Ninja Passive: Explained

On the 16th July, Plarium released a 7 – day event where you could earn Ninja, for free, a legendary Shadowkin Champion as part of a partnership with Tyler ‘Ninja’ Blevins.

A1: Single Target Attack – 1 hit – 3.7x Multiplier – Applies Decrease DEF
A2: Random Attack – 3 hits – 2x Multiplier – Applies HP Burn (explodes HP burn vs bosses)
a3(1): AoE Target Attack – 1 hit – 3x Multiplier – Applies Freeze
a3(2): Against bosses – Single Target Attack – 1 hit – 3.95x Multiplier

But the most interesting part about Ninja, is his passive, Escalation:

Increases Ninja’s ATK by 10% (up to 100%) and C.DMG by 5% (up to 25%) each time a single enemy is hit by all three of Ninja’s Active Skills in a single round. This effect can occur multiple times against the same enemy.
When fighting bosses, will increase Ninja’s ATK by 20% (up to 100%) and C.DMG by 10% (up to 25%) instead.

Initially we assumed these were based on his BASE stats, meaning it would only increase the attack by 1509, which is great – however not game changing.
Due to how this passive works, it will ramp up significantly faster vs bosses, and you will rarely get many stacks when attacking regular enemies.

How it Really Works:

So we did some diving into the code, and found that the attack increase is coded:

B_ATK*0.1*producerComboCounterOnHeroes+B_ATK*0.2*producerComboCounterOnBosses

This is very similar to another champion in the game, Mountain King, the key thing is the B_ATK which we initially assumed stood for Base Attack.

So after some testing with Mountain King, it became clear that the scaling was being done on his TOTAL attack when entering combat.

This means, that if we build Ninja with 5000 Attack & 200% C.Dmg – Once Ninja reaches the maximum stacks on his passive, he will be sitting at 10,000 ATK & 250% C.Dmg which is incredible!

This shows the difference between having stacks & no stacks on the test build we ran.
*These numbers do not show Weaken, Masteries or additional Ignore DEF from any sets.
The reason the A2 is gaining less, is because the actual skill damage is the only thing that is being benefited here – we are accounting for the HP burns into the damage calculations.

So how does this look in an actual in-game scenario?

We have run some calculations through a spreadsheet we are currently working on to predict damage for a clan boss team, based on the mathematics behind skill damage – against a known defensive stat.

We ran our tests based on a standard Bat-Eater due to the popularity of this comp.

This assumes:

4500 ATK – 200% C.DMG – To make this more relatable, we used a more achievable build.
Standard Clan Boss Masteries
Increase ATK & Decrease DEF – 100% Uptime
100% Critical Rate & Fully booked
Average Damage – Calculated at 0% Range
Includes ignore defence effects
No artifact sets included (No savage, Cruel, Fury, etc)

One thing to mention, in a Bat-Eater you will be losing Weaken, with Ninja – due to him only bringing Dec DEF, this will impact your whole team by around 25% loss of damage, which is a big hit, while he is a great damage dealing option – Champions like Fayne potentially still come out on top in this scenario, and there’s no question, champions like Dracomorph remain the better options.
BUT if you can get him into a team where he can run 2:1 with Def Down, Weaken & Increase ATK – These results will skyrocket.

We have done some testing with different builds, based on his A2 damage, we’ll share those with you to show you the difference of building higher attack vs higher Critical Damage as reference points – overall though, we’d recommend building him as you would any damage-based champion.