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Why is everyone so obsessed about true damage being op?

Snowman Arc··3 votes·877 views

With all the talk about lethality doing true damage, and comparisons do magic penetration also being able to apply true damage in some cases, it got me thinking, why do people consider "true damage" (not the real true damage) to be so op?

An example I will offer here is someone was comparing Liandry's + Sorc Shoes vs Morello + Ionian's. A quick rundown of the stats is as follows:

  • 30 Magic Pen 80 AP
  • 0 Magic Pen 100 AP 30% CDR

Now, under ideal circumstances, let's assume that the first build actually would do true damage to someone (so, the enemy has 30 MR). Why do people consider that to be so overpowered, compared to the other build that doesn't do that? Why don't people take into consideration the extra CDR that allows you to spam spells more often and probably end up dealing more damage?

And all these are being questioned under ideal circumstances. A negatron cloak would negate a lot of that penetration, pun intended. I think people are tunnel visioning way too much on true damage being somehow OP, that they don't realize that it's just another bonus you get when you sacrifice something else. You get true damage? You lack CDR. You build Lethality? You miss out on crit and attack speed. These are all trade offs that you give up to get that coveted true damage, and my point is that maybe you are giving up too much to get something that isn't necessarily that strong anyway.

Stop considering true damage to be so strong.

4 Comments

Teridax682 votes

What you are mentioning isn't the true damage everyone is talking about. When people gripe about true damage, they're usually talking about actual true damage, such as Vayne's W or Camille's second Q. The main issue the the mechanic then is that it's impossible to counterbuild: that much can be fine, if the goal of the mechanic is to be counterplayed, rather than counterbuilt, but often that damage feels both gratuitous and excessive. Irelia's true damage, for example, is an on-hit effect, which is just one uncounterable mechanic on a champion that is already excessively difficult to pin down. Camille's own true damage is not difficult to land, and the fact that it also converts Trinity Force procs into true damage doesn't feel good. Vayne is a champion who has been presenting an increasing amount of counterplay issues with the game's rising damage levels, which makes the play behind her three-hit effect less easy to appreciate.

The other goal of true damage is to allow champions to deal about the same amount of damage to both squishies and tanky opponents, just like maximum health damage. Trouble is, that works by devaluing a core strength of tanks and fighters, and when there's too much of it, tankiness feels less relevant than it should be. A big ongoing pain point has been about the design of tanks, and how their items are innately too statistically strong because of how easy it is to counter tankiness in-game. The more ways you implement in-game of making tankiness less relevant, the stronger tanks have to be, whether it be in raw tankiness or damage, in order to be worth picking, which leads to very weird and not-too-healthy balance directions (e.g. the current state of tanks dealing too much damage overall).

CancerBasedGod1 votes

People don't consider anything when making rage posts. Many if not most use blatantly false statements to try and back up their claim. (For example, someone claiming all 5 pen items could turn 600 armor into 100, it can't, it changes it to roughly 200... They just seem to be incapable of math or logic.)

ScissorsNstuff1 votes

The problem with this is that in order to win against CDR you can outsustain or just choose a good time to engage.

They hit you over and over again.. whatever

against pure damage just blasting you in the face whenever you try to go in you have to get some defense and play like you have some chesthair... this hurt too much for some people. People lose half their hp in the blink of an eye while built full tank about to engage and think its time to run.. no that means its time to fight till you drop, someone just focused the tank.

LordGeovanni1 votes

The thing about it is that both mages and adcs are balanced to be strong without all that penetration with it its over kill. Yes mages have and that penetration for years but what people dont consider is that riot has been cutting spell cooldown for mages for about 2 years and they have been increaseing spell cooldown on tanks and nerfing their damage and utility at the same time in most cases. Both had an increase in cdr on thier items but only mage items got to keep good stats while getting cdr while tank items traded good stats for cdr which you couldnt build in most cases because of cdr over stack. 45% cdr tanks have about the same cooldowns as 10% cdr mages if not some mages with no cdr while mages have higher base stats higher scaleing and better cc. Slows are the most abundant cc in the game but slows against a ranged character isnt much but slows against a melee character you might as well had put them in a 2 second stun, but ranged characters get higher intensity slows on higher damage spells on lower cooldowns than melee characters because when a melee character peraslows you its unfun and no skill but when a ranged character permaslows you its because of skill kiteing and skill shots and totally not because melee characters have to walk straight towards you face tank your damage and cc or they can only dream of catching you

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