Yo Riot, it's 2015, nearly season 6

The Bearded Bard·Sep 26, 2015·14 votes·1,162 views

And clones still don't have fake buffs when their originals do.

What's up with that?????

13 Comments

ShikigamiSep 26, 20153 votes

Maybe balance reasons? Let's face it, a clone basically doubles effective health considering there's no sure-fire way of telling which one is which -- so you're stuck in an escape only situation for the duration of the clone.

The Bearded BardSep 26, 20156 votes

What?? How does it double your health in any way? lol there are easy ways to tell it's a clone. 1. Has buffs? Not clone. 2. Click on either of them, real has items, fake doesn't. 3. Is one acting even more dumb than your average player? Clone. Even if it wasn't easy as hell to tell which one was the clone, it still wouldn't be doubling their health.

Why should Shaco specifically be punished for literally doing his job? Why should LB be punished for getting blue buff? Wukong for killing enemy jungler? All of them for getting Baron?

delonixSep 26, 20155 votes

I think GodCorvus was responding to your original post where you suggest that Riot should remove "easy ways to tell it's a clone."

You're right, it doesn't literally double your health. It just makes it so that your enemy has to kill both you and your clone (again, not currently, but in a world where Riot listens to you and makes it difficult to tell which is the clone).

Shaco's R makes him untargetable, invulnerable, and completely invisible (even to true sight) for 0.5 seconds before the enemy team can see his buffs. Even then, Shaco's clone does damage when it's alive and when it dies.

LeBlanc gets a free second of invisibility when she generates her clone before the enemy team can see she has blue buff and chase her down.

Wukong goes into stealth for 1.5 seconds when he generates his clone. Even if it's easy for the enemy to tell that Wukong has used Decoy, they can't do much but guess where he is until he reappears.

OrangesilkSep 26, 20151 votes

Well, these champions are -meant- to be confusing and have you shift your focus around, why add clones if you don't want them to be functional at all then?, we're just asking for an ability to be consistent with itself and be functional at all moments of the game instead of doling out random punishment (an ability not working as intended is punishment indeed, imagine if Lucian couldn't dash while under the influence of red buff) for doing things they are meant to do?:

delonixSep 26, 20151 votes

I think the clone abilities are working as intended. Having LeBlanc go invisible for 1 second when she hits 40% hp is already distracting, making the clone have her buffs isn't necessary. Shaco's clone is super functional; it can do damage and proc items on its own, plus it does a decent amount of aoe magic damage when it dies.

I'm not sure why you think buffs not appearing on clones is "punishment." The worst thing that happens is that your opponents play well, notice the buff, and kill you instead of the clone. This is called counterplay. If you want to be able to completely fool your opponents and never die when you play champs that create clones of themselves, then this is definitely the wrong game. Let's be realistic, if Riot gives clones the buff visuals, then there's no justification for having any difference between the items or stats of the original and the clone. At that point, the only option for your opponent would be to guess which one is the clone.

Adding buff visuals to clones to make the ability "consistent with itself and functional at all moments of the game" is like removing the ! from Rengar's ult. I mean, he's stealthily hunting champions, why should they get to know when he's nearby?

The Bearded BardSep 28, 20151 votes

Yes the counterplay to Shaco is for Shaco to have red, blue, or baron buff on him. /Sarcasm.

That's not playing well or counterplaying. Playing well would be noticing that one of the shacos is taking more damage than usual or dealing less than usual, one of the shacos is using abilities, one of the shacos is acting a bit strange, or perhaps noticing that the real shaco is always facing the same direction on spawn as when he used Hallucinate,or noticing that the real shaco has the buff icon 'Hallucinate' when it is clicked on. Counterplay would be upgrading red trinket so you can see which is real and which is fake.

With all of those reliable ways of showing which is the real one and which is the fake, why would adding a visual red buff to the clone make him impossible to differentiate from the original? With your logic, Shaco without red, blue, or baron is better than a Shaco with red, blue, or baron, and that doesn't make sense at all.

delonixSep 28, 20151 votes

I'm not sure why noticing some things is "playing well" but if it's red buff than that's not okay. You seem pretty confident that detecting the clone is easy and reliable, so I'm not sure what displaying buff visuals would actually do. In other words, with all of those reliable ways of showing which one is real and which is fake, why would adding a visual red buff to the clone change anything?

I'm pretty sure red trinket doesn't even help unless Shaco uses Deceive, because Hallucinate makes him invisible even to true sight.

If you're right about all of this, then even if Riot goes through all of the trouble of changing the way clones are coded so that they appear to have the same buffs as the originals, it won't actually make it difficult to detect the clone, so there will be no change. What is the point then?

The Bearded BardSep 28, 20151 votes

{quoted}

I think GodCorvus was responding to your original post where you suggest that Riot should remove "easy ways to tell it's a clone."

Shaco's R makes him untargetable, invulnerable, and completely invisible (even to true sight) for 0.5 seconds before the enemy team can see his buffs. Even then, Shaco's clone does damage when it's alive and when it dies.

LeBlanc gets a free second of invisibility when she generates her clone before the enemy team can see she has blue buff and chase her down.

Wukong goes into stealth for 1.5 seconds when he generates his clone. Even if it's easy for the enemy to tell that Wukong has used Decoy, they can't do much but guess where he is until he reappears.

I'm not saying remove easy ways to tell if it's a clone. There are still many ways to tell if it's a clone.

Here's some for Shaco: When using Hallucinate, the real Shaco will always appear facing the same direction that he was originally facing. When using Hallucinate, the real Shaco gains the buff indicator 'Hallucinate', and will retain indicators such as an enemy debuff or an allied buff, the clone will have none of these. The clone Shaco cannot use abilities or item actives. I can't tell you how many times I'll clone, then use Hydra active, W, E, even Q and the enemy still just attacks the clone. The clone takes increased damage and deals less damage.

And Leblanc: The clone will always move immediately on spawn. The real one will continue to have debuffs and buff indicators, the clone will never have these. The clone cannot use abilities or item actives. The clone deals no damage.

And Wukong: The clone can't move, use items, attack, or use abilities. Upgrade red trinket. If it doesn't disappear after 1.5 seconds. Again, buff and debuff indicators.

Those are great and healthy ways to tell if the enemy champ is actually a clone or not. What's not a healthy way is 'Oh look, the enemy Shaco has red buff, good thing we now know which is the clone for the remainder of his red buff.' That's punishing the player for doing something he's supposed to do. As that other guy said, what if Lucian couldn't dash when he had red buff? That's a bit extreme because as you pointed out, the abilities still do other things, but a fair comparison would be to say 'What if Lucian could only dash half the distance while he has red buff?' That's what it's like.

delonixSep 29, 20151 votes

Your original post suggests that you want clones to have "fake buffs" that mirror the actual buffs that the originals had, so I'm not sure why you mention buff and debuff indicators on all three of them. I guess Riot could go through the trouble of coding clones so that they have red/blue/baron buff visuals but don't actually have buff/debuff icons displayed on the clone character hud, but that seems like a pretty ridiculous request.

I'm not sure why you feel that obvious things like using abilities and item actives are "great and healthy" but obvious things like whether you have red buff or not are punishing. Let's look at an edge case. Say LeBlanc with Blue Buff gets hit by Braum Q, dropping her under 40% hp. She automatically generates a clone and gets 1 second of invisibility. In the current system, she would reappear with Braum debuff visual and blue buff, while her clone runs away with no visuals. Maybe the invisibility buys her enough time to escape, maybe the clone eats an auto or skillshot before the enemies jump back on to her, or maybe she dies because the buff gives her away.

Your original post isn't very detailed, so let's assume there are two possible other scenarios. First, her clone has blue buff, but not Braum debuff visual, and isn't slowed. In addition to everything else you listed, this makes it so that there is literally no change from the current system. Sure, it would be cool if clones displayed buffs, but if it doesn't change anything, why bother?

Second, LeBlanc clone shows up as close to identical as possible, with the slow, the Braum debuff, and blue buff. There are still ways to tell if it's the clone or not, but some of them require spending time damaging the clone. This would be a significant buff to clones and would require Shaco, LeBlanc, and Wukong to get nerfed somewhere else. I don't think any of them are overpowered right now, but I really would not want to trade any of their current power for buff visuals on clones.

The Bearded BardSep 29, 20151 votes

By it showing buff indicators, I mean when you click on a champion, it'll show things like 'yarr this unit is a mighty pirate' for GP. Or 'this unit is a flippin' ninja' for any of the ninjas. For Shaco it'll show 'Hallucinate' for the real one, and nothing for the fake.

But you actually have to physically click and maintain vision on the champion to find these things out. With any of the map buffs, red buff, blue buff, baron buff, alter buff, vilemog buff, etc, you know instantly without any effort at all because the real has the buffs and the fake doesn't. What all of those other posts are saying is, while this would be an awesome change for clone users because it'd make it way easier to fool people, it definitely wouldn't remove all ways of knowing which is real and which isn't.

See what I'm saying here?

delonixSep 29, 20151 votes

To me it seems like duplicating the buff visuals but keeping the buff indicators the same would be weird, so that if the clones do get changed, the buff indicators will also be duplicated, including stuff like Shaco's Hallucinate buff.

The Bearded BardSep 29, 20151 votes

Disagree. They already have duplicate visual buffs from items: if Shaco buys GA, both the clone and Shaco will show the GA, but if the clone dies, he's not going to revive. It's the same concept.

Teridax68Sep 26, 20151 votes

Likely because the code used to support clones is old, janky and in need of an overhaul. In spite of being a core game mechanic, projectiles have only received a proper update to their code this season too, so it's likely Riot's been working on overhauling this kind of tech for some time and is planning on releasing it whenever they do come up with a fix. There are probably also some lingering balance and pipeline reasons (for example, it might be a better idea to overhaul clones at a time when the champion update team works on Shaco ), but ultimately it would make a ton more sense for clones to be proper visual copies of their original champions than for them to only be half-convincing as they are now.