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Why isn't attack speed a viable path?

UberAffe··1 votes·1,307 views

Right now on every ad champion in the game it is not viable to build attack speed as your damage source. Every adc is practically useless unless they have infinity edge and yet runaans is an exceptionally niche item that isn't even all that good on the champions who do build it.

Part of the why I think attack speed isn't a viable build path is that it doesn't scale very well per item, the second and larger reason is that attack speed is capped at 2.5. There are two stats in this game that are capped, attack speed and cdr. Personally I don't see why they should be capped.

Changes I would like to see:

  • Attack speed and cdr become uncapped
  • Attack speed items get some better scaling
  • Alternate cdr/as items with some other stats and low-none ap/ad
  • Items with a combination of ap/ad and cdr/as stay about the same

The reason I want this change is to allow a different playstyle, currently both mages and marksmen are forced to build high amounts of damage so that each ability hits for the most possible. You are forced into a Heavy-hitter build, but what about people like me, some games I would rather run around poking them a million times even if those million hits only do the same amount as a couple from a Heavy-hitter build. The point is that I want to be able to do roughly the same amount of damage with either build assuming perfect use of both.

The only issue I see with this are the stacking champions and cdr, Sion shouldn't be an issue but for nasus, viegar, and early cass it could be a problem, but that could be solved with price gating so that it is hard to get high amounts early.

27 Comments

Korillo2 votes

Attack speed is extremely viable for Vayne...

Sightless662 votes

Even if there wasn't a cap, you'd never have a pure attack speed build in this game. It's not possible. Attack speed and Attack Damage each increase the value of the other stat. The more Attack Speed I have, the more valuable 1,000 gold of AD is worth to me. There is going to be a formula to maximize DPS, and unless stats are changed to make attack speed the single best stat in the game, you're going to have to follow that formula if you want to do well.

The point is that I want to be able to do roughly the same amount of damage with either build assuming perfect use of both.

This can't happen unless you have an item that rewards attack speed without giving any benefit to AD (or vice-versa). Unless you add an ungodly powerful on-hit item, possibly one that actively punishes having AD, this isn't going to happen.

I would rather run around poking them a million times even if those million hits only do the same amount as a couple from a Heavy-hitter build.

You're not going to be running around much with a high attack speed build. You'll be standing still, trying to use all of that DPS. You can look at Tychus in Heroes of the Storm for an example. 4 attacks per second, doesn't move while autoattacking because it's impossible to effectively weave autoattacks in between his movements. Just keep in mind, you would be playing a stationary character.

Personally I don't see why they should be capped.

Attack speed is an old engine restriction that could be circumvented, but there is a very good reason why CDR must be capped. CDR becomes exponentially more powerful as you buy more of it. It would be the best stat by far. Just to give some numbers, 40% CDR gives you a 66% increase in spell usage. 50% CDR would give you a 100% increase in spell usage. 90% CDR would give you a 500% increase in spell usage. 100% would give you infinite spell damage. This exponential scaling is just way, way too strong. Allowing people to get as much as they want means that CDR would be more effective than AP in every situation. CDR would be the best stat for lategame mage scaling, period. No exceptions. No other situations. CDR is best. Capping it lets mages get a good increase to their damage and utility without letting them become completely unstoppable.

And that's not even considering the problem you have with tanks getting high CDR and literally permastunning champions. Going up to 60% CDR more than doubles my spell uptime over 40% CDR. I could literally CC a champion forever with 60% CDR, and that's not a hard amount to get.. Think about URF mode, and how champions could permastun other champions. That happened in a game mode where every champion got a huge tenacity boost. Let it happen in normal games, and you completely destroy this game.

Even if we nerfed CDR to compensate for this, it would produce a situation where a champion either gets all the CDR they possibly can, or they completely avoid it. No in-between. That's not really interesting. I'd much rather champions be open to getting some as needed for utility purposes.

UberAffe1 votes

The second two parts you were quoting were referring to a cdr cap removal. Which would probably take to many changes to champions and items to be worth considering.

As for the first part saying that either AD or AS must be the stronger stat, I disagree. I see no reason why there can't be two "peaks" building equal of both leaves both lackluster and building mostly one maximizes damage.

A place we already kind of see this is in rabadons. It is not even close to the best ap damage item on its own, but if you have other items that have already given you ap it becomes one of the best.

Something like that could be done for AD/AS it would require tweaking a lot of items, but I don't see why it wouldn't be possible.

Sightless661 votes

It's not that AD or attack speed will be the strongest stat. It is that there will be a formula for determining the highest possible autoattack DPS, unless you have an item which rewards one stat to an unbelievable degree, a degree which we probably can't reach in this game. The entire problem is that for the purpose of DPS, the best solution is always going to be a combination of attack speed and attack damage. Getting around that isn't really mathematically viable in this game.

A place we already kind of see this is in rabadons.

A slightly better example might be Cinderhulk, and how it interacts with resistances items. Right now, Cinderhulk rewards you for building more health, but you always need to buy resistances with it, because all of that health you buy increases the value of your resistances. You're never as tanky stacking pure health as you could be stacking health and resistances. Even though the item rewards health, the fact that health and resistances scale off of each other trumps that, and the only way it wouldn't trump that is if the item gave so much health that it completely invalidated the need for resistances. That's a better comparison because health and resistances scale off of each other similarly to how AD and attack speed do.

Attack speed and AD work similarly. If I had a Rabadon's deathcap for attack speed, it wouldn't encourage me to skip AD. I'd still need AD to reach my optimal DPS, and it would be that way unless the attack speed deathcap could increase the value of attack speed by more than 100%. It would need to be the single most effective item in the game, without any competition, and we just don't have the room to make those numbers possible.

I mean, try to think of some numbers that would make it work. I'm thinking about it, and I can't make it work without making the attack speed deathcap multiple times more efficient than any other item we have. That's obviously not a solution, so what is? Mathematically, I don't think this is possible without completely redesigning the entire item system and probably every champion in the game. For that effort, I think telling you to try Heroes of the Storm is a better solution.

I think it would need to be done with a champion specifically designed for this. Someone who automatically converts X% of AD into attack speed for example. Outside of that, I don't think it's possible.

FantasySniper2 votes

AA stats are multiplicative, and it's usually more efficient to get AD before AS. Special cases can actually rush AS, but that's more of because of a reliance on special effects rather than their own attacks. (Kalista, Vayne, Kayle, Teemo, Warwick)

UberAffe1 votes

Yes. I want it to be equally efficient to build AS or AD. At least from a straight dps standpoint, not necessarily from a kiting perspective.

disregardable1 votes

Kalista is literally the ADC you build Runaans on and no crit.

UberAffe1 votes

I don't think I have ever seen a Kalista buy runaans before IE, but that might just be my elo. Aside from that, if you build more than around 1.8ish attackspeed on her it becomes ridiculously hard to use her passive effectively, at least from what I have seen and tried.

disregardable1 votes

It's not even your Elo, it's just you being inexperienced with ADCs. You seem to just play everything.

Her most popular and her highest win build is item 3072 item 3006 item 3085 item 3153 item 3035 item 3139

http://champion.gg/champion/Kalista

You absolutely need runanns on her to farm properly, and because of that you rarely build IE. To use her passive effectively, you need to just hold down attack+move, which by default is set to shift+click. Doing that makes it SO much easier.

UberAffe1 votes

The "play everything" bit is because I am looking for champions that I can comfortably take to other lanes, but I main jinx/taric/amumu, at least those are my preferred ranked champions.

Don't you have to alternate between the regular right click move and attack move in order to actually make use of her passive? If not then going higher than 1.8 wouldn't be problem.

disregardable1 votes

It's easier to not constantly shift+click when you're trying to last hit minions (early), but if you just want to chase/kite then you can and should just hold down shift+click. It's really fun too. It's so fun to kite junglers. I once kited a Sejuani all the way down mid lane. Then she killed me right at my turret. It was funny. You could tell how hard she was trying, meanwhile I was just clicking backwards.

UberAffe1 votes

well shit, I was under the impression I had to alternate between the click types. Does it only work that way on kalista because of her passive? Unless I was just being stupid while trying it I thought only using the attack+move as other adc's you would stand in place instead of kiting backwards.

disregardable1 votes

It is only that way on Kalista, BECAUSE of her passive of moving directly after autoing. You never get out of range because of the dashes. It gets a little awk when you're trying to escape, and you get out of range. You like walk forward towards him and dash back and repeat before you realize, oh shit, I need to stop shift+clicking now, but that's bearable.

Marthian1 votes

Runaan's is essentially core on Kalista, not sure what you are talking about. They will never uncap AS/CDR since it would lead to ridiculous abuse such as 100 CDR builds permastunning teams or super fast stacks such as Vayne or Kalista (not to mention it could bug out the game.)

Lord Dusteon1 votes

CDR is capped because of how powerful and fast it scales.

Let's say you have a 100 damage spell with a 10 second cooldown. Over 10 seconds you deal 100 damage. With 50% Cdr, over 10 seconds you deal 200 damage. With 75% Cdr, over 10 seconds you deal 400 damage. With 87.5% Cdr over 10 seconds you deal 800 damage. And on towards infinity (though actually capped at casting delays and then reaction time).

So the first 50% cdr doubles your damage...but you can then double it again for only 25% and then 12.5% cdr. The cap is meant to keep the damage at a relative point and prevent horrible abuse cases (Tryndamere literally never dying, Karthus ulting every 3 seconds, permanently stunned by Ashe ult).

The AS cap is more likely only there because A) champions look really stupid with high AS, and increasing that further would make it incredibly hard to see what is happening, and B) Because almost always getting more AD/AP will add more damage than more AS except for a few abuse cases (Yi with E, Vayne with W) which could abuse the lack of a cap.

UberAffe1 votes

Again the cap removal would be conditional on items changing so that damages would be roughly equal. That said, I see why it was initially put in place but I don't see why a change like this shouldn't be possible.

As for the abuse cases, if there is a game wide mechanic that is limit by a few champions being able to abuse it, those champions might need to be looked at anyways.

I guess I hadn't considered how they would look with really high attackspeed's, I don't really know how that could be fixed to work for this, but it would look interesting.

AMetroidEatsU1 votes

one of the reasons there's an atk speed cap is for reasons of animation. However skills build off atk or ap, so until there's an adc who's dmg scales off atk speed having more atk usually works out better.

All Skillzz1 votes

100% cdr morgana plz riot. i always wanted to never move at all.

Lights And Magic1 votes

New Ashe is gonna make use of Runaans as well.

UberAffe1 votes

Yea, but that isn't exactly my point, she still will be building IE and all the other high damage items. What I wish we had the option to do is to just build ridiculous amounts of attack speed and deal about the same amount of damage. Might be a bad example but say Runaans is the Blood Thirster of Attack Speed items. This means that in the same amount of time of two adc's just standing and attacking each other should do about the same amount of damage regardless of which they bought.

There are some obvious problems with that example but the game really doesn't have an existing item that does that.

Only Play Darius1 votes

MasterYi

UberAffe1 votes

Have you tried build 0 damage items and only attack speed items, doesn't work well. I want attack speed to be as impactful as AD, and not something that just gets tacked on to kits because they need something else There would have to be changes to items and some champions but I think the stat is just kinda there right now and its not very interesting.

Only Play Darius1 votes

Of course I build damage, it's just that Yi scales extremely hard with AS because his passive multiplies his DPS and his ult is unique in that it multiplies his BONUS attack speed. 30% attack speed runes + item 3707 item 3153 item 3006 item 3074 item 3046 item 3031 = 2.5 AS during ult with about 400 AD, armor pen. is an afterthought because E gives me +100 bonus true damage on hit, and at 2.5 attack speed the guaranteed damage is INSANSE.

UberAffe1 votes

But what if you could have 150-200 ad and 5.0 attack speed.

I want more ways of doing damage than just "hard-hitting" builds.

DrNova1 votes

KogMaw

Cronofuge1 votes

Pure attack speed builds, save a few niche cases, aren't as good because of how it is a single component of a multiplicative damage equation. Buying 100% attack speed from none gives you... well 100% more attack speed but buying another 100% is only a 50% increase to your total IAS (increased attack speed)

On top of that with crit and attack damage those numbers increase your damage exponentially meaning that unless you have an ability that scales incredibly well off attack speed (kalista/vayne/kog) your best bet for damage is spreading your gold into those stats.

UberAffe1 votes

Yes, that is how it currently works.

My post is asking for a change so that AS has a similar usefulness to building AD and crit

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