Tooltip Clarity w/ on-hit effects
I thought about this while discussing some interesting build options. Champion abilities aren't very clear on what type of effects they can activate.
Por ejemplo, I will compare Nasus' Q and Jax's W.
Nasus' Q, Siphoning Strike, is an attack modifier that deals bonus damage based on how many kills he has farmed with said ability. Like most attack modifiers, it has base damage and resets the attack timer, and the attack applies on-hit effects. While the modified attack can crit, his Q's damage is not multiplied (except for that one time when it was bugged, but that's another story).
Jax's W, Empower, is also an attack modifier. It deals bonus magic damage, and has a low base cooldown to give more consistent damage output and help ramp up his passive's bonus AS via the attack reset. However, the attack applies regular on-hit effects and spell on-hit effects. I have my own hypothesis of the mechanical reason why it functions like this, but that's irrelevant; what is important is that this is not made readily apparent in any way to the player.
In fact, very few spells explain functions like that. There are a handful of spells that apply on-hit effects, and that's explicitly mentioned, but there are attack modifiers and passives that do not reveal such information for spell effects.
I can understand why, though; it's more tooltip clutter to say "Applies spell effects," even though there are some abilities that do apply spell effects (Jax's R passive), and some similar abilities that do not (Diana's passive).
Here is one solution I cobbled together on my own.
Why not have abilities tagged with different types to explain how they work?
Instead of saying "Applies on-hit effects," why not call it an "Attack Ability" since it's treated like an attack? Instead of not saying anything, why not call it a "Spell Ability" so people know it applies spell effects? Instead of calling it an "on-hit effect" because spells have on-hit effects as well, call it an "Attack Passive" for simplicity. You can likewise call the spell equivalent a "Spell Passive."
I haven't come up with a good name to separate passive spell abilities that do/don't proc spell-hit effects (i.e. Brand's passive extends the duration of Rylai's slow, but Liandry's effect does not). There's also probably an easy way to note which attack abilities can/can't Crit, but I haven't come up with anything for that yet. But that's the general idea.
Opinions welcome, discussion appreciated.
>proceeds to the "useless but not worthless" bin that's probably stacked to the ceiling