Description
Instantly kills a target whose Health is below a threshold (typically a % of max Health). Resolves as true damage equal to the target's current Health, so it ignores Armor, Magic Resist, Durability, and damage reduction. Unlike ordinary true damage, an execute destroys any active Shield before applying its kill — a shielded unit at low HP is still executed once the threshold check passes; the Shield does not save it.
Listed in: Anti-tank
What enables Execute (3)
Champions (1)
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Heat Without Equal Passive: Attacks deal 75 / 75 / 100% damage to enemies adjacent to the target. Active: Become invulnerable and fly into the air. On return, stun all enemies for 1.25 / 1.25 / 99 seconds, gain 15 / 15 / 100% Omnivamp, and Ignite them for 3 / 3 / 99 seconds. Ignited enemies take 2 / 2 / 20% max Health physical damage per second. Replace this ability with Flame Breath and immediately cast it. Flame Breath: Spew fire at the most enemies in a line through the target, dealing 305 / 465 / 7200 physical damage, reduced by 20% for each enemy it passes through (minimum 20%.) Ignite those enemies for 3 / 3 / 99 seconds. Elder Dragon Buff: Damaging an enemy below 12% Health executes them.
Emblems (1)
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- +20% Crit
- +8% Crit Damage
The holder gains the Executioner trait. Damage executes enemies below 8% of their max Health.
- 2
- Executioners gain Precision and 15% Critical Strike Chance.
- 3
- Additionally, enemies bleed for 30% bonus true damage over 3 seconds.
- 4
- Bleed damage increased to 40%.
Artifacts (1)
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- +40% AD
- +20% Crit
Attacks and Abilities execute enemies below 12% of their maximum Health. Executions on champions have a 33% chance to drop 1 gold. Unique - only 1 per champion
What counters Execute
What Execute counters
Frequently asked questions
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What does "execute" actually mean in TFT?
Execute is the act of removing a target from combat by dealing 100% of its current Health through the raw-damage source type rather than through a normal damage instance. The effect is keyed to a Health-threshold check (commonly a percentage of max Health, e.g. "below 25%"); if the check passes, the unit is killed outright instead of going through resist, reduction, or amplification math. So although the kill resolves "as damage" mechanically, players experience it as instant death the instant the threshold is crossed, regardless of how much damage the trigger ability would otherwise have done.
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Does a shield protect a unit from being executed?
No. Executes are explicitly written to destroy any active shield before applying their kill, so a Shield bar does not save a unit that has already crossed the execute threshold. This is the opposite of true damage in TFT, which is absorbed by normal Shields just like physical and magic damage. The mental model: a Shield buys a target HP back against damage, but the threshold check that triggers an execute is comparing the unit's underlying Health, not the Shield bar — once the underlying Health is low enough, the execute fires through the Shield.
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Are execute and true damage the same thing?
No — they are different layers. True damage in TFT is a damage type that ignores Armor, Magic Resist, damage reduction, and damage amplification, but it is still damage that is absorbed by Shields and that has to chip a target down hit by hit. Execute is a kill outcome, not a damage type: the trigger checks "is this target's current Health below the threshold?" and, if yes, removes the unit outright. Many execute effects are implemented as raw damage equal to 100% of current Health, which is why the death is instant rather than an HP bar slowly emptying.
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Can damage reduction or Durability stop an execute?
No. Execute kills route through the raw-damage source type, which is documented as ignoring resistances and mitigations — Armor, Magic Resist, percent damage reduction, and the Durability-style flat "take X% less damage" stacking effects don't apply, because there is no normal damage instance for them to scale against. The threshold check looks at the target's current Health and either fires the kill or doesn't; once it fires, no defensive multiplier reduces it below 100% of current HP. Stacking Durability is still useful against the damage that brings a target to the threshold, just not against the execute itself.
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Does invulnerability or untargetable block an execute?
Invulnerability does block standard executes — the wiki explicitly notes the kill "will have no effect if the unit is invulnerable" unless the source is the rarer internalraw type. Untargetable is a separate state and works differently: an untargetable unit cannot be picked as a target by an ability that requires targeting in the first place, so most threshold-based execute abilities simply skip that unit because the targeting step fails. Either status — invulnerable or untargetable — is a clean save against an incoming execute, which is why short windows of either are valuable counterplay.
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Can an execute kill a unit that is untargetable or invulnerable mid-fight?
No — an execute does not punch through a death-escape window. During an untargetable window (for example, an item effect that triggers at a Health threshold to briefly make the holder untargetable, shed negative effects, and heal), the unit cannot be picked as a target, so a threshold-based execute has nothing to fire at and is simply skipped. An invulnerable unit can still be targeted but takes no effect from the kill — the wiki notes a standard execute "will have no effect if the unit is invulnerable unless the source type is internalraw." Once the window ends the unit is killable normally; execute is an instant kill, not a special bypass of untargetable or invulnerable states.
Sources
- Kill — League of Legends Wiki (execute "will have no effect if the unit is invulnerable unless the source type is internalraw") (opens in new tab)
- Edge of Night — tactics.tools (item: "At 60% Health, briefly become untargetable, shed negative effects, and heal 20% missing health") (opens in new tab)
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I had ~30% HP and the execute fired anyway — was the threshold higher than the tooltip?
Almost always no — what happened is that the same ability hit the unit with normal damage *and then* checked the execute threshold against Health after that damage tick. So a target that was at 30% before the ability lands can be at 18% afterwards, fall under a 20% threshold, and be executed in the same animation. The tooltip percentage is the post-damage threshold, not a pre-damage one. The fix is to read the ability as two stages — "deal damage, then check threshold" — and to position so the carrier never lands its damage instance into the threshold band against a key target.
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Do executes work on summoned units, clones, and pet-style units?
In general, yes — anything that occupies a hex, has a Health bar, and is a valid target for damage is also a valid execute target, because the threshold check is just a current-Health comparison. The two practical exceptions players run into are (a) untargetable summons during invulnerability or dodge windows, where the targeting step itself fails, and (b) summons whose Health pool is so high relative to the executor's threshold band that the threshold rarely matters before normal damage finishes them. There is no general "executes ignore summons" rule on the TFT-namespaced wiki — treat them as ordinary execute targets unless an ability explicitly says otherwise.