Conqueror’s Excessive True Damage Conversion Increases Snowball

The conversion rate of true damage on Conqueror is too high, causing a primary and secondary effect that have increased the snowballing of games.

The primary effect of Conqueror is to increase the gold efficiency of damage item purchases of Attack Damage Juggernauts, Fighters, and Duelists who have the keystone. Since less of their damage is blocked by armor, each gold coin spent on AD translates into more damage on target. This effect increases the snowball potential of fighters who kill their opponents in lane, since any gold difference will translate into a larger trading and all-in difference than before the rune was introduced.

I imagine that this effect was desired. Such champions were having a hard time converting lane leads into map pressure. However, it has caused a secondary effect, which is to decrease the gold efficiency of armor purchases against Conqueror uses. This change was meant to affect tanks, who could stonewall a lane by stacking early armor, but it also affects everyone else.

The secondary effect was so strong that tanks could no longer reliably contest lane against fighters and duelists, making them the meta top lane picks. Any matchup with a fighter or duelist on both sides is inherently volatile already, but the increased efficiency of the damage items they buy and decreased efficiency of the defensive items they otherwise might purchase when losing only increases this volatility.

Moreover, classes facing fed conqueror champions also have less reason to buy armor. Carries continuing to buy damage to potentially scare them off and keep scaling is often the more gold-efficient choice, but it spreads the inherent volatility of top lane to their roles. Supports and junglers now have less reason to spend their meager budgets on armor, too.

Some reduction was reasonable, since resistance stacking was leaving fighters and duelists irrelevant. However, the true damage conversion is so high that champions cannot buy armor to force champions who have the rune to continue their snowball by roaming to other lanes or invade the jungle to rather than forcing solo kills or denying farm. The delay of scaling from even starting, much less finishing, an resistance item is significant. The relief should be, too.

Otherwise, Fighters and Duelists will have such reliable laning, snowball potential, and target-agnostic scaling damage as proved unhealthy on hypercarry Marksmen like Tristana, Kog’Maw, and Twitch last season. A reasonable yet substational reduction of the true damage conversion would keep fighters and duelists from crowding out tanks in solo-queue without greatly reducing their effectiveness against squishy targets who have not built any armor. If the conversion reduction is too great, then it can be pared back or compensated with more AD.

I propose a reduction from a 20% conversion to a 15% conversion. For a corrective AD buff if necessary, I propose an increase from 10-35 to 15-50 bonus attack damage. These are guesses, and I would welcome harder numbers on them in addition to your opinions about the effect of Conqueror and my proposed change.