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Put a 0.2 - 0.25 second on-target cooldown on Black Cleaver's passive armor shred.

Reaper Review·5/29/2016, 3:12:38 AM·3 votes·594 views

I'm assuming the fact that Lucian's ultimate wreaks havoc on his enemies' armor with Cleaver is a contributing factor to the item being so strong on him. Not the only reason, mind you, because good AD + Rage + 20% CDR are all good reasons too, but a reason nonetheless.

A bit of math that I did earlier showed me that The Culling at rank 1, which is 20 bullets fired over a duration of 3 seconds, deals physical damage roughly 6-7 times per second. That's an instance of damage every ~0.15 seconds, give or take. Basically meaning that The Culling by itself will fully stack Cleaver on a target within one second. (At rank 3, or 30 bullets within the same 3 seconds, the interval decreases to a mere tenth of a second, at which point Cleaver fully stacks within a little over half a second.)

Giving it a very short on-target cooldown for the armor shred effect prevents The Culling from driving up the stacks instantly. If you're worried that this might impact other users of the item:

  • 2.5 AS means you attack roughly every 0.4 seconds, so basic attacks wouldn't be affected by this change. (Unless you're Kog'Maw, but then, nobody builds this item on Kog anyway.)

  • At level 16, Garen's Judgment deals damage every ~0.33 seconds, so that isn't affected by this change either.

  • Physical damage DoTs, like Urgot's E and Talon's Q, as well as Wukong's ultimate, typically deal physical damage per second as far as I'm aware, so this change doesn't interfere with them either.

Basically no single source in the game deals physical damage even close to as rapidly as The Culling does at rank 1.

If this seems like an odd way to nerf an item, Tiamat and its upgrades have a similar under-the-hood nerf on them. Their passive Cleave has a very brief cooldown between activations, which exists solely because of Shyvana. Specifically, so that her dragon form Q doesn't proc Cleave on everything it hits due to how it functions. (I'm not sure if this functionality still exists or if they've since worked it out, but either way, there is/was precedent for this sort of functionality tweak to curb an outlying case.)

I'm not sure this would fully solve the "Korean Lucian" issue, but it seems like a decent way to help curb it without meaningfully tweaking either the champion or the item.

15 Comments

AHeroNamedHawke5/29/2016, 5:13:49 AM5 votes

Change the intrinsic mechanics of an item while going over numerous champion abilities to ensure the change doesn't accidentally impact the established and balanced gameplay of every other Cleaver champion

Instead of nerfing Lucian

http://i.imgur.com/GLWxmBK.png[/img]

Critmaster Garen5/29/2016, 4:25:15 AM2 votes

great fucking idea. lets nerf another bruiser item because some adc is abusing it, instead of changing the stats around in favour of bruisers, or putting a "melee only" tag on it.

im seriously sick of this shit. this cant keep going.

either nuke lucian into the ground, or make bruiser items more restrictive. morello knew this is gonna be a problem 4 years ago, and sicne then theyve come up with solutions to make items scale better on bruisers, than adc. (steraks base ad scaling, melee only items)

so use these solutions.

alternatively just work more with base ad scalings, change sheens scaling, and reduce adc base ad/lvl across the board while slightly increasing their items ad values.

CrazedPorcupine5/29/2016, 3:14:53 AM1 votes

Hmmm, this would actually be okay. What about Wukong's ult? How often does it damage? Because I know that Wukong is another champion that also really likes Black Cleaver.

Irelia Bot5/29/2016, 4:00:16 AM1 votes

THis would actually target mostly the marksmen who are abusing it. Well talon might also feel it with his bleed but if you are still bleeding after a talon combo he has bigger things to worry about then reducing your armor.