Both CA are 10 nora. Of the 15 units with CA abilities, only 3 are viable, and only 1 of these are actually run with it. The three are: Skeezick Blackguard (doesn't run), Barbarian Exemplar, and Frostwing Glaive (doesn't run) I'm sure some of you will say that these abilities have to be expensive because they provide access to free attacks, but the control of this is up to your opponent. This isn't a hidden ability like RD or Blizzard Cloak, this is one that is printed on the rune itself. The idea is that these abilities give a certain safety to the rune either from ranged or melee, but in truth, they don't do that very effectively. Units with counter attack melee will be ranged down, and even if meleed, will have their damage mitigated through things like heals, awestruck, defense stacking, block, and the dozens of other ways people mitigate damage in this game. The exact same goes for the ranged versions of said abilities and counters. In short, because the opponent has full knowledge of these runes capabilities, they will play around the rune, or even take advantage of it. I can't count the times I've had my counter attack ranged unit be RD'ed to death from 2 attacks. These abilities were created based off the old block/riposite dodge/arrow throw mechanics, and some runes that had these abilities were given the counter attacks instead. Most units with the CA abilities are rather squishy (All except skeezick blackguard have 50 or less hp), and have low damage(melee between 8-12, ranged have either 10 or 12). While some have ways of boosting their damage, the fact remains that an ability that requires taking damage and is dependent on the unit's own damage, is not very good when the unit will die fast and not deal much damage. My proposal is to reduce the costs of Counter Attack:Ranged and Counter Attack: Melee by 4, placing them at 6 nora. This would be more than the current state of riposite, but does not benefit from blocking damage. In addition, the text regarding gaining attack and losing defense, as well as the ability granting it should be removed. Counter Attack: Ranged10 Nora This unit makes a free attack against any champion that successfully attacks it with a ranged attack. If the counterattack misses, this unit gains +3 DMG and -1 DEF for 2 turns would become Counter Attack: Ranged6 Nora This unit makes a free attack against any champion that successfully attacks it with a ranged attack. and the same for CA melee.
-4 feels like a bit much as a snap change. All on-board for cleaning up the secondary clause -- it just muddies up the text. Maybe shift to 8 or so, remove the extra conditional trigger, and go from there?
Seems to me CA: Melee should be cheaper than CA: Range. But I agree, I have always hated the secondary clauses on these - and they have very little to do with the ability's function or cost.
I heavily disagree about that. Both should be the same cost like reflexes and evasive, or block and dodge.
I find counter attack: melee has less ways to backfire on you - worse that can happen is block/riposte which you don't see anymore (unfortunately). With counter attack range you can be insta-****ed with righteous defection, or be lesser-****ed with paralytic feedback. Even apart from that, I think that because it is easier for range to pick targets than melee it is easier to choose when and if to take damage, whereas a melee champ with CA: melee can face off against other melee and know it will cause them problems.
I feel the same, I feel that CA melee should be either more expensive or the same, especially considering the melee heavy lineup of people with it.
While there are specific scenarios where CA: Melee is more useful, if you consider the general case of "do I wish I had X or Y" it'd generally be CA: Ranged you want in most actual gameplay situations.
Except no it wouldn't be. Access to anti range is much more common than access to anti melee. The access to range counters makes it easier mitigate the damage recieved from CA ranged. This also works against the CA ranged ability in the fact that it has diminishing returns in terms of preventing ranged attacks. An enemy that wouldn't attack you just with CA ranged, will never attack you if you add in something like evasive. Melee basicly only has resolute, intimidating, block, and reflexes, where ranged has ash terrain, arrow eater, absorb, evasive, elusive, camoflage, shroud, RD, and god knows how many more counters I can't think of right now. 14/15 CA units have 1 minimum range, meaning they run up and engage units. If engaged unit is ranged, it has to spend ap to disengage, reposition, then attack. If engaged unit is melee, it just attacks you. This obviously means that for most of the CA units, they would prefer CA melee, because it fits their range and playstyle better than CA range. The ranged unit would disengage anyways, but the melee unit is forced to either disengage out of the clash, using ap, or attack and get counter attacked. This isn't even counting the fact of how common melee is vs ranged, with range composing about 33% of the average bg, and nearly 0 summons. In most situations I would prefer my runes to have CA melee over ranged.
