Arena of Valor (AoV) - Items Basics (Plus Stat Caps + Calculating Percentages)

To view explanations and recommendations for each item, read our item guide, tier 1 guide, or tier 2 guide, or view our list of all the items.

From item trees and unique passives to percentage calculations and stat caps, how items function in Arena of Valor is often glossed over. If you’re not an experienced MOBA player, you might not know the following about items in Arena of Valor:

Item Trees – How Much Do Items Really Cost?

The total price of items is listed in the Armory, but you don’t have to pay full price if you already have a component of the item equipped. For example, if you have two Rings of Vitality, then Greaves of Protection will only cost you 300 gold, rather than 900. Once you purchase Greaves of Protection, the two Rings of Vitality will disappear from your inventory, freeing up space to equip other items.

If you already have 900 gold, you don’t have to purchase two Rings of Vitality before you buy Greaves of Protection. You can just buy the Greaves without going through all of the trouble of getting the Tier 1 items first.

Higher-tier items usually have the same or upgraded effects of its components, but sometimes the effects can be slightly different. For example, Belt of Clarity’s Regenerate passive is replaced by a magic defense shield when upgraded to Medallion of Troy.

Selling Items and Cooldowns

Selling an item returns 60% of the original gold price to you. Cooldowns on items will not reset if you sell and re-buy the same item. A common trick to play around this is to purchase another item with a long cooldown while you wait for the first cooldown to expire.

How Does Pre-ordering Work?

Once you pre-order an item, only components of that item will appear in the Quick Buy area. Even if you purchase an entirely separate Tier 3 item, the pre-order will remain until you purchase, change, or cancel your pre-order.

If you don’t pre-order anything, the game will offer you selections based on the next two items (from left to right) in your set item build. The extra options can be useful if you find yourself waiting a long time to build up to that Tier 3 item, and want some extra utility in the interim.

On the other hand, sometimes you’ll want to pre-order an item that’s already next in your item build so that you can automatically select items in the heat of battle without having to think about what components make up the item you want to get.

Unique Passives

There’s a reason some effects are simply listed, and others are characterized as Unique Passives: “unique” here means that you can only have one of said passive effect (rather than meaning “special,” for example). That prevents a player from, say, buying multiple Claves Sancti for its incredibly powerful combination of attack damage and critical chance. Another common example occurs when you need both Tier 3 magic defense items (Gaia’s Standard and Medallion of Troy): if you purchase Gaia’s Standard first and buy Belt of Clarity on the way to Medallion of Troy, you won’t get the benefits of both items’ “Regenerate” unique passive, even though the effect is slightly different.

Interestingly, the unique passives of Omni Arms (Omnipower), Frost Cape (Frost Power), and Trick Blade / Apocalypse (Elemental Power) do not stack. It seems to be a translation error or decision, as the unique passives are all “Elemental Power” on other servers.

How Percentages Are Calculated

Any percentages that affect a category that is normally written as a percentage is simply added to the total (note that armor and magic defense percentages are provided as a reference and are not used in any calculations). For example, if I have 10% life steal, and I purchase an item that grants +10% life steal, I will now have 20% life steal.

As for percentage-based items that affect a raw number, the percentage is always calculated at the very end. For example, Hecate’s Diadem adds up all of the ability power you possess, including the +200 it provides, and then adds 35% to that number. So if you equipped Hecate’s Diadem and nothing else, you’d have 270 ability power.

Another example: if you equip both Rankbreaker and Muramasa at level 15, 250 armor will be subtracted from your opponent before 40% of the new total is taken away (how to calculate pierce damage). So with both items equipped at level 15, facing an opponent with 1250 armor, you’d drop their armor to (1250-250)*.6 = 600, or from 67.6% to 50%.

Finally, if you buy multiple percentage-based items that affect a raw number (Zweihander and Frosty’s Revenge is probably the most likely combination), the percentages will not compound. Every percentage addition will be based on the initial base number that is established. This situation is pretty rare though, so you probably won’t have to worry about it too much.

Stats Caps – Are There Maximums for Each Category?

Yes, various stat categories have maximums, so be careful when putting together your item build:

• Cooldown reduction caps at 40%. This cap is the most relevant to know, as players can easily put together an otherwise reasonable item build that exceeds 40% CDR
• Resistance cap is 60%
• Movement speed caps at 800 units per second (double Batman’s base movement speed)
• Movement speed reduction cap is 100%, though characters’ movement speed cannot go below 120 (a third of many characters’ base movement speed)
• Life steal caps at 100%
  • The effective magic life steal cap is Rhea’s Blessing (+25%) + Sap Arcana x 10 (+16%) + Consume Arcana x 10 (+7%) = 48%. Rhea’s Blessing’s magic life steal does not stack with Vlad’s Impaler’s magic life steal
• Attack speed caps at 200%
• Critical chance obviously caps at 100%
• There is no set cap in Arena of Valor for armor and magic pierce, but every pierce effect is a unique passive so the effective cap for armor is Spear of Longinus (+250 max) + Rankbreaker (+250 max) + Astral Spear (+50) + Onslaught Arcana x 10 (+36) + Skewer Arcana x 10 (+64) + Muramasa (+40%) = -650 – 40% of whatever’s left. The effective cap for magic pierce is Violate Arcana x 10 (+24) + Flurry Arcana x 10 (+64) + Hecate’s Diadem (+75) + Enchanted Kicks (+75) + Soaring Aura (+150 max) + Staff of Nuul (+40%) = -388 – 40% of whatever’s left (for some reason, Spoopy Mask and Hecate’s Diadem do not stack magic pierce, even though Enchanted Kicks does. We suspect a bug).
• There are no caps on attack damage, ability power, max HP, max MP, HP regen, or MP regen, though obviously there’s a maximum amount possible given the items and inventory slots available
• There are no caps on the raw number on armor and magic defense, though given the way it’s calculated, you can’t exceed or even reach 90%.

Related Articles on Wiki

Guides

• Beginner's Guide
• Hero Role Guide
• Lane and Jungle Guide
• AoV Top Page

Heroes Stats, Guides, and Item Builds

▼ Hero Class Guides
List of Item Builds
Warrior	Tank	Assassin
Mage	Marksman	Support

Database

Arcana	Armory	Talent
Hero Skins	Hero Availability	Hero Comparison

Others

• Game Features and Menu Screens of AoV
• How to Play AoV
• AoV Glossary

Arena of Valor (AoV) Recommended Article List

▼ Popular Articles
Beginner's Guide	Hero Tier List
Hero Class Guide	Armory (Item List)

▼ Popular Articles
Beginner's Guide	Hero Tier List	Hero Class Guide	Armory (Item List)