Fighters and Fighter Items Discussion

I read on surrenderat20 that Riot will be looking into fighter items in the near future. To help them out I wanted to create this board discussing the current items we have available to these champions as well as what sort of items we need to fill some sort of gap of fighter items.

Lets try to quantify the differences between a few similar champion types in order to understand what these types of characters desire from their items.

Tanks are champions who are very team based characters who specialize in disrupting and catching targets. Tanks are rewarded (usually through additional stats) for building lots of defensive items. A great example would be Malphite with his shield passive and W which increase his overall armor. Their abilities will typically have greater amounts of cc than most other champions and these abilities can have very high natural cooldowns or high mana costs to restrict these abilities from being spammed. Ultimate abilities from tanks will generally have hard aoe crowd control components that are some of the most game changing abilities in the game or offer another form of defense and/or aoe damage.

Assassins are agile hunters whose abilities offer high damage and little utility. They want to jump in and precisely deal all the damage they are able to do on a priority target and then quickly get out of harms way before attempting to strike again. Their kits usually contain multiple forms of mobility and deceptive options. Assassins should be extremely vulnerable when caught due to their squishy nature. Due to this, an assassin requires precise timing and lots of damage from their items in order to do their job effectively.

Fighters are a melting pot of champion diversity and are the hardest to pin down in pointing out their qualities. Fighters want to get into a fight and just be bullies. They want to deal sustained damage to their targets and still be hard to take down. They can build just like tanks and still be pretty darn tanky, however they will not see the benefits of these heavy anti-damage items granting them additional stats. Nor will fighters be able to have the same amount of effectiveness as most tanks when engaging an entire team. Fighters also have the option of choosing to exclusively buy damage items (typically a yasuo or riven) but will remain extremely squishy and vulnerable if caught. A fully offensive fighter will be able to get in the fight and blow up a target, but usually without the amount of ease or quickness an assassin would have. And unlike an assassin, fighters will usually lack resets, an escape option, stealth engage, or abilities that deal more damage to low health targets.

A fighter will generally tend to be lackluster in comparison to other champion types if they invest too much into either offensive or defensive routs. A fighter will have more single target damage than a tank but less than an assassin. These champions will also have more utility than assassins but less than tanks. Fighters also vary greatly in terms of mobility, steroids, and cc.

Currently, fighters can buy a few hybrid damage/defensive items such as frozen mallet, black cleaver, Hexdrinker, etc. But there are a real lack of such items in this game and they are often considered lackluster (black cleaver is much much better now though). Hexdrinker is a great item but Maw of Malmortius feels lackluster and will often be a final purchase or the Hexdrinker will simply be sold in place for another item. So what is the final product of the lack of offensive and defensive items? The result is usually a mix of great offense and defense items to put on a these champions. Jax will build Trinity Force and a Blade of the Ruined King and then proceed to build full tank items like a Randuin's Omen and a Banshees veil in order to be tanky. There is nothing inherently wrong with this build option though and it should probably remain a valid option to fighters. The problem again is the sheer diversity of the fighter cast as well as the assassins or tanks who can also take advantage of hybrid damage/defense items and become quite oppressive with them.

We need items that allow fighters to get in the fray and survive while allowing them to effectively deal damage to a target. But we need to be careful to not make these items simply give a ton of stats that can be abused by other classes... because nobody wants to fight an Akali or Zed who will instantly kill you and still be fighting and assassinating after getting jumped on and nobody wants a Zac or a Sion who engages on you with 5k health and duels your whole team to a standstill.

We have tons of options here. For example, we could simply make Maw of Malmortius a more attractive option for fighters by buffing a few stats, giving it a new passive, or an additional feature/passive. We could also give Hexdrinker a second upgrade path to add more options to match the versatility of fighters. These options are possible with many hybrid items and I'd love to have this board filled with your ideas. Lets keep the conversation calm and civil and lets try to examine all these ideas together.

Give your suggestions below!