Game Concept Explanations by iCarus

Here is iCarus again!

Well I think there is no guide that explains game concepts that a fairly new player may not understand, so I hereby create this guide, explaining some of the not-so-straightforward game concepts.

If there are in fact guides like this existing on Vaingloryfire, please contact me through PM or leave a comment here, and I will delete this ASAP. Thanks.

Change Log Feb 3: updated Fountain of Renewal, added concepts of moving speed, and tweaked few heroes/items' description due to the new patch and Ardan's release (And due to my growth of experience with this game).

This Chapter is dedicated to explain a few hero skills/perks that may have effects that are not immediate apparent or can be easily ignored by players, or have negative impacts on it.

Koshka's Heroic Perk It stacks when Koshka strikes a neutral or hostile target, need not to strike an enemy hero, and Twirly Death can add stack based on how many target(s) Koshka hits. Max. 4 stacks, decays after 5 seconds.

Koshka's Twirly Death If your game crashes WHILE there are still stacks of it remain, the TD basic attack bonus will not apply when you relaunch the game, and will only start affect you again if you died after your game crashes.

Krul's Heroic Perk You will need to STAY STILL AND DO NOT EXECUTE ATTACKS to let the perk start countdown, and the perk's effect IMMEDIATELY ends when you strike an enemy. When the stack is start counting, moving or attacking will reset the timer, but moving within the same bush AFTER the ability is applied will not cause the counter to disappear or diminish.

Skaarf's Heroic Perk After Skaarf ignite an enemy, consequentially striking the enemy will prolong the burning and escalates the DoT Effect damage, HOWEVER, keep igniting enemies with abilities (Repeating spitfire, ignited goop, ultimate) will only prolong the effect time, but does not escalate DoT damage. It can be blocked by activating Reflex Block (But the fire is not "cleansed"). This will also proc Frostburn.

Petal's Spontanious Combustion If Petal resummon pets right after the first pet explode, it is possible to chain four pet explosions, but only four.

Petal's Bramblethorn Seeds In addition to the health regen to allies, it also applies an armor buff which many may forget(The armor buff does not stack). Also, when Bramblethorn munions spawn, any neutral or hostile targets standing on it will suffer crystal damage and speed debuff.

Catherine's Heroic Perk All Panzer stacks are NOT lost but the counter resets. Your actual stack would be the number of the counter before you quit and the number of the current counter. Multiple relaunches will not decrease the counter. (Sorry about my original statement, I realized it was wrong.)

Catherine's Stormguard It makes Catherine unsusceptible to any damage that exceeds 10% of her original health (Before boosted by defense items)(The recent patch changed the description to 77 health, +7 per lvl to avoid confusion, which is still 10% of the original health), and reflects these exceeded damage back to nearby enemy heroes (And/Or original attacker) However, with each reflection its duration is reduced by 0.5 seconds. This makes Petal's munion a quite effective weapon against Catherine, as the pets' attack just exceed Catherine's damage cap. (Late game of course)
The reflection bubbles will NOT trigger Frostburn, but the burn from the shield (when enemies are near it) WILL trigger Frostburn.
I am not sure if the damage is mitigated by armor/shield before reflection or not, since sometimes its reflection deals 0 damage. If you are an experienced Catherine player, please leave a comment about that issue.

Catherine's Blast Tremor Silence is possible to be blocked by reflex block, and Taka's Kaiten is immune to Silence once it reaches Overdrive (5 SP), which reduces its MP cost to 0. Also, the new hero, Arden's skill is immune to Silence. (He still cannot use item when silenced.)

Ringo's Twirling Silver Many people forget this also increases Ringo's moving speed.

Ardan's Heroic Perk The damage received when his health barrier is up will increase his current health due to his perk. However, damage received during reflex block (Presuming the reflex block did not break off) will not cause him regaining health. Notably, his health regen from the perk cannot receive 75% of the damage he received AFTER armor/shield mitigation, so building tons of armor/shield may not utilize his perk to the extremity.

Ardan's Gauntlet The Gauntlet will NOT disappear when Ardan is dead until its expiry time. In addition, any act of leaving/entering the Gauntlet without activating reflex block will be stunned. Acts including Afterburn, Rocket Leap, enter/leave with a gap closer, and even Recalling will trigger stun. (Whether Kaiten will trigger stun or not is unconfirmed.)

This Chapter is dedicated to explain a few hero skills/perks that may have effects that are not immediate apparent or easily ignored.

Aftershock's Slice Damage It deals damage based on target's current max health (boosted after all defensive items), but is mitigated by Shield.

Clockwork's CD Acceleration It accelerates skill CD, not reduces. This applies to other skill acceleration items. Which means one CW can reduce skill CD to 66%, yet the second one can only reduce it down to 50%. Further stacks will cause increased diminishing returns.

Alternating Current's Crystal Damage Boost Obviously, it deals crystal damage, and can be mitigated by shields. It also only boosts once per two attacks.

Eve of Harvest's vampirism Notably, this vampirism applies to all damage caused by Crystal power, which means some things: It does not apply to the WP buff on Joule's Thunder Strike, it does apply to Alternating Current's Crystal damage buff, and it does apply to Petal's munion damage. It also stacks with Aftershock's slice damage health steal.

Serpent Mask's vampirism Just the reverse of Eve of Harvest, it does not boost any sort of CP damage buffs. Which means it does not apply to alternating current, but apply to any kind of WP buff on skills. However, killing an enemy no longer provides healing like its preceder, Barbed Needle and Book of Eulogies do.

Bonesaw's Armor Shredding Shredding enemy's armor works differently than piercing them, as shredded armor will not work against allies' Weapon-based attacks as well. This stacks per hit, and can reach a maximum of 60% shred, even from multiple allies equipping Bonesaw.

Tension Bow's Damage Boost It can land Critical strikes. The damage of its critical strike will be calculated as: (original critical damage+180)*(100%+(Dmg boost from items)), and is mitigated by armor.

Tornado Trigger ... It actually grants some Critical Damage and Critical Chance...

Stormguard Banner's True Damage First, it inherits Ironguard Contract's effect. The true damage boost is calculated by your RoF, which means it will cause diminished effects if your hero strikes rapidly. Vise versa, slow striking hero will enjoy a greater boost. Warhorn increases the 35 True damage DPS boost to 100.

Fountain of Renewal It have two preceding items like all other items (Except boots), but many may forget the other preceding item-- Kinetic Shield. This means the fountain also grants the owner a significant shield boost and slight armor boost. Also, the healing value of the fountain is NO LONGER predetermined when you initiate it(Due to the most recent patch), meaning the healing value WILL increase/decrease as the affected hero's HP decrease/increase. This change occurs every second while it is active. Using two fountains at the same time will not give more effectiveness.

Atlas Pauldron's AS Reduction It will Not subtract one's attack speed by 65%, instead, it will multiply the target's AS by (1-65%). Meaning it will reduce one's AS from 200% (Additional AS from item) down to 200% * 35%=70%. Similarly, if one have 900% Attack Speed (Can only achieved when using SAW and full Tornado Trigger), it will be reduced down to 900% * 35%=315%. Meaning the higher one's AS is, the more efficient this item will become.

Shiversteel's slow Even though the description says it will reduce enemy speed by 6, but it will actually always leave enemy a speed of around 2. However, enemies will not be able to enjoy the speed boost from boots and war horn as efficiently. This effect does NOT stack and CAN be blocked by reflex block.

Reflex Block The reflex block effect will soak up damage AFTER it is mitigated by armor and/or shield, and is able to defend against a variety of debuffs (Speed debuff, AS debuff, DMG debuff, DoT, stun, silence, armor shred) before it is expired/broken. This will NOT cancel any negative effect already existed prior to using a reflex block.

Speed Boost One's move speed will NEVER exceed a maximum gate, and will NEVER exceed a minimum gate. When one's speed is higher than the maximum or lower than the minimum, his move speed will be set to the maximum/minimum. The currently suspected maximum/minimum move speed is 5/1.
For example, when one is consecutively buffed by Warhorn and Boots, his move speed will become 7.5--Which exceeded the maximum. So his move speed will be reduced to 5. However, when Frostburn is applied, it still reduces the target's speed from 7.5, not 5.
On the other side, if one is slowed by Adagio's Arcane Fire AND Shiversteel, his speed will become nearly -5, meaning he will actually move backwards or cannot move at all. However, since the minimum speed gate exists, his move speed will only be reduce down to 1. However, similar to above, his Move Speed will increase from -5 when buffed from a variety of move speed items/skills.

Some items works great together more than the other, and some does not work as good than other combinations. In this section I will introduce what you should not do when combining items.

Stacking ANY and ALL items will cause diminishing returns in most, if not all of the effects applied.
Also, lower tier items tend to have a higher cost-efficiency ratio, despite they generally do not have as much applications than T3 items.

By Diminishing Returns, I mean you will gain less and less percentage of the item can boost you upon.

Three examples would help you understand three most general kinds of diminishing.
The easiest-to-understand one is to stack items that grant bonus effects. For example, Alternating Current, Frostburn, Breaking Point, Warhorn, Boots, Bonesaw. As those items' special effect granted will not stack if you have two same items in your inventory. Exceptions are utilities like boots and Warhorn, as two items can let you activate them more frequently. Still, default speed boost from boots and DPS bonus from Warhorn does not stack.

The second one is stacking items that add hero's aspect by VALUE. Like CP, WP, Shield, Armor, Health, etc.
All we need to do is to take one of them, say, health, and make some calculations. The average hero health is around 1600 (Some hero have more, and some have less).
And we just pick some random health item, say, Dragonheart. One Dragonheart will add 500 health, which increases 31% of the hero health. (500/1600=0.3125) If purchase another Dragonheart, however, it will only further increase the hero's health by 23.8%. (500/2100=0.23801) The third Dragonheart will further increase the diminishing, as 500/2600 is only about 19.23%. The same calculation process also apply to all other aspects of hero EXCEPT Health Regen and CP, as the hero do not possess or have a negligible amount of those two aspects without any items applied. (However, the efficiency will still decay over time when you start stacking the second item.)

The third example is items that add hero's aspect by PERCENTAGE. Like CD(CoolDown) Acc(eleration), AS(AttackSpeed) Boost, Crit(ical) chance/dmg boost.

The first thing I should make clear is how did CD Acc and AS Boosts works.
A hero's default CD RATE is 100%, and any item that gives CD Acc will add to that value. That is why many people noticed the significant diminishing from CW: One CW adds 50% rate to that default rate, making it 150%. 100/150=66.67%, meaning one CW will reduce the skill CD to about 66.7%. Two CWs will increase that rate to 200, and 100/200=50%. Meaning two CWs will only reduce the skill CD to 50%. See the difference? The first one reduce the CD by 33%, while the second one only reduce it further by 16.7%. You can basically do the math yourself now: Just add all the CD Accs items give you, add it by 100, and use it to divide 100.
Formula: 100/(100+[Sum CD acc items grant])

Attack Speed, however, works slightly different.
A hero's default attack speed is 100%, and will gradually increase up to 136% for ranged, and around 110% for melee. 100% does not equal to one shot per second, instead, it is quite a bit longer than that. I do not want to go into all that stuff in calculating the default attack speed, so let's create a new time unit called "A", stands for "Attack interval".
The hero's attack speed is calculated by (Hero's AS)+(Sum AS bonus granted by items), meaning one Tornado Trigger will boost the hero's default AS to 175%, and two will make it 250%.
Now in a hero's default AS, he can launch 10 attacks in 10A. After boosted by a TT, it will be increased to 17.5 shots (10*175%=17.5), that is a 75% boost as promised ((17.5/10)-1=0.75). Two TTs will increase the AS to 250%, which will make the hero launch 25 attacks in 10A,but it will only further increase the AS by 42.9% ((25/17.5)-1=0.42857). In addition to that, this boost will also diminish when hero levels up, because the default value is no longer 100%. (For example, when a hero's AS reaches 125%, one TT will only boost it by 60%, as (20/12.5)-1=0.6 )

The Kraken have great deal of health, and will gradually escalate throughout the game, which is dependent on the gold gained from each team. It is really weak if left along, and should be kept as a last resort of sieging weapon.

However, few additional resistances made Kraken a even fearful foe to fight against.

Unlike all other jungle mobs, Kraken is not susceptible to stun, Krul's smite's ATK speed debuff, Atlas Pauldron's debuff, and is immune to silence (But he cannot use skills anyway)
Another NPC that also enjoys those debuff immunity are Turrets.

ADDITIONALLY, the Kraken have a strong damage resistance to ALL damage types, even True damage is reduced by about 70%. This damage resistance cannot be reduced. What can be reduced is his shield and armor value, which is susceptible to armor pierce/shred and shield pierce. (His armor and shield value, however, is quite low.)

I am quite positive that all NPCs deals true damage, but they may be just dealing crystal damage, so someone please solve this question. Reason I know it does not deal weapon damage is because mobs' attack is not mitigated by Joule's Heavy Plating.

If you have any questions about other game concepts, please leave a comment on this page!

Thanks for reading!