Battle Mechanics
How your stats work, how damage is taken, damage over time effects and enemy types.
Your stats
Every class starts from the same base stats. Gear, talents and runes add to them, up to the caps below.
| Stat | Base | Cap | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|
| Damage | 25 | +350% | Damage of every hit. Each hit varies by ±4%. |
| Critical Chance | 5% | 100% | Chance for a hit to crit. |
| Critical Damage | ×1.5 | ×4 | Damage of a crit. |
| Attack Speed | 1.2× | +300% | Your attack rate counts fully up to 2.5×, then a quarter as much, up to 5×. |
| Max HP | 100 | +600% | Your health. |
| Armor | 20 | +400% | Flat damage reduction, see below. |
| Dodge Chance | 0% | 50% | Chance to avoid a hit completely. |
| Life Steal | 0% | 150% | Each 100% heals 2% of Max HP, at most once per second. |
| HP Regeneration | 0% | 200% | While hurt, each 100% heals 5% of Max HP every 3 seconds. |
| Move Speed | 1.8 | +100% | How fast you move. |
On top of these, True Divine and higher items and the Exalted runes socketed in your set add to a final multiplier. In-run stat abilities for Damage, Max HP and Attack Speed also multiply on top, so they still help once a stat is capped.
How skill damage works
- “X% damage” means X% of your current Damage. At the start of a run that is the number on your stat screen, and it goes up as you pick damage boosts during the run. Each hit also varies by ±4%.
- Every hit rolls its own crit. Each projectile, each enemy caught in an area and each tick of an aura rolls separately. Damage over time effects (Burn, Poison, Darkness) never crit.
- Area damage is not split. Every enemy inside the area takes the full damage.
- Each projectile deals the full listed damage, but abilities aim differently. Prism Barrage sends one bullet at your current target and the rest at random other enemies, so against a single enemy only one bullet hits it. Hela’s Wrath’s homing weapons, on the other hand, can all hit the same enemy.
- Some areas grow with level, some do not. Holo Spike always hits the same small area around its impact; leveling it raises its damage and cast rate. Elemental Aura’s ring gets bigger with each level, shown as Aura Size on its card.
- Elemental Aura’s damage is per second. It ticks 5 times a second, each tick dealing a fifth of the listed damage, and every tick also puts its element’s effect on the enemies inside.
Example with 1,674 Damage, all at 1 star: Prism Barrage (120% each) deals about 2,009 per bullet. Holo Spike (180%) deals about 3,013 to each enemy in the blast. Elemental Aura (20%) deals about 335 per second, or 67 per tick, to each enemy in the ring. All before crits.
Extra Target and Extra Ricochet
- Extra Target: ranged weapons (bow, staff and tome) hit 2 targets with each attack. Each Extra Target adds one more.
- Extra Ricochet only works on your weapon’s own shots: basic attacks and class skill shots. It does not apply to ability projectiles such as Prism Barrage. Natural ricochets and every +1 Ricochet source stack together.
- From gear, talents and runes, each of the two stops at +3. In-run abilities and some skills, such as Predator Overdrive, add more on top of that.
- Each bounce jumps to a nearby enemy it did not just hit. Its damage before crits is 60% of the bounce before it, and it rolls its own crit.
Taking damage
- Armor removes a flat amount from each hit (one fifth of your Armor), but a hit always deals at least 20% of its damage.
- Melee classes (Warlord, Vanguard, Reaver) receive 30% less damage after armor, in every mode except the Arena.
- Dodge avoids the whole hit.
- There is no invulnerability after a normal hit, so getting surrounded is dangerous. You only get a short invulnerability after a revive and while a shield skill protects you.
Bosses hit much harder than other enemies. Keeping boss fights short is the best defense.
Damage over time
Elemental skills put effects on enemies. Each element appears once per enemy: hitting it again restarts the timer instead of stacking. Different elements run at the same time.
| Effect | Duration | Tick | Damage per tick |
|---|---|---|---|
| Burn | 2 s | every 0.5 s | 3% |
| Poison | 3 s | every 0.5 s | 2% |
| Darkness (Shadow) | 1.5 s | every 0.5 s | 5% |
| Lightning | instant | none | 3%, then chains |
| Freezing (Frost) | 3 s | none | No damage: slows by 50% |
- The percentage is of the enemy’s max HP. For ordinary enemies it is capped at 50× your Damage, so damage over time shreds weak mobs at any chapter.
- Paragons take 35% of that and bosses only 5%. The Frost slow is reduced the same way.
- Lightning triggers 60% of the time and jumps to up to 3 nearby enemies.
- Damage over time ticks never crit and do not get element rune bonuses. Element runes boost the direct hits of skills of that element.
Enemies never put these effects on you outside the Arena, where other players’ skills can.
Enemy types
| Type | What to know |
|---|---|
| Normal | Colored outlines mark special attackers: orange explodes, red charges, yellow leaps, blue shoots. |
| Strong | Tougher and faster than normal enemies. |
| Paragon | Much tougher and bigger. Survives the screen wipe of a revive. Some tooltips call them elites. |
| Boss | Ends each chapter. Cannot be knocked back. |
Enemies get tougher the longer a run lasts. In Boss Battle, bosses enter a second phase at half HP and attack much faster. Chapters 36 to 42 are much harder: enemy HP and damage jump sharply.
Revive and death
In the campaign and the Eternal Tower you can revive once per run (see Campaign). A second death ends the run. You keep what you collected. Boss Battle, Raid, Gold Mine, Mythic Maze and the Arena have no revive.