Why does Thornmail do magic damage?

LXII·10/23/2016, 6:18:40 PM·6 votes·1,010 views

Between all the MR options available on AD champs it's hard to get any mileage out of Thornmail anymore. I actually lost a game earlier as Darius because my Thornmail popped a Maw as I was mid-dunk on the enemy ADC and cost me my reset and the fight.

Would it be too oppressive if it did physical damage or is there some other reason it's magic damage? Legitimately want to know the answer to this question, not looking for long debates about Maw, EoN, or Mercurial being "op".

EDIT: Not sure why you're downvoting a question, but okay Boards.

46 Comments

oSEXYPLATYPUSo10/23/2016, 6:22:22 PM3 votes

because it is designed to protect from physical damage and you build it in games vs alot of AD damage dealers who normally dont stack mr ( base mr stats 30 mr for ranged and 32 scaling to 54 for melee champs) so if you inflict magic damage to someone who only has 30 mr like a vayne for example then the damage reflected is stronger due to her low MR

Billy VoHagen10/23/2016, 7:26:00 PM3 votes

Because then it would proc Black Cleaver without the champion even having to touch the ADC.

Bonipherus10/23/2016, 7:10:52 PM2 votes

Maw shield only blocks magic damage. Darius Dunk is true damage. Can't blame this on anything but yourself.

Zero Skill Tank10/23/2016, 7:00:04 PM2 votes

I actually lost a game earlier as Darius because my Thornmail popped a Maw as I was mid-dunk on the enemy ADC and cost me my reset and the fight.

Care to elaborate how that happened? Any magic damage they would receive while you were mid-dunk would be mitigated by maw shield anyway, so I can't see how your thorn mail had anything to do with this?

It's OT, but I'm interested, because I'm clearly missing something here.

CerealBoxOfDoom10/23/2016, 7:17:37 PM2 votes

item 3075 item 3033 item 3078 item 3071 item 3083 item 3812

The Deckowner10/24/2016, 12:35:11 AM1 votes

because if thornmail does physical damage, adc and ad assassins will abuse this item.

FourVsFive10/23/2016, 7:08:21 PM1 votes

why not just lower the dmg a little and change it to true dmg.

Rivuo10/23/2016, 6:40:00 PM1 votes

Adcs dont even get any MR until 25-30 minutes........

Dehitay10/23/2016, 7:13:59 PM1 votes

I'm not sure if you're implying that Thornmail is too powerful or isn't powerful enough. If you think it's too powerful cause it does magic damage instead of physical damage, I can understand even though I disagree about it being too powerful. If you think it's not powerful enough and think physical damage would do more damage, I can pretty much assure you that's not the case. Just look at on hit reliant champs in your game from now on. The vast majority of the time, they are going to have more armor than MR.

However, I will agree that Thornmail isn't really powerful enough. Both magic damage dealers and physical damage dealers have a way of proc'ing grevious wounds, but tanks lack one. I think adding it to Thornmail would be an ideal solution. You can still outheal the damage dealt with life steal in the majority of cases, but it would stop thornmail from being so negligible in the face of lifesteal.

Borror10/24/2016, 5:05:03 PM1 votes

It's because doing magic damage on adcs is a lot better than doing physical because ranged adcs don't having scaling mr in their base stats but they do have have scaling armor. Late game, an adc will have like 80 armor?, compared to around 30? mr as long as they didn't build any mr. So dealing physical damage instead of magic damage would actually end up nerfing thornmail.

ADC5LUT10/23/2016, 7:19:32 PM1 votes

Lol poor queen people can't seem to comprehend you most basic of question. Unfortunately I just woke up and have nothing to add to the conversation

oSEXYPLATYPUSo10/23/2016, 6:32:22 PM1 votes

also why i think its ideal to get ap tanks like Maokai Malphite vs ad comps for more then their kits, cuz they can get item 3068 item 3075 with some magic pen from runes or item 3151 item 3001 which makes those items do more magic damage

kinda how Rammus works

SwiftKitten8810/23/2016, 11:56:52 PM1 votes

its does magical because if it did physical and you both had item 3075 it would reflect back and forth forever

Pierce The Veal10/23/2016, 6:40:43 PM1 votes

Armor options are even greater.

Do note MAW doesn't block true damage or physical damage, so if you didn't kill them then it was because you weren't able to kill them in the first place.

OurLestrade10/23/2016, 6:40:47 PM1 votes

You'd get it on people who don't build much in the way of penetration, and in most cases people have much lower MR than armour. Same reason why supports tend to do magic damage - makes it so it doesn't become completely irrelevant.