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Melee attacks being uninterrupted by flash is counter-intuitive for both sides of the fight

Kitsuki05··6 votes·2,984 views

So, I don't know if many people know this, but when you flash away from a guy swinging his weapon at you, it'll still land after the animation is complete even if you're quite a distance away from him. This is most noticeable on Nautilus who I believe has the slowest attack animation in the game. (to be a good Nautilis player you actually have to learn *not *to orbwalk, and to let your attack land where someone used to be before running after them.)

Now, what this often results in is the following: 1. Champion is low on health and flashes out of an intense fight in reaction to the enemy swinging what he knows will be the final blow, and the dies several feet away, punished by his quick reaction time. 2. Champion is about to land the killing blow and sees the enemy flash away, he quickly reacts by stopping his attack animation to give chase, possibly losing the opportunity to have landed the killing blow because he reacted to an "escape"

Now, if you were too slow in either of the scenarios, you actually benefit out of the situation, because something you weren't aware of functioned in a way you wouldn't expect. But if you happen to be able to react this quickly, the result is a humiliating failure for demonstrating skill.

EDIT: To put things into a more easily understandable perspective, let me draw this comparison. Most players learn to be distinctly aware of the wind-up times of powerful skillshots, such as blitz grab, thresh hook, lux/morgana snare, ect. Also, there is a reasonable amount of time where a player can react to such abilities with flash. Your choices in these situations are to use flash or not use flash. If you flash quickly enough, the ability is spent, and you dodge whatever it was you were afraid of. Yes, there is still a chance to use flash and still be hit, or to be unable to use it at all; however this is consequence of a failure to react. You can also choose to not flash, and still avoid things, this is a different form of reaction, and you are rewarded by retaining your ability to flash.

There are distinct player chooses and predictable consequences in all of these scenarios

Now, when a champion is closing in on you in order to melee attack, there are still the same two choices, flash or don't flash. However, in this situation any reaction is a failure. You may choose to flash, and that mean you will use flash and die. You may choose to not use flash, and you allow them to hit you when they might have otherwise accidentally caused themselves to miss.

I'll admit, the canceled your own auto attack when they flashed away scenario is incredibly unlikely. But we as players know it is possible. When we are forced to consciously make the decision to fail, it kinda suck regardless of unlikelihood.

9 Comments

Deep Terror Nami3 votes

Did you consider why this is done? If you do, you'll realize that this is necessary and quite intuitive;

Problem caused by melee not landing on moving targets: Melee can't hit jack shit unless they stand there like a fence post.

  • Solution 1: Melee now have nearly instantaneous autoattacks and the animation plays afterwards.

New problem caused by shitty solution: True orb-walking is back. The power of your champion is directly tied to how fast you can stutter step and cancel the animation.

  • Solution 2: Melee can auto attack on the move so targets aren't constantly getting out of range.

New problem caused by shitty solution: If you aren't melee, you suck. Kiting them is impossible so ranged either gets buffed to be just as tanky as them, or they become worthless in the game.

  • Solution 3 (current): After a certain point in the attack animation, the attack will go through. Ranged already does this but has missile travel time. Melee will simply hit the target as if they were still in range. Melee still has to stop to swing.

Problems caused by this solution: Sometimes you get 1 auto attack when you flash/teleport in a very tiny window while being attacked.

Take your pick of problems. I'll take an auto to the face once in a while over breaking the game any day.

Kitsuki051 votes

This information is obvious and irrelevant to the topic. The statement is that Melee attacks being uninterrupted by flash is counter-intuitive. Just being able to walk away from melee attacks would be dumb, considering they had to get into melee range in the first place, and if this situation applied to any ability in which the character was blinked, it would arguably ruin melee champions. This situation applies to flash, and only flash. Either the champion should get the kill for the melee attack, and flash shouldn't be burned, or flash goes off successfully and you escape.

Deep Terror Nami2 votes

Obvious, except you clearly don't care about the problems that are prevented by letting you get hit when you flashed. If you don't like it, that's too bad. Fixing your tiny issue would break the game which is why everything I wrote is relevant. Get over it.

Kitsuki051 votes

Ok, guess I'll write how everything you said is just plain wrong or has nothing to do with this issue.

Problem caused by melee not landing on moving targets: Melee can't hit jack shit unless they stand there like a fence post.

Moving targets has nothing to do with the issue. If anything players feel more compelled to stand still and not give chase knowing that if the enemy flashes at the last second and you do anything to stop the attack, you allowed them to escape.

  • Solution 1: Melee now have nearly instantaneous autoattacks and the animation plays afterwards.

This technically solves the problem, but just adds in more problems. Why would you even consider making this change when only the single instance of flash is the problem?

  • Solution 2: Melee can auto attack on the move so targets aren't constantly getting out of range.

This doesn't even fix the whole problem and still adds problems. It is now even harder to infer at what point an autoattack will officially occur onto your character, but at least players have no reason not to continue chasing in fear of canceling? Radically changes how League is balanced.

  • Solution 3 (current): After a certain point in the attack animation, the attack will go through. Ranged already does this but has missile travel time. Melee will simply hit the target as if they were still in range. Melee still has to stop to swing.

Problems caused by this solution: Nobody really knows at what point in an attack animation will actually hit or not, attacker or the attacked, it simply isn't telegraphed in any way. A game-changing skill can be wasted due to a lack of clarity, for no real reason as there is clearly a programmable solution (see interaction between flash and Skarner ultimate).

Literally, what are the consequence of making this simple change? Who is going to rage and say, "Before they allowed flash to break melees, that last attack would have killed you, noob!" And if they're that worried that this tiny change will somehow negatively impact melee champions as a whole, just set it so flash isn't put on cooldown after you get killed in this specific manner.

DJ Hatsune Miku2 votes

Flashing away from ranged attacks makes the arrows/axes/energy beams make sharp 90 degree turns to hit me. That's also not that fair. Also as a very seasoned Nautilus player I will certainly tell you that orb walking is quite useful to him and actually canceling the animation of his empowered autos to extend his W duration past what it should be is quite key to him, something that involves the player moving and attacking to do. Plus he's gotta stay in range and not stutter stepping is a recipe for being out run.

Everyone makes bad flashes, some people flash as they die, other flash and die to a phantom auto. No one is going to call you a noob because you flashed and died to the third hit of jax's autos when he was pummeling you. Hell, I'm sure it even happens to the top .01%.

Kitsuki051 votes

Yeah no, if you cancel your critical champion snaring initial auto in order to keep up with the enemy, you're going to fail to CC them, and they are most likely getting away. Within the time frame Nautilus hooks, riptides, and then winds up his auto, 50% of the things you want to lock down most will have either dashed or used a non-flash blink, and running after them just stops the snare.

As for ranged attacks, nowhere in my post do I claim that melees shouldn't happen because it doesn't physically make sense, everyone should understand that if something is homing in on you, you shouldn't be able to just flash dodge it. This is consistent and intuitive to the game mechanics. My only issue is when you skillfully react to the wind-up of a dude getting ready to smash your face in, or flash away just as they reach melee range, and you fail to escape because of an inscrutable amount of time between an attack is winding up but cancelable and this hit will land no matter what. You could argue that that this should also apply to the wind up of ranged attacks as well, and I would say that could be valid, but generally no one is fooled into thinking they can dodge an attack by range because of how variable ranged attack distances play out. (there is no definitive "this is the range all champions can shoot you at") They either maintain a safe distance, or they see the telegraphed attack and know they're dead.

DJ Hatsune Miku1 votes

[deleted]

Kitsuki051 votes

How can you not know that you can cancel your own autoattacks? They just released a champion whose passive literally points out that she can't cancel her autoattacks like all the other champions.

Booty Studio2 votes

I fully agree. I also believe certain spells (like tristana using her W to jump away) would need considered.

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