Boards›Gameplay

Let's Talk About Twitch's Passive (and How Little Damage It Does)

Catffeine·5/23/2019, 2:24:08 PM·1 votes·1,895 views

TL;DR at the bottom #Introduction

A DoT that deals true damage; it's an understandable design philosophy that there shouldn't be too much true damage since there's no way to counter it.

However, other champions with DoTs deal considerably more damage, despite resistances being in the game, and some dealing true damage? "They deal attack/magic damage" could be argued, but that's why the ratio is attached to them, and they also get armor/magic penetration. There is no "true damage penetration". Despite that, they still have higher base damages while also having two scaling factors (per level scaling and stat ratio). I can't find any ability specific statistics, but I can say with confidence from experience that DoTs on champions like Darius, Cassiopeia, and more I'll list later deal more damage than Twitch's passive, some with good reason and some not. Cassiopeia and Darius are just the most guilty.

#Skill Level

It goes without saying that the skill level needed to successfully deal damage with an ability will play a part in determining whether it deals more or less damage by default, omitting other factors not relevant to the topic. Let's take a look at the application of each major DoT, starting with the subject matter. For all of these, we will be using Level 3 stat values and not considering ability casts unless an ability applies the DoT.

#Twitch

##Application and Other Considered Values Auto-attacks, 550 Range, squishy, six stacks. Damage: 1/2/3/4/5 true damage based on level, per stack, for six seconds.

##Math With Alacrity and the +10% Attack Speed in Offense, he will have .82 Attack Speed, meaning it will take him about seven seconds to reach six stacks. 20 damage is dealt by the passive between the first auto attack and the sixth stack, for a total of 56 damage assuming Twitch does not continue to reapply it. This is lessened if Venom Cask was cast, as it reduces the time between the first stack and the sixth.

##Risk There is huge risk at level 3 in a Twitch spending the time to apply six stacks, rewarded with a large amount of damage on his Expunge Contaminate. However, the damage dealt by the DoT is not rewarding whatsoever and honestly hardly noticeable. Even a health potion heals for 10 health per second and prevents a lot of potential DoT kills compared to other counterparts.

#Darius

##Application and Other Considered Values Auto attacks, 175 range, healthy, five stacks. Damage: 13-30(+30% Bonus AD) physical damage based on level, per stack, for five seconds.

##Math With +18 Adaptive Force from Offense, and Flex and Doran's Blade, he will have 25.2 Bonus Attack Damage and .65 Attack Speed, meaning it will deal 16 damage per stack (after armor is calculated, with the exception of someone starting cloth armor), 126 damage total (after armor is calculated) at full stacks, with the exception of someone starting cloth armor), and take 4.725 seconds to apply full stacks if the first auto is cancelled with Crippling Strike. 22 damage is dealt by the passive between the first and fifth auto attack, for a total of 148 damage assuming Darius does not continue to reapply it.

##Risk Depending on the matchup, it is an extreme risk to apply all five stacks as a melee champion, rewarded with bonus Attack Damage. On top of the reward of successfully applying five stacks, the DoT damage does quite a noticeable chunk of damage, more than double the damage of Twitch's passive, despite resistances reducing the amount of damage taken.

#Cassiopeia

##Application and Other Considered Values Skillshot with delayed cast, 850 range, squishy, one stack. Damage: 75(+90% AP) magic damage over 3 seconds.

##Math With +18 Adaptive Force from Offense and Flex, and Doran's Ring, she will have 33 Ability Power, meaning it will deal 80 damage (after magic resist is calculated and with the exception of starting Magic Resist in Flex or Defense).

##Risk The risk of applying this DoT is significantly lower, though counterbalanced by its mana cost and cooldown. Despite having a good reason to good amount of damage, even with as much early resistances as possible it deals more damage than Twitch's true damage passive.

#Teemo

##Application and Other Considered Values Autoattack, 500 range, squishy, one stack. Damage: 24/48/72/96/120(+40% AP) magic damage over 4 seconds.

##Math With +10% Attack Speed from Offense +9 Adaptive Force from Flex, and Doran's Ring, he will have 24 Ability Power and an attack speed of .76, meaning it will deal 26 damage (after magic resist is calculated and with the exception of starting Magic Resist in Flex or Defense). With the assumption he auto-attacks six times, he will do a total of 65 damage.

##Risk Considering top is his most commonly played lane, there is seldom any risk to applying his poison over and over. Even so, Teemo is the least guilty on the list, but still was worth mentioning due to him dealing more damage under the same conditions despite resistances.

#Honorable Mentions

##Brand His damage does %health magic damage, but is considerably harder to apply. Due to the complications in applying his DoT, and his DoT not even coming close to being his primary source of damage, he isn't worth the comparison, though it is still notable that his DoT deals considerably more damage and is %health damage.

##Malzahar His DoT being his primary source of damage, it makes complete sense that it would deal significantly more damage than Twitch's passive and be the highest damage DoT on this list. However, it was worth mentioning him as another example as a champion with a DoT that isn't true damage and deals considerably more damage.

#Professional Play and Platinum+ Solo Queue Twitch did not see a single pick in competitive play this season until MSI. In comparison, Cassiopeia and Darius were both picked multiple times around the world. This is, obviously, for more reasons than just Twitch's passive, but an increase in Twitch's passive damage could help him see a minor boost in pick rate. His early game is weak for more than one reason, but having even one low-impact ability is the difference between being picked and ignored in professional play. Where very minute micro mechanics can change the course of a game, having four abilities instead of five like every other pick is one, of many, contributions to his weak early game.

It isn't just early game either; statistics show that the average true damage done by Twitch in a game is 2,412. This is, of course, mixed in with red buff's burn damage, meaning his passive is doing even less than 2,412 damage per game.

#Reasoning Twitch is a very niche champion right now. He is, without a doubt, very strong, but the current meta just isn't letting him get much play (more later). It's completely understandable that true damage will deal less damage than physical/magic damage, but the damage output on Twitch's passive is so low that it's hardly worth calculating in fights. A passive definitely shouldn't be a core part of a champion's gameplay, it should just be a slight boost, but this isn't even a boost. It's an afterthought and a nice "haha" moment the 1% of times Twitch's poison actually gets a kill. Anyone who carries a potion can ignore Twitch's poison until he's level 9, then it only outdamages potion healing by 1. While a champion like Darius deals more than double Twitch's poison damage despite resistances. This isn't the major problem with Twitch's low pickrate, it's the meta, but this is one of many contributions to Twitch's weak early game. By no means should it be a game changing 5 true damage per stack at level one, but buffing it by even 1 damage per stack would be a huge improvement to his early game. It wouldn't make his passive feel overbearing, but it would at least make his passive noticeable.

#The Meta Aforementioned, Twitch doesn't have a high pickrate right now for more than just his passive. The meta just doesn't favour him in more than niche situations. He, without a doubt, can pop off in the right hands in the right situations, but he's still sitting at a 2% pickrate, the 3rd lowest pickrate of ADCs (right above Kalista and Kog'maw). We are in a high damage early game meta, where Twitch thrives in a tank meta and in the late game. 55.9% of games end before the 30 minute mark, and Twitch sees a huge increase in winrate between 30-40 minutes (going from a 51% winrate before 30 minutes to a 54% winrate after 30 minutes). A lot of the current laners bully him and provide a lot more in the early game than he does. Buffing his passive can help increase his early game success while still not making him even close to dominating the meta.

#TL;DR Other champions with DoTs deal significantly more damage than Twitch with their DoTs. This is, obviously, for good reason, but his passive is so underwhelming that it's more of an afterthought than an interactive part of his kit that Twitch players care to play around. Most of the time it's used for spamming ctrl+4 when the enemy has 6 stacks at 10 hp. He is bullied out of the meta for his weak early game already, seeing one of the lowest pickrates of ADCs. By no means is he weak, he simply just doesn't excel in the early game like other champions do. Buffing his passive by just one damage will ensure he sees more play without making him an overbearing, as he will be able to more successfully trade and deal a smidgen more damage during a fight.

8 Comments

Ackelope5/23/2019, 3:30:46 PM2 votes

nice long post, and while i'm apprehensive about the idea of any sort of direct twitch buffs, i'd rather they look at whether they even like the fundamental design of his passive and find a more fundamental way to change it than just fiddle with the numbers, as you said, DoT true damage is a bit of a scary concept if it's allowed to get out of hand. However, I'm not a twitch player, nor do I play against him very frequently, so I'm not sure that my opinion should really be respected on that matter.

On a different and semi-unrelated matter, though, I'd like to bring up one particular quote in the "Reasoning" paragraph.

"A passive definitely shouldn't be a core part of a champion's gameplay, it should just be a slight boost..."

and this statement I don't really agree with at all. It depends entirely on how complicated the passive is, how it is executed, and most importantly, what it does. There are passives like Twitch's or Leona's that are scarcely noticeable most of the time, although effective for certain purposes (Twitch's E in particular) and then there are passives like Lucian's and Fiora's, where it creates a pretty entertaining minigame of playing around the passive with the rest of your kit optimally to achieve the highest damage. It can be really fun, rewarding, and is a great way of differentiating the ways in which champions do things. Passives shouldn't just be slight boosts to champions, they should incentivize interesting and different gameplay patterns to separate each champion in a more basic way.

Kazekiba5/23/2019, 3:50:19 PM1 votes

The multiplicative nature does mean you have to make very very minor adjustments to it, or alter its function. Buffing it to 3-9 damage instead of 1-6 doesnt sound like much, but then the total damage at 6 stacks goes from 36 -216 to an insane 108 - 324 and becomes destructive early and relatively powering down late, the opposite of Twitch's intended design.

1 / 3 / 5 / 7 / 9 at levels 1/5/9/13/17 (or even 1+0.5/level) gives him more damage late without overbuffing his early game, which has to be kept poor in order to afford the late game monster he becomes with rank2 R, Max Q + Runaans + IE + BoRK. To further balance him, I'd love to see the ratio on his E reduced slightly and 5 damage added to base, but return his Q's old strength. Currently its a 10% ms increase, which unless one uses Celerity is next to nothing. Yes, this is tripled when approaching an enemy champion. However, there's conditions involved with that and it makes that passive all but worthless too;

Ambush bonus movement speed is tripled when moving towards enemy champions who cannot see him within 1000 range

With the change from Stealth to Camoflauge, he has a large circle in which he's revealed to enemy champions, and said range is iirc 600 or 550 at best.

This means he actually only has ~450 range in which the bonus movespeed applies, and it ONLY applies while moving towards an enemy. Vayne gets a flat MS boost at 2000 range, and this bonus is tripled when she has her ult on (which is currently "Always", but thats a different conversation) and is not lost when near enemy champions. If you flash towards vayne she still has the MS boost and is still invisible. Twitch is neither. Janna's passive gives an 8% MS boost to all allies within a 1,250 range moving toward her. One could argue Twitch's Q is balanced around moving toward Janna, as they could always be laning together, but there's a multitude of reasons why this wouldn't be the case (namely, Janna should never be in front of twitch)

Buffing his Q MS to 15-18% or so and removing the "toward enemy champions who cannot see him" honestly could help more than passive buffs, but I'd argue both are needed and power can be taken out of his kit in other ways.

SN: Another way I'd like to see Twitch power adjusted. Currently, Twitch gets empowered autos from Rat-a-Tat-Tat, his Ultimate, along with 20/30/40 AD. This is a good chunk of AD, but increasing the rank of his R only gives that extra longsword. If you never level your R past 6, all you miss out on is item 1036 item 1036 Duration, CD, Mana cost, empowered range, damage fall off ... none of these are changed in any way.

Spray and Pray (R) --> Changed (back?) to Rat-a-Tat-Tat Mana cost: 100 (Unchanged) Cooldown 90 at all levels --> 120 / 105 / 85 Bonus Range: 300 at all ranks --> 225 / 275 / 325 Bonus AD: 20 / 30 / 40 (unchanged) Duration: 5 seconds at all ranks --> 6 / 8 / 10 seconds

TwitchInMyPants5/23/2019, 3:59:43 PM1 votes

Just saying his passive is not meant to be a dominant DoT

Teemo doesn't have Expunge nor a 1000 range steroid. Cassiopeia does chunks of burst in a similar pattern for more damage but she has to hug people's faces as well. Please don't try to buff the least interesting part of the champion's kit just because a PASSIVE doesn't match the power level of ABILITIES. I'd hate for other stuff to be nerfed just to justify this champion having higher dps poison.