Strategy & Combat

Combat in AION: Legions of War is a mixture of timing, strategy, and team composition. Most enemies will have a specific move that needs attention throughout the battle, requiring you, the Commander, to have excellent foresight as well as impeccable timing to bring the victory home!

## Skills

Skills can be found in the bottom right of the battle or hero screen, and are split into the following categories:

* Basic
* Auto
* Continuous
* Special
* Link
* Counter
* Divine

These abilities have a variety of effects and are essential to maximizing your team’s potential.

### Special Skills

These are the abilities you see most often and will be tapping to execute. They are main ability of a hero and illustrate a hero’s specialty.

### Leader Skill

Leader Skills are special abilities that allow select heroes to benefit the entire party during battle, such as by increasing the critical rate for all heroes that you are battling with.

## Combat Screen

Health Point (HP) bars are located on the left-hand side of the screen and are key to effectively timing moves. You won’t want to have a healing skill go off when your team is at full health, for example!

Your main tank's HP bar is situated in the top left to help you monitor its health during battle. Since they will be taunting often, keeping your team safe, you’ll want to be aware of the HP bar so they can defend your party for the duration of the battle. This is the same for the enemy team, except you’ll be able to see their target to the left of their HP bar.

## Status Afflictions

Various status afflictions affect the trajectory of combat in game. Master your understanding of these skills to lead your party to victory!

### Block

Block indicates a skill or attack is negated.

### Interrupted

Interrupted indicates an enemy has been stopped in the middle of a skill.

### Resist

Resist indicates an effect/debuff does not take hold.

### Dodge

Dodge indicates that no damage is taken due to the hero’s evasion stat.

### Glancing

Glancing is a missed attack due to affinity disadvantage.

### Restraint

Hero is restrained and cannot move. Hero is stuck and skills are unavailable.

## Affinity Interactions

The elemental affinities have a large impact on the performance of battle, and should be taken into account before engaging in combat. There are five affinities: Fire, Water, Wood, Light, and Dark.

The below chart details how each affinity affects others.

Name of Affinity
Affinity is strong against
 Fire
 Wood
 Water
 Dark
 Light

The advantage of having the right affinity in a battle is:

* The advantage affinity has higher accuracy versus its opposite.
* The advantage affinity will be hit less often by its opposite.
* Attacks have a chance to cause Smite damage, which resembles delivering a critical hit.

## Sidekicks

Sidekicks from your friends are especially useful in difficult battles as their purpose is to fill a role on your team when you lose a member mid-battle. Though you won’t be able to control your friend’s hero, they can still provide you invaluable support on tough battles.

If you designate a friend's main hero as a Sidekick, they will receive a Social Coin reward which they can use to summon more heroes.

To add a sidekick in battle, when at the party selection screen, tap on the Friend tab to see which heroes are available. Select a hero to add to your party.

Once a sidekick is used, the hero will be unavailable for a set cooldown period. The more friends you add, the more sidekicks you'll have available to choose from.

To set a hero as a sidekick for your friends to use, tap on the starburst icon when viewing a hero, next to the lock icon. This will set that hero as your main one, which will make them available for your friends to take into battle!