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Anbody else think that Thornmail gives way to much free damage?

Starcall Casey··2 votes·382 views

It's an item that anybody can buy to just add to their damage without even having to touch that person. I played as twitch and was doing really well, The enemy diana purchased Thornmail and suddenly I can no longer kill her and was 3 shotting myself as she stood still while also killing our carries, surviving because of the extra defense and burst of that item. It shut's down anybody who needs auto attacks for damage so why can't we have the same for magic damage? The enemy team has two champions that instakill you with magic damage? you build banshee's and that only gives you 55 MR so they're still killing you instantly. Why can't we just have either thornmail be removed or a thornmail banshee's vail or something. I'm just sick of losing because they have 1 item. DFG was removed because of it's toxic play pattern, but it also had a cooldown, meanwhile thornmail has a toxic play pattern without needing it to be activated nor having a cooldown.

Maybe let thornmail have an active or a new effect like this one, "Every auto against you now deals 30-120 (scaling by level) back the the attacker" instead of this bs we have right now.

Another thing I find funny is that while everyone get's armour per level, only a few get MR per level and not even every tank champ get's it.

Lower the damage on thornmail, change it's build path so it doesnt give 100 Armour,

10 Comments

Lord Dusteon3 votes

You do realize unless a champion has heavily itemized defense Thornmail won't help them as much as a Randuin's or even Sunfire, right? Additionally, you realize Thornmail is A) A PURE armor item with no other stats to speak off (Frozen Heart has mana and massive cdr, Zz'Rot has MR and the active, etc.) with an active only useful against autoattack centric champions, B) Does magic damage, already weakening it's effect and allowing one to itemize against it, and C) Does damage back based on damage taken, allowing an adc (or other autoattacker) to get a Last Whisper or such and lifesteal much more, cutting the damage even further?

DrNova1 votes

I'm pretty sure he doesnt realize that

Starcall Casey1 votes

I do realise that you can itemize against it, but Dying from it dealing 1500 damage with you having bork, last wisper and banshee's is fair right? Diana's abilities still doing 600 each with all of those items and her still surviving. Totally fair right?

Kouga1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Lord Dusteon,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=WcgX8aon,comment-id=0000,timestamp=2015-05-26T20:36:09.302+0000) C) Does damage back based on damage taken, allowing an adc (or other autoattacker) to get a Last Whisper or such and lifesteal much more, cutting the damage even further?

Thornmail reflects based on damage before any damage reductions (armor) are applied. Not on the amount of damage taken.

Via Wiki:

On being hit by basic attacks, returns 30% of damage, before any reductions such as armor, as magic damage.

Also

Damage is reflected when hit by an attack, regardless of whether the attack deals damage. If the attacker is blinded, or the wearer is protected by a shield or invulnerability, damage will still be reflected.

And

If you have >233.3 effective armor, Thornmail will reflect more damage than you receive, assuming the attacker has 0 magic resist; if they have 30 magic resist, >333.3 armor is required.

Lord Dusteon1 votes

{quoted}

Thornmail reflects based on damage before any damage reductions (armor) are applied. Not on the amount of damage taken.

Via Wiki:

Also

And

If you didn't cut out the important part of "to get a Last Whisper or such and lifesteal much more, cutting the damage even further?" that would work. Cutting their effective armor increases your effective damage after it is reduced by armor, increasing the amount of life gained via lifesteal. More life gained from lifesteal means less total damage taken from Thornmail (unless you build 3+ Lifesteal items you aren't going to outheal Thornmail, but even one or two lets you almost ignore Thornmail damage).

For the last bit, that means an average melee champion needs Thornmail and at least 2 more armor items to equal out damage on an adc. If the adc has Last Whisper (or your armor was shredded from the new Black Cleaver) that armor jumps to ~490 to equal out damage, which requires either 4+ armor items or a champion with a massive armor steroid (Rammus, Malphite, Taric, maybe Garen). Even then, any lifesteal or extra magic resistance the adc has will make that armor amount jump even further.

LoLKiru1 votes

Thornmail should probably still give you 100 armor (its sort of why nothing else builds into it, its JUST armor so its not gold efficient unless you have health to back it up)

You could maybe stand to lower the damage a bit though if its really that much of an issue, its noteworthy though that its intended use is to counter lifesteal.

Only Play Darius1 votes

Well without thornmail people would be taking Quinn top every single game. So you can blame those guys for the existence of item 3075.

Matezoide1 votes

If a Thornmail on a champion that was probably building damage until that point completely shut you down, you werent playing well.

The reason Armor items are better than Magic Resist is because AD, as a stat, is strictly better than AP.

IcyPepper1 votes

It's not free if you had to buy it.

If anything, you could argue that it's cheap.

And it's a way for melee champions to damage champions with "free" attack range. And to counter lifesteal (which is a defensive stat, while thornmail's passive is offensive, so lifesteal will almost never "break even" with thornmail's damage. That would be imbalanced).

Kouga1 votes

Thornmail is built against Auto-Attackers. Most of which will/can build Lifesteal to help mitigate the damage taken. Plus it means the defender is putting a large gold investment into one item against you which gives them no other stats.

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