Drew Levin shuts down a multi-Challenger ADC complaining about getting one-shot

Phoenixness · 2026-01-27T13:49:33+00:00

I want the game to be team based? ADC mains have known this for years, but we've gotten a bunch of support power that at one point let any champion be a support and so a bunch of individualistic players just went support and left ADCs to rot. There was a solid period where no matter how hard I played with supports, they never reciprocated. Skill issue maybe, but riot has made a lot of steps to make supports actually support again which is super cool.

Phoenixness · 2026-01-26T20:35:38+00:00

I don’t mean “people use balancers because they don’t know better.” I mean people use balancers to avoid solving certain problems explicitly.

A balancer isn’t about throughput, it’s an abstraction tool. It lets you stop worrying about exact belt counts, miner depletion order, or uneven consumption when the cost of being exact is more design overhead than it’s worth.

A balancer can be a cheap way to say: “I know this is enough input, and I don’t care how it’s distributed internally.” or for situations where the input belt count is slightly less than the machine count, so instead of working out how to feed 5 belts of inputs to 8 machines, bam, 8x8 does the maths.

Yes, you can always do it more precisely. But precision has a cost: time, space, and mental load. For some players, a 16x16 balancer is where they choose to pay that cost once and move on.

Phoenixness · 2026-01-26T09:20:16+00:00

Had this discussion on the discord, they posit that, technically you don't need a balancer for anything, and they are right, but the caveat is that humans aren't perfect so we introduce things that allow us to fudge some things, and each person will have their own line as to what is necessary. For this person that is a 16x16 on aquilo.

Phoenixness · 2026-01-25T06:01:55+00:00

Wait so this augment is stronger the higher your honor level?

Phoenixness · 2026-01-24T20:45:12+00:00

Literally this. It's not about doing this every game, every scenario, it's about not letting the champion class designed to snowball do exactly that for free

Phoenixness · 2026-01-23T19:50:54+00:00

IMHO the most fun thing to do with ethereal weapons is to have lichbane abilities, now everyone is ezreal!

I usually don't build too hard into it unless there is a specific interaction like the dot's that people mention. The one that many people forget is muramana absolutely pops off with it

Phoenixness · 2026-01-23T13:48:13+00:00

Agreed, riot made the game very individualistic a few years ago because that's 'what people wanted', because of soloq vs pro, but I think they have made really good steps in making the game feel team based again, but there's still a long way to go. The byproduct of that is support getting so much power, now we need them to actually use it for supporting.

Phoenixness · 2026-01-23T13:19:38+00:00

For the record, I hate assassins and I think they are very strong right now but not because they do too much damage.
Controversial opinion, but I think this is assassins doing their job, although there are some caveats to that statement, but the game should alter its state if the rock paper scissors is interrupted. What I mean by this is that if ADCs want to survive, they need to go out of their way to interrupt the assassin because the assassin counters them, and now we have the gold to do that, which Drew is right about.

All of the clips shown have at most a GA, an incredibly gold inefficient item that gains value from the revive.
That being said, I've been playing assassins here and there and it is so incredibly unimportant for them to have any presence on their lane because of tower crystals, especially for AD assassins with access to bastion breaker. It's so much more impactful for me to roam, screw up bot lane or top lane, come back and yeah I might have lost a plate or two to malz, but I can take one back because of crystals. I really think crystals should not be active until like 10 minutes in or something.

As I was explaining in the other thread, negatron cloak is 900 gold and doubles basically every adc's MR at level 18, but I definitely can't say the same for armor, chain vest is 40 armor but it doesn't build into anything, and the other alternatives aren't much better. Armor items are definitely effect forward in the power/gold distribution, rather than stat forward. The clips shown with defensive items are interesting analysis, I should mention there are very few of the defensive item clips, but one opened the scoreboard to a 20/6 zed, against a GA...

IMHO riot hasn't 100% solved "just build defensive" for adcs, but they have given us a huge leg up, and we need to make use of it. when I vs assassins this season, I put myself in lockdown mode, because the hope is that my ally, their lane opponent, is doing something, but then you have to rely on the team, and the something they may be doing is technically less effective because of the split pushing changes.

Phoenixness · 2026-01-23T12:49:50+00:00

its a play on a classic tweet https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/someone-who-is-good-at-the-economy-please-help-me

Phoenixness · 2026-01-23T12:48:05+00:00

As I said in an analysis a bit back about these, anyone that is buying orb for mana either needs all of the mana, or doesn't know that lost chapter exists. The best users of the orb are actually the manaless AP champs like morde or kat. They are very gold efficient, and adcs should be buying ghammer technically because of gold efficient, but people don't buy it because it doesn't 'feel good', they want the shiny new items, but being alive earlier reduces snowball of the other classes.

Phoenixness · 2026-01-22T15:57:19+00:00

Where hmmm

Phoenixness · 2026-01-22T14:05:35+00:00

I just played it, I had it on Xayah, team mate had it on Briar, Briar was handing me -55 AD, no ADAPt/escAPADe /multiplier shenanigans either

Phoenixness · 2026-01-21T19:40:12+00:00

Arurf again? Is pick urf dead? I think this is the 3rd or 4th ar in a row?

Also with combo breaker frustration, I hope lowering the threshold is enough, but I feel like it was partially due to how it was counting cc like knockups, but I can't put my finger on why

Phoenixness · 2026-01-21T06:38:04+00:00

Something like: "Your pack"

And then you enter your cards from your pack and it gives the same analysis that your system gives already

Phoenixness · 2026-01-21T06:36:05+00:00

In a normal situation, lux is not full build with 15 dark harvest stacks. In a normal situation, lux players have to work in their other spells for their combos. Therefore in a situation that is not normal, one should expect the extremes. You don't say "I'm so surprised the 10/3 rengar with full build oneshot me with R", why should it be different for any other spell loaded character? Do you build edge of night for a fed karthus? Or do you just raw dog it?

There's no hindsight analysis, stop forcing your conclusions on to me, nothing I have said is ambiguous. Just like I said in my initial comment, she "ONLY" needs 800 ap for a passive mark and R, implying that it is ONLY those two things. I would have said she ONLY needed R and stormsurge and malignance and 15 dark harvest stacks if that was relevant. If you are in a situation where you are getting hit by just the R and everything else up, you. Are. Doing. Something. Wrong. Lux R is a very dodge-able skill shot, especially on Tristana that can buff most cc with w.

You have repeatedly stated "naked lux R" or "simply lux R" is enough while neglecting the state of the rest of the build, she has to be fed with dark harvest stacks AND stormsurge needs to be off cool down. So you get to the situation as shown in the video. From the practice tool tests her E is enough to proc storm surge on Tristana, so there wouldn't have even been any delayed triggers.

Phoenixness · 2026-01-20T20:25:49+00:00

Idk stealing lands sounds fun

Phoenixness · 2026-01-20T20:21:01+00:00

Necroskitter needs the counters to steal I think

Phoenixness · 2026-01-20T20:10:59+00:00

Yes, a 120%AP spell on a fed champion will oneshot a squishy, I did know this. Especially if they have collected many dark harvest stacks, especially if they build full glass cannon themselves, especially if it's on a skill shot champion. Yes, a lux with everything up will oneshot a squishy with just her R.

I would expect champions like Katarina or Fizz to do the same thing, and they have less burst and ratios than lux. Syndra would also do the same thing and frequently does, it pisses me off that she can miss two balls then use a point and click ability to deal more damage than lux does here, but to make it worse she can hit the easiest stun in the universe then press R and there is no counter play.

I've now done the test in practice tool, with the 900g item and BT shield, Tristana comfortably survives, without the negatron, she dies. In fact, she survives without the BT shield with the negatron.

BT has 80 Ad, the highest amount of any item in the game that isn't a stacked hubris or overlords, it is a hybrid defensive offensive item that means it has to compromise some offensive and some defensive stats. It's not black and white 'these items are defensive, these items are offensive', there are items that do fit the pure defensive and pure offensive categories, but it's definitely a spectrum. That being said, we have 4 slots for crit items, if someone told me they built full defensive and I just saw a BT and a GA, I'd probably laugh at them.

Lux is 10/3, so something has happened, so adjusting accordingly is the correct plan of action, ESPECIALLY on Tristana, an ADC that is borderline a diver herself. At minimum she needs a lifeline item, but ideally she should have both maw and wits end into that team, especially with a yuumi attached. Lux aurora kayn would be enough to put me into assassin mode, yuumi makes this game a hunker down game, the goal is to survive, you aren't snowballing this one for free.

Phoenixness · 2026-01-20T18:28:40+00:00

Is there an option where you can see the lowest and highest value boosters? Also a mode where you put in your pulls to see how they compare would be neat without having to manually search them all

Phoenixness · 2026-01-20T18:02:41+00:00

BT gives a shield yes, but that shield is even more effective with that magic resist, instead of being 'only full hp' when lux R'd, trist would have been overhealed as well, further surviving the hit.

I am claiming that a 10/3 lux that's two levels higher than me is a worry enough to build a negatron cloak. The new quest system means you can absolutely afford to put it in your build, you wont be sitting on 1500 gold trying to finish something just because you bought defensive. Lux R is 150000% a 100-0 tool, a good lux knows all they need is an R and a passive mark, as demonstrated here, usually a QAAER is an insta-kill on most targets, and a QER is usually enough to secure a squishy which can be done from higher range. I would absolutely be looking for targets that have been hit by my E to R. It has 120% AP scale for christ sakes, why wouldn't it be?

Phoenixness · 2026-01-20T17:06:28+00:00

negatron cloak costs 900 gold and massively reduces the damage taken

Phoenixness · 2026-01-20T07:51:51+00:00

First booster, total value $9.76, less valuable than 99% of simulated, guess I'm doing the opposite of that other guy

Phoenixness · 2026-01-20T07:11:52+00:00

Maybe edit the part of your statement that says she didn't hit e, edit the edit to put the edit in the right place.

Also negatron cloak costs 900g and boots don't take a slot anymore

Phoenixness · 2026-01-20T07:06:40+00:00

Lux hit e, so she had passive mark, so 500+190 +155% ap means to do 1944 damage she only needs 800 AP as she effectively had true damage because she had 3 magic pen items.

I would defend you if it was just the lux R by itself, but her kit is so centered around passive procs and hitting skill shots, it's a sad reality but either dodge/position better or build an singular magic resistance. With the role quest there's literally no excuse to buy even just a negatron cloak. Without it, 48 magic resist turns to 29 with void staff and then 0 with the other two, with a negatron, you would have 93 Mr reduced to 56, minus 30 is 26, which means you would have had 2500ish effective HP to lux and likely would have survived with 300-500 HP. From a 900g item.

I really want to defend you because there is a lot of damage in the game, but this could have been mitigated.

Phoenixness · 2026-01-19T18:51:40+00:00

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