COMBAT MECHANICS (part 2)
5.13 Critical Strikes
All hits have a chance to critically strike, or “crit”, dealing much more damage than normal. Damage over time effects cannot crit. All hits have a base critical strike chance of 5%. This can be improved by items, passives, and skill tree nodes. Critical strike chance caps at 100% and gains no additional benefit afterwards.
The difference between added critical strike chance and increased critical strike chance is very important. “+1% critical strike chance” will result in a final chance of 6% (assuming no other modifiers), while “1% increased critical strike chance” will result in a final chance of 5.05%. Both stats together will result in a final chance of 6.06%.
When a hit crits, the damage dealt is multiplied by a critical strike multiplier, which is multiplicative with other modifiers. The default critical strike multiplier is 200% (meaning 2x the damage).
The critical strike avoidance stat grants a chance to cause critical strikes to become normal hits instead. This chance is rolled after the attacker’s crit chance. If an enemy has 30% critical strike chance and you have 50% critical strike avoidance, the enemy will effectively have a critical strike chance of 15%. Critical strike avoidance caps at 100% and gains no additional benefit afterwards.
All enemy hits that can critically strike have a critical strike multiplier of 200%, but this can be reduced by less bonus damage taken from critical strikes. You cannot have more than 100% less bonus damage taken from critical strikes, which reduces the damage of a critical strike to that of a regular hit.
Critical Vulnerability is an ailment that increases enemies chances of being critically hit. By default it increases enemies chances of receiving a critical strike by +2% and lowers enemy critical strike avoidance by -10% over a 4 second duration. Critical Vulnerability can stack up to 10 times.
5.14 Increased, Added, and More
Stats and modifiers in Last Epoch can exist in 3 main categories: added, increased, and more. The category a modifier belongs to determines which step it will be used at in calculations. Not all stats will have modifiers for each category in practice.
First, all added sources of the stat are totalled together;
(5 + 2 + 3) = 10
Second, all increased sources of the stat are totalled together;
(1 + 0.05 + 0.3 + 0.1) = 1.45
Increased values are percentages, so they are converted to decimal numbers and an additional 1 is added. Reduced sources are subtracted from this same total.
Third, the total of the added sources is multiplied by the total of the increased sources;
(10 x 1.45) = 14.5
Finally, the product of the added and increased sources is multiplied by each more source;
14.5 x (1 + 0.05) x (1 + 0.3) x (1 + 0.1) = 21.77
More values are also percentages, so 1 is added each time. Less sources are also applied here as values subtracted from 1.
Note that the more sources are not added together first, which would result in a different number. If the more values in this example were totalled first, the final result would be 21.03, not 21.77.
5.15 Health Leech
Health Leech is a mechanic that allows you to recover a percentage of the damage you deal as health.
Each time you deal damage (whether from a hit or damage over time), any applicable leech stats are calculated, then the amount of damage is multiplied by this value to get the amount of health you will gain.
For example, if you deal 100 physical damage with a melee attack and you have “5% of melee damage leeched as health" and “3% of physical damage leeched as health”, you will leech 100 x (0.05 + 0.03) = 8 health.
The damage value used to calculate the health returned is the final damage dealt to the target, meaning defensive mechanics like resistances, armour, and block will reduce it.
If a target takes more damage than it has health remaining, the excess will not be used to calculate leech.
For example, if an enemy has 25 health and you deal 100 damage to it, only 25 damage will be used for calculating leech.
Health returned by health leech is granted evenly over 3 seconds. Health from each instance of leech is granted independently, meaning they expire at different times. There is no limit to how much you can leech at once.
Overkill Damage Leeched as Health: When you kill an enemy with a hit a percentage of the excess damage is returned to you as health over 3 seconds.
For example, if you have “4% of overkill damage leeched as health” and you deal 100 damage to an enemy with 25 health, you will leech 75 x 0.04 = 3 health.
Also, you may have invested in various kill threshold stats – that instantly kill enemies below a certain health threshold (a percentage of their maximum health). Kill threshold changes where the “minimum hp” an enemy has before it is considered “dead” and therefore any damage dealt beyond this point is considered overkill damage and will be leached as health.
For example, an enemy has a maximum of 1,000 health and you have a kill threshold of 10% (meaning the enemy will die at 1,000 x 0.1 = 100 health). If the enemy currently has 200 health and you deal 150 damage, than 50 of that damage is overkill damage.
Increased Leech Rate: Increases the speed at which health is gained from health leech, reducing the 3 second time of health leech. This does not change the total amount leeched.
For example, if you deal 100 physical damage with a melee attack and you have “5% of melee damage leeched as health" and “50% increased leech rate”, you will leech 100 x 0.05 = 5 health evenly over 3 / (1 + 0.5) = 2 seconds.
Increased Health Leech: Increases all sources of health leech you have.
For example, if you deal 100 physical damage with a melee attack and you have “5% of melee damage leeched as health" and “20% increased health leech”, you will leech 100 x 0.05 x 1.2 = 6 health.
Increased Damage Leeched as Health: Increases the amount of damage you leech as health. This functions the same as “Increased Health Leech”, just worded differently.
5.16 Healing Effectiveness
Healing Effectiveness increases the amount healed by your healing skills. This does not affect health gained from other sources such as potions, health regen, leech, or health gained on hit/kill/dodge/block/glancing blow.
For example, if you use a skill that heals you for a flat 50 health and have “200% increased healing effectiveness” than you will be healed for 50 + (50 x 2) = 150 health.
The Sentinel class has certain skills that use healing effectiveness to scale their damage. The spell damage scaling of these skills stack additively with their healing effectiveness scaling.
5.17 Stun
Stunned enemies and players cannot move or use skills. Stun has a base duration of 0.4 seconds.
All hits have a chance to stun if they deal enough damage. Hits that deal more damage are more likely to stun, but enemies that have higher maximum health are harder to stun. The Increased Stun Chance stat also makes hits more likely to stun, while the target’s Stun Avoidance stat makes it harder to stun.
The stun chance of any hit can be calculated starting with this formula:
https://i.imgur.com/HYiVPlT.png
Player skills are 100% more likely to stun on hit than enemy or minion skills. This bonus is doubled for melee attacks and is applied after the calculation above is completed.
For example, a hit with a 20% chance to stun will instead have a 60% chance to stun if it’s from a player melee attack.
If the target’s Stun Avoidance is reduced below 0 it is easier to stun, and this formula is used:
https://i.imgur.com/eSs26iH.png
5.18 Freeze
Enemies and players that are frozen cannot move or use skills. Freeze has a base duration of 1.2 seconds.
To have a chance to freeze, a skill must have a freeze rate. Most Cold skills have a freeze rate, which is listed on their tooltips.
Freeze rate is multiplied by the “freeze rate multiplier” stat (which is 100% by default), and it is more difficult to freeze enemies that have more maximum health.
https://i.imgur.com/58fSE0r.png
5.19 Minions
Minions are allies of the player that are summoned by skills, items, passives, or other effects.
Minions automatically attack enemies and will run towards the player if they’ve strayed too far behind. You can also manually tell your minions to target the enemy under your cursor using the [A] key, by default. If there’s no enemy at the location you target, your minions will move there before picking a new target to attack. You can also use this command to have your minions break things like crates.
Minions summoned by a skill will typically be granted additional stats from skill tree nodes. Modifiers your character has (such as from passives and items) will not apply unless minions are specified.
For example, a passive node that grants “increased physical damage” will not apply to your minions, but “”increased minion physical damage” will apply.
A minion will prioritize using a skill that has just come off of cooldown if it has multiple to use, assuming there is a valid target in range.
Companions and Totems are two types of minions that have additional mechanics.
5.20 Companions
Companions are a type of minion with special mechanics that the Primalist class uses. By default, you can have 2 companions active at once. All minion stats and effects apply to companions, but there are effects that only benefit companions.
After using a skill to summon a companion, the summon skill will be replaced by a companion ability, which is specific to the companion summoned. If you can summon multiple of the same companion, you must summon the maximum number or reach your companion limit before the ability will change.
When a companion’s health is reduced to zero, it enters a Downed state rather than dying. Being close to a downed companion will revive it, but if you wait too long the companion will die and must by summoned again.
5.21 Totems
Totems are a type of minion that is used by the Primalist class.
Totems cannot move and have a fixed duration in addition to health. All minion stats and effects apply to totems, but there are effects that only benefit totems.
5.22 Potions
Potions are a special type of item that drop from killing enemies or hitting bosses. Potions can be used on demand for a quick burst of healing. You can pick up a potion by walking near it while you have empty potion slots or you are not at full health. When you pick up a potion while you are at max potions but not full health, the potion will be automatically consumed and you are healed. You can increase your maximum potion carrying capacity by upgrading your belt.
Keep a look out for some special potions.
5.23 Reflect Damage
Reflect damage has many unique traits that set it apart from all other types of damage in Last Epoch. Unlike hit damage or damage over time, reflected damage does neither and instead directly reduces health and/or ward without going through the full damage calculation. As a result of this, reflect damage itself cannot be reflected. Reflect damage will also not apply ailments or leech health. However, it can still proc on-kill effects if it kills the attacker.
Reflect damage doesn’t have a damage type tag, it is just simply ‘damage’. If an enemy deals fire damage and has high fire resistance, the reflected damage won’t be affected by the enemies fire resistance because it no longer has a damage type tag. In fact, reflected damage will ignore all enemy mitigations except for more/less/increased damage taken modifiers (e.g. 30% more damage taken) and adaptive boss mitigation. The list of enemy mitigations that are ignored include; resistances, armour, endurance, block, dodge, glancing blow, as well as the damage reduction enemies gain from area level (which is substantial at later levels).
Reflect damage comes in the form of either flat “X Damage Reflected to Attackers” or “X% Damage Reflected”. These stats operate independent of each other and one does not scale the other. The “X% Damage Reflected” stat is calculated after mitigation, so it only reflects the percentage of damage received after all forms of player damage mitigation have been calculated.
For example, if you have both “20 Damage Reflected to Attackers” and “50% Damage Reflected” and you receive 100 damage (after all your damage mitigation layers have been applied) you would reflect 70 damage (20 + 50) back to your attacker.
Reflect damage cannot be scaled, so it’s unaffected by all modifiers (i.e. increases to global damage, specific damage types, etc). Currently, the only exception to this is the Thornshell shield, which increases flat “X Damage Reflected to Attackers” per Attunement.