True damage

For the virtual band and associated content, see True Damage

True damage is one of the three types of basic damage in League of Legends. True damage ignores incoming damage reduction (e.g. Unbreakable Will, Primal Howl, Exhaust) and incoming damage amplification (e.g. Hemoplague, Press the Attack, Last Stand) unless otherwise stated.

True damage can be dealt as a damage over time effect.

Blocking true damage

• Abilities or summoner spells which deal true damage are still blocked by spell shield, unless otherwise noted.
• Parries can block the true damage from basic attacks and on-hit effects.
• Invulnerability will block all types of damage including true damage.

Countering true damage

True damage cannot be mitigated or reduced, but there are ways to counter it:

• Stacking  health causes sources of flat true damage (e.g. Ignite) to effectively deal a lesser percentage of total health.
• Normal shields can absorb true damage at any amount.

Dealing true damage

Abilities

• Ahri's Orb of Deception *
• Amumu's Cursed Touch
• Camille's Precision Protocol *
• Cho'Gath's Feast
• Darius' Noxian Guillotine
• Fiora's Duelist's Dance
• Gangplank's Trial by Fire and Cannon Barrage with Death's Daughter upgrade *
• Garen's Demacian Justice
• Gwen's Snip Snip! *
• Ivern's Friend of the Forest *
• Kog'Maw's Icathian Surprise
• Lillia's Blooming Blows *
• Master Yi's Wuju Style
• Nunu's Consume *
• Olaf's Reckless Swing
• Pyke's Death from Below *
• Rek'Sai's Furious Bite *
• Samira's Taunt
• Sett's Haymaker *
• Syndra's Force of Will with Transcendent
• Twitch's Deadly Venom
• Urgot's Mercy *
• Vayne's Silver Bolts
• Vel'Koz's Organic Deconstruction and Life Form Disintegration Ray
• Yone's Soul Unbound *
• Zoe's Sleepy Trouble Bubble *

Items

• Death's Dance (self damage)
• Elixir of Sorcery
• Emberknife ( Challenging Smite)
• Hailblade ( Chilling Smite)
• Knight's Vow (self damage)
• Kraken Slayer ( Wyrmfallen Sacrifice)
• Redemption
• Riftmaker ( Icathia's Curse)

Summoner spells

• Ignite
• Mark and Dash
• Smite
• Challenging Smite
• Chilling Smite

Runes

• Cheap Shot

Neutral Buffs

• Crest of Cinders
• Aspect of the Dragon

Neutral Monsters

• Rift Herald *

Notes

• The following items' damage modifiers affect true damage dealt:
  • Abyssal Mask's Unmake
  • Horizon Focus' Hypershot
  • Prowler's Claw's Sandswipe
• Unintuitively, %bonus damage ( Riftmaker's Void Corruption, Ahri's Charm) systematically applies to true damage, as it's not a damage modifier but a separate damage instance based on pre-mitigation damage dealt. They are therefore not to view as exceptions.
• ARAM's and URF's damage modifiers can amplify and reduce true damage dealt.
• Despite popular belief, champions whose abilities have health costs associated with them do not deal true damage to themselves when they use an ability which requires health to cast.
  • This can be evidenced when they have a shield on them. When they use their health-based ability, the cost of health penetrates the shield and directly drains the health of the user, in contrary to true damage that has to break any shield on the target to reach their health. This also applies to invulnerability.
• The Nexus Obelisk deals a unique form of true damage that additionally bypasses every damage-event related effect in the game, including shields, damage transfers, death immunity, and invulnerability effects. Furthermore, since it doesn't register as a damage event, it will not flag the champion with 'in combat' status, with some exceptions. This is classified as internal raw.
  • If the target becomes untargetable after the turret's attack wind up started, the turret will drop aggro but that specific attack will still fire and hit the target through untargetability.
• As of patch V3.15, true damage is no longer amplified by abilities such as Zed's Death Mark and Vladimir's Hemoplague.

References

Champion statistics

Gameplay Elements