AD shouldn't be acting like AP on some champions

deadlychuck··3 votes·1,258 views

It's unhealthy and actively destroys the game by creating a situation in which the stat needs to do everything to appeal to all of the classes which utilize it differently.

AD scaling on all skills either needs to be removed or gutted. If you want to have 4 AD scaling abilities, then any additional damage scaling should never be anything more than a secondary aspect of the kit and should never be allowed to be core to it.

If an AP champion gets behind, they basically lose all of their damage influence in the game, they are forced to resort to their mechanical influenced that are attach to their CDs, but this is gated heavily by substantially higher mana dependence on AP champion, which just gets worse if you're at 40% CDR. Where as if an AD champion gets behind in a game, their damage isn't made nearly irrelevant, just less influential, yet they retain just as much of their mechanical influence as an AP champion. But in the case that neither is behind, then there isn't any kind of advantage to being AP, they're on par at best. Making AD lower risk equal reward! The normal argument for why this is normally has to do with AP champions tending to get more CC, but all of that is made irrelevant when AD champions keep getting designed with more CC and general mobility creep, since virtually all AP CC is still being attached to skillshots. ** DIVIDE THE ROLES OF THE PRIMARY STATS RIOT. THIS ENCROACHMENT OF AD INTO THE REALM OF AP HAS GONE IGNORED FOR TOO LONG AND MIGHT HELP YOU LOWER GAME TIMES TO YOUR TARGET 18 MINUTES, BUT THAT'S KILLING YOUR GAME IN THE PROCESS. **

24 Comments

ZephyrDrake4 votes

Sure let's gut ratios but massively increase base damages deal? No? Then sorry but no.

Ahpe1 votes

Hmmmmm.... High bases damages on AP champions? That sounds familiar....

https://imgur.com/wLjhd0J https://imgur.com/qz5rqMi https://imgur.com/L8S7DVR

deadlychuck1 votes

Who ever said about increasing the base damages?

MagicFlyingLlama3 votes

Let us just completely break a decade of game balance decisions to appeal to Anon's OCD!

deadlychuck2 votes

A decade of game power drifting, it's only balance if it's moving towards them middle, but they've been moving away from that for at least half of the existence of the game.

Here's a better idea, let's fix half a decade's worth of mistakes and bring it back to the way that the stats use to work and were designed to work as.

MagicFlyingLlama2 votes

AD ratios are nothing new.

What would you replace them with? They need something.

Option A: Remove them.

Result A: Every champion with AD ratios is now unplayable trash

Option B: Replace them with AP

Result B: Every champ with AP ratios is now unplayable trash, except for Corki and Ez, who are now mages.

Option C: Replace them with free damage from level scaling

Result C: Every champ with AD ratios now builds full tank and becomes Darius

What else is there, aside from totally redesigning the game?

deadlychuck1 votes

I never said AD ratios were a new phenomenon.

They have existed for all of league, but using them as focal points of a kit isn't in the original design of the game or the trifecta primary stat design (HP, AP, AD). Each has it's usages, but reaching between usage use to be rare exceptions, not par the course. I.e. XinZhao E and W is a good example of how AD scaling use to be given out more sparingly.

Option D: Reduce them to make an AD champion's primary source of damage output their auto attacks.

Yeah, if you want to a build which consists of stacking AD on your champion fine, but that should come at the cost of your damage mitigation. Mitigation which shouldn't be getting handled by riot woefully undervaluing the cost of mobility in the kit's budget.

MagicFlyingLlama2 votes

Reducing them is option A: every AD champion becomes trash.

They have to be replaced with something for the champions to stay balanced. That means they either get equal damage from some other source (defeating the entire point) or they all become tanks or juggernauts, totally screwing up the metagame and entire game balance in the process.

Instead of complaining, tell us how you would fix it without screwing everything up.

deadlychuck1 votes

There's two methods of fixing this from a design prospective.

  1. You do your option B.
  • How you came to the conclusion that simply swapping the scaling of these champions from AD to AP would somehow impact the AP champions is baffling. If Darius now scales with AP on his Q, then that doesn't somehow make Ziggs scale worse with the same build as before the change. It would make part of his kit weaker, but would give the player a decision on how to use his abilities, rather than them acting as both damage and utility, but not having to sacrifice his auto attacks like AP champions.
  1. Take the portion of AD that is overlapping with AP, and separate it into it's own new primary stat.
  • This one is obviously a bigger task, because it would require a pass over all the champions, new itemization, and (the hardest part) picking a new color.
  • Basically, if you had a stat like "expertise", which acted as a primary stat used directly for scaling purposes on "Skills", but not on "Abilities"... You might see where I'm going with this... Basically it would get it's own set of secondary stats and act as an intermediate between AD and AP. It might benefit from say lifesteal and CDR. It would also require either a new defensive stat or function as raw true damage. But from the opposite prospective it could act as mage's attack modifier scaling, with things like TwistedFate E, Orianna passive, Ziggs passive, Viktor 2nd half of Q, Kennen W passive. Opening those up to benefit from lifesteal, and in some cases letting the CDR (like with ziggs or viktor) act as a means to increase the frequency of them triggering.

However, it wouldn't have the implicit auto attack scaling of AD. Think of it like three different pie charts. Currently, you have AD overflowing into AP, taking up 2/3 of the primary stat pie chart. Then the two options break down into receeding the AD back to only occupy 1/3 of the pie chart or adding in a new field which reduces each primary stat to being only 1/4 of the whole pie chart.

It would become the preferred damage stat for champions like Zed Talon Gnar LeeSin Riven who are basically just treating AD as ability power.

MagicFlyingLlama2 votes

How you came to the conclusion that simply swapping the scaling of these champions from AD to AP would somehow impact the AP champions is baffling.

I never suggested that, but it actually would. Mess up AD balance and you mess up everything indirectly. It would make AP champs more (relatively) powerful, not less.

Changing AD scaling into AP would require a huge change to itemization and a couple seasons of balancing to fix all the fallout. In the end, things would end up back more or less where they are now.

deadlychuck1 votes

They literally did the opposite of this in the past. So it's not beyond their capacity to do it in a correcting manner. Yes, it would require a couple of seasons of rebalancing and reitemizing if it was all done at once, but the way they managed to justify it before was to stretch it out over 4 seasons and slowly roll out the changes.

Presumably if they were to implement this, then you'd see the same general approach.

Option B: Replace them with AP

Result B: Every champ with AP ratios is now unplayable trash, except for Corki and Ez, who are now mages.

However, currently most champions who use AD as AP actually beat mages and/or marksmen and tanks. So really this would just be bringing them to an even playing field in their mage and/or marksmen matchups, but allowing them to still beat tanks. Unless you don't think that AP is strong enough to beat marksmen or mages. Like for example, Zed wouldn't be suddenly shut out going against a mage if his Q and E scaled with AP. He'd still keep his burst damage and mobility that he uses to overwhelm them if he builds AP. But by building AD, would then be pretty much just as capable in the tank matchup as he is now (even though Zed vs Tank isn't exactly preferable now either, it's not the worst matchup in the world).

DarukongSr1 votes

{quoted}

I never said AD ratios were a new phenomenon.

They have existed for all of league, but using them as focal points of a kit isn't in the original design of the game or the trifecta primary stat design (HP, AP, AD). Each has it's usages, but reaching between usage use to be rare exceptions, not par the course. I.e. XinZhao E and W is a good example of how AD scaling use to be given out more sparingly.

Option D: Reduce them to make an AD champion's primary source of damage output their auto attacks.

Yeah, if you want to a build which consists of stacking AD on your champion fine, but that should come at the cost of your damage mitigation. Mitigation which shouldn't be getting handled by riot woefully undervaluing the cost of mobility in the kit's budget.

Every idea and conception you have about the game is actually terrible.

deadlychuck1 votes

Well it would seem to me that if you think that my ideas and conceptions about this game are "actually terrible", that yours must be naive or ignorant. Because what I'm proposing isn't change into unknown territory for the game, it's return to form of how the game's design use to exist.

... Well except for the idea of adding a 4th primary stat. That's actually just best way that I could devise to make the new design work, without returning to the old design. Though I can't exactly conceive beyond my creative limitations, so there might be a better solution, but again it's beyond the scope of my creativity.

DarukongSr1 votes

{quoted}

Well it would seem to me that if you think that my ideas and conceptions about this game are "actually terrible", that yours must be naive or ignorant. Because what I'm proposing isn't change into unknown territory for the game, it's return to form of how the game's design use to exist.

... Well except for the idea of adding a 4th primary stat. That's actually just best way that I could devise to make the new design work, without returning to the old design. Though I can't exactly conceive beyond my creative limitations, so there might be a better solution, but again it's beyond the scope of my creativity.

There's no point of what you are suggesting by eliminating ad ratios. It's the hardest and least sure why of fixing balance that I've heard in ages. It would cause many more issues than fix and it would honestly be pretty unfun. Mages in general are doing just fine by winrate. Your suggestion would be chaos for Chaos's sake. Serious players are actually interested in fixing balance, not making it worse.

deadlychuck1 votes

Holy shit, this it's not every day that I deal with someone like yourself. Outliers on the intelligence spectrum are rare.

First,

There's no point of what you are suggesting by eliminating ad ratios. It's the hardest and least sure why of fixing balance that I've heard in ages.


"Option D: Reduce them to make an AD champion's primary source of damage output their auto attacks."

Well it's a good thing that I didn't suggest it. But I assure you, it might not be the easiest way to fix the balance issues, but it's absolute one of the most reliable ways.

Second,

Mages in general are doing just fine by winrate.

Yes, mages are at a relatively high win rate, but win rate isn't representative of viability. The thing that tends to set specifically mages apart is their high magic damage. This prevents secondary defense stacking of armor or MR, creating openings for your AD champions to kill the tankier targets or punish them with the magic damage. In a match up of viability, AD overwhelmingly wins out. Hints this thread https://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/gameplay-balance/Er530JjU-full-ad-high-chance-of-winning-full-ap-autolose

Third,

Your suggestion would be chaos for Chaos's sake.

This is just ignorant. Let's assume a couple of these premises to be true. The game is heavily lopsided towards AD and the natural order of the stat design is not the way that the game is currently being maintained, and my suggestion would create chaos for the sake of it. Then shaking up the proverbial sandbox which is lopsided in favor of AD right now to create chaos, would statistically be more likely to be balanced. Is it a surefire way to make things balanced? No, I don't think any honest single suggestion could claim that.

Fourth,

I will admit, that I'm in favor of conversion to AP rather than simply lowering AD, because this would give the AD caster style champions a choice in how they want to play the champion, as opposed to limiting their AD scaling and simply forcing them into a particular play style with the champion. Mind you this doesn't mean changing the damage types, only scaling stats. But unfortunately, riot's history suggests that they'd prefer to simply lower the AD as it's easier for them to control for meta data purposes.

Bears Dont Care1 votes

{quoted}

I never said AD ratios were a new phenomenon.

They have existed for all of league.

Eh... Originally AD affectes only auto attack damage and AP affected abilites, hence the names. OP might be rethinking stuff from long ago.

deadlychuck1 votes

I mean, that's literally what I'm saying to do... Go back to properly aligning their use with their names. The design worked, and it wasn't meaningless. It might have been unintentional (as many examples of extreme success are), but it worked for a reason and that reason is now being neglected in the current game design.

Moody P3 votes

this AP circlejerk is so deliberately disingenuous lol

deadlychuck2 votes

No it's honest.

Trying to dismiss such a blatant design flaw is naive.

Ahpe2 votes

Fuck this I wanna to see meta Malzahar with item 3146item 3020item 3124item 3072item 3115 in S9.

deadlychuck1 votes

Pretty shitty build tbh, though malzahar is a pretty trashy champion now, so i never really put much effort into figuring out a good AD build after the rework.

DarukongSr2 votes

Wow...the OP's ideas are...absolutely awful. I haven't read worse suggestions since the time Patrick Star convinced the citizens of Bikini Bottom to push the town somewhere else. And we all know how that ended.

deadlychuck1 votes

I'm pretty sure that I didn't put any suggestions in the OP

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