EDIT: Re: Maokai - his win rate is up somewhere between 5 and 6%. Considering a 55% win rate is "omgwtfhairisonfire" op in this game (no, he doesn't have a 55% win rate), that's an enormous, enormous swing.
Pretty sure the new Skarner is MUCH stronger than the old one. I've even seen him banned a few times in ranked. He has some differences, but ultimately the differences tend to be things that make him mostly very strong, albeit more of a tank than a fighter now.
Just to be clear, I don't even care about the damage from Ghostblade, as long as it's 'good enough'. It's the mobility I'm after... I've gotten to late game twice building this way (I've tried it four times, two of them were: jungle rengar with 8 kills at 10 minutes on enemy team, and every lane but bot lost to the tune of a 20 to 3 score at 15 minutes, just regular bad luck) and I'm just unkillable while doing 90% of Kog'Maw's regular damage (which is still way higher than anyone else's).
Ashe build: IE/PD/LW/Merc Scimitar/BoRK/Boots
Kog'Maw: BoRK/Ghostblade/Merc Scimitar/LW/Tri Force or IE/Boots
These carries are super terrifying when they can self-protect, and with three or four speed-up button presses (BoRK, Youmuus, Merc Scimitar, Heal), even these two are nearly impossible to actually run down and kill if you're at all careful positioning. Self-protecting Kog'Maw is terrifying.
Link loses 70% in that video bursting Voyboy... If not for the silence, there'd be a real chance Link would die before Voyboy (Syndra's burst IS comparable to Leblancs, Syndra's just silenced here).
Hrm. I'm not sure I've followed the thread of the conversation, then.
I'm not saying she doesn't do solid damage without snowballing, I'm saying it's not particularly remarkable (for her class), and that the problematic part of her late game is how easy it is to get there with a bunch of kills, assuming you know how to play her.
A lot of that is because of how fed she usually is, though. Her late game is entirely dependent on being mega fed. It's just also really easy to get mega fed right now.
I mean, a nerf is appropriate here, right? Not sure why we ought to have the expectations that nerfs always come with compensation.
EDIT: As for Twitch, I'm a little biased here (I'm 13-1 on him in ranked play, I just played one with GLJ and a couple diamond tier players last night in normals and went 12-1 despite playing with heavy lag, steady 300 ms ping), but I'd be very surprised if this goes far enough. Twitch isn't a little better than the rest of the ADC roster (except maybe Lucian), Twitch is a LOT better, and he can be hit pretty hard before he falls into 3rd place among adcs imo. He's also both a great BoRK user and a great IE user (BoRK -> IE being the maximal 2-item dps build, though it gets awkward after that) and both of those are buffed from an ADC perspective.
Not that I oppose them taking an incremental approach to nerfs, just I think they'll have to hit him again a couple patches later.
Re: Draven: I'm pretty sure this is a nerf. He can't position safely; the Randuin's nerf doesn't affect him very much. He's heavily AD ratio-driven; BT is much worse for that. Crit probably affects the lowest percentage of his damage among all ADCs except Ezreal, and AD probably helps him the most among all ADCs (with a 1.85 ratio on his basic attacks !!!). He'll probably still be good, but he's probably taking the biggest hit among ADCs not being explicitly nerfed.
Caitlyn, Ashe, Tristana look like the big winners here. Anyone whose best move early is rushing IE -> PD -> LW loves these changes. Double or triple Dorans into IE is gonna be great.
I've been playing BoRK / SotD Twitch lately. It's grotesque. I don't know if its a low elo artifact (I'm only in Gold 5), but it feels positively abusive - I'm picking up easily 3 kills a game off of stealthing up to people and instantly bursting them down before they can react. It's a fine combo in teamfights with spray and pray, not ideal, but the lead it lets me build IS that good in teamfights.
Flat pen actually increases your damage more against soft targets than hard targets. % pen increases your damage equally against both. Which means that neither form of pen is actually something that you build to counter tanky items; they're both just strong (VERY strong) multipliers on your dps.
This doesn't address anything just wrote, of course. Just a note on game math.
Except % hybrid pen would be so ridiculously expensive under current % pen pricing that no one would buy it. It's just not worth it.
I'm sorry - are you agreeing with me or arguing with me or...?
The original suggestion was make a good hybrid pen item that Akali would want to use. I was explaining why that's not a thing which would, imo, be good for the game. The fact that a meaningful hybrid pen item at a decent cost would be hard to build in the first place supports that, I think?
Sort of, but understand what I'm saying. If a hybrid pen item was added that Akali actually wanted, that would be a functional buff for her (otherwise she wouldn't care about the item, and if Akali is not caring about this hypothetical item, it's probably not worth bothering to create), same for Jax and Kayle. And if they're not comfortable buffing those champs, they only have two options: nerf the item until it ISN'T a buff for them, or nerf the champions directly.
If they nerf the item until it isn't a buff for those champs, then they've literally added an item whose best users don't really care about it. Why add that item?
(Incidentally I don't think it's true that they won't nerf champions to preserve items - actually, they tend to hit *both* at the same time, e.g. mid Lulu and Lichbane at the same time, or Jayce and Tear of the Goddess, or Blue Ezreal and Iceborn Gauntlet, or a hundred other examples)
Honestly I can't think of a way to make the item good enough to want it over things like Trinity Force, Gunblade, Nashor's Tooth, etc., but if Riot found a way to make the item, I am confident that it would be available as an alternative to say Gunblade, and not as a must buy, and thus would not necessitate a nerf. If they make it situationally powerful then they don't need to nerf anything.
Options are power; you take away a weakness, say, which means you have one fewer weakness for your opponents to exploit.
However, pure damage mult stats like % pen are not situationally powerful; they are blanket powerful. If % pen was actually an anti-tank stat, then MAYBE it could fit that? But % pen is every bit as strong against squishy targets against tanks; as a hybrid dpser, you want to blow someone up, and % pen helps you blow someone up better.
If they did it, it would be because they found a way to fix it, but I'm pretty confident you won't see that happen.
In the same way to how damage is an anti-squishy stat, although pen is more drastically affected by mitigation yea. I mean in theory a hybrid pen item would be balanced in a way where it gives more pen each than it would if it were single pen, to account for the fact that relatively small amounts of flat pen are bad. But (just like hybrid pen runes huh) that could make it very OP in the early game.
Maybe a hybrid dual-pen item that builds out of 2 1500ish gold mono-pen items would work nicely - like Brut + Haunting Guise.
Flat pen is preferentially better against squishy targets than it is against tanky targets because of how their defense math works. You get a larger percent damage increase from it vs a low armor target than vs a high armor target.
Sort of, but understand what I'm saying. If a hybrid pen item was added that Akali actually wanted, that would be a functional buff for her (otherwise she wouldn't care about the item, and if Akali is not caring about this hypothetical item, it's probably not worth bothering to create), same for Jax and Kayle. And if they're not comfortable buffing those champs, they only have two options: nerf the item until it ISN'T a buff for them, or nerf the champions directly.
If they nerf the item until it isn't a buff for those champs, then they've literally added an item whose best users don't really care about it. Why add that item?
(Incidentally I don't think it's true that they won't nerf champions to preserve items - actually, they tend to hit *both* at the same time, e.g. mid Lulu and Lichbane at the same time, or Jayce and Tear of the Goddess, or Blue Ezreal and Iceborn Gauntlet, or a hundred other examples)
The game that got me gold 2: http://matchhistory.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/#match-details/NA1/1442840057/36311243
EDIT: Re: Maokai - his win rate is up somewhere between 5 and 6%. Considering a 55% win rate is "omgwtfhairisonfire" op in this game (no, he doesn't have a 55% win rate), that's an enormous, enormous swing.
Kog'Maw: BoRK/Ghostblade/Merc Scimitar/LW/Tri Force or IE/Boots
These carries are super terrifying when they can self-protect, and with three or four speed-up button presses (BoRK, Youmuus, Merc Scimitar, Heal), even these two are nearly impossible to actually run down and kill if you're at all careful positioning. Self-protecting Kog'Maw is terrifying.
I'm not saying she doesn't do solid damage without snowballing, I'm saying it's not particularly remarkable (for her class), and that the problematic part of her late game is how easy it is to get there with a bunch of kills, assuming you know how to play her.
EDIT: As for Twitch, I'm a little biased here (I'm 13-1 on him in ranked play, I just played one with GLJ and a couple diamond tier players last night in normals and went 12-1 despite playing with heavy lag, steady 300 ms ping), but I'd be very surprised if this goes far enough. Twitch isn't a little better than the rest of the ADC roster (except maybe Lucian), Twitch is a LOT better, and he can be hit pretty hard before he falls into 3rd place among adcs imo. He's also both a great BoRK user and a great IE user (BoRK -> IE being the maximal 2-item dps build, though it gets awkward after that) and both of those are buffed from an ADC perspective.
Not that I oppose them taking an incremental approach to nerfs, just I think they'll have to hit him again a couple patches later.
Re: Draven: I'm pretty sure this is a nerf. He can't position safely; the Randuin's nerf doesn't affect him very much. He's heavily AD ratio-driven; BT is much worse for that. Crit probably affects the lowest percentage of his damage among all ADCs except Ezreal, and AD probably helps him the most among all ADCs (with a 1.85 ratio on his basic attacks !!!). He'll probably still be good, but he's probably taking the biggest hit among ADCs not being explicitly nerfed.
Caitlyn, Ashe, Tristana look like the big winners here. Anyone whose best move early is rushing IE -> PD -> LW loves these changes. Double or triple Dorans into IE is gonna be great.
Flat pen actually increases your damage more against soft targets than hard targets. % pen increases your damage equally against both. Which means that neither form of pen is actually something that you build to counter tanky items; they're both just strong (VERY strong) multipliers on your dps.
This doesn't address anything just wrote, of course. Just a note on game math.
I'm sorry - are you agreeing with me or arguing with me or...?
The original suggestion was make a good hybrid pen item that Akali would want to use. I was explaining why that's not a thing which would, imo, be good for the game. The fact that a meaningful hybrid pen item at a decent cost would be hard to build in the first place supports that, I think?
Options are power; you take away a weakness, say, which means you have one fewer weakness for your opponents to exploit.
However, pure damage mult stats like % pen are not situationally powerful; they are blanket powerful. If % pen was actually an anti-tank stat, then MAYBE it could fit that? But % pen is every bit as strong against squishy targets against tanks; as a hybrid dpser, you want to blow someone up, and % pen helps you blow someone up better.
If they did it, it would be because they found a way to fix it, but I'm pretty confident you won't see that happen.
Flat pen is preferentially better against squishy targets than it is against tanky targets because of how their defense math works. You get a larger percent damage increase from it vs a low armor target than vs a high armor target.
If they nerf the item until it isn't a buff for those champs, then they've literally added an item whose best users don't really care about it. Why add that item?
(Incidentally I don't think it's true that they won't nerf champions to preserve items - actually, they tend to hit *both* at the same time, e.g. mid Lulu and Lichbane at the same time, or Jayce and Tear of the Goddess, or Blue Ezreal and Iceborn Gauntlet, or a hundred other examples)