Armor Penetration (?)

[Nuparu]

I think we could use a couple of armor penetration items to make up for the serious armor buff which kind of flobs AA carries over in the meta.

 

Before you go "waa waaa all you play are aa carries gtfo", I'm not being biased. To look at Barbed Plating, for example, with double Timesplitter (That's 28 armor by default, plus base armor and integrity = about 50 armor), there is literally absolutely no way an AA carry can kill another one with Barbed Plating without the use of such, due to the leech nerf. This makes the item about as integral as Pyre was before it got nerfed. And I'm pretty sure no one wants to see a team full of Barbed Platings, like a team full of Pyres. Even heroes like Garamond can use Barbed; all they need is that, integrity, and they can probably rape any AGI carry, no matter the damage.

 

And there aren't enough spell damage AA items in the game, so that's really not an option.

 

 

I'm going to propose 3 things:

 

A) Rework Contamination Shard to reduce enemy armor by 20-25%. That'd make a huge difference, and bring a crappy item out of the gutters. It'd be the AA equivalent of Gravity Edge- but it'd also have it's problems if you used it in a bad build, which would result in you getting raped anyways.

 

B) Make another AA item that's normally not used reduce armor. Or make a new one, but it can't provide armor/agility itself or else it's going to literally counteract itself if the enemy has one as well.

 

C) Introduce more on-hit spell damage to AA carries. That'd be good, because now armor isn't going to rape, but the naturally occuring Spell Buffers/Sliptide Scythes will make a difference. And it'd allow more variety then the basic Lightning Rod -> Time Splitter/Explosive Retrofit (AAs/Bruisers respectively).

 

 

Thoughts?

[Legacy]

Yes, we need these!

[Eliwan]

Contamination Shard amplifies Physical Damage by 30%.

 

Most of the time that's better than reducing enemy Armor...

 

But I would like to see something that mirrors Armor Penetration; it would be interesting.

 

Although adding on-hit spell damage to AA items seems good; keep in mind that if you give too much it makes the enemy be forced to get multiple SR items. Instead of Spell Damage on-hit, maybe DoT Physical Damage? I know that that'd leech, but why is that a problem?

[Nuparu]

But the added physical damage from Contam gets shut out by a lot of armor, which is the new problem with the AA heroes. If it cut off armor instead, that'd make said AA hero more lethal versus armored people (and also make Leech more effective, because it'd cut down the resistance)

 

On-hit Spell damage would be painful, yes, but it should have like a special twist to it, not just "You do 10 Spell Damage every attack." For example, Psionic Blaster from 4.0 which did Spell Damage equal to 4%(?) of the enemy's current mana.

 

And I'd like to see Pyre reverted to something between 3.0 and 3.5% max HP. That'd be a step forward in making progress towards variety, but not overly strong.

[akanna]

We already have this....its called true damage, and it ignores all resistances and armor....

 

Other points related to what you said:

1) barbed is getting nerfed and can easily be mitigated with hp and spell resist or attacking with your team

2) you can add spell damage easily with items like sunflaregun and armor wont matter

3) let your casters/towers do some of the work....

4) you shouldn't be able to kill every hero regardless of how they build with your 1 AA hero, kind of defeats the point of having different roles and having a team

5) having shard reduce armor would make it less useful overall, because it would only be good against high armor heros. Lots of heros stop around 30/40 armor.

 

 

That aside there are about 20 new items in the works last I heard so I would wait and see what comes out before really worrying about this.

For now remember that its a TEAM game and you can bring backup if someone is proving hard to kill.

 

@Eliwan Shard really only adds about 5-10% damage overall on high armor heros and is thus not the right way to go even though it feels like it is. Crits and spell damage are your friend whenever armor gets high ;)

[Nuparu]

I'm just saying, for example, Gankers (like DARPA, Nova) are meant to be able to quickly kill someone, but with the new armor mechanics, they get murdered by anyone with decent armor and damage.

 

And the issue with barbed is that you can barely leech, and to have a lot of health would make you a not-so-effective carry. Force of Entropy/Darwins don't cut it now with the new HP.

 

And there's barely any use for contamination shard nowadays anyways, the hard counter is to get barbed plating and laugh as you murder yourself. Now, it turns the tables- an item that counters an item (we need a decent counter to mass armor anyways)

[Banzaiguy]

Stacking armor debuff item would work quite ok. At least counterable through debuff removal so tanks don't get melted that fast.

[Skydie]

I 'came' here because of the second word.

[BestZeratul]

We already have this....its called true damage, and it ignores all resistances and armor....

 

 

5) having shard reduce armor would make it less useful overall, because it would only be good against high armor heros. Lots of heros stop around 30/40 armor.

 

Seriously dude post less if you don't know what you are talking about.

 

Crits are now physical damage so the first part of your post is stupid because AA heroes can never do true damage with their auto attacks.

 

Concerning your 5), you apparently don't know how armor works because armor debuffs are good against low armor targets and pretty much useless against high armor targets (if you have any doubt about it just make some calculations with random numbers and you will see it extremely quickly).

[Ironsights]

Hmm

 

I agree with eliwan about the shard...i like shard, and I have argued that it helps to counter high armor in teh past...but was told I am a noob for thinking its an answer so...not sure on A

 

B: Hell yes. Make new items, and makes one or more of them anti-armor items. Why not.

 

c: On hit spell damage...pyre, starsfury, blackhole magnum, explosive retrofit, lightning rod(and silver soul? sliptide...one of them gives i think 50 on hit spell damage)...well, more options (that are balanced) are never a bad thing, so why not. But there ARE options.

[Eliwan]

Contamination Shard increases your Physical Damage output by 25% after the first shot.

 

However, it actually increases your *team's* Physical Damage output by 25% on that target. It's EXTREMELY strong if your team has both a primary and secondary AA carry. =]

 

Also, for C, Sliptide Scythe

[captcpc]

5) having shard reduce armor would make it less useful overall, because it would only be good against high armor heros. Lots of heros stop around 30/40 armor.

Actually it's quite the opposite, it would be LESS effective against high armored targets. A 1000 health target would have ~263 bonus EHP with 10 armor, but only 59 with 2 armor. The same target would have ~704 bonus EHP with 40 armor, but have 622 bonus EHP with 32 armor. Making it percentage based would just make it the same as physical amplification.

 

Lost the work by accidentally going back a page, too lazy to retype. (It's .97^armor right?)

[Eliwan]

yes

[Itsthatguy]

I'd like some on hit Spell Damaging items. People say Explosive Retrofit, but that doesn't actually damage the unit your targeting =/ I'd like more of an option than just pyre and sliptide for the two [And lightning rod isn't really reliable]. Just primarily because i like Bandit's artifice, but it's damage comes from basicly only pyre and sliptide [which have fairly low damage especially after pyre nerf].