True damage is a pretty awful mechanic.

Especially for how available it is these days.

True damage used to be a pretty niche stat. Now its everywhere. to name a few.

I just don't see how damage you can't itemize against is healthy in a game that is more or less centered around itemization. Its basically taking a core mechanic of the game and saying "this doesn't matter anymore."

And I'm not really sure its the actual concept of true damage that's the problem, so much as the sheer amount of it that can be put out, how little skill it requires to put out, and how quickly it can be put out. Cho'gath in particular can INSTANTLY put out 2000+ true damage with a point-and-click skill. Damage like that should happen over time, or over a few skills, or at least something that has some kind of skill expression.

Most champions that deal true damage either deal it with a point-and-click skill, or with auto attacks. You'd think that damage that can't be blocked would be gated behind something that requires skill to execute so there's a fair trade off.

As a squishy champion, its just the worst. Most champions that deal true damage can deal it in the hundreds, and they can deal it very quickly. So as a squishy champion like a mage or an adc, you just die. Especially with how mobile champions are these days. One wrong step and you're dead. Zero forgiveness. Your base armors and your bonus armors from allies and such just don't even matter. And its not like you're building any health anyway.

Its pretty bad as a tank, too. You're supposed to be able to soak damage for your team, and yet you go down like you haven't spent thousands of gold on defensive items. It makes you wonder "why did I go through all that trouble to farm if its just not even going to matter. Why did I even buy these items?"

So yeah... it'd probably be fine if there were fewer champions that had access to true damage. It'd probably be fine if there was more of a "skill gate" on heavy-hitting true damage abilities. It'd probably be fine if champions couldn't inflict true damage with their insane attack speed auto attacks.

But as of right now, true damage is just too easy to access, too available in the champion pool, requires too little effort to execute, and appears in excessive amounts. When you end up in a game with an enemy lineup like its just like.... why would I even buy a defensive item at all? Its just gonna boil down to who kills who first.

My bet is on the entire 5 man team comp jam packed with true damage.