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Magic resistance icon Magic Resistance (also Magic Resist), or MR, is one of the two damage resistance subtype stats. It reduces incoming magic damage by a percentage.

Every champion has a certain amount of base magic resistance that increases through growth per level. Total magic resistance refers to base plus bonus magic resistance. Bonus magic resistance can be gained from any source other than levels, for example from abilities, buffs, items, runes, and others.

Excluding the intentional outlier of Mega Gnar Mega Gnar (whose magic resistance deviates greatly from all other champions' at 115.1), magic resistance values at level 18 range from 43.7 (Yuumi Yuumi) to 75.35 (Sylas Sylas).

Gold Value

  • Magic resistance has a gold value of 18 Gold 18 per point.

Magic resist formula[]

Magic resist determines how incoming magic damage is reduced before it is applied to the target. The incoming pre-mitigation damage is mitigated by Magic resist into a reduced amount of post-mitigation damage that the target then takes.

Magic resist is a percentage reduction of incoming damage; this means that magic resist can also be interpreted as increasing the effective health of the target (when dealing with magic damage).

Arithmetically, to find the post-mitigation damage from incoming magic damage, the following formula is used:

Due to the order of operations for penetration and reductions of either resistance, negative values almost never occur. Therefore, ignoring negative magic resist values, the following simpler formula may be used ( is magic resist, is mitigated damage, and is raw magic damage):

Solving this formula for magic damage gives:

This second formula shows that magic resist can be taken as a percentage increase of effective health when dealing with physical damage. Every point of magic resist adds 1% to the effective health pool. Also, see Stacking Magic resistance below.

Examples using 1,000 raw damage

  • 25 Magic Resistance → 1,000  ÷  (1  +  25  ÷  100)  =  1,000  ÷  1.25  =  800
    • Total damage reduction 20%,  + 25% effective health, 1,000 post-mitigation damage  =  1,250 Raw Damage
  • 100 Magic Resistance → 1,000  ÷  (1  +  100  ÷  100)  =  1,000  ÷  2  =  500
    • Total damage reduction 50%,  + 100% effective health, 1,000 post-mitigation damage  =  2,000 Raw Damage
  • 200 Magic Resistance → 1,000  ÷  (1  +  200  ÷  100)  =  1,000  ÷  3  =  333.34
    • Total damage reduction 66.66%,  + 200% effective health, 1,000 post-mitigation damage  =  3,000 Raw Damage

Stacking magic resistance[]

Following the above damage formula, each point of magic resist increases the effective health pool against magic damage by 1%, formally:

Example: A unit with 60 magic resistance has 160% of its maximum health in its effective health, so if the unit has 1000 maximum health, it will take 1600 magic damage to kill it.

By definition, magic resist does not give diminishing returns of effective health. Each additional point of magic resist increases the effective health pool (against magic damage) by 1% of your maximum health. This is not changed by any amount of magic resist already held.

If a unit's magic resist is negative due to reduction debuffs, magic resist has increasing returns with respect to itself. This is because negative magic resist cannot reduce effective health to less than 50% of actual health. A unit with -100 magic resist has 66.67% of nominal health (gains −33.33%) of its maximum health as effective health. This is an exotic case with only a select few in-game applications.

For a more detailed explanation, see this video.

Magic resistance as scaling[]

Effects may benefit from (scale off of) a percentage/ratio, of total magic resistance, or bonus magic resistance.

Champions[]

Self[]

Enemy[]

Items[]

Self[]

Runes[]

Self[]

Neutral buffs[]

Self[]

Increasing magic resistance[]

Items[]

This table is automatically generated based on the data from Module:ItemData/data.

ItemCostAmountAvailability
Abyssal Mask Abyssal Mask2400 2400 Gold60Nexus Blitz, Arena, Classic Summoner's Rift 5v5, All Random All Mid
Banshee's Veil Banshee's Veil3100 3100 Gold50Nexus Blitz, Arena, Classic Summoner's Rift 5v5, All Random All Mid
Force of Nature Force of Nature2800 2800 Gold55Nexus Blitz, Arena, Classic Summoner's Rift 5v5, All Random All Mid
Hexdrinker Hexdrinker1300 1300 Gold35Nexus Blitz, Classic Summoner's Rift 5v5, All Random All Mid
Hollow Radiance Hollow Radiance2800 2800 Gold40Nexus Blitz, Arena, Classic Summoner's Rift 5v5, All Random All Mid
Jak'Sho, The Protean Jak'Sho, The Protean3200 3200 Gold50Nexus Blitz, Arena, Classic Summoner's Rift 5v5, All Random All Mid
Kaenic Rookern Kaenic Rookern2900 2900 Gold80Nexus Blitz, Arena, Classic Summoner's Rift 5v5, All Random All Mid
Locket of the Iron Solari Locket of the Iron Solari2200 2200 Gold30Nexus Blitz, Arena, Classic Summoner's Rift 5v5, All Random All Mid
Maw of Malmortius Maw of Malmortius2800 2800 Gold50Nexus Blitz, Arena, Classic Summoner's Rift 5v5, All Random All Mid
Mercurial Scimitar Mercurial Scimitar3000 3000 Gold50Nexus Blitz, Arena, Classic Summoner's Rift 5v5, All Random All Mid
Mercury's Treads Mercury's Treads1100 1100 Gold25Nexus Blitz, Arena, Classic Summoner's Rift 5v5, All Random All Mid
Negatron Cloak Negatron Cloak900 900 Gold50Nexus Blitz, Classic Summoner's Rift 5v5, All Random All Mid
Null-Magic Mantle Null-Magic Mantle450 450 Gold25Nexus Blitz, Classic Summoner's Rift 5v5, All Random All Mid
Quicksilver Sash Quicksilver Sash1300 1300 Gold30Nexus Blitz, Classic Summoner's Rift 5v5, All Random All Mid
Reliquary of the Golden Dawn Reliquary of the Golden Dawn2200 2200 Gold40Nexus Blitz, Arena, Classic Summoner's Rift 5v5, All Random All Mid
Spectre's Cowl Spectre's Cowl1250 1250 Gold25Nexus Blitz, Classic Summoner's Rift 5v5, All Random All Mid
Spirit Visage Spirit Visage2900 2900 Gold60Nexus Blitz, Arena, Classic Summoner's Rift 5v5, All Random All Mid
The Unspoken Parasite The Unspoken Parasite3200 3200 Gold60Nexus Blitz, Arena, Classic Summoner's Rift 5v5, All Random All Mid
Verdant Barrier Verdant Barrier1800 1800 Gold30Nexus Blitz, Classic Summoner's Rift 5v5, All Random All Mid
Vigilant Wardstone Vigilant Wardstone2300 2300 Gold30Classic Summoner's Rift 5v5
Watchful Wardstone Watchful Wardstone1100 1100 Gold15Classic Summoner's Rift 5v5
Wit's End Wit's End2800 2800 Gold50Nexus Blitz, Arena, Classic Summoner's Rift 5v5, All Random All Mid

Item passives[]

Champion abilities[]

Runes[]

Neutral buffs[]

Reducing magic resistance[]

Magic resist can be negated by magic penetration and magic resistance reduction, treated as negative values in damage calculations. The calculation then uses the effective magic resist values after the reduction; the actual damage formulae are not changed.

Magic resist vs. Health[]

HP Armor LW VS

Note: The following information similarly applies to armor. As of season six, the base equilibrium line for magic resist is a function:

health = 6.75 × (magic resist + 100)

while the line for armor is a bit shifted up and more steep:

health = 7.5 × (armor + 100)

It can be helpful to understand the equilibrium between maximum health and magic resist, which is represented in the graph[1] on the right. The equilibrium line represents the point at which your champion will have the highest effective health against that damage type, while the smaller lines represent the baseline progression for each kind of champion from level 1-18 without items. You can also see that for a somewhat brief period in the early game health is the most gold efficient purchase, however this assumes the enemy team will only have one type of damage. The more equal the distribution of physical damage/magic damage in the enemy team, the more effective will buying health be.

There are many other factors which can effect whether you should buy more magic resist or health, such as these key examples:

  • Unlike HP, increasing magic resist also makes healing more effective because it takes more effort to remove the unit's HP than it does to restore it.
  • HP helps you survive both magic damage and physical damage. Against a team with mainly burst or just low damage, HP can be more efficient than resistances.
  • Percentage magic resist reduction in the enemy team tilts the optimal health:magic resist ratio slightly in the favor of HP.
  • Whether or not the enemy is capable of delivering true damage or percent health damage, thus reducing the value of magic resist and health stacking respectively.
  • The presence of resist or HP steroids built into your champion's kit, such as in Leona's Leona's Eclipse Eclipse or Cho'Gath's Cho'Gath's Feast Feast.
  • Against sustained damage vamp and healing abilities can be considered as contributing to your maximum HP (while being mostly irrelevant against burst damage).
  • The need to prioritize specific items mainly for their other qualities (regardless of whether or not they contribute towards the ideal balance between HP and resists).

List of champions' magic resistance[]

Most melee champions, along with Graves Graves, Ivern Ivern, and Urgot Urgot, have a base magic resistance of 32 − 66.85 (based on level).

Most ranged champions, Kassadin Kassadin, and shapeshifting champions who can become ranged in one of their forms (Nidalee Nidalee, Jayce Jayce, Elise Elise, Gnar Gnar), have base magic resistance of 30 − 52.1 (based on level).

Optimal efficiency (theoretical)[]

Note: Effective burst health, commonly referred to just as 'effective health', describes the amount of raw burst damage a champion can receive before dying in such a short time span that he remains unaffected by any form of health restoration*. Unless champion's resists aren't reduced below zero, it will always be more than or equal to a champion's displayed health in their health bar and can be increased by buying items with extra health, armor and magic resistance. In this section, effective health will refer to the amount of raw 'magical damage' a champion can take.

In almost all circumstances, champions will have more maximum health than magic resistance, thus a single point of magic resistance will give more 'effective health' to a champion than a single point of health. However, if there is a case where max health is below the value of 'magic resistance + 100', the opposite becomes true.

Because of this relationship, theoretically, maximum effective health is attained by ensure that you have exactly 100 more max health than magic resistance, regardless of how much health or magic resistance you actually already have.

Example: Given a theoretical situation where you start off with 1 health and 1 magic resistance and are given an arbitrary sufficient number of stat points (x ≥ 100), each of which you can use to increase either your health or magic resistance by 1 point, the way to maximize your effective health is to add points to your health until your health has 100 more points than magic resistance, then split the remaining stat points in half and share them between your health and magic resistance.

However, this is only theoretically true if we consider both health and magic resistance to be equally obtainable resources with simplified mechanism of skill point investment. In reality a player buys these stats for gold Gold gold instead. So when attempting to ensure the balance of 'health = magic resistance + 100', consider it through gold value distributed to the stats. Because the gold value of 1 health is roughly 7 times smaller than 1 point of magic resistance (as of V8.7), distribution per point of health or magic resistance should be 12.5% gold into health and 87.5% gold into magic resistance once the 'health = magic resistance + 100' equilibrium is reached.

This model is highly simplified and cannot be exactly applied when buying any other item that aren't purely magic resistance or health oriented as they deviate the equilibrium. Going even further, the continuous model simplifies a discrete character of real shopping, as you cannot really buy 1.125 × Ruby Crystals Ruby Crystals for 450 Gold 450, so you either opt to buy a single Ruby Crystal Ruby Crystal or a single Null-Magic Mantle Null-Magic Mantle, drastically unbalancing the equilibrium.

Broadly speaking, items which provide both health and magic resistance give a very high amount of effective health against magic damage compared to items which only provide health or only provide magic resistance. These items should be purchased when a player is seeking efficient ways to reduce the magic damage they take by a large amount. Furthermore, these items are among all available items the best ones to distribute their gold value equally among both health and magic resistance, thus working perfectly for rule of preserving equilibrium.

Conclusion[]

This information is strongly theoretical. Due to how there are many variables aside from health, magic resistance and gold value, "true equilibrium" is too complicated and unrealistic to achieve. However, a player can develop their intuition to itemize towards this equilibrium in a timely manner through the experience gained from the multitude of plays they perform.

The important thing to remember is that there is no reason to hold to the equilibrium too strictly, or else you might just lose the fun out of the game.

Trivia[]

  • The old stat icon for Stat icon magic resistance magic resistance was a blue recolor of the old stat icon for Stat icon armor armor, which seems to based on the old icon of Aegis of the Legion Aegis of the Legion.
  • The game internally refers to magic resistance as spellBlock.

Last updated: July 29, 2020, patch V10.15

Without using Shyvana's Shyvana's Fury of the Dragonborn Fury of the Dragonborn or Jax's Jax's Grandmaster's Might Grandmaster's Might with Gathering Storm Gathering Storm which potentially allow for infinite amounts of magic resistance, the largest amount of magic resistance is reached with a level 18 Rammus Rammus at 1464 magic resistance (which reduces magic damage by 93.607%).


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