How to make Armor and MR more intuitive

Plague2427·12/4/2016, 5:44:42 AM·1 votes·832 views

For the most part, stats such as AD and AP are pretty straightforward, building what a champion scales with will allow them to deal more damage. However, when a champion needs to survivability, judging what mix of MR, Armor, and health to build is much more difficult. The % damage reduction is a hard stat for many to understand, for two reasons.

First, how it's efficiency is affected by health. 50% reduction for a tank will give more effective health than it would for a damage dealer. Ex: 1000 health and 50% damage reduction = 2000 damage needed to kill the target. Thus the % reduction results in the equivalent of 1000 extra health. Whereas 2000 health with 50% reduction = 4000 damage needed to kill the target. Effectively 2000 extra health.

Second, how 50% to 51% reduction is not the same as 98% to 99% can be confusing to some players. While there is little difference in toughness between 50% and 51% (1000 / 0.5 = 2000), (1000 / 0.49 = 2041) ; 98% to 99% HALVES the damage you receive (1000 / 0.02 = 50,000), (1000 /0.01 = 100,000). An extreme example but you get the point.

What I propose: 'effective health' a simple number on the statbar that shows how much magic or physical damage it would take to bring you from full health to zero. An example of this: a champion has 60% physical damage reduction and 3000 health. Formula being [ ((hp / ( 1.00 - damage reduction) = effective health ] Plug in the numbers [ ( 3000 / (1.00 -0.6) = 7500 effective physical health ]. Knowing that enemies will have to output 7500 damage in order to kill you is much more useful to a player than knowing that you have 60% physical damage reduction and 3000 health.

I hope that my idea, or one that makes resistances easier to understand may be implemented in hopes that it will give players a better idea of how to itemize.

7 Comments

ljt11712/4/2016, 8:54:04 AM2 votes

Well, I get your point, and it's an interesting concept. The problem is, there's another stat exist: penetration, and also we have both flat pen and percent pen. When your opponent start buying those items, I think the effective health just makes everything even more confusing.

500000000000000012/4/2016, 5:49:25 AM1 votes

New players need to learn how resistances work, which adds a little bit of burden of knowledge. I don't think adding "effective health" bar will fix that, though. There are a lot of penetration items that would make effective health pretty inaccurate.

Sailor Mint12/4/2016, 5:54:45 AM1 votes

It's a confusing concept, but considering the limited number of item combinations, it really doesn't matter.

Dying to physical damage. Buy Armor.
Dying to magic damage? Buy Magic Resist.
Getting bursted down too fast even with resists? Buy more health.

You really don't need a spreadsheet to calculate eHP and when to buy health vs resists. Knowing the base concepts is more than enough.

Rebonack12/4/2016, 6:13:31 AM1 votes

The last time I ran the numbers on ideal HP vs resist stacking was back before Cinderhulk was added to the game, I think?

If memory serves you wanted something like 1500 HP per 100 resist if the enemy didn't have %Pen and something like 2400 per 100 if they do. That number is still the same against Voidstaff, but it has been tilted even further in favor of HP over Armor with the changes to Last Whisper.

And we still don't have an HP multiplying item outside the Jungle aside from this guy item 3053