Why does Vayne's W deals Max HP % in the form of true damage?

TequilaZombie·Aug 22, 2016·4 votes·635 views

THIS IS NOT A QQ THREAD. I HAVE NOTHING AGAINST VAYNE. I DON'T WANT HER NERFED, BUFFED OR CHANGED. THE PURPOSE OF THIS THREAD IS TO GENERATE A PRODUCTIVE DISCUSSION ABOUT GAME DESIGN AND RIOT'S BALANCE PARAMETERS.

Currently, Vayne stands as the one and only champion who has a form of damaging someone that can't be mitigated by any means.

The third proc of her silver bolts deal True Damage, which is not affected by resistances. In the case of True Damage, the only defensive option is to build HP. In Vayne's case, her true damage is based on the target's Max health, making stacking hp useless.

What is the design philosophy behind it? How can such an ability be balanced (specially when it's tied to a passive that's so easy to proc)?

15 Comments

JustMyBassCannonAug 22, 20167 votes

To put it bluntly, it's because she has almost none of the tools that other Marksmen have.

She lacks range, and I'm not talking about her attack range, we all know it's the average 550. No, I'm talking about the fact that none of her abilities extend beyond that attack range. If she's using Tumble aggressively, the longest range she can pull off an attack is around 750-850 on a target running away from her (depending on their MS). A lot of Marksmen, and non-Marksmen for that matter, have abilities that can reach farther than that without also expending mobility.

Her base stats are average, and she has only one other steroid in her kit. And it's an AD steroid, so it doesn't affect her W proc rate.

Her CC is situational, and almost always only usable to either engage or disengage a fight. It's difficult to guarantee her E stun on a target moving in a fight, as it's not fire-and-forget CC.

Her mobility is built more for chasing targets than for escaping them. Her Tumble can get her a bit of distance if her pursuer is relying completely on movement speed, and her Condemn can stop one person from chasing her sometimes.

Like most Marksmen, she's exceedingly vulnerable to CC.

Silver Bolts even has some mechanics to make it super obvious that she only benefits from engaging and staying in fights. If she attacks another target, any previous target's stacks go away. If you can get in and out of fights faster than her, you kill the damage from Silver Bolts.

Finally, while Armor and Health do not stop the true damage from Silver Bolts, it makes the majority of her damage output take much longer to kill you. If Vayne was only dealing damage through Silver Bolts, she could guarantee a kill in 13 procs. Which requires 39 attacks. Even at the highest attack speed (which would make Tumble's attack reset slow her down, thus making it a waste outside of chasing/repositioning), that would take more than 15 seconds of constant attacking. But Vayne doesn't take 15 seconds to kill someone, she usually takes 3-5 seconds, because the other 80-90% of her damage output is 100% Physical.

The entire purpose of %HP True Damage, in the rare cases that it is implemented, is to have the same level of threat against tanks as she does against squishy champions. Marksmen in general are built to shred tanks, but Vayne is the queen in that regard. They built her kit around that ability.

Also, Vayne's not the only one. Fiora

TequilaZombieAug 22, 20161 votes

Well explained. Thanks!

GaleWinUnleashedAug 22, 20164 votes

Silver Bolts takes the "kill me immediately or I'll shred your entire team" to the next level. %HP true damage makes her threat level and time-to-kill very similar against any champion or build. Having it tied to a 3-hit passive makes her scale extremely hard with attack speed, allowing her to be an absolute monster in the late-game.

Her trade-off is being a squishy marksman with no way to affect anything outside of her attack range. Literally every other marksman has some form of long-range poke or some other method of staying out of range. Along with being squishy like every other marksman, I'd say she has enough counterplay.

Attack speed debuffs such as Randuin's and Frozen Heart still work to reduce her damage, by the way.

https://i.imgur.com/1HvNiEO.png?noredirect

OurLestradeAug 22, 20163 votes

The idea is that it's heavily countered by attack speed slows (Which have been taken from most champion that had it in the past) and by people that can kill her before she can get her damage off. Whether or not that works out in practice is another thing all together. I remember hearing somewhere once that only around a quarter of the damage most Vaynes do are true damage though.

AstôlfoAug 22, 20162 votes

Because it takes up one of the 4 abilities (Q/W/E/R, hers being on W) as a passive and she herself is weak? And stacking armor/health isn't useless. Yes, the third bolt procs and deals % max health true, but the rest of her autos up to that point are all still normal physical damage.

adidasAug 22, 20162 votes

{quoted}

Because it takes up one of the 4 abilities (Q/W/E/R, hers being on W) as a passive and she herself is weak? And stacking armor/health isn't useless. Yes, the third bolt procs and deals % max health true, but the rest of her autos up to that point are all still normal physical damage.

Stacking armor/health isnt the counterplay to vaynes true damage. I play vayne and the only true counter is frozen heart or anything that slows attack speed.

When she gets a lord dom its practically like you're taking true damage anyway from her ult bonus ad

AstôlfoAug 22, 20161 votes

I never said it's the counterplay or solution. I'm saying that stacking armor/health isn't pointless, like OP was saying. And yes Frozen Heart/Randuin's/etc sort of things are the only counter items really.

FududlesAug 22, 20161 votes

Uhhh... twitch has true damadge Maybe not also % but thats vayne bb

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/73/Trollface.png

NaeniaAug 22, 20161 votes

Yi has true damage too. It's his E I believe.

TequilaZombieAug 22, 20161 votes

Yi, Darius, Irelia, Twitch, Olaf, Rek'Sai and I'm almost certain about Fiora all have True Damage.

The difference is that Vayne has the only form of True Damage that can't be reduced by HP stacking.

NaeniaAug 22, 20161 votes

I agree with you. When you said "her true damage is based on the target's Max health, making stacking hp useless." I thought you were absolutely right.

FududlesAug 22, 20161 votes

#When vayne gets any small advantages over you ... ya your right shes hard to deal with (if your againt vayne i suggest playing varus ashe or caitlyn) why ... they out range her!!!

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/73/Trollface.png

EndlessSorcererAug 22, 20161 votes

You realize that Garen and Fiora also have percent maximum health true damage, right?

TormentulaAug 22, 20161 votes

I think the main "balance" aspect is to emphasize on vayne's weak early game. It does %HP damage, but that means nothing to ADCs, squishy supports, anything thats frail+anything early game that hasn't built tank yet.

When you think about it, how useful is vayne's damage early game if nothing is even tanky? She doesn't do much and is very weak without her items. Lategame this turns vayne into a monster, but because her base damage is low and relies on %HP true damage, she's best at deleting tanks over squishies ADCs in fights.. she has to debate whether to get the ADC off her and her team, or kill the tanks that are diving and blocking your team from cleaning up.

redfeenixAug 22, 20161 votes

This is leaning on Vayne's roots as a demon hunter. Demons have traditionaly tough armour and bolts or bullets dont do shit because of their high Armour and MR. However their weakness is silver, which pierces and causes true damage to take them down.

Thats why her SILVER bolts do TRUE damage to enemies.