Keyword Glossary
Every mechanic with interaction notes and edge cases. The interactions that cost you fights.
Deals damage twice per second. Each tick the value decreases by 1 (decaying). A Burn of 10 deals 10+9+8...+1 = 55 total damage.
Burn and Poison apply simultaneously — a board with both can bypass both Shield and healing defenses.
Deals a fixed amount of damage every second. Does NOT decay — each tick deals the full Poison value.
Unlike Burn, Poison bypasses Shield entirely. A 50 Poison player takes 50 damage per second regardless of how much shield they have.
Stops an item's cooldown from advancing for the duration. The frozen item cannot activate while frozen.
Freezing Dooley's Core breaks his entire trigger chain. This is the single best counter to Dooley builds.
The targeted item charges at double the normal rate for the duration. Duration-based.
Haste and Slow cannot coexist — Haste overrides Slow and vice versa based on which applied last.
The targeted item charges at half the normal rate for the duration.
Slowing an opponent's lowest-cooldown item (their 'engine' item) can delay their entire combo chain significantly.
Absorbs incoming damage. Reduces Burn damage by 50%. Does NOT block Poison.
Durian (Jules) turns YOUR high Shield value into damage against you. Fighting a Durian Jules board — don't let your shield stack too high.
Restores a fixed HP amount per second. Counters Poison tick-for-tick.
Regen and Heal are different: Regen is per-second flat restoration; Heal restores to maximum HP and removes status effects.
Restores HP to maximum. Removes 1 Poison AND 1 Burn per trigger.
IMPORTANT: Lifesteal does NOT count as Healing. If your skill says 'when you Heal, do X' — Lifesteal will NOT proc it. This changes many Mak skill combo calculations.
Instantly advances an item's cooldown by X seconds, making it available to fire faster.
Charge bypasses the cooldown timer entirely for that amount — a 2-second Charge on a 4-second CD item makes it fire at the 2-second mark instead.
The item activates multiple times per use. Each activation from Multicast counts as a SEPARATE item use.
Multicast and trigger-on-use items create exponential scaling. A 3× Multicast item with 'when used, charge right neighbor 1s' charges that neighbor 3× per activation.
Regains HP proportional to damage dealt.
The most misunderstood keyword. 'Lifesteal does NOT count as Healing' — this is critical for skill builds. Any skill that procs on Heal will not fire from Lifesteal.
Item has the Flying property. Slow and Freeze durations applied to Flying items are halved.
Start Flying ≠ Stop Flying. Building only start-triggers or only stop-triggers halves your potential. True cycling requires both.
A limited-use counter on weapons. When depleted, the item stops charging. Fully refills after each fight.
In very long fights (vs. high-HP boards), ammo depletion can effectively disable your best weapon. Carry reload items or avoid full ammo-dependency on slow boards.
Percentage chance to double ALL effects of an item activation simultaneously — damage, poison, heal, regen, shield, AND burn.
A crit on a Multicast item doubles EACH multicast activation separately — this compounds exponentially with high-multicast builds.