What's this weird thing people have against targeted abilities all of a sudden?

JedenVojak·2/16/2015, 12:20:51 AM·2 votes·578 views

Undodgeable, uninterceptable ranged spells doing damage you can't avoid seem to be a large complaint with people these days, yet there's an entire class (marksman) built around that function, and optimizing the damage of those attacks. Their entire class is based on point and click damage, which doesn't have a cooldown, and doesn't cost mana, yet no one seems to have a problem with the way those work...

Why then all this recent hate for spells that are targeted? I'm not picking a fight, and I don't have a problem with ranged auto attacks working the way they are... I just honestly don't understand.

11 Comments

Jubbinaut2/16/2015, 12:53:44 AM3 votes

At a guess? The huge differences in either damage or utility. Consider: The base damage of Annie's Q (as a pure damage spell) at rank 5 is 220 (plus scaling). The highest base AD in the game is only 132.6, and it's shared by Cho'Gath and Skarner (both melee champs) - the highest base AD on a ranged champion is Urgot's at 113.2. Add to that that AP items tend to have higher numbers (120 for rabcap vs 80 for BT), and we see that targeted spells tend to be significantly more powerful.

Additionally, there's very few targeted spells that don't have some kind of additional utility built into them. Taking Annie's Q again - if her passive is up, it's an inescapable stun for almost 2 seconds in addition to being more damage than any single basic attack.

That said, I personally believe there's space for them, and there's very few that I take any real issue with.

disregardable2/16/2015, 12:41:40 AM1 votes

Because, in general, those untargetable spells can either 100-0 you Veigar or happen from so obscene a range that you can do NOTHING to stop it Zilean . Neither of those things are true for AAs. Even in the late game, you need 3-4 autos.

Matthias91192/16/2015, 12:42:10 AM1 votes

Their entire class is based on point and click damage, which doesn't have a cooldown, and doesn't cost mana, yet no one seems to have a problem with the way those work...

There's a big difference between someone chipping away at you with AAs and Veigar going E->W->Q->R and 100-0ing you while you're stunned (see also: Ahri last season doing the same with the combined damage amps on Charm and DFG). If that first ability lands you are eating the whole combo with no retaliation possible. At least with someone like Zed or LB you have a chance to stun them, exhaust them, dash or flash away, use Zhonya's, etc.

Most AA-based carries also don't have the ability to lock you down, or if they do (e.g. Ashe or Varus) they don't have as much damage/steroids in their kit. Or their kit is ALL damage and they don't have much else (e.g. Kog'maw or Draven).

Axxuka2/16/2015, 2:22:12 AM1 votes

I'm afraid for my Void Mage... Malzahar