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Analyzing Liandry's Passive

Palaven·9/20/2018, 7:27:02 PM·7 votes·4,322 views

Liandry's currently has changes on PBE where there is a slight % max health damage increase (0.5%). I wanted to discuss the passive and how I think it is flawed.

Liandry's Concept: My understanding is that Liandry's is supposed to be the tank busting AP item. How quickly it shreds a tank is a matter for the balance team. But the point is that you buy it to deal with high HP tanks.

Personal Experience: I main Singed and have two accounts in diamond. There are different ways Singed mains play the champ. My typical build is item 3116 and item 3742 into situational items after that. I don't usually build item 3151 but I have gotten it on occasion when facing stuff like Chogath DrMundo or Sion . **In these situations Liandry's has felt extremely underwhelming - like it just tickles my high HP tank opponent who usually has item 3194. **

Liandry's and Singed Mains: The Singed mains who buy Liandry's the most are the one's who typically build AP. Liandry's is a decent all-around AP item on Singed and actually helps do significant damage to squishy targets.

This Constitutes An Item Failure: From my experience playing and watching other Singed mains, Liandry's fails because it doesn't function in the niche that it is supposed to. It amplifies damage to all targets but doesn't really put that much fear into the target it is designed for: high HP tanks.

Some Quick Maths: Suppose you have a 3500 HP tank that reduces incoming magic damage by 50%. If you use the 2.5% max HP value (for movement impaired targets) on Liandry's, the passive is doing 43.75 hit points after the 50% damage reduction. While I don't want to write this off as irrelevant, it also isn't that much. A full five seconds of this (quite a long time in a teamfight) will do 218.75 damage to a 3500 HP target.

The Problem: An underlying issue with the present values is that if you raise the % max HP damage to something that actually burns tanks, champions like Singed will become far too effective against squishy targets who have less MR.

My Solution: The passive needs to do two things to accomplish the tank busting purpose without making the item OP against non-tanks: (1) The % max hp damage should be true damage; (2) The passive should only activate against targets with at least X hit points. This could also be scaling.

Example: The numbers I use here are completely hypothetical subject to change by the balance team. But here's an example: "Deal 2.0% max HP of true damage over one second to targets with 2000 HP or more. Increases by 0.5% every additional 500 HP of the target."

12 Comments

Doge20209/20/2018, 7:35:44 PM1 votes

One thing that you could try do and something I want to try soon, is on somebody like singed or rumble (and have Liandry’s of course) use the conquer rune and try see how that interacts. I haven’t tried it in game yet (don’t have enough time when I remember it and I usually forget stuff lol) but from what I think and have seen it could be really good in adding lots of true damage to your DOTs, which btw item 3194 does not reduce true damage.

Also one thing, the reason why it is good on rumble and other mages and not so good on singed is that usually the other mages build at least spellpen boots to counter the MR that the enemy will buy. And if I remember correctly singed players don’t normally build spellpen or void staff.

I would really like to see a buff like that going to Liandy’s, but the problem with adding that idea is that there is already a ton of true damage to the game. And conquer already kinda shreds tanks pretty damn hard. so reworking an item passive to instead deal true damage to help just one champion that struggles when buying it (singed) is not only impractical, but will also most likely make the game not fun and probably more toxic. Maybe instead of true damage, have Liandry’s burn still increase like how you said (but without converting to true damage) but instead also a percent of the magic damage from the passive bypasses the target’s MR.

Colton1479/20/2018, 8:36:59 PM1 votes

Mordekaiser

ZaFishbone9/21/2018, 8:12:16 AM1 votes

From my, admittedly much lower ranked, experience, you usually spend quite a bit more than 5 seconds applying poison, and you usually use it against more than just one person. Combine this with the damage ramp up and this also helps in finishing off people who escape with just a sliver of HP.

VoraciousX9/21/2018, 8:33:58 AM1 votes

I personally don't agree with this. I do think it's good against squishies and not too good against tanks unless the synergy is there for the champion(multi hit abilities mainly), but I think giving it true damage and only activating it on champions who have high HP, might be a little wrong. I'd say instead give the %maxHP shred an AP scaling(and likely a lower base damage) so that for one Singed can't just get a liandry's and run all over the place on people with full tank items. I've always hated that Singed could do this and still be effective, He should have to build AP if he wants to do damage imo, and for 2, AP casters could actually get a decent tank busting item. The passive totally needs AP scaling. It makes no sense that it doesn't have AP scaling. I'm not saying make the AP scaling BUSTED but it definitely needs more than just it's base damage.

I've always compared BORK and Liandry's as being two sides of the same coin, the difference is BORK scales with attack speed, while liandry's doesn't scale at all.

You also have to keep in mind that when building liandry's, you're going to be having enemy squishy champions too. So you're going to have an item that's almost useless against other champions if you gave it's passive a health threshold to pass.

However, giving it scaling might make it too effective against squishies later in the game as well, and I can sympathize with that. You could also treat it like Giant Slayer was, so that it isn't too overpowered against squishies it could be like 1+(0.5% per 100 AP) to 2.5+(1% per 100 AP) depending on how much more health they have than you. It'd likely have to be a much lower threshold than Giant Slayer was though because liandry's and rylai's both give a sizeable chunk of health.

DearPear9/21/2018, 8:42:05 AM1 votes

Yup. Make it true damage, reduce the % damage on low max HP targets, increase it on high HP targets with a max value.

Only thing I'd be afraid of is the interaction with Mord's ult. It could become a press R to kill any tank. You don't want that.

You could also make the passive scale off CDR and / or AP, with its base value reduced.