How skills land

Choosing a target

In a battle, click or tap an enemy to make it your target. A gold ring appears under its feet and a gold arrow over its head: that is the body your next turn hits. To heal or buff an ally, pick the ally the same way; the ring turns green. Healing an ally does not forget the enemy you picked.

• Behind cover. If you pick an enemy in the back row with a melee attack and someone stands in front of it in the same lane, the ring stays on your pick, faint and marked Covered, and the arrow moves to the body in front: that is the one your attack hits. See Front covers back.
• Random and all-enemy skills. These do not follow your pick. Your pick is shown faint, marked Random target or Area.
• A defeated target cannot be picked. When your target falls, its ring goes and you pick a new one. Until you do, auto battle picks for you, and a hand-played character waits.
• The target card beside your skill bar shows the name and health bar of the body your next turn hits. On a phone it has two buttons that step to the previous or next target, so you do not have to tap small bodies.

Your companion picks its own target, the enemy closest to defeat.

Combos stay on their target

Some single-target skills strike more than once in one turn: Double Strike, Cross Slash, Triple Combo, Triple Flash, Quad Combo Plus and the Ranger's Combo. Every strike lands on the target you aimed at, and each strike shows its own damage number. If the first strike already defeats the target, the rest still land on it, so you see every number. They never move on to another enemy.

Random strikes

A few skills pick their targets at random. They do not all pick the same way:

• Blizzard throws five strikes at random enemies. One enemy can take up to three of them, so a lone enemy is struck three times and two enemies share all five.
• Destiny's Verdict fires its arrows at random spots among the ten places on the enemy side. An arrow that falls on an empty place misses, and one enemy can be struck several times. It is strongest against a full formation.
• Abyssal Agony, Shadow Trap, Ice Storm and 10,000 Needles each pick different enemies, one blow per enemy.

Strikes go to enemies that are still standing: a defeated body is not picked again.

Taunt

A taunted enemy must aim at the one who taunted it, whether it is played by hand or on auto. Taunt decides where an attack is aimed, not how big it is:

• A single-target attack hits the taunter.
• A row attack, such as Fire Wall or Strafe, hits the whole row the taunter stands in.
• An attack on every enemy, such as Hellfire, Frozen Wasteland or Fear Link, still hits everyone.
• A random skill always includes the taunter. Blizzard spends its strikes on the taunter first, up to three, and the rest fall on the others.

The Warrior's own Taunt reaches the back row too. A taunter standing behind cover cannot pull a skill that cannot reach past the front row. See Front covers back.

Seal

A sealed body cannot use skills until the Seal wears off: it can only make basic attacks. Rune Arrow Rain rains arrows on every enemy and may Seal the ones it hits; its description in game says the chance and how long the Seal lasts.

Slows

A slow makes a turn bar fill more slowly, so the slowed body acts less often. The Mage talent Biting Frost gives every ice spell a chance to slow each enemy it hits, and the chance grows with each rank of the talent. A body carries one slow at a time, and the newest one replaces the last.

Damage over time and Link

Some attacks leave a burn or a shadow wound that hurts on a timer after the hit. Its ticks grow with the caster's damage in that element, so better elemental gear makes them hurt more.

The Priest's Fear Link binds every enemy with a Link. The next damage-over-time effect that same Priest lands on a Linked enemy spreads to every enemy they Linked, and the Links are used up. Lay Fear Link first, then follow with Shadow Trap or Abyssal Agony.