What if Lucian was THE mixed damage carry?
Make his passive second shot converted into magic damage. Follow this same pattern with his ultimate, making each shot from one pistol do physical damage and each shot from the other pistol do magic damage.
This would accomplish a few things:
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Item balance: Current Lucian uses lethality items and Black Cleaver very effectively because he can use Black Cleaver to shred armor quickly with passive and ultimate shots, causing lethality to hit that much harder. Making his passive and ult partly deal magic damage would make it harder for him to stack Cleaver and make lethality on him way less effective, nudging him more towards crit items.
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Strategic niche: Right now, if your team lacks magic damage you can pick Corki because his damage profile is mainly magic. He fills that strategic niche. By contrast, whenever Lucian is meta, he’s automatically the best pick because he doesn’t have much of a niche - he’s just the best marksman whenever his numbers are good because his kit offers a lot of things a marksman would want without many downsides. Lucian could really fill the niche of a bully that dominates early but falls off late, due to the nature of mixed damage kits in League.
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Thematic cohesion: Lucian’s passive currently manifests itself as a weaker auto, which is kinda lame for how cool and good it feels to use, but it also doesn’t do his lore justice since he and Senna depended on each other equally. If the numbers on the second shot were as powerful as the first but a different damage type, it would really feel like he’s wielding two guns of the same set. His numbers could be tweaked to accommodate having each shot be equal damage (lower base AD, lower attack speed, etc), and the second shot could even have some different effects or colors to designate its significance from a normal physical damage auto. This logic applies to the ult as well, obviously.
I think this direction would be healthier for Lucian overall. What do you think?
TL;DR Making Lucian’s damage profile mixed could carve out more of a niche for Lucian and make him easier to balance as a marksman, while having the added effect of tying him more into his theme of dual wielding magic pistols.
