Combat Sequence[]
All heroes keep continuously walking to their target until it is in range.
Heroes get turns for:
- A physical attack. Even mages only have a physical attack and not a magical one.
- Their ultimate skill (if energy is full and if it is activated), which uses up all energy. This skill can be either physical, magical, or holy.
- Each of their regular skills (Green, Blue, Purple, Legendary). Each of them can be either physical, magical, or holy.
- HP recovery,
- Energy recovery.
If they cannot perform any of those actions, they start walking again to the nearest target.
Combat Timing[]
The order in which skills are cast is consistent amongst different heroes, unless that skill takes priority over others such as Iron Hoof's War Charge. In this example, the skill is cast only once and immediately at the beginning of the fight. It is then removed from the skill rotation completely.
The default skill rotation is as follows:
- Green skill
- Blue skill
- Purple skill
- Legendary skill (if present)
An ultimate skill that is ready to be used when fighting in player-vs-player (PVP) or with the auto fight option enabled will always override any action that is currently taken. This means that you can skill cancel if playing manually by stopping the skill that is being casted via using the ultimate skill. Note that this can also be detrimental as it results in the skill effectively going into cooldown without actual effect, but skilled players might use this as a means to evaporate "recovery frames" and speed up the skill cycle. A good example in this scenario is cancelling out Machinist's Seeker recovery frames once the missile is already in midflight. The timing in this case has to be very precise as the rocket needs to be detached from the arms before it can fly and hit a target. Cancelling too soon causes Seeker to fail.
Ideally, to maximize the damage rotation on any hero, cast their ultimate after they finish casting the skill they are using.
It is also good to make note of the unique freeze frame effect almost every ultimate skill has. If a hero casts their ultimate skill, the screen will go dark (in booty cave only the player's team ults cause the screen to go dark) and an animation will start. During this dark screen time, the game continues to count downwards for the battle timer, and already active ultimate skills continue to deal damage. This is an extremely useful mechanic in various outland portal fights as well as it allows a lengthy ultimate skill such as Machinist's Overcharge to deal all their damage during the "frozen" period when paired with other ultimate skills.
A good example can be observed by having a team including a Ferryman, Death Mage, Machinist, Mystic, and Dwarf Warrior. The Longest dark screen timing comes from ferryman and if he starts with his ultimate skill, then DURING that time, death mage, machinist, mystic and dwarf warrior all use their ultimate skills, the result is that the screen remains dark, but the skills continue to deal damage. This allows for packing massive amounts of damage in a small window of time since the game is effectively frozen during an ult black screen. Keep in mind that black screen time does not stop the battle timer, and this means that some outland portal bosses cannot be cleared due to running out of time if one uses a lot of ultimate skills during the fight. The same applies during raids where time literally means damage dealt. An effective countermeasure is lining up your ultimate skills to be used in pairs rather than one by one. This maximizes damage output with minimal time lost.
Some of the skills are not castable skills but rather passive effects that remain active during the entirety of the fight. This holds true for the vast majority of the available passive skills such as auras and boosts. If such a skill is not available in the rotation for casting actively, it is skipped and the next skill is chosen until all are used in the rotation. This means that heroes with a large array of usable skills will have a much more varied attack pattern than heroes with only a few castable skills.
Once a skill has been cast, regardless of whether or not it was successful it is put into a cooldown. The value of this cooldown is unknown but seems to be consistent amongst different heroes. Once all the skills have been rotated, the only available option is default attacks until a skill comes off cooldown. This means that if all the skills a hero cast are interrupted either via a crowd control skill (CC) or hitlock (see Physical attacks), the hero will not re-cast the skill until it becomes available again. Certain buffs and passive skills allow faster rotation (less cooldown) between skills but these are usually unique to the hero that has them.
Turn speed can be affected by various beneficial effects, ultimate skills and buffs, such as Commando's Inspiration skill, Tusked Storm's Battle Focus, and so forth.
While the above affect attack speed and therefore turn speed, this is false for numerous attack speed increasing skills, such as Rifleman's Stimulant skill or Machinist's The red button Skill. Instead these skills either change the default attack or speed up the cooldown for other skills.
One such example is whenever a hero casts one of their skills, then gets buffed by Psychopath's Blood Call and then proceeds to cast the same skill earlier in the rotation again due to the decreased cooldown.
In light of this mechanic, numerous skill descriptions are to be regarded as false or inaccurate, since their mechanics do not actually allow faster attacks.
Physical attacks[]
A physical attack will fail if the defender has physical immunity, which pops up as PHYSICAL IMMUNITY. For instance the Cleric can grant such immunity.
A physical attack begins with trying to hit with some accuracy. Usually hits seem to connect, but DODGE can pop up, showing a hero succeeded in using his Dodge skill. Accuracy counters the dodge rating of heroes and while some heroes have no dodge rating of their own, some skills like Mystic's Blinding skill can reduce the physical attack accuracy, resulting in a similar effect as if the hero would have dodged.
If the hit connects, then the Physical Attack rating determines how much damage is dealt in combination with defender's Armor rating. How much damage is stopped by armor is currently unknown.
The Physical Crit determines the chance that the damage is multiplied by x2. Armor rating also affects the chance of a succesful crit, with lower armor values resulting in more likely critical hits. These are not percentile values. Ninja Assassin's purple skill increases the damage multiplier.
When receiving a certain amount of physical damage, a hero may be put into a hitlock animation, causing him or her to flinch and stop what he or she was doing. This can potentially interrupt skills, causing them to be put into cooldown without their actual effect being used.
The value for a hero to be put into hitlock seems to be a treshold or percentile amount of their maximum HP. A tank class hero with a large HP pool will not go into hitlock as often as a DPS class hero with a much smaller healthpool.
Some skills and presumably every ultimate skill are immune to hitlock. This means that no matter how much damage the hero casting the skill in question receives, he or she will not stop using or casting the skill until it has run it's course. Other heroes have skills causing them to become unhittable but still appear as a target. Good examples are Ember Blade's Blazing blades, which still causes enemies to target him but resulting in the attacks hitting thin air and the first phase of Ninja Assassin's Ultimate skill which still causes him to be targetted but until his dash animation ends, cannot be harmed.
Critical hits are more likely to cause a hitlock due to their larger damage value.
Gear and armor values seem to play a part in this as well, but it is unclear to which degree.
Magical attacks[]
A magical attack will fail if the defender has magical immunity, which pops up as MAGICAL IMMUNITY. For instance the Cleric can grant such immunity. Only skills can be magical in nature. Regular attacks never are.
A magical attack always connects with a strength of the Magical Power, but can be resisted with the defender's Magical Resistance, reducing the amount of damage done. Any attacks that are magical in nature cannot be dodged.
The Magical Crit determines the chance that the damage is multiplied by x2. As with normal armor, the amount of Magical Resistance has a direct influence on how likely they are to receive a critical hit.
As with physical damage, if a hero receives enough magical damage, they might be put into a hitlock stance and flinch, causing them to stop whatever they were doing.
Skills[]
When a skill is used with a "will definitely hit enemies of level X or lower" part, every now and then a MISS notification pops up. A miss notification means that a portion or all of the skill's effect have failed to produce a result.
HP recovery[]
During battle various actions result in gaining hit points, similar to Energy recovery as explained in the next section. Presumably the hero recovers an amount of HP equal to his HP Regen rating.
Additionally, each hero gets a recovery turn at the end of combat, before proceeding to the next combat.
Oddly enough these values are not accurate when fighting in stages at a higher level. Most likely this is a means to prevent "Ult nuking" through the hardest stages of the game with an underleveled team.
Energy recovery[]
During battle various actions result in gaining energy. The most common are
- Attacking
- Casting a skill
- Causing damage
- Receiving damage
- Buffs
- Killing an enemy.
Each of the above actions result in an unknown amount of energy gained, but almost every action taken grants energy. It is to be noted that Receiving damage only counts towards instant damage. Damage over time skills (such as poison) do not grant energy to the target.
The amount of energy gained is not directly co-related to the amount of damage done or taken. Higher level heroes with big health pools and loads of resistances and armor will not build up energy as much as an equally equipped but lower leveled hero. This is a very dangerous mechanic when fighting in player-vs-player since it is almost 100% guarantees that mirror matches with equal teams in equal equipment, but one team having one level lower heroes will ensure that the lower level hero team wins. This is due to the larger energy buildup the lower level team receives, presumably in an attempt to balance out PVP so high levels don't always overtake low levels.
The above is a direct affront to core RPG mechanics, and can potentially result in a team being beaten consistently despite the owner having put more effort and resources into it than the team that is beating him or her.
Additionally, each hero gets a recovery turn at the end of combat, before proceeding to the next combat area. The hero recovers an amount of energy equal to his Energy Regen rating. As with HP recovery, this amount is inaccurate when fighting higher level stages.
Whenever a hero's attack results in a kill, 300 points of energy are awarded to the hero making the killing blow. This shows up as a popup saying KILLING REWARDS +300 ENERGY. This is an important game mechanic when used in areas with free control, as it allows a player to (for example) cast a multiple target ultimate skill that, if it kills enough enemies, will result in enough energy awarded to immediately cast the skill again.
It is confirmed that the base value needed to cast a hero's ultimate skill is 1000. This value is lowered by equipping Dragon glass, which is the only item with this property. An unenchanted dragon glass reduces the amount of energy needed by 15%, resulting in a hero being able to use their ultimate skill at 850 instead of 1000. This amount is further reduced by enchanting the dragon glass item, but the extra effect is lost when the hero is promoted.
Some heroes such as Emberstar also have skills that increase their energy gained above normal values when using specific attacks. Ice mage's Sigil of Arctus skill also provides a passive energy regeneration during battle itself, and other skills such as Mystic's Harmony will grant energy to any hero that does not have a full energy bar.