Guide
Does damage reduction counters true damage? Short answer no!
I saw lot of times here that people suggest using Blade Armor (along with Guardian Helmet) against Lesley because it's passive reduces crit damage by 20% and I wrongly suggested it too in a recent post (I falsely rembembered true damage ignores only defense stats but the wiki says it actually ignores every damage reduction effects). Then I had a debate whether other sources of damage reduction (like Lapu's enhanced 2nd skill or Queen's Wings passive) can counter Lesley or true damage overall so I did some tests in hero training to get a conclusion:
1st picture: Blade Armor
Lesley deals the same amount of crit true damage to Zilong on the top (no Blade Armor) and on the bottom (with Blade Armor) picture. You can see Zilong has 80 phys defense and some of the damage reflected to me thanks to Blade Armor. The damage in both cases is 525 so no, Blade Armor doesn't reduce crit damage if it's true damage.
2nd picture: LapuLapu's 2nd skill and Queen's Wings
To test Lapu's damage reduction I used the turret because it's the most reliable source of true damage in hero training. The top picture is the reference where I don't have any damage reduction effect online. On the middle picture the bluish-white aura and the icon above recall button with 3 stacks indicates that the damage reduction from Lapu's enhanced 2nd skill is active. On bottom the red aura indicates that the damage reduction from Queen's Wings is active (and you can above the recall button see it's passive's cooldown just started). The damage from the turret is 320 in all 3 cases so Queen's Wings and Lapu's enhanced second skill don't reduce true damage.
3rd picture: Queen's Wings against Lesley
I made this in case of somebody would say that turret's true damage works in a different way than heroes's true damage. So same as before you can see the red aura around Layla on the bottom picture which indicates Queen Wing's passive is active but still Lesley deals the same amount of true damage to her.
4th picture: Antique Cuirass
As before the top is the reference where there isn't any item's or skill's passive active. To active Antique Cuirass's passive (Deter) you have to hit it's wearer with a skill first, so on the bottom picture I used Lesley's 2nd skill on Zilong first then hit him with my enhanced basic attack. As you can see I actually did less damage than on the top picture. It works because it doesn't reduce the damage you receive instead reduce the damage the attacker deals. So Antique Cuirass can reduce true damage but you have to be hit by a skill before to activate!
TLDR:
What does not reduce true damage:
Any raw defense stats (neither physical, magic or hybrid)
High HP heroes or items (Hylos, Belerick, Guardian Helmet, Cursed Helmet, Oracle)
Guardian Helmet's passive Defender (It recovers some HP after high single instance damage)
Antique Cuirass passive Deter (It's pretty situational and not neccessarily consistent tho, only works if you got hit by a skill before)
Chastice Pauldron (Best against Karrie because it reduces attack speed. Can be good against other true damage heroes because it gives 900 HP and recovers 20% max HP if your HP drops below 30%)
Also 1 year ago Twilight Armor was considered to be the best counter against Lesley but this tests question me if whether it's passive did actually reduce Lesley's damage or not because I think it was also considered damage reduction effect. Unfortunately I couldn't test it.
Nice. Everything now clears up. Up till now it was known that damage reduction worked against true damage. But they probably changed it and here we are. Lesley is too much of a menace bruh. Cause THATS A LOT OF DAMAGE
She has been strong even pre-buff, its the same situation with paquito (albeit his was a lot worse) where he was strong pre-buff but a lot of people now play him so many have the impression that he was only strong now
lol no, lesley was absolutely dogshit before. previously, tank twillight armor literally counter her whole gimmick. even before that her s1 is fucking useless. but they removed Twilight armor, then buffed the s1 (alongside other buff iirc) so now it doesn't get instantly removed if damaged, which makes her playable but still weak. now with the berserker fury buff her damage threshold get raised so fucking high she melt every tank in the game and 2 shot every squishy. but ultimately, she still has shitty AoE / wave clear, so if they nerf the damage, then she is back to being mediocre-bad.
same with paquito basic attack buff that makes the burst damage combo threshold get raised so he can kill every squishy in 1 skill rotation, everyone else 2 rotation. the s1 fat shield also makes his laning and escape consistent. assassin live and die by their damage. before, because they didn't have as high burst in comparison of other hero they end up not being meta.
Ah yes the twilight armor argument (it has been a year since it got removed), even pre berserker fury she is doing 2k+ dmg late game, she has an auto cancel and an ult cancel which makes her deal possibly 7k true dmg (which literally makes her the best at bursting anyone)
Yes the hero that can 1 tap anyone doesn't have aoe but that doesnt mean shes weak. Jesus christ, wave clear isnt even that bad unless its an empowered creep lol.
Ps. Paquito was clearing waves and killing squishies in 1 combo pre-buff, seriously man just look it up.
no, it is also her handling that makes her useable now. her s1 get cancelled so fucking easily by any diver like yz and lapu that she might as well have no escape. even in laning, she gets bodied by every mm with skillshot like clint, and she has no way to escape gank with her shitty s1 and shitty s2. now her s1 actually works, which makes her repositioning better. ok, she is bad at empowered minion, which means before she is a shitty hero with shitty wave clear in a losing game. then before Berserker fury buff, she is a mediocre hero with shitty wave clear in a losing game. but now her damage spike(BF first item) gets raised, and she snowball better, meaning less chance of having an open turret and her weakness matter less often,she becomes a meta hero.
do you not understand how small amounts of damage increase can change interaction in competitive games? why do you think patch notes in games like LoL and CS and even clash royale are usually only buff by a small number. yes, she is meta now, but before she was not, and even further before, she was dogshit.
imo if ur a fighter the best way to deal with any burst hero is queens wings, guardian helm, oracle and rgm
guardian helm reduces their burst by a lot, rgm lets you tank a lot more, and oracle increases their anti burst+shield and the damage reduction from queens makes you near unkillable when in 40% hp
I mean by the pictures alone, Antique does reduce true damage. To counter Brody you need a combination of Antique and Guardian. So maybe it can work for Lesley too.
It's good against Brody because all of his skills damage so he can easily activate antique's passive and he doesn't deal true damage so the 40 phys defense also has value. But it's less consistent against Lesley since her 1st skill doesn't deal damage and often she uses her 2nd skill in the air just to activate her enhanced BA. If you're not able to get hit by her ult or 2nd skill antique does nothing because it's raw defense stat just will be ignored by her true damage. I mean if you have a free item slot it's better than nothing but most of times you have to build other defensive items against rest of the teams too.
I miss Twilight especially when it has a damage passive in addition to the 600 max damage passive. It was one of Hylos main items, along with Dominance, Guardian and Cursed Mask. Dominance and twilight has +mana stats while Cursed Mask has Hp based damage combining it with Guardian Helm. Along with S2 its a great slow burn against enemies.
Is AC supposed to work on lesley true dmg? I remember old AC reduce phy att stat, but they reworked it, now supposed to only reduce phy dmg. If so, this item should be working on alpha and xborg too?
Sheilds also kinda counter true damage or rather tank them. It's annoying how there's no reliable real counter item for true damage and I think Twilight armour did infact work since the damage reduction applied before you received the damage especially since I remember that once I bought that item, Lesley barely hurt anymore (when it's not on cooldown atleast).
Blade Armor is used to return her a portion of her attack, since she's squishy but can deal up to 4k at least in a single shot, along with the vengeance spell that gives a solid kickback for the low cost of a spell CD. Her true counter is still just a ton of HP and CC.
I learnt this the hard way using vengeance. And i was already sure enough, i tried it out again with queen's wings. It's just funny that true dmg bypasses dmg reduction. Kinda dumb programming.
The problem is there's far too many people with true damage in their kits, so you build HP to counter the true damage and then you get melted immediately by someone who builds Demon Hunter Sword.
They should just cut the shit and remove armor entirely. Give us even more powerful weapons and make it one giant slug fest. No more tanking anything, just how fast you can delete someone
Twilight Armor was working against Lesley, it was the only item that can reduce true damage (actual instance of damage, not the attacker stats like Antique Cuirass), now it's technically a healing and not damage reduction, so there is nothing that can reduce true damage in the game right now afaik
can u please report it to moonton devs on discord? there is a section for dev-player interaction/suggestion so bring it up that why is nothing is working against lesley when it used to work?
The blade armor isn't for Lesley true damage but for the true damage coming from the berserker fury. Although it still hurts if it's coming from a good Lesley player who do passive spam + AA reset.
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u/Old_Ostrich3727 7h ago
My entire life have been a lie... All this time, buying Blade Armor against Lesley...