True Damage - An Ever Meta Changing Mechanic
"True damage is an inherently bad game mechanic, as it drives HP heavy metas..."
- Morello, 2011-2012 in response to the idea of Towers doing True Damage.
Many people fail to understand my steady advocation against the ever-growing addition of True Damage to the game. While they argue that True Damage is relatively low, compared to other mechanics, let us this time follow the actual course of events over the past few years. While I understand that the path is hard to see, over the long term, I will break it down a bit.
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Vayne is released (I was there, she was so much worse than she is today). Upon her release, however, there was a singular way to handle this champion... especially as, previously, there were only two other champions who did True Damage, and theirs was extremely limited and did not scale... the only way to handle her was to begin building extremely HP heavy in any game that she was found. Many things were blamed for the heavy HP meta, but ultimately the precise timing of that particular Tank Meta is too much to ignore.
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Darius, Velkoz, Yi E Change, Etc. In response to every new addition of true damage... every... single... time... the ending result is a rapid increase in HP for all champions in games, because these new champions become mainstays of almost every game.
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After some time, Mages began to complain that they were vanishing faster and faster - especially as Darius was, at the time, able to E, Q, Ult you to dead. Therefore the HP heavy mage items rose from 2, to what we have now. Mages end the game, fairly often, with almost 3k hp or more at current.
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Assassins begin to complain that they are unable to compete against the new HP heavy casters, and as such various items like Duskblade are thought up from some failed concept of a way to solve this. The only true solution was, once again, for mages to double down on their health.
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Tanks begin to complain that they are unable to handle all of the sudden burst damage, especially as the mages are now being able to outlast even the tanks. Numerous changes were made to various tank items. Tanks have risen from 2500-3k hp per game, to almost 4-5k by end game.
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ADCs begin to complain that they can not truly compete any longer, as every champion in the game, other than them, are now either oneshotting people - or simply outlasting them outright. As a solution, a heavy itemization shift occured for the ADCs to compete again - The only way to ensure this was to ensure that they could burst through all of the HP. We find ADCs begin to rise to auto-attacking bursters.
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Bruisers complain that, now that ADCs 3 shot them, that either ADCs need to change, or they need more toughness. Therefore many items were added, or altered, giving Bruisers more toughness. This was done because if you lowered ADC damage output they once again fell behind the tanky champions, if you reduced the tanky champions in response they fall behind the mages again, etc etc etc. Therefore we give bruisers and juggarnauts far more health to mitigate the outright damaging burst.
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Once again the way for survival was to, yet again, double down on being tough and out sustaining. ADCs do not perform well while heading down the line of toughness, so even more itemization was performed to allow them to compete... and yet more toughness in response.
The solution to solving all of this is now seen to be extremely difficult. There was no true way to revert back, and the nature of this has become cyclical. If you buff those who need to survive burst, a tanky meta begins. Once you have done this, you have to yet again increase damage to offset the new tankiness. Once you do that, you have to increase survivability once again. Rinse and repeat forever.
Each time True Damage has been added to the game, a tank meta has begun, and various changes had to take place to displace it. Yet... we keep adding it.
