Hey, I have trying to figure out, why cones and such does % DMG instead of flat numbers? In the old times, when we had a "few" runes, lacks of stats boosting, was fine, but now a champion doing 20+ AoE every 3 turns is ridiculous. Why don't make such abbilities do a flat number (like death nova), this will balance aa lot of champ (ritual cultist as example, also, take her sandbagged range, he doesn't even attack). PS: sry if bad english.
We have AOE abilities that do flat damage; they're called Lightning Skewer, Flamethrower, Arctic Bolt, and Magic Beam. Other examples are Corrosive Grenade, Screech, Annihilate, and X Nova. Back in the day, cones and breaths used to do 100% damage to the champion in the center, then reduce damage by ~20% per space outwards from the middle. It was changed for simplicity's sake and given ranks to better control the power of champions with cones and breaths. One other suggestion has been to change cones to deal damage equal to the user's damage, then divided evenly between all champions in the area, down to a minimum. But that makes cones almost useless on all but the highest damage champions, since it's rare you'll use a cone or breath on only one champion. Their purpose is to punish poor positioning and/or take advantage of map conditions that force tight knit fights. I guess the reason they don't do flat damage is because they're a different class of ability. We have a bunch of other flat damage abilities, and cones are simply in the %damage group so things aren't as boring.
They don't do flat damage because there is only a small pool of people on the forums that QQ for rune nerfs...those people use multiple accounts, and they are USING those runes so they do not complain about them. It is no surprise the game has devolved into hour+ games with people only 'actually' taking a turn every 3 or 4 rounds, depending on their OP ability's CD. All the other turns are just guesses at how close you think you can get without your opponent being able to power turn u first. It's also why KF is so bad right now...not many ways to counter the attrition based stall-till-power turn BGs....ST, UD,IS,FW all have much better spells...RD/Mobi/Gale/Blizz Cloak/BoP/Split Personality/FR/etc... If they really wanted to start working towards balance, toning down all the range 5 AE2 80% damage cone/breath effects. The model is fine on champs when their base damage is 7 or 8 and buffed up they MIGHT get to 20....but the abilities are going on champs with 15+ base damage and doing 30+ damage which is beyond OP.
I know this. But the abilities you lsited are a Line AoE, different style, different gameplay, different function. Cone is for punishing bad positioning, so why put them in champs that have 8dmg or so? They will do 6~7dmg to enemies for 10nora, 1ap, and with 3 turn CD. If we goes to the simplicity usage, why not make them all flat dmg? It will simplify even more, at the sime time this will be more easy to balance. The greens would know better in who to put or take the cones, and all to balance it arround all champs that have it.
This isnt complained about also because most factions have breath champion to use so if you are upset about it. You are probably playing kf as mentioned above. These abilities are fine, no need to change the ability. More at issue are other abilities in conjuction with breath, although I still have no problems with those personally
I feel like a big reason why people are not happy with cones, auras and aoes and such is because theyre more prevalent atm to combat all the stat stacking, grouping up of champs and things like sapping armor, its caused the meta to shift to it somewhat.
I'd support something like flat damage on AOE abilities (breath/bomb), also reduction on a lot of things to only 1 rank.
I am personally quite intrigued by the evolution of AE abilities - for example, when I first nerfed them to CD3, they almost completely disappeared from the meta as people kept telling me I over-nerfed them and made them useless. ~ Also, interesting is if we go back to the old old days when AEs did like 250% (or something) DMG but divided amongst all targets in the AE... except you could put the AE so it focused on just one target. It was like the best of single target AND AE damage in one package. Healing Breath was the same way - it was so OP
There's nothing inherently broken about AoE abilities, it just depends on the champion it's on. Ironically the most broken AoE based champ in the game is one that uses 3 of these static damage based AoEs that everyone seems to want.
Just for you to know: never liked KF. I main SP and FS since I started playing (the time grimlic was launched). My problem with it not being flat numbers, is the unbalance it causes for some champ. There are some dealing 6dmg on it, while others does 15. This inconsistências make things harder to balance, and only make the game more complex for newbies without need. Thats why I suggested flat numbers, not shoebox, not OP. Just do some testa and find an number for each rank in DMG and nora cost, making the ability better to use, easier to balance, more simples for begginers.
The static damage AoE seem to be priced correctly, the terraformer issue is due to not having any damage to increase its Nora cost. If it had other abilities to increase its cost like prismatic skywing, I believe it would feel balanced. Percentile based AoE are tougher to balance since their Nora costs are static across all champs, but deal variable damage based on the champ they're on.
So you mean the static AoEs are not inherently overpowered and it's the champions that they're on that matters? See what i'm getting at here?
Keep in mind that the Terraformer was not played very much when it did have DMG and a Basic Attack (note that I don't necessarily make a claim about power level), and that the Imperator does enjoy a decent negative nora modifier currently.
I believe that is related to the lack of damage and basic attack on terraformer, not the static damage AoE.
That's what I'm getting at. The static damage AoE is not the problem, it's the rune. The same can be said for every single non-static bomb champ in the game. This whole argument that bombs should be static damage because units have different base damage is incredibly asinine because you could use the exact same argument for every enhanced attack ability in the entire game. (i.e. throw axe being way better on a 12 dmg unit than a 6 dmg unit, despite being priced at the same nora).
