Hey everyone, I’ve been testing Riki’s Tricks of the Trade (TotT) in demo mode and noticed something odd about how the bonus Agility it grants interacts with its damage output. TotT makes Riki invulnerable and deals damage with multiple hits at 40% of his normal damage, while also giving a huge agility boost (up to +100 at max level). The problem is that this bonus Agility, which should increase damage, is actually nerfed by the 40% damage multiplier, meaning the agility’s damage bonus gets reduced along with everything else.
For example, with max TotT and Cloak and Dagger talent, 100 bonus Agility translates to about 260 damage potential from agility alone, but because of the 40% multiplier, you only deal about 104 damage. Similarly, agility from items also gets reduced during TotT. Plus, attack speed and armor from agility don’t help during TotT because Riki’s attacks are locked in rate and he’s invulnerable.
This makes the bonus agility feel counter-intuitive since its main damage boost is severely cut, and it affects talents that add agility or backstab multiplier during TotT, making them less appealing.
I have a couple suggestions:
1. Remove the bonus agility from TotT and instead calculate agility damage separately after the 40% reduction applies to base damage. This makes the agility investment actually count during TotT.
2. Keep the bonus agility but let it last a few seconds after TotT ends so the full benefits of agility (damage, attack speed, armor) apply when Riki is vulnerable again.
What do you think? Would these changes make Riki’s scaling feel better or do you have other ideas?
4 Answers
One interesting fix could be to separate agility’s damage contribution from the base damage multiplier. For example, apply the 40% damage reduction only to base and bonus flat damage, then add the agility damage after, so agility counts fully during TotT. That way, agility still feels powerful without breaking the balance of the ability.
Alternatively, keeping the bonus agility but making it stick around for a couple seconds after TotT so you can benefit from attack speed and armor post-ability would also make the bonus more meaningful. Currently, all the agility’s nicer benefits are wasted since Riki is invulnerable and attack speed doesn’t affect the fixed attack animation during TotT.
Basically, the game wants agility to be more valuable on Riki compared to just raw damage items. The 40% damage multiplier punishes your total damage including agility, which is confusing because agility should boost damage based on how much you have. It’s probably designed to balance the ability’s power, but yeah, it does feel weird.
From a core Riki standpoint, Tricks of the Trade is mostly about farming faster and clearing camps/waves quickly. Even with this damage reduction, if you hit from behind, your backstab damage remains strong outside of TotT, so it still feels useful for burst damage. The low cooldown allows constant use to farm efficiently, which is the real value here rather than maximizing agility scaling during the ability itself.
True, but that doesn’t change the fact that the level 15 agility talent isn’t very impactful if the base mechanic weakens agility’s damage. If you already have Aghanim’s, the ability is strong for farming, but the talents aimed at boosting agility during TotT just don’t feel rewarding.
Exactly, but the problem now is that no one really builds agility purely on Riki since items like Daedalus or MKB are more straightforward damage options. The current mechanic just cuts down the bonuses that the ability itself grants, which feels like a missed opportunity to make agility builds more viable.