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[Preseason Suggestion] Lane Minions Combat Clarity

AlgorithmcApathy·1/7/2016, 3:14:58 AM·3 votes·608 views

I never liked laning. The micro that laning involves is tedious and not fun, but there are interesting strategic elements that are fun. What if it was clear when a minion was low? Then we can display it in the UI, to make the strategic element more apparent to new players and less mentally taxing for more advanced players. It could be like wards, where you only need a small, pre-determined amount of auto attacks to kill a minion. When that number is 1 ("low enough"), the minion health bar turns red.

A quick test of this concept in terms of clarity could be just to pick the highest of either an autoattack that crits or the highest damaging ability, and display the enemy health in increments of that. When a minion is at 1, display it's health in red. Obviously this has it's problems, but it is useful in demonstrating the clarity of this idea.

I think a more interesting direction to take this is to have something like a 3-hit melee, 2-hit mage system. Towers deal one hit. Melee and Mage minions each deal 1 hit per auto, but have a longer windup time. This makes it easier to last-hit, more clarity on the importance of wave control, while still retaining the familiar wave control patterns. Attack Speed thematically becomes about splitpushing.

I think it's a good idea. It takes some work and a lot of change, but I think it's a good idea.

4 Comments

GinoSoldier1/7/2016, 4:14:32 AM1 votes

Minion damage to minions would need to be massively lower than 1 otherwise caster minions would two-shot each other. You'd also lose your opportunity to last hit if three mage minions were to target any same minion at the same time, which is quite frequent.

Another hitch; as far as autoattacking, sure this kinda works. However, what about spells and mages? And another; how does anyone press advantage when no matter what stats you possess, your clear power remains the same throughout the game? And another; Laners trusting this system would pay hard when the indicator for last hitting happens to pop up just as a minion receives a second consecutive hit and dies before you can target it.

I like the idea and i'm all for last-hitting gaining some clarity, but this plan of yours needs fine-tuning.

GinoSoldier1/7/2016, 5:33:36 AM1 votes

Say it went like this instead; Melee Minions have 300, Caster 200, Siege 500 HP. An autoattack from a champion or a turret hit automatically deals 100, and spells vary per AoE/DoT/Targeted/Skillshot. Inhib turrets deal about 30-50 per tick. Melee minion deals 30 damage, casters deal 20, siege deals 75. Last-hit Indicator appears when any minion falls below 100.

The lane pace with the current amount of minions should be close to the same while bringing your system in play.

There are only two issues left; minion damage to champions, and minion damage to turrets.

And lastly, the biggest hurdle, would this system's result be worth the insane amount of coding that would go with it?