League of Legends XXXI: I'll Start My Own Team! With TF! And Janna!

[Eldariel]

Well, I think this is where we go from "makes sense" to "would be horrendously OP otherwise". I mean, especially if we're talking about Pantheon who is probably the hardest to balance nonstealth character in the game (except maaaaybe Shen). So if you look at chucking a spear, range is stronger than melee. If it didn't have a mana cost it would be infinite harrass on a short cooldown which is completely undodgable; two ways to go from here, remove that skill from his kit and just give him a ranged autoattack, or leave him with a relatively boring very strong skill. If it applied lifesteal, I gotta say, Wriggle's Lantern solo top Pantheon just became the best laner in the game. In fact, I'd wager that Vamp Sceptre solo top Pantheon would be amazing, given that Spearshot has pretty good base damage.

Well yeah, I was more wondering why so many clearly manaless champs are mana champs in the first place. I guess it's just the default resource management system in the game so meh.

But Spear applying Lifesteal would be no more special than GP's Parrrley applying Lifesteal; which it already does. As such, the concept, I feel, is not inherently overpowered.

And I think that Kat does magic damage for a couple of reasons. Firstly it's a bit of a holdover from the days when a physical damage ability that wasn't a steroid was WOAH and secondly that she's a burst caster (she'd need more damage to deal with armour as opposed to MR) who primarily scales off AP. Same reason that Ezreal's autoattacks deal physical damage. He's a carry so tradition takes precedence over the fact that he is explicitly said to be shooting people with magickal lasers.

Kat's AD scaling is actually better than her AP scaling (outside Shunpo, but Death Lotus and Bouncing Blades have strong AD scaling); the only reason you build her AP instead of AD is the fact that you need Spellvamp, MPen and in general, stats you only get from AP items. So in fact, the same exact problem we're talking about in the first place, only in her case the solution is "make her do magic damage" apparently.

But yeah, I feel she's a holdover from the time when abilities dealt magic damage period, and should be changed to the more modern design philosophy. Autoattacks I have no real problem with though I would prefer magical autoattacks of course.

I have gone off on a bit of a tangent, but I think yeah, it doesn't make any sense that chucking a spear would work completely different from running up to someone and hitting them with the same spear (besides the obvious), however I think at this point you have to just acknowledge that BLC did it better.
OH SNAP
Wait no, I mean that you have to acknowledge that game design comes before making an ounce of sense.

Well, I feel there's no reason for game design and sense to be in opposition in this case. I feel it would be entirely possible to change all current AD-scaling abilities to utilize Lifesteal and Critical Strike and, with some adjustments, maintain perfectly good balance while suddenly enabling the current itemization to serve all the champion categories.

Some changes would have to be made, sure. But that's, I feel, not nearly as heavy-handed as the changes that would need to be made to make AD caster itemization work with the present system. I feel even the old Gunblade was a bandaid fix at best; even then you wasted the AP stats and mostly the Lifesteal stats most of the time and that made me feel it really silly whenever I built it on champs that don't have solid AP scaling.