User blog comment:Blackthifer/Shivaerus the Swordmage/@comment-3391671-20170117020855/@comment-25753763-20170117210016

While i agree that magic blades are pretty overused in custom champion concepts, i have to point out that the idea here isn't that Shivaerus has a magic blade. He's a mage that infused his sword with magic. Didn't call him the swordmage for nothing :P

On that note, an earlier draft of him had him losing damage on basic attacks for using skills, since he would use magic which he then couldn't use to infuse his blade with, after which it would recharge slowly. Suffice to say i stepped away from that. (perhaps worse, even earlier i had him do % less damage for a while after each skill, and multiple debuffs of this stacked)

anyway, as i did with another custom champion that you critiqued of mine, i'm gonna try to react to your comments (and this time actually try to change the champion):


 * I suppose it's not completely new since has the half physical/half magical basic attack now, but at the time i thought of this he had the 10% extra true damage (also when i thought of this the idea was full true damage, but that felt undoable pretty quickly).
 * Yeah the idea with crits is that it would take the crit multiplier and apply that to the ratios as they are at the moment of the crit, so say you had infinity edge and lvl 2 ult, you would deal 2.5* as damage on crit. I guess i need to make that more clear.
 * A build up passive is not the easiest to play around, if that's what you mean. While i know that this makes it harder, it's still very usable if you do as i've seen a lot of yasuo players do, just charge up your knockup (in this case burst) before you go in. And with a just 5 stack charge late-game i think it's pretty accessible even if you go in without 4 or 3 stacks, seeing as a full rotation and two basic attacks grants full stacks. Another problem is that i tried other things, but this worked the best in my opinion. P.S.: guess i could reduce the necessary stacks by one though
 * Eh yeah with this one as well as the E, i did indeed put the ad scaling on it as a thing to incentivize building AD on Shivaerus, but otherwise they'd be a definite no, indeed.
 * Yeah i guess i should increase that cooldown a bit, no matter where i'm gonna place this skill. I think the 4 second cooldown stuck around from when this used to reduce Shivaerus' damage dealt by 5%, stacking up to 10 times, because i thought it was a rather short range for a dash and not too easy to hit (reasonably low missile speed, small width).
 * I guess i placed it on Q because i felt like Q's always had lower cooldown and as such placing it here would make the low cooldown kinda expected. And i wanted a lower cooldown on it because, well, mobility. It isn't even over the top mobility because you can't use terrain for it. Ah well better make Nauti less jealous.
 * Ok, let's look at your questions (funny enough, the answers are kinda theme-related).
 * So this actually kinda stems from the theme and the earlier draft where every spell reduced damage dealt. The idea is that Shivaerus has to use a lot of magic to make sure he can hit his target where it hurts, and as such deals less damage overall to others (less magic to infuse his sword with). This magic however slowly, naturally, regenerates over 5 seconds. In accordance to that, i guess i can instead make the damage reduction go back to 0 over 5 seconds, hmmm....
 * So i'd like to thank you in the middle here, because i've already gotten ideas to make this better. A mark could be a thing, though have to think about how that'll fit themewise (see the above). As an on-kill effect, it could indeed remove the damage reduction... ideas :D.
 * Yeah indeed, look at the Q explanation :P
 * Hmmm, yep.
 * With some changes, maybe. Then again, maybe there's gonna be a completely new ability. Because while the Q is oftentimes the ability to deal the most damage and to be the most iconic (most often used), the whole point of the concept was to focus the damage around the basic attacks. Then the Q would be more likely to be utility, because i don't really want to have to much damage in my ablities. Could also be an auto-attack enhancement but i feel those are rather stale, especially when your passive is basically already that.
 * Thanks, that's gonna be useful.
 * Well the idea was even something stronger than true stealth, that is, stealth where even turrets and control wards can't see you. I suppose it is in that way very reminiscent of poppy's old ult, as Jeutnarg kinda commented, and maybe gives a bit too much of an easy time taking one person out. In that case i could change it to true stealth because yeah, camouflage just isn't gonna cut it.

Thanks for not completely tearing me a new one on the theme, even though you weren't correct on what the theme actually was. (not too surprising given how little information there was) I'd like some feedback on that, maybe less negative now that you do have more information ^^. Because even though i did put some thought in it, it was the part of the champion that i undoubtedly put the least thought in of all.

And last but not least, i'd like to thank you for indulging me with your critique. I love getting it even if it isn't always positive for a few reasons: i want to improve this champion (my one and only child :P) and getting other viewpoints really helps, and on top of that i learn a bit more about creating custom champion concepts with every comment of yours that i read.