True damage

True damage is one of the four types of damage in League of Legends, the others being magic damage, physical damage and pure damage (which is only used by the fountain turrets). True damage ignores armor and magic resistance, as well as other forms of damage reduction such as Unbreakable, Unbreakable Will and Vengeful Maelstrom.

Blocking true damage

Abilities or summoner spells which deal true damage are still blocked by effects that prevent damage such as the passive on Banshee's Veil, Sivir's Spell Shield, Nocturne's Shroud of Darkness, and Standard Attacks which deal additional true damage are still capable of being blocked by Pantheon's Aegis Protection. Kayle's Intervention will block all damage to a target champion, including true damage. Before the removal of Dodge, both true damage as an on-hit effect and true damage on standard attack were capable of being avoided completely if the standard attack was dodged, however during the effect of Counter Strike, Jax can still effectively dodge true damage from on-hit effects and true damage from standard attacks.

Countering true damage

Although true damage cannot be directly mitigated, it is possible to diminish its relative effect by stacking health or using shields.

• Building health causes sources of flat true damage (eg. Cho'Gath's Feast) to effectively deal a lesser percentage of total health. This only partially applies to Vayne's Silver Bolts, because it scales based on maximum health.
  • Reducing Vayne's attack speed (via items such as Frozen Heart or Randuin's Omen) mitigates damage from Silver Bolts by reducing how often it procs. The bonus resist/health also diminish physical damage effects, which usually comprise the large majority of Vayne's total damage.
  • For each Silver Bolt proc, bonus health is effectively equal to (1 - % True damage) * (bonus health). For rank 5 Silver Bolts, this means Bonus Health over 12 autoattacks remains 87% effective—still quite efficient. For all the above reasons, health constitutes an essential aspect of efficiently countering Vayne's damage output, contrary to popular belief.
• Absorption shields such as Janna's Eye Of The Storm Eye Of The Storm absorb true damage and do not count towards max health; therefore, they protect equally well vs. all sources of true damage.
• Magic-only shields such as Morgana's Black Shield and the passive on Hexdrinker and Maw of Malmortius will have no impact on true damage.

Dealing true damage

Champions who deal true damage with standard attacks

• Corki's Hextech Shrapnel Shells
• Irelia's Hiten Style (active only)
• Twitch's Deadly Venom (applies true damage over time)
• Vayne's Silver Bolts (upon 3rd consecutive hit on a single target)
• Master Yi's Wuju Style (on autoattacks, but for duration of ability only)

Champions who deal true damage with abilities

• Ahri's Orb of Deception (upon retraction)
• Cho'Gath's Feast
• Darius' Noxian Guillotine
• Kog'Maw's Icathian Surprise
• Nunu's Consume (only to minions, neutral monsters, and pets.)
• Olaf's Reckless Swing
• Rek'Sai's Furious Bite (100 Fury)
• Vel'Koz's Organic Deconstruction (upon 3rd consecutive abilities on a single target)
• Zyra's Rise of the Thorns

Champions who deal true damage with casting delayed or otherwise non-damaging spells

NOTE: These spells deal a 1-2 true damage for turret and minion aggression reasons, as well as allowing the caster to receive an assist.

• Anivia's Crystallize deals one true damage when it is casted directly on an unit.

• Trundle's Pillar of Ice deals one true damage when it is casted directly on an unit.

• Fizz's Chum the Waters deals two true damage for each tick of the timer when attached to an enemy champion.

• Zilean's Time Bomb deals one true damage when it is cast on an unit.

• Zed's Death Mark deals one true damage when Zed arrives at his target enemy (PENDING FOR TEST).

Items

• Elixir of Sorcery (5 second cooldown against champions)
• Entropy
• Stalker's Blade
• Skirmisher's Sabre (Smiting enemy champion makes basic attacks deal true damage)

Summoner spells

• Ignite
• Smite, Blasting Smite and Scavenging Smite (only to minions, neutral monsters, and pets)
• Challenging Smite - debuff that dealing true damage on hit to champion
• Chilling Smite

Neutral Buffs

• Crest of Cinders

Neutral Monsters

• Dragon Dragon

Notes

• Despite popular belief, champions whose abilities have health costs associated with them do not deal true damage to themselves when they use an ability which requires health to cast.
  • This can be evidenced when they have an absorption shield on them, when they use their health-based ability, the cost of it penetrates the shield and directly drains the health of the user, in contrary to true damage that has to break any absorption shield on the target to reach its hitpoints.
• The Nexus Obelisk at the heart of a team's base, contrary to popular belief, does not deal true damage, but pure damage, which is similar to true damage in that it ignores all forms of resistances but also has the caveat of ignoring damage immunity and death prevention buffs.
• True damage is unaffected by damage reductions such as Exhaust.
• True damage is not amplified by the mastery Executioner.
• As of patch V3.15, true damage is no longer amplified by abilities such as Poppy's Diplomatic Immunity, Swain's Torment, and Talon's Cutthroat.