As a primary damage dealer, I sometimes get stunned or rooted and the fight shifts away from me. By the time I get back into the fray, my damage timer has reset, and though I'm almost dead still, the damage graph only shows the final hit that kills me. Everything from before the root is gone. Also, I find as a support or tank character that the enemy will pick and poke at me in short spurts, which has the net effect of whittling me down over time. As a result, the same scenario from above repeats, and my damage graph basically just shows me the moment where they finally killed me me.
This isn't useful data, because they spent two minutes whittling me down constantly, but my graph only shows five seconds worth of them committing to kill me. If I'm fighting, or my supported champion is fighting someone who has also damaged me, that's still recent combat to me. WE are still in combat, so the damage they gave me earlier may come back to kill me soon.
There's really two things that people want to see: what recent damage caused them to die this time, and what sources of damage did they receive during this last life? It would be nice if we could see both sources. Perhaps a Recent and a This Life damage page with a tab separator to toggle between them? It would also be cool if they displayed this information chronologically, rather than stacked by champion. Maybe display the stacked totals to the side, and the damage events downward across the screen in a sort of timeline?
Recent Damage
The Recent tab should show your total health loss as of the first recent damage event before your death. The 'recent' timer starts the moment you take damage, and doesn't stop until either you die, or a period of time has elapsed. I assume this is how it works now, but it's missing a few things that end up leading to inconclusive summaries.
Take the damage timer and modify it so that when you take damage, the clock starts on your 'recent' damage graph; when you die, everything from that first moment until death is shown. If the recent damage timer elapses without additional damage, that single damage source is forgotten. When you finally die, at the top of the death graph, it should show the HP you had at the time of the first attack that led to your death in a clear manner, something like '990/1550 HP', and the damage sources should add up to 990, each displaying the total percentage of damage that they dealt. Any excess damage that totals up beyond 990 should be indicated as well. This tells me whether I just got nibbled to death by a minion auto attack, or whether Dunkmaster Darius slammed it home.
The criteria that start or extend the timer are:
- Damage from minions or jungle mobs should start/extend the timer to five seconds. Each consecutive minion or jungle mob hit renews the timer. If the timer is already above five seconds, nothing happens.
- Dragon hits start/extend the timer to ten seconds, Baron hits push it to fifteen, just because they're awesome. Also, teamfights occur a lot here, so this makes their damage more relevant. If the timer is above ten/fifteen seconds, nothing happens.
- Damage you receive from Champions should automatically extend the timer to twenty seconds. Each subsequent hit renews the twenty second timer.
- If you are supporting a champion (shields, heals, buffs, etc) who takes damage from an enemy champion, any existing timer is extended just as if you'd been hit yourself.
- If you or the champion you are supporting are within auto-attack range of an enemy champion or his support, any existing timer is extended to ten seconds. Maybe add a limit to the number of times this can occur; if the champions have fired on each other and continue to meet but don't engage for over a minute, the timer elapses.
This Life Damage
A much simpler summary. Just show me, chronologically (and with time-stamp please!) the damage sources I received from the moment I stepped off the pedestal, to the moment I died. If I get back up again, keep going until I stay dead.
