Boards›Gameplay

Does anyone want the old Flat->Percent penetration system back?

NinjaFifer··29 votes·2,111 views

Back in S2 the penetration system used to be that Flat Penetration and Resistance Reduction applied before Percent Penetration did. Granted, this made Tanks very... well... tanky, but it was bad. Really bad. The problem is that with the way that resistance is done, the first 25 points of resistance are worth almost as much as the next 75 points. If you can get into the low numbers of resistance on an enemy, your damage skyrockets.

With Percent Pen applying first, you get a lot of penetration against tanks, but you ALSO get near True Damage against squishies, and, thanks to Irelia, we all know how powerful even a small amount of True Damage can be. If we switched to the old system, you'd have to actually invest in a ton of flat penetration to get that true damage against squishies, but you'd deal less damage to tanks. Build Percent Pen and you'll deal more damage to Tanks, but less to squishies. All that would be needed from the old system is some numbers changes. Basically, just up the Percent Pen to make tanks less unkillable, but there could be other solutions.

If we switched to the old system, we'd also have more room for item diversity. You'd need to build a lot of flat penetration to deal true damage to squishies, but, currently, there's only 1 Flat AD Pen final item, and 3 Flat AP Pen final items. There's very little variety here, and I'd like to see that widened.

There should be a strategic choice to what type of Pen you buy, just as there is in everything else in this game, but, currently, Pen is just a catch all damage boost for everyone.

27 Comments

xLegendary Troll8 votes

Does anyone want the old tank meta to come back? You know, the one where Rammus can ram the anus of your adc 100-0 and there's nothing you can do but cry in the forums to revert the changes back?

BetaDude402 votes

Well, what about the new ADC meta, where the ADC of your team can 5 shot Rammus before he even gets close to him/her and easily 100/0 the person that's supposed to be hard to kill? Look at all the tanks "crying" (I don't really like using that. Many of the people "crying" about the weakness of tanks make very good points and offer balanced methods to keep both tanks and ADCs in line) on the forums to revert armor penetration back to the way it was in S2.

EDIT: No, I don't want the old tank meta to come back, but I do want tanks to be worth a damn

xLegendary Troll1 votes

There is no "new" ADC meta. There's a C at the end because people realized that marksmen had the highest DPS overall and can carry an entire team. That's why the support role exists. Their job is to "baby sit" the marksman and make sure they can farm freely without getting bullied.

Maybe adc seem op because nowadays people feed even harder and the game snowballs even faster.

Sammystorm2 votes

Tanks weren't the problem in that meta. Bruisers were. People like xin, lee, J4.

They could build one damage item then be really hard to kill.

Sound at all like the current meta?

Talamare5 votes

No, old system was stupid Getting percentage pen reduced how much flat pen you had That is insanely stupid

They need to change % pen to be only bonus defenses instead of all

Rebonack7 votes

{quoted}

No, old system was stupid Getting percentage pen reduced how much flat pen you had That is insanely stupid

They need to change % pen to be only bonus defenses instead of all

That would make the problem worse.

Tanks would just build Ninja Tabi and then spam the hell out of HP since something like 58% bonus pen would be required to be workable according to Riot. All you would do is make building resistance totally pointless.

What Riot should do is make Void/Whisper give bonus true damage based on the target's relevant mitigation stat, that way it would scale only on their defense like Torment/BotRK rather than scaling off their defense AND your damage. That would be way, WAY easier to balance for.

NinjaFifer4 votes

That just sounds abusable by certain champs. We're looking for a solution to the overall system, not a solution that only champs with spammables can use. There'd be no way to balance what you're talking about since champs who can deal more small instances of damage would abuse the item while those that did their damage in large chunks would find the item useless.

Granted, that's exactly how Bork/Torment work currently, but we don't need more of that segregation.

Rebonack2 votes

{quoted}

That just sounds abusable by certain champs. We're looking for a solution to the overall system, not a solution that only champs with spammables can use. There'd be no way to balance what you're talking about since champs who can deal more small instances of damage would abuse the item while those that did their damage in large chunks would find the item useless.

Really now? Impossible to balance?

UNIQUE passive: Dealing physical/magic damage causes enemy champions to take True Damage equal to (percentage) of their armor/magic resist over 5 seconds. This ability can not be applied again to the same champion for 6 seconds.

That allows it to be useful on basically anyone and the 6 second cooldown prevents it from being abused by DoT effects with long durations.

Granted, that's exactly how Bork/Torment work currently, but we don't need more of that segregation.

Yes we do.

Have you ever seen what someone who has BotRK, Yomama's Ghostblade, and Whisper does to people? Making Void/Whisper inflict a True Damage dot would make it so they no longer interact with either %HP damage nor with flat resistance penetration. They would simply be counter-build items against high mitigation values. This might even allow Riot to make resist values a little less absurd, because right now if you build Tanky you're immortal against anyone without Void/Whisper.

NinjaFifer5 votes

{quoted}

Really now? Impossible to balance?

UNIQUE passive: Dealing physical/magic damage causes enemy champions to take True Damage equal to (percentage) of their armor/magic resist over 5 seconds. This ability can not be applied again to the same champion for 6 seconds.

This HEAVILY favors poke and siege based champions. This would also fall to the same drawbacks as Torment has, in that its damage would have to be OP to be noticed by enough people to see play. Also, how would multiple people with it on the same team interact? Could you just slap the AP version on the support and not have to worry about it on the mid? Could top take the AD version and let the ADC build 100% damage?

Yes we do.

Have you ever seen what someone who has BotRK, Yomama's Ghostblade, and Whisper does to people? Making Void/Whisper inflict a True Damage dot would make it so they no longer interact with either %HP damage nor with flat resistance penetration. They would simply be counter-build items against high mitigation values. This might even allow Riot to make resist values a little less absurd, because right now if you build Tanky you're immortal against anyone without Void/Whisper.

I'm all for having tanks not feel immortal unless you build one of 3 items, but this would pretty much fall into the same category. In fact, since there's no interaction, these items would probably either just be OP and a must on everyone (especially everyone if the DOT's were tracked differently per character), or would be be completely unused since they don't do enough to solve the problem and can't be synergised to increase their efficiency.

NinjaFifer1 votes

Bonus defenses would be interesting. I would personally still want to feel like the item I bought still functioned against someone who didn't build resistance, even if not as effectively.

Percent Pen working only against bonus resistance reduces the damage you do to tanks (something we kind of want) but just straight up doesn't work at all against squishies (minus runes/masteries, but those are negligible by the time said item would be built). It may be a better solution by the numbers, but it feels bad to have an item just be not useful against 2/5 or so enemies.

Sneak Dog5 votes

The problem is that with the way that resistance is done, the first 25 points of resistance are worth almost as much as the next 75 points.

False. There are no diminishing returns on armor just like there are no diminishing returns on health. Every point of armor will increase your effective health against physical damage by 1% of your maximum health, regardless of the amount of armor you have. This means that 10 arpen will decrease the enemies effective health against physical damage by 10% of their maximum health.

PoisonedPeace1 votes

I don't know about that, but OP is talking about algorithm for damage resistance from armor, where the damage multiplier is (100)/(100+armor).

Sneak Dog4 votes

The damage multiplier is fun, but often misleading. Going from 50% damage taken to 33% damage taken by buying another 100 armor after having 100 armor increases your effective health by 100% of your maximum health.

I feel like the OP expected to go from 50% damage taken to 25% damage taken when going from 100 to 200 armor. This would be silly, it'd mean 100 armor would double your effective health for every 100 armor. It'd mean there were increasing returns on armor.

It'd be like buying a pickaxe and it giving 25% of the total ad you had before the pickaxe. Instead, a pickaxe increases your ad by a flat 25. This means that buying it when you have 200 ad is a smaller boost than buying it when you had 100 ad. That's only logical. If you invested all your gold in ad, starting for this comparison at 0 ad, and yet you only had 100, getting a pickaxe is 25% of your gold. If you had 200, it'd be 12.5% of your gold (which also are the exact amounts the one pickaxe increased your ad with).

VanillaOreo1 votes

No it would be like buying a pickaxe and only getting 20AD because you already had one.

Sneak Dog2 votes

That is outright false.

If you buy 100 armor and you have 2000 health, your effective health against physical damage goes up by 2000. Whether you had 0 or 300 armor before you bought the 100 armor, it will go up by 2000 health.

If you think this is not true, tell me how you think the math works.

DeusVult3 votes

No, we have already gone too far, and the old system made no sense

the problem is simply that all tank itemization is lackluster compared to damage itemization, in both AD and AP categories. And the fact that each % pen item is such a bandaid to cover all the "problems" that carries have against anyone building resistances. There needs to be more pen itemiztion, but each needs its own niche, so its not, "buy this item and do more damage to everyone"

Brorelia2 votes

Well it would somewhat help if LW only effected auto attacks.

Then you wouldn't have every AD assassin building LW and blowing up a target (I'm looking at you rengar) and make them have to be more selective about who they go after.

AFK Push5 votes

{quoted}

Well it would somewhat help if LW only effected auto attacks.

Then you wouldn't have every AD assassin building LW and blowing up a target (I'm looking at you rengar) and make them have to be more selective about who they go after.

That wouldn't change for Rengar, because nearly all of his damage in his all ins is from his q, which is just a really strong auto attack.

doubleguac2 votes

I do think there's a problem with penetration, but I don't think the system should be reverted. It didn't make sense to essentially punish people for stacking a lot of flat armor pen on top of % armor pen--it seems like that is exactly what you should do if you're trying to punch through a tank's defenses.

I think LW, BotRK and Void staff just needs to be individually changed. As everyone pretty much already knows, they are way too cost/slot efficient against squishies. People should have to go somewhat out of their way to itemize against tanks, but right now, there's basically no opportunity cost to building in a way that will allow you to burn through tank health.

Cindikle2 votes

Pen system IMO is fine as is.

Problem is that tanks don't have options. If you're building tanky. You get armor, hp and MR. Maybe Tabi's.

Why isn't there a tank item that say increases the effectiveness of armor vs abilities by 10% but reduces it vs basic attacks by 10%. Or the other way around.

Tanks can't specialize in how they tank. The itemization is bad.

While damage dealers have multiple options. -Flat Pen -% pen -AD/AP -CDR -On-Hit effects -Crit -Attack Speed

I understand offense is supposed to outscale defense. But that doesn't mean that every tank build should be the same thing as the last game. Or very close to it.

KirbyCake1 votes

i don't, it would essentially mean don't get any flat pent if you're going to get % pent.

with 40% pent, it means that 40% of your flat pent is essentially worthless.

67chrome1 votes

If we switched to the old system, we'd also have more room for item diversity. You'd need to build a lot of flat penetration to deal true damage to squishies

They're squishy. Pretty much every existing damage stat kills them already, because they're squishy. Which makes flat pen geared exclusively to killing easily killed targets useless.

The answer between flat or % is always going to be the same if you turn them into an either-or choice. % is always the way to go.

That's not diversity, that's just making some items completely useless. Having items synergize well with one-another is usually what breads diversity.

Mandaari1 votes

Yes. Idk why they made the change in the first place. Now you stack pen and laugh at anyone that builds armor. Before you actually had to make a decision between wanting to blow up squishies or tear through tanks.

Phil Fly1 votes

item 3001 item 3135 item 3020 item 3151

or

item 3035 item 3071 item 3142

with appropriate runes and masteries, everybody becomes a squishy :D

Borbland1 votes

Just reduce Last Whisper's percent reduction and it's fine.

ccseancc1431 votes

There should be a tank item, that has a paasive that calculates flat before percent but make is really expensive and only give that passive and like 50 armor.

Raith Alghul1 votes

Suggested an item a while ago that would offer some options for pure tanks when dealing with penetration or health shred builds without being a problem for health/resist scaling or making bruisers stronger.

http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/gameplay-balance/p0bnA43G-all-hail-leviathan-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-the-botrk

This item would effectively scale with any tanks stat, since the more resist you have the more efficient the passive, and it does the same job as the ancient golem without the crazy scaling problems. it wouldn't be effective on a bruiser because of the reduced effectiveness it would have when buying it by itself and the fact that buying it early would mean giving up damage items.

More from Gameplay

3 Refunds per season, upvote if you want 3 refunds per season.
Gameplay764 comments
7,167
votes
3 Refunds per season, upvote if you want 3 refunds per season.
Gameplay156 comments
3,510
votes
UPVOTE FOR URF
Gameplay606 comments
2,440
votes
Yes plz.
Gameplay456 comments
1,721
votes
3 Refunds per season, up vote if you want 3 refunds per season.
Gameplay114 comments
1,716
votes
When is ANYONE at riot going to address the awful new player experience?
Gameplay634 comments
1,383
votes

More by NinjaFifer

As first pick,
Gameplay29 comments
20
votes
Another reminder that death recap is terrible.
Gameplay14 comments
17
votes
The number one rule for playing league...
Live Gameplay Balance9 comments
11
votes
Shop Easter Egg I never knew about.
Concepts & Creations6 comments
9
votes
Other weird news: Smite trolling.
Gameplay9 comments
7
votes
Gotta say, Ryze might actually be balanceable now.
Gameplay4 comments
6
votes