Description
Effect fires when the unit itself is killed, commonly on items that bank value during combat (see damage-storage) and discharge it as a final payload. The Annihilator is the Set 17 example: it stores 20% of damage dealt and unleashes it as true damage on death.
Items (5)
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- +25% AD
- +25% AS
- +25 AP
The holder dons a Hat on each takedown. The holder gains 1% Attack Damage and Ability Power per Hat. On death lose 20% of all Hats.
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- +55 Armor
- +55 MR
Every 3 seconds, Shields the lowest percent Health ally for 70% of the holder's combined Armor and Magic Resist for 5 seconds. On death grants this shield to all allies.
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- +300 HP
Combat start: Store 30% max Health and 2.5% more every second. On death, unleash the stored Health as magic damage split between enemies within 4-hexes. [Unique - only 1 per champion]
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- +30% AD
- +30 AP
- +5 Mana Regen
Store 20% of damage dealt. Every 6 seconds and on death, deal the stored damage as true damage to all enemies, reduced by 5% for each hex they are from the epicenter. Recommended Roles: Attack or Magic Caster
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- +20% AD
- +30 AP
- +5 Mana Regen
Store 25% of damage dealt. On death or after 16 seconds in combat, deal the stored damage as true damage to all enemies, reduced by 15% for each hex they are away from the epicenter. Recommended Roles: Attack or Magic Caster
Augments (2)
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Climb The Ladder II Gold Each time an ally dies, allies that share at least one trait with them gain 7% Ability Power, 7% Attack Damage, 6 Armor, and 6 Magic Resist.
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Climb The Ladder I Silver Each time an ally dies, allies that share at least one trait with them gain 3.5% Ability Power, 3.5% Attack Damage, 3.5 Armor, and 3.5 Magic Resist.
Traits (2)
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Stargazers chart a different constellation every game. This game: The Altar. More hexes reveal at each player level
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Stargazers chart a different constellation every game. This game: The Huntress. Combat Start: Mark the highest Health enemies. Allies in empowered hexes gain 15% Attack Speed. Stargazers in empowered hexes gain more and heal for 15% of their max Health when a marked enemy dies. More hexes reveal at each player level
Frequently asked questions
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What does "on death" actually mean in TFT?
On-death is a trigger that fires the moment a unit's combat health reaches 0 — that is, when it falls in the current round. The unit returns next round at full health regardless, so "death" here means the in-combat removal event, not permanent loss. Effects keyed to it discharge a stored payload at the instant of that event: typical examples are dealing AoE damage from accumulated stats, dropping bonus gold, or summoning a follow-up unit. The trigger is always a one-shot per combat per unit — once the unit has fallen, that combat's on-death has fired.
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If the on-death payload deals true damage, do shields still block it?
Yes. True damage in TFT ignores Armor, Magic Resist, damage reduction, and damage amplification — the TFT-namespaced wiki is explicit that those are the only carve-outs. Shields are not on that list: normal shields absorb every damage type (physical, magic, and true), so an on-death AoE that fires as true damage still gets soaked by any shield the targets have up at the moment of the explosion. Pre-positioned shields on the back line are the cleanest counter-pattern when you face an on-death detonator.
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Do multiple on-death sources on the same unit all trigger?
Each on-death source is its own discrete trigger keyed to the unit's death event, so stacking different on-death items, traits, or augments on one unit generally fires every one of them when that unit falls. What does not stack additively is two copies of the same effect — most TFT items cap at one copy per unit, and the few that allow duplicates follow the per-item rule (some scale, some don't). Mixing one damage-storage on-death with one gold-drop on-death with one summon on-death is the normal pattern, and they each resolve.
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How does the AoE on-death damage scale with distance?
Most on-death AoE payloads in TFT carry a hex-based falloff rather than a flat radius. The current Set 17 reference detonator stores 25% of damage dealt and discharges it as true damage on death, reduced by 15% per hex from the epicenter — so the unit standing on the dying carrier eats the full hit and units further out take a fraction. This is why on-death detonators reward placing the carrier near where the enemy will pile up, and why spreading your own board reduces the damage a single enemy on-death blast can do to you.
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Is "becoming invulnerable for a moment before dying" the same as on-death?
No — those are death-prevention effects, and they are a separate layer that resolves before the death event, not at it. A per-unit example is Edge of Night: at 60% Health the unit briefly becomes untargetable, sheds negative effects, and heals, so it cannot be hit down to 0 during that window — its on-death does not fire because it never falls. (Distinct again from player-elimination escapes like a Last Stand augment, which keep YOU in the lobby rather than saving a single unit in combat.) On-death triggers, by contrast, only resolve once a unit's health has actually reached 0. The two layers are independent: a death-prevention skip can preempt one death-event, but every subsequent fall still procs on-death normally.
Sources
- Edge of Night (TFT) — League of Legends Wiki (per-unit: at 60% Health briefly become untargetable, shed negatives, heal — a pre-death escape, not an on-death) (opens in new tab)
- Champion (TFT) — League of Legends Wiki (death = removed from combat at 0 HP) (opens in new tab)
- Items — tactics.tools (Set 17 Edge of Night: 60% Health untargetable, sheds negatives, heals missing Health) (opens in new tab)
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Is selling a unit treated as death for on-death triggers?
No, in practice. Selling happens out of combat — there is no combat health reaching 0 — so it is not the trigger event that on-death effects key off, and on-death payloads are uniformly described as firing in-combat at the death moment (or, on some items, on a fallback timer). The TFT-namespaced wiki documents on-death effects only in combat-tied terms; selling returns the unit to the pool and its items to inventory. Treat "died this combat" and "sold this round" as fully separate game events — community-confirmed convention, with no wiki source documenting an exception.
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What's the difference between on-death (the dier side) and on-kill / on-takedown (the killer side)?
On-death is a trigger on the unit that fell — its own items, traits, or augments fire when its HP reaches 0. On-kill / on-takedown are triggers on the unit that did the killing or assisting — an entirely different unit's effects bank credit when an enemy falls. The two often resolve in the same instant against the same target, but they belong to different units' rule sheets. An untargetable or invulnerability window — like Edge of Night's escape at 60% Health — denies the attacker on-kill credit by keeping the target from ever reaching 0, and for that same reason the target's own on-death does not fire either; both hinge on the one death event. But the two sides are otherwise independent: stack-on-takedown items keep stacking on the killer regardless of whether the killed unit had any on-death payload.
Sources
- Takedown — League of Legends Wiki (a takedown = a kill or assist; credit only banks when an enemy actually goes down) (opens in new tab)
- Champion (TFT) — League of Legends Wiki (combat death framing) (opens in new tab)
- Items — tactics.tools (Set 17 untargetable/invuln escapes — e.g. Edge of Night at 60% Health — that suppress an attacker's kill credit) (opens in new tab)