casting Primordial Burst onto the target unit.

Unit-targeting is the most basic targeting paradigm an ability can have. Abilities using this targeting type require a valid target unit to be selected within range, which means having sight of the target is also necessary. What constitutes a 'valid' target varies from spell to spell; this list has been separated into subsets depending on what the spell can be used on, with several abilities belonging to more than one group.

Certain unit-targeted spells should not be confused as having the alternate targeting paradigm auto-targeting. Abilities listed here can have the caster as one of the potential valid targets, but not the only valid target. Casting unit-targeted spells on the caster requires the caster to be selected, unless cast using self-cast keybindings.

List of Abilities

Main article: List of abilities/Unit-targeted

Trivia

Janna's Eye of the Storm and Senna's Piercing Darkness are the only unit-targeted abilities that can target allied turrets.

Vector-targeted

The indicator for a vector-targeted ability. Note the direction-targeting input is being cast from the targeted location and not the source.

Vector-targeted abilities have cast effects that occur in a direction from a specified location, using a combination of location-targeting and direction-targeting to be cast. Vector-targeted abilities use an arbitrary location as an origin point. This location is specified on the first cast similar to using location-targeting. The direction of the ability's effect is specified on the second cast similar to using direction-targeting.

Quick cast allows the location-targeted component to be specified on-press, and the direction-targeting component to be specified on-release.

List of Abilities

Main article: List of abilities/Vector-targeted

Passive Abilities

Main article: Passive

Passive abilities are abilities with no active components and can affect a target without requiring a targeting input.

Some passive abilities require a valid target other than the caster to be nearby in order to take effect, similar to proximity-targeting.

Targeting Types (Engine)

The targeting inputs are based on targeting types that are in the game's code, but may heavily differ from the player's inputs thanks to additional scripts.

For example, in the files it is specified that Warwick's Infinite Duress uses Location with 25 000 cast range, however, the player only has to specify which direction they want to leap to while the range is based on Warwick's movement speed. Because of such situation, the Wiki only uses the engine's targeting types as a guidelines to categorize the player's inputs.

Additional script can heavily modify how an ability behaves, such as Kai'Sa's Icathian Rain targets herself to cast the ability, but scripts make the projectiles target units around her.

Engine Name	Examples	Note
Invalid	N/A	This is not used at all.
Self	Renekton's Dominus Katarina's Death Lotus Kai'Sa's Icathian Rain	These abilities always target the caster, usually granting a buff.
Target	Annie's Disintegrate Soraka's Astral Infusion Ryze's Rune Prison	This is also the default targeting type, meaning if one ability hasn't give a type, it will be defaulted to this.
Area	N/A	This targeting type is rarely used anymore as majority of abilities are rescripted to use Location with added radius instead.
Cone	Nidalee's Swipe
SelfAOE	Morgana's Soul Shackles Blitzcrank's Static Field Tryndamere's Mocking Shout	These abilities check for all valid targets within range up to a maximum of 64 targets.
TargetOrLocation	Bard's Caretaker's Shrine Riven's Broken Wings Kayle's Celestial Blessing	These abilities can be cast on units or at a location, usually only having minor differences between the two.
Location	Corki's Phosphorus Bomb Jhin's Captive Audience Malphite's Unstoppable Force
Direction	Ezreal's Mystic Shot Cho'Gath's Feral Scream Ashe's Volley	These abilities can also store the location input of the cast. This is used for interactions, such as Flash where the ability will change its direction toward the original location if the caster flashed during the cast time. Whetever used or not, it is a balance-specific decision case-by-case.
DragDirection	Viktor's Death Ray Rumble's The Equalizer Taliyah's Seismic Shove	This targeting type is also known as "vector-casting".
LineTargetToCaster	Quinn's Vault (Removed)	This was exclusively used by Quinn for a small period of time.
AreaClamped	Kayle's Radiant Blast	This type is connected to Area type with the only difference being that clamped abilities will cast at max range if the user inputs a range further than max range.
LocationClamped	Brand's Pillar of Flame Ziggs' Bouncing Bomb Corki's Valkyrie	Similar to AreaClamped, this type is connected to Locationtype with the only difference being that clamped abilities will cast at max range if the user inputs a range further than max range.
TerrainLocation	Bard's Magical Journey	Exclusively used by Bard. It shows similarities to Direction with the added restriction to only be able to cast it on walls.
TerrainType	Qiyana's Terrashape	Exclusively used by Qiyana. It shows similarities to Location with added terrain type check.

Gameplay Elements