Talk:Basic attack/@comment-3974211-20191229164538

DRAFT:

Basic attacks are analogous to abilities in how they are mechanically implemented. The primary distinction is that they generally have a consistent effect across all champions, aren't named, and are assigned to a non-QWER key (namely RMB or A). There is no inherent requirement for a champion's basic attack to deal attack damage to the target as physical damage, with a chance to deal 2x damage. There is no inherent limitation that requires a champion's basic attack to be a unit-targeted damage dealing ability.

There is a cooldown - e.g. 0.625 attack speed functions as a 1.6 second cooldown. Some champion abilities will reset your basic attack's cooldown (e.g. ), which we refer to as "resetting the attack timer".

There is a cast time, called the Attack Windup. If the cast time is interrupted (e.g. by user-input, vision loss or crowd control), the ability is cancelled and the cooldown is reset. After the cast time has been completed, your champion can perform any other actions and the basic attack ability will always resolve.

There's a collection of effects (e.g. ) that trigger whenever your champion deals attack damage, which we call "on-hit effects". Most "on-hit effects" deal proc damage, which interact with few other effects (to prevent recursion). Lifesteal will heal you for a portion of all attack damage you deal.

Most champions have a collection of animations that their basic attacks can use, which the game either cycles between or chooses at random. Each animation is technically a separate ability with the potential for different parameters (such as attack windup or missile speed), but for most animations they default to consistent values. The biggest exception to this consistency is critical strike animations.

"Attack modifiers" falls into two categories: one is an alternate animations (see above), and one is an alternate ability that replaces the champion's basic attack (similar to and . In either case, the modified attack can vary significantly from the champion's basic attack. For example,  causes  to uses alternate animations that consistently have a shorter windup time than her basic attack; while  swaps to a new effect.

The only difference between and a basic attack is that Mystic Shot is flagged as an ability for the purposes of spell shields. Behaviorally, Mystic Shot also deals 0 spell damage for the purposes of effects that trigger whenever your champion deals spell damage (e.g. ).