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Is there a reason for champion MR to not start at 0?

Burungeru·1/3/2015, 12:56:27 PM·1 votes·1,271 views

To start, I'd like to state that this could probably be said for armor, but I think that gets slightly more confusing. In light of that, I want to focus exclusively on magic resistance because it's easier to explain.

Assuming the lolwiki is correct, the base for all champions magic resistance is 30. This translates into roughly about 25% percent reduced damage. If this is the standard for all champions, wouldn't it be significantly clearer if simply everyone started at 0 MR / 0% resistance (then +per level thereafter), and monsters/turrets/minions to be adjusted in accordance with that so that spells values are roughly equal? I ask this both because I wonder if there's more complex math involved with it that might not be so obvious, and because I think it's a solution to a problem.

While I understand that basically after level 1 (or even at level 1 with many rune/mastery setups) the number deviates wildly between champion types due to innate scaling/runes/masteries/items, it seems like this might be a change that's preferable. As it is, it seems like a popular complaint is that penetration is currently too strong, and I'm wondering if the fact that resistances don't start from a neutral point, that this might be a reason it's hard to balance penetration. Think of a situation where neither you nor your own opponent have any MR runes/masteries/items. If you're both mid laners and you buy spell penetration even though your opponent has no bonus MR, you still deal more damage to them with those boots. This makes penetration a strong buy for against targets who buy MR and those who not. However, if we were using the system where everyone started off with 0 magic resistance, it would would make the item strong versus target who buy MR (or are naturally tanky) but not against targets who buy exclusively damage items. The reason this might be nice is because this means penetration becomes a stat that's not universally strong, but one that's focused against champions that actually obtain resistances. Because it becomes a stat where there is a focus, its value versus other targets become weaker. You effectively choose to either deal more damage to a tanky target and less to glass cannon than on live, or to ignore spell penetration in favor of damage/bulk in order to deal more damage to glass cannons, but less to tanks.

Please, if there are any obvious errors with my math/typing, point them out. It's really early and this thought kinda came out of nowhere.

17 Comments

Raptamei1/3/2015, 6:36:00 PM2 votes

The base magic resist is from Dota.

Talamare1/3/2015, 1:10:06 PM1 votes

Only a few melee champions get 0.75 MR scaling

SEKAI1/3/2015, 1:29:57 PM1 votes

Champs don't start with 0 armour either, except 1 dude who is closer to that.

It's a balance thing, I guess.

Angry Monster1/3/2015, 3:47:42 PM1 votes

So first off since every person starts with 30 MR, that is a neutral starting point. 0 does does not have to be a starting point in math. IT just has to have a common place, ie in league 30.

So it is possible to take a champions MR to negative resistance. Old Sorka was the biggest offender though some other champs may still be able to do this, or maybe a feature champ will. There are 2 different types of MR removal in league, and i am not talking about flat and %. This is what allowed Sorka to cause negative MR with old star fall.

At this point and time AP ability, AP item, and AP pen item would have to be changed. That is a lot of work since some AD champs also have AP abilities and those would also have to be modified.

Your also talking about a net buff to every mage in the game. Mages would probably lose pen boots id your idea happened. Well then they would be free to pick up CDR boots instead. This is giving them a huge boast in power since they are supposed to be gated by CDR and limited item choices.

When you look deeper you start to see why the MR is set to 30. This forces certain itemization like pen boots as a gating mechanic to limit choices. Void is problematic cause it is just to good of a item, It is efficient even against people without MR. I do not really see how changing resistances to 0 would fix anything besides forcing a numeric rebalance. That rebalance does not even mean things would be fixed.

Kratos2631/3/2015, 6:24:13 PM1 votes

Even if you found a way to make this work, it would be way too much work and you should all forget about it. If champions started with 0 mr (so true damage from magic damage) they will need to rework the masteries and runes because of base ap becoming way too strong, and they will also need to rework every champion who has magic damage in his kit so it doesn't become op. Also, if they didn't change the runes, base ap would be better than penetration, because

#1: you'd get fed easily with a mage early game, and if the other guy has bought mr runes, then he's probably still less resistant then he would have been now (try to get that 30 mr with runes alone), while also being weaker since he had to use his runes on resistance.

#2: reducing base mr and forcing erveryone to buy mr runes isn't balancing, it's mega nerfing. It won't make people chose between penetration and base ap either. As you said, penetration doesn't work on champs with no mr, however, ap gets you're damage higher no matter if the other guy has mr or not. It's a safe bet with extreme reward if the other guy has no mr.

You just can't rework the game to work with this idea, no matter the angle you look at it.

There is also absolutely no reason to think riot is incompetent for not doing this. and by the way Generalmente, if you really would do a better job then Riot, you would've seen this problem too before saying it's a good idea.

There isn't anything else to be said, so I probably won't reply back, even if you just ignore the facts that all I said is true. You can't balance this.

Tiax1/13/2015, 1:03:35 AM1 votes

That's Riots job to figure it out. His theory is a sound one that just would need some more exploration and tweaks. Also that one champion who could formerly reduce mr and prior to that (before s3 ) deal amplified damage because of that shouldn't impact balance changes now. That's like making decisions about s5 blue buff based off of how strong kha and ap yi were, it's nonsensical. You think you are way smarter than you are, playing the game for a long time doesn't necessarily mean you are better in any way. And if you say that there is no precedent for such a huge change just look at the jungle for the past 3 seasons alone, and those changes barely even help make a difference in the game overall...