League of Legends: Official Thread

[guppy]

We’re talking starting items here Pogo. Can’t afford a Negatron Cloak on 475g. I thought you might have meant a Null-Magic Mantle, but that’s not part of Banshee’s.

[Malcolm_Tucker]

So I got given some Riot Points this week and spent them on the Digital Collector’s Pack and a few extra heroes.

This game is super fun! The only game I’d played in the genre before was Demigod, so there is quite a learning curve, but I’m enjoying it. The acquisitive aspect is definitely a big part of it; just like with Pokemon I love collecting the coolest looking dudes as though they were action figures.

I also like that, at least at my level, there are enough champions of each type to allow personal preference to make a difference. If my team needs an AD nuker, I can play as Veigar, but I can also play as Annie, who is way more fun.

Any must-have champions? Aside from the ones in the collector’s pack I’ve bought Cassiopeia, Xin Zhao, and Ashe.

[guppy]

If my team needs an AD nuker, I can play as Veigar, but I can also play as Annie, who is way more fun.

And better!

Why, yes, I will take any chance I can to bash Veigar. Why do you ask?

Any must-have champions? Aside from the ones in the collector’s pack I’ve bought Cassiopeia, Xin Zhao, and Ashe.

This is a hard question to answer because the game is continually rebalanced, and not always with the delicate hand you might hope. Someone we say is great right now might be nerfed into irrelevance in the next patch.

[SlyFrog]

I realized that my understanding of something that is pretty fundamental may not be so solid.

“Magic” in the game generally speaking is damage from skills, correct? Damage for Q, W, E, and R.

“Damage” (or AD) is generally speaking from auto-attacks.

For most characters (with exceptions like Cait and other AD carries), doesn’t most of the damage you take come from skills? Even with characters like Cait, her Q is a “skill” and does a large amount of damage (as obviously does her R).

Doesn’t that imply that a slightly higher priority should be placed on getting Magic Resist items as opposed to Armor items (ignoring for the moment Rammus like characters who get additional bonuses from Armor)?

It just feels like the bulk of the damage and dying that happens in this game is from skill bursts (including in team fights). Is it the case that a number of skills actually do AD damage? I assumed that was the case for awhile (which is why you buy armor against characters like Xin), but having repeatedly seen people equate “magic” with “skills,” regardless of character, now I’m not so sure.

I know you can see the sources of damage that killed you, but that’s only helpful from a post-kill standpoint - I’d like to know the mechanics.

Fundamental, I know, but I want to make sure I don’t have a fundamental misunderstanding (and with characters like Xin, I want to know what exactly my armor is blocking, damage from his skills, or primarily damage from his autoattacks).

[forgeforsaken]

I realized that my understanding of something that is pretty fundamental may not be so solid.

“Magic” in the game generally speaking is damage from skills, correct? Damage for Q, W, E, and R.

“Damage” (or AD) is generally speaking from auto-attacks.

It’s not as clear cut as that. Several characters have skills that do physical damage. It gets really confusing when they have skills that scale off of their total AD but do magic damage.

[McKnight]

We’re talking starting items here Pogo. Can’t afford a Negatron Cloak on 475g. I thought you might have meant a Null-Magic Mantle, but that’s not part of Banshee’s.

Yup, getting a null-magic, for an eventual merc threads) and then grabbing a Revolver would be the right choice against Vlad (after your tear, you should still start boots or a Sapphire). Vlad beats people out with sustain, so you at least have to have some sustain to fight him and it’s not like WotA isn’t an amazing item on Ryze anyway so it’s a win/win. Also getting an early Blue from your jungler will allow you to just hands down beat him in lane.

Sly I know one of us, maybe Pogo?, did a pretty complete list of what skills are the exception when it comes to dealing magic damage after scaling from AD (and vice versa). Other then those few exceptions the easy rule to follow is that if a skill scales from AD it does physical damage and if it scales from AP it does magical damage.

[Pogo]

I realized that my understanding of something that is pretty fundamental may not be so solid.

The problem is you’re not paying attention to the text of the skill.

Every single damaging ability in this game says whether or not it does physical or magical damage. This is independent of whether or not that skill’s damage numbers scale off of attack damage or ability power.

When looking at damage numbers, +orange means the skill’s damage scales off of total (or bonus) attack damage. If it’s +green, the skill’s damage scales off of ability power.

How much a champion’s abilities scale off of ad/ap, or whether they do physical/magical damage, is pretty seemingly arbitrary except for pure AP or AD champions.

Some abilities scale off of both AD and AP, but they still only do one type of damage (physical or magical).

[guppy]

I realized that my understanding of something that is pretty fundamental may not be so solid.

“Magic” in the game generally speaking is damage from skills, correct? Damage for Q, W, E, and R.

“Damage” (or AD) is generally speaking from auto-attacks.

For most characters (with exceptions like Cait and other AD carries), doesn’t most of the damage you take come from skills? Even with characters like Cait, her Q is a “skill” and does a large amount of damage (as obviously does her R).

Doesn’t that imply that a slightly higher priority should be placed on getting Magic Resist items as opposed to Armor items (ignoring for the moment Rammus like characters who get additional bonuses from Armor)?

It just feels like the bulk of the damage and dying that happens in this game is from skill bursts (including in team fights). Is it the case that a number of skills actually do AD damage? I assumed that was the case for awhile (which is why you buy armor against characters like Xin), but having repeatedly seen people equate “magic” with “skills,” regardless of character, now I’m not so sure.

I know you can see the sources of damage that killed you, but that’s only helpful from a post-kill standpoint - I’d like to know the mechanics.

Fundamental, I know, but I want to make sure I don’t have a fundamental misunderstanding (and with characters like Xin, I want to know what exactly my armor is blocking, damage from his skills, or primarily damage from his autoattacks).

What you say is often, but not always, true.

First: Your fundamental presumption is false. The goal of a traditional pure AD carry – Tristana, e.g. – is to farm up enough items to right click you to death. This does not typically happen until late-game; AD carries are, therefore, comparatively weak early game.

To accommodate this goal, a carry will typically have one or more of what are referred to as “steroid” skills, which passively or actively boost the output of your autoattacks. Tristana’s is a straight activated attack speed buff. Others might boost crit chance or damage or something else.

The current highly rated AD carries like Caitlyn do a lot early as well – Caitlyn has extremely high attack range and a fairly damaging, fairly spammable Q skill. To my mind this is a problem and should be fixed. This issue isn’t unique to LoL; HoN is having similar problems with “toolbox” heroes who can do too much at all stages, which favors those heroes over hard carries.

AP carries work differently, primarily off of low-cooldown spells with good scalingThese are champions like Annie. Problems here can arise if base skill damage is too high (making them too strong without items) or if AP ratios are too low (making them too weak with items, i.e. poor scaling).

(This paragraph is opinion.) Recently we’ve seen a new type of champion that I think of as an “AD nuker” – think Talon. Builds AD items, but most of his damage is burst damage from skills. Personally, I think this type of hero will eventually cause problems of not addressed, because it will result in heroes who do both great burst skill damage and great autoattack damage when those skills are on cooldown.

Second: Skills don’t always do magic damage. Every skill of Garen’s except his ult does physical damage. Plenty of other heroes’ do the same. As far as I know there is no way to know this except to know the heroes and perhaps to read your post-death logs.

[SlyFrog]

Every single damaging ability in this game says whether or not it does physical or magical damage. This is independent of whether or not that skill’s damage numbers scale off of attack damage or ability power.

When looking at damage numbers, +orange means the skill’s damage scales off of total (or bonus) attack damage. If it’s +green, the skill’s damage scales off of ability power.

Okay. I knew about the color for scaling; I did not know if the color also implied the type of damage done.

One of the problems is that I don’t always have access (or remember) the skill description for each on a character I’m not playing. The other is that I’m still not clear (I’ll have to check tonight) if the skill description describes the damage type.

I’m looking at Gragas’s skill description from the LoL wiki (I realize it says the damage type in the language in the right column, but that may not appear in the in game description):

“Gragas rolls his cask to a location, which can be activated again to explode or will explode on its own after 5 seconds. Enemies struck by the blast have their attack speed reduced for 3 seconds.”

For that, for example, I don’t see where it says physical versus magical damage.

I’ll take a closer look next time I play. In any event, it would be nice if they also gave the damage type in the skill description you can access when you call up summaries of the champions.

[Anti-Bunny]

I hope he summons a shark out of the ground the same way as Kunkka’s ghost ship.

[SlyFrog]

What you say is often, but not always, true.

First: Your fundamental presumption is false. The goal of a traditional pure AD carry – Tristana, e.g. – is to farm up enough items to right click you to death. This does not typically happen until late-game; AD carries are, therefore, comparatively weak early game.

I did know this - didn’t mean to imply otherwise. That’s why I wrote that AD damage comes from autoattacks (generally).

Second: Skills don’t always do magic damage. Every skill of Garen’s except his ult does physical damage. Plenty of other heroes’ do the same. As far as I know there is no way to know this except to know the heroes and perhaps to read your post-death logs.

That’s the part that I didn’t know for sure one way or the other. I’ll have to look more closely at the heroes.

Frankly, up until now, I had been looking at their general profile (e.g. is their AD or AP bar highest in the character overview) and buying resistances accordingly.

[McKnight]

Okay. I knew about the color for scaling; I did not know if the color also implied the type of damage done.

One of the problems is that I don’t always have access (or remember) the skill description for each on a character I’m not playing. The other is that I’m still not clear (I’ll have to check tonight) if the skill description describes the damage type.

I’m looking at Gragas’s skill description from the LoL wiki (I realize it says the damage type in the language in the left column, but that may not appear in the in game description):

“Gragas rolls his cask to a location, which can be activated again to explode or will explode on its own after 5 seconds. Enemies struck by the blast have their attack speed reduced for 3 seconds.”

For that, for example, I don’t see where it says physical versus magical damage.

I’ll take a closer look next time I play. In any event, it would be nice if they also gave the damage type in the skill description you can access when you call up summaries of the champions.

And beside the description, it says “Magic Damage: 85 / 135 / 185 / 235 / 285 (+0.9 per ability power)”.

[SlyFrog]

And beside the description, it says “Magic Damage: 85 / 135 / 185 / 235 / 285 (+0.9 per ability power)”.

I know, that’s why I mentioned that I knew it was available at the wiki site in the other column. But it doesn’t say that in the game, right? Or does it, and I just missed it?

[Hanacker]

For a few games check the stats at the end and see if you’re taking more physical damage or magic damage overall. I think it tends to be about 50/50 but I haven’t really looked at it in detail. You also need to keep in mind that a bit of the physical damage comes from minions, especially if you’re jungling.

[Pogo]

I know, that’s why I mentioned that I knew it was available at the wiki site in the other column. But it doesn’t say that in the game, right? Or does it, and I just missed it?

I’m not sure, since I never play Gragas. If so, it’s an unintentional omission/bug.

[forgeforsaken]

Your death recap should say what kind of damage it was, though I know it was buggy in the past.

[peacedog]

Frankly, up until now, I had been looking at their general profile (e.g. is their AD or AP bar highest in the character overview) and buying resistances accordingly.

Well, there’s not many situations where you are really going to care, but it’s good to keep in mind just who has the “unexpected” damage.

1. Sivir - her Q (the long boomerang throw) does magic damage. She’s all physical outside of this. Q scales on AD and AP.

2. MF’s E and R do magic damage (also, E’s passive stacks extra magic damage on you). E only scales on AP, R scales on AD + AP. If she’s building AP (it happens occasionally), you want to get MR. I have seen AP trist twice in my entire life. Not recommended.

3. Kog’Maw - all of Kog’s active abilities do magic damage. R scales off both ap and ad. You’ll almost certainly want to get MR though on him. He might be going on hit (malady, wit’s end, Razors), which is MR. If he goes pure AD he’s still going to do a good bit of Magic Damage through his Ult and Dat W.

4. Trist - R and E are magic damage. You only care about this if she’s doing AP (which she shouldn’t be doing), as they don’t really scale off AD.

5. All of Teemo’s ability damage is magic damage. You want to watch his items. If he goes on hit he’ll produce a shit load of magic damage. If he goes traditional AD his magic damage will be a greater than mild annoyance but nothing more. Teemo can be a decent hybrid damage dealer too, FWIW.

6. TF is all over the place. But his items are the giveaway. Q (the 3 card toss) does magic damage and scales on AP. I can’t remember what the damage type for each pick a card is, but they scale off AD and AP but better of AD (iirc). The third ability adds magic damage to every fourth attack and scales off AP.

7. Forgot Ez. I forget which ability does what (I think the white ray thing is physical, the yellow ray is magic). Whatever, his itemsms are a giveaway. Plan accordingly. Also, don’t play AP Ez I guess.

Really, the characters you care about are most likely to get thrown off guard by are Kog, Teemo, and TF. Look at the items and adjust accordingly, and remember that AD kog still puts out a ton of magic damage.

[McKnight]

I know, that’s why I mentioned that I knew it was available at the wiki site in the other column. But it doesn’t say that in the game, right? Or does it, and I just missed it?

It definitely mentions it in game.

[maxle]

I know, that’s why I mentioned that I knew it was available at the wiki site in the other column. But it doesn’t say that in the game, right? Or does it, and I just missed it?

It says so in the game, but not in the lobby client. Browsing the store or the champion list, you don’t get numbers. Playing as the champion, you do.

Because, I dunno, the best time to theorycraft is when you’re playing a match. Or they really want to encourage people to go use the third-party wiki. Or something.

[Pogo]

5. All of Teemo’s ability damage is magic damage. You want to watch his items. If he goes on hit he’ll produce a shit load of magic damage. If he goes traditional AD his magic damage will be a greater than mild annoyance but nothing more. Teemo can be a decent hybrid damage dealer too, FWIW.

Not sure what you mean by “going on-hit.” He builds Malady because his E applies instant magic damage and poison… it’s essentially a passive AD steroid for him and it’s never less than a pain in the ass because you don’t realize that you’ve just been shredded of 24 MR and have about 120 more damage to go before the poison wears out.

I’d have to say that Teemo at level 3 is a huge threat because of that E ability. An ignite and one auto attack is like 200 damage total at that level.