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Quote from Douggie »

You have given me a solid analogy and I commend you by conceding a point: There can be relevance and it is therefore not moot. At least not until the spell is removed in S3 (your original counter-statement).

I however can't ignore the fact that evidence for the larger argument (Surge>Ignite) has been fairly weak, including the original post by OldManEyeBrows (another earlier statement that I made needs to be retracted as well).  The evidence has either been pretty subjective (I use it on X champion and I do fine with it) or in one case given inconsistent comparisons (Surge will do more damage then Ignite against towers or creep waves).  The one time I was presented with hard objective evidence (Vunjo's example) it was riddled with, in my opinion, some faults:

1) His math is wrong (This I find kinda humorous since he cites a source with the equation and an example to illustrate).  He incorrectly calculated ending Attack Speed and made some of his conclusion based on this error.  Using numbers from the Wiki and his base model of lvl 9 Master Yi:

Master Yi's base attack speed is .679.  He gains 2.98% per level for 8 levels (level 1 is not included) for a total of 23.84%.  25% from Zerker Greaves. 40% from Highlander. 50% from Youmuu's Active.  Bonuses are additive so 25+40+50+23.84 = 138.84%.  Masteried Surge gives 40% for a total of 178.84%.  Calculation for each is:

Without Surge:

.679 * (100%+138.84%)-> .679 * 238.84%-> .679 * 2.3884= 1.622 (Game rounds to 3 points)

With Surge:

.679 * (100%+178.84%)-> .679 * 278.84%-> .679 * 2.7884= 1.894

Not the best quality but a screenshot nonetheless: http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y38/pheonixfire000/YiAttackSpeed.jpg

This is actually only a 16.7% increase, not 18%.  If AD remains the same then without surge: 213 * 1.622 = 345.486. Applying Surge would increase damage by 57.69. Ignite is 46 DPS. That gap just got smaller.

2) There is some exaggeration that is creating some false emphasis.  At level 9, having both a Youmuu's and a Brutalizer with Zerk's means you have almost 5k gold.  Not saying that's impossible, it just comes off as pretty far-fetched. And saying 66 armor pen at level 9 is "far more than most players have" is pure hyperbole.  Master Yi himself at level 9 has about 50 from just base.  Throw in armor seals and the armor mastery (both easily met conditions) and he has close to 69 armor. Sure he has only 3 armor remaining, but the fact it's there and is higher can invalidate his statement.  This ties into my last problem:

3) He uses a Goldfish Opponent.  I remember using this term when I played Magic: The Gathering.  Essentially you played a solitaire game with your deck against an imaginary opponent that just passed his turn and did nothing else.  Sure you could see how your deck could play on each of it's turns, but you were ignoring human interaction and reaction. Not a really good way to test something.  It's like looking at something in a vacuum. He tries to build on his argument by adding that crit and more ad make the number bigger, but he ignores how additional armor will reduce the number. OldManEyeBrows tries to eliminate this by looking at skeleton numbers, but I don't feel that's a proper way to look at it either.  If I was to use the Yi example then lets say his opponent buys Ninja Tabi (Something easily doable by level 9 even if you were to goldfish in the game). Ninja Tabi not only has 25 armor, but it lowers auto-attacks by 10%.  According to the wiki this stacks multiplicatively with armor, so I believe the calculation would look like this:

25 armor -> 100/125 = .8 -> 20% physical damage reduction

(1-.2)*(1-.1) = .72 or 28% physical damage reduction.

Here's where I might mess up so please correct me if I'm wrong but given the previous Yi example:

213*.72=153.36*1.622 =248.749 (I think this is how you would calculate it since you reduce the damage then factor attack speed, I could be wrong).  If Surge increases damage by 16.7% like I said before then Surge is only increasing your damage by 41.54.  Ignite is still 46.

Can you see how I'm having trouble being truly convinced?  Yes, I have been presented with examples from both sides, but I find them all to be fairly weak or inconsistent.  So even if evidence is thrown at me, I shouldn't just take it at face value and automatically assume a certain truth or falsehood.  You yourself have given what could be considered better objective reasoning then anything else presented and you still come up with a middle ground/neutral answer, so I hope you can see where I'm coming from in this perspective.

Honorable comment, I must say that. I am shocked that someone actually took the task to calculate it on his own. Congratulations for that.

But...I'm sure I have listed another thing, search for the quote on your own, but these were my words "I have forgot to implement the double strike passive, and critical strike damage, so my calculations are wrong, but are actually higher in result than it is at the moment". So the damage is as following:

212 AD. 15% crit chance, given the fact that critical strike deals 210% damage (100% + 100% + 10% mastery point), we can easly use the following formula:

New Attack Damage = (Attack Damage x (1 - Crit Chance)) +(Attack Damage * Crit Chance * Crit Damage)

Making it a total of 246.98 => 247

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Double Strike can just increase the overall damage output by 8/7 => 14.28%, since in the time of 7 attacks, Yi will strike 8 times.

Which makes the damage go up to 282.28 instead. The best part? It's the damage, not DPS :>

I see that I have made a mistake in calculating attack speeds now. But, you made a slight mistake too. You forgotten the 4% attack speed bonus from mastery :)

So I'll just apply those 4% into your calculations:

Without Surge: 1.64

With Surge: 1.92

Which makes it 17% difference in DPS (It's just silly, but I think you were way too confident, nice try though).

Which adds up to 78.69 -> 79 bonus Physical DPS.

So your maths weren't correct either, yet you didn't see it like I mentioned in posts few days ago, where I clearly said that I have forgotten to imply certain factors (I might still be missing few of them). Let's get to your points now.

2.) I hate to use this term, but it's simply based on my user experience. If you haven't tried Surge as much as I use it, then I suppose it's hard to counter this one. Early in the game, when enemy jungler comes to our lanes (I lane as AD Carry along with a support), and let's say that I might be level 6 by that time. If so, given certain factors, but cause of Surge and clearly overspamming Q to champions, I end up having a triple kill. But since this is asks for too many factors, let's just say, surge grants me early game double kill in ~85% of games.

The above point: If I'm level 9, it does not mean the enemy team is also filled with level 9 champions. I'm usually at least 2 levels (a lot of times even more) higher than them. This makes them have less armor.

Another point: They do not gain that much armor like you said, because Master Yi has actually quite high base armor, and armor gain, making your post invalid.

+ Even if they somehow manage to reach the given armor penetration, in the season 3, which this is the point of course, to have a possibility that Riot should keep Surge in season 3. Maths change. Rotation of calculating Armor Penetration changes. The % armor penetration comes first. Because of the 10% from Mastery point, it now allows them to have up to 73 armor, at pretty low levels, considering that Surge grants me overall much higher level improvement than the others gain. Given the fact that it won't and does not happen in most cases, I assume I was right.

Another point, the rotation of my focus is simple, kill the tanks last, or my last focus is one with Ninja Tabi.

Since this was actually all seen from my games, my Master Yi with my builds, I'm pretty confident that all I say here simply gets accepted, bringing pictures here is just silly since everyone can see my scores in LoL if anyone cares to see them though.

Another, and far biggest wrong part of your post. The overall damage from my calculations if first post was not around 70, but around 160. Despite Master Yi being mainly based on Attack Damage, when given such power, his Alpha Strike is devastating, and I dare saying in some cases deal more damage (Well, in this one the DPS was higher). Not to mention that the time I took was 10 seconds, in reality, because of the overall high DPS, it's much lower, based that the team is fighting as well, I'm sure the enemies melt in 6 seconds, which overall makes the Alpha Strike DPS increased by 67%. Now I'm just inserting approximations, but:

If the Alpha Strike DPS was about 92.4, then given by my game plays, and pretty much this position, is increased to 154.3, which when added to physical DPS, is up to 233.3 bonus DPS given from Surge.

Which makes, in this case, Surge > Ignite by 507%.

Well played, but you have forgotten a mastery point, so don't brag about anything without being apsolutely sure, or at least, saying that there might be a mistake or 2. Indeed, I did some mistakes with the physical damage calculations, but I have said so in the posts after it. 

Your main mistake was the fact that you forgot the godlike Alpha Strike. How did you even start the physical calculation point, and yet, even say that "46 Ignite damage is stronger than 41.54 Surge damage" If you forgot the highest DPS gain of the Surge, used by Alpha Strike?

EDIT: I think I also mentioned that I was out of this conversation, clearly because people can't give any reasonable arguments that can completely throw my theories to pieces, but this post, your post, just gave me the inspiration to join. I consider being out now.

Talking about perspectives, sure, you can't use Surge on champions like Ryze, or a lot of other mages. But that's not how you can counter it's power. It's used by fewer champions, but results are much higher, as you can see that.

Every champion that is based on buffing him/herself up can also use Surge instead of Ignite. It's just simple, if a champion is made to be used in a way so he/she can fight for certain amount of time, Surge is way better. Just because you obviously never played such champions, doesn't make Surge less powerful as a spell. +LoL is one of the games where you can actually rely only on DPS, since there is Tenacity, which will shorten the effect of CCs on you, + many more items that actually break cc. There's also both spell vamp, and life steal, which means the higher your DPS is -> more defensive you are.

Ignite sure is easier to use, but if you can't use Surge instead, why not let the rest use it?

To Basinator, you're right, more damage from items like Infinity Edge make Surge a better use. It's just that people in this community obviously haven't come from games where DPS is actually measured, so they can't learn to create proper builds for their champions, instantly making their DPS lower, which makes Surge worse choice. I laugh every time I see an enemy Master Yi buying Phantom Dancers (sometimes, more than just 2 of them) as first items, while I just get Youmuu's Ghostblade, and Brutalizer (Which do stack, there's wiki if you don't believe me), and literally kill the enemies within 2 seconds...

Overall, it's just silly to discuss this topic anymore. People around here obviously do not know how to use champions that are based on buffs (Master Yi, Olaf, Kayle, Xin Zhao, Kog Maw, etc.), so they instantly can't use Surge as a spell,

Quote from TreeBurrow »

First of all, I agree to an extent... Surge CAN do more damage, but I do still believe it's Niche... Some champions can use it better than others, and yes it CAN lead to dealing more damage in SOME situations... But not all situations... I often buy ExCa when I play ADC, so Grevious Wounds isn't a huge deal in my opinion... And yes, your math shows that it is possible to deal more damage with Surge, however I also agree with clutz1 in the sense that Surge is easier to shut down than Ignite... Yes, all champions can be countered by CC or walking away... However, Ignite is instant, you only need to be in range for 1 second to automatically deal 410 true damage to the target... Whereas with surge, you'll need to be within range for a lot longer period of time... Some champions can pull this off time and time again, some people are amazing at positioning and can stay at a same distance while also un-leashing a huge amount of damage, but this takes skill to pull off, and if you Surge during a team-fight, you make yourself an even bigger target... Yes, you can pull it off, the numbers are there, Surge is viable, you've proven that... However, in a real game situation, you're not always going to be able to stay in range of the preferred target...

You can Ignite and Walk away, still dealing 410 True damage, but in order to deal that much extra damage with Surge, you have to be much better at positioning yourself... Ignite is safer, it's damage is guaranteed... Surge can be baited a lot easier... It's like Youmuu's, great if you can time it right, great if you're good at positioning... But otherwise, not the best option...

Surge is great, But so is Ignite... The difference is, Surge has the potential to deal more damage, whereas Ignite is Guarantee'd to deal the same amount of damage each time, no matter what... It takes less skill to Ignite someone than to Surge and Auto-attack for a full 7-12 seconds... Therefore Surge is the riskier option...

Finally an acceptable comment.

Of course it's easier to cast Ignite than Surge, but as I have given in the example, I play Master Yi a lot, and my very first item after boots is Youmuu's Ghostblade, which means I can stay on the target for quite some time. Surge can do deffinetly more damage if used correctly like you said. My main point of the post was not to show how to use Surge properly, but to show that Surge's damage is far better than Ignite's if used properly. I remember many games where my Surge won many teamfights, and also granting triple kills +.

For TL;DR: Surge apsolutely deals much higher damage if used correctly. Ignite is much easier to use and is directly better at some situations. The point of my post was to show how overpowered and well used Surge can be, having up to 5 times higher damage, and the point was not to show which is better at certain situations, nor which is more easly countered.

Quote from clutz1»

Walk away. Crowd control. Kill.

3 ways to counter surge.

1. Use Ghost 2. Use Tenacity 3. Life steal/Spell vamp doh? Seriously your arguments are really getting more and more stupid as it goes :O

+ You did not say anything that makes Surge less damage usable than Ignite, since then I'm pretty much sure that your 3 arguments can be used for anything, and anyone. It's too late to cast ignite as well, either the target walked away, or you're CCed, or you're already dead, ignite has same fate as Surge....So please try with reasonable arguments not some random ideas....

Another Edit: Your argument is just another argument that is showing how any kind of buff can be countered (Yi's or Olaf's ulti, Lulu's ulti too, pretty much any sort of buff). I can say the same for ignite, just use some strong heal that will counter the damage dealt even though the heal is reduced by 50%, and done, Ignite can be ignored, but that's just low level of thinking...

I'll quote myself here:

0.86 from the base attack speed, which makes up to: +25% from boots, +40% from Highlander, and +50% from Youmuu's Ghostblade. Making it +115% attack speed. The resulting attack speed equals 1.849 attacks per second. Along with Surge, which makes it 155% attack speed bonus, it's increased to 2.193 attacks per second.

It's also clearly seen here that the difference between those attack speeds should be around 40% of base Yi's attack speed, like you mentioned.

I haven't seen any part of my post that says 40% attack speed equals 40% bonus DPS. Indeed, I wrote that attack speed may be better at start, and perhaps a bit weaker in the end, but it's not meant to be restricted by numbers, but their ratio is the best used in the beginning. Imagine the following situation, 0% attack speed bonus, then getting 40% boost from surge. Overall attack speed ratio, is 140% to 100%, which is clearly 40% improvement. On the other hand, if we're talking about mid/end game, let's say there are attack speeds, 200%, and 240% from Surge. The ratio here, is different. It's now not 40% improvement, but 20%. This simply approves that attack speed bonus from Surge is used the best in the beginning. However, that does not point that Surge's damage is lower than Ignite's damage end game, and my calculations have proved it so. If there's 354% damage improvement (Which is actually wrong, I forgot to input 15% crit chance, and 8 hits for 7 attacks from Double Strike, making it even better ratio/improvement), it's obvious that the damage from Surge can still be much higher than from Ignite's. Also, we can see the following clearly:

Attack Speed bonus from Surge is the best at beginning, a bit worse at the end.

While AP bonus is weaker in beginning, but OP in the end.

So the overall damage from Surge will not fall in the game, but will adjust based on the type of Champions. In this case, magical DPS champions will usually have a greater use of it end game. I repeat, even though attack speed bonus may be weaker in ratios in the end of the game, the damage, shown by my maths in the first post, which is actually slightly smaller cause of forgotten Crit and DS, is still far too big compared to Ignite. On the other hand, if my maths are correct, is there anything you can actually say to counter the damage of Surge?

You obviously are not familiar with basics of maths, nor with how league of legends calculates damage done, are you?

Well then, let me show you the power of surge.

Surge gives 40% attack speed at all levels, and increasing ability power by level, as you have shown it with your AP table. I'll do it your way, restrict it by usage of different types of champions.

AD Carries

For AD Carries, their main source of damage is attack damage of course. Some of their spells may or may not depend on the ability power. If they do, I can clearly say the following: Surge gives them 40% bonus damage. 40% attack speed along with 10-78 AP shows the result. If AD Carries' damage is pretty much ~60% basic attacks, and ~40% by using spells, then it's clearly seen that 40% attack speed boost is major improvement.

You can see how to calculate attack speed in here: http://leagueoflegends.wikia.com/wiki/Attack_speed

Of course, even AD Carries can use that AP bonus, cause of their spells which actually deal a lot of damage. For example, I'm sure good one would be Kog Maw, who's considered to be AD Carry, even though all of his spells are based on AP. Kog Maw's first 2 spells show that he's based on attack speed, and magical damage (% bonus damage of maximum health). Surge, increases both of those stats. Just because you probably haven't seen how Kog Maw can be overpowered with Surge, (good enough for early games triple kill+), doesn't mean it's a bad spell. If used early game, surge gives minor attack speed, but rounding the numbers up will fix it. If at that point, surge gives 46 AP, the game should round it up, so his 2. spell, deals 1% of maximum health more damage with each attack, making him instantly stronger, along with the bonus 40% attack speed, which is a huge result.

Another reason why Surge is not used often, it's because people like you don't even know the basics of DPS, nor maths to be honest. While Surge is one of the most under-used spells, there's another champion attribute that is also under-used. You guessed it, it's the armor penetration. Of course you can't expect to see damage caused by Surge, if players can't even build proper items, and proper attribute points. My games as Master Yi always end up with following stat: 66 Armor penetration (quite simple maths, 25 from quintessences, and marks, 6 from masteries, 20 from Youmuu's Ghostblade, and 15 from Brutalizer) at very early game. At that time, if I'm quite fed to have those 2 items early game, my damage actually counts as "true damage", like you used for Ignite. Now, let's begin with the calculations:

Ignite's damage at level 9, (which is far from level 1 where you mentioned that Surge's damage is only then stronger than Ignite's), deals only 230 damage. If you ever heard what DPS (Damage Per Second) is, then you know that it deals 46 true damage per second. I'm free of saying "true damage" for now, since I have calculated that 66 armor penetration, which is far more than most players have. Master Yi with only 2 those items has 212 damage. You're wandering how probably, well... 83.02 from base leveled Yi, 3 from mastery base points, and 1.125 from the other mastery point, 70 from activated Wuju Style, 30 from Youmuu's Ghostblade, 25 from Brutalizer.

Total of 212 Attack Damage. Master Yi's attack speed then is (if counting boots):

0.86 from the base attack speed, which makes up to: +25% from boots, +40% from Highlander, and +50% from Youmuu's Ghostblade. Making it +115% attack speed. The resulting attack speed equals 1.849 attacks per second. Along with Surge, which makes it 155% attack speed bonus, it's increased to 2.193 attacks per second.

Results: 18% higher DPS.

Master Yi's DPS without Surge, then equals:

213 x 1.849 = 393 Single target DPS. Since the bonus DPS from Surge equals 18% in this case, the result is a total of 70.89 DPS increasement. Compare it to Ignite, which is better now? And I picked a single AD Carry (Master Yi is ADC, deal with it), who is not Hybrid, and does not use complete power from Surge.

So we're comparing 71 DPS to 46 DPS, when used properly, for AD Carries, which are not specially designed for using Surge.

The result from these, give a total of 18% bonus DPS only by calculating the attack speed part, not to mention that his Alpha Strike, which may hit multiple times depending on the kill count during that fight, will also deal much more damage (up to 231 x 4) damage, 46.2 is AP bonus, casted 5 times, 4 targets, if you happen to make a penta kill and/or have decent cooldown reduction, which my build actually has from Youmuu's Ghostblade and Brutalizer.

The overall damage from Alpha Strike is Increased by 924. It's enough that if the killing was made in 10 seconds, which is actually a whole lot of time, it grants yet another, 92.4 DPS.

So with Master Yi, at level 9, with certain items, the results are, Surge compared to Ignite, is 163.39 to 46; which is 3.54 times stronger than Ignite.

Do I need to go on, or have my maths just proved the power of Surge? Since it's a bit of late here, I'll end it soon, with few notes. When used by AD Carries, Surge is still a greater tool than Ignite, if used properly, with decent runes and/or items. AP champions (Mages) do not require Surge, though it may help them. The result will probably end up that Ignite deals more damage than Surge when it comes to Mages, but let's face it, the main power of Surge is the Attack speed bonus, which Mages do not use. Besides, land 1 AoE spell, with 1 x AP Ratio, that hits up to 5 units, then you already have the damage of Ignite, and it's dealt in less than a second. So again, even some Mages can have a greater use of Surge, than Ignite. This is not a constant though, it's highly dependable on each Mage Champion.

After having 3.5 times more damage with Surge than Ignite on an ADC like Master Yi, it's just silly to calculate how high the damage would be when using a Hybrid Champion, or even better, magical DPS Champion, like Teemo or Kayle. I dare saying that results would be at least 5 times better for picking Surge. So, before posting a thread like this, try to see how to calculate basics of things, and understand what is DPS.