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. It ignores  armor and  magic resistance, as well as other forms of damage reduction such as Unbreakable Will,  Unbreakable, Primal Howl, or Exhaust and forms of damage increase like  Hemoplague, Charm, Press the Attack or Coup de Grace.

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 deal with it:

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

Dealing true damage

Abilities

• Ahri's Orb of Deception (on return)
• Amumu's Cursed Touch's
• Camille's Precision Protocol (2nd cast, if cast after 1.5 seconds)
• Cho'Gath's Feast
• Darius' Noxian Guillotine
• Fiora's Duelist's Dance
• Gangplank's Trial by Fire (DoT) and Cannon Barrage (with Death's Daughter upgrade, in the centre of the hitbox)
• Garen's Demacian Justice
• Ivern's Friend of the Forest (against non-epic monsters)
• Kog'Maw's Icathian Surprise
• Master Yi's Wuju Style
• Nunu's Consume (against minions and monsters)
• Olaf's Reckless Swing
• Pyke's Death from Below (against enemies below the execution threshold)
• Rek'Sai's Furious Bite (at maximum Fury)
• Sett's Haymaker (in the centre of the hitbox)
• Syndra's Force of Will (With Transcendent)
• Twitch's Deadly Venom (DoT)
• Urgot's Fear Beyond Death (2nd cast)
• Vayne's Silver Bolts
• Vel'Koz's Organic Deconstruction and Life Form Disintegration Ray (DoT)
• Zoe's Sleepy Trouble Bubble

Items

• Death's Dance (self DoT)
• Elixir of Sorcery
• Knight's Vow (self damage)
• Redemption
• Stalker's Blade
• Skirmisher's Sabre

Summoner spells

• Ignite (DoT)
• Mark and Dash
• Smite (only against monsters)
• Challenging Smite (DoT)
• Chilling Smite

Runes

• Cheap Shot

Neutral Buffs

• Crest of Cinders (DoT)
• Aspect of the Dragon (DoT)

Neutral Monsters

• Rift Herald (first hit on turrets)

Notes

• 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 an 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 Zed's Death Mark and Vladimir's Hemoplague.

References

Champion statistics

Gameplay Elements