on-Damage Effects vs Damage-over-Time

Hello fellow summoners... well... players, and possibly Rioters.

TL;DR - DoT spells have different Refresh Rates, and this causes difference in effectiveness of on-damage effects like Unyielding Mastery. Something has to be done for this.
For some more details, read the "Why I Think..." and the "Possible Solution..." sections.

This will be a huge wall of text, maybe in bad English (not my first language). Sorry!

Background of this Problem

A patch changed Fiddlesticks' Drain Refresh Rate from 0.5 seconds to 0.25 seconds. There was a thread about it; this patch doubled the effect of Unyielding (Mastery), and I have been curious about it. First, let's see how big this change can be.

Assumptions; Fiddlesticks has 0 AP and Drain level 1 (lowest possible damage, 60 per seconds). The target is Melee (-2 damage with Unyielding). Unyielding reduces damage before reduction by AR/MR. They have no other damage modifier. We just need the % reduction by Unyielding.

And the damage (before MR) is, Pre-Patch: 30 -> 28 per tick, 6.7% reduction (60 -> 56 per second) Post-Patch: 15 -> 13 per tick, 13.3% reductoin (60 -> 52 per second)

Actual difference will become smaller as Fiddlesticks gains AP and level. I'm not sure this is a big deal, due to lack of actual experience...

This thread is about THIS sort of small thing. If you're not interested, feel free to stop reading and save your time for your things.

Why I Think this is a "Problem"

There are DoT spells with various Refresh Rates (most of them have 0.5 seconds), thus various rates of on-damage effects. The tooltips rarely show the Refresh Rates, which can impact the gameplay in (As far as I know) these ways.

• How many times the DoT triggers effects on "taking damage" trigger. e.g. Unyielding Mastery, Galio's Bulwark and Amumu's Tantrum (physical damage reduction)
• How many times the DoT triggers effects on "dealing damage" trigger. e.g. how fast The Black Cleaver shreds the enemies' AR. Maybe I forget some other champion abilities and items, but Rylai's Crystal Scepter and Liandry's Torment are not really problems since they won't stack on multiple hits.
• How fast a DoT can kill Poppy. I mention about this later.

Even if they did show the Refresh Rates, it would be a bit odd for me to have various rates on those effects when most of the spells are supposed to do damage continuously, i.e. poison (unless victims' heart rates matter), curse, etc; just not "rapid-firing over duration" thingies like Lucian.

Possible Solution for Most of the Problem

First, give a look at some recent champions. Namely, Vel'Koz and Cassiopeia. Their Passives and DoT spells have separate Refresh Rates, not just "adding one stack on each tick of damage". The solution I suggest is inspired by those spells.

• One source of DoT can trigger on-damage effects only once in 0.5 second. Or twice in 1 second for some spells with 0.33-ish seconds Refresh Rates.
• Multiple sources of DoT trigger on-damage effects separately. e.g. if you hit one enemy with both of Fiddlesticks' Drain and Crowstorm, they trigger Unyielding 4 times a second in total.
• Show the Refresh Rates in tooltips for the spells with longer-than-0.5-second Refresh Rates (e.g. Rammus' Tremors has 1 second) as they trigger on-damage effects less often. Or shorten the Refresh Rates for some cases.
• If they want some spells to be exceptions (likely, Miss Fortune's Bullet Time and Lucian's The Culling), show their Refresh Rates in the tooltips. Those are considered to be "rapid-firing" spells, and trigger on-damage effects on each hit as if each "bullet" was fired by separate spellcasting (just like current settings).
• On-damage effects which are not affected by Refresh Rates (e.g. Rylai's and Liandry's) are triggered just like current settings; refresh every tick.

These won't make a big change in the game balance, so it's not urgent. I just hope they will notice and mention about this small problem someday.

A Special Treatment for Poppy

Poppy's Valiant Fighter is a special case - it's effectively a percentage reduction, but a DoT with shorter Refresh Rate (i.e. more ticks in 1 second) kills her faster. I came up with one solution.

• Change the damage reduction threshold from "10% of Poppy's current Health" to "20% x Refresh Rate (seconds) of Poppy's Current Health" for DoT and rapid-firing spells. 10% for most of cases (0.5 seconds Refresh Rate). DoT threshold is practically "20% per second".

It requires some more coding. Possibly it's easier and/or better to wait till her passive (or over-all kit) rework. As I mentioned, I can wait.

Thanks for reading! I wish to hear your thoughts.