Why do some skills completely out shine others? Specially Newer abilities?

Romans VI XXIII··2 votes·790 views

For Example.

Ability 1.

basic attacks grant Focus, stacking up to 4 times. Stacks last for 4 seconds, after which they fall off one at a time every second.

Once reaching 4 stacks, can activate Ranger's Focus to consume all Focus stacks, granting 20 / 25 / 30 / 35 / 40% Attack Speed and replacing basic attacks with a flurry of arrows resulting in 1.05 / 1.10 / 1.15 / 1.20 / 1.25 of her Total Attack Damage per attack for 4 seconds.

Ability 2.

surrounds herself with a storm of feather-blades for 4 seconds, granting her 30 / 35 / 40 / 45 / 50% bonus attack speed, 20% increased damage on her attacks, and 30% bonus movement speed for 1.5 seconds whenever she attacks a champion.

If X is nearby, he will also gain Deadly Plumage, in turn increasing the bonus damage on each of them to 40%.

Both abilities serve the same purpose, but one completely out shines the other.

  1. the First requires at-least 4 attacks before being able to be activated, where as the second can be activated at any time.
  2. The First gives less attack speed at all ranks.
  3. the First increases the damage by less at all ranks but the last. -15/-10/-5/0/+5 %.
  4. If the Second has a certain ally champion nearby he also gets it PLUS it increases the damage bonus to 40%, 15% more than max ranked ability 1.
  5. the second gives a movement speed burst.

I know champions are balanced around there entire kits, but when abilities are literary identical except for one having higher stats it just really bugs me.

I'm not complaining about either champion, cause its obvious who they are :P, just simply pointing this out.

8 Comments

Aptest5 votes

Mostly because Ashe's power budget is heavily invested in having a free CV, a hyper range catch skill and a perma-slow.

Whereas Xaya, as pointed out, has a situational and short ranged snare, and an ability dodge. So she gets to have more damage.

Xaya is a hyper carry and similar to other hyper carries she has limited utility but multiple steroids, as well as some "outplay" ability. The other hyper carries are built in a similar way.

The Lost Marbles2 votes

Xayah's kit is basically all damage, so she kinda has to bring higher damage potential with her skills or else there's no reason to be playing her.

Ashe, on the other hand, has a lot more utility, so her potential damage is lower and her steroid's not as strong.

For what it's worth, though, Ranger's Focus has that nice synergy with Black Cleaver.

BananaSlayerAMO2 votes

Although Xayah's ability is clearly stronger, I'll mention this to be thorough:

  • Xayah has 16/15/14/13/12 CD while Ashe has none (needs 4 stacks of focus instead)
  • Xayah's ability costs 60/55/50/45/40 mana while Ashe's costs 50
  • This essentially works to Ashe's advantage early game

And as you mentioned, it better to consider the champ's entire kit rather than just one ability.

  • Ashe passively slows her enemies, so she doesn't need MS buffs
  • Ashe has very high attack stats; she beats Xayah in base range, AD and AS. Compared to other adc's, Ashe is very reliant on autoattacks so her spells are innately weaker.
  • Overall, the main difference is probably that Xayah has great survivability while Ashe brings immense utility.

This said, I still think the W interaction between Xayah and Rakan is too strong. It single-handedly wins 2v2 skirmishes.

Romans VI XXIII2 votes

I agree, except on the point of it being in ashes advantage early, its by far not, as ashe NEVER maxes Q first. and untill rank 4/5 Xayas W is FAR beter than ashe Q

HaIlMonitor1 votes

I notice this with champs such as: Ekko > Diana the two of them have almost identical kits, but Ekko's kits is better in every single way. I think both have cool kits that fit their theme, but why is would they make the same person, re-skinned, just flat out better.

Big Lincoln1 votes

so that you buy them

ChaddyFantome1 votes

Because one champion has a Frozen Mallet Passive at lvl 1 and the other doesn't.

DemainaNyx1 votes

Want a better example, Tristana's Q is 30-110% attack speed with NO MANA COST. Granted I feel like her downside is the fact only one of her abilities has an AD scaling, but still, no mana cost on an attack speed steroid for an ADC seems wrong.

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