Lightning

Lightning is a 6-Elixir Epic spell that calls down three bolts, each one locking onto a different enemy troop or building with the most hitpoints inside a medium-sized target circle. Every unit it strikes takes heavy damage and gets stunned for a moment, which makes it as much a crowd-control tool as a straight damage spell. Because it picks targets by hitpoints rather than by a fixed spot, it shines against clumped, high-value threats — a grouped Three Musketeers, a charging Prince, an Inferno Tower mid-lock, or the support troops hiding behind a tank — rather than against spread-out troop swarms.

• Lightning is a 6-Elixir Epic spell that unlocks in the Frozen Peak arena (Arena 8).

• Each cast strikes up to three enemy troops or buildings — whichever have the highest hitpoints inside its 3.5-tile radius — and every unit it hits takes the full damage, not a divided or shared amount. If fewer than three valid targets are standing in range, it simply fires fewer bolts instead of overkilling one target.

• At tournament-standard level 11 — the fixed level Ranked and tournament matches normalize every card to — it deals 1057 damage to each troop or building it strikes.

• It deals less damage to Crown Towers than to troops or buildings — 265 at level 11. That's down from 286 after a June 2026 balance update that trimmed Crown Tower chip damage on Lightning and eleven other spells (by roughly 7-19% each) specifically to cut down on passive spell-cycle play, while leaving their troop damage untouched.

• Every target it hits is also stunned for 0.5 seconds — brief, but long enough to reset an Inferno Tower's or Inferno Dragon's damage ramp-up, or to interrupt a charging Prince, Dark Prince, or Battle Ram before it connects.

• Because it locks onto the highest-hitpoint targets rather than a fixed spot, it's a go-to answer for Three Musketeers — with no bigger unit nearby to soak the bolts, it wipes out all three for a big Elixir profit (6 spent versus 9 for the Musketeers). It also strips a huge chunk of a Sparky's health and resets her charge from a safe distance, often enough to finish her off with minimal follow-up.

• It also doubles as a strong single-card answer to X-Bow siege pushes, since it can hit the X-Bow itself plus its Tesla and Archer support in the same cast — though because it rarely gets the outright kill, it's often an Elixir-negative trade unless the building is already low or something else is distracting it.

• Lightning has been in Clash Royale since the game's very first limited regional soft-launch on 4 January 2016 — released on iOS only, in Canada, Hong Kong, Australia, and several other countries — almost two months before the worldwide release on 2 March 2016.