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An Item for Hybrid Champions

Frenzied Dragon·12/12/2014, 5:59:37 AM·3 votes·729 views

So I was reading the patch notes yesterday for 4.21 and I got down to Shyvana and was reading about her slight buff. I noticed that one of the notes mentioned was that they've seen a huge decline in Shyvana players, which doesn't bother me to much since I main her, but she is a strong champion so there has to be something wrong that makes her not as viable of a choice anymore. I started watching games seeing who was being picked and realized that a lot of hybrids have fallen more out of use than they used to be (Shyvana, Xin Zhao, Kayle, etc.). They are becoming less and less picked. They aren't as viable as they used to be (or some of them (Irelia I'm sorry but you're still broken)). I was doing some thinking and I came up with an idea that can add some strategy to the game and allow mixed champs a way back into the meta. What we really need is an item that can give both armor and magic pen. Much like there is the Void Staff and Last Whisper there needs to be something for the hybrids.

I'm going to be using Shyvana as my example for the most part since she is my main so fair warning. A lot of the hybrid champions have mechanics that make it not very friendly to build one of those two options. Take Shyvana for example, she builds best off of AD since her Q and W build AD and once she has a Hydra her autos become important as well. However, her W, E, and R all deal magic damage even though her W builds off of AD. Although her E and ult build AP her W doesn't and is much more important to her kit than her E and R. It is not that reasonable to build Void Staff just so three of her abilities can shred through some MR. Likewise building a Last Whisper is not a viable idea either because only her Q and autos would benefit from the pen. Thus it is difficult to find a good path to gain her a little more firepower (pun intended) against some of her tougher opponents (like darn Trynds and Darius' and Yi). So I propose an item that gives a bit of both.

I did some calculations to figure out an item that could work well for this situation and be gold efficient. I used Last Whisper and Void Staff as my models for find the gold value of each flat AP and AD and gold value of each percentage of magic and armor pen and to find a good balance of these builds. This is what I propose:

  • 25% magic pen (worth about 551,25 gold)
  • 25% armor pen (worth about 614.25 gold)
  • +25 AP (worth about 712.5 gold)
  • +25 AD (worth about 544 gold)

This creates a combined cost of 2,422 gold so right about the same as a normal Last Whisper or Void Staff. My proposed recipe is

[New Item] = item 1026 + item 1037 + 692 gold

Notice that Last Whisper and Void Staff do 35% of their respective pens while this does 25% of each. Since this item has a combination of both it would be a little to OP to give it the same amount of pen as the others, so by dialing it down a bit you get less individually but together you get a total of 50% pen. Also 25% is a pretty good amount. Take for instance a typical bruiser normally by late game has armor of about 135 and MR of 115 well since this item ignores 25% of both take 75% of their armor and MR and you get armor of 101.25 and MR of 86.25 so now they are back towards the end of the mid game essentially. It sends a typical bruiser in the late game back to the end of mid game so they fall back a bit.

I think this item could add some interesting features to the game for hybrids and make them a little better so they can do their job a bit better instead of sitting awkwardly between being a fighter and a mage. I do realize my idea has some flaws being that some hybrids are OP and would be more OP (Irelia), and maybe my amounts and percentages may be a little odd this is the first time I've tried coming up with an item or some other mechanic. Riot I hope you take to read this and consider it. This was only an idea you could have a completely different idea on how much armor and magic pen there should be and so on so forth. Riot I would love to hear what you think of this idea and if you want me to do any other kind of calculation or something I'd be glad to be of service. Other players also please comment I would love to hear your input, positive or constructive and let's get Riot to see this idea.

7 Comments

Rebonack12/12/2014, 6:32:19 AM4 votes

I've bumped into people suggesting that Rage-blade's low HP passive be removed and replaced with 20-25% both resist penetration that doesn't stack with Void or Whisper.

The not stacking part is important.

bahamutkaiser12/12/2014, 7:16:33 AM2 votes

Rage Blade should have dual pen, they can remove the attack speed, and ability power ramp up as well as the low health advantage and make it stack 5% dual pen per auto attack or skill use, and shoot directly to max stats if they are below 50% health.

There are a lot of alternate ways they could make it work, but they don't need to make more Hybrid items, they need to make the existing ones more accommodating...

67chrome12/12/2014, 8:24:10 AM2 votes

Xin Zhao being a hybrid champion is a pretty big stretch.

As for mixed damage champions having a duel penetration item: that gets wired with the general pattern of hybrid champions vs. single damage type champions.

Mainly - champions that deal hybrid damage are usually like Mundo, Shyvana, Udyr, Alistar, Leona, Taric, Nasus. The tankier a champion gets, the more hybridized their damage tends to become.

Generally speaking you get large damage increases that specifically add big damage up-front at a discount in return for having awful end-game scaling (Wit's End or Kingblade's on-hit, Sheen, Tri-Force, and Gauntlet's sudo-crit off base AD). As a tanky champion - you want to predominantly focus on tank items, so setting up a solid IE + SS + LW combo with tertiary multipliers is largely out of the question. Champions like Nasus ususally come with some crazy damage that specifically doesn't need AD, AP, or pen to actually match other damage rolls within a pure-tank build in the first place. Just getting 1 major damage item like T-Force is all they ever really need.

Problem with your hybrid damage item - AD, AP, and penetrations specifically scale very well into pure-damage builds, which means rather than the ~40 tanky champions that do deal a considerable amount of mixed damage, you're mostly just targeting Teemo and Kayle.