From a design perspective,is it fine giving an ability overloaded damage because of a utility spell?

TyroneWatermelon··8 votes·696 views

WARNING:WALL OF TEXT As you guessed from the title,dear no lifers Board users,Bored users and trolls I am talking about a utility abilities,specifically on carry champions. My opinion is that's it is unhealthy to make an ability very strong because of another complete utility ability,it creates I believe lack of counterplay an -don't more of a hit or miss ability,it basicly does ALOT more damage than it should do,in the cost of another's spell being complete utility,creates a hit or miss-feast of famine situation. Either you hit it,and do a lot more damage than expected,or missing it,and missing an important majority of your damage,if it can be missed. Take for example,Ryze: Type is a carry battle mage,his Q is a skillshot,the main source of his damage-but when hitting a "fluxed" target(marked by his E) It deals DOUBLE the damage(scale With E rank) considering it doesn't already a nice chunk when not "fluxed" It creates the hit or miss situation,Q for double damage,or miss your main sources of damage,considering they are 2 basic abilities on low cooldown,it feels too powerful. And all of that is a true the cost of a mage's ULTIMATE Realm Warp dealing no damage. Another example is Anivia's E,dealing double damage against chilled targets,or fully charged R,at the cost of w being pure utility(and cc) Another example is Khazix's Q,molesting isolated targets,because His E deals 1% max health damage and R dealing none Taliyah's fully thrown Q tearing A_nuses apart like another mages 2-3 spell combo because her W deal a no notabale damage and R is pure utility(and cc)

And so on,i believe you get the the idea My question,do you think it is fine to exist?why or why not?

6 Comments

Sire Hippington3 votes

I think the main issue are no-combat ults on no-support champs. those champs need pretty powerfull basekits to stand their ground and usually dominate pre 6 in lane and have alot power with little downtime. Ryze is one example, but Shen also always was an balance problem, thalia and twisted are also hard to balance in high elos, and pant also has clear gamehealth issues. Even Reksai and Tham have some issues, and they atleast get some passive power from their ults to boost theri combat power.

However, mostly utillity focused base spell are not a big deal imo. Haveing alot damage put into one place doesn't have to be bad, anvia is quite a good example for that.

Asayake 5150glow2 votes

Jayce is insane, getting effectively 2 abilities every level, and leveling an ability is twice as effective if he uses it twice, due to his R. For example, his Q might have a base damage of 70, which is fairly standard. But because of his ult, he can use it twice, giving him 140 base damages in abilities - which is pretty insane, not to mention double the scalings as well.

Get to level 2, and he gets 2 new abilities, but his W (Gate/zappy field) by itself is pretty unnoticable, especially in melee form. Level 3, and he already has 6 abilities, twice that of anyone else.

Then he gets to level 6 and doesn't get an ult, but his early is pretty insane due to how many sheer abilities he has at his disposal.

Another example is his Q+E in ranged, which doesn't really have any downsides, as he probably wants to engage on you if he's chasing, and if he's poking, well he doesn't need the movespeed from his E if he's that far away. But the downside is that his E is kind of an underwhelming ability, and his W is also a little underwhelming, which means so much of his power budget is put into his Q's, and his passive.

TyroneWatermelon1 votes

{quoted}

Jayce is insane, getting effectively 2 abilities every level, and leveling an ability is twice as effective if he uses it twice, due to his R. For example, his Q might have a base damage of 70, which is fairly standard. But because of his ult, he can use it twice, giving him 140 base damages in abilities - which is pretty insane, not to mention double the scalings as well.

Get to level 2, and he gets 2 new abilities, but his W (Gate/zappy field) by itself is pretty unnoticable, especially in melee form. Level 3, and he already has 6 abilities, twice that of anyone else.

Then he gets to level 6 and doesn't get an ult, but his early is pretty insane due to how many sheer abilities he has at his disposal.

Another example is his Q+E in ranged, which doesn't really have any downsides, as he probably wants to engage on you if he's chasing, and if he's poking, well he doesn't need the movespeed from his E if he's that far away. But the downside is that his E is kind of an underwhelming ability, and his W is also a little underwhelming, which means so much of his power budget is put into his Q's, and his passive.

Yeah,Jayce is an example of an overloaded cancer,although it would be cool if he had more Accelarate Gate interaction with his kit,currently a whole ability just gives a speed boost and enchanting 1 ability. Melee Q could stun,Ranged W could have penetration,melee E may knock farther,but no,just one cancerous ability

ProfDrDeath1 votes

Generally, the answer to your question is yes, but there need to be considerations, the biggest being: How does this power allocation affect intended power curves of the champion in question?

For my main, Quinn, I'd still argue that she has a bit too much power before level 6, as her basic abilities need to compensate for her missing combat power of the ultimate. What I'd like Riot to do was to increase her early passive, Q and E CDs by 1 second and then have ultimate possess a passive that decreased her base cooldowns by 1/1.5/2 seconds at ranks 1/2/3. Quinn is also an example for proper power allocation for her second utility spell W, Heightened Senses. This spell comes with a passive that makes proccing Harrier give AS and MS, and that scales with W's rank.

Other good examples are pre-S7 Zed, who, despite his other flaws, had proper power allocation for his W utility spell (imagine if W did not have that increased AD passive, and had increased AD ratios instead - snowball galore), or Darius , who gets increased effectiveness against tanks with E ranks.

Teridax681 votes

I think it's mostly okay to have really powerful damage alongside pure utility/CC/mobility abilities, the only thing I take issue with is combining hard CC with really quick burst: generally, the counterplay to a burst mage is to dodge their skillshots, but if they happen to have an ability that renders you unable to dodge. on top of enough damage to kill you within that window of crowd control, it tends to reduce their counterplay down to a single ability, which is why champions like Syndra, Lux or Veigar tend to be annoying when they're really strong, and why Ryze is current frustrating as well. Ryze is meant to be a battle mage, and not a burst mage, so the issue with him has more to do with his double Q damage, rather than his root.

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