A wild Constructive Criticism has appeared!

Issue: True Damage

I believe True Damage has become too accessible within the game. I realize why it is there, however it is at its core an unhealthy mechanic. While it can be used to solve certain cases and shore up weaknesses in game design, it's really an alien concept to the rest of the game. There isn't any item that reduces True Damage dealt; actually that would defeat the purpose of True Damage , which means there is no organic counter to True Damage besides stacking health.

HP & True Damage are an exclusive pairing, which doesn't seem to fit the theme of Damage vs HP (Physical Damage vs Armor + HP). True Damage only interacts with HP while HP interacts with all damage types.

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Solution: Altered Damage

Altered Damage Allows increased damage to Tanks, by passing their highest resistance and going straight for their weakness, without making their purchases partially invalidated. The above percentages are just based off of arbitrary numbers. In reality it may actually have to be something like:

1.0% True Damage = 2.0% Altered Damage 20% True Damage = 40% Altered Damage

Since Altered Damage is giving an increase to 40% of your damage, that is still resisted, where as True Damage is non-resisted damage. It's just something to think about. I'm not a game developer, I also haven't run calculations in most cases.

Altered Damage & True Damage can even be used simultaneously to benefit each-other, to create a minimum amount of damage dealt (True Damage) as well as increasing the ceiling of potential damage (Altered damage), past what would've been provided already by True Damage alone. While the average damage dealt is aimed to be the same as the original True Damage only version, the damage floor will be lowered as well as the damage ceiling be raised. This creates a balance that damage done to squishy targets is increased, while damage dealt to tanks are decreased. I then believe that base damages on items should be lowered in general, otherwise this does nothing to solve the issue of blowing up squishes too quickly.

An example of what I'd change with Infinity edge:

From:

Infinity Edge Total Cost: 3700g Attack Damage: 80 UNIQUE Passive: Doubles your critical strike chance. UNIQUE Passive: 20% of critical strike damage is converted to true damage.

To:

Infinity Edge Total cost: 3700g Attack Damage: 70 UNIQUE Passive: Doubles your critical strike chance. UNIQUE Passive: 10% of critical strike damage is converted to True damage and 20% is converted to Altered damage

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Closing

These are just my thoughts, the numbers are mostly ass-pulled, I will not deny that. I only used hard numbers to represent the feeling I'd want this new damage type to provide. I want there to be an increased range of variable damage that is effected by the players, it is more interactive that way. There is a chance for lower damage and a chance for higher damage.

To be clear: Altered damage is meant to be weaker than True Damage. I believe True Damage is over-powered. Altered damage is a boost in damage, not guaranteed flat damage. If it takes a 3:1 of Altered Damage to True Damage to have the same average median result, then that's fine, at least there's something a player can do in response besides buying a Ruby Crystal.

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Edit: In the case that the resistances are exactly the same. I believe there could be an equation devised by those much smarter than me to convert the median Altered Damage into additional True Damage to reach the median point of what should be provided by Adaptive damage. So maybe the new I.E would, in the case of a resistance draw, do the equivalent of ~15% True damage instead of 20% True damage.