ID:2173759
 

Poll: Do you think True Damage is a Healthy Mechanic?

Yeah, in every form. 23% (3)
Yes, but only if it isn't in absurd amounts. 53% (7)
Yes, but only if it doesn't scale based on its target's health. 15% (2)
No. 0% (0)
Other: (Give more exact reasoning in comments) 7% (1)

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This is a question for all of you: In games where there are defensive stats other than health (like Defense/Special Defense in Pokémon, or Armor and Magic Resist in League), what is your opinion on true damage, which completely ignores said defensive stats? Personally, I very much enjoy it as a game mechanic, as it makes it so beefy tank enemies aren't *completely* unstoppable, but since there are quite a few people I'm friends with that seem to disagree, I'd like a general opinion on it, preferably from both a game designer's standpoint and from a player's standpoint.
One of the greatest things about true damage is its helps add to your arsenal for creating unique abilities. Then theres a variety of ways you can apply the true damage. Oh, a true damage over time? or perhaps an AoE? Or maybe just regular true damage.
It's not a matter of is true damage okay to put in a game. Of course it is. You just have to make sure it's being used where it makes sense. Vayne for example. Her job is to be a late-game single-target DPS powerhouse. Dealing health % true damage every third auto-attack makes sense in this situation. Outside of late game carries, typically the only other common scenario is when it's given to bruisers in the form of executes. So take Axe in Dota 2 for example. He can kill you once you reach a certain amount of health regardless of resistances ( which, this isn't true damage, this is health removal but the point is it's still a mechanic that bypasses resistances and in Dota 2s case, spell immunity as well ).

You also have to remember that even if you don't put true damage into a kit, true damage ( or close to true damage ) is still achievable if you have items and abilities that penetrate or lower resistances. So in League for example, you have LeBlanc and Katarina mid lane 20 minutes into the game. Katarina is Bronze 5 so her runes and masteries are 100% offensive and she didn't go Abyssal Scepter and let's say she got shit on in lane so she's level 11. So Katarina has 45 magic resist. LeBlanc teamchats Amumu "kill this bitch" so Amumu runs his mummified ass into the lane and auto attacks Katarina. Amumu right clicks Katarina reducing her magic resist to 25 because of his passive, minus another 20 because he's level 12 with Abyssal Scepter. Katarina now has 5 magic resist, meaning she's only going to be blocking like 3%-4% of whatever LeBroken is about to combo her with, or in other words, LeBroken is doing 96%-97% of her damage, which is nearly true damage. So you'd also be asking yourself "are penetration/resistance reduction abilities and items healthy too"?

And then we also have to remember that true damage also has counters. You can stack health. This is what everyone ( with a brain ) does against Pudge in Dota 2 - they build a little extra health early on because his hook does pure damage. Shield abilities counter it ( it ignores resistances but it doesn't ignore a temporary 300 damage shield for example ). One uncommon one people don't think about is attack speed reduction as well. When I first started playing League, I found Jax to be pretty annoying because he dealt mixed damage. So for example, when you're laning against a Zed, it's pretty straight-forward. You just rush an armor item if you want to survive against him. With Jax, if you rush armor, you're still going to get fucked by his W and his passive which deal magic damage. If you rush magic resist, surprise: he does a lot of physical damage too! Shyvana is the same way. At first, I had no idea what I was supposed to do to itemize against this but then you realize Jax needs to auto-attack you to deal damage to you in the first place - reducing his attack speed means reducing both his physical and magic damage, meaning if you want to survive against Jax, get an item that reduces attack speed of enemies.

This goes for Vayne as well. She deals true damage every 3rd auto. If you reduce her attack speed, she gets her 3rd auto less frequently. Less frequent 3rd autos = less true damage output.

So basically TL;DR Nothing is broken about true damage as long as it's on the appropriate champions/heroes, remember that true damage can be achieved even on champions/heroes who don't have true damage built into their kit, and remember that true damage has counters just like everything else so it's not like, some super broken unstoppable mechanic that can't be dealt with.
Keeping with the League references: True damage is fine, ranged true executes (Garen...................) could probably use a redesign. I like the Kindred trade-off that you get true damage, but you have to actually earn it. It seems more reasonable than something ala Vayne where her passive and tumble all but guarantee you're getting the true damage in for free.
Kindred doesn't deal true damage.

Garen has a ranged execute because unlike a lot of execute mechanics ( darius, axe, i'm even going to throw kat in here because even though she doesn't necessarily have an execute, her design, at least pre-rework ( i haven't paid attention to her recently ) forced her to only use her abilities when it meant she was certain she was getting a kill when she went in, she was basically a walking execute ) have resets, and in Darius's case, if he screws up with his ultimate he can still kill you with Hemorrhage.

Garen doesn't have the insane mobility Kat brings, or the resets and bleeding passives Darius has, or AoE CC ( Axe ) and in order for him to deal true damage to you in the first place, you need to be marked by his passive. In terms of execute-style melee champs, he basically got the shit end of the stick when it comes to getting kills and the range is there to compensate. Probably also why they gave him a 30% damage reduction ability so that even if he runs in and doesn't get a kill ( since he's worse at doing it than every one else I just mentioned ) at least he won't die for it. If you screw up as Darius, you're pretty much dead. You have no form of escape and granted your enemies are kiting and keeping their range properly, you'll never be able to pull them and retaliate. So those are the trade-offs there.

I haven't played a ton of Kindred but what I will say about that is comparison is that Kindred basically brings an AoE Shallow Grave to the table, so yeah, we'd like her to have to "earn" her % health damage bonuses. As I said before with Vayne, she has a very straight-forward purpose and that's to right click hard. That's basically all you do. Right click. I used to main Vayne in season 4. I came across this clip of Wildturtle's stream and said to myself "yeah, I want to main that":



But anyway, this is Vayne in a nutshell. Right click > Tumble away from skill shots > right click some more > Flash > continue right clicking, I mean if you're going to make Vayne entirely reliant on one thing to deal damage, she needs to be damn good at it. She doesn't have The Culling to finish off escaping enemies or Enchanted Crystal Arrow to initiate 5v5s, or as I said before, an AoE Shallow Grave, she just has right clicks and tumbles. As this clip demonstrates, half the time she can't even rely on her E especially in higher ELOs where enemies aren't going to stand next to walls 24/7 so what Turtle had to do here was use E to waste Banshee's Veil and then use BotRK active to deal a bit more damage and gain move speed to help a bit more with dodging the abilities.

It's basically like Phantom Assassin in Dota 2. She is one of the hardest right clickers in the game but that's kind of all she does. For example, someone like Anti-Mage does exactly what his name suggests: he makes life for spell-casters a living hell: mana burn, magic resistance passive, and an ultimate that does damage based on how much mana the target is missing. His blink also gives him the added benefit of farming faster than anyone else ( except maybe Alchemist when he's against retards who sit there and watch him get a 10 minute Radiance without ganking him ). PA doesn't have any of this. She has no ranged mana % execute, she doesn't burn mana, her blink requires a target to get onto, and her Q scales with her damage ( meaning it kind of does nothing early on ). So what's the point of playing her?

In response to EmpirezTeam
EmpirezTeam wrote:
Kindred doesn't deal true damage.

Oops. :D
There is always a sacrifice when you choose not to give a personality to offense or defense whether it be elemental or damage type. Though sometimes this doesn't matter because preparing to face 1 type of opponent will only leave you vulnerable to the rest which really isn't implementing more strategy.

Let's say swords do bleeding, axes do massive damage and maces do stun. Well you could code all those things to happen on a very successful hit and it would be a nice variety adding feature if you could make all three equally annoying to the victim.

In my opinion the TRUE pro and con to all combat mechanics is this. More mechanics always adds more strategy, but also makes it harder to balance adding more variety.

Also if you add variety without personality you have a game where one character does magic based lightning damage of 32 damage and one character does physical bludgeoning damage of 32 damage but neither cares because it's the same damage.

Lets say you add armor with all that programmed in then you have 1 of two things happening. One being you need a different set of equipment for each opponent. Two being that there are so many damage types in the same hunting area it is senseless to prepare for one because you will always be vulnerable to the other.