What’s up guys it’s me Jeremy.
Riot uses a lot of different mechanics and techniques when it comes to designing their
game, and it’s hard to appreciate the little nuances of everything when you just play the
game, as it’s all of these little mechanics and techniques that add up together to make
the game what it is, so I always enjoy taking a look at individual mechanics and breaking
them down.
Today, we’re looking at the mechanic of percent maximum hp damage.
And helping me out with this video I have to give a huge shoutout to Proguides.com.
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Anyways let’s get started.
Now max percent health damage is a mechanic that Riot likes to use quite a lot, and it’s
definitely for good reason.
I for one think it’s quite an interesting way to design an ability, and it does create
some interesting gameplay interactions.
The concept of percent max health damage is a cool one, since the way it works out, at
least on paper causes to be a source of damage that has both a ceiling and a floor.
This type of ability is a lot less at risk of dealing too much damage and killing people
too quickly, while it’s also a lot less at risk of dealing too little damage in situations
where you are behind.
And because of that it generally creates well balanced and fair gameplay scenarios, that
have some positives for both the player using it and the player facing it.
Since it has kind of a damage floor, it allows the ability and therefore the champion to
still have some kind of damage, even if you fall super far behind, and on the flip side,
it makes it so that even if you get super far ahead, you aren’t going to just randomly
one shot people.
And by giving the damage sort of like a cap on both ends, it contributes to a lot of really
healthy gameplay elements.
What percent maximum health damage scaling does, is that it allows you to give someone
a source of damage that interacts in a similar way versus all types of opponents.
Regardless of who you hit it with, you will of course be dealing roughly the same amount
of damage in terms of the percent of their overall health.
And this allows you to deal solid damage versus tanks without actually becoming ridiculous
when you are attacking someone who is not a tank.
So it allows you to have relevant damage, but in a way that is a lot more fair to play
against for anyone.
However one thing I will say that is a very relevant argument to pecent max hp damage
actually being not that good of a mechanic, is that it potentially can allow a champion
to deal a lot of relevant damage without actually having to build any damage items, and as a
result you get this super tanky raidboss who still deals an insane amount of damage to
people, which is certainly at risk of being overpowered.
It’s much better to make a champion have to make a choice between being a bit more
squishy and dealing more damage, or choosing to be a bit more tanky while dealing less
damage, and itemization is usually what will allow someone to make that choice, and it’s
pretty reasonable to expect that kind of trade off, since getting killed in 3 seconds by
someone that takes you 20 or 30 seconds to kill is kind of ridiculous, and percent max
hp damage can definitely contribute to that type of scenario, and it hurts the idea of
that trade off of choosing tankiness versus choosing damage.
So when implementing this mechanic of percent
max hp damage, it’s important to consider that type of raid boss situation and definitely
try to avoid it.
A lot of times this is done by doing a non-scaling, kind of low base damage value, but having
a solid amount of scaling on the damage ratio.
Another way you could do this is to just heavily gate the actual ability behind some kind of
interaction, to where it still does a lot of damage, but it’s never going to kill
someone really quickly, because you have to do some kind of interaction or meet some kind
of condition, which makes it a bit more fair, and it also makes it possible to outplay,
and that is probably the more common way that it gets implemented, since Riot really likes
the idea of tanks having some relevant damage, but gated behind some kind of interaction,
to allow the melee top laners and tanks to be a lot more fun to play and create more
interesting gameplay patterns in melee versus melee combat.
Riot Gypsylord commented a bit about this mechanic and the design concepts behind it,
and he said that essentially percent max hp damage is actually something that is really
great to put on certain types of champions.
And he argued that percent max hp damage is a mechanic that potentially has a place on
almost every tank in the game as kind of like a baseline thing for a tank to have, since
it gives them a lot of threat and relevancy in a fight that makes their kits a lot more
interesting to play, but still very healthy and easy to balance and especially fair to
play against.
And he went on to say how three hit passives were a good way to do that, and as long as
the percent max hp damage isn’t something that is too powerful with little interaction,
meaning that you have some kind of a delay, or require some kind of condition to be met,
or you have it have a low base value but high scaling with damage stats, then it’s something
that can be pretty awesome.
And let’s take a look at a couple examples on opposite ends of the spectrum that showcase
a lot of the characteristics of this mechanic.
Take for example someone like Leblanc maybe.
Leblanc actually does a reasonable amount of damage to tanks, but it’s a lot more
because she does insane damage to a squishy target, with really solid potential to just
one shot them instantly.
And being one shot instantly isn’t exactly fun or fair to play against, although it is
necessary for leblanc to have that gameplay as an assassin.
And as a result, leblanc becomes much more volatile.
When she’s ahead, she’s unstoppable, and when she’s behind she’s almost useless
and has a really really hard time catching up.
The main problem with this example is that maximum percent hp damage can’t really be
used as a form of burst damage, and so it doesn’t make sense to put that mechanic
on leblanc, but Leblanc does show a lot of the problems with alternate damage types that
percent max hp damage does not have.
Leblanc is extremely volatile, and is very one dimensional in terms of her gameplay patterns,
since it revolves pretty much entirely around whether or not she can successfully kill her
target.
And she also becomes very unhealthy when she gets a bit too far ahead, since it reaches
the point where it’s too easy for her to kill anyone and it happens too fast to be
able to react or outplay her most of the time.
And percent max hp damage elimates a lot of those problems, at least it does on paper.
Now take Malzahar, who is a great example of this mechanic being implemented since he’s
fairly recent.
Before Malzahar was quite unhealthy because his ultimate resulted in burst damage oriented
gameplay patterns, which are typically volatile and one dimensional, and so it was replaced
with percent maximum hp damage, which resulted in an ultimate that was much better design,
and it was also a lot better when he’s behind, and although Malzahar was overpowered for
different reasons that happened on the same patch, the percent maximum hp damage being
put on his ultimate was a pretty good decision and it made the ability a lot more healthy
and fair to play against, especially when he’s ahead.
Those examples do a good job of showing off the design concepts of the mechanic, but when
it comes to actually implementing it, it’s much better to put it on a tank or a bruiser.
And the reason why is because percent max hp damage is a form of sustained damage.
You aren’t going to be one shotting people with it, and there are usually better mechanics
or forms of utility to give a sustained dps mage or ad carry most of the time, malzahar
being a good exception.
So the most practical way to use percent max hp is really just to give a tank relevant
sustained damage without it being overpowered, at least depending on how you implement it.
Theres are certainly a lot of exceptions, but that’s definitely the most common and
most likely place to see this mechanic in the game.
So what do you think about percent maximum hp damage?
I hope you guys enjoyed this look into the insights of the champion designers and the
choices they make surrounding this mechanic, and it looks like that’s gonna be it from
me today.
If you enjoyed the video hit that like button, subscribe if you want, thanks for watching,
and I’ll see you guys next time!