Does lulu Help pix bonus magic damage per auto attack actually help adc?

Lwnt··2 votes·4,583 views

Every time I always shield my ally adc with help pix I always wonder am I giving decent amount of bonus damage to my adc in other words is it helping at all. I always look at my adc magic damage and see its always very small. I was wondering if someone can do the math and explain to me the damage output of pix and tell me if its actually good.

Lulu passive: Whenever Lulu or the allied target of Help, Pix!.png Help, Pix! attacks an enemy (excluding structures and wards), Pix fires a barrage of 3 homing bolts toward the same target that deal 3 / 7 / 11 / 15 / 19 / 23 / 27 / 31 / 35 (+ 5% AP) magic damage each to the first enemy they each hit, for a maximum possible 9 / 21 / 33 / 45 / 57 / 69 / 81 / 93 / 105 (+ 15% AP) magic damage.

There some things that I found out: 1)Pix has a max attack speed of 2.0 in other words if adc has 2.5 attack speed pix will continue to do damage at 2.0 attack speeds. 2) Pix shoots 3 bolt and each bolt gets reduce with magic resistance separately. I think this explains the early game 0 when auto attacking but I dont know how. I notice that when I auto attack leona u see my ad damage then pix's 3 magic damage are all 0. Its really annoying. 3) Pix's damage is based on user magic pen and most adc will have 0. 4) Its scale with Ap but most support lulu dont build Ability power (you especially see that in LCS)

I know their is so much variable that affects pix's damage but I was wondering if someone can explain to me if its actually a good passive from early game all the way to late game.

22 Comments

The5lacker4 votes

"Each bolt gets reduced by Magic Resist separately."

...Yeah. Because it's a % Reduction. It doesn't matter if it's in multiple parts or not, the total damage is still reduced by the same %. An ability could deal 1000 damage or 100 damage 10 times and it would deal the same damage to the same target no matter their Armor or MR (Ignoring a few minor rounding differences, of course.)

And if you aren't building AP on Support Lulu you're doing it wrong. There's a reason they made support Utility scale on AP.

Sailor Mint5 votes

The Unyielding mastery reduces the damage of each bolt by 1 (2 for melees). That's enough to reduce the level 1-2 damage to 0 against melees.

As for building AP on Support Lulu, 40%CDR is the more important part.

The5lacker2 votes

Oh no, Lulu's level 1 trading ability is reduced against tanks. The horror.

Also, is your Lulu build typically Frozen Heart + Spirit Visage or something? Because, I don't know about you, but I find it exceedingly easy to get AP with my CDR. item 3504 item 3174 item 3060 item 3092 item 3025 item 3165 item 3115 item 3023 item 3152 Not saying they're all completely relevant, but it's kinda ludicrously easy to get max CDR while having plenty of AP so that you can, you know, better shield, speed up, or provide covering fire.

Sailor Mint2 votes

Are you really downvoting me for what's mostly a clarification for a fairly obscure interaction and pointing out that even for lane Lulu CDR is the most important part?

Either way, you don't need Mobos on Lulu and the earlier you get 40%CDR the better. Masteries (5%) + Talisman (10%) + Crucible (10%) + CDR Boots (15%). Cheap, simple, efficient.

The5lacker1 votes

And then you can use your remaining slots and gold for AP. What point are you arguing again?

Also, if you aren't getting 10% CDR from Masteries you're doing it wrong.

And I downvoted you for making a completely inane point that's irrelevant by level 3, especially when the discussion is on Lulu's late-game potential, hence the comment on Pix's max AS being 2.0.

Sailor Mint2 votes

I was explaining the whole 0 damage from Passive vs Leona at level 1.

0/9/21 and 0/13/17 variants are the current standards for support masteries. Veteran's Scars + Juggernaut are arguably more useful than 5%CDR during the laning phase.

Sire Hippington1 votes

actually, that wouldn't be enough, but pix counts as AA and therefor also gets reduced by block, which adds another -2

also, there are enough ap/cdr items, especially item 3060 anditem 3504 work very well for most supports

Sailor Mint1 votes

Can you guys take a minute to test ingame before making those statements?

Unyielding reduces Pix's damage by 1 (2 for melee) per bolt, or 3 (6) damage total. Block doesn't reduce Pix's damage.

Sire Hippington1 votes

i know verywell that i deal 0 damage vs most toplaners with lulus passive till level 3, and 3-1 would be 1, not 0.

Sailor Mint1 votes

Is Unyielding really calculated after resists?

((BaseDamage * MR)-Unyielding) * 3 Bolts

Vs Ranged (42MR) Level 1: ((3 * 0.7) -1) * 3 = 3.3 Damage. Level 3: ((7 * 0.7) -1) * 3 = 11.7 Damage.

Vs Melee (42MR) Level 1: ((3 * 0.7) -2) * 3 = 0.3 Damage (shows up as 0). Level 3: ((7 * 0.7) -2) * 3 = 8.7 Damage.

Sire Hippington1 votes

3 isn't the total damage, but the damage per hit, so it's 3-1(2 for melee), which is 2(1), or 3*(3-1(2)) = 9-3(6) = 6(3) on the full AA. with 20% reduction, that would still be 0.8, even with 50% reuction from mr, which needs 100mr in lvl 1-3, that would be 0.5 and therefor should be rounded up to 1

Sailor Mint1 votes

Fixed.

I hate how inconsistent this game can be. I completely forgot the order masteries were applied and had to look it up.

Block is applied before Armor and doesn't affect Pix's Bolts. Unyielding is applied after Armor and Magic Resist and applies to all 3 bolts separately (that's a total of -8 damage from Unyielding alone if you include Lulu's basic attack).

Sire Hippington1 votes

lvl 80, even if we asum PD+IE, it'S still adding damage equal to 60 ad on the AA-dps(without any ap on lulu) the 0 damage isn't from mr as the mr-reduction is % based, it's from the flat-damage reduction from masteries, reduceing each of the 3 hits by 4, going with 3 damage on lvl 1, thats 0 damage left. So if your enemies are smart enough to invest 5 points in defense, lulus passive is usless till lvl 3, but from there on it actually scaales quite well. Not sure about the 2.0 as cap on pix, never noticed it, 2.5 as-lulu does get the bonus on each hit, so i wonder why pix would have a capped as on allies. overall, the main problem probably is that pix AAs get bodyblocked by minons, and most carrys aren't used to that and don't consider it in there positioning.

Lorinne1 votes

It's not that he's necessarily capped at 2.0, but once you get above that his attack animations start to have trouble keeping up and you lose bolts sometimes... Or maybe it's just a visual bug and you don't lose anything... But it's something I've read about several times before. I've never really noticed it when I play Lulu because I don't tend to try to cap attack speed.

Lwnt1 votes

No I read that his damage is cap at attack speed of 2.0 seconds for both lulu and ally. I remember a riot member said that and it was due to the visual effect they couldn't bring it to 2.5 seconds. Honestly I wish it shoots 1 bolt and increase it to 2.5 seconds.

Sailor Mint2 votes

Tested it ingame. Pix will fire at your attack speed.

Lwnt1 votes

lulu wiki page it says this:

At 2.000 attack speed Pix will fire an endless stream of bolts. at 2.001 attack speed Pix will not be able to match the speed and will start to lose bolts.

Sailor Mint2 votes

Test it ingame.

It wouldn't be the first time that the wiki is wrong.

Lwnt1 votes

The flat magic reduction make so much sense in the early game thanks for that.

But I dont see that it equal to 60 ad for each AA can you show me the math for that.

Sire Hippington1 votes

it was ruthly estimated. with IE+PD, the crit increases your AA dps by ~82.5%, 60x1.82 = ~108 damge per AA in average, lulus pix does 105, so i guess 58 is a more exact value, but still slightly more than a BF gives.

However, this is purely AAs and no abillitys and ignores the fact that pix does magic damage, which will probably deal more damage midgame if the tanks rush armor, and less damage later on once you have LW compared to physical damage.

Sailor Mint1 votes
  1. As long as you're not attacking a ward/structure, Pix will attack. He properly attacks above 2.0 attack speed.
  2. Unyielding (Mastery) will reduce Pix's Barrage by 1 (2 for melees) per bolt, reducing it by 3 (6) damage total. Magic Resist is % based and is unaffected by number of hits.
  3. Magic Resist is generally lower than Armor. All ADCs have 6% Magic Pen (Mastery).
  4. It still adds a fairly large amount of damage compared to other shields.
Leaf of the lake1 votes

To figure out how much additional damage giving your shield to the ADC does, take:

([ADC attacks/second] - [Lulu attacks/second]) * [Strength of bolts]

So at lv18 with 0 AP, supposing you have no additional AS, lulu will have about .864 AS, dealing 105 damage with bolts, or about 90.72 dps. To provide an additional 90.72 dps, your ADC would need about 1.73 AS. This is not unreasonable to achieve, especially for champs with inbuilt AS steroids.

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