Combat formulas

Game mechanics guide

Beta 0.7.2

ClassesSkillsPassive treeBestiary

A hit, step by step

Every basic attack and skill hit goes through the same steps, in this order:

1. 1
   Automatic missThe target is untouchable, or a melee attacker swings at a flying target.
2. 2
   Dodge or evasion roll
3. 3
   Fury chargeA hero that is hit gains one.
4. 4
   Crit roll
5. 5
   Level difference
6. 6
   Armor and resistances Armor on the physical part, resistances on each elemental part.
7. 7
   Block rollSeparately for the physical and the elemental part.
8. 8
   AbsorptionOn the whole hit. A hit that connects deals at least 1.
9. 9
   Bonuses Fury, Shock, Curse and Expose, then Weaken, then an act boss's phase multiplier.

Percentages are the ones the game shows (it stores them in basis points, 100 = 1%). Dodge, Block and Elemental Block are ratings, and Health, Regen and Absorption are the scaled values from the hero sheet.

Critical hits

Crit Chance can go above 100%: every full 100% is a guaranteed crit "layer", and what is left over is the chance of one more.

Crits apply to the physical and elemental parts of a hit, but not to damage over time, thorns or heals. Monsters never crit.

Level difference

Heroes never gain from out-levelling a monster; they only lose when they are below it, and the monster then hits harder. Stage and act bosses punish the gap far more:

The boss factor takes over whenever a stage or act boss is on either side of the hit; the dodge column is the same against bosses. Both factors also apply to damage-over-time ticks and thorns. Hero against hero (the arena) is always even.

Damage reduction

Armor and resistances cut each part of a hit, dodge avoids it, block halves a part and Absorption trims what is left.

Armor and penetration

Defense cuts the physical part of a hit. It is measured against the attacker's level, so the same Defense stops less against stronger monsters:

The armor class sets how close Defense can get to the 90% ceiling, which it never reaches. Monsters have no Penetration, so the last term only matters in the arena.

Physical reduction of a heavy-armor hero; multiply by 0.8 for medium armor and 0.6 for light:

Monster armor rises with the stage's power and is capped at 75%. A hero's Penetration removes that share of it, and Penetration debuffs on a monster (armor break) add to the Penetration of every hero hitting it.

Resistances

Each resistance cuts its element's part of a hit, weighed by the armor class like Defense and lowered on the harder maps. Below zero, it makes that element hit harder:

Max Resistance comes from the passive tree. Monsters use weight 1, cannot go below 0 and are capped at 75%: a monster listed with 100% resistance to its own element counts as 75%.

Dodge, evasion and blind

Heroes avoid hits with Dodge, measured against the attacker's level and the level gap:

The same table gives the Block chance for a Block rating, without the level factor. Monsters have no Dodge and heroes have no Evasion.

Monsters avoid hits with Evasion, and only basic attacks: skill hits never miss.

For a hero with exactly the base Accuracy of the monster's level (see base Accuracy); more Accuracy lowers it.

Blind on a monster helps the heroes it attacks, even heroes with no Dodge:

Bosses are immune to Blind. The Assassin's Smoke applies it.

Block

Block covers the physical part of a hit and Elemental Block the elemental part, each rolled only if the hit has that part, with no level-gap factor:

Block 500 against a level-30 monster blocks the physical part 17.9% of the time. Monsters never block. Monsters in elemental biomes deal almost all their damage as their element, so against them Elemental Block matters far more than Block.

Absorption

Absorption comes last, after block, and works on the whole hit. It takes a bigger share of small hits than of big ones:

Absorption equal to five times the hit halves it. Monsters have no Absorption.

Bonuses and debuffs

Fury, Shock, Curse and Expose

These four share one "more damage" bonus, soft-capped above +300%. On a hero they raise the hero's own hits and damage-over-time ticks, but not thorns; as skill debuffs on a monster they raise everyone's damage to it:

Every debuff counts in full, except that the Paladin's Condemn applies Expose that adds nothing and the Witch's Curse counts at half. Monsters have none of the four.

Fury charges. Every hit that lands on a hero gives it 1 charge, up to 10; dodged hits and the hero's own attacks give none. 4 seconds after the last hit the charges start to fade, one every 2 seconds.

The factor runs from 0 to 2: double at 10 charges with almost no Health left. Blocked hits still give a charge.

Weaken, Chill and crowd control

Weaken, Chill and Blind are defensive stats: on a hero they act on whoever attacks that hero, and as skill debuffs on the monster that carries them.

Weaken 25% cuts the monster's damage to 80%; Chill 50% makes it swing every 1.5 s instead of every second. The Witch's Jinx applies Weaken as a debuff.

Damage over time and healing

Damage over time

A hero's Bleed, Decay, Burn and Poison stats add up into one flat damage per second, dealt once a second to the hero's current target. The element does not matter:

No armor, resistance, crit, dodge or block applies, and Lifesteal heals from it.

Damage-over-time skills work like this:

1. 1
   Basic hitThe skill first lands the hero's basic hit.
2. 2
   TicksAt once and every second after that, so a 5-second effect ticks 5 times. Ticks ignore armor and resistances too.
3. 3
   RecastsCasting the same skill again refreshes it; the same effect from different heroes stacks.

The Healer's Sacred Flame grows on hurt targets: each tick × (0.25 + 1.5 × the target's missing Health share).

Thorns

Thorns are dealt once a second to the hero's current target, like a damage-over-time stat. Growing Thorns make them grow faster than linearly:

The level factor and Weaken apply; the amplifier bonus does not; nothing mitigates them. Lifesteal heals from them.

Healing and regen

Healing Done and Healing Received change heal skills, but not Regen or Lifesteal:

In the arena all healing is halved.

Stats, speed and cooldowns

How stats are finalized

A hero's sheet is built in a fixed order, so the passive tree's percentage bonuses multiply everything added before them:

1. 1
   Gear Every affix and enchant on equipped items (each +1 of enhancement adds 5% to them) and socketed gems. Offhand "amplify" enchants then raise all item stats by a percentage.
2. 2
   Class growth × level Most classes grow Attack, Defense and Health; the Mage grows Elemental Damage and the Witch Chaos Damage instead of Attack. Each class page lists its growth.
3. 3
   Class base stats
4. 4
   Base AccuracyFormula below.
5. 5
   Passive tree Flat values, item "multiply" enchants, damage conversions, % increases, then "more" multipliers. Every stat is then rounded down.
6. 6
   Enhancement tiersThe tier effects of enhanced (+1 to +10) gear (see the Workbench).
7. 7
   Final scalingHealth ×10, Regen ×1.5, Absorption ×5. Combat uses these scaled values.

The Healer also gains Regen equal to 15% of its Attack, just before the final scaling. Elemental Damage is added to whichever of the hero's elements is already highest (ties go fire, ice, lightning, chaos in that order; a hero with no elemental damage gets it as fire).

With an infused weapon, Penetration also counts as Elemental Penetration, and in combat part of the hero's Attack becomes the weapon's element: it keeps the Attack bonuses and gains the element's % and "more" bonuses from the passive tree. Damage skills that scale with Attack split their bonus the same way.

Base Accuracy (step 4) depends on the level and the class:

Attacks and casts

Every fighter swings a basic attack at a steady rhythm. Haste speeds it up in a straight line, with no cap:

Monsters have no Haste, so they swing once per second.

When a slotted skill is ready, the hero casts it instead of the next basic attack:

1. 1
   Pick Skills are tried in turn, starting after the last one used. Heals wait until someone is hurt. Other skills hold back when only one enemy is left and the party's basic attacks would finish it within about two seconds.
2. 2
   Cast The action lasts as long as the longer of the attack interval and the cast time. The cooldown starts when the cast starts.
3. 3
   Hit Every cast also lands the hero's basic hit. Damage skills add their own bonus on top of it, and buffs, heals and debuffs still hit the current target with it. Skill hits cannot be evaded.

Cooldown reduction

The Cooldown stat has diminishing returns: the real reduction creeps toward 80% but never reaches it.

No skill comes back faster than every 1.5 seconds, and buffs, shields and health buffs never come back faster than they last, so they cannot overlap.

How monsters fight

Monsters swing once per second and have no crit, dodge, block, absorption, regen, lifesteal or amplifiers. Their stats per stage are on the maps and bestiary pages.

Early hordes hit softer

Below stage level 17 each normal monster's damage (not its Health) is scaled down, so a whole horde hits about as hard as a few monsters would:

The damage listed per stage does not include this.

Who gets hit

Guardians (the Warrior, Barbarian and Paladin) hold the front line:

Melee monsters cannot target flying heroes. Bosses are immune to stuns and other crowd control, Chill and Blind, and have low evasion.

When a hero falls

Worked example

A level-30 heavy-armor hero fights a normal stage-10 monster in Floating Isles on the Veil:

Hero hits monster

Skill hits always land.

Monster hits hero

What we could not confirm

Read from the code, not yet checked in the live game:

Source: closed-beta game client 0.7.2. Data from the closed beta, so values may change at launch.