Lux Ability Costs

Bharhash·12/4/2015, 7:30:29 PM·3 votes·674 views

So Lux's E has outrageous mana costs. At ranks 4 and 5, it costs more to use than her ultimate. Even at Rank 3, it breaks even with her ult for cost. That's kind of ridiculous. Why is her E so expensive? Nothing about it warrants such a massive mana cost. If people MUST have some kind of nerf to it in order to justify bringing the cost down then shaving .1 off the AP scaling and take off 0/5/10/15/20 off the base damage.

9 Comments

thebigjames12/4/2015, 8:28:08 PM4 votes

Her E brings a lot of utility. As a side not, I have yet to hear or read a good argument as to why Lux is OP. Win rates aren't sufficient evidence.

SaltyKracka12/4/2015, 7:43:14 PM2 votes

Lux needs nerfs anyways. Why would she get buffs too?

Bharhash12/4/2015, 7:59:59 PM2 votes

Based on what? What makes her OP?

Sir Yamazuki12/4/2015, 8:39:29 PM1 votes

Yeah, lets completely ignore that her other abilities cost no mana anyways, and a lot of mages have 1 or 2 high mana costs anyways. People need to stop pretending her kit costs a lot of mana. I rarely go oom when I play her.

RedCyclone12/4/2015, 11:38:15 PM1 votes

Seriously is not that much of a problem when you can itemize to get rid of her mana problems

A chalice early is usually a common item for her to buy and alleviates her mana issues quite a bit Lux usually wants 40/45% cooldown, Athenes and Morellos will both together give her this and effectively give her infinite mana, or alternatively getting one of those with Lucid boots and a blue buff works too

Bharhash12/5/2015, 2:02:12 AM1 votes

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If people MUST have some kind of nerf to it in order to justify bringing the cost down then shaving .1 off the AP scaling and take off 0/5/10/15/20 off the base damage.

I'm not sure why it is that people seem to continually miss this line thus far. Whatever my personal feelings for a champion are, I rarely seek a straight nerf or straight buff as I believe that a champion's balance is better served with a more lateral shift in their power. Though I do certainly recognize when straight buffs/nerfs are appropriate.

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Lux has steadily received buffs over the past 12 months. Her passive gained an AP ratio, her E detonation delay was removed, her shield lost its delay, her Q got a reduced mana cost as well as applying full effect to both targets rather than just the first. I may have missed even more.

While she has gotten a number of buffs over the last year, many of them I would argue are QoL buffs that she needed to have done in order to keep her remotely relevant or simply healthy. The scaling on her passive was pretty needed to smooth out her damage curve (she'd do either almost no damage or ALL the damage before), and she really needed to not have her shield be delayed. Many of these could be sourced from design shifts and looking at how champions interact and perform now vs when she was made. Still, buffs are buffs.

A chalice early is usually a common item for her to buy and alleviates her mana issues quite a bit Lux usually wants 40/45% cooldown, Athenes and Morellos will both together give her this and effectively give her infinite mana, or alternatively getting one of those with Lucid boots and a blue buff works too

A champion should never need blue buff to function Also, no champion has non-infinite mana. It's only ever a matter of how many spells / combos their pool can handle before being effectively depleted.

If a champion has too much power in their kit, then find ways to shave that power off some. Over-inflating mana costs is a poor design choice to try and correct such issues. When itemization allows a champion to overcome said cost, they've gone and broken your attempts at balancing. Accuracy in buffing and nerfing a champion is important. So if Lux has too much power right now, then it's better for Riot to normalize her costs and bring down some of her base numbers or scaling instead.