Tertiary Causes of the Damage Creep

##Intro There are often threads that address an increase in damage across the game. And while I don't have match histories from 2012 to compare, I'll discuss it under the assumption that the damage creep is real. While this list spans multiple seasons, I'll focus on causes that resulted in it culminating in this one.

##Cause 1: Cooldown Reduction First up, the main reason for the damage creep outside of straight changes to damage is the increase across the board of CDR. Generally, the trend among items has actually been a slight reduction in their AD and AP (such cases as Cleaver and Rylai's). However, where it used to be rare to get even 30% with a regular build path, it's now quite easy to get 40-45% without sacrifice because many items simply had their CDR bumped from 0-10 or 10-20.

For fighters, both Trinity and Cleaver grant 20%, with many defensive options having 10 - 20%. For mages, the standard build of Luden's/GLP/Archangel's with a Zhonya's second or third boasts 30%. And the core build for assassins, Youmuu's/Duskblade/Cleaver caps you out at 40%. Then there's the slew of items with 10% on top of that, Twin Shadow's, Banshee's, Spirit Visage, Righteous Glory, etc. And there's still the option to get 15% from runes alone, without the large sacrifice to damage that doing so with the old runes entailed.

Having your spells up more often means you're able to use them more, and as a result deal more damage overall throughout a game than before. While it was possible before, choosing to max out CDR meant making a sacrifice to your flat damage. But now 30 - 40% within your first three items is standard for all ability-based core builds.

##Cause 2: The Defense Nerf Tank Update Last year's midseason tank update was stated to be the last class update (thank god), but it was also surprisingly the first and only to be a nerf to the class involved instead of a buff. Especially considering the fact that they only adjusted three champions to cope with the nerfs, unlike the small tweaks they did to most members of each class in the Juggernaut, Mage, Marksman, and Assassin updates to adjust them to the coinciding item changes.

How they accomplished this was simple: they adjusted most tank items to have less HP and more of either armor or magic resist. That maintained the same effective health (meaning how much HP you have factoring in defense stats) against the damage type the armor/MR was for but reduced each item's effectiveness against the other damage type. Two items were even introduced with comparably bad base stats, but passives that further increased your defense against specific types of physical and magic damage. This means that tanks in general are now weaker, but also means that the option of finishing off a mage or ADC build with a defense item is weaker as well.

##Cause 3: The Other Other Damage Type Closely tied to the reduction in effective HP across the board is the new-to-this-year trend of making a ton of true damage conversion available to multiple classes. Namely, the Conqueror rune and the change to Infinity Edge. With the overall effective health of defense items lowered by the tank update, true damage became stronger than it ever was before. This wasn't so impactful when true damage was limited mainly to Vayne and Fiora's %HP effects (which weren't effected) and relatively weak burn effects like Challenging Smite and Twitch's passive. But now that true damage is core on two entire classes, the fact that the reduction to effective health adversely effected vulnerability to true damage is showing through.

##Conclusion While there are other things to include, like the straight-up addition of damage in the forms of runes (starting with Thunderlord's and escalating with the new system) and item effects (Duskblade, Luden's), these are the main reasons not directly tied to a flat increase in damage. And though I don't have a suggestion as to how to fix them, seeing as two are tied to the revamped rune system, I wanted to bring attention to some of the factors besides AD and AP that have increased the damage we deal in games.