On this page
- Magic beats Spirit, Spirit beats Force, Force beats Magic. Void is outside the triangle: neutral against everything, both ways.
- There is no flat damage bonus for the advantage. It gives +15 points of crit chance and a chance of crushing hits (+30% damage).
- The disadvantage hurts twice: every hit does 20% less, and 35% of hits glance (30% less again, never critical, debuffs dropped).
- A hit gets one type from a single roll, so on a bad matchup you only crit if your C.RATE is above 35.
- Poison, HP Burn and reflected damage ignore affinity completely.
The triangle
Every champion and every boss has one of four affinities. The first three form a loop where each one has the advantage over the next:
| Attacker | Has the advantage over | Has the disadvantage against | Neutral against |
|---|---|---|---|
| Magic | Spirit | Force | Magic, Void |
| Spirit | Force | Magic | Spirit, Void |
| Force | Magic | Spirit | Force, Void |
| Void | nobody | nobody | everyone |
The relation is two-sided. If your Magic champion has the advantage over a Spirit enemy, then the Spirit enemy's attacks on your champion are at a disadvantage. It is worked out for each hit, from the attacker's point of view, so it applies to the enemy's hits against you in exactly the same way.
One roll decides the hit type
Every damaging hit ends up as exactly one of four types: normal, critical, crushing (the strong hit) or glancing (the weak hit). The game draws a single random number between 0 and 100% and compares it with three thresholds, always in this order: glancing first, then critical, then crushing.
- Glancing threshold
- 35% when the attacker is at a disadvantage, otherwise none.
- Critical threshold
- The attacker's C.RATE (capped at 100%), plus 15 points when the attacker has the advantage.
- Crushing threshold
- 50% when the attacker has the advantage, otherwise none.
Because the draw is shared, the thresholds eat each other's room. That gives two rules that surprise people:
Good matchup: P(critical) = C.RATE + 15% P(crushing) = 50% − P(critical) (never below 0)
- With a bad matchup, a champion with 35% C.RATE or less never lands a critical hit. At 53% C.RATE it crits on 18% of its hits, not 53%.
- With a good matchup, crushing hits only appear while the crit chance is under 50%. With C.RATE 35 or more there are no crushing hits at all, and the whole advantage is the +15 crit chance.
We checked this on a three-hit skill used at a disadvantage in real fights (84 pairs of hits, a small sample). Pairs where one hit was a crit and the other a glance were 10% of all pairs. The single-roll rule predicts 13%; treating crit and glance as two independent rolls predicts 24%.
The numbers
This table follows from the rules above. "Good" means the attacker has the advantage and "Bad" the disadvantage. "Average damage" is the average multiplier on a hit before DEF, with C.DMG 100 (a crit is ×2.0), relative to the same champion on a neutral matchup. The bad-matchup rows include the flat 20% cut.
| C.RATE | Matchup | Glancing | Critical | Crushing | Normal | Average damage |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 15 | Neutral | 0% | 15% | 0% | 85% | 100% |
| 15 | Good | 0% | 30% | 20% | 50% | 118% |
| 15 | Bad | 35% | 0% | 0% | 65% | 62% |
| 50 | Neutral | 0% | 50% | 0% | 50% | 100% |
| 50 | Good | 0% | 65% | 0% | 35% | 110% |
| 50 | Bad | 35% | 15% | 0% | 50% | 56% |
| 100 | Neutral | 0% | 100% | 0% | 0% | 100% |
| 100 | Good | 0% | 100% | 0% | 0% | 100% |
| 100 | Bad | 35% | 65% | 0% | 0% | 62% |
Read it like this: the advantage is worth the most to a champion with a low crit rate (+18% at 15 C.RATE) and nothing to one that already crits every hit. The disadvantage costs a champion roughly 40% of its damage (38% to 44% in the table), and C.RATE can only soften it.
What each hit type does
| Type | Damage | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Normal | ×1.0 | |
| Critical | ×(1 + C.DMG ÷ 100) | Triggers "on critical hit" effects such as stacking bonuses. |
| Crushing | ×1.3 | Only with the advantage. |
| Glancing | ×0.7 | Cannot be critical. Drops the effects riding on the hit (see below). |
The bad matchup's flat 20% cut comes on top, and it applies to every hit, glancing or not. A glancing hit at a disadvantage is therefore 0.7 × 0.8 = 56% of a normal neutral hit. Both slot into the chain described in How damage works.
Glancing hits drop debuffs
A debuff that is attached to a damaging hit, such as "attacks one enemy and has a 50% chance of placing [Decrease DEF]", only gets its chance if the hit does not glance. Almost every on-hit effect in the game data is written this way. So an attacker at a disadvantage loses about 35% of its debuffs before ACC and RES are even looked at; see Landing debuffs. A skill that only places effects and does no damage has no hit to glance, so affinity does not hurt it.
Some effects force glancing hits whatever the affinity: [Enfeeble] on an attacker, and [Poison Cloud] on a target.
Enemies follow the same rules
The Clan Boss has a crit rate of 15%. When it has the advantage over a champion, its hits crit 30% of the time and crush 20% of the time. When it is at a disadvantage against a champion, 35% of its hits glance and it can never crit that champion (15% is below the 35% threshold). Picking champions that beat the boss's affinity takes away its crits; picking ones it beats gives it extra crushing hits. This is for its area attacks: its single-target stun attack is a fixed share of the boss's own MAX HP and does not roll a hit type. The Clan Boss changes affinity, so the best team for one day can be the worst for another.
What ignores affinity
Hits with a fixed amount have no hit-type roll and no affinity: [Poison] and [HP Burn] ticks, [Reflect Damage], and similar damage that is not a normal hit. For those, the affinities of attacker and target make no difference. The rest of their rules are in How damage works.