The tank meta has hurt midlane diversity

Chris Chiaki·Jul 8, 2015·2 votes·956 views

The only things that can excel in this meta are mages with ridiculous DPS like or poke-orientated champions like .

That's not to say burst mages like can't succeed but they work so much harder to do their jobs.

Like how do you kill a with with his support and peeling for him? There's CC there, multiple shields, a cleanse and his summoners.

Azir and Viktor shine because they can do enough sustained damage to melt the tank line and get the squishes after. Poke mages work because you can chunk out the tanks before the fight begins.

Tl;dr Burst mages aren't super weak but they work extremely hard to acheive the same result as a DPS/poke mage. Basically there's no reward to picking them.

11 Comments

pripustasJul 8, 20152 votes

Lel and what about assassins? They can't even 1x1 carries anymore without being extremely fed. I had a match a couple of days ago, I was playing Talon vs Cassiopea. Neither of us were fed. I jumped her, and she used item 3040 shield to negate a huge chunk of my damage, and then proceeded to ulting me, and bursting me down in 2seconds. Same story happens all the time with Zhonya's. How are ranged carries allowed so much safety, while having the same burst as an assassin? And AP assassin's buy Zhonya's too, making them head above AD ones.. Assassin's job is to kill squishies, except they're not squishies anymore with all the shields, invincibilities, and insane kiting potential. Riot HAS to remove or nerf these items. They're too op. Or at least give AD analogs.

Critmaster GarenJul 8, 20152 votes

{quoted}

Lel and what about assassins? They can't even 1x1 carries anymore without being extremely fed. I had a match a couple of days ago, I was playing Talon vs Cassiopea. Neither of us were fed. I jumped her, and she used shield to negate a huge chunk of my damage, and then proceeded to ulting me, and bursting me down in 2seconds. Same story happens all the time with Zhonya's. How are ranged carries allowed so much safety, while having the same burst as an assassin? And AP assassin's buy Zhonya's too, making them head above AD ones.. Assassin's job is to kill squishies, except they're not squishies anymore with all the shields, invincibilities, and insane kiting potential. Riot HAS to remove or nerf these items. They're too op. Or at least give AD analogs.

yea, this is a problem i see aswell. mages can still keep themselves relevant even if they didnt manage burst a carry. assassins on the other hand have problems.

while mages can attemt to burst a squishy from relatively safe distance, assassins usually have to put themselves at risk and get into melee range for their burst attempts. if they fail, there is a good chance they die.

while this is in principle ok, i see the most problems in the fact that theyre giving ranged ad too much survivability with bloodthirster shields, heal, support shields, lifesteal, spellshields. a lot of these defensive stats built into their core items. basiucally the same thing theyve been biwtching about with atmas back then. they get defense by stacking damage. they almost turn into ranged bruisers with carry damage. give a ranged ad a bloodthirster shield and a support shield, factor in lifesteal, have him buy a g.a. and his total health and resistances arent much different than that of a bruiser anymore.

i find mages with items like these usually less of a problem, as they dont present such a permanent threat as carries. basically if you and a mage fail to kill each other because of shields and defensive steroids, you both walk away. in case of a carry, it just means you dont stand a chance against him.

pripustasJul 8, 20151 votes

Yes, you're right. Assassins should be high risk-high reward. Now it's extremely high risk- very low chance of reward. It's just unfair and unbalanced. I don't know where Riot's head's at. P.S. you can downvote me, but deep inside of your hearts, you know that to be true.

Moulin RougeJul 8, 20152 votes

Um, lux can hit the back-line easily. She doesn't care about who's peeling the adc.

Critmaster GarenJul 8, 20151 votes

{quoted}

Um, lux can hit the back-line easily. She doesn't care about who's peeling the adc.

she can hit it, but if the adc has a constant 350 damage shield from bloodthirster, hitting the backline probably wont do much. lets say the ad carry has a banshees and a bloodthirster. even a full rotation of a mage wont do enough damage to kill him. and then theyll just heal the little bit of damage they took off lifesteal or hit their summoner heal. imo the problem is less with tanks, but how theyre freely giving the targets of those mages defensive stats on their offensive items.

adc dont have to bother as much positioning against the mages anymore or dodging abilities if they wont get killed by the burst.

i wouldnt say mages are completely screwed, as they can still support, but it diminishes their value. assassins are kindof fucked. they need to take a step back with adc. right now their lategame damage is disgustingly overtuned. and theyve given them too much safety with self peel, defensive items designed for them and when they buffed their ability to kite.

pE4CbxDPQOJul 8, 20151 votes

ok?

FrikgeekJul 8, 20151 votes

Annie is still one of the strongest midlaners, I don't know what you're talking about. Her winrate in diamond+ for midlane is 56.2%, that's insanely high. With a 10.7% pickrate and 46% for popularity it's a decent sample size, it's not like some other champs who are only played by dedicated mains and get a high winrate that way. This is probably because she's a decent initiator with flash and has good followup to a tank's initiation. If you build straight damage on her she'll still melt everyone's face off. Just don't go for RoA or chalice or something more suited to a DPS mage. In fact, she has amazing burst on squishies with just a haunting guise and sorc boots. If you abuse her 10min spike to roam and get your team ahead their tanks won't matter in those 35-min teamfights. That's what you get with burst mages that you can't do with DPS mages. Don't underestimate how strong an earlier powerspike can be(As azir and Viktor usually spike with a few fully built items, around 25 minutes).

And lux really isn't a burst mage, she has burst but she's more of a control mage like ziggs, focusing on zoning and punishing enemies out of position rather than straight up blowing up teams. She actually is weaker in this meta simply because she punishes assassins rather than bruisers or tanks.

Lost In TimeJul 8, 20151 votes

Viktor is burst, though. Cassiopeia and Ryze would be examples of DPS magic damage.

I agree, tanks do hurt some burst mages, but they aren't bad. Most burst mages still offer a good amount of utility or can pick up item 3116

Critmaster GarenJul 8, 20151 votes

if you blow blow up the enemy adc, and/or support, you still have a large impact on the game.

not to mention, that most mages can act like a second support for their teammates even when they dont deal a lot of damage against tanks themselves.

the only problem i see, is that riot is in the process of overloading ranged ad with so much stuff, that they start to deal enough burst damage to outshadow mages.

if you can burst down a squishy with an adc, then why pick a mage or assassin? you get burst damage and sustained damage in one champion. most mages cant do more than burst a squishy anyways.

AbyssphereJul 8, 20151 votes

What you're describing isn't reduced diversity. There aren't less champions in the meta, there are just different ones. In the assassin meta all of the DPS and pokey mages were worthless because you needed to kill people very quickly and reliably in that meta. It's impossible to have every kind of mage viable at the same time, this meta just isn't favouring the bursty ones.

Critmaster GarenJul 8, 20151 votes

{quoted}

What you're describing isn't reduced diversity. There aren't less champions in the meta, there are just different ones. In the assassin meta all of the DPS and pokey mages were worthless because you needed to kill people very quickly and reliably in that meta. It's impossible to have every kind of mage viable at the same time, this meta just isn't favouring the bursty ones.

though like i said. i dont think its a problem with tanks. its more of a problem with ad carries being too tanky. especially for the damage they get out of it in return.