Most Fighters have either true damage or %armor shred in their kits

Rebonack·Aug 18, 2015·4 votes·520 views

There are a few that don't, obviously. But Riot has been adding these aspects pretty consistently across the board when remaking older champions. Gang, Yi, Fiora, and Xin all had one or the other added to their kits when they got reworked. Makes me wonder if Noc is going to end up with %shred on his Innate or something eventually.

Is this a conscious design choice, Riot? I know you guys have been trying to figure out how to best distinguish melee AD folks from the ranged ones. Giving melee champions the capacity to deal with hard targets better via built-in mechanics for invalidating resistance certainly isn't a terrible way to go about it.

That leaves a few weird outliers, though. Notably and . How do you feel about ranged champions muscling in on what's mostly a melee-champ's game?

3 Comments

67chromeAug 19, 20152 votes

Most Fighters have either true damage or %armor shred in their kits

Hybridized physical/magical damage is just as good as %armor pen and true damage, and due to how armor and MR items generally work: sustained magic-damage and physical burst also tend to offer some measure of anti-tank power.

Most champions have counter-defensive mechanics to a point, and such mechanics can serve a variety of purposes, but the biggest one is just not being completely shut down by someone counter-building a particular champion.

Preventing being locked out through a build allows several champions to play around a specific style and emphasizes tactical or reflexive ways in dealing with them, and it allows for certain high-risk plays to have the right chance of success to be risks worth taking.

A lot of mixed damage or counter-defensive mechanics also tend to have less amazing scaling than just flat damage, which tends to lead to more even power-curves throughout the course of a game. You aren't completly screwed when someone attempts counterbuilding you, and you aren't exactly going to 2-shot someone because 25% of their HP isn't 50% of their HP.

TLDR: physical burst, %armor pen, sustained magic, %magic pen, physical/magical damage, true damage, and %true damage allow for a fairly modular system in dealing with issues of a tanky build making a certain pick irrelevant, allowing Riot to make a champion anti-tank enough to justify their play-style or power spike.

LilxPaprikaAug 19, 20151 votes

Its more how its givin/done than just having it. Like vayne has shorter range than other ADCs and needs to apply 3 stacks. (Granted she has really good as scaling making the 3 bolts a bit less difficult to reach/less gated.) But what I'm trying to say is it can be found on any champ so long as delivery system suits said champ.
Kogmaw has low mobility as well similar thing that plagues melee champs. So its okay on him. Give true damage to someone like kallista however now that could be problematic unless its via some roundabout way of triggering it.

RebonackAug 19, 20151 votes

Hybridized physical/magical damage is just as good as %armor pen and true damage,

That depends.

A champion with a single damage type can grab Whisper to drastically increase their damage, both base and scaling.

Champions with heavily mixed damage either ignore one side for the most part (like Jax) or just build tanky and ignore Whisper/Void (like Shy). Mixed damage is really only a good thing if you aren't planning on buying one of the %Pen items, which is typically the route chosen by tanky folks who grab one or two offensive items and then go pure defense.

Void/Whisper are really really strong. Especially on champions with decent base damage to back them up.