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The AP / Utility scaling problem discussion

JimmynatorB··5 votes·1,471 views

IMPORTANT: I'd ask you to like the post if you think the conversation is worth continuing and NOT if you think my ideas are good or not. That's what the poll is for. This way we can keep the conversation going.

This season introduced utility scaling with AP on supports, making them have better scaling (mostly only on MS and slows). This was so that supports could feel better with AP, but it actually didn't help a bit. This caused Lulu to be played in top lane again, with obnoxious amounts of slow, shields and MS scaling as she increased her AP. What riot didn't see is that as those supports bought AP, they were increasing both their DEFENSIVE (MS boosts, slows, shields, heals) and OFFENSIVE (damage, slows) capabilities. The utility scalings can't be good enough because they are increasing attack and defense at the same time, which is something that should be avoided, as it can become really snowbally (look at riven or mid soraka for example).

So what can we do to solve this? First of all AD and AP scaling on defensive things such as heals, shields, slows and MS boosts should be removed. There is no reason why just by stacking AD or AP you should have all you need (attack and defense). There should be a choice given to the players to spend money on defense or attack, depending on their needs. Thus the base amounts on shields, heals, MS buffs and slows should be increased to compensate.

Now that we have removed the problem, we need to give those champions a way to scale in the places they think is appropriate. The most appropriate solution IMO would be adding specific niche items that scaled those abilities separately, thus giving more choices to build champions with some sort of utility. These are some examples of passives you could give to those items:

  • UNIQUE passive: Increases the duration of your CC by 35% This could be inserted in a somewhat expensive item that isn't gold efficient (or maybe in a support-only item). This would be a way for supports and champions that rely on their CC to counter Mercury's Treads (note that Mercury's Treads would still be useful in the early game and to counter this passive)

  • UNIQUE passive: Increases your slow and MS buff amounts by 50% This one I think would be perfect as an additional passive for Zephyr. This would help the item to be more used among champions that have MS buffs or slows and like to have the advantage of mobility.

  • UNIQUE passive: Increases heals and shields by 50% Spirit Visage has a similar passive, but it only works on yourself, which makes the item not worth on a support. I'd change Spirit Visage so that it incorporates this passive. Also remember we had removed all AP scaling from heals and shields, so it wouldn't be as abusive as it would be on live. You may think this would make this item mandatory for healers and champs that use a shield, but I think it would only be picked if you need to increase shields and heals, as it doesn't give any offensive capabilities.

These are only some ideas that I think would make supports feel better, reduce snowballing potential on champs with heals or shields (swain, riven), and increase the number of Meaningful Choices players have to make. Feel free to discuss anything about this problem, give your own solutions, or point out any kind of errors I may have made. Also I'd love it if someone from the gameplay team at Riot could give me some feedback on these ideas.

14 Comments

Worgslarg3 votes

I feel that some heals/ shields should scale with ap/ad, if the shield is an integral part of the kit and its scaling is minor.

It seems to me that Riot would be better off adding a utility power scaling to support items and a small few offensive items.item 3157 item 3091

This would mean that kayle and other similar champs could still build ap without insanely overpowered heals

JimmynatorB1 votes

The reason I didn't want to leave some heals and shields scale with AD/AP is to make those abilities homogeneous. For example, Riven has a shield that is an integral part of her kit, but that scaling makes it so that she snowballs out of control really easily. I think that it could be adressed by giving it a better base shield and removing the scaling. And if she ever wanted a better shield, making her buy a defensive item instead of a Bloodthirster.

And I also thought about utility scaling, but I think adding a new scaling is a bit overkill and it would be more work for Riot to balance it out and deciding the scalings on every single ability. It's totally doable, but I think Riot doesn't want more work. :P

EDIT: Just to clarify, utility scaling is definitely a thing that could be done. It could solve the problem with AP scalings on supportive spells. I just wanted to give a different option to Riot, as the utility scaling has been suggested time and time again.

PhailRaptor2 votes

All of this would have easily been avoided if Riot had gone through with the original idea of adding a "Support" or "Utility" stat, and having Supportive utility aspects scale with it instead of trying to mess with AP. It has fundamentally damaged the Support role, due to both the utility and damage of champions scaling with the same stat. This is compounded by the fact that it was not applied more universally, instead being given only to specific champions, rather than looking at abilities on a case-by-case basis and giving them where appropriate. There are a lot of champions who's spells do not have Support scaling, when really thematically they should.

Honestly though, as a whole, there are a lot of champions and abilities that scale with things that are very odd. Looking at Malphite, for example, his kit scales with like 4 different stats. You could easily replace every AP ratio in his kit with an Armor ratio. Taric could easily follow suit, which would fit his theme far more than AP scaling. Speaking of those 2, there are only 4 other champions who scale with either Armor or MR -- Galio (passive), Rammus (passive, W), Leona (W), and Braum (W). It's an unexplored area in terms of build options and champion thematics that could seriously help with the "Fighter problem".

  • UNIQUE passive: Increases the duration of your CC by 35% This could be inserted in a somewhat expensive item that isn't gold efficient (or maybe in a support-only item). This would be a way for supports and champions that rely on their CC to counter Mercury's Treads (note that Mercury's Treads would still be useful in the early game and to counter this passive)

This is inherently broken. Leona, Fiddle, Zyra, Naut, Sej, Amumu... Basically anyone with a long duration or AoE CC will buy it, and any team playing against them will get roflstomped. I mean... The item you put this on would have to be obscenely expensive, and have very little in the way of other stats in order for it to be anything approaching balanced. We already have issues with ZGlass and DFG, both of which are much simpler.

  • UNIQUE passive: Increases your slow and MS buff amounts by 50% This one I think would be perfect as an additional passive for Zephyr. This would help the item to be more used among champions that have MS buffs or slows and like to have the advantage of mobility.

Well, 50% seems a little much, but this isn't a bad concept. I'd think, though, that the passive would be split into 2 separate ones, rather than both slows and hastes together as one.

  • UNIQUE passive: Increases heals and shields by 50% Spirit Visage has a similar passive, but it only works on yourself, which makes the item not worth on a support. I'd change Spirit Visage so that it incorporates this passive. Also remember we had removed all AP scaling from heals and shields, so it wouldn't be as abusive as it would be on live. You may think this would make this item mandatory for healers and champs that use a shield, but I think it would only be picked if you need to increase shields and heals, as it doesn't give any offensive capabilities.

Iirc, this is what Spirit Visage did during it's initial testing, and it turned out being incredibly bad for game health. Granted, this is when Soraka and Taric were both strong, but somehow I doubt the end result will have changed by much. We'll just go back to the Heal/Poke meta where one team sits on their turret firing long range skillshots while the other sieges it firing their own long range skillshots, and nothing important actually happens for a really long time because the healers on both teams keep topping everyone off.

JimmynatorB1 votes

This is inherently broken. Leona, Fiddle, Zyra, Naut, Sej, Amumu... Basically anyone with a long duration or AoE CC will buy it, and any team playing against them will get roflstomped. I mean... The item you put this on would have to be obscenely expensive, and have very little in the way of other stats in order for it to be anything approaching balanced. We already have issues with ZGlass and DFG, both of which are much simpler.

I can see why you would think this is broken, but as I said, picking this item would mean that you are willing to increase your CC at the expense of damage and defense, so it's a choice. And the 35% is not just a random number, it's the same amount of CC tenacity removes. So think about it for a moment: you are buying an expensive item that isn't gold efficient to give you more CC, and if the enemy has tenacity, this passive is cancelled out. I don't see it as being OP.

About those champions you mentioned: In competitive play those champions haven't been played that much, so this could help them become a thing.

Well, 50% seems a little much, but this isn't a bad concept. I'd think, though, that the passive would be split into 2 separate ones, rather than both slows and hastes together as one.

You're right in that maybe it's too much for abilities that have over 70% buffs/slows. This would have to changed in some way so that those wouldn't be OP.

About splitting it up: It could be an option, but I feel like those items could be far too niche.

Iirc, this is what Spirit Visage did during it's initial testing, and it turned out being incredibly bad for game health. Granted, this is when Soraka and Taric were both strong, but somehow I doubt the end result will have changed by much. We'll just go back to the Heal/Poke meta where one team sits on their turret firing long range skillshots while the other sieges it firing their own long range skillshots, and nothing important actually happens for a really long time because the healers on both teams keep topping everyone off.

True, but they tested that with heals scaling off AP. Remember I removed all scalings from heals and shields. Maybe the heals and shields having no scaling is a bit of a stretch on my part, but I feel like they shouldn't be scaling off AP/AD, as they are defensive spells.

The Yetii Rider1 votes

Your fixes based on itemization are broad and not the correct solution to the problem.

The problem is that supports are supposed to have strong early games and moderate mid/late games with almost 0 gold. Riot completely went off the rails when they introduced more gold and scalings to compensate. Now utility supports have weaker lane phases while tank supports get free scaling from stats they already have (Thresh gets free AP from Damnation for some reason, Leona's runes will give her bonus armor and MR, and Braum's Winter's Bite scales off TOTAL health and not bonus health).

Scalings need to be changed. More supports need mana scalings and we need a support-specific upgrade for Tear of the Goddess (maybe make Mikael's build out of Tear instead of Chalice). Perhaps supports could also have a CDR scaling on shields and heals (That's easy to control since it has a hard cap of 40%).

Supports need to build tanky so they can survive. Riot has weakened Sona, Soraka, Lulu, and Janna when they do this, and they nerfed Taric immediately after rewarding him for doing this. Supports are not utility mages, they're not supposed to thrive off AP and AP wasn't a useful stat for them until Riot nerfed all their bases.

JimmynatorB3 votes

The problem is that supports are supposed to have strong early games and moderate mid/late games with almost 0 gold.

I don't think supports are supposed to be like this. I feel like supports should be unable to fight anyone 1v1 but be able to turn teamfights around for themselves and/or defend their carry so that they can deal damage, helping their team to win. I don't feel like that strong early and moderate late is appropriate. About the 0 gold thing: this is true for DotA, DotA 2 and old LoL, but it's not something that defines supports. However, supports should be getting items that help their team instead of giving them a better 1v1 with AP items.

Scalings need to be changed. More supports need mana scalings and we need a support-specific upgrade for Tear of the Goddess (maybe make Mikael's build out of Tear instead of Chalice). Perhaps supports could also have a CDR scaling on shields and heals (That's easy to control since it has a hard cap of 40%).

I'd like it if you could give some examples of mana scalings that could help. It could be an interesting solution, but it has the potential to be too weird (why is my heal scaling with mana?).

Perhaps supports could also have a CDR scaling on shields and heals (That's easy to control since it has a hard cap of 40%).

Uhh... I don't know. I feel like CDR scaling is stretching it too far. CDR has a purpose of giving you more abilities at the expense of power, and it shouldn't be altered so that it increases both things. It would make 40% CDR obligatory on supports (even though it is way too easy to achieve as of right now).

Supports need to build tanky so they can survive.

No. Not all supports are supposed to be tanky. The reason the tankier supports are doing better right now is because they do their support role better. Nami doesn't build tanky for example, and you can see her in competitive play.

Supports are not utility mages, they're not supposed to thrive off AP and AP wasn't a useful stat for them until Riot nerfed all their bases.

This one is true. If a support wants to increase their support power, AP isn't the way to go, as that increases their 1v1 power and gives them damage they souldn't care that much about as supports. AP scaling in their damaging abilities should remain so that they could be played as AP carries.

Binxy Prime1 votes

I agree that scaling with AP for utility is a bit pointtless since its a feast or famine kind of thing, you build sight stone, your gp10 item and michaels and THEN you get maybe 1 more item most games, sometimes 2 if your team is doing really well on objectives. This means you basically only get AP when you are snowballing or somehow picking up a lot of the kills.

The problem is, is that unless your teamis way ahead you cant afford those stats, and if you are behind you need to build tanky, so why not just pick supports that go full tank anyways. Thats why leona and braum are so strong because they are good even when they are behind.

I think they just need to remove scaling with AP on support champs and increase the base damages, this will keep them strong in lane but fall off late game or their pushing power will go down. For instance have level 9 lulu do 50-70 more base damage with q and e than she does now but have AP scaling of close to 0 then give her e some sort of health scaling for shields only or something like that. Or add more items that add on hit damage for spells for supports to buy I dunno.

JimmynatorB1 votes

I think they just need to remove scaling with AP on support champs and increase the base damages, this will keep them strong in lane but fall off late game or their pushing power will go down. For instance have level 9 lulu do 50-70 more base damage with q and e than she does now but have AP scaling of close to 0 then give her e some sort of health scaling for shields only or something like that. Or add more items that add on hit damage for spells for supports to buy I dunno.

I do think that they should remove AP scalings, but only on supportive spells like heals, shields, slows and MS buffs. AP scaling on damage spells is OK, as it makes those champions usable outside the support role.

IMO, the support role shouldn't be allowed to deal as much damage as other roles, but it should be able to help their team the most. I think they should create support-only items that increased their utility which are cheap enough for supports to buy but gold inefficient enough for other roles to make them have to make a choice between damage, defense and utility.

Chargin Targe1 votes

By removing the scaling and buffing the base amount, wouldn't the heal at level 9 (assuming it was maxed first) be the exact same as the heal at level 18? This heal would be too small late game to even heal up from poke, or if not, it will be too oppressive at level 9 to balance. The purpose of AP scalings was to scale a supports utility over the game based on their teams gold income, but unfortunately this resulted in several abuse cases so scalings were warped to the ground.

Instead of scaling with gold and ap, the utility scalings should all be by level. Instead of heals 50/100/150/200/250 +(0.50 AP), make it 50/100/150/200/250+(3/6/9/12/15*level) or something similar. My numbers might be too high, but I hope the point is understood. This lets supports utility scale with their ability to stay in lane, so supports scale with their ability to support. Damage portions of spells would still scale with AP.

The only major counter argument I can forsee is supports as solo-lanes with an op heal because it scales even more with the extra solo lane experience. But this wouldn't happen as long as the level scaling on utility spells scale heavily with skill level (rank 1-5) and the supports lack wave clear without maxing their offensive skills first (small heal stays small until the laning phase is over because the laner cannot level it early, but could do so in a supporting role).

JimmynatorB1 votes

By removing the scaling and buffing the base amount, wouldn't the heal at level 9 (assuming it was maxed first) be the exact same as the heal at level 18? This heal would be too small late game to even heal up from poke, or if not, it will be too oppressive at level 9 to balance. The purpose of AP scalings was to scale a supports utility over the game based on their teams gold income, but unfortunately this resulted in several abuse cases so scalings were warped to the ground.

The way I suggested it to work, heals would have to be balanced around level 9, and then have an item that would balance that heal for level 18 (the spirit visage suggestion). Even though that could be made level 13 would be VERY hard to balance. This is why the heal/shield part is the hardest to address of them all, so I'm sure it isn't as easy as I made it sound. It's the main argument against my suggestion.

I'm thinking that maybe a mix of the UP scaling and the utility items could be a good solution. Maybe making UP scale heals, shields, MS buffs, slows and other utility things like mana regen or auras, and making an (expensive and gold inefficient) item to increase the duration of CC so that champions that rely on their CC could counter tenacity in the late game.

JimmynatorB1 votes

OK, so what I can see from your dislikes is that you don't like AP and AD scalings on heals and shields being removed. Maybe we could find another way to avoid the AP and AD scalings that are just not good for those defensive spells. Any ideas?

deadlychuck1 votes

The way riot implemented the utility scaling of supports was a very niche and ultimately ineffective in my opinion, though it did spark some funny outcomes like lulu top. I think the correct way to go about the whole thing. In fact i feel that utility scaling might be exactly what the tanks, supports, and mages (non-assassin) could use. Obviously there would be a fair amount of balancing numbers involved, but as it stands now, scaling tends to work linearly.

If you are tank and build tanky, that's what you get. Most tanks have started getting one or two scaling skills that deal more damage based on MR or Armor, but why not the actual effectiveness of those skills?

If you are support, you could use stats like CDR and AP. CDR increases the duration or effectiveness by a portion of the %.

If you are a mage you could use purely AP. AP could increase the duration, range, or power of CC or Mobility (the few they have).

Think if Fiddlesticks fear was based on AP, Zilean revive window increased based on CDR, or if Maokai ult radius scaled with current or max health.

JimmynatorB1 votes

In fact i feel that utility scaling might be exactly what the tanks, supports, and mages (non-assassin) could use. Obviously there would be a fair amount of balancing numbers involved, but as it stands now, scaling tends to work linearly.

The utility scaling is a fair solution. If it scaled MS buffs, slows, heals, shields and CC duration it could really well compete with AP, AD and defensive stats for a place in your slots. It is a new stat to balance, but it would be worth it in the long run. One thing to keep in mind is that any champion that can access to any of those things (MS buffs, slows, heals, shields or CC) should be able to scale it with UP (utility power).

Then there is that problem that Riot doesn't like that is CC not being homogeneous (even though we have tenacity). That's why I suggested the other way of solving it that is with specific items.

deadlychuck1 votes

To that i say, give us anti-CC item builds, there is no reason not to make Tenacity stack, other that the fact that the options (all 3 of them including masteries) are so freaking high. Make it like CDR, give it a cap at 60%, and add it onto more items.

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