@Meddler: A question or two about damaging your teammate to give them a huge buff

darkdill·May 19, 2015·1 votes·254 views

I'm looking into making a possible Slavemaster Champion Concept designed to buff teammates while also doing some good short-range fighting, and some people have suggested that I give him skills that deal damage to a TEAMMATE, but give them a huge buff in exchange.

Obviously, the idea of damaging your teammate sounds... dicey. Griefers would love using it to teamkill, and it could lead to several toxic keyboard fights if your teammate damage ended up killing him/her "by accident". However, with Bard and Kalista having mechanics that can potentially screw teammates over, I'm left uncertain as to what your stance is toward "damage your teammate" abilities.

Can I please get a word or two on the matter?

3 Comments

Jungle Lux GodMay 20, 20151 votes

I'm obviously not Meddler (or any Rioter for that matter), but I wanted to give my opinion here, because I feel like this is an interesting idea.

I don't think that any kind of ability like that would be healthy, not for griefing by teamkills (it would probably be coded so that a player cannot kill their teammate), but with the kind of gameplay cost that would require, mostly with clarity.

If it isn't clear that a champion is giving another champion a buff at the cost of the champion's health, then there is a lot of clarity issues that need to be addressed so that the champion clearly has a buff.

Some players playing with the champion might see the health loss, and disengage when they lose health, causing them to waste the buff for the loss of health.

Some players playing against the champion might see the health loss, and engage when the opponent loses health, only to find themselves coming out of a super-unfavorable trade because of the buff.

Not to mention that players that want to grief their teammates can still do so by taking them low enough that they can't stay in lane, the jungle, or just outside the base on the Rift for teamfights and stuff, even if they can't kill their teammates so that they are so low that it isn't too difficult for them to die from everything else.

Then again, if Kalista is fine than a champ that does hurt his allies would probably be okay. Out of curiosity, what kind of ability were you interested in putting onto your champ concept?

darkdillMay 20, 20151 votes

Well, whipping a teammate to get them going could be seen as this kind of thing.