A solution to % hp true damage: make them have to build penetration

Pierce The Veal··1 votes·1,265 views

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.

15 Comments

Critmaster Garen2 votes

garens true damage hasnt been an issue at all. its conditional enough to be able to play around it.

fioras only issue is that riot decided to fuck up item 3053 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.

the real problem is vayne.

Pierce The Veal2 votes

[{quoted}](name=Critmaster Garen,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=YR5HdljN,comment-id=0002,timestamp=2019-02-21T15:50:48.162+0000)

garens true damage hasnt been an issue at all. its conditional enough to be able to play around it.

fioras only issue is that riot decided to fuck up item 3053 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.

the real problem is vayne.

Conditional enough as in (A) don’t kill people (B) stay way far away from garen if you do.

Critmaster Garen1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Pierce The Veal,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=YR5HdljN,comment-id=00020000,timestamp=2019-02-24T01:55:22.265+0000)

Conditional enough as in (A) don’t kill people (B) stay way far away from garen if you do.

a single target on the enemy team, vs. vayne who can just attack the safest target for her and gain the full benefit, without having to fulfill any special conditions.

yea, you can play around garens villainy passive.

Pierce The Veal1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Critmaster Garen,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=YR5HdljN,comment-id=000200000000,timestamp=2019-02-24T02:08:09.897+0000)

a single target on the enemy team, vs. vayne who can just attack the safest target for her and gain the full benefit, without having to fulfill any special conditions.

yea, you can play around garens villainy passive.

Relatively speaking.

So what can I build to deal with it?

Critmaster Garen1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Pierce The Veal,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=YR5HdljN,comment-id=0002000000000000,timestamp=2019-02-24T02:33:54.658+0000)

Relatively speaking.

So what can I build to deal with it?

shields. thats why the true damage is attached to mechanics that you can play around yourself.

you can outposition fiora and deny her hits on your vitals. you can kite out of garens range and fight him during spin cooldowns, or coordinate yourself with your team enough to keep him off you during a fight, and have someone who doesnt have the villain mark fight him directly.

the point is, that its a very restricting mechanic for garen, because he only gets the bonus damage when fighting a specific target on the enemy team. for fiora its just as unreliable, since it can be outplayed by her opponent and the procs arent guaranteed.

only vayne doesnt offer counterplay to the true damage. it doesnt modify her playstile or force her to go out of her way to fulfill some sort of special condition to access it like the other two have to.

Pierce The Veal1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Critmaster Garen,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=YR5HdljN,comment-id=00020000000000000000,timestamp=2019-02-24T02:52:29.222+0000)

shields. thats why the true damage is attached to mechanics that you can play around yourself.

you can outposition fiora and deny her hits on your vitals. you can kite out of garens range and fight him during spin cooldowns, or coordinate yourself with your team enough to keep him off you during a fight, and have someone who doesnt have the villain mark fight him directly.

the point is, that its a very restricting mechanic for garen, because he only gets the bonus damage when fighting a specific target on the enemy team. for fiora its just as unreliable, since it can be outplayed by her opponent and the procs arent guaranteed.

only vayne doesnt offer counterplay to the true damage. it doesnt modify her playstile or force her to go out of her way to fulfill some sort of special condition to access it like the other two have to.

Fiora is given the mobility to proc her passive. It’s not like she has those vitals and she is just incapable of proccing them unless you walk up to her and present them to her. If you’ve been on the fiora reddit you’d see that people are capable of instantly proccing all 4 of her ult vitals on people.

Garen’s true damage is just tacked on. It’s gimmicky and doesn’t improve his power much as a champion, but is overwhelming when he is decent or strong.

How many champions can itemize for shields? There’s four plain shield giving items in the game: locket, sterak’s, phantom dancer, and seraph’s. Locket is a support item and has a shield too insignificant to do much to % hp true damage. Sterak’s is the reason why jax, irelia, and camille can even win against fiora, garen, and vayne at all. Phantom dancer is recent, and has you sacrifice lots of damage for it; odds are if the champions we’re talking about are on you, you’re dead with or without the phantom shield. Seraph’s requires you to give up all of early and mid game to get, but is actually underwhelming.

Thus there is no reasonable way to build OR play against them.

The thigh guy2 votes

[{quoted}](name=Critmaster Garen,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=YR5HdljN,comment-id=000200000000,timestamp=2019-02-24T02:08:09.897+0000)

a single target on the enemy team, vs. vayne who can just attack the safest target for her and gain the full benefit, without having to fulfill any special conditions.

yea, you can play around garens villainy passive.

Don’t interact with them is not counterplay.

Pierce The Veal1 votes

[{quoted}](name=The thigh guy,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=YR5HdljN,comment-id=0002000000000001,timestamp=2019-02-24T13:08:34.503+0000)

Don’t interact with them is not counterplay.

Literally this. I don’t understand why this is so hard to understand for some people.

“Oh yeah just stay way far away and let him do his own thing, that’s counterplay!”

Saezio1 votes

Instead of all this math, wouldn't it be easier if their damage simply scaled off of penetration? Kinda how Pyke scales with lethality now?

If vayne W had lower base true damage but scaled from lethality and % arm-pen?

Pierce The Veal1 votes

{quoted}

Instead of all this math, wouldn't it be easier if their damage simply scaled off of penetration? Kinda how Pyke scales with lethality now?

If vayne W had lower base true damage but scaled from lethality and % arm-pen?

Pretyy much exactly what my rendition would accomplish. It would scale up exactly as her autos would without a wonky +x damage scaling.

Weiner the Pooh1 votes

Fiora hasn’t been a “balance nightmare” for nearly 3 years, And that was only because Fiora could build tank due to Titanic Hydra. Her passive has never been a balancing problem.

Pierce The Veal1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Me Not Smart,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=YR5HdljN,comment-id=0001,timestamp=2019-02-21T15:44:18.866+0000)

Fiora hasn’t been a “balance nightmare” for nearly 3 years, And that was only because Fiora could build tank due to Titanic Hydra. Her passive has never been a balancing problem.

Her passive, while not necessarily problematic, is part of a larger balancing problem. Percent health true damage has no way to play against except Fiora’s “minigame.” Something that Riot has pulled away from doing a while back, but remains in fiora’s kit. She is only “not a problem,” because conqueror provides champions like jax a way to do true damage and outdo champs like fiora. If conqueror were to be removed, tanks would come back, and with them, so too would fiora.

Weiner the Pooh1 votes

Its funny you mention tanks. Yes in a duel Fiora will beat a tank 9/10 times. But League hasn't been balanced around splitting or independent play for a long time now, and that is where Fiora excels. Half the reason Fiora is not very good atm is because shes a horrible team fighter. Tanks massively out scale her in team fights. Fiora doesn't "beat" tanks.

5050BS1 votes

The #1 Best solution to it is to REMOVE both Completely and make ADC build Armor Pen like in S1-4

Pierce The Veal1 votes

{quoted}

The #1 Best solution to it is to REMOVE both Completely and make ADC build Armor Pen like in S1-4

This is what I’m aiming for ultimately. I miss when people had to build armor pen. Nowadays building tank only protects you from weak champions.

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