Is there any real balance related reason for this?
I know some people are gonna reply "
" but if he and other attack speed enthusiasts were balanced with an uncapped attack speed in mind this wouldn't be an issue right?
So why is it a thing?
Magi Mayvin1 votes
OyddAWqJ5r1 votesDoesn't break the cap. And I'd be much less afraid of an attack speed stacking Rageblade Vayne than I would of a traditional AD Vayne.
DrCyanide1 votesbut if he and other attack speed enthusiasts were balanced with an uncapped attack speed in mind this wouldn't be an issue right?
It becomes an issue of balancing on-hit effects for two very different people: people with one or two attack speed items and people who attack you 5 times a second. That's why Kog was such a problem, he showed that you can only balance on hit items if you've got a min and max amount of time they can be applied.
OyddAWqJ5r1 votesKog was a problem because he literally doubled his total attack speed. Attack speed on-hits were never the issue. If he had to buy 3 more attack speed items to reach that level of attack speed it wouldn'tve been an issue because he'd be eating up item slots where he would have otherwise built damage after hitting the cap.
And if you think about it, on-hits are balanced for both cases. On-hits typically deal a flat base amount of damage because they scale with attack speed and therefore scale as the game progresses.
Everything in the game is balanced around the biggest abuse cases. Look at old spell vamp. It was balanced around the abusers. Steraks? Liandrys? Even current on-hits are balanced around those who can proc them the most and are put at an appropriate damage level for both the scaling aspects and maximum use cases.
Therefore I see it as a non-issue that they should be balanced around those who build for it and those who don't build for it. That's like saying Infinity Edge should be balanced for those who build crit and those who don't build crit. It's redundant because you don't spec into a stat like that unless you are trying to utilize it fully. The same should be said for attack speed and on-hits.
DrCyanide1 votesEverything in the game is balanced around the biggest abuse cases. Look at old spell vamp. It was balanced around the abusers. Steraks? Liandrys? Even current on-hits are balanced around those who can proc them the most and are put at an appropriate damage level for both the scaling aspects and maximum use cases.
There's a reason it's "old spell vamp", because they couldn't balance it around the abuse cases and normal use cases. It was either busted on the abuse cases or not worth it for every other AP champion. Sterak's was similarly nerfed hard because of the abuse by Marksmen, which has resulted in Riot testing out melee only effects on it.
Liandry's and Infinity Edge hit the sweet spots where even if you're not getting the maximum out of the item it's still good, and it's just a bit better on those who can hit the condition.
Crit Damage differs from On Hit because of the stacking of different effects. BORK's magic damage is improved by Wit's End MR steal, the stacking of Rageblade makes all other On Hit effects stronger, etc. Additional Crit only makes Crit more consistent (and has diminishing returns at a point, the difference between 80% Crit and 100% Crit isn't much), it doesn't multiply the power of other Crit items.
TLDR: they'd have to pick some AS value to balance all the On Hit items at, which would be based on the abuse cases (much like Spellvamp was), which would make the builds feel weaker to other champions than they do now.
OyddAWqJ5r1 votesThere's a reason it's "old spell vamp", because they couldn't balance it around the abuse cases and normal use cases.
Oh. Got me there lol. Never thought of it as if they couldn't balance AS but rather they just don't. I get it though. Similarly if there was some form of cap on the usage of spell vamp it would be balanced which is why we have our current system that imposes this solution in its simplest form where the cap is 0!
Makes sense.