A solution to % hp true damage: make them have to build penetration
Vayne, Fiora, and Garen’s % hp true damage has been a balancing nightmare for a while. It’s impossible to itemize against properly. What I propose is a replacement of % hp true damage with % effective health physical damage, but nerfed a little from live values. Essentially, this is % hp true damage that requires you to build penetration to get the most out of it.
The way it works is like so:
If I have 200 armor and 2000 hp I have 6000 effective hp. Let’s say vayne’s W deals 5% effective hp physical damage. It would deal 300 damage and then get reduced by the armor down to 100 damage. Vayne now has to choose to build a proper penetration item or itemize attack speed. Building more armor still doesn’t help, but % damage reduction does apply to this new damage type. Anyway, back to the math. If she buys lord dominiks, it reduces the enemy’s armor to 130. Doing the math: 300x100/(100+130)=130 damage. The ultimate outcome of this is these champions will actually have to consider building penetration or lethality to do more damage, instead of just beig able to outright ignore building pen.
Ideally the values would be somewhat worse without penetration and somewhat better with penetration, making the champions have to consider building pen vs their opponents.
TL;DR: Nerf base values of the true damage, make it benefit off of building penetration so the champions are forced to seriously consider what items they build instead of just more ad/attack speed/defenses.
Edit: not sure why I am getting downvote bombed. I’m literally just saying that we should force garen, fiora, and vayne to itemize to optimze their percent max health true damage, instead of just having it tacked on as free damage.
when they made the item give bonus ad instead of increasing base ad. otherwise its the same as garens. her true damage is attached to a conditional mechanic.