@Meddler: Phantom Dancer and Skirmishers Sabre

What is the current balance regarding these two items?

• Reduced enemy damage by 20% applied for 4 sec using Smite (min. 15 sec cd, with a 60 sec recharge rate, can hold 2 charges)
• Reduces enemy damage by 12% applied from basic attacks therefore no cd, ends after 10 sec.
• ( MS/AS reduced by 30%, armor/mr decreased by 10 and deals 40% reduced damage for 2½ sec.)

I've thought a while about how best to approach this subject but overall I feel that champions who's main weaknesses was supposed to be squishiness is now bypassing it by using a combination of the items listed above, to the point where I have seen top Yas with both items and other top laners with just Skirmishers Sabre more than I care to remember :/

The champions who benefit from pd+Skirmishers are generally pretty squishy as they're relying on basic attacks and attack speed, (Yas, Graves, Kindred, Yi and so on)

However this combination of items makes it ridiculously difficult to invade and force a fight, while they're unprepared. Partially since their kit relies mainly on basic attacks rather than abilities, but also because they have too much damage mitigation to survive your burst, and too much sustained damage if I would want to stick around for an extended fight.

#Thoughts I'm not going to discuss stats unrelated to damage mitigation.

What role do they fulfill?

• Phantom Dancer

• Duelists

• Nimble champions

• Champions who rely on crit (Marksmen + Trynda, Yi and Yas)

• Skirmishers Sabre It was meant as a dueling tool, the 'old' active gave you on hit true damage, but was nerfed/reworked due to certain abuse cases (Yi/WW being the main offenders).

  • Still a dueling tool, but it's a one stop shop for most champions.

#Problems

• The champions who benefit the most from those items, are using them to bypass their own weaknesses.
• It is very binary, making the champions up to 64% harder to kill with their -32% damage mitigation, this is detrimental if you want to kill them using assassins, making Assassins an unreliable strategy.
• The items are meant for champions and roles who's intended weakness is squishiness, so it makes them walking fortresses that deal the sustained damage of carries, but is just as hard or in some cases harder to kill than bruisers and juggernauts because of their lifesteal on top of the damage mitigation.

#Suggestions

Rework the items, to keep their intended purpose, but change how they go about it.

• Phantom Dancer (kiting and a bit dueling)

  • Change the duration from 10 sec to 6
  • Change it to be stacking 2% every hit, up to 12%
  • Change the radius for the bonus % ms for ranged champions, to be [their range + 50], 450 for melee
  • This would solidify it more as a kiting and dueling item, rather than get close and be binary stronger, you can opt to kite opponents who have dash skills.
  • When the stack disappear from one champion you receive double the MS bonus for 1½ sec, so 14% instead of 7% regardless of distance to enemy champions. (this should be applied when alternating between enemy champions)
  • It won't trigger in duels, by the time it does the enemy is either dead or you will have escaped.
  • It'll be awesome in double lanes
  • Should work well for teamfights as a kiting tool
  • Only abuse case I can think of, is when being chases by 2 or more champions but in that case it will work mostly as the old Furor, except that you now have to attack different champions which can be very difficult, and you will have to be in range to auto attack as well, so quite a high risk, high reward, high skillcap edge case.

• Skirmishers Sabre

• Remove the active damage mitigation to champions and DoT true damage completely.

• Change the active on champions to a 3 sec 'silence' where the enemy champion can cast 1 spell before being silenced, as well as -20% decreased AS for the 3 sec.

  • This would create a whole new array of options and scenarios, if you activate it too late the enemy will have already used all his spells, if you activate it at a bad time, they still have the option of escaping (Lee might have some problems since he'll need to use q twice, or have a ward ready)
  • Damage amplification to champions rather than mitigation would cause the same problems that DFG did, therefore I do not feel that this is a viable option as it causes more problems than it solve.

• 20% increased smite damage, (rather than the old AoE)

  • Damage amplification (and/or mitigation) to monsters creates different dilemma's, but 5-10% increase in spell damage to monsters or monsters you've smited shouldn't tip the balance.
  • The topic at hand here is clear speed and remaining health after clearing the camp, if you clear it faster you'll receive less damage anyway so dmg mitigation from monsters is rather redundant.
  • If the clear speed is increased too much it'll interfere with the niche of Trackers Knife
  • It'll give you the option to 'duel over objectives', creating a scenario where you genuinely have to think about saving your smite to negate the enemy carry for a few precious seconds, or steal the objective, which is possible with the 20% increase

That's it guys, any idea/thoughts on how we can go about this without upsetting the balance?