True damage

True damage is one of the three types of damage in League of Legends, the others being magic damage and physical damage. True damage ignores armor and magic resistance.

Blocking true damage

Abilities or summoner spells which deal true damage are still blocked by effects that prevent damage such as the passive on Banshee's Veil or Sivir's Spell Shield, and Standard Attacks which deal additional true damage are still capable of being blocked by Pantheon's Aegis Protection. Kayle's Intervention will block all damage to a target champion, including true damage. Before the removal of Dodge, both true damage as an on-hit effect and true damage on standard attack were capable of being avoided completely if the standard attack was dodged, however during the effect of Counter Strike Jax can still effectively dodge true damage from on-hit effects and true damage from standard attacks.

Countering true damage

Although true damage cannot be reduced, it is possible to diminish its effect.

• Against true damage that does a flat amount of damage such as Cho'Gath's Feast, building health will diminish how much damage it does to you (as the ability does a lesser % of your heallth). The only ability this will not work against is Vayne's Silver Bolts which deals a % of max HP as true damage.
  • However in this case, building a Frozen Heart or Randuin's Omen will reduce the true damage, by reducing how fast she can trigger the ability, in addition it protects you immensely from physical damage, Vayne's primary damage source.
• Absorption shields such as Janna's Eye Of The Storm Eye Of The Storm will also protect you from both flat true damage and Vayne's Silver Bolts as it does not treat the shield as part of max health and damage will go through the shield first.
• Ways that grant a "damage reduction" will not diminish true damage.
• Magic-only shields such as Morgana's Black Shield and the passive on Hexdrinker and Maw of Malmortius will have no impact on true damage.

Dealing true damage

Champions who deal true damage with standard attacks

• Corki's Hextech Shrapnel Shells
• Irelia's Hiten Style (active only)
• Twitch's Deadly Venom
• Vayne's Silver Bolts (upon 3rd consecutive hit on a single target)

Champions who deal true damage with abilities

• Ahri's Orb of Deception (upon retraction)
• Cho'Gath's Feast
• Darius' Noxian Guillotine
• Kog'Maw's Icathian Surprise
• Nunu's Consume (only to minions or neutral creeps)
• Olaf's Reckless Swing
• Zyra's Rise of the Thorns

Items

• Entropy
• Spirit of the Elder Lizard

Summoner spells

• Ignite
• Smite (only to minions or neutral creeps)

Neutral Buffs

• Blessing of the Lizard Elder

Neutral Monsters

• Dragon

Masteries

• Bladed Armor Bladed Armor

Notes

• Champions whose abilities have health costs associated with them deal true damage to themselves when they use an ability which requires health to cast.
• The Nexus Obelisk (spawn point) turrets at the heart of either team's base deals 1000 true damage which cannot be mitigated by any means, even by abilities that make the champion invulnerable.
  • Prior to patch V1.0.0.108, shields and invulnerability worked against these turrets, effectively allowing some champions to "safely" dive into the enemy spawn.
  • The Nexus Obelisk in the game mode Dominion can be ignored by invulnerability such as Kayle's Intervention and Poppy's Diplomatic Immunity.
• True damage is unaffected by damage reductions such as Exhaust.
• True damage is not amplified by the masteries Havoc Havoc or Executioner Executioner
• True damage can be amplified by abilities such as Poppy's Diplomatic Immunity, Swain's Torment, Talon's Cutthroat and Vladimir's Hemoplague