General
Summoners War is a turn based game. Which monster gets a turn next is determined by their Attack Speeds and Attack Bars. The in-game help tells us:
"The order of attack on the battlefield is determined by how high the Attack Bar is. Increasing the Attack Speed will fill up the Attack Bar faster, enabling you to gain turns more frequently.
In the beginning of the battle, the Monster with the highest Attack Speed in the battlefield will take the first turn of the battle."
Details
A single unit of time is called a tick. (Antique clocks used to make noise "tick tock." The word tick can be used as either a noun or a verb.)
- At the beginning of every battle, each monster's Attack Bar starts at zero.
- The clock ticks. Every monster fills its Attack Bar by 7% of its Attack Speed.
- If any monster's Attack Bar has reached or exceeded 100%, then that monster gets a turn. If not, then go back to step two.
- If more than one monster has passed 100% Attack Bar at the same time, the monster with the higher Attack Bar gets a turn first. (Attack Bar does not stop at 100%, it can "overflow.")
- After the monster's turn is over, go back to step two.
- In the event of an Additional Turn, for example due to Violent proc or the result of a skill effect, no additional tick happens; that monster just gets another turn. Go back to step two when all the Additional Turns are over.
Notes
It's slightly counter intuitive that after a turn ends, another tick happens, instead of immediately giving another monster a turn if their Attack Bar is already at 100%.
So because another tick happens whenever a turn ends, strange things may happen sometimes:
- After Konamiya uses skill two Resurge, a different monster besides the one resurged might "cut in line." This will happen if monster X's attack bar + 7% of its speed > 100% + 7% of resurged monster's speed.
- In Trial of Ascension, the enemy waves are often very closely speed tuned. If their turns all happen in between some monsters of your team, you can watch your team's Attack Bars going way out of sync. After each enemy turn, your monsters that have already moved will visibly gain Attack Bar, while your monsters that have not yet moved seem to stay at 100% Attack Bar. In reality their Attack Bars are "overflowing" over 100% but it is not their turn yet, because the enemy's Attack Bars are overflowing even higher.
- Leo makes everything weird.
Charts
Speed needed to reach 100% Attack Bar in X ticks = RoundUp(100/(.07*ticks);0)
For example, if you change your Bernard from speed 238 to speed 239 (total, including leader and tower bonuses), then it will only take him 6 ticks to reach 100% Attack Bar instead of 7 ticks. Then you will notice that the rest of your team's Attack Bars are different too, because they also have only gotten 6 ticks' worth of Attack Bar instead of 7.
| Ticks | Speed |
|---|---|
| 1 | 1429 |
| 2 | 715 |
| 3 | 477 |
| 4 | 358 |
| 5 | 286 |
| 6 | 239 |
| 7 | 205 |
| 8 | 179 |
| 9 | 159 |
| 10 | 143 |
| 11 | 130 |
| 12 | 120 |
| 13 | 110 |
| 14 | 103 |
| 15 | 96 |
| 16 | 90 |
| 17 | 85 |