Top 30 Must-Know Mechanics

In this article, we are going to reveal all of the most important hidden mechanics in AFK Arena.

Basic Stats

Damage Types

Plate & Leather heroes deal physical damage, including skills. Physical damage takes an extra calculation of accuracy and evasion.

Cloth heroes deal magical damage including their auto attacks. Magic damage isn’t affected by accuracy and evasion.

A small number of heroes have “cause enemies to lose X amount of health” which ignores defense and damage reduction effects. These damage also ignores shields to deal direct damage. This is similar to “true damage” in other games

Interrupts

A hero will be interrupted when taking large amounts of damage even if the damage source doesn’t have a specific interrupt effect. This threshold is roughly 10% of the hero’s maximum health .

This is not the same as the hero being stunned

Shield

Shields will prevent damage and does not allow on damage taken effects to trigger. Skills dealing damage to shields will also not suffer from damage reduction.

Since shields do not calculate damage reduction from items and abilities, it tends to be weaker than health of the same value. That said, it still takes into account the defense

Insight

When a character is about to fall under control effects, if the defender’s tenacity is greater than the at-tacker’s insight, there is a chance the control effect is resisted.

Every 1 point difference will increase control avoidance chance by 2%
If insight exceeds tenacity, then control effects are guaranteed to apply

Tenacity

Essentially the opposite of above. As an example if A with 10 insight casts a control ability on B with 20 tenacity, the value difference is 10.

As such, hero B will have a 20% chance of avoiding the control effect altogether. However if B has 9 tenac-ity, then the 9 tenacity does nothing

Health

Determines how much damage a hero can receive. The amount of health deduction is dependent on the enemy’s damage after factoring in defense, damage reduction etc

Attack

Determines how much damage a hero can deal. Final damage is based on attack * attack multiplier and subsequently factors in enemy defense, damage reduction etc!

Critical Rating

This is the chance which a hero trig-gers a critical hit, dealing double damage. Every 1 point of critical rating is equivalent to 1 critical hit chance.

Attack Speed

Every 1% increases normal attack frequency by 1% (applies 1% to both animation speed as well as CD).

This only applies to normal attacks and is essentially a weaker version of haste.

Final ASPD = Base / (1+ASPD)

Normal Attacks

Normal attacks are treated as a skill and have their own cooldown. This is the frequency of attacks calculated between 2 normal attacks.

Most heroes have their auto attack at 1.8s with few exceptions such as Athalia, Izold etc Currently, the animation speed of all heroes is smaller than their normal attack cooldown (as of July 2020).

Heroes such as Gwyneth and Ferael seem to have a lower attack speed but that’s simply due to the game treating their passives as normal attacks which they utilize more of. As such, they would attack roughly 3.5s and 3s respectively despite their normal attacks being actually at 1.8s.

Ultimate Animation

A “freeze state” is activated once a player hero activates their ultimate where time is stopped for every other hero and the battle timer is paused.

In other words, the hero casting ultimate can continue to take action and his buffs will continue running out

Defense

Defense affects the amount of physical or magic damage a hero receives

The formula is Final damage = (Attack x Mulfiplier) * (1 – 1/(Attack x Mulfiplier)) / (5xDef)))

Every source of damage takes into account defense first before factor-ing in other sources of damage re-duction

Health Regeneration

This is a mistranslated ability. It actu-ally increases the potency of a char-acter’s heals where every 1 point in-creases healing effect by 1%.

Received Healing

Every 1 point increases received healing by 1%.

This is applied regardless of the source of healing Final Heal = Base Heal * ( 1 + Caster’s Health Regeneration + Defender’s Received Healing)

Recovery

Amount of life recovered per second. Currently this stat only exists on the stats page and no heroes have any recovery amounts. Perhaps in the future there will be equipment that affects this.

Accuracy

Affects the hit rate of physical physi-cal heroes. The higher the accuracy, the higher the hit rate.

Only physical heroes are affected by accuracy. Mage heroes deal magic damage with their normal attacks which are guaranteed to hit

Dodge

Affects the chance of dodging a physical attack. Only physical at-tacks and skills can be dodged.

Magic / Physical Resist

This affects the amount of damage a hero receives from magical/ physical sources respectively.

Every 1% of resist gives the hero 1% damage reduction towards the damage type. This is calculated after defense has been applied

Insight

This affects the amount of damage a hero receives from magical/ physical sources respectively/

Every 1% of resist gives the hero 1% damage reduction towards the damage type. This is calculated after defense has been applied.

Haste

Affects

• Active skill cooldowns.
• Animation speed.
• Attack speed.
• Movement speed.

(normal attacks are also considered a skill in this game and the higher the value, the higher attack frequency)

Haste calculations for skill cooldown:

Final CD = Base CD/ (1+Haste/150) (cooldown is halved if haste is 150)

-Haste is calculated where Final CD = Above* ((1-Haste)/100) (cooldown is doubled if haste is 100).

Haste also increases attack speed and can be stacked. The result is ad-ditive in nature and represented by the following formula:

(1 + Attack Speed + Haste)

Crit Amplification

When critical is dealt, the damage is increased based on the difference between attacker’s crit amplification and defender’s crit resistance.

Points within 30 affects the damage by 0.5% while points exceeding 30 increases it by 2% up to a maximum of 75% critical increase.

Given that the base critical damage is 200%, 30% critical increase will in-crease crit damage to 230%.

Crit Resistance

Critical resistance follows the same formula as critical amplification where points within the first 30 af-fects the damage by 0.5% while points exceeding 30 affects it by 2% up to a maximum of 75% critical re-sistance at 60 critical resistance.

Given that the base critical damage is 200%, 10 points in critical resis-tance will increase critical reduction by 5% and thus we will only take 195% damage when receiving crits.

Note that this effect only applies to crits and will not reduce the damage of non-crit attacks

Life leech

Every 1 point of life leech gives 1% lifesteal. This is applied to attack that deals damage which includes normal attack and skills (but this is actually treated as the same in-game where normal attacks are just skills with short CD. That said, effects that in-crease attack frequency only applies to normal attacks).

Damage over time effects cannot lifesteal. If summons/ clones do not have innate lifesteal, they do not benefit from lifesteal effects.

Lastly lifesteal only works if damage is applied so damage dealt to shields will not return life.

Notes

Hero stats page include – Elder Tree – Signature Item – Furniture – Union

Final Stats = Base Stats * (Tree% + SI% + Fl% + Union%) + (Tree Flat + SI Flat + Fl Flat + Union Flat)

Damage reduction priority goes as follows Defense > Physical/ Magic Resistance > Skill Reduction

As such, the formula is:

Final Damage = UI damage * defense reduction * physical/magic reduction * skill reduction multiplier.

Reduction effects from different skills are multi-plied together which means:

Final Skill Reduction = 1 – ( 1 – SkillA% ) * ( 1 – SkillB% )

Energy Mechanics

All heroes’ energy is capped at 1000 point This means most heroes acti-vate their ultimate at 1000 energy. There are rare cases like Skreg’s signature which allows him to acti-vate his ultimate earlier.

There are 3 types of energy recovery methods namely active damage, damage taken and on-kill recovery.

Given damage

This includes damage dealt by normal attacks as well as skills and every hero has their own recovery amount.

Normal attacks tend to recover 70-120 energy with melee heroes re-covering slightly more. Skill recovery is a bit more varied.

Note: Damage recovery is decided on activation of the skill/ normal attack. As such, it recovers a fixed amount of energy regardless of how many targets it hit, whether it hits or if it causes a critical damage.

Received damage:

Heroes also recover energy when taking damage.

This is determined by the skill that inflicts the damage.

Every skill has it’s own energy value which means the same skill applied on different enemies will give the same amount of energy.

This energy is only granted when damage is taken and doesn’t work for dodge/shield/immune.

On kill:

When your hero kills an enemy, they recover a fixed 200 energy. There are also a few skill specific energy recovery methods which are typically described within the skill itself

How skills work!

Skill Order

Every skill has a cooldown which is applied at the start of a match that determines the order in which heroes activate such skills. Skills activate-able at the same time will have priori-ty orders that dictate which gets acti-vated first.

Since most heroes don’t have skills to activate immediately, their position on the field affects their normal attacks which will in turn affect their skill order. Haste also affects this.

There is currently a bug with Leather Weapons where even though the weapon isn’t supposed to affect haste, certain heroes will have their opening cooldowns shortened and have different skill priorities. One ex-ample is Ferael who uses auto attack first without his bow but accursed arrow when equipped with it.

Skill Frequency

Skill activation is determined by skill animation speed as well as the skill cooldown.

When a skill animation is complete, the game determines the next course of action (skill). It looks at which skills are off cooldown and the priority of such skills. Typically, ulti-mate abilities’ activation only depend on the energy requirement and does not require waiting for the previous skill animation to finish.

Crowd Control

Crowd control effects which apply damage require the damage to be dealt before taking effect.

In other words, this control can be avoided via dodge/ shield/ immunity. On the other hand, cc without damage (i.e. Tasi’s ultimate) will not be affected.

Since a lot of control skills come with damage within the game, shield is useful for avoiding them

Crowd Control Effects

• Stun: Common control effect that prevents enemies from taking any action. It contains an interrupt effect and can cancel current spellcasting.
• Move: Does not interrupt and causes positional change only. The enemy is still able to cast their skills
• Frozen: Enemies cannot perform any actions, can interrupt and is ba-sically the same as a stun. However, freeze typically has other synergies and has a different priority than stun
• Fear: Enemies will move away from the caster, can interrupt and the enemy cannot perform actions other than moving.
• Silence: Can interrupt caster abilities and it’s current cast. Once a caster is silenced, skills and normal attacks cannot be used but physical heroes that get silenced aren’t affected

Crowd Control Priorities

Freeze > Move > Stun > Fear

When multiple effects are applied, only the highest priority takes effect. A target both stunned and feared will not move until the stun effect is over but will move if fear effect hasn’t ended yet by the end of it. Frozen en-emies also cannot be moved so Eironn cannot pull frozen targets.

All Shields Stack, All Hastes Stack!

• This means the Haste Buff from Lyca stacks with all of the other Haste buffs, including Relics.
• Nemora Shield also stacks on top of the others.
• Lucius’s Relic (dropped in Labyrinth & Peaks of Time) is very disgusting due to this since his shield timer is removed. His shield stacks with the other and can be never become expired. Pair him with Energy buffers and you will be immortal.

Soren Guild Boss

• Lucius’s Shield is excellent at preventing the Boss CC, which can wipes out your team any time. This is what makes him the best tank for Soren.
• Nemora Shield is also very useful at prevening Soren’s CC.
• Soren always attacks units behind him first. This is why Grezhul, Baden, Numisu, Silvina, Warek, etc. good at distracting Soren and taking the CC themselves as they tend to get to behind the boss.

Non-Ultimate Skills

• The cooldown of normal skills is based on the attack speed of the heroes.
• Haste buffs help Heroes cast out normal skills faster.

CC Mechanics

• CC skills are always super OP because they prevent the enemies from:
  • Dealing damage
  • Recovering Energy via attacking
• Stun & Freezing prevent the enemies from moving.
• Wilders Heroes have more CC skills than any other faction.
• Single target CC skills can be dodged: Arden’s roots, Tasi’s banish, Fawkes’s coffin etc. This makes Kaz super annoying.
• Tasi’s ultimate cannot be dodged. It’s one of the most OP CCs in AFK Arena right now.
• When the Hero gets CCed while casting a skill, that skill won’t deal any damage and will be set on cool down. This also shows you how important Haste is in this game.
• Mini stun also cancels skills and put them on cool down.
• Lyca passive skill can do mini stun every 10 hits. You can, of course, do more stuns with Haste. Lyca’s Relic helps her stun 3 targets at once.
• Farael’s Spirits have mini-stun. This is why he is one of the strongest carries in the late game. Farael’s Relic makes his spirits last forever. With a well-formed team, you can absolutely stun your enemies till death.

Energy

• You can get Energy from Attacking, Taking Damage & Killing Enemies.
• Regardless of the damage you do, you always get a certain amount of Energy for every hit. For example, level 100 vs level 200 Shemira gains the same amount of Energy per attack.
• Haste gives you more Energy. This is why Lyca is OP.
• Taking Damage gains Energy. This is why front-line Heroes usually gains Energy faster than the backline Heroes. Putting overleveled Shemira on the front-line is a great strategy in the mid game, due to this.
• When the enemy team gets CCed, your front-line Heroes will receive less Energy.

Shemira’s Mechanics

• Only charm prevents Shemira from dealing damage. Other CCs cannot do that.
• Shemira Ultimate can get stacked, even when the visual doesn’t show that. This makes Shemira excellent for Energy-focused teams.
  Example: Shemira + Rowan + Rosaline + Estrilda for Guild Boss.
• Shemira’s Ultimate can deal damage during the other teammate’s ultimate animation. This takes some practice to be perfect. The easiest way is to activate the teammate’s Ultimate 2 seconds after Shemira Ultimate starts spreading out. You will have 3 extra seconds for her ultimate. This becomes even more powerful when you have Ice/Fire bringer as it gives you 3 debuff stack before the enemies can do anything.

Tasi’s Mechanics

• Tasi’s blink ability allows her to dodge all of the damage coming towards her during that instance (while still gaining Energy). At level 2, the cooldown of the skill reduced every time she is struck. This makes her very annoying when having enough HP and DEF.
• She can heal using Dream Spirit.
• Tasi’s banish steals up to 60% of the enemy Attack’s Rating. This is why Tasi is great versus higher-leveled enemies. She could do an insane amount of damage if she banishes the correct enemy.

Tasi is one of the best Heroes in AFK Arena because:

• Healing
• Damage Steal.
• Single target CC.
• Tasi has the strongest AoE CC in AFK Arena:
  • Doesn’t require any specific positioning comparing to Mehira.
  • Undodgeable
  • Increases the amount of damage the enemies received after waking up by 30%.

Note: You still can counter Tasi’s ultimate using Brutus’ ultimate, Warek’s passive, Post-Ultimate Ulmus, Athalia’s Ultimate etc.

• Reduces CD + guarantees dodge as Tasi takes damage.
• Haste buff for the team (Friendly Teleport)
• Dream Spirit: 13s Self Haste buff which doesn’t require Energy. Can be used more than once. Haste = more Energy.

Rowan’s Mechanics

• The mana shield allows Rowan to use his Energy to take damage. The amount of Energy spent is capped at 80. Even when Rowan takes 100,000,000,000 damage, he only loses 80 Energy. This is why Rowan is very OP.
• Remember that Rowan’s Energy can also be recovered when taking damage. Thus, Rowan is a very great tank in the late game. Lose Energy to take damage and take damage to gain Energy.
• He also has an Energy stealing skill. His Ultimate and Signature Item both buff Energy, making him one of the most annoying and durable support.

Eironn’s Mechanics

• During the start of a battle, his suction pull is prioritized the most. This makes him a nightmare to Mage units.
• When having enough Haste, he can slow down the Mages with his Ice Sword super fast before they can even do anything when having enough Haste.
• His Signature item allows his ultimate to freeze the targets. Frozen enemies cannot get knocked away by the tornado, giving more DPS.
• Eironn works perfectly with Belinda (damage based on the number of enemies gets hit).
• Eironn’s suction works very well with Safia’s Spectral Disruption, applying 40% damage debuff on enemies immediately.

Lorsan’s Mechanics

• Inner Sight increases all damage coming from ally ultimates by 220% until he is dead. This is so crazy. Although he doesn’t have the faction advantage over Wrizz, he is still a S tier hero for guild boss because he can boost.
• Shemira + Inner Sight = Insanely OP.
• Gale Force increases the damage received by the enemies by 48% =  (120% + 120%)/5.
• Link works perfectly with AoE skills.

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