Arena of Valor (AoV) - Glossary

September 30, 2018 Pixel Jello Arena of Valor (AoV) 13

This glossary page contains a list of frequently used terminology in Arena of Valor (AoV). The list serves as a guide for communication between players.

Game-related

Arena of Valor Game related Glossary

 

Term Definition
AoV An abbreviation used for the Arena of Valor (AoV) mobile battle arena game.
Summoner Term used for the player of Arena of Valor (you). As the summoner’s level increases, various abilities and power-ups such as Arcana become available.
PvP An abbreviation for “Player versus Player”. PvP playing can be done against more than 1 player per encounter or clash.
Bots / NPCs / Creeps Refers to the non-playable characters controlled by the AI of the game. They are mostly in the form of minions or random heroes used for “practice mode” or “custom matches.” Non-Player Characters are also often fittingly called NPCs. “Creeps” usually refer to just minions and monsters in Arena of Valor.
Custom Refers to a shortcut term for “Custom Match”. Custom matches can be in the form of “practice mode” or against Bot heroes.
Ace When all the heroes on one team are killed and down at the same time.
HP Hit Points. The amount of health a hero has.
MP Mana Points. The amount of mana a hero has.
Attack Damage. Can refer to the amount of damage a hero deals with normal attacks, or the type of hero that deals physical damage.
AP Ability Power. Can refer to the amount of ability power a hero has, or the type of hero that primarily deals magic damage.
AS Attack Speed. Displayed as a percentage in Arena of Valor.
 LS Life Steal. Displayed as a percentage in Arena of Valor.
MS Movement Speed, measured in units per second.
Leash When a monster stops being attacked or is pulled too far away, so it returns to its original location and regenerates its lost health.
Armor Pierce / Magic Pierce Refers to the value of an item or ability to reduce the protection provided by armor (Armor Pierce) or magic defense (Magic Pierce). Read how to calculate pierce damage or how pierce percentages work.
Lifesteal / Magic Lifesteal Refers to the value of an item or ability to absorb a percentage of an enemy’s HP either through normal attacks (Lifesteal) or magic-based abilities (Magic Lifesteal).
Bruiser Refers to a hero who can deal considerable damage while being very tough to take down because of high sustain (HP or defense).
OP Stands for “overpowered,” but can casually be used to refer to generally strong heroes, items, Arcana, or anything else.
KDA Stands for Kills/Deaths/Assists, but is actually an indicator of the kills you contributed to compared to how many times you died. Your KDA ratio is (Kills + Assists) : Deaths
RNG Stands for Random Number Generator, which games use to simulate a chance occurrence. The term RNG is often used by gamers to mean “luck” in general. In Arena of Valor, RNG is used to determine when a critical hit lands, or how much damage is applied on each hit (go to training mode and you’ll see that your damage fluctuates by a few hit points on every hit).

Character-related

Arena of Valor Character related Glossary

Term Definition
Hero A term used for the playable characters in Arena of Valor, though they’re sometimes referred to as “champions,” a carryover term from League of Legends. Heroes are categorized as Tank, Warrior, Assassin, Mage, Marksmen, or Support.
Minion A term used for non-playable soldiers which are friendly or unfriendly depending on the team the player is with.
Core A term used for the players’ main tower located in their home base. The Core also attacks and recovers health over time when left alone.
Tower A term used for the guard towers on opposing lanes in the battlefield. Whenever a tower is destroyed, the player’s team gains experience and gold. If the player destroys all towers in a single lane, powerful minions with strong armor are summoned instead.
Warrior A hero focused on dealing damage with physical melee attacks.
Tank A hero with high health or defense whose focus is absorbing damage in place of their teammates.
Support A hero focused on healing or preventing damage rather than dealing it. Can also refer to a hero who’s best-suited sticking to a damage-dealing ally, setting up kills with CC abilities.
Mage A hero whose damage is based on their abilities rather than attacking.
Marksman A ranged hero focused around dealing damage with their physical attacks at a distance.
Assassin A hero focused around dealing large amounts of damage in a short amount of time.
DPS Short for “damage per second,” but often refers to damage dealers or damage in general. Example: “We need another DPS hero.”
Squishy Easy-to-kill heroes or hero classes. Mages and Marksmen are often squishy, while Assassins and Supports can be as well.
Tanky The opposite of squishy, able to soak up large amounts of damage.
Tank (Verb) To absorb damage for your team. Ex: “Tank the tower’s shots so we can dive the hero underneath.”
Main Tank The more durable of a team composition’s two (or more) tanks, main tank characters often have great crowd control and sustainability but low damage. They are expected to be the first to engage the enemy in team fights and soak most of the damage so that the team can follow up.
Off Tank / Second Tank The secondary tank in a team’s composition, the off tank has less sustainability and crowd control but more damage. They are the secondary initiators after the main tank, and are typically Warriors or Warrior-Tank hybrids. Off tanks often occupy the Dark Slayer lane because of their great dueling capabilities.

Ability-related

Arena of Valor Ability related Glossary

Term Definition
Recall A default ability that allows all heroes to warp back to their home base. If the warp process is disrupted, the warp is canceled and the player must restart the process. The ability is unchangeable.
Restore A default ability that allows all heroes additional recovery over time. The ability is unchangeable.
Talent An additional ability available to all heroes. As the player levels, new talents become available for use during the battle. Talents include buffs on attack damage, attack speed, health recovery, crowd control effects and more.
Crowd Control (CC) Abilities or effects that hamper or disable enemy actions. Stuns, slows, silences, and other disabling effects are examples of CC.
Cooldown The time between use of an ability.
CDR “Cooldown Reduction” – items or abilities that reduce the time it takes to use abilities
Damage over Time (DoT) Refers to Abilities and items that cause a player to lose HP over a certain amount of time. This includes debuffs such as Poison and other Abilities and items and auras that deal Magic Damage.
Area of Effect (AoE) Refers to Abilities that deal damage in an area, affecting multiple heroes. Also referred to as “splash damage”
Buff This refers to a temporary boost to one’s stat. Most Support heroes have Abilities that enhance their team’s stats. Another way of getting buffs is by killing a Large Neutral Monster.
Crit Short for “critical hit,” though often used as a verb: He crits for 1000 damage = When he gets a critical hit, it deals 1000 damage.
Proc / Trigger / Activate These terms refer to when a hero or item’s ability (often passive) is activated by having its preconditions met.

For example, Azzen’Ka’s Sand Trap passive needs him to inflict 3 stacks of Sand Trap on enemies. Once the player manages to get 3 stacks of Sand Trap on his enemies, it will trigger the petrify and damage effect.

Another example:

Frost Cape empowers its wearer’s normal attack each time he or she casts an ability. As such, whenever a hero equipped with a Frost Cape uses an ability, his or her normal attack becomes empowered with Frost Cape’s passive, Frost Power.
One-shot Killing an enemy in one attack, ability, or combination of abilities (without needing to wait for any cooldowns).
Stun-lock Chaining together abilities that stun the opponent so that they are continuously unable to act.
Stack Refers to incremental benefits gained from accomplishing a certain task, like killing a hero or monster. Can be used as a verb or a noun. For example, a hero who has 10 stacks on Mr. Stabby‘s Wild passive will have 30 bonus damage.

Tactics-related

Arena of Valor Tactics related Glossary

Term Definition
Lane Refers to the main zones between the players on both ends of the battle map. Each lane also consists of towers that guard a specific area against an opposing player. There are three types of lanes: Top (DS),  Mid, and Bot (AD).
Dark Slayer (DS) or Top Lane Refers to the lane closest to the Dark Slayer, though it is sometimes called “Top” despite the map flipping from game to game. Because the Abyssal Dragon is the first major objective in the game, teams send just one hero to the Dark Slayer lane, usually a bruiser that can handle themselves.
Mid Lane Refers to the middle lane of the map. Heroes play this lane solo in order to farm experience, and are usually mages or marksmen.
Abyssal Dragon (AD) or Bot Lane Refers to the lane closest to the Abyssal Dragon, though it is sometimes called “Bot” despite the map flipping from game to game. Because the Abyssal Dragon is the first major objective in the game, teams send two heroes to the Abyssal Dragon lane (or roam if they’re more advanced), usually a support and a damage dealer.
Jungle Refers to the zone of land made out of forest and rivers. Also called “JG,” it covers a huge area across different lanes. Neutral monsters reside in the jungle which, when defeated, give the player(s) a specific buff.
Jungler Refers to a player whose main roles are to clear out neutral monsters, farm gold, and raise their own experience level quickly. Heroes that pick this role are usually Assassins.
Farm Refers to the act of killing minions in the lane, the jungle or other neutral monsters to gain gold and experience. Oftentimes, the Jungler is also referred to as a Farmer, since if they are not ganking a lane, they are killing jungle monsters to get gold and experience.
Gank An abbreviation for “Gang Kill.” It involves a player or a team ambushing an unsuspecting solo or group of enemy heroes. A player who mostly leads ganks is called a “Ganker”
Last Hit The act of delivering the killing blow to a minion, resulting in higher gold and experience than simply being near the unit when it dies.
Auto-attack A character’s basic attack. Heroes said to have high sustained damage often have strong auto-attacks.
Harass Harass refers to consistently dealing damage in an annoying fashion, eg. poking without taking damage in return, or stalking a ranged hero with a pesky, mobile melee hero.
Kite Kite or Kiting refers to the act of moving between attacks, often to stay within range of an opposing hero while dealing damage, or to deal damage while running away. This is usually done by ranged heroes and is a key skill for Marksmen.
Spam Repeatedly using the same low-cooldown ability as quickly and often as possible.
Burst Refers to a hero who is capable of dealing a high amount of damage in a short amount of time. Mages are oftentimes synonymous with burst heroes, thanks to their Magic Damage.
Juke The act of escaping an enemy ability by using the environment (e.g. terrain, bush) and misdirection.
Carry Refers to a hero who has the ability to take over games. Oftentimes, this also refers to a hero who gets better the longer the game progresses, so long as the hero is able to farm for his or her core items and get some kills.
Attack Damage Carry (ADC) Refers to heroes who can carry games and are reliant on dealing Physical Damage. Typically, the Marksman class are designated as ADCs, but some Warriors and Assassins can also be considered as ADCs.
Peel The act of providing assistance to your team’s carries (usually the Mage or Marksman) by disabling the high-threat hero on the opposing team, allowing your vulnerable allies to deal damage or escape.
Team Fight This refers to when all members of the two opposing teams are battling one another at the same time in one area of the map. This is also known as a Clash.
Aggro Refers to the abbreviated phrase of “taking aggro”. This happens when the player is getting hit by enemy minions, turrets, enemy heroes or high-level monsters.
Poke Dealing damage from a distance without receiving damage in return
Roam To move strategically around the map searching for kills, ganks, objectives, or other opportunities.
Split-Push To split away from your team in order to push a separate lane, forcing the other team to have to defend multiple points of attack.

Have We Missed Anything?

Leave us a comment below or at our Twitter or Facebook if there are any confusing terms you’ve come across in our guides or in the game.

Related Articles on Wiki

Database

Guides

Heroes Stats, Guides, and Item Builds

All Heroes
Arena of Valor WarriorWarrior Arena of Valor TankTank Arena of Valor AssassinAssassin
Arena of Valor MageMage Arena of Valor MarksmanMarksman Arena of Valor SupportSupport

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13 Comments

  1. Does aof count player’s positioning and leading the fight to the enemy’s base by striking at critical moments, when both sides are down to an equal number of towers? I play with strategy but I don’t get kill points.

    Reply

    • It’s related to the “snowball effect;” “a tiny snowball can roll and get bigger and bigger.” In AoV is when a team gets an advantage which gives them another one later, until they have a pretty big advantage.

      Reply

  3. What do all of the awards at the end of a match mean? I don’t know what the red figure means. The others are intuitive most gold collected most damage received ect.

    Reply

    • Constitution is about how a hero match as well to the lane and role. As example, there are heroes that are so powerful in lane, in the same time roaming or jungling isn’t fit with the skills or equipment set, also some warrior has low constitution means they can fulfil or do another role as they can positioned in jungle and support as well.. Some marksmen could also do jungling things… But constitution is just the system’s suggestion and how far it could affect our gameplay depends on the pilot/subjective, team objective, and strategy.

      Reply

  8. I’m still confused about the difference between heartshot vs legendary hero mastery.

    Can someone explain me about this.

    *indonesia player

    Reply