Can we please get an Ability Power and Attack Damage split?

deadlychuck·Nov 3, 2018·2 votes·1,783 views

Please riot, split the roles of

ABILITY POWER and **ATTACK DAMAGE **

You're suffocating your game trying to make AD act as ability power for some and attack damage for others.

15 Comments

ParoeNov 3, 20182 votes

Originally this was the case, way back in S1, but it created a problem where many AD champions just werent strong enough compared to their AP counterparts.

Homogenizing damage types isnt a bad thing though. You should be able to itemize against your enemy, you shouldnt have Irelia doing magic damage on hit that scales with AD for example.

RebonackNov 5, 20182 votes

This was how things worked back in Season 1 (mostly). And then Riot started adding AD ratios to everyone.

I liked the old style a lot more. It created distinctive AD and AP playstyles for champs. But then Riot decided that was bad because clarity.

This was why I loved Malz before Riot butchered him. His AD and AP play styles were radically different and both fun in their own way.

deadlychuckNov 5, 20181 votes

Yeah, and now all of the new players who are unaware of this design, appear to view such a distinction to be a flaw with the game rather than a feature.

Like apparently the idea of making it so that bruisers and marksmen don't have a single stat that they use to scale ALL of their ability damage and their auto attacks, is just a radical thing to say. Because riot would never do something like that Nasus Tristana Pantheon

But yeah, rip the day's when you could pick how you wanted malzahar to feel to play. I've literally got a dead smurf that was going to be AD malzahar one trick, but is worthless after the rework

Silly NeekoNov 3, 20181 votes

I... am going to need to ask for more details of what you mean.

deadlychuckNov 3, 20182 votes

I mean, divide the primary stats as their names suggest.

Rather than arbitrary design decisions like making it so that abilities that look like they should be magic damage so they're going to scale with AP and abilities that look like they should deal physical damage so they're going to scale with AD.

If you press a key, that isn't directly or indirectly modifying an auto attack, then any damage it does should be scaling with Ability Power, even if it's going to deal physical damage.

Silly NeekoNov 3, 20181 votes

So what you are looking for is more visual clarity. For example Jayce's knockback scales on ad and does magic damage. Ezreals Q can scale off AP but does physical damage while his W and R can scale off attack damage but deals Magic damage?

That kind of stuff?

deadlychuckNov 3, 20181 votes

No i'm looking for more technical consistency, "visual clarity" is meaningless if you set consistent mechanics.

If you are going to, or want to, deal damage with abilities, then take ability power. (Regardless if you deal physical or magic damage E.g. Zed, Darius, Lucian) With more burst damage, skill shots, faster wave clear, and leave your auto attacks to act as filler between your cooldowns or pauses during the laning phase to regen mana.

If you are going to, or want to, deal damage with attacks, then take attack damage. (Regardless if you deal physical or magic damage E.g. Teemo, Kayle, Orianna) With more consistent damage, secondary stat options, and farming reliability in the early-mid game, leaving your abilities to act as mostly utility options with a little bit of base damage sprinkled in.

That said, I'm fine with methods of reaching between these with items like nashor's tooth or essence reaver, or on hit effects both active and passive that will sometimes vary in what they scale with. Ideally I'd prefer these to actually always scale hybrid or at least gain some benefit from the secondary stats of AD if not directly scaling.

Obviously this would also require item changes, but that's fine, we should have items of every stat combination even if the rioters can't think of any champions that would use them for ALL of their available stats.

Shit like Ionic Spark, shouldn't be removed just because they don't have a champion that is particularly fond of the stat distribution at the time. Even though Shen, Jax, and Udyr did actually get reasonable use out of it.

emarythomp2Nov 3, 20182 votes

So you're suggesting that someone like aatrox, who uses ability attacks to get his damage off, build ap?

deadlychuckNov 3, 20181 votes

To do more damage with said abilities yes.

Just because you're weapon is swung in the animation doesn't suddenly change it from an "ability" into a "skill"

emarythomp2Nov 5, 20181 votes

{quoted}

To do more damage with said abilities yes.

Just because you're weapon is swung in the animation doesn't suddenly change it from an "ability" into a "skill"

Im telling you this so you realize how ridiculous it sounds...

deadlychuckNov 5, 20181 votes

I mean I agree, the idea of changing the scaling of a skill based on what animation is used and completely disregarding the balance sounds ridiculous, but that's pretty much what riot has been doing.

But let me clarify.

So you're suggesting that someone like aatrox, who uses ability attacks to get his damage off, build ap?

Yes if the player wants to make the focus of his damage his abilities (Still dealing physical damage). No if the player wants make the focus of his damage his auto attacks. Going AD should free up the use of your abilities to be used in the most utilitarian way possible, while putting pressure on you to position yourself for your auto attacks, but at the cost of your burst damage with skills. Going AP should make you choose between efficient utilitarian use and damage use of your abilities, putting pressure on you to aim your skills properly, but at the cost of your consistent auto attack damage.

If riot wants to give champions access to both consistent auto attack damage throughput and bursty ability damage throughput fine, but they shouldn't be scaling with the same stat, because then they're making no compromises to acquire both.

emarythomp2Nov 6, 20181 votes

{quoted}

I mean I agree, the idea of changing the scaling of a skill based on what animation is used and completely disregarding the balance sounds ridiculous, but that's pretty much what riot has been doing.

But let me clarify.

Yes if the player wants to make the focus of his damage his abilities (Still dealing physical damage). No if the player wants make the focus of his damage his auto attacks. Going AD should free up the use of your abilities to be used in the most utilitarian way possible, while putting pressure on you to position yourself for your auto attacks, but at the cost of your burst damage with skills. Going AP should make you choose between efficient utilitarian use and damage use of your abilities, putting pressure on you to aim your skills properly, but at the cost of your consistent auto attack damage.

If riot wants to give champions access to both consistent auto attack damage throughput and bursty ability damage throughput fine, but they shouldn't be scaling with the same stat, because then they're making no compromises to acquire both.

So you want them to still deal physical damage but building ability power items?

Here's some other things:

Ability power actually does make your abilities stronger no matter which champion you are. Your abilities have scaling that either scale with ad or ap, but do either physical or magic damage off that scaling. But if you go in the practice test and test your damage with an ad champion while having ability power you can see that your abilities will do slightly more damage than before.
If you made it like you're suggesting then noone would invest in ad. Why go ad as zed when I can go ap and get my abilities stronger like how I'm suppose to? There would be literally no reason to go ad. Except if you're a marksmin. No other champion focuses primarily on auto attacks than adcs. Bruisers don't even rely on auto attacks that much. They only weave it as an inbetween for cooldowns. Also what you're suggesting is that do to auto attack based abilities you need to build ap, which would further confuse as well.

"Going AD should free up the use of your abilities to be used in the most utilitarian way possible, while putting pressure on you to position yourself for your auto attacks, but at the cost of your burst damage with skills,"

^ Yeah then noone would invest in ad if it's going to be easier to just go ap. This would only be useful for adcs who already weave their auto attack damage and positioning and are ranged. Imagine a melee having to do extra steps just because they wanted to focus ad instead of ap meaning their abilities and weaker but they have strong auto attacks, which don't really help since their melee and auto attacks aren't a main focus.

TL;DR Building ad will be virtually useless and you'd be needlessly handicapping yourself if you did that unless you're an adc.

It would make the game even less diverse and probably stale it out since everyone would invest in ap except for one class.
"If riot wants to give champions access to both consistent auto attack damage throughput and bursty ability damage throughput fine, but they shouldn't be scaling with the same stat, because then they're making no compromises to acquire both,"

Why can't a physical damage dealing ability scale with attack damage which is also physical damage?

I mean there's abilities that scale with ad but deal magic damage.

There's also physical/magic damage abilities that scale with health, movement speed, attack speed, crit.

With what your saying you'd want volibears W to scale with ap rather than health to deal physical damage meaning he has to invest in off tank type builds for significant damage and it won't scale unless he gets more ap items

TL;DR for whole post: With what you're suggesting Riot takes the ad and ap scaling, no one would take ad when their abilities would do less damage and only power their auto attacks (Think aatrox who heavily relies on abilities. He barely uses auto attacks at all) except for adcs. Every other class would just get ability power to boost their damage more.

deadlychuckNov 6, 20181 votes

Ability power actually does make your abilities stronger no matter which champion you are.

Objectively false, and just to humor your absurd claim, I did test it on Illaoi Aatrox Riven Darius all 4 are exclusively AD scaling according to the wiki and the in game UI, all did the same damage regardless of 0 AP or 6 death caps, with all of their abilities. There's no implicit AP scaling in the game, and really there was no need for me to check because it's the same fundamental stat design that I've played since the start of 2010. Well aside from removing dodge and spell vamp.

If you made it like you're suggesting then noone would invest in ad. Why go ad as zed when I can go ap and get my abilities stronger like how I'm suppose to? There would be literally no reason to go ad. Except if you're a marksmin. No other champion focuses primarily on auto attacks than adcs. Bruisers don't even rely on auto attacks that much. They only weave it as an inbetween for cooldowns. Also what you're suggesting is that do to auto attack based abilities you need to build ap, which would further confuse as well.

Naw, I'm not in favor of removing all AD scaling. In fact, I'd be fine with auto attack modifiers scale hybrid, to allow for players to pick between the two. Since auto attack modifiers are an in between of being an ability and an attack.

Yeah then noone would invest in ad if it's going to be easier to just go ap. This would only be useful for adcs who already weave their auto attack damage and positioning and are ranged. Imagine a melee having to do extra steps just because they wanted to focus ad instead of ap meaning their abilities and weaker but they have strong auto attacks, which don't really help since their melee and auto attacks aren't a main focus.

Yes, which is precisely why they should have the majority of their ability scaling converted to AP. There are plenty of melee champions which have no problems managing to use their auto attacks, even if their abilities were made to deal 0 damage, the utility they provide (regardless of the damage scaling) acts to nullify their range disparity. Darius Fiora Hecarim Jax Kled MasterYi Nasus Nocturne Olaf Pantheon RekSai Rengar Trundle Tryndamere Udyr MonkeyKing XinZhao Yasuo

If you split AD and AP scaling, then these champions, though that's not a complete list just what I clicked as I passed over the champion list, would see very little significance to their damage patterns, other than having to now actually play around their range disadvantage. Though, again that's IF they go AD. If these champions go AP, they'd be right back to smashing down an marksmen in a split second.

But woe is you, having to "do extra steps just because you (they) wanted to focus AD"

[sg-janna]

Imagine having to wait on CDs while dealing no damage, because you wanted to focus on AP... on an AP champion... because your stat is incomplete and doesn't provide to you everything you could possibly ask for... But probably the best part about all of this, is that if you reduce the degree to which AD fighters and assassins scale with AD, you could actually do something crazy, like nerfing marksmen without directly impacting juggernauts and fighters. Which would give them more time to get into range to do those auto attacks that you so selflessly wanted to focus on.

It would make the game even less diverse and probably stale it out since everyone would invest in ap except for one class.

I find this particularly humorous considering the current state is exactly the inverse of this xD No, people would want to invest into what they felt comfortable with, or enjoyed, on the champion.

Why can't a physical damage dealing ability scale with attack damage which is also physical damage?

The reason is simple. Because itemization for AD items attempts to appeal to marksmen, to juggernauts, and assassins. When a champion is given AD scaling on their skills, they completely lack any clear weaknesses. AD have it's 100% scaling with auto attack, but you seem to be making the same heuristic mistake that's far too common in this game. AD isn't necessarily synonymous with physical damage, and AP isn't necessarily synonymous with magic damage. This is just the design that riot has reinforced over the years. But this is more a tradition than a design choice.

In fact, yes, I wanted to double check this, Sivir Q initially didn't have any AD scaling. But always dealt physical damage. In fact, they even removed the AP scaling for 2 weeks before adding it back in.

With what your saying you'd want volibears W to scale with ap rather than health to deal physical damage meaning he has to invest in off tank type builds for significant damage and it won't scale unless he gets more ap items.

Hahahaha, no I'm not. I'm fine if riot wants to remove HP scaling. It use to be pretty much non-existent. Though, I think that it'd be fine to leave skills scaling with HP on tanks, but generally these things are defensive aspects of skills such as mundo's ult, naut's shield, shen's shield, exc. So while voli is an interesting case, he really doesn't need the scaling on his W. A simple flat execute would probably be fine, and trust me I played a handful of AP volibear games recently. He's pretty solid even if you don't put any gold into bonus HP for his W scaling.

I actually want to thank you, you did a pretty good job of laying out the case for why AP is an inferior stat, in this reply.

You clearly don't want similar limitations to be put on AD champions that AP champions currently have to deal with through the use of AP. Yeah, most AP champions don't go AD, but they also tend to no have the best utility for making auto attacks more reliable. Compared to AD champions who generally get more mobility and soft CC.

While I can understand someone newer to the game being afraid of this kind of design. It's not like the game didn't exist, and thrive to it's current success, in such a state. The introduction of AD as a primary ability scaling tool pretty much started with roughly Lee Sin, only having his W shield scale with AP, while being a very ability heavy champion.

It didn't immediately start causing issues, but at this point I think it's clear that trying to balance AD itemization for assassins, juggernauts, and marksmen (and then fighters in the middle). Just leads to an arms race, that leaves the rest of the game's itemization, then inadvertently kits, behind as the community constantly chases the most powerful of the most powerful of the 3.

AD burst damage > AD consistent damage > Armor > Ad burst damage

Sometimes it's somewhere in the middle, but for the past 5 years or so, the game hasn't been able to break out of this cycle of power creep. And this is pretty defensively the flaw in the design which causes the power creep phenomenon, but more specifically damage creep.