Damage multipliers Non-targeted damage By "damage multipliers" I mean anything that applies a percentage increase modifier to a champions damage output under select conditions. So not only things like elemental Amplify: X abilities, but also abilities like Soul Feast, Hunter: X or Renovate. By non-targeted damage I mean anything that does not require you to click on a specific champion to deal damage. Examples of this mechanic include things like cones/bombs, skewer/beams, pings, Stormread, Whirling Stones, Soultapped, Dark Favor, etc. Why are these bad? Arms race of damage amp Multipliers stack (Extispicer with amp out solo one-rounds an average 50 hp champ) Many tank abilities are geared towards reducing the damage of attacks and attack abilities DEF kinda doesn't matter Percentage damage multiplication requires percentage damage reduction to keep up Only Combat Awareness exists to deal with non-targeted damage sources at this point On-deploy effects should probably be on watch as well.
Terraformer, Jangar Arcanis, Goblin Spellkaiser, Hyaenid Stormreader, Firk Mindshredder: burn them with the fires of nerfing and as they burn I will dance in front of the fire as they are all shoeboxed to my great delight. Passive damage champions are cancerous excrement.
the reason spellkaiser is strong is because of regen with one with nora. stormreaders cost is still too low, i told them to give him more abilities or stats to increase it but they didnt listen. just increasing stormreaders cost without adding anything would likely shoebox him. the rest of the runes you mentioned are fine, maybe remove mountainer from terraformer and give him a weaker sandbag ability.
Just delete spellkaiser, stormreader, mindshredder, arcanis, and terraformer. Remove from game. Make them dissapear. Call it a quality of life improvement for the game.
Stormreader was nerfed by reducing the effect of its ability. Instead of ALSO nerfing the cost at the same time we took it one step at a time. In no scenario was I about to give it a bunch more abilities (like Dogpile and a basic attack as you suggest) just for cost. Disagree. This makes no logical sense. Either it is undercosted or not. If it needs a cost increase, it will simply get one, instead of turning the champ into something else.
There are just more and better champs with these mechanics. Like the ones that most immediately pop to mind are stormreader (of course) and the revised extispicer. So it seems like their effect is felt more in the wider metagame because they are seen more.
I like no-targeted damage, like catalyst and alike. And as for "combat awareness" being the only counter measure, for future expacs an ability could be made to grande % or flat reduction to non targeted damage, instead of the hard counter CA is.
I rarely run mindshredder and if I do it is to counter UD arrow eater bg's, majestic abuse, or IS super champ crap.
Extispicer- buff to already strong/borderline psychic, better source of psychic agony Stormreader- strong non-targeted damage source Seism- non-targeted relic damage while multiple relics were changed to 20 hp Longer-term stuff: Dragons: very good deck that punishes attack-based decks pretty hard (w bonus + regen + Aerial Supremacy) while using non-targeted damage extensively Single stat inflation: (inevitable) introduction of more runes leads to higher possibility of stacking one stat, so damage that ignores DEF is more consistently useful than basic attacks Tough: rise in value due to use in countering non-targeted damage, but it itself is outscaled by multiplicative modifiers bc it's a flat reduction capped at 3
It's interesting because I was constantly being told Firk and Psychic were bad. And as soon as I buff Extispicer people start saying "already strong." That said, I have noticed that even a couple of "new" runes into the meta tends to give people an entirely different impression of the meta. This should have been reduced quite a bit with the Commander/Boost consolidation, but aside from the initial complaints (mostly re: Skeletons), it doesn't seem to have hindered things. It also makes me happy I nerfed Bombs/Skewers long ago (even tho there was a lot of complaints about those nerfs and how DEF was too strong afterwards and people kept right on playing those Bombs/Skewer champs).
I think psychics really were borderline before. But Extispicer is handy, and each combination of nerfs and buffs can have an unpredictable impact on the meta. But psychics aren't really so strong that people are playing them overwhelmingly like they were with stormreader/elec. They are just a good, competitive bg now.