@Ghostcrawler what is the thought process behind adding lots of damage to right click mechanics?

Brascus·Jul 18, 2017·3 votes·321 views

I can understand adding tons of damage to unreliable abilities that are telegraphed, have intricate conditions or are simply difficult to land, that's an equivalent trade in counterbalance I can get behind. What I don't understand is the new Duskblade, how it delivers damage and why it's considered appropriate when this meta already has high and reliable damage in abundance.

What is the goal here? What is it meant to achieve?

http://i.imgur.com/ZmJ4j9d.jpg

11 Comments

RalanrJul 18, 20172 votes

item 3147 does require you to be unseen for 1 second. So it does have a condition. The difficulty of that condition varies from champion to champion.

SquashCannonJul 18, 20171 votes

{quoted}

does require you to be unseen for 1 second. So it does have a condition. The difficulty of that condition varies from champion to champion.

Yeah but you can be spotted for quite a long time. You can literally walk into range of someone and auto them if you're an adc and you'll likely get the proc, especially if you're an adc who has any sort of mobility.

Duskblade is stupid.

BrascusJul 18, 20171 votes

This condition is non-consequential for most champions within the 5 second limit, and free for all in a bush gank or bush flash combo.

LostFr0stJul 18, 20171 votes

Not Ghostcrawler (obv.) but they already hotfixed item 3147 's damage down.

Basically the proc needs to be guaranteed damage since otherwise it won't be a good first buy. It needs to be on an auto-attack to make sure they aren't proccing it on spellcasts and out of range from enemy retaliation (like zed shadow Q, Talon rake, etc.)

May I ask how you would change it to be more "appropriate?"

WoonStruckJul 18, 20171 votes

The damage isn't the only problem.

Much like Deadman's Plate, the slow should only be applied by melee attacks.

ModWulf HelhammerJul 18, 20172 votes

It is now

LostFr0stJul 18, 20171 votes

^This. The removal of the slow for ranged isn't live but they put in on Pbe yesterday.

BrascusJul 18, 20171 votes

You can juke lots of spell casts, sometimes using your own abilities reactively, sometimes by anticipating aggression by player movement and even by prediction if you read well in to player patterns. You cannot juke auto attacks, auto-attacks cannot contain counterplay, they are binary mechanics, the inability to counter balance them makes it unsuitable for high power or core identity in champion design.

There are two things I would do:

Make the player earn the damage
Back load it instead of front load it

How you can do these things:

The first part is obvious, attach it to free form abilities, as an assassin item it needs to delve into the theme of surgical precision it trumpets, back loading the damage is where you can get more creative to give the target a fighting chance:

[SIMPLE] After hitting the same champion with an ability 'x' times within 'z' seconds deal bonus 'y' damage on your next ability
[COMPLEX] After hitting a champion with an ability they get a stack of for 'x' seconds, trigger the item to consume stacks to deal tons of damage as Draktharr's blade descends from the shadows, each stack reduces the CD when consumed

Darktharr would act as a high damage finisher for Assassin style gameplay where nailing multiple abilities rewards you with tons of damage, not just an auto attack damage steroid that will inevitably be nerfed into oblivion and then reworked patches later or forgotten/removed.

LostFr0stJul 19, 20171 votes

{quoted}

You can juke lots of spell casts, sometimes using your own abilities reactively, sometimes by anticipating aggression by player movement and even by prediction if you read well in to player patterns. You cannot juke auto attacks, auto-attacks cannot contain counterplay, they are binary mechanics, the inability to counter balance them makes it unsuitable for high power or core identity in champion design.

The necessity to auto does have counterplay though. It means that the assassin is in range for the enemy to retaliate.

There are two things I would do:

Make the player earn the damage

Back load it instead of front load it

How you can do these things:

The first part is obvious, attach it to free form abilities, as an assassin item it needs to delve into the theme of surgical precision it trumpets, back loading the damage is where you can get more creative to give the target a fighting chance:

[SIMPLE] After hitting the same champion with an ability 'x' times within 'z' seconds deal bonus 'y' damage on your next ability

^ Follow up question: this design makes the item's output vary based off of not only ping, but player skill and champion. Also note some champs don't have all damaging abilities (which isn't a big deal, ofc. there will be better and worse item users.)

Another big thing that comes to mind with such a design is the harass combos of some of the users. While we could argue "dodge it" the cast times can be quite fast or perhaps you're playing a melee champ. It's hard to dodge Renek or Zed's combo as a melee champ.

[COMPLEX] After hitting a champion with an ability they get a stack of for 'x' seconds, trigger the item to consume stacks to deal tons of damage as Draktharr's blade descends from the shadows, each stack reduces the CD when consumed

Darktharr would act as a high damage finisher for Assassin style gameplay where nailing multiple abilities rewards you with tons of damage, not just an auto attack damage steroid that will inevitably be nerfed into oblivion and then reworked patches later or forgotten/removed.

The original duskblade had something similar; looked like Zed ult: UNIQUE PASSIVE: Your next basic attack on an enemy champion applies NIGHTFALL (120 second cooldown). UNIQUE PASSIVE – NIGHTFALL: After 2 seconds, deals 90 (+ 25% of target's missing health) physical damage. If the target is taken down before NIGHTFALL dealt damage, the full cooldown is refunded.

It would be nice if the original and your idea could be combined somehow, but I kinda like the damage being tied to being "unseen" since you can counterplay it with vision somewhat right now. 5 seconds is a while though.

Sun Wu RyuumokuJul 18, 20171 votes

@Ghostcrawler what is the thought process behind adding lots of damage to right click mechanics?

This question need to be replied. But this

What I don't understand is the new Duskblade, how it delivers damage and why it's considered appropriate when this meta already has high and reliable damage in abundance.

Its obvious for this, most of Assassins :