If the point was missed in the start of the previous post, I'll just re-orate the announcement made. In all likelihood, we'll be playing in the Open Category of CAPL Winter by virtue of simply not playing CAPL Elites in Autumn.

We do have enough players to stay in Elites for Autumn, but the lineup will be shaky at best, and a player might have to register purely for the sake of keeping the team in Elites and not actually playing. I mean... 2 players from the original Zenith with 3 others... isn't the best team to field in the world.

It isn't my style to have a post simply to make some minor announcement that affects no one, so here's a little discussion about...

Why Damage Reduction is Imba.

And no, I don't throw the word "imba" around randomly. I'm just using it loosely here as something that is "very good", but not to the point of utter imbalance where a team will is forced to use it or almost immediately loses.

For starters, let us just throw out some heroes. Bristleback Visage Viper Void Anti-Mage Spectre.

Except for Anti-Mage, these heroes have at some point or other been used as gay late gamers in normal drafts.

Back to the late-gamer theory, late gamers usually fare well in the late game due to an offensive skill that greatly boosts their damage. Clinks with Strafe. Sven/Arnold/GPS with God's Strength, et cetera. However, we see that popular late-gamers are drafted now due to their ability to be so damn difficult to take down, not so much their ability to dish out damage.

Just look at QoP and PotM now. Both rose to popularity as late gamers simply because their escaping skills allowed them to avoid a large amount of damage.

But that isn't so much the discussion today. Back to damage reduction.

Generally, any hero with damage reduction is going to be a pain in the ass to take down. Check the above. We see heroes with many forms of damage avoidance. However, windwalk is limited at best in avoiding damage since you can't deal damage at the same time as you are avoiding it, mirror image or illusion skills are rather short term and serve more as offensiverather than defensive measures. Reincarnation is easily stopped, and the best bet would be Sunder, something I would classify as damage avoidance since it makes it seem as if the damage simply wasn't done, but even Sunder can be prevented with the proper counter-measures.

Passive damage avoidance however, as in the above heroes, are not preventable. There is absolutely nothing stopping the Spectre from Dispersing or the Void from Backtracking. Like it or not, these heroes are so damn difficult to take down because there is absolutely nothing stopping them from reducing the damage you do to them.

Mathematically there seems to be nothing impressive about a simple 25% Backtrack or even a 40% reduction in damage doesn't seem so bad. A Platemail or so, or maybe a bit more HP, could at certain times increase your survivability by much more than these damage avoidance spells seem to do.

The key here is that damage avoidance skills (Backtrack, Disperse, or even spell resistance from Viper or Anti-Mage) stack multiplicatively with every other damage reduction thingy you have. A reduction of 40% damage is not much except that it stacks multiplicatively with all your armor and spell resistance. As one would know, the damage reduction offered by armor grows significantly lower with each point of armor. Armor gives the same absolute bonus (6% of hp) with each point but does not stack multiplicatively. Damage reduction skills however, will stack with every damn thing you have.

Add that to the fact that you can't increase your spell resistance by adding armor, and heroes that can reduce spell damage will have a much greater survival advantage over heroes without.

The second thing is that element of the unexpected. Low HP heroes with damage reduction skills have deceiving amount of survivability. No one expects the Spectre to Disperse Laguna Blade, or the Anti-Mage to take no damage from your nuke, which greatly throws off how people calculate engagements or fights will go.

But my lesson is over and I gotta leave the complab, so I shall just leave this post in its rather unsatisfactory condition (too lazy to edit and add at home).