• Defense / Resistance scale incoming damage by 100 / (100 + effective DEF). 100 DEF = half damage; uncapped but diminishing, and never zero. DEF blocks Physical, RES blocks Magic.
• Penetration subtracts from the target's DEF / RES. Over-penetrating adds bonus damage, up to x1.5.
• Evasion is a flat % chance to take zero (a MISS). No cap, so 100% Evasion = total immunity, even to True damage and DoTs.
• Damage Reduction shaves a flat % off every hit, capped at 50%.
• Critical hits deal 1 + Crit Power damage. Crit Chance can pass 100%, overflowing into extra crit levels (max level 3).
• Variance nudges every hit by plus or minus 5%.
• True damage ignores DEF / RES entirely, but can still be evaded and reduced.

A single hit is resolved in this fixed order, each step feeding the next:

1. Base damage = ATK x the skill's percentage (which depends on the chain level, e.g. [78/120/160]%).
2. Critical hit: on a crit, multiply by (1 + Crit Power).
3. Variance: nudge by a random plus or minus 5%.
4. DEF / RES: mitigate by the target's DEF (Physical) or RES (Magic). True damage skips this.
5. Evasion: the target rolls to dodge; on success the whole hit is negated (MISS).
6. Damage Reduction: cut the survivor by the target's Damage Reduction (up to 50%).
7. Shields: any active shield absorbs damage before HP.
8. HP: whatever remains is subtracted from HP.

These layers stack multiplicatively, so DEF, Damage Reduction, and Evasion never cancel out; each multiplies the value of the others.

DEF reduces Physical damage and RES reduces Magic damage; they are otherwise identical. The attacker's matching Penetration is subtracted first to get your effective defense, then damage is scaled by this curve:

So 100 effective DEF halves the damage, and every further 100 helps a little less. It never reaches zero, so defense alone can't make a unit immune, but it also never stops scaling:

Penetrate DEF and Penetrate RST are attacker stats, subtracted from the target's DEF or RES before the curve above is applied. They are the direct counter to a tanky enemy.

If your Penetration exceeds the target's defense, the surplus does more than zero out their armor, it adds bonus damage:

These are the three ways to take less damage, and they behave very differently:

• Evasion is all-or-nothing: a flat % chance to take zero damage (a MISS). It is rolled against a random number, so it is the highest-variance option, great on average but streaky. Crucially there is no cap, so 100% Evasion is total immunity to any damage, including Magic, True, and damage-over-time.
• Damage Reduction is the steady option: a fixed % off every hit, no randomness, but capped at 50%, so it can't carry a unit alone.
• DEF / RES sits between: reliable like Damage Reduction, uncapped like nothing else, but with diminishing returns, and enemy Penetration eats into it. Each only covers its own damage type.

Rule of thumb: DEF/RES and Damage Reduction are consistent and stack cleanly, so lean on them for predictable survival. Evasion is a gamble that scales toward invincibility, so it shines when you can push the percentage very high and is unreliable when low.

A critical hit multiplies damage by your Crit Power:

Crit Chance behaves unusually: it can climb above 100%. When it does, the excess overflows: every full 100% guarantees a crit and adds a crit level, and the leftover is the chance for one more. Higher crit levels hit harder, but the level is capped at 3.

Every hit is one of three types:

• Physical is mitigated by DEF.
• Magic is mitigated by RES.
• True ignores both DEF and RES entirely. It can still be evaded, cut by Damage Reduction, and soaked by shields, but no amount of defense lowers it.

Variance. Every hit is randomized by plus or minus 5% (minimum spread of 1), so repeated identical attacks land in a small range.

Shields. Shields absorb damage before it reaches HP, and breaking one can trigger on-shield-break passives. Any damage left after a shield pops carries through to HP.

Revival. A hero downed at 0 HP is not gone for good: they revive on the spot, healing 4% of max HP per second until back on their feet.

PVP. Arena fights apply an extra bracket-based damage reduction on top of everything above, so the same hero deals less in PVP than in the campaign.

A skill lands a 1,000 Physical hit on an enemy with 150 DEF and 20% Damage Reduction, with no Penetration and no shield:

• Effective DEF = 150 (no Penetration), so the DEF curve gives 100 / (100 + 150) = 0.40. The hit drops to 400.
• Not evaded this time, so it lands.
• Damage Reduction 20%: 400 x (1 - 0.20) = 320.
• No shield, so 320 comes off HP.

The same 1,000 hit as True damage would skip the DEF step and land for 1,000 x 0.80 = 800 after Damage Reduction, showing how much the 150 DEF was doing.