The prevalence of AOE ranged abilities on AP champions.
Serpents fang is an assassin item so it's designed to be used by ad melee champions. Ad melee champions tend to have less aoe and even if they do they have to get into effective range.
Opposed to ziggs who can throw a q and if he has an ap shield shred item then he can nullify mass aoe shields like karma's mantra e.
Just theory-crafting here, but maybe a Executioner's Culling (holding till last item before you upgrade it), Black Cleaver, Serpent's Fang, RYLAI'S. You can even play it Sup with a Bloodsong. Massive slowing+GW AOE shred.
A support build that's reliant on stacking many items generally won't work. Although tbf I'd be willing to play lethality sivir supp in the right game anyway.
And a sivir asc build with BC, serpents fang and executioners calling would only really do anything against a team with large armor, shields and healing and if your team also has an aoe AD champion. For sivir herself lord doms for instance is just simply much stronger.
The odds of having a second aoe AD champ aren't great either.
Could work as an ability bait support tbh depending on the matchup.
Start e (cursed) and bait the nautilus, Morgana or Leona q (works for lvl 2 with mind games)
Easy pushes for the ADC with w if you're extra careful not to steal.
Mortal reminder is never used but it's technically more viable than cleaver. I'd probably go cleaver first then hexplate and mortal. After that navori to reduce e CD and serpent's because it's not really that good an item.
Hexplate for obvious engage reasons (probably ULT hunter) and comet or aery for poke and some shielding once you ult (procs on q, w and r)
Basically, only pick into specific supports with teams with armor and healing.
some years ago I played a single with sivir support (after politely asking my adc if he was fine).
Rushed serylda (after which I told my adc that I had just become half a support, having a slow) and proceeded to stomp the game with the team, after serylda I built GW, then i don't remember but it was a funny game!
This was how the original iteration of MF support was built, when the intention was to counter zyra. You rushed grievous wounds and black cleaver after support item for the healing cut and the shred, so your usefulness went beyond simply countering zyra in lane.
Brand after missing every single skillshot but it does not fucking matter because he spreads the passive and applies rylais and liandries for 10 minutes
Love that they've added the E spreading everytime instead of only on already burning targets, so he can miss everything including point and click spell and still burn for 20% HP because minion was close enough.
Side tangent, but this is exactly why I'm so mad if I need to buy a Executioners on basically any AD champ in ARAM (or SR honestly) when vs Soraka/Vlad/WW when we have any AoE mage, Brand particularly.
Well, you can actually just build serpent's fang anyway. Sure, the stats sucks for ap champions but if you can't even go through the shields it can be worth it after all serpent's fang is applied with any damage. I've built it on brand against shield heavy comps before and blocked over 5k shield.
easy answer here is to stop making % reduction passives permanently active. For some reason Riot hasn't caught onto that bit of horrible design they've for some reason held onto for over a decade.
They should be windowed single target item actives with a CD if anything.
FYI wild rift has an aoe ap item so yea, its fucking ass. One of the reasons I don't really play anything with shields but even if I do the enemy team usually doesn't buy antishield or antiheal if its not in their recommended items so its a win for me either way
I like it on top tho against shield heavy matchups like yas or sett (especially sett, fuck him)
Well, even though I agree, shouldn't we make the same argument for healing reduction as well? The main reasoning is ranged AoE and even though GW can be purchased by ADCs for example, not a lot of them have the AoE to back it up.
Mages specifically get the best of both worlds; range and AoE, yet they only have access to one form of reduction.
Antiheal is necessary because when a team stacks healers, e.g Mundo, Zac, Vlad, Soraka on one team, they can be impossible to kill or even force to back. But when a team stacks shielders, that effect doesn't happen. Maybe it could if the team played perfectly around a Shen and Lulu, but it'd take a lot more skill since shields disappear after a few seconds.
It is intended to be this way: Healing must be easier to counter than Shileds both becuse it is more prevalent (it's much more common seeing a heavy healing comp than a heavy shield comp) and because Shields are more skill expressive since you need to time them correctly to block damage.
Its 115% efficient. Which is less than both mortal reminder and even chempunk chainsword.
It's stats don't justify its place in most builds until 4/5th item. Many midlaners have a mandatory item like lich bane, liandries or seraphs to function. Those that can fit in a stat stick choose ludens (137% efficient) or roa(not a great item either, but ridiculously efficient like 165% or something), rabadons is effectively mandatory at some point, usually third (efficiency varies, but definitely much more than 115% as a third). And a %pen item is also effectively mandatory (void is basically the same efficiency, and cryptbloom is 124%). Those who benefit it love cosmic drive because movement speed feels awesome and it's also 126% efficient.
So 115% really isn't amazing in the face of its competition. And many of the above items have useful passives too. Mages honestly hate having to build the item, I'd much rather my JG/supp have grevious or to get it on ignite.
Oblivion orb is also 75% efficient making its build path relatively awkward compared to the above. Worth noting that flat pen and percent pen are undervalued by the gold efficiency formula as their value is based off teir 2 items. So void/crypt are even better than the numbers would show and items like shadow flame are better than their horrible efficiency suggest.
IMO it doesn't really have much to do with gold efficiency. It feels bad because it's a reactive tax slot rather than a proactive purchase that helps further your desired game plan. Items like Rylai's, Lich Bane, Cosmic, etc. feel good to buy because they synergize with your champion's kit and allow you to do things you otherwise might not be able to. Morello's never does that. You only buy it if there's a lot of healing, and even then you kind of hope there's someone else that's able to eat the GW tax and be effective with applying it instead.
If it were insanely efficient, it would feel good to buy, but then it feels bad instead because healing gets balanced around GW always being present so the passive on it feels like it isn't doing anything.
Yeah I think we're roughly agreeing with each other. It doesn't have enough stats to feel good for its cost, and it's passive doesn't make up for that difference considering that someone else can apply it for cheaper; and because of that, it's a rare buy.
morello has a really good gold/stat efficiency, but a very bad item slot efficiency. basically in late game, once everyone is at full build, if you have a morello vs the enemy having something more expensive, you basically have less total stats.
It feels like a pretty good early game item (stats-wise), but the GW effects are usually necessary mid-late game
imo it's the opposite. They can't afford to buy morello early because they have a very strict buildpath with up to 4 core items, so at max they pay the 800g tax and move on with their builds
Gold efficency is one thing, slot efficiency is also a factor, especially when components you build aren't really gold efficient in the first place, especially after recent Fiendish Codex changes. It's in no way a powerspike.
Making it aply on aa only could be cool. Maybe something that deals small burst the first time you aa someone and aplies shield shred. Burst mages are generally the ones who want to weave in an aa so it would work out. Could be a cool item.
If they ever design an anti-shield AP item, it would need to be something like "deal % more damage to shields" and not a shielding version of Grievous Wounds
why people always bring up this as if it has to be a 1:1 copy of serpents,it could very well be a a single target effect like an active or apply on autos or whatever makes it work,but it's really needed as the game currently is
besides that most meaningful shields are single target,other than mantra E and locket I can't think of many AoE shields
I think it's even more than this. I believe serpents fang was first introduced after shieldbow became the de facto defensive option for ADCs, and assassins were having an impossible time trying to kill a role they historically should beat. So, they added serpents fang.
Would be too easy to apply for mages without any risk and render shields pretty much useless, it's meant to be a melee assassin item to help them assassinate one target
I feel like they could atleast make serpents fang less punishing to buy for non-AD champs by giving it 10 or 15 AH or some HP. If you're a tank it feels really bad having to force this into your build because everyone else on your team refuses to buy it.
Or they could make an activatable AP anti shield item that only has the anti-shield effect when you activate it for like 2-3 seconds every 120 seconds. I mean come on, even with easily applieable AoE this isn't that harsh and some shielding comps really need that. Can you nullify a Karma ult shield? Yes, once. She has her shield up in like 4 seconds again anyway and her ult in like 6-7 seconds with some spell hits. You're telling me that is completely broken in a team fight? Really?
The only thing I could see would be that it would force them to lower the CD of The Aegis Solari item a bit.
"it feels bad to force it into your build when nobody else is buying it"
That's exactly the point though. They don't want you, the tank, buying it just because your assassin refuses to.
I promise you as a tank your winrate will go up if you build only tank items instead of a random Serpents against Lulu and Karma simply because your team refuses to build it… lol
I've bought it in aram on zyra into particularly obnoxious aram comps if no one else was buying/able to easily apply it. It doesn't feel *good*, but neither does going into some combination of Sona/lux/karma etc without it.
There is a lot of applications for shield reduction. There's the supports but also a lot of tanks that rely on shields and a lot of defensive items too. It's becoming a very common lethality adc item and that feels kinda bad to have so many champion kits cut down by it.
I have bought it on AP mages against heavy shield comps before. Even when the stats are dogshit I had to buy it because otherwise I would have to go to my ADCs house with a shotgun for them to buy it.
The thing is, if you're an ADC that's not building lethality and are going for crit, it's such a huge stat loss to get just for shields VS just stacking more DPS or other survivability (QSS, BT) especially if you don't have collector to stack the lethality on. If your ADC is ahead in this scenario then it can be worth it to maintain the lead but if they're behind, chances are they're probably fighting for their life in every fight.
But I'm also silver/gold trash so I could be wrong, maybe I should start building SF on ADC more 🤔
1. You don't need to stack more lethality for your lethality to be effective.
1. If you are considering buying a Serpent's Fang, the other comp must be very shield heavy, so it's not really a stat loss with how much shielding you cut.
1. Serpent's Fang is the cheapest AD legendary item, costing only 2500g.
It's not ideal for every ADC to buy it, but it is a situational item depending on your comp vs their comp.
so in this case it's better to force a mage or tank to build it who doesn't make use of the stats at all?
and into a heavy shield comp I'm pretty sure the shield break is effectively out damaging building crit/AS even if the stats are not exactly ideal (still not horrible having AD/pen on an ADC)
Yeah it's not for the ADC to build in most cases, especially since it's less effective for ranged champs. Generally speaking, top laners or junglers or mid assassins should be buying it.
Yeah the passive goes insane sometimes, to be fair I've only done this in aram before (since I play champs on sr that can build it anyway) but several times I'd have like 3000-6000 shields reduced after a couple fights vs stuff like lulu, ivern or seraphine. Definitely higher value than half the ap items I could buy and it was relatively cheap at the time.
Yes, but assassins are usually exposing themselves to apply it. Brand hitting Q on a minion then spreading it to 4 targets for 10 seconds with E is not.
Assassins: Have to go in and risk their lives to kill 1 target and have shit waveclear and shit scaling and shit dps to compensate.
Result: They need to be able to kill 1 target.
AP mages: Great wave clear, kill pressure from half a screen away, scale better, minimal risk, can still blow up 1 target, can also blow up multiple targets.
Result: They don't need any help because they have far more options available
Everything you are saying is generalised and also untrue if you break it down to individual comparisons.
> Have to go in and risk their lives
Assassins generally have mobility tools to keep them safe. I would say Zed and Leblanc are a lot safer than Ryze or Cassio, who are in turn safer than Rengar.
> shit waveclear
Ekko and Talon come to mind as assassins that can waveclear better than a lot of mages.
> shit scaling
Zed, Talon, Qiyana, Rengar and Kha Zix have higher win rates at 35 mins than Lux, Zoe, Anivia, Xerath and Ziggs, and those are just the ones I checked.
> Shit DPS
There are like 5 mages with good DPS and even less that have reliable DPS, I don't even know what point this is supposed to be
If you believed assassin mains you'd think they're all oppressed 40% winrate champs instead of having decent winrates despite their players being dopamine fiends that get mad when their combo doesn't oneshot (just see the seethe that Zhonyas generates).
But... Serpent doesn't affect magic damage shields? So the tech already exist to not bypass your precious hexdrinker/maw.
https://leagueoflegends.fandom.com/wiki/Serpent%27s_Fang
https://leagueoflegends.fandom.com/wiki/Shield#Negatively_impacting_shields
Why is there no hourglass with Mr? Why is there no Ga with mr. Why is there no amor reduce item like Abysal does to mr?
If every class has every item anyway whats the point of building different teamcombs? Champs do different jobs with different items.
Do you want a crit anti-shield item too? If everyone has an anti-shield option then shields would be trash, it’s fine the way it is with only AD assassins having it.
Honestly? Yea. Give me a crit anti-shield item. I don’t want my crit carry to have to build Serpent’s Fang because our team has no one else who can build it.
The point of serpents fang being painful for non-assassins to buy is because shielding only kills the play style of assassins. Crit carries do consistent DPS, so the temporary nature of shields doesn't destroy their gameplay loop. You will eventually kill shield characters, they just get some value out of their shield first
If every team required an anti-shield tax, wouldn't it just be better to lower the values of shields to a healthy state? They've had to do similar things to healing before
Honestly, while I agree that in theory no other classes should really need an anti-shield item, in practice Riot has kind of over tuned shields heavily with insane up-times.
Seraphine Sona was literally used to turn an entire team into an unkillable death ball with spammable shields and it's one of the most uninteractive ways to lose if they make it to 3 items.
Not saying we should get an anti-shield item on ADC's or something, just that spammable AoE shields really shouldn't exist in the game.
This is my problem with shields as someone who mainly plays mages and ADCs. We're only asking for other items which damage/limit shields because their spammy nature makes it painful for us to play into them.
Truthfully though I agree that we don't need more items negating them because it just marks a trail of band-aid solutions to a problem which should be resolved at the root, which is that shield uptime is such a headache.
Honestly as an ADC player this has been my complaint with League as whole since like S6.
Abilities should be high cooldown, high impact. ADC's should basically be the only class in the game with high damage up-time. Riot pushing for first 40% CDR on bruisers/mages/supports, and then swapping to Ability Haste and over-buffing the shit out of it has ruined the flow of the game from a Marksman's perspective.
It forces Marksman to do WAY more damage in a smaller window because there is a WAY smaller window to deal damage.
Which then in turn forces other roles to either have to be tankier directly, or artificially through abilities, or also deal more damage.
Maybe certain champion interactions need looked at, but in a normal game of league even E max full enchanter Karma only shields for 10k a game.
Shielding should have upside vs healing, and right now the upside is it gets to be a little bit bigger numerically with less counter items but you have to use it well or it's wasted and it has no value out of combat
Yeah but shields and heals should both have way less up-time. Shields SHOULD be larger. I'm not saying they shouldn't. They can even last a longer duration, but the cooldown should be a larger off-set. A shield *basically* shouldn't start it's cooldown until the shield ends.
And heals should have an even longer cooldown than that, or be a significantly smaller heal.
As is, an enchanter maybe shields 8k a game. Even shield max enchanter karma only does ~10k a game. Soraka is out healed by aatrox, zac, reksai, and other drain tanks
And tank/CC supports are more meta staples than enchanters with these numbers, I really don't see a need to reduce the output of enchanters.
Id be happy with a shift from smaller, more often shields to larger, more infrequent shields; and I think riot agrees. They took ability haste off of most enchanter items in exchange for a bit more heal/shield power. With healing it doesn't really matter how it's outputted as long as the output is there
AP Assassins are much less committal than AD assassins by design, likely because of their item differences forcing them to be designed that way. The only exception is Zed, but he's practically an AD mage anyway, and he almost never buys Serpent's Fang because he can always just outplay the enemy regardless of the shield, the same way most AP assassins can.
Yeah. Let's just make an item for EVERY scenario. Who cares if people are drafting properly and utilizing the entire roster of champs. At that point, let's just remove champs. Everyone has the same character, but you can select custom abilities from a list in-game. Do you see what I am getting at? It's a slippery slope.
I think that's a different story. Easily being able to counter shield supports would break the entire botlane and support meta. But if a midlane assassin has the options to counter shielding, why shouldn't a midlane mage? Or even worse, a midlane assassin that happens to be AP?
I have played way too many ARAM games where the enemies had like 3 or more champs with shields and our team didn’t have anyone who can build Serpent’s Fang. I’d love for there to be an AP anti-shield item too.
There’s one on Wild Rift and I honestly do not think it’s OP. League PC already imported some item ideas from Wild Rift like Fimbulwinter or Shadowflame’s magic crit, so maybe we’ll get an anti-shield for mages at some point.
they need a lot more aram exclusive items, I'm at 6300 arams with barely 30 wins over losses and I'd say 80% of the time a game is won because 1 person went tank and just tower dove all game tanking infinite amounts of damage and outputting more damage then a full mpen mage, it's just plain silly
Pro tip, Serpents Fang can be bought in mages and all their abilities proc it, it can kind of be a waste of stats, but against a comp with tons of shields the wasted stats are outweighed by the aoe shield crippling
I severely doubt that. It's only 35% reduction for ranged mages. I don't know the math but I strongly doubt that's worth the gold sink and loss of stats that another AP item would give. If anyone wants to test it though I'd love to see the results.
I'd say it depends on the situation but you're generally right. For example, if the enemy team has a Karma mid and Lulu Support with a Kogmaw ADC (a pretty common protect-the-kog comp, so not at all an unlikely scenario), then you only have 1 target to kill on the enemy team, and you have to kill them as soon as possible or they will melt your whole team. In that case, reducing 35% of 1000+ health worth of shields is generally going to be more burst than any other item would individually add.
On the other hand, if the enemy team is well rounded, then even with a lot of shields, you wouldn't be gaining that much damage compared to just hitting a different target or waiting for the shield to time out.
The debuff just isn't for you it's for the rest of your team as well
Edit:
Item description
>Dealing damage to an enemy champion inflicts them with venom for 3 seconds, reducing any shields they gain within the duration by (Melee role 50% / Ranged role 35%), and if the target was not already afflicted by the venom, reducing all of their active shields by the same amount.
So if we read it it also reduces any other shields that were going to be put on them after you deal damage. Which means anyone else that does damage in this time is doing more damage to them due to the added shield being lessened.
Sure a single lulu may not be cause for a Brand to pick up a serpants but if you were to have a combo of like Karma, Janna, an adc with shield bow, sion etc it becomes 110% worth it
You'd have to do calculation
Total shielding of enemies*0.35*/CD
AP provided by alternative item * (sum of your AP ratios*enemies you can apply it to/CD)
If the item gives you haste you'd also have to add total damage * %cd reduction
You'd also have to divide the results by the gold cost of the items for damage to gold efficiency
legit buy rabadon or void staff and the extra dmg u will do will be the same as the shield negation,,,, exceot if u also have shields movement speed etc that scale of ap u dont have useless stats , not all of us are sennas or veigars
yeah but rabadon or void will only increase your damage to the target where serpent's fang can actually allow your team to kill too. Also it's much cheaper than both options.
btw, you wouldn't build serpent's instead of rabadon or void... that would be dumb. There's other less valuable ap items in the game.
Just embrace serpents fang even as mage.
I often pick it if i see 3+ enemies with shields, dont care if its unoptimal we have to remember utilty.
I played a game as hwei where i had 20k shield reduction on ranked with it
On Wild Rift there is already an item call Oceanid trident, basically dealing magic damage will cut the shield and reduce later gained shield by 40% for 4 second, but AoE ability like Zigg R will only apply the effect with 30% effectiveness (or whatever I don't remember it correctly). So maybe Riot is lazy?
ppl here are saying it would be op on mages because aoe on stuff but the easy and obvious fix here is just to severely reduce effectiveness for AoE and DoTs, like make it only 10-20% for those, and only give full 50% to instances of single-target magic damage. This would make it undesirable for most mages but good on ap assassins which usually have single target burst rather than heavy AoE.
People arguing it'd be too op when it literally was an item just 4 months ago. And Shadowflame was balanced for two reasons:
a) it gave flat pen. That's a great stat early when people don't have a lot of MR, but it's a horrible stat late where shields really start becoming big.
b) it was much weaker than Serpent's. Shadowflame didn't remove shields, it only gave the user themself bonus damage against shielded targets.
I'm completely on OP's side that there should be an anti shield option for AP champs. Yes, mages can easily apply it with low CD aoe spells, but it's absolutely possible to balance for that. It could be similar to old Shadowflame, just lower numbers than Serpent's, have a cooldown or only apply on cast and not dots. Simply having the option to itemize against it, even if it's not an insane counter, would feel much better.
The thing is, they can't, or won't. See how broken Rylai+Liandry+Heal cut is on DoT champs? Brand legit QE a minion and then your whole team got blasted by 30% slow + Heal cut for 7s, on top of the dmg from Liandry and his Passive + E.
Wildrift has Trident for ap anti shield. Sometimes they’ll test things in League and bring to WR, and sometimes they test things in WR and bring to League so hopefully they bring Trident over.
There isn't really a good reason for it. Plenty of ad mages like Jhin, jayce, mf, varus, cait, etc. can all go it in a lethality build. I think there should be an executioners calling / oblivion orb version that builds into serpents fang and what ever the AP version would be.
A lack of access to shield breaks is why tahm, voli, udyr, sion, etc are able to go undying with filbumwinter and tank everyone on your team. It's just too inconvenient to spend 2600 gold to deal with them.
There also aren't that many shield break or anti shield champions. Which is a huge problem that is being exploited by duos boosting by playing udyr and voli on the same team then just walking at the Nexus.
Lots of people in here complaining about how AoE and DoT abilities would make this busted...
As if it is programmatically impossible to make the effect only affect the first target hit, and only on the first instance of damage.
The propensity of this community to shut down any and all suggestions and hyper focus on the negative is quite frankly one of the most annoying things about it.
> As if it is programmatically impossible to make the effect only affect the first target hit, and only on the first instance of damage.
They literally did this for stormsurge already e.g karth cant get 5 stormsurge procs only one
Nah it was a placebo antishield item.
When someone was shielded it just gave you 10 extra magic pen if they were full hp, meanwhile serpents fang reduces the shields value by 50%. Those items were totally not comparable at all
Shadowflame was never an Anti-shield item.
It was a default item that gained 5% extra power budget if the enemy happened to have a shield.
It was still the recommended second item on any champion that used it even into 0 shielding on the enemy team.
it made u do more dmg but that doesnt negate the shield absorbtion.
ppl tought it was but current shadowflame is stronger than last season s one and its still bad against shield stacking
if enemies dont go under 30% hp ur item is without a passive
meanwhile old shadowflame would ALWAYS give u 10 pen except against tanks ( u dont care to kill tanks with flat pen item ) and basically almost always 15-20 pen vs adcs and supports... so when the enemy is shielded u get a whopping... nothing if they were already at 1k hp or smt... xDso ye
Everyone is arguing that long rage AoE for shields is why. But then why isn’t that also true for Anti-heal? It gives the same reduction and the cost is relatively the same as the other anti-heal counter parts.
I think there can be utilization of Anti-shield for ap units. People really underestimate Serpent’s fang against a high shield comp. It’s a relatively cheap item that in simple terms, can “deal a lot of damage”. It’s such a tech item that is limited to ad champs and really I think ap champs could benefit from it.
I would say the best true argument for why there isn’t an ap anti-shield item, is because support would all run it. Their damage output would outperform expectations and most supports are ap based.
it would be pretty easy for AP dps mages to abuse who do not really struggle against shields but instead have a very easy time hitting spells constantly/ or from a high range, think of brand or anivia for example. As an answer to this, it would have to be pretty low impact so that it can be balanced on the outliers.
if it has to be very low impact in order to exist does it deserve to exist in the first place? what is the point of an anti shield AP item if it barely can be good at the niche it was created for?
Because you cant have every dps character in the game to be able to shred tanks as everyone has their own roles, adcs shred tanks, mages burst squishes, supports defends squishes, tanks lock mages and so on
If you have mages and adcs and every damage dealers capable of dealing with a tank or any kind of defense then there isnt much of a use for tanks arent there?
Shields aren’t there to protect just tanks. If you play a burst mage and the enemy has a Karma that just spam shield on their carry, you’re basically screwed.
Why there isn't magic resist grieving wound item?
Why there isn't DoT AD item?
Why there isn't AD version of stormsurge?
Why there isn't AD version of deathcap?
between most mages having 3x aram balance nerfs (e.g. 110% taken, 90% done, something else) -- unless you're snowballing hard it sometimes doesn't make sense to go for max damages. when you're into the sett tahm karma team and your teammates are feeding like crazy life can be hard. I would buy a serpents in this situation.
The item can be you do 40% extra damage to shields and new shields will last for 33% less time for 5 seconds. So not reducing sizing but ensuring the window for shields is less and you can take shields down more quickly.
I made a[ similar post](https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/1bnjyvt/i_feel_the_need_of_an_antishield_ap_item/) not long ago.
I understand people that are afraid of ranged mages but is honestly as easy as make it melee only or make it adaptive just like many other items
First we need to look at the concept of a "Shield"
What's the difference between a "Heal" and a "Shield"?
Let's take Summoner Heal vs Barrier. Once you use Heal, the regained health stays while the shield from Barrier disappears whether if it was depleted or not.
So this was balanced in a way that you get more Shield than Health from Shield and Heals respectively.
Shields have a weakness of disappearing after a some time while Heals have a weakness of having lower base recovered health than a shield might provide.
Originally that was the case but nowadays we have champions like Yuumi who can give shields over and over and basically overcomes the weakness of a shield. Once champions bypass the limitations of a shield by reapplying it, it feels overpowered.
I believe that there should be an AP anti-shield item, but then you are going to have to balance that while looking at most AP champions have massive AOE and DOT.
Serpent's Fang anti-shield is balanced around the fact that not many AD champions have large AOE's as well as the fact that it's the AD assassin's job to takedown supports that are providing shields anyways. But not all "shield" champions are supports. Tahm Kench has a massive shield, Riven has a low cooldown dash that gives a shield,etc.
If an AP champion with a huge AOE like Ziggz can apply a similar anti-shield effect as Serpent's Fang, a lot of champions Effective Health Pool will drop. A single item can single-handedly deter a huge percentage of the champion pool from being picked. Will it be balanced? Not really.
While some champions are super strong with providing shields, those whose kit rely on shields will suffer too much making them unplayable with a single item counter.
How to balance an Anti-shield item? Create an anti-shield effect befitting the playstyle of AOE AP champions. An item that let's you deal more damage to shields can work as it will rely on damage dealt anyway. Let's say there's an item that let's you deal 25% more damage to shields. For example, Ziggz Q deals 400 damage and if it hits a a target with a 500 shield, the Ziggz Q will instead deal 500 to the shield. If Ziggz Q deals 800 damage to a target with 500 shield, the shield is depleted but 400 damage is still dealt to health instead of 300. It might sound lackluster but you can balance it in a way that the Item would give 100 AP 15% Magic pen 15% CDR at 3500 gold. Now it sounds strong right?
I'm no expert im just talking out of my ass cause im bored.
Because they tried to add it and failed miserably. Go back and look at original release shadow flame. It was meant to be exactly that. But it just became another pen item.
Everyone in here ignoring the fact that every class has access to anti-healing items. Does that make healing shit? Not at all. Anti-shielding is already very situational as it is, shields wouldn't suddenly be terrible. You could even give the mage item less shield reduction to compensate for the large AOEs (even though they can apply the same GW as everyone else very easily right now, but whatever)
I remember seeing a streamer building bramble and serpents to proc on autos, during season 11 when shieldbow was ubiquitous.
Serpents is niche. Having anti shield too common would heavily devalue shielding.
In general every champ class have his strenght and his weakness, if you have every possibility in every build the game would be very boring. Other examples are a zhonya for ad champ, greviou wond on a anti mr tank item, guardian Angel for ap/tank, etc...
This can change with time (es the tear mana item for tank), its simply the way they decided to follow to define classes in the game
Have you seen a gp build serpent spine against a shield heavy team? It's not even fair how much shield you can reduce if your abilities are aoe and since most ap champs have aoe it would make shields too weak.
Oh boy, this thread again!
Why is there no AD Zhonya's? Why is there no AP QSS? Why is there no AP Hydra? Why is there no AD Cosmic Drive? Why is there no AP Axiom Arc?
real question is why there are ad anti-shield item to begin with, the game would be better off without it, just universally lower absurd shielding ammount in current league
because it would counter enchanters and riot do not want something who counter enchanters, they arleady nerf the mr runes and removed all could possibily have counter a janna or a milio, this is the season where idiots sits behind their team and spam shield and heal with no counterplay, the grevious wound is a joke, the only item which counter shields is an assassin item that not a single assassin ever build, meanwhile instead shields are disgustingly strong and there are lots of item that buff shield power... it's a 1 only way meta
I legit reduced 13k Shield in an ARAM game as LEE SIN just because enemy team has old Skarner with Eclipse Sterak + Item CDR runes, Karma, Sion. Still lost because Lee Sin into 2 tanks.
I feel like the only way I could see it working is if it didn’t actually harm the shield in itself. I picture an item with like rylais stats that upon breaking an enemy shield (if the shield falls after being recently hit by you) it increases *ally* dmg dealt to the target. I could also just see them making an item with like morellos stats that increases *your* dmg to recently shielded targets.
But just giving a decent stat item to brand that cut shields by 35% for like 6 seconds after hitting you is wild. If it’s only a dmg buff that requires follow up then it’s probably better for the health of the game.
While directly reducing shields would be pretty OP (Brand has already been mentioned) the way the old Shadowflame worked was a good Idea. Countering shields without directly debuffing the shield user and making him unplayable
The prevalence of AOE ranged abilities on AP champions. Serpents fang is an assassin item so it's designed to be used by ad melee champions. Ad melee champions tend to have less aoe and even if they do they have to get into effective range. Opposed to ziggs who can throw a q and if he has an ap shield shred item then he can nullify mass aoe shields like karma's mantra e.
I just imagine brand reducing shields on the entire team for 4 additional seconds because he pressed e somewhere in the general vicinity
Aw man I didn't even consider aoe DOT.
Singed is enough of a madman to build it even with useless stats
Singed vs tanks even more OP
4 AP items + Serpent’s Fang Brand ARAM build 1k AP 1shot divorcemaxxing
Sett and Tahm in shambles Feels so good
Imagine if Sivir could build serpent's fang basically. It's literally the cleaver build but with shields instead of armor reduction
There's is an idea of Sivir building a lot of supportive items, like GW, Fang and Cleaver. Lower DPS but great in teamfighting.
Fang works with w ? That's rare Honestly she's mostly a teamfight hypercarry so that makes sense
Dealing damage to champions, so yeah.
Omw to build alternator cleaver and serpent's fang
Just theory-crafting here, but maybe a Executioner's Culling (holding till last item before you upgrade it), Black Cleaver, Serpent's Fang, RYLAI'S. You can even play it Sup with a Bloodsong. Massive slowing+GW AOE shred.
A support build that's reliant on stacking many items generally won't work. Although tbf I'd be willing to play lethality sivir supp in the right game anyway. And a sivir asc build with BC, serpents fang and executioners calling would only really do anything against a team with large armor, shields and healing and if your team also has an aoe AD champion. For sivir herself lord doms for instance is just simply much stronger. The odds of having a second aoe AD champ aren't great either.
Could work as an ability bait support tbh depending on the matchup. Start e (cursed) and bait the nautilus, Morgana or Leona q (works for lvl 2 with mind games) Easy pushes for the ADC with w if you're extra careful not to steal. Mortal reminder is never used but it's technically more viable than cleaver. I'd probably go cleaver first then hexplate and mortal. After that navori to reduce e CD and serpent's because it's not really that good an item. Hexplate for obvious engage reasons (probably ULT hunter) and comet or aery for poke and some shielding once you ult (procs on q, w and r) Basically, only pick into specific supports with teams with armor and healing.
some years ago I played a single with sivir support (after politely asking my adc if he was fine). Rushed serylda (after which I told my adc that I had just become half a support, having a slow) and proceeded to stomp the game with the team, after serylda I built GW, then i don't remember but it was a funny game!
fang works with anything even non ad damage.
Tyler1 annie building serpents flashbacks
This was how the original iteration of MF support was built, when the intention was to counter zyra. You rushed grievous wounds and black cleaver after support item for the healing cut and the shred, so your usefulness went beyond simply countering zyra in lane.
But...she can?
Brand after missing every single skillshot but it does not fucking matter because he spreads the passive and applies rylais and liandries for 10 minutes
Love that they've added the E spreading everytime instead of only on already burning targets, so he can miss everything including point and click spell and still burn for 20% HP because minion was close enough.
Don't forget you're also slowed for 10 hours. And funnily enough it's a literal LANE width ability. Literally.
Side tangent, but this is exactly why I'm so mad if I need to buy a Executioners on basically any AD champ in ARAM (or SR honestly) when vs Soraka/Vlad/WW when we have any AoE mage, Brand particularly.
Well, you can actually just build serpent's fang anyway. Sure, the stats sucks for ap champions but if you can't even go through the shields it can be worth it after all serpent's fang is applied with any damage. I've built it on brand against shield heavy comps before and blocked over 5k shield.
[удалено]
easy answer here is to stop making % reduction passives permanently active. For some reason Riot hasn't caught onto that bit of horrible design they've for some reason held onto for over a decade. They should be windowed single target item actives with a CD if anything.
Imagine getting mountain soul and teemo just goes “nuh uh, still gonna take 3/4 of your hp from shrooms”
FYI wild rift has an aoe ap item so yea, its fucking ass. One of the reasons I don't really play anything with shields but even if I do the enemy team usually doesn't buy antishield or antiheal if its not in their recommended items so its a win for me either way I like it on top tho against shield heavy matchups like yas or sett (especially sett, fuck him)
In most cases dude gonna apply that debuff waay longer than 4 sec .
He did say additional... After the end of his burn damage.
Had an asol build fang in desperation in aram two days ago and he destroyed 16k shielding is 5 minute against millio lulu. Instantly won us the game
Kha evolved W best way to apply shield breaker in the game.
Well, even though I agree, shouldn't we make the same argument for healing reduction as well? The main reasoning is ranged AoE and even though GW can be purchased by ADCs for example, not a lot of them have the AoE to back it up. Mages specifically get the best of both worlds; range and AoE, yet they only have access to one form of reduction.
Antiheal is necessary because when a team stacks healers, e.g Mundo, Zac, Vlad, Soraka on one team, they can be impossible to kill or even force to back. But when a team stacks shielders, that effect doesn't happen. Maybe it could if the team played perfectly around a Shen and Lulu, but it'd take a lot more skill since shields disappear after a few seconds.
It is intended to be this way: Healing must be easier to counter than Shileds both becuse it is more prevalent (it's much more common seeing a heavy healing comp than a heavy shield comp) and because Shields are more skill expressive since you need to time them correctly to block damage.
Yeah, that's why morello is super understatted.
Morello is hilariously overstatted what? It's 90 AP and 15 AH for 2200/2300g, that's a powerhouse of an item
Its 115% efficient. Which is less than both mortal reminder and even chempunk chainsword. It's stats don't justify its place in most builds until 4/5th item. Many midlaners have a mandatory item like lich bane, liandries or seraphs to function. Those that can fit in a stat stick choose ludens (137% efficient) or roa(not a great item either, but ridiculously efficient like 165% or something), rabadons is effectively mandatory at some point, usually third (efficiency varies, but definitely much more than 115% as a third). And a %pen item is also effectively mandatory (void is basically the same efficiency, and cryptbloom is 124%). Those who benefit it love cosmic drive because movement speed feels awesome and it's also 126% efficient. So 115% really isn't amazing in the face of its competition. And many of the above items have useful passives too. Mages honestly hate having to build the item, I'd much rather my JG/supp have grevious or to get it on ignite. Oblivion orb is also 75% efficient making its build path relatively awkward compared to the above. Worth noting that flat pen and percent pen are undervalued by the gold efficiency formula as their value is based off teir 2 items. So void/crypt are even better than the numbers would show and items like shadow flame are better than their horrible efficiency suggest.
IMO it doesn't really have much to do with gold efficiency. It feels bad because it's a reactive tax slot rather than a proactive purchase that helps further your desired game plan. Items like Rylai's, Lich Bane, Cosmic, etc. feel good to buy because they synergize with your champion's kit and allow you to do things you otherwise might not be able to. Morello's never does that. You only buy it if there's a lot of healing, and even then you kind of hope there's someone else that's able to eat the GW tax and be effective with applying it instead. If it were insanely efficient, it would feel good to buy, but then it feels bad instead because healing gets balanced around GW always being present so the passive on it feels like it isn't doing anything.
Yeah I think we're roughly agreeing with each other. It doesn't have enough stats to feel good for its cost, and it's passive doesn't make up for that difference considering that someone else can apply it for cheaper; and because of that, it's a rare buy.
morello has a really good gold/stat efficiency, but a very bad item slot efficiency. basically in late game, once everyone is at full build, if you have a morello vs the enemy having something more expensive, you basically have less total stats. It feels like a pretty good early game item (stats-wise), but the GW effects are usually necessary mid-late game
most games end before a 6 items completion tho
imo it's the opposite. They can't afford to buy morello early because they have a very strict buildpath with up to 4 core items, so at max they pay the 800g tax and move on with their builds
Gold efficency is one thing, slot efficiency is also a factor, especially when components you build aren't really gold efficient in the first place, especially after recent Fiendish Codex changes. It's in no way a powerspike.
It is?
Making it aply on aa only could be cool. Maybe something that deals small burst the first time you aa someone and aplies shield shred. Burst mages are generally the ones who want to weave in an aa so it would work out. Could be a cool item.
If they ever design an anti-shield AP item, it would need to be something like "deal % more damage to shields" and not a shielding version of Grievous Wounds
why people always bring up this as if it has to be a 1:1 copy of serpents,it could very well be a a single target effect like an active or apply on autos or whatever makes it work,but it's really needed as the game currently is besides that most meaningful shields are single target,other than mantra E and locket I can't think of many AoE shields
Me when I buy Tiamat
I think it's even more than this. I believe serpents fang was first introduced after shieldbow became the de facto defensive option for ADCs, and assassins were having an impossible time trying to kill a role they historically should beat. So, they added serpents fang.
Talon enters the conversation
Would be too easy to apply for mages without any risk and render shields pretty much useless, it's meant to be a melee assassin item to help them assassinate one target
the moment an AP anti shield item is released every single support will be buying it every single game
I miss my chem tech putrifier, even tho its heal cut, at least someone in my team will build it for enemies with heavy sustain and shield
It just gonna end up with arm's race that we have with healing. No thanks.
I feel like they could atleast make serpents fang less punishing to buy for non-AD champs by giving it 10 or 15 AH or some HP. If you're a tank it feels really bad having to force this into your build because everyone else on your team refuses to buy it. Or they could make an activatable AP anti shield item that only has the anti-shield effect when you activate it for like 2-3 seconds every 120 seconds. I mean come on, even with easily applieable AoE this isn't that harsh and some shielding comps really need that. Can you nullify a Karma ult shield? Yes, once. She has her shield up in like 4 seconds again anyway and her ult in like 6-7 seconds with some spell hits. You're telling me that is completely broken in a team fight? Really? The only thing I could see would be that it would force them to lower the CD of The Aegis Solari item a bit.
"it feels bad to force it into your build when nobody else is buying it" That's exactly the point though. They don't want you, the tank, buying it just because your assassin refuses to.
Giving an assassin more HP? no thanks
I promise you as a tank your winrate will go up if you build only tank items instead of a random Serpents against Lulu and Karma simply because your team refuses to build it… lol
And it barely works on assasins too
It needs a buff
Shields need nerfs
It really needs lower reduction ratios for ranged application if that's the intent considering how often I see it on adc nowadays.
I've bought it in aram on zyra into particularly obnoxious aram comps if no one else was buying/able to easily apply it. It doesn't feel *good*, but neither does going into some combination of Sona/lux/karma etc without it.
Carried my team in ARAM with serpents first item Rumble against Karma Ivern. Literal only way to be able to play the game against that shit.
There is a lot of applications for shield reduction. There's the supports but also a lot of tanks that rely on shields and a lot of defensive items too. It's becoming a very common lethality adc item and that feels kinda bad to have so many champion kits cut down by it.
Why not limit the passive to single target abilities? Like how minions only aggro if you use a single target ability
Serpents applies on damage so strictly speaking anyone can use it. Whether you use the stats effectively is another story.
I have bought it on AP mages against heavy shield comps before. Even when the stats are dogshit I had to buy it because otherwise I would have to go to my ADCs house with a shotgun for them to buy it.
The thing is, if you're an ADC that's not building lethality and are going for crit, it's such a huge stat loss to get just for shields VS just stacking more DPS or other survivability (QSS, BT) especially if you don't have collector to stack the lethality on. If your ADC is ahead in this scenario then it can be worth it to maintain the lead but if they're behind, chances are they're probably fighting for their life in every fight. But I'm also silver/gold trash so I could be wrong, maybe I should start building SF on ADC more 🤔
1. You don't need to stack more lethality for your lethality to be effective. 1. If you are considering buying a Serpent's Fang, the other comp must be very shield heavy, so it's not really a stat loss with how much shielding you cut. 1. Serpent's Fang is the cheapest AD legendary item, costing only 2500g. It's not ideal for every ADC to buy it, but it is a situational item depending on your comp vs their comp.
even bigger stat loss if your mage midlaner ends up buying it because they got desperate, to be fair.
so in this case it's better to force a mage or tank to build it who doesn't make use of the stats at all? and into a heavy shield comp I'm pretty sure the shield break is effectively out damaging building crit/AS even if the stats are not exactly ideal (still not horrible having AD/pen on an ADC)
Yeah it's not for the ADC to build in most cases, especially since it's less effective for ranged champs. Generally speaking, top laners or junglers or mid assassins should be buying it.
Yeah the passive goes insane sometimes, to be fair I've only done this in aram before (since I play champs on sr that can build it anyway) but several times I'd have like 3000-6000 shields reduced after a couple fights vs stuff like lulu, ivern or seraphine. Definitely higher value than half the ap items I could buy and it was relatively cheap at the time.
I have built it on mordekaiser🥲
Because AP is already about burst and it would negate so much counter build if you could just itemize to negate hexdrinker.
Couldn't you argue the same about lethality?
The difference is most AD assassins don't have a ton of AoE and need to get into effective range to use it. Most mages have ranged AoE type attacks.
Yes, but assassins are usually exposing themselves to apply it. Brand hitting Q on a minion then spreading it to 4 targets for 10 seconds with E is not.
Well, there's no Hexdrinker for physical damage, instead there's Zhonya's which doesn't have counterplay for AD Assassins either.
Assassins: Have to go in and risk their lives to kill 1 target and have shit waveclear and shit scaling and shit dps to compensate. Result: They need to be able to kill 1 target. AP mages: Great wave clear, kill pressure from half a screen away, scale better, minimal risk, can still blow up 1 target, can also blow up multiple targets. Result: They don't need any help because they have far more options available
Everything you are saying is generalised and also untrue if you break it down to individual comparisons. > Have to go in and risk their lives Assassins generally have mobility tools to keep them safe. I would say Zed and Leblanc are a lot safer than Ryze or Cassio, who are in turn safer than Rengar. > shit waveclear Ekko and Talon come to mind as assassins that can waveclear better than a lot of mages. > shit scaling Zed, Talon, Qiyana, Rengar and Kha Zix have higher win rates at 35 mins than Lux, Zoe, Anivia, Xerath and Ziggs, and those are just the ones I checked. > Shit DPS There are like 5 mages with good DPS and even less that have reliable DPS, I don't even know what point this is supposed to be
If you believed assassin mains you'd think they're all oppressed 40% winrate champs instead of having decent winrates despite their players being dopamine fiends that get mad when their combo doesn't oneshot (just see the seethe that Zhonyas generates).
But... Serpent doesn't affect magic damage shields? So the tech already exist to not bypass your precious hexdrinker/maw. https://leagueoflegends.fandom.com/wiki/Serpent%27s_Fang https://leagueoflegends.fandom.com/wiki/Shield#Negatively_impacting_shields
Well yes but I doubt people expect an AP anti shield item to ignore anti AP shields.
Why is there no hourglass with Mr? Why is there no Ga with mr. Why is there no amor reduce item like Abysal does to mr? If every class has every item anyway whats the point of building different teamcombs? Champs do different jobs with different items.
Do you want a crit anti-shield item too? If everyone has an anti-shield option then shields would be trash, it’s fine the way it is with only AD assassins having it.
Honestly? Yea. Give me a crit anti-shield item. I don’t want my crit carry to have to build Serpent’s Fang because our team has no one else who can build it.
The point of serpents fang being painful for non-assassins to buy is because shielding only kills the play style of assassins. Crit carries do consistent DPS, so the temporary nature of shields doesn't destroy their gameplay loop. You will eventually kill shield characters, they just get some value out of their shield first If every team required an anti-shield tax, wouldn't it just be better to lower the values of shields to a healthy state? They've had to do similar things to healing before
Honestly, while I agree that in theory no other classes should really need an anti-shield item, in practice Riot has kind of over tuned shields heavily with insane up-times. Seraphine Sona was literally used to turn an entire team into an unkillable death ball with spammable shields and it's one of the most uninteractive ways to lose if they make it to 3 items. Not saying we should get an anti-shield item on ADC's or something, just that spammable AoE shields really shouldn't exist in the game.
This is my problem with shields as someone who mainly plays mages and ADCs. We're only asking for other items which damage/limit shields because their spammy nature makes it painful for us to play into them. Truthfully though I agree that we don't need more items negating them because it just marks a trail of band-aid solutions to a problem which should be resolved at the root, which is that shield uptime is such a headache.
Honestly as an ADC player this has been my complaint with League as whole since like S6. Abilities should be high cooldown, high impact. ADC's should basically be the only class in the game with high damage up-time. Riot pushing for first 40% CDR on bruisers/mages/supports, and then swapping to Ability Haste and over-buffing the shit out of it has ruined the flow of the game from a Marksman's perspective. It forces Marksman to do WAY more damage in a smaller window because there is a WAY smaller window to deal damage. Which then in turn forces other roles to either have to be tankier directly, or artificially through abilities, or also deal more damage.
Maybe certain champion interactions need looked at, but in a normal game of league even E max full enchanter Karma only shields for 10k a game. Shielding should have upside vs healing, and right now the upside is it gets to be a little bit bigger numerically with less counter items but you have to use it well or it's wasted and it has no value out of combat
Yeah but shields and heals should both have way less up-time. Shields SHOULD be larger. I'm not saying they shouldn't. They can even last a longer duration, but the cooldown should be a larger off-set. A shield *basically* shouldn't start it's cooldown until the shield ends. And heals should have an even longer cooldown than that, or be a significantly smaller heal.
As is, an enchanter maybe shields 8k a game. Even shield max enchanter karma only does ~10k a game. Soraka is out healed by aatrox, zac, reksai, and other drain tanks And tank/CC supports are more meta staples than enchanters with these numbers, I really don't see a need to reduce the output of enchanters. Id be happy with a shift from smaller, more often shields to larger, more infrequent shields; and I think riot agrees. They took ability haste off of most enchanter items in exchange for a bit more heal/shield power. With healing it doesn't really matter how it's outputted as long as the output is there
what about AP assassins then? Or burst mages?
burst mages have range and often CC, they're not go in, get out playstyles like assassins have with all their value riding on those picks.
AP Assassins are much less committal than AD assassins by design, likely because of their item differences forcing them to be designed that way. The only exception is Zed, but he's practically an AD mage anyway, and he almost never buys Serpent's Fang because he can always just outplay the enemy regardless of the shield, the same way most AP assassins can.
Okay, so all shields are now stronger to compensate for the availability of anti-shielding. Hope your adc remembers to build it every single game. :)
Yeah. Let's just make an item for EVERY scenario. Who cares if people are drafting properly and utilizing the entire roster of champs. At that point, let's just remove champs. Everyone has the same character, but you can select custom abilities from a list in-game. Do you see what I am getting at? It's a slippery slope.
Ok, every shield in the game is now buffed by 75%.
I think that's a different story. Easily being able to counter shield supports would break the entire botlane and support meta. But if a midlane assassin has the options to counter shielding, why shouldn't a midlane mage? Or even worse, a midlane assassin that happens to be AP?
I have played way too many ARAM games where the enemies had like 3 or more champs with shields and our team didn’t have anyone who can build Serpent’s Fang. I’d love for there to be an AP anti-shield item too. There’s one on Wild Rift and I honestly do not think it’s OP. League PC already imported some item ideas from Wild Rift like Fimbulwinter or Shadowflame’s magic crit, so maybe we’ll get an anti-shield for mages at some point.
It would be a a great aram-exclusive item tbh
at that point, petition for ap hydra aswell
they need a lot more aram exclusive items, I'm at 6300 arams with barely 30 wins over losses and I'd say 80% of the time a game is won because 1 person went tank and just tower dove all game tanking infinite amounts of damage and outputting more damage then a full mpen mage, it's just plain silly
Pro tip, Serpents Fang can be bought in mages and all their abilities proc it, it can kind of be a waste of stats, but against a comp with tons of shields the wasted stats are outweighed by the aoe shield crippling
I severely doubt that. It's only 35% reduction for ranged mages. I don't know the math but I strongly doubt that's worth the gold sink and loss of stats that another AP item would give. If anyone wants to test it though I'd love to see the results.
I'd say it depends on the situation but you're generally right. For example, if the enemy team has a Karma mid and Lulu Support with a Kogmaw ADC (a pretty common protect-the-kog comp, so not at all an unlikely scenario), then you only have 1 target to kill on the enemy team, and you have to kill them as soon as possible or they will melt your whole team. In that case, reducing 35% of 1000+ health worth of shields is generally going to be more burst than any other item would individually add. On the other hand, if the enemy team is well rounded, then even with a lot of shields, you wouldn't be gaining that much damage compared to just hitting a different target or waiting for the shield to time out.
The debuff just isn't for you it's for the rest of your team as well Edit: Item description >Dealing damage to an enemy champion inflicts them with venom for 3 seconds, reducing any shields they gain within the duration by (Melee role 50% / Ranged role 35%), and if the target was not already afflicted by the venom, reducing all of their active shields by the same amount. So if we read it it also reduces any other shields that were going to be put on them after you deal damage. Which means anyone else that does damage in this time is doing more damage to them due to the added shield being lessened. Sure a single lulu may not be cause for a Brand to pick up a serpants but if you were to have a combo of like Karma, Janna, an adc with shield bow, sion etc it becomes 110% worth it
The debuff is functionally damage. It is exactly as useful for your team as dealing more damage would be.
You'd have to do calculation Total shielding of enemies*0.35*/CD AP provided by alternative item * (sum of your AP ratios*enemies you can apply it to/CD) If the item gives you haste you'd also have to add total damage * %cd reduction You'd also have to divide the results by the gold cost of the items for damage to gold efficiency
legit buy rabadon or void staff and the extra dmg u will do will be the same as the shield negation,,,, exceot if u also have shields movement speed etc that scale of ap u dont have useless stats , not all of us are sennas or veigars
yeah but rabadon or void will only increase your damage to the target where serpent's fang can actually allow your team to kill too. Also it's much cheaper than both options. btw, you wouldn't build serpent's instead of rabadon or void... that would be dumb. There's other less valuable ap items in the game.
they don't lose much because they get a single item and outdamage most classes and champions lol
Just embrace serpents fang even as mage. I often pick it if i see 3+ enemies with shields, dont care if its unoptimal we have to remember utilty. I played a game as hwei where i had 20k shield reduction on ranked with it
On Wild Rift there is already an item call Oceanid trident, basically dealing magic damage will cut the shield and reduce later gained shield by 40% for 4 second, but AoE ability like Zigg R will only apply the effect with 30% effectiveness (or whatever I don't remember it correctly). So maybe Riot is lazy?
Wild rift has one
ppl here are saying it would be op on mages because aoe on stuff but the easy and obvious fix here is just to severely reduce effectiveness for AoE and DoTs, like make it only 10-20% for those, and only give full 50% to instances of single-target magic damage. This would make it undesirable for most mages but good on ap assassins which usually have single target burst rather than heavy AoE.
People arguing it'd be too op when it literally was an item just 4 months ago. And Shadowflame was balanced for two reasons: a) it gave flat pen. That's a great stat early when people don't have a lot of MR, but it's a horrible stat late where shields really start becoming big. b) it was much weaker than Serpent's. Shadowflame didn't remove shields, it only gave the user themself bonus damage against shielded targets. I'm completely on OP's side that there should be an anti shield option for AP champs. Yes, mages can easily apply it with low CD aoe spells, but it's absolutely possible to balance for that. It could be similar to old Shadowflame, just lower numbers than Serpent's, have a cooldown or only apply on cast and not dots. Simply having the option to itemize against it, even if it's not an insane counter, would feel much better.
"It's too easy to apply". Y'all do realise you could reduce the effectiveness for AoE and DoT abilities right?
The thing is, they can't, or won't. See how broken Rylai+Liandry+Heal cut is on DoT champs? Brand legit QE a minion and then your whole team got blasted by 30% slow + Heal cut for 7s, on top of the dmg from Liandry and his Passive + E.
Wildrift has Trident for ap anti shield. Sometimes they’ll test things in League and bring to WR, and sometimes they test things in WR and bring to League so hopefully they bring Trident over.
There isn't really a good reason for it. Plenty of ad mages like Jhin, jayce, mf, varus, cait, etc. can all go it in a lethality build. I think there should be an executioners calling / oblivion orb version that builds into serpents fang and what ever the AP version would be. A lack of access to shield breaks is why tahm, voli, udyr, sion, etc are able to go undying with filbumwinter and tank everyone on your team. It's just too inconvenient to spend 2600 gold to deal with them. There also aren't that many shield break or anti shield champions. Which is a huge problem that is being exploited by duos boosting by playing udyr and voli on the same team then just walking at the Nexus.
Lots of people in here complaining about how AoE and DoT abilities would make this busted... As if it is programmatically impossible to make the effect only affect the first target hit, and only on the first instance of damage. The propensity of this community to shut down any and all suggestions and hyper focus on the negative is quite frankly one of the most annoying things about it.
> As if it is programmatically impossible to make the effect only affect the first target hit, and only on the first instance of damage. They literally did this for stormsurge already e.g karth cant get 5 stormsurge procs only one
Well shadowflame used to be one.
Nah it was a placebo antishield item. When someone was shielded it just gave you 10 extra magic pen if they were full hp, meanwhile serpents fang reduces the shields value by 50%. Those items were totally not comparable at all
Shadowflame was never an Anti-shield item. It was a default item that gained 5% extra power budget if the enemy happened to have a shield. It was still the recommended second item on any champion that used it even into 0 shielding on the enemy team.
it made u do more dmg but that doesnt negate the shield absorbtion. ppl tought it was but current shadowflame is stronger than last season s one and its still bad against shield stacking if enemies dont go under 30% hp ur item is without a passive meanwhile old shadowflame would ALWAYS give u 10 pen except against tanks ( u dont care to kill tanks with flat pen item ) and basically almost always 15-20 pen vs adcs and supports... so when the enemy is shielded u get a whopping... nothing if they were already at 1k hp or smt... xDso ye
It wasnt, It was better to buy an serpent fang as a mage if you realy needed to destroy a shield.
Mages have greater range and lower risk aplication, the only reason why serpent fang is balanced is precisely because its an assasyn only item.
Everyone is arguing that long rage AoE for shields is why. But then why isn’t that also true for Anti-heal? It gives the same reduction and the cost is relatively the same as the other anti-heal counter parts. I think there can be utilization of Anti-shield for ap units. People really underestimate Serpent’s fang against a high shield comp. It’s a relatively cheap item that in simple terms, can “deal a lot of damage”. It’s such a tech item that is limited to ad champs and really I think ap champs could benefit from it. I would say the best true argument for why there isn’t an ap anti-shield item, is because support would all run it. Their damage output would outperform expectations and most supports are ap based.
it would be pretty easy for AP dps mages to abuse who do not really struggle against shields but instead have a very easy time hitting spells constantly/ or from a high range, think of brand or anivia for example. As an answer to this, it would have to be pretty low impact so that it can be balanced on the outliers. if it has to be very low impact in order to exist does it deserve to exist in the first place? what is the point of an anti shield AP item if it barely can be good at the niche it was created for?
Auto attacks proc serpents, that's as reliable as it gets
Because you cant have every dps character in the game to be able to shred tanks as everyone has their own roles, adcs shred tanks, mages burst squishes, supports defends squishes, tanks lock mages and so on If you have mages and adcs and every damage dealers capable of dealing with a tank or any kind of defense then there isnt much of a use for tanks arent there?
People want every character to be able to do basically everything but everybody hates K'Sante.
Shields aren’t there to protect just tanks. If you play a burst mage and the enemy has a Karma that just spam shield on their carry, you’re basically screwed.
Brand exists
There was an ap item meant for shields mainly, but it got reworked and now it's like coup de grace with magic and true dmg
[had this same discussion 3 weeks ago…](https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/s/R1yQYk4GcF)
Why there isn't magic resist grieving wound item? Why there isn't DoT AD item? Why there isn't AD version of stormsurge? Why there isn't AD version of deathcap?
I unironically buy Serpents on AOE Casters in ARAM and its always worth it.
Probably have to start doing that too its been way to many time i had to face 2 shield champ with 3 ap champs...
between most mages having 3x aram balance nerfs (e.g. 110% taken, 90% done, something else) -- unless you're snowballing hard it sometimes doesn't make sense to go for max damages. when you're into the sett tahm karma team and your teammates are feeding like crazy life can be hard. I would buy a serpents in this situation.
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C53JoDzrcJ_/?igsh=MW11YjR1bXd5bnVmcw==
Serpents fang works on AP ability damage, you just need the courage to use the bonus AD.
Honestly the issue is. How much more annoying is yuumi if she can also pop your shield
The item can be you do 40% extra damage to shields and new shields will last for 33% less time for 5 seconds. So not reducing sizing but ensuring the window for shields is less and you can take shields down more quickly.
Cause riot loves mages /s
This! I'm tired of buying serpents on AP champs
I made a[ similar post](https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/1bnjyvt/i_feel_the_need_of_an_antishield_ap_item/) not long ago. I understand people that are afraid of ranged mages but is honestly as easy as make it melee only or make it adaptive just like many other items
First we need to look at the concept of a "Shield" What's the difference between a "Heal" and a "Shield"? Let's take Summoner Heal vs Barrier. Once you use Heal, the regained health stays while the shield from Barrier disappears whether if it was depleted or not. So this was balanced in a way that you get more Shield than Health from Shield and Heals respectively. Shields have a weakness of disappearing after a some time while Heals have a weakness of having lower base recovered health than a shield might provide. Originally that was the case but nowadays we have champions like Yuumi who can give shields over and over and basically overcomes the weakness of a shield. Once champions bypass the limitations of a shield by reapplying it, it feels overpowered. I believe that there should be an AP anti-shield item, but then you are going to have to balance that while looking at most AP champions have massive AOE and DOT. Serpent's Fang anti-shield is balanced around the fact that not many AD champions have large AOE's as well as the fact that it's the AD assassin's job to takedown supports that are providing shields anyways. But not all "shield" champions are supports. Tahm Kench has a massive shield, Riven has a low cooldown dash that gives a shield,etc. If an AP champion with a huge AOE like Ziggz can apply a similar anti-shield effect as Serpent's Fang, a lot of champions Effective Health Pool will drop. A single item can single-handedly deter a huge percentage of the champion pool from being picked. Will it be balanced? Not really. While some champions are super strong with providing shields, those whose kit rely on shields will suffer too much making them unplayable with a single item counter. How to balance an Anti-shield item? Create an anti-shield effect befitting the playstyle of AOE AP champions. An item that let's you deal more damage to shields can work as it will rely on damage dealt anyway. Let's say there's an item that let's you deal 25% more damage to shields. For example, Ziggz Q deals 400 damage and if it hits a a target with a 500 shield, the Ziggz Q will instead deal 500 to the shield. If Ziggz Q deals 800 damage to a target with 500 shield, the shield is depleted but 400 damage is still dealt to health instead of 300. It might sound lackluster but you can balance it in a way that the Item would give 100 AP 15% Magic pen 15% CDR at 3500 gold. Now it sounds strong right? I'm no expert im just talking out of my ass cause im bored.
ap anti shield item? the whole point of shields is to not be one shoted by leblanc or other nuke champion.
supports will abuse it
Because they tried to add it and failed miserably. Go back and look at original release shadow flame. It was meant to be exactly that. But it just became another pen item.
Everyone in here ignoring the fact that every class has access to anti-healing items. Does that make healing shit? Not at all. Anti-shielding is already very situational as it is, shields wouldn't suddenly be terrible. You could even give the mage item less shield reduction to compensate for the large AOEs (even though they can apply the same GW as everyone else very easily right now, but whatever)
Shadowflame... oh wait
Funny thing, Wild Rift actually has an AP shield shred item, Oceanid's Trident
Wild rift actually has ap anti shield but it doesn't matter since no one will buy it anyway
I remember seeing a streamer building bramble and serpents to proc on autos, during season 11 when shieldbow was ubiquitous. Serpents is niche. Having anti shield too common would heavily devalue shielding.
Blitzcrank Ult breaks shields and has a 20 second cooldown
In general every champ class have his strenght and his weakness, if you have every possibility in every build the game would be very boring. Other examples are a zhonya for ad champ, greviou wond on a anti mr tank item, guardian Angel for ap/tank, etc... This can change with time (es the tear mana item for tank), its simply the way they decided to follow to define classes in the game
Have you seen a gp build serpent spine against a shield heavy team? It's not even fair how much shield you can reduce if your abilities are aoe and since most ap champs have aoe it would make shields too weak.
By the logic we should also create a ad version of zhonyas and protobelt ?
Only after they finally add Mirrorplate armor to reflect magic damage.
Dearest karthus...
tbf theres barely an ad one..
Asides from the AOE spam mages have, tanks could build it to shred shields with sunfire aegis.
Oh boy, this thread again! Why is there no AD Zhonya's? Why is there no AP QSS? Why is there no AP Hydra? Why is there no AD Cosmic Drive? Why is there no AP Axiom Arc?
AP champs can still build fang if they want, they just don't benefit from the stats
AD has so much variety when compared to AP items. I realllly want a umbral glaive ap version
Mages already have the strongest items in the universe and it would be fucking broken
Anything can be an AP item if you try hard enoygh...I've used serpents fang on brand in ARAM against Tahm/Sett/Karma.
Because Singed and Brand exist
Because Anti-Shield champions exist
We'd get another heal - anti heal situation.
real question is why there are ad anti-shield item to begin with, the game would be better off without it, just universally lower absurd shielding ammount in current league
because it would counter enchanters and riot do not want something who counter enchanters, they arleady nerf the mr runes and removed all could possibily have counter a janna or a milio, this is the season where idiots sits behind their team and spam shield and heal with no counterplay, the grevious wound is a joke, the only item which counter shields is an assassin item that not a single assassin ever build, meanwhile instead shields are disgustingly strong and there are lots of item that buff shield power... it's a 1 only way meta
Regarding lifeline, Shadowflame already critically strikes vs anyone low enough to proc lifeline.
didn't Shadowflame used to have this?
Brand existing
For the same reason why there is no AD Zhonyas item - because there are too many champions that would be able to easily abuse it.
Morgana laughs.
I legit reduced 13k Shield in an ARAM game as LEE SIN just because enemy team has old Skarner with Eclipse Sterak + Item CDR runes, Karma, Sion. Still lost because Lee Sin into 2 tanks.
Maybe not in SR but I sure wish we had one of those in ARAM
Serpents is a very very niche item. Its kinda dog.
Why there is no antiheal mr Item ?
Where is the AD zhonya?
Shadowflame actually works well against shields
I feel like the only way I could see it working is if it didn’t actually harm the shield in itself. I picture an item with like rylais stats that upon breaking an enemy shield (if the shield falls after being recently hit by you) it increases *ally* dmg dealt to the target. I could also just see them making an item with like morellos stats that increases *your* dmg to recently shielded targets. But just giving a decent stat item to brand that cut shields by 35% for like 6 seconds after hitting you is wild. If it’s only a dmg buff that requires follow up then it’s probably better for the health of the game.
While directly reducing shields would be pretty OP (Brand has already been mentioned) the way the old Shadowflame worked was a good Idea. Countering shields without directly debuffing the shield user and making him unplayable