That moment when Phreak puts into words what everyone was trying to say about Seraph's Embrace all along but you still feel that the item isn't gonna be made any more exciting 😩
the problem is that ap scaling is much steeper than the ad equivalent because almost all common mages already will do enough damage but dont have a lot of health so the difference between a 300+ health shield and ~50-100 damage is bigger than an auto attacker that has 4-5 options for health regen.
I like secondary resource bars because when considering if a trade is good or bad you have more to think about than "they lost 20% health and i only lost 10% so i won the trade hard"
Great work with this one! This felt just like watching a GDC talk (but actually narrowed down to a very specific point) so I'd love to see more like these! The seraph's discussion about how it's effectively just acting like a less interesting AP stack item without providing any real horizontal progression was something I hadn't considered before!
Great video Phreak, you really hit nail on the head about tank itemization being made difficult not only in a way that unique abilities being tied to stats that you don't really want right now(like Thornmail's Grievous wounds vs AP champs like Akali who build Riftmaker) but also in stat amounts being different on different items, making choice even more difficult for seemingly no reason. Hope to see more of those videos, thanks for making it!
I do enjoy some of the theory-crafting that goes into studying build options prior to going into a match. Some people argue that as much of the match should be "played in the match" as possible, and despise feeling like they need to study or do research before they have a shot at being truly competitive. I sympathize with that and sometimes even feel it myself more strongly sometimes. But I also enjoy rewarding some degree of champion-specific knowledge. Knowing that my champion has a low base mana pool and tends to be starved on that axis allows me to make decisions based on that knowledge and have the opportunity to convert that into an advantage over other players who do not possess the same depth of awareness and have made less-intentional decisions. And it allows me to display a higher success rate than other players would playing the same champion I am, either given the same team compositions/game states, or across a variety of them. It allows for another dimension of creative problem-solving, that can give me the chance to get a leg up on the meta whenever it shifts by re-evaluating and curating my champion pool and crafting out my own item builds before the stats websites have compiled the information so that more players just have it handed to them as a default. I think there's something to be said about discrepancies between champions in things like mana pool that allow me to express skill as a player by knowing what the correct questions to ask myself are, which then informs which decisions between items I am going to make when either theory-crafting my default couple of item paths or making an on-the-fly decision to go off script for some reason and innovate a solution to the game-flow I see in front of me. I will say that this seems to have a higher satisfaction-to-frustration ratio for me on something like a mana pool than on something like a distribution between Armor on the targets I am fighting due to clarity issues. It feels bad and frustrating on some level if I just have to know that e.g. Rakan had absurdly high base Armor for a while and therefore I needed to value Armor Pen items higher than the relative lack of armor items in his inventory and him being visually a squishy-looking Enchanter-skewed, flighty sort of engage champion would otherwise suggest. The other side to this is that sometimes the item system just becomes unbalanced in a way that hugely restricts the competitive pool of champions (especially markspersons) artificially, because the right eclectic combinations of stats happen to be on items whose other qualities match certain champions' playstyles. And so you're left with a system in which even a savvy player who's put a lot of effort into trying to theory-craft their way to parity just can't overcome that disparity, and it ends up feeling like they're being punished for liking to play the kind of champion they do. This is probably even worse for newer or lower-Elo players who may be less-informed about the intricacies of the system and have a large initial knowledge barrier to overcome before they can truly master making itemization choices for themselves, as deviations from whatever the most standard build fed to them by a website. And overall, we probably do want to maximize the confidence of a player to make heads-up item decisions in a match without worrying about whether they're sacrificing too much Raw DPS from the standard build in order to make their hail mary itemization choice, especially because it can be difficult to evaluate whether the choice ends up being correct.
Great video, Phreak! My only contention is that I think mana pool *can* feel like vertical scaling, if it unlocks something major for your champion. I play a lot of Kai'Sa and Qiyana; neither of them explicitly NEED to build a manamune to function, but when you have one you feel like you can bounce back and forth between fast clearing waves and still having mana for teamfights without a concern in the world about that blue bar. That being said I'm in low gold where people are constantly starting random fights with no objective in sight so perhaps I perceive it as more valuable to be ready to go at a moment's notice than a higher ELO player in a more predictable game does.
All champs having the same mana also makes balancing mana costs easier. FF14 did this, all classes have the same amount of mana, making it really easy for them to balance mana costs on spells so the class works how it's supposed to. It's been pretty sweet as all systems around mana were also either removed as they weren't needed anymore or streamlined like crazy.
honestly i live for this kinda content, mainly because i also want to be a game designer, but also because i find design in general really interesting and fun to learn about
Great video! I hope you do more of these, I agree that having varying degrees of stats among the same item type is not good, it makes sense if it's done like the crit mythics, where it's very clear one is your defensive item and it makes sense that it has lifesteal on it but less offensive stats,the other is the damage option and it has more ad and attack speed and the third has its power on the active instead (I don't agree with the execute damage on galeforce but that's another matter) but in the case of the armor items there's just not a clear distint direction and the active on randuin's for example just feels tacked on, I think it would make sense to have a singular statline across all those items, it would also be nice to have a couple of tank items with mana on them one with mr, hp and mana and one with armor, hp and mana that you can build second if you are playing a mana hungry tank trading off the special effect you'd get on the manaless item. I think having a more uniform baseline stat level in general would make it a lot more intuitive and easier to balance in general both in regard to items and to champions base stats, there could just be a few "classes" in which the champion would fall and have the stats for that there could be one for all base stats but also one for single stats would be ok like a 3 point slider starting from frail all the way to resilient for hp and defenses, same for movespeed attack damage etc. It would make it really easy to see what to expect from a champion at a glance without having to go into numbers and make calculation and it should be pretty easy to implement, there could just be the slider done like this instead of the currently useless one on client and you could tell at a glance "this champion is slow and tanky" or "fast and high damage but squishy"
Phreak, thank you for putting out content like this. I loved the mana conversation that you put up a while ago, and I'm glad you put up another one of these things. I really like long-form content, but UA-cam's algorithm tends to promote 5-15 minute videos. And I, as a Sona player, definitely consider mana regen as a secondary stat. Now you are correct in pretty much every other case, that pretty much no one actually considers it as it's just *tacked on*, but there is a breaking point in mana regen where it becomes *difficult* to run out of mana. It may not be optimal, but I like buying two faerie charms on my first back because the stat works with itself. For that reason, I also do not upgrade the fc into bandleglass, because both the HP from kindlegem is more useful, and there is no upgrade to mana regen in the upgrade. Used to go Seraph's for the mana, but for some reason this season, slot efficiency (which I was hoping you'd get to) is more difficult in S11.
hey phreak, idk if you read comments, but one thing to consider with the mana that was always kind of the obvious design goal here: League is all about not getting fatigued after millions of games played. One way to achieve that is to make stats similar, but not the same. if all tanks start with 650hp, and go up to 2500hp, then that makes sense for their class, but its boring to look at. Making the numbers more convoluted helps lessen the fatigue one gets by looking at the numbers. Mana is so random for the same reason. It makes zero difference, but its more interesting to look at different numbers from time to time. Of course, that means you cant really transfer knowledge from one champion to the next, but i feel like thats actually a design choice aswell, as you can then spend more time playing the game as you have to learn more. thats imo not a bad thing, its just something ive noticed where the designers maybe used different motives for certain things.
I like it a lot, well done. I think like this too, its nice to see you decide you need to determine the point of the items in the first place and go from there and not just drop it.
Talking about how having different amounts of mana makes bonus mana more unclear I have to say that I hate the fact that when you ping your mana, the text in the chat states the percentage of mana you have, like 9% mana... Thats useless! Even if I main your champion and I probably know that your combo costs 120 mana I don't know what percentage of the total that is, especially when I have to consider champion levels and items
Dota signals that you don't have enough mana to cast the skill when you ping it but when you ping your mana bar it gives the mana AND hp % which can be even more confusing than just the mana.
@@amuro9624 you can ping a spell in league like that too, but thats useless if you need to cast multiple spells for your combo. in general, its best to check other peoples mana before fights imo.
this is why i personally ping the spells that i can't cast because i lack mana because that specifically tells people "i don't have enough mana for R" so i probably can't do a qw combo, but i agree there needs to be something that i can do about this. even if it's just like, If mana is less than 15% then output "mana is low"
@@IANF126 its just a problem with heavy combo based characters. Even AD chamos like darius. If i have 30% of my mana bar that's barely enough for one combo. If the fight is extended I might just lose due to having no mana. But theres no way to indicate that.
@@alextrollip7707 Exactly. The problem arises when all of your spells say that you have mana to cast them once but you don't have enough mana to use more than one spell. Let's say your q costs 100 mana and your w costs 70 mana but you have 110 current mana. Pinging both q or w will say that the spell is ready and pinging your mana pool will say something like 14% which means nothing to a player expecting you to join the fight that you know you will lose if you can't get more than one spell off. (explanation for people that might not understand what we are talking about. My reply to you specifically is "exactly".)
Great video. The one thing I think you left out about is item synergies. I like when items synergize like how ROA and Seraphs would or spellbinder and deathcap or thornmail with other armor items etc. I like the feeling of once I get this combo of items I'm gonna be god tier even though they may be weak individually. (As long as the combination makes up for the trough prior)
14:27 I would love to see an actual mana item for tanks some point. I actually uninstalled for season 11 because it is totally unfun to me without the option of building catalyst and its upgrades on tanks. Something I would like considered though is to avoid Fimbul Winter because that has the same problem as Frozen Heart in that it is a terrible choice for mana when you are not against full AD. 19:00 Thank you Phreak for acknowledging the plight of Taric mains. We cannot function without mana but we are also limited to pretty much only Frozen Heart. Again, I uninstalled because the loss of catalyst and no longer enjoyed playing.
@@tostupidforname I said I wanted them to avoid fimbul winter but as it turns out, they just changed the build path of it for health instead of armor so it ended up being fine.
I think the stat differences on items is an interesting decision point as long as the items are balanced correctly. Without needing to do math, if I am against a team with 5 AD champs, I know that the item with more Armor and less Health might be better then the item with less Armor and more Health, even if the passive might be less interesting. There's certainly games or builds that really want a specific stat very highly, and that can influence what they take as much as the passives IMO.
Good stuff Phreak. You’re dead on about tanks needing mana. I played Poppy and Volibear top last season and they feel so much worse without a mana item like IBG. Really wish they’d fix thorn mail to apply Gw on ability hits too
ive been playing for 10 years, and im glad you talked about snowball, cuz there was a season where u went againts it, so im glad it is a lot better now!
I love this video and the idea that items are compelling for the choices they make us make. So then why were mythic items introduced, narrowing your choices for your first or second item to only 3 or 4 possibilities?
I like the current itemization system in concept but I wish for supports that base/flat stats on mythic items would be determined entirely by which support item you started with. In general all of the mythic actives/passives are good on all supports and I wish I really did have 4 to choose from each game, but the bundle of stats you get feel really bad to buy in almost all cases outside of the 1 or 2 "made for" your champion. Another related issue is that support itemization feels incredibly linear right now. In general each support has at most 2 viable options for mythics. On top of that you generally only get to finish boots and 1 other legendary item in the majority of games - and that 1 other legendary is usually selected from a set of 2-3 viable options at most depending on your champion.
The above is in line with what you're saying... The "unique text" on items for supports is really compelling right now, but the specific primary/secondary stat bundles are hurting the system a fair bit, especially in relation to the 4 mythic items.
I love your point about seraph. It could be interesting as a mana item if you wanted to build one of the non-mana mythics (i.e. Rocketbelt on Lissandra) and still be good on mana. However, the current ap conversion completely works against this. Buying it without a mana mythic straight up makes it less efficient. With a few exceptions (like Kassadin) it mostly seems to be used to maximize ap and the last round of buffs even enforced this. I think a new passive (or active) instead of mana to ap conversion would really help to balance the item around more than a select few champs who are kind of reliant on it. Imagine building Night Harvester + Seraph Karthus and not feel bad about it. Seraph could even be viable on some supports.
I can say a few things about thae state of LoL itemization options: - The passive of RoA was outdated, but now the only item which have AP, HP and Mana on it is Everfrost and some champ don't like the active on it. Some players are really happy that there are more items with AP, HP and CDR in S11 and would be nice to have few other items with the statline of RoA. - Boots can be an easy and accessible way of picking up off-class stats and I would like it to be a more meaningful choice in that reguard. - Some item have the same stat lineup, but different build paths, like Cosmic Drive and Night Harvester. There is room to make the build paths more similar and less combine cost = more fun. - Would be nice to have more choices in melee mythics that better fit the playstyle and stat preferances of some champions. - Would be nice to have some items with niche stat lineup, like Hybrid pen. + tank and Lethatity + AS. It's fine if a specific champion's needs set the standard for an item's design as long as it is not just a trap. - What is the value of getting crit chance just in adjunct from a single item in your build, like The Collector on AD assassins? - Would be nice to have a less selfish gold economy in the game.
"Just a dude" who has a lot of history, passion, experience, and focus on exactly these sorts of design questions for this particular game. Humility is good, but there's a reason we're listening when you're talking.
I like the design of most of the mythic items. The only one i don't like is Frostfire Gauntlet because the effect doesn't feel like i gained anything unique. 5 other items slow opponents and since I'm already playing a tank, there is probably already enough CC in my kit. I wish Frozen Heart would be absorbed into the item because then the slow+attack speed slow would actually feel like a unique thing that is mythic. And Frozen Heart... poor Frozen Heart. Back in the old old days it was an excellent item. It gave you 500 Mana, 99 Armor, 25% CDR (back when it wasn't slapped onto every item and was actually hard to hit the 40% CDR cap) and a 25% AS slow for 2700. Now the AS debuff is down by 40% the armor is down 20%, Mana is down by 20%, 20% Ability Haste is worse than 20% CDR and can be found on pretty much any item now and it costs the same. The only instance where it is worth buying is when the enemy team has 3+ champs that heavily rely on auto attacking.
What if seraphs had a active which for a few seconds casting spells lowered the cooldown of your other spells (probably not ultimate) by a certain amount. Which i think helps the item identify as an item that trigger happy mages would love to have
I very much enjoyed this video and tend to agree on a lot of your points. While I know this would be a different discussion entirely, I would like to hear your thoughts on rather items are even good for a moba. Hots for example uses a talent system in which I much prefer for several reasons. Items have the issues of where some champs are inextricably bound to them such as Brand with Liandry's or Vayne with Rageblade. If these items are weak for everyone else, then it will need to be buffed or what is in the point of the item, but buffing them then requires nerfs to certain champions and then it just becomes a mess of balance. I know league will never remove items from the game and that's fine, but if you were to make a new game, which path would you take?
When you mention that some stats are held in unhelpful ways (Frozen Heart holding mana hungry tanks hostage vs AP comps) is it possible that such a thing is a conscious idea in some cases? Like hey Mana + MR would be too busted cuz Ryze now builds this like old Abyssal Scepter or w/e, or Mana+Health/Armor just had too much of an identity crisis with RoA
I think it makes more sense to balance one or a few champions than to say "all tanks are unable to buy mana+mr". Also there are ways to prevent other classes taking some items. You can make it melee only, or make the effect worse for ranged. That applies to all those similar circumstances too. For years now I am asking for class restrictions in items, like "here is an item we would like adc's to have BUT you can't buy it if you are supposed to be a fighter", or "assassins can't buy tank items... like...never"
@@manolismarinakis8444 I don't like the idea of that. If I'm behind in an assassin vs assassin matchup I'd like to buy some tank stats as they are cheaper and may help me catch up, or at least survive the rest of the laning phase without giving more gold to the enemy. Item choice makes this game fun and being told you can only buy these items made specifically for your class/role is not interesting to me. I do understand frustrations about a champion being able to poach an unintended item and becoming way too strong, but it's also fun to think of ways to counter that + the game is patched every two weeks. Hopefully this makes some sort of sense lol.
Mana stacking was fun on old Blitzcrank and old Transcendence rune. Stack frozen hearts for scaling AD, CDR, and Blitz shield scaling. Frozen Heart has always been super bad tho, even more now. 15% attack speed reduction is so bad bleh
on the last point of having same armor+health on all armor+health items: IMO its important for mythics to have same stats that because you are "forced" to build them and choosing based on stats was the whole point mythics were supposed to adress BUT for minor items i think its healthy to have different stats even though it becomes math problem, because it gives you options like "oh im dying to renekton top but im gonna get more health because enemy has AP mid"
Seraph is a strange item in general - it mainly used on long range control mages that spam there abilities, but it gives you a fkn shield. Like... why? You never see Seraph on fiz or other engaging champions that can actually utilize that shield reliably. Compare it to muramana and it's day and night in terms of usefulness. If i am a backline mage, i want my giant mana pull be converted in damage, not in a fkn shield.
To tag onto this discussion, games dev and student of like 8 years. Not primarily in design, but I mean when you work with designers and talk to designers on a daily basis you learn a bit about it. There's 3 (technically 4) different skills that are tested in the vast majority of games, in one extent or another. You'll have heard different names for them, but I go by Twitch, Tactical and Spacial Awareness (the 4th is Social skills but that's abstract af and I'm no psychologist). All three are tested pretty significantly in League of Legends, one of the reasons it's so hard to get into for a more casual audience. Twitch skills are reflexes and testing your response time, "dodge this thing, hit this thing", also called dexterity or mechanical skill. Spacial Awareness in regards to League is watching out for threats in a team fight, watching your map, knowing where things (or people) are, watching timers and respawns and such. Those two aren't really relevant to this video though. Tactical skills revolve around decision making, and line up with the subject matter of this video, and I think it's something Riot has done extremely well, especially with the item shop rework this season. You want to offer a wide selection of options that make the player ask a lot of questions, that's pretty much 90% of this video so I won't dwell on it, but it's right. People don't think about simply "I should buy AD on my Caitlin", you just do it because you're an ADC. New players need nudging that's just the way things are otherwise they build Thornmail Ashe, however after a while that just becomes instinctual. And after you get a bit more comfortable with the champion and start thinking about builds outside of recommended, you probably start by saying "I want AP and Attack Speed on Azir, what items give those two stats?" and filtering your choices from there. It's worth noting, oftentimes when exploring off-meta stuff, your first descriptor is often a change my priority on stats so AD Fizz, AP Tryndamere, AP Amumu, Tank Teemo. I think, with regards to uneven stats, there is some inherent value in prioritising one over another when you consider edge cases such as different scaling. For a champion that ignores their max HP, armour and MR outside of damage mitigation, the discussion on stats is just "Which is more effecient in this moment". However for a champion with it, maybe it makes you cultivate different idea's. Rammus has a taunt, and insane scaling with armour. I recommend looking up Mark Rosewater's GDC talk about Magic the Gathering, where he delves a little into player archetypes, Timmy, Johnny and Spike. Spike knows the exact gold effetciveness of every item, on his champion, has them all written in an Excel sheet on his second monitor. We don't talk about Johnny, he's too busy sniffing Teemo shrooms. But Timmy, he see's "Oh this champion scales with Armour!" filter's by armour, buys the 6 highest armour items available selling his boots to do so, and is perfectly content about it. "My W auto's are doing THIS MUCH DAMAGE meanwhile their puny ADC is only hitting me for THIS LITTLE DAMAGE!" He probably loses that game, because his build is Thornmail and 5 Frozen Hearts, but he doesn't care about that, they just want to ping their 90% physical resistance while the Ahri one-combo's them for the 14th time. That's also the reason I think having near nonsensical parts to characters is a positive, for the Johnny's of the world. There are less examples of it in modern League of Legends, but for instance when Morgana was a midlane mage, Johnny's played her support because as the hipsters of the world, no-one else was. They don't necessarily care about winning or losing, they want to express themselves, they want players to remember them after the game. (Preferably positive thoughts, but to each their own) They sort champions by playrate on op.gg and scroll to the bottom of the page. The reason I think Seraphs is in a bad spot right now, is because it's a Timmy item. Timmy wants to get a FAT stack of AP, by any means nessecary. And while this item does help them do that, the game is in a spot where they just gutted mana itemisation. It FEELS like it should give you less than it did before, because despite the new statline, they removed all the items it synergised with. Most the mana items you can only buy one of, and Seraphs into Frozen heart are uncomplimentary unless you're I dunno. Singed maybe? Singed who lost his mana gain passive? Kassadin's in range to use the armour and aura while he oneshots the person he's applying it to... Timmy's experimenting with other things right now, not AP gains. They're getting Urf levels of CDR or whatever, it's more exciting. So it's left as an item that Johnny is using, but not happy with because it's a bit boring being the stat-stick guy, that's not particularly expressive.
I'm curious what you think of items like Cosmic Drive and Horizon Focus. My bf plays Neeko and mid in general, and neither of us really know who you'd want to take those items on. Heck, we even crunched some numbers (perhaps incorrectly, so I'd double-check this) and realized that the 10% damage boost for Horizon is kinda comparable to Void Staff even if the opponent hasn't built bonus MR, yet there's an added requirement of "Snipe them across the map without a point-and-click, or Hard CC them." Yeah, there's an added "reveal" on the effect, but it's Ignite's pseudo-Reveal where you just put a Stealth Ward in the enemy's pocket instead of, I dunno, actually revealing someone Camouflaged (or Akali in her shroud). Meanwhile, Cosmic Drive... well, the MS from its effect seems generally outclassed by Lich Bane at first glance since it's only 10 + 20% of your Ability Haste (so 16 base) and it's only active after dealing ability damage instead of always on. If you want the Health for an extended fight, wouldn't Rylai's serve a similar purpose? I suppose Cosmic lets you dodge skillshots better while Rylai's lets you land skillshots better, but both help you chase just as well (assuming you can keep reapplying Rylai's since its effect duration is admittedly much shorter). With all that considered, the selling feature appears to be the Ability Haste, which... I guess is a selling point, but it's not a very interesting one. I'm kind of hoping to see more options for AP characters in general, since it feels like there's so many brands of AD characters and what they can build by comparison.
Cosmic Drive seems to me like an item for someone who weaves in and out of fights. I would say that it could be bought for survivability on burst mages. Once Veigar or Syndra have done their combo, they're a sitting duck and need to wait for their cooldowns. They can disengage and re-engage faster and have to wait shorter between combos.
I personally wish there was more options for mana. Personally my game play style is spam spam spam on like anyone. So them removing almost all mana items was super not fun for me this season. I feel like they should move some mana off of mythics and give more options to mages as well as give other options to other classes especially like you said tanks fighting mages the loss of abyssal was so huge honestly.
Topic: Should champions be able to flex into different roles? Some will say it creates diversity, others might say it makes is harder, if not impossible, to balance (e.g. Sylas jg). Some are able to be quadra-flexed. I feel like no more than 2 roles/lanes. 3 or more probably makes a champion too strong, especially in Pro play when draft and bans are even more important.
Why does Seraphs not have ability haste on it like Muramana does? If you buy this item, you're expected to be spamming abilities to use that mana. Also, we absolutely need a tear item for tanks, there is rarely a time where you can decide you need more mana and fit glacial into your build.
The first time I played with the new items I saw 3 of the 6 ap mythics randomly gave an entire 600 mana. I felt like it locks me from buying them if I didnt care about having mana. I wish that if I needed mana I could make the decision to get mana and if i dont want mana I can still get the item I want to get without having to spend money on 600 mana I dont need, if its 300 the game seems like it would be so much more exciting
Well, the design of mages right now is that they're supposed to buy some early mana since they're by nature so spell heavy. That mana tends to be pretty heavily discounted. Lost Chapter is more than 100% gold efficient before the mana regen passive.
I thought that the a big point of the video was to talk about how it is important to make items feel like you are choosing them for a specific reason. From what I understand the problem with SERAPHS is that Mythic items do its job on the side more conveniently not to say it isn't useful on specific champions. If that is the case, and the goal is to have decision making depth in the game, wouldn't it be important to adjust other options so that the item is more Exciting? And if the clear best choice for a specific champion is always one of the 3 MYTHIC items with 600 mana; which can virtually remove any Mana (resource) problems from a champions kit. Some of the most exciting and mind stimulating moments I've had are when I am almost out of mana and have to think about how to play a fight with everything I have left on my champion. I wonder if an exciting decision is to choose how and when you are going to deal with your resource problems rather than for them to be negated from a first purchase every game no matter what playstyle as a mage you opt for because having majority of mana constraints completely nullified is way too valuable, that the other AP mythic items aren't an option. Love the content, I was excited seeing you respond, to my comment I love your approach to bringing the theory and numbers into league content, all the best!!
Video suggestion: Imo Grievous wounds should be removed and healing be balanced "properly". No more dual state of champion allowing for better fantasy based design and less a war of numbers. Compare to the removal of the pink ward stealth interaction or QSS and Zed ult. 1 way counter rarely work. I would love your opinion on this
Maybe they could make it an hard counter active skillshot on the anti-heal items, if you hit the skillshot, the targets healing is like 90% reduced. Make it a very thin skillshot, so that the target pretty much needs to be cc'ed first for you to land it, increasing the potential for picks, but not ruining all healing champs. (Vlad can dodge with pool, fiora can parry, adc's should not really be hittable except when they're already cc'ed) ofcourse nerf healing as a whole when implementing this.
I liked how you put the perspective of vertical and horizontal progression as a design defining trait. However... I still have the idea that you can't separate systems from within the game, meaning that choices are made for you before the game starts, because some champions can abuse interactions with items/runes and that tends to make them overpowered, and yes, items aren't inherently bad, but the fact remains, that some of the new items are terribly designed because they removed prior constraints on the game (adding omnivamp, removing cooldown and changing it to spell haste, or the famous removal of flat pen over lethality), in my mind all those things impact game feel, and that should be something to take care about, constraints are there for a reason, you don't want a single player RPG (breaking a single stat, check for example old games that did 9999 dmg each hit like ff7) experience on a multiplayer "competitive" team oriented experience, it doesn't feel fair, because you have to wait for the other guy to screw up for you to be useful, you stop having agency when they just overstack stats on you. And i get it, they're supposed to win if they win, but it's just the gold efficiency on some stats, or the importance of them, is just broken, I.E. Tear of the godess is NOT a good item if you're going vs someone who can 1 shot you, because at the end of the day, you can't spam, but they shouldn't be allowed to 1 shot you by just having 1 item, just because they don't have to manage a mana pool (like talon, or zed) it's just terrible from my point of view, because you don't have a compelling reason to pick a mana based champion most of the time in those scenarios (talking about the early game, where you just 1v1) and you just have to play the survival game until the teamfight game happens, and by then, you have to be somewhat effective just by farming (and this puts you in a terrible spot, because the other person, has all the power built-in, while you, have to wait for it, and hope for the best). Honestly this game feels broken because instead of tuning down the vertical scaling of things, they just amp it up every time something else goes up (playing catch up I.E. Self-Healing vs Grevious wounds), making the champ themselves (statwise) unreliable and unfun, why should i bother to pick a champ that scales out of armor, if everything that AD assassins buy, reduces armor, making every purchase ineffective against them, unless i win the stat/gold treshold (buying items, that are more costly, faster than them, so i can win when i'm supposed to counter an entire class just by raw picking). I have yet, to see, this season (And past) a laneswap of old, when people were forced to move from lanes because their champs were highly countered by another champs, and some champs are just statwise busted... i don't get it really, it shouldn't be that hard to cap shit up, that is what is supposed to make something fun, the choice within constraints, because in the end, if you don't, you end up with monsters that are just far better than their counterparts, and it's not fun to play against, so why should the player feel "satisfaction" playing against it, it's like running a race, you're crippled, and the other person starts with a lead and fully functioning legs.
Is Movespeed a Vertical or Horizontally scaling stat? Might be decided by how many situations it's relevant - champions are always moving and always want to move faster, but there are a lot of cases where that won't matter (e.g. getting one shot).
To me Seraphs used to be (before the lost chapter reworks) an Item where you delay your current power for Safe Waveclear because you are in a bad matchup, and then get a power bump later when the grouping face of the game started in the form of 2nd most Ap of any item and a powerfull shield that could help you make plays without being doomed to die even though you had a rough lane. i get that it was mean as the item for champions who needs all the mana in the world but thats not interesting and it found a another use... that use is gone now however. While im at it, im confused as to why Morrelonomicon gives less relevant stats for its class than Putrifier and Chainsaw does. Why does Ad champions get 15Haste and Mages dont?
I also have a mind for game design and often wonder why professional players with multi-million dollar companies backing them lose games to shop keeper. Like doesn't every team have a coach or someone dedicated to the different aspects like this?
Tank Mythics are definitely still awkward to me because I want to build my first item almost always to fend off my lane opponent, not necessarily to predict game state and team fight objective. On another note, with it not giving and direct healt, what are your thoughts on Gargoyle’s Stoneplate?
Gargoyles is a tiny bait. Its a good and well priced item. But often people buy it early meaning its active is useless as it scales with HP( bonus i think). Second people use it as a dont die anymore button. Instead of burst removal. Using it earlier to negate burst rather than to protect your 50 hp sliver you have left is something I dont see many people doing.
On the topic of math in the middle of the game when looking at something like high health low armor vs low health high armor, what, if any, role do you thinking studying the game outside of the match should play? Is it bad to expect people who want to take the game more seriously to dedicate some amount of time and brain power into memorizing and internalizing the effective differences that such stats might make?
I think the issue here would be that what this will boil down to is just using an online tool to look-up which item is most stats-efficient. There will almost always be a correct answer to what the appropriate mix of armor / health you want, and the answer is already going to be published. And then because there are right & wrong answers, a bunch of items become invalid beginner's traps that you just ignore. I wholly agree with Phreak's argument that items should have baseline costs & stats that are uniform across the board, with only secondary stats and unique powers being the things you really shop for. The stats-mix game is one you should only be playing intuitively while buying components, not when looking through completed items.
@@kevinbrown2438 well the answer to your mix of health and armor will depend on enemy team comp, so it doesn’t just make one flatly unusable or a trap right?
Hey Phreak, is it correct that Lord Dominik’s Regard and Serylda’s grudge only penetrate bonus armor? My brother believes that % Armor Penetration and % Magic Penetration should be built second item. I am almost positive that he is incorrect but I can not explain why. Thanks for your great content!
last whisper and its upgrades have given total armor penetration since mid season 8 ( and, hell, before preseason 6, because that's when the "bonus armor pen" change was introduced ) while void staff has literally always given total magic penetration the reason why you don't build them second isn't because they do literally nothing until your opponents start building defenses, it's that the 14ish armor you're penetrating on the level 10 darius with last whisper is literarily the same amount you'd be penetrating if you got a youmu's instead. except with a lot less ad, none of the move speed, and you'd be penetrating significantly less than 14 armor against squishier targets. 'course, if the darius rushed a dead man's second, then you'd be penetrating 22 armor instead with the last whisper ... but, like, is that -8% ehp when all that means is that you have to deal 170 less physical damage to kill him? especially when you're giving up all the utility of the move speed, the actual raw damage from the ad, and the fact that you're _only_ benefitting from that when fighting this one specific enemy who decided to go a fairly tanky build? i mean, possibly. if that darius is the only threat on the enemy team and you already have an easy enough time killing the others? then sinking only 1450 gold in a last whisper _now_ means he doesn't get a fight where he shows up with a bunch of armor and walks right over you and now you have to rush to build armor pen before he takes over the game. 'course, that's still a "build last whisper second in this game in particular" reason and not "build last whisper second in _every_ game," so it's generally better form standard builds that actually build around _multiple_ members of the enemy team 'course, if your brother is constantly facing against full-tank teams, well ...
Arctangent is right about them not penetrating bonus resist, but total. % pen doesn't provide much damage for its cost until numbers get higher and you are absolutely paying for that stat.
Seraph's is boring, but I say it has a pretty well defined role. It allows you to not worry about mana and scale off of it. If anything, I'd say to just remove the bonus ap from it and put a lifeline shield that heavily drains your mana.
One reason I disagree with your point about "equal stats, different passives" is that sometimes the passive is only compelling if it's stronger then the item stats itself. Let's say every item has a certain power budget. If every statline remains the same, some passives become much less viable choices because the power budget for the passive is much lower. For example, if shieldbow had the same AD CRT as Kraken slayer, the shield would have to be much less because it would provide too much. But at a certain point, a shield becomes useless if it doesn't fulfill its purpose - to survive. So by balancing stats and passives differently, you provide a lot more design options for player choices. It's consequentially harder to balance, but it does make choices more interesting.
I'd like to think the live balance team has tried to hire assassins to dispose of phreak in the past but failed and every time they do he posts another one of these videos.
I had no idea that Seraph's Embrace was based on bonus mana. I had just assumed it was total mana. On a sidenote, this video could be retitled to "Why I hate Seraph's Embrace" for a more UA-cam content friendly clickbait title.
My biggest question about this topic is why are there damage items or spells that scale with resistances or health? Why do tanks need to deal damage when their main priority is to tank damage and be almost un-killable?
There is a much larger discussion around tanks as a whole, but my quick answer is: A tank's job is not really to absorb damage. Tanks just have to build durability because they need to be imposing up in front. Sometimes, they're imposing via putting out damage, not just crowd control. Notice how every offensive ability on ever tank deals damage. There's an argument to be made that those should get to scale in some way. For Leona's passive, it's from levels. In another world, that could have been some % of her hp/armor/mr.
Because if they didn't damage you, you would just ignore them, and then they don't tank any damage nor they protect their teammates. But making them buy damage items so that they can threaten you means that either they won't be tanky to be useful/fulfill their fantasy OR some damage items give good offensive stats AND enough tankiness for the tank to function properly and then every fighter buys that item, deals more damage and is also unkillable
It makes Malphite "the armor tank." That stuff is champion identity and if malphite's damage is too high, his base damage can be lowered to keep his armor damage scaling.
also, like, damage is pretty vital to interact with league as a whole. solo laners need it to contest cs and then actually clear it before their opponent crashes the wave into their tower. junglers need it to actually, y'know, jungle. and supports need it to harass, and they need _more_ of it if they don't have any form of harass so that they can actually help their carry win trades after a successful engage. and junglers and supports both have to do stuff in ganks, too now, in theory, could you siphon all this damage out of a tank's kit and items and still balance them to not be completely useless? probably. however, i get the feeling you _don't_ actually want to unkillable sack of bricks to instead cc lock you for twenty seconds straight while their talon mid casually saunters all the way from base to your bottom tier 2 to finally finish you off. this may sound extremely obvious, but giving tanks more cc means giving tanks _more cc,_ and you'd have make their cc _so_ much more potent if you effectively make them hypercarries by gutting their ability to actually generate gold and experience 'sides, tanks don't even do that much damage, even now. they reason why they can _seem_ like they're so deadly is because their engage and cc tends to lend them a _lot_ of stickiness ( which translates into them landing more abilities, attacks, and ticks of ambient damage from the mythics ), and their bulk and cc means that it takes you _far_ longer to kill them than the rest of their team ( which translates into ... the exact same thing ). so without proper kiting, they end up winning duels because they just _die slower_ than you do, and when it comes to damage charts? when they have good games, they're staying in the middle of fights for a _long_ time and applying all their aoe damage to multiple targets, giving them a lot more chances to add to their total while also making those chances more valuable because they're just casually multiplied by two, three, hell sometimes even _five_ remember, you can't deal damage if you're dead, so the longer you're in a fight without dying, the more damage you'll do just from getting out more attacks and having your abilities come off cooldown
I love this stuff, exploring game design without having to mess up a game is fun as hell. Keep it up
it'd be cool if you could do an interview with some of the lead item designers
That moment when Phreak puts into words what everyone was trying to say about Seraph's Embrace all along but you still feel that the item isn't gonna be made any more exciting 😩
the problem is that ap scaling is much steeper than the ad equivalent because almost all common mages already will do enough damage but dont have a lot of health so the difference between a 300+ health shield and ~50-100 damage is bigger than an auto attacker that has 4-5 options for health regen.
i hope this was easy for you to make, Phreak, because i want more.
I like secondary resource bars because when considering if a trade is good or bad you have more to think about than "they lost 20% health and i only lost 10% so i won the trade hard"
Honestly thank you for these videos, I use them to fall asleep and it's honestly just nice to have someone talk
I literally can't fall asleep if phreak doesn't upload
So basically Phreak *reads* a lullaby for you?
@@__ash13__ That's correct
21:11 Puns of Damage
Great work with this one! This felt just like watching a GDC talk (but actually narrowed down to a very specific point) so I'd love to see more like these! The seraph's discussion about how it's effectively just acting like a less interesting AP stack item without providing any real horizontal progression was something I hadn't considered before!
Great video Phreak, you really hit nail on the head about tank itemization being made difficult not only in a way that unique abilities being tied to stats that you don't really want right now(like Thornmail's Grievous wounds vs AP champs like Akali who build Riftmaker) but also in stat amounts being different on different items, making choice even more difficult for seemingly no reason. Hope to see more of those videos, thanks for making it!
I do enjoy some of the theory-crafting that goes into studying build options prior to going into a match.
Some people argue that as much of the match should be "played in the match" as possible, and despise feeling like they need to study or do research before they have a shot at being truly competitive.
I sympathize with that and sometimes even feel it myself more strongly sometimes.
But I also enjoy rewarding some degree of champion-specific knowledge.
Knowing that my champion has a low base mana pool and tends to be starved on that axis allows me to make decisions based on that knowledge and have the opportunity to convert that into an advantage over other players who do not possess the same depth of awareness and have made less-intentional decisions. And it allows me to display a higher success rate than other players would playing the same champion I am, either given the same team compositions/game states, or across a variety of them.
It allows for another dimension of creative problem-solving, that can give me the chance to get a leg up on the meta whenever it shifts by re-evaluating and curating my champion pool and crafting out my own item builds before the stats websites have compiled the information so that more players just have it handed to them as a default.
I think there's something to be said about discrepancies between champions in things like mana pool that allow me to express skill as a player by knowing what the correct questions to ask myself are, which then informs which decisions between items I am going to make when either theory-crafting my default couple of item paths or making an on-the-fly decision to go off script for some reason and innovate a solution to the game-flow I see in front of me.
I will say that this seems to have a higher satisfaction-to-frustration ratio for me on something like a mana pool than on something like a distribution between Armor on the targets I am fighting due to clarity issues. It feels bad and frustrating on some level if I just have to know that e.g. Rakan had absurdly high base Armor for a while and therefore I needed to value Armor Pen items higher than the relative lack of armor items in his inventory and him being visually a squishy-looking Enchanter-skewed, flighty sort of engage champion would otherwise suggest.
The other side to this is that sometimes the item system just becomes unbalanced in a way that hugely restricts the competitive pool of champions (especially markspersons) artificially, because the right eclectic combinations of stats happen to be on items whose other qualities match certain champions' playstyles. And so you're left with a system in which even a savvy player who's put a lot of effort into trying to theory-craft their way to parity just can't overcome that disparity, and it ends up feeling like they're being punished for liking to play the kind of champion they do.
This is probably even worse for newer or lower-Elo players who may be less-informed about the intricacies of the system and have a large initial knowledge barrier to overcome before they can truly master making itemization choices for themselves, as deviations from whatever the most standard build fed to them by a website.
And overall, we probably do want to maximize the confidence of a player to make heads-up item decisions in a match without worrying about whether they're sacrificing too much Raw DPS from the standard build in order to make their hail mary itemization choice, especially because it can be difficult to evaluate whether the choice ends up being correct.
Great video, Phreak!
My only contention is that I think mana pool *can* feel like vertical scaling, if it unlocks something major for your champion. I play a lot of Kai'Sa and Qiyana; neither of them explicitly NEED to build a manamune to function, but when you have one you feel like you can bounce back and forth between fast clearing waves and still having mana for teamfights without a concern in the world about that blue bar.
That being said I'm in low gold where people are constantly starting random fights with no objective in sight so perhaps I perceive it as more valuable to be ready to go at a moment's notice than a higher ELO player in a more predictable game does.
All champs having the same mana also makes balancing mana costs easier. FF14 did this, all classes have the same amount of mana, making it really easy for them to balance mana costs on spells so the class works how it's supposed to. It's been pretty sweet as all systems around mana were also either removed as they weren't needed anymore or streamlined like crazy.
Love theses videos, informative enough to matter engaging enough to not get stale. I’m at work and this is the perfect content (for me) to listen to.
honestly i live for this kinda content, mainly because i also want to be a game designer, but also because i find design in general really interesting and fun to learn about
good video as always
you always seem to bring up interesting discussions that no one else is talking about or ignores
Great video! I hope you do more of these, I agree that having varying degrees of stats among the same item type is not good, it makes sense if it's done like the crit mythics, where it's very clear one is your defensive item and it makes sense that it has lifesteal on it but less offensive stats,the other is the damage option and it has more ad and attack speed and the third has its power on the active instead (I don't agree with the execute damage on galeforce but that's another matter) but in the case of the armor items there's just not a clear distint direction and the active on randuin's for example just feels tacked on, I think it would make sense to have a singular statline across all those items, it would also be nice to have a couple of tank items with mana on them one with mr, hp and mana and one with armor, hp and mana that you can build second if you are playing a mana hungry tank trading off the special effect you'd get on the manaless item.
I think having a more uniform baseline stat level in general would make it a lot more intuitive and easier to balance in general both in regard to items and to champions base stats, there could just be a few "classes" in which the champion would fall and have the stats for that there could be one for all base stats but also one for single stats would be ok like a 3 point slider starting from frail all the way to resilient for hp and defenses, same for movespeed attack damage etc. It would make it really easy to see what to expect from a champion at a glance without having to go into numbers and make calculation and it should be pretty easy to implement, there could just be the slider done like this instead of the currently useless one on client and you could tell at a glance "this champion is slow and tanky" or "fast and high damage but squishy"
Phreak, thank you for putting out content like this. I loved the mana conversation that you put up a while ago, and I'm glad you put up another one of these things. I really like long-form content, but UA-cam's algorithm tends to promote 5-15 minute videos.
And I, as a Sona player, definitely consider mana regen as a secondary stat. Now you are correct in pretty much every other case, that pretty much no one actually considers it as it's just *tacked on*, but there is a breaking point in mana regen where it becomes *difficult* to run out of mana. It may not be optimal, but I like buying two faerie charms on my first back because the stat works with itself. For that reason, I also do not upgrade the fc into bandleglass, because both the HP from kindlegem is more useful, and there is no upgrade to mana regen in the upgrade. Used to go Seraph's for the mana, but for some reason this season, slot efficiency (which I was hoping you'd get to) is more difficult in S11.
This is a good 101 discussion on item design. Follow up discussions on some of the things you mentioned would be a great next step
hey phreak, idk if you read comments, but one thing to consider with the mana that was always kind of the obvious design goal here:
League is all about not getting fatigued after millions of games played. One way to achieve that is to make stats similar, but not the same.
if all tanks start with 650hp, and go up to 2500hp, then that makes sense for their class, but its boring to look at. Making the numbers more convoluted helps lessen the fatigue one gets by looking at the numbers. Mana is so random for the same reason. It makes zero difference, but its more interesting to look at different numbers from time to time. Of course, that means you cant really transfer knowledge from one champion to the next, but i feel like thats actually a design choice aswell, as you can then spend more time playing the game as you have to learn more.
thats imo not a bad thing, its just something ive noticed where the designers maybe used different motives for certain things.
I like it a lot, well done.
I think like this too, its nice to see you decide you need to determine the point of the items in the first place and go from there and not just drop it.
Talking about how having different amounts of mana makes bonus mana more unclear I have to say that I hate the fact that when you ping your mana, the text in the chat states the percentage of mana you have, like 9% mana... Thats useless! Even if I main your champion and I probably know that your combo costs 120 mana I don't know what percentage of the total that is, especially when I have to consider champion levels and items
Dota signals that you don't have enough mana to cast the skill when you ping it but when you ping your mana bar it gives the mana AND hp % which can be even more confusing than just the mana.
@@amuro9624 you can ping a spell in league like that too, but thats useless if you need to cast multiple spells for your combo. in general, its best to check other peoples mana before fights imo.
this is why i personally ping the spells that i can't cast because i lack mana because that specifically tells people "i don't have enough mana for R" so i probably can't do a qw combo, but i agree there needs to be something that i can do about this. even if it's just like, If mana is less than 15% then output "mana is low"
@@IANF126 its just a problem with heavy combo based characters.
Even AD chamos like darius.
If i have 30% of my mana bar that's barely enough for one combo. If the fight is extended I might just lose due to having no mana. But theres no way to indicate that.
@@alextrollip7707 Exactly. The problem arises when all of your spells say that you have mana to cast them once but you don't have enough mana to use more than one spell.
Let's say your q costs 100 mana and your w costs 70 mana but you have 110 current mana. Pinging both q or w will say that the spell is ready and pinging your mana pool will say something like 14% which means nothing to a player expecting you to join the fight that you know you will lose if you can't get more than one spell off. (explanation for people that might not understand what we are talking about. My reply to you specifically is "exactly".)
Phreak showing off his genius understanding of game design.
Love the video man!
Great video. The one thing I think you left out about is item synergies. I like when items synergize like how ROA and Seraphs would or spellbinder and deathcap or thornmail with other armor items etc. I like the feeling of once I get this combo of items I'm gonna be god tier even though they may be weak individually. (As long as the combination makes up for the trough prior)
More videos like this please! The theory of the game is something not widely covered and you're great at it and great at making it interesting.
I could listen to Phreak talk about anything all day. His rants are funny, informative and insightful.
He never fails to put me to sleep tbh.
a tank version of tear upgrade does sound really nice
14:27 I would love to see an actual mana item for tanks some point. I actually uninstalled for season 11 because it is totally unfun to me without the option of building catalyst and its upgrades on tanks. Something I would like considered though is to avoid Fimbul Winter because that has the same problem as Frozen Heart in that it is a terrible choice for mana when you are not against full AD.
19:00 Thank you Phreak for acknowledging the plight of Taric mains. We cannot function without mana but we are also limited to pretty much only Frozen Heart. Again, I uninstalled because the loss of catalyst and no longer enjoyed playing.
Now we have one. Kinda cool.
@@tostupidforname I said I wanted them to avoid fimbul winter but as it turns out, they just changed the build path of it for health instead of armor so it ended up being fine.
I think the stat differences on items is an interesting decision point as long as the items are balanced correctly. Without needing to do math, if I am against a team with 5 AD champs, I know that the item with more Armor and less Health might be better then the item with less Armor and more Health, even if the passive might be less interesting. There's certainly games or builds that really want a specific stat very highly, and that can influence what they take as much as the passives IMO.
Good stuff Phreak. You’re dead on about tanks needing mana. I played Poppy and Volibear top last season and they feel so much worse without a mana item like IBG. Really wish they’d fix thorn mail to apply Gw on ability hits too
ive been playing for 10 years, and im glad you talked about snowball, cuz there was a season where u went againts it, so im glad it is a lot better now!
I would totally love to see more of this in-depth content, could maybe start some discussions as well
I love this video and the idea that items are compelling for the choices they make us make. So then why were mythic items introduced, narrowing your choices for your first or second item to only 3 or 4 possibilities?
When I saw one of the default themes from google slides I knew the video would be goated
I like the current itemization system in concept but I wish for supports that base/flat stats on mythic items would be determined entirely by which support item you started with. In general all of the mythic actives/passives are good on all supports and I wish I really did have 4 to choose from each game, but the bundle of stats you get feel really bad to buy in almost all cases outside of the 1 or 2 "made for" your champion.
Another related issue is that support itemization feels incredibly linear right now. In general each support has at most 2 viable options for mythics. On top of that you generally only get to finish boots and 1 other legendary item in the majority of games - and that 1 other legendary is usually selected from a set of 2-3 viable options at most depending on your champion.
The above is in line with what you're saying... The "unique text" on items for supports is really compelling right now, but the specific primary/secondary stat bundles are hurting the system a fair bit, especially in relation to the 4 mythic items.
Honestly... this video was amazing phreak. Very good stuff! Thank you
Haven't gone back into League since last ranked so I don't have much more to say other than: Good work, Phreak.
Great video. Very interesting to me as someone who studies design
I fuckin love this shit, i NEED content like this
I love your point about seraph. It could be interesting as a mana item if you wanted to build one of the non-mana mythics (i.e. Rocketbelt on Lissandra) and still be good on mana. However, the current ap conversion completely works against this. Buying it without a mana mythic straight up makes it less efficient. With a few exceptions (like Kassadin) it mostly seems to be used to maximize ap and the last round of buffs even enforced this. I think a new passive (or active) instead of mana to ap conversion would really help to balance the item around more than a select few champs who are kind of reliant on it.
Imagine building Night Harvester + Seraph Karthus and not feel bad about it. Seraph could even be viable on some supports.
I can say a few things about thae state of LoL itemization options:
- The passive of RoA was outdated, but now the only item which have AP, HP and Mana on it is Everfrost and some champ don't like the active on it. Some players are really happy that there are more items with AP, HP and CDR in S11 and would be nice to have few other items with the statline of RoA.
- Boots can be an easy and accessible way of picking up off-class stats and I would like it to be a more meaningful choice in that reguard.
- Some item have the same stat lineup, but different build paths, like Cosmic Drive and Night Harvester. There is room to make the build paths more similar and less combine cost = more fun.
- Would be nice to have more choices in melee mythics that better fit the playstyle and stat preferances of some champions.
- Would be nice to have some items with niche stat lineup, like Hybrid pen. + tank and Lethatity + AS. It's fine if a specific champion's needs set the standard for an item's design as long as it is not just a trap.
- What is the value of getting crit chance just in adjunct from a single item in your build, like The Collector on AD assassins?
- Would be nice to have a less selfish gold economy in the game.
"Just a dude" who has a lot of history, passion, experience, and focus on exactly these sorts of design questions for this particular game. Humility is good, but there's a reason we're listening when you're talking.
i really like this style of video :)
I like the design of most of the mythic items. The only one i don't like is Frostfire Gauntlet because the effect doesn't feel like i gained anything unique. 5 other items slow opponents and since I'm already playing a tank, there is probably already enough CC in my kit.
I wish Frozen Heart would be absorbed into the item because then the slow+attack speed slow would actually feel like a unique thing that is mythic.
And Frozen Heart... poor Frozen Heart.
Back in the old old days it was an excellent item. It gave you 500 Mana, 99 Armor, 25% CDR (back when it wasn't slapped onto every item and was actually hard to hit the 40% CDR cap) and a 25% AS slow for 2700.
Now the AS debuff is down by 40% the armor is down 20%, Mana is down by 20%, 20% Ability Haste is worse than 20% CDR and can be found on pretty much any item now and it costs the same. The only instance where it is worth buying is when the enemy team has 3+ champs that heavily rely on auto attacking.
What if seraphs had a active which for a few seconds casting spells lowered the cooldown of your other spells (probably not ultimate) by a certain amount. Which i think helps the item identify as an item that trigger happy mages would love to have
I used this PowerPoint template in a speech I did. Excellent taste lol
I very much enjoyed this video and tend to agree on a lot of your points. While I know this would be a different discussion entirely, I would like to hear your thoughts on rather items are even good for a moba. Hots for example uses a talent system in which I much prefer for several reasons. Items have the issues of where some champs are inextricably bound to them such as Brand with Liandry's or Vayne with Rageblade. If these items are weak for everyone else, then it will need to be buffed or what is in the point of the item, but buffing them then requires nerfs to certain champions and then it just becomes a mess of balance. I know league will never remove items from the game and that's fine, but if you were to make a new game, which path would you take?
When you mention that some stats are held in unhelpful ways (Frozen Heart holding mana hungry tanks hostage vs AP comps) is it possible that such a thing is a conscious idea in some cases? Like hey Mana + MR would be too busted cuz Ryze now builds this like old Abyssal Scepter or w/e, or Mana+Health/Armor just had too much of an identity crisis with RoA
I think it makes more sense to balance one or a few champions than to say "all tanks are unable to buy mana+mr". Also there are ways to prevent other classes taking some items. You can make it melee only, or make the effect worse for ranged. That applies to all those similar circumstances too. For years now I am asking for class restrictions in items, like "here is an item we would like adc's to have BUT you can't buy it if you are supposed to be a fighter", or "assassins can't buy tank items... like...never"
@@manolismarinakis8444 I don't like the idea of that. If I'm behind in an assassin vs assassin matchup I'd like to buy some tank stats as they are cheaper and may help me catch up, or at least survive the rest of the laning phase without giving more gold to the enemy. Item choice makes this game fun and being told you can only buy these items made specifically for your class/role is not interesting to me. I do understand frustrations about a champion being able to poach an unintended item and becoming way too strong, but it's also fun to think of ways to counter that + the game is patched every two weeks. Hopefully this makes some sort of sense lol.
Btw there is a tank version of the tear upgrade on the mobile version :)
We ALL know this feeling 8:25 thank you Phreak for making that clear
when the best shoutcaster is also the best analyst
I like this content, please do more
Mana stacking was fun on old Blitzcrank and old Transcendence rune. Stack frozen hearts for scaling AD, CDR, and Blitz shield scaling. Frozen Heart has always been super bad tho, even more now. 15% attack speed reduction is so bad bleh
Personally I think your way better when you ramble.
Sure the length of time is lower but that's not why I watch your videos.
Riot game designers: 👁️👄👁️
another great vid thx phreak
Loved the video Phreak
on the last point of having same armor+health on all armor+health items:
IMO its important for mythics to have same stats that because you are "forced" to build them and choosing based on stats was the whole point mythics were supposed to adress
BUT for minor items i think its healthy to have different stats even though it becomes math problem, because it gives you options like "oh im dying to renekton top but im gonna get more health because enemy has AP mid"
Seraph is a strange item in general - it mainly used on long range control mages that spam there abilities, but it gives you a fkn shield.
Like... why?
You never see Seraph on fiz or other engaging champions that can actually utilize that shield reliably.
Compare it to muramana and it's day and night in terms of usefulness.
If i am a backline mage, i want my giant mana pull be converted in damage, not in a fkn shield.
Love hearing your thoughts about the design of the game
That was very interesting, thanks Phreak
Listening to Phreak more fun than playing league itself
To tag onto this discussion, games dev and student of like 8 years. Not primarily in design, but I mean when you work with designers and talk to designers on a daily basis you learn a bit about it.
There's 3 (technically 4) different skills that are tested in the vast majority of games, in one extent or another. You'll have heard different names for them, but I go by Twitch, Tactical and Spacial Awareness (the 4th is Social skills but that's abstract af and I'm no psychologist). All three are tested pretty significantly in League of Legends, one of the reasons it's so hard to get into for a more casual audience. Twitch skills are reflexes and testing your response time, "dodge this thing, hit this thing", also called dexterity or mechanical skill. Spacial Awareness in regards to League is watching out for threats in a team fight, watching your map, knowing where things (or people) are, watching timers and respawns and such. Those two aren't really relevant to this video though.
Tactical skills revolve around decision making, and line up with the subject matter of this video, and I think it's something Riot has done extremely well, especially with the item shop rework this season. You want to offer a wide selection of options that make the player ask a lot of questions, that's pretty much 90% of this video so I won't dwell on it, but it's right. People don't think about simply "I should buy AD on my Caitlin", you just do it because you're an ADC. New players need nudging that's just the way things are otherwise they build Thornmail Ashe, however after a while that just becomes instinctual. And after you get a bit more comfortable with the champion and start thinking about builds outside of recommended, you probably start by saying "I want AP and Attack Speed on Azir, what items give those two stats?" and filtering your choices from there. It's worth noting, oftentimes when exploring off-meta stuff, your first descriptor is often a change my priority on stats so AD Fizz, AP Tryndamere, AP Amumu, Tank Teemo.
I think, with regards to uneven stats, there is some inherent value in prioritising one over another when you consider edge cases such as different scaling. For a champion that ignores their max HP, armour and MR outside of damage mitigation, the discussion on stats is just "Which is more effecient in this moment". However for a champion with it, maybe it makes you cultivate different idea's. Rammus has a taunt, and insane scaling with armour. I recommend looking up Mark Rosewater's GDC talk about Magic the Gathering, where he delves a little into player archetypes, Timmy, Johnny and Spike. Spike knows the exact gold effetciveness of every item, on his champion, has them all written in an Excel sheet on his second monitor. We don't talk about Johnny, he's too busy sniffing Teemo shrooms. But Timmy, he see's "Oh this champion scales with Armour!" filter's by armour, buys the 6 highest armour items available selling his boots to do so, and is perfectly content about it. "My W auto's are doing THIS MUCH DAMAGE meanwhile their puny ADC is only hitting me for THIS LITTLE DAMAGE!" He probably loses that game, because his build is Thornmail and 5 Frozen Hearts, but he doesn't care about that, they just want to ping their 90% physical resistance while the Ahri one-combo's them for the 14th time.
That's also the reason I think having near nonsensical parts to characters is a positive, for the Johnny's of the world. There are less examples of it in modern League of Legends, but for instance when Morgana was a midlane mage, Johnny's played her support because as the hipsters of the world, no-one else was. They don't necessarily care about winning or losing, they want to express themselves, they want players to remember them after the game. (Preferably positive thoughts, but to each their own) They sort champions by playrate on op.gg and scroll to the bottom of the page.
The reason I think Seraphs is in a bad spot right now, is because it's a Timmy item. Timmy wants to get a FAT stack of AP, by any means nessecary. And while this item does help them do that, the game is in a spot where they just gutted mana itemisation. It FEELS like it should give you less than it did before, because despite the new statline, they removed all the items it synergised with. Most the mana items you can only buy one of, and Seraphs into Frozen heart are uncomplimentary unless you're I dunno. Singed maybe? Singed who lost his mana gain passive? Kassadin's in range to use the armour and aura while he oneshots the person he's applying it to... Timmy's experimenting with other things right now, not AP gains. They're getting Urf levels of CDR or whatever, it's more exciting. So it's left as an item that Johnny is using, but not happy with because it's a bit boring being the stat-stick guy, that's not particularly expressive.
I think the value of thornmail's passive overtakes the need for health and it having health makes it op
Yes, destroy the only good tank item besides the mythics, good idea.
I'm curious what you think of items like Cosmic Drive and Horizon Focus. My bf plays Neeko and mid in general, and neither of us really know who you'd want to take those items on. Heck, we even crunched some numbers (perhaps incorrectly, so I'd double-check this) and realized that the 10% damage boost for Horizon is kinda comparable to Void Staff even if the opponent hasn't built bonus MR, yet there's an added requirement of "Snipe them across the map without a point-and-click, or Hard CC them." Yeah, there's an added "reveal" on the effect, but it's Ignite's pseudo-Reveal where you just put a Stealth Ward in the enemy's pocket instead of, I dunno, actually revealing someone Camouflaged (or Akali in her shroud).
Meanwhile, Cosmic Drive... well, the MS from its effect seems generally outclassed by Lich Bane at first glance since it's only 10 + 20% of your Ability Haste (so 16 base) and it's only active after dealing ability damage instead of always on. If you want the Health for an extended fight, wouldn't Rylai's serve a similar purpose? I suppose Cosmic lets you dodge skillshots better while Rylai's lets you land skillshots better, but both help you chase just as well (assuming you can keep reapplying Rylai's since its effect duration is admittedly much shorter). With all that considered, the selling feature appears to be the Ability Haste, which... I guess is a selling point, but it's not a very interesting one. I'm kind of hoping to see more options for AP characters in general, since it feels like there's so many brands of AD characters and what they can build by comparison.
Cosmic Drive seems to me like an item for someone who weaves in and out of fights. I would say that it could be bought for survivability on burst mages. Once Veigar or Syndra have done their combo, they're a sitting duck and need to wait for their cooldowns. They can disengage and re-engage faster and have to wait shorter between combos.
I personally wish there was more options for mana. Personally my game play style is spam spam spam on like anyone. So them removing almost all mana items was super not fun for me this season. I feel like they should move some mana off of mythics and give more options to mages as well as give other options to other classes especially like you said tanks fighting mages the loss of abyssal was so huge honestly.
Topic: Should champions be able to flex into different roles? Some will say it creates diversity, others might say it makes is harder, if not impossible, to balance (e.g. Sylas jg). Some are able to be quadra-flexed. I feel like no more than 2 roles/lanes. 3 or more probably makes a champion too strong, especially in Pro play when draft and bans are even more important.
great video!
More things like this pls
Why does Seraphs not have ability haste on it like Muramana does? If you buy this item, you're expected to be spamming abilities to use that mana. Also, we absolutely need a tear item for tanks, there is rarely a time where you can decide you need more mana and fit glacial into your build.
interesting video, i love thinking about this stuff
Loved the video. Super interesting
Great video 👍
Pretty cool video
The first time I played with the new items I saw 3 of the 6 ap mythics randomly gave an entire 600 mana. I felt like it locks me from buying them if I didnt care about having mana. I wish that if I needed mana I could make the decision to get mana and if i dont want mana I can still get the item I want to get without having to spend money on 600 mana I dont need, if its 300 the game seems like it would be so much more exciting
Well, the design of mages right now is that they're supposed to buy some early mana since they're by nature so spell heavy. That mana tends to be pretty heavily discounted. Lost Chapter is more than 100% gold efficient before the mana regen passive.
I thought that the a big point of the video was to talk about how it is important to make items feel like you are choosing them for a specific reason. From what I understand the problem with SERAPHS is that Mythic items do its job on the side more conveniently not to say it isn't useful on specific champions. If that is the case, and the goal is to have decision making depth in the game, wouldn't it be important to adjust other options so that the item is more Exciting? And if the clear best choice for a specific champion is always one of the 3 MYTHIC items with 600 mana; which can virtually remove any Mana (resource) problems from a champions kit. Some of the most exciting and mind stimulating moments I've had are when I am almost out of mana and have to think about how to play a fight with everything I have left on my champion. I wonder if an exciting decision is to choose how and when you are going to deal with your resource problems rather than for them to be negated from a first purchase every game no matter what playstyle as a mage you opt for because having majority of mana constraints completely nullified is way too valuable, that the other AP mythic items aren't an option.
Love the content, I was excited seeing you respond, to my comment
I love your approach to bringing the theory and numbers into league content, all the best!!
Video suggestion:
Imo Grievous wounds should be removed and healing be balanced "properly". No more dual state of champion allowing for better fantasy based design and less a war of numbers. Compare to the removal of the pink ward stealth interaction or QSS and Zed ult. 1 way counter rarely work. I would love your opinion on this
Maybe they could make it an hard counter active skillshot on the anti-heal items, if you hit the skillshot, the targets healing is like 90% reduced. Make it a very thin skillshot, so that the target pretty much needs to be cc'ed first for you to land it, increasing the potential for picks, but not ruining all healing champs. (Vlad can dodge with pool, fiora can parry, adc's should not really be hittable except when they're already cc'ed) ofcourse nerf healing as a whole when implementing this.
I liked how you put the perspective of vertical and horizontal progression as a design defining trait. However...
I still have the idea that you can't separate systems from within the game, meaning that choices are made for you before the game starts, because some champions can abuse interactions with items/runes and that tends to make them overpowered, and yes, items aren't inherently bad, but the fact remains, that some of the new items are terribly designed because they removed prior constraints on the game (adding omnivamp, removing cooldown and changing it to spell haste, or the famous removal of flat pen over lethality), in my mind all those things impact game feel, and that should be something to take care about, constraints are there for a reason, you don't want a single player RPG (breaking a single stat, check for example old games that did 9999 dmg each hit like ff7) experience on a multiplayer "competitive" team oriented experience, it doesn't feel fair, because you have to wait for the other guy to screw up for you to be useful, you stop having agency when they just overstack stats on you.
And i get it, they're supposed to win if they win, but it's just the gold efficiency on some stats, or the importance of them, is just broken, I.E. Tear of the godess is NOT a good item if you're going vs someone who can 1 shot you, because at the end of the day, you can't spam, but they shouldn't be allowed to 1 shot you by just having 1 item, just because they don't have to manage a mana pool (like talon, or zed) it's just terrible from my point of view, because you don't have a compelling reason to pick a mana based champion most of the time in those scenarios (talking about the early game, where you just 1v1) and you just have to play the survival game until the teamfight game happens, and by then, you have to be somewhat effective just by farming (and this puts you in a terrible spot, because the other person, has all the power built-in, while you, have to wait for it, and hope for the best).
Honestly this game feels broken because instead of tuning down the vertical scaling of things, they just amp it up every time something else goes up (playing catch up I.E. Self-Healing vs Grevious wounds), making the champ themselves (statwise) unreliable and unfun, why should i bother to pick a champ that scales out of armor, if everything that AD assassins buy, reduces armor, making every purchase ineffective against them, unless i win the stat/gold treshold (buying items, that are more costly, faster than them, so i can win when i'm supposed to counter an entire class just by raw picking).
I have yet, to see, this season (And past) a laneswap of old, when people were forced to move from lanes because their champs were highly countered by another champs, and some champs are just statwise busted... i don't get it really, it shouldn't be that hard to cap shit up, that is what is supposed to make something fun, the choice within constraints, because in the end, if you don't, you end up with monsters that are just far better than their counterparts, and it's not fun to play against, so why should the player feel "satisfaction" playing against it, it's like running a race, you're crippled, and the other person starts with a lead and fully functioning legs.
Is Movespeed a Vertical or Horizontally scaling stat?
Might be decided by how many situations it's relevant - champions are always moving and always want to move faster, but there are a lot of cases where that won't matter (e.g. getting one shot).
FWIW the distinction was probably not perfect on my end, regardless. But I'd put movespeed pretty firmly in the vertical category.
PHREAK! I like your video and all... but why put 2 ads every 3 min???
love this bro more of this
ty phreak for vid. very nice 👍
Good stuff! And it was even under an hour this time. haha
TED talk with your guest host Phreak
To me Seraphs used to be (before the lost chapter reworks) an Item where you delay your current power for Safe Waveclear because you are in a bad matchup, and then get a power bump later when the grouping face of the game started in the form of 2nd most Ap of any item and a powerfull shield that could help you make plays without being doomed to die even though you had a rough lane.
i get that it was mean as the item for champions who needs all the mana in the world but thats not interesting and it found a another use... that use is gone now however.
While im at it, im confused as to why Morrelonomicon gives less relevant stats for its class than Putrifier and Chainsaw does. Why does Ad champions get 15Haste and Mages dont?
Real cool phreak
I also have a mind for game design and often wonder why professional players with multi-million dollar companies backing them lose games to shop keeper. Like doesn't every team have a coach or someone dedicated to the different aspects like this?
Tank Mythics are definitely still awkward to me because I want to build my first item almost always to fend off my lane opponent, not necessarily to predict game state and team fight objective. On another note, with it not giving and direct healt, what are your thoughts on Gargoyle’s Stoneplate?
Gargoyles is a tiny bait.
Its a good and well priced item.
But often people buy it early meaning its active is useless as it scales with HP( bonus i think).
Second people use it as a dont die anymore button.
Instead of burst removal.
Using it earlier to negate burst rather than to protect your 50 hp sliver you have left is something I dont see many people doing.
On the topic of math in the middle of the game when looking at something like high health low armor vs low health high armor, what, if any, role do you thinking studying the game outside of the match should play? Is it bad to expect people who want to take the game more seriously to dedicate some amount of time and brain power into memorizing and internalizing the effective differences that such stats might make?
I think the issue here would be that what this will boil down to is just using an online tool to look-up which item is most stats-efficient. There will almost always be a correct answer to what the appropriate mix of armor / health you want, and the answer is already going to be published.
And then because there are right & wrong answers, a bunch of items become invalid beginner's traps that you just ignore.
I wholly agree with Phreak's argument that items should have baseline costs & stats that are uniform across the board, with only secondary stats and unique powers being the things you really shop for. The stats-mix game is one you should only be playing intuitively while buying components, not when looking through completed items.
@@kevinbrown2438 well the answer to your mix of health and armor will depend on enemy team comp, so it doesn’t just make one flatly unusable or a trap right?
you know he's right because he made a powerpoint
not to mention he wrote a script!
Hey Phreak, is it correct that Lord Dominik’s Regard and Serylda’s grudge only penetrate bonus armor? My brother believes that % Armor Penetration and % Magic Penetration should be built second item. I am almost positive that he is incorrect but I can not explain why. Thanks for your great content!
last whisper and its upgrades have given total armor penetration since mid season 8 ( and, hell, before preseason 6, because that's when the "bonus armor pen" change was introduced ) while void staff has literally always given total magic penetration
the reason why you don't build them second isn't because they do literally nothing until your opponents start building defenses, it's that the 14ish armor you're penetrating on the level 10 darius with last whisper is literarily the same amount you'd be penetrating if you got a youmu's instead. except with a lot less ad, none of the move speed, and you'd be penetrating significantly less than 14 armor against squishier targets. 'course, if the darius rushed a dead man's second, then you'd be penetrating 22 armor instead with the last whisper ... but, like, is that -8% ehp when all that means is that you have to deal 170 less physical damage to kill him? especially when you're giving up all the utility of the move speed, the actual raw damage from the ad, and the fact that you're _only_ benefitting from that when fighting this one specific enemy who decided to go a fairly tanky build?
i mean, possibly. if that darius is the only threat on the enemy team and you already have an easy enough time killing the others? then sinking only 1450 gold in a last whisper _now_ means he doesn't get a fight where he shows up with a bunch of armor and walks right over you and now you have to rush to build armor pen before he takes over the game. 'course, that's still a "build last whisper second in this game in particular" reason and not "build last whisper second in _every_ game," so it's generally better form standard builds that actually build around _multiple_ members of the enemy team
'course, if your brother is constantly facing against full-tank teams, well ...
Arctangent is right about them not penetrating bonus resist, but total.
% pen doesn't provide much damage for its cost until numbers get higher and you are absolutely paying for that stat.
Title: Item design in League of Legends...
Me: I can finish that sentence for you if you like.
Wait.... do Azir soldiers not trigger the grevious wounds passive on Bramble Vest?
Seraph's is boring, but I say it has a pretty well defined role. It allows you to not worry about mana and scale off of it. If anything, I'd say to just remove the bonus ap from it and put a lifeline shield that heavily drains your mana.
I don't agree that math choices are bad, they just shouldn't be the main reason why you buy one item vs another
fast click in the west
Nice.
One reason I disagree with your point about "equal stats, different passives" is that sometimes the passive is only compelling if it's stronger then the item stats itself. Let's say every item has a certain power budget. If every statline remains the same, some passives become much less viable choices because the power budget for the passive is much lower. For example, if shieldbow had the same AD CRT as Kraken slayer, the shield would have to be much less because it would provide too much. But at a certain point, a shield becomes useless if it doesn't fulfill its purpose - to survive. So by balancing stats and passives differently, you provide a lot more design options for player choices. It's consequentially harder to balance, but it does make choices more interesting.
I'd like to think the live balance team has tried to hire assassins to dispose of phreak in the past but failed and every time they do he posts another one of these videos.
I had no idea that Seraph's Embrace was based on bonus mana. I had just assumed it was total mana.
On a sidenote, this video could be retitled to "Why I hate Seraph's Embrace" for a more UA-cam content friendly clickbait title.
My biggest question about this topic is why are there damage items or spells that scale with resistances or health? Why do tanks need to deal damage when their main priority is to tank damage and be almost un-killable?
There is a much larger discussion around tanks as a whole, but my quick answer is: A tank's job is not really to absorb damage. Tanks just have to build durability because they need to be imposing up in front. Sometimes, they're imposing via putting out damage, not just crowd control. Notice how every offensive ability on ever tank deals damage. There's an argument to be made that those should get to scale in some way. For Leona's passive, it's from levels. In another world, that could have been some % of her hp/armor/mr.
Because if they didn't damage you, you would just ignore them, and then they don't tank any damage nor they protect their teammates. But making them buy damage items so that they can threaten you means that either they won't be tanky to be useful/fulfill their fantasy OR some damage items give good offensive stats AND enough tankiness for the tank to function properly and then every fighter buys that item, deals more damage and is also unkillable
It makes Malphite "the armor tank." That stuff is champion identity and if malphite's damage is too high, his base damage can be lowered to keep his armor damage scaling.
also, like, damage is pretty vital to interact with league as a whole. solo laners need it to contest cs and then actually clear it before their opponent crashes the wave into their tower. junglers need it to actually, y'know, jungle. and supports need it to harass, and they need _more_ of it if they don't have any form of harass so that they can actually help their carry win trades after a successful engage. and junglers and supports both have to do stuff in ganks, too
now, in theory, could you siphon all this damage out of a tank's kit and items and still balance them to not be completely useless? probably. however, i get the feeling you _don't_ actually want to unkillable sack of bricks to instead cc lock you for twenty seconds straight while their talon mid casually saunters all the way from base to your bottom tier 2 to finally finish you off. this may sound extremely obvious, but giving tanks more cc means giving tanks _more cc,_ and you'd have make their cc _so_ much more potent if you effectively make them hypercarries by gutting their ability to actually generate gold and experience
'sides, tanks don't even do that much damage, even now. they reason why they can _seem_ like they're so deadly is because their engage and cc tends to lend them a _lot_ of stickiness ( which translates into them landing more abilities, attacks, and ticks of ambient damage from the mythics ), and their bulk and cc means that it takes you _far_ longer to kill them than the rest of their team ( which translates into ... the exact same thing ). so without proper kiting, they end up winning duels because they just _die slower_ than you do, and when it comes to damage charts? when they have good games, they're staying in the middle of fights for a _long_ time and applying all their aoe damage to multiple targets, giving them a lot more chances to add to their total while also making those chances more valuable because they're just casually multiplied by two, three, hell sometimes even _five_
remember, you can't deal damage if you're dead, so the longer you're in a fight without dying, the more damage you'll do just from getting out more attacks and having your abilities come off cooldown
how about this for mana? for every 100 mana above 3000, you get 5s off your ult cd
Ults with no CDs, nice idea.
oops i meant to say 3000, edited...