Why Riot needs to bring the Spear of Shojin

Some thoughts of a player, who played at all ranks from Bronze to high Platinum this Season, at a total of 600 games per Season:

Bruisers had rough times over the past 5 seasons. It did not matter how hard you got fed, if you were not able to finish the game after 20 min, as a bruiser after 20 min, you were forced to make a decicion you should not be forced to make: You had either to buy tank Items in order not to die after the first two seconds in team fight, or continue buying AD to be able to MAYBE oneshot the ad or ap carry and then die afterwards in teamfight.

And here is my opinion why this is just wrong:

As a bruiser you should be able to fight for a longer period of time in team fight, without beiing forced to buy tank items, which are less effectife on a bruiser as they are on a tank.

• Why? Because as a bruiser you are kind of a counter part of an adc without peel. You are not a tank, but in most matchups you stil need to fullfill certain teamfight essentails like the engage in a team fight when there is no other tank in team. And even if you have another tank in team, you always will be in the Front Line. But this is simply not possible if you are gettin shotted down in the first two secounds of the fight with mass cc and dmg output.

Imagine if you go after 25 min 15/0 with 270 cs. You will have earned 15x 300 gold = 4.500 (Kills) + 270x 24 gold = 6.480 (Farm) which equals to 10.980 gold in Total.
As a Jax you would therefore be able to purchase Triforce (3733), Titanic Hydra (3250), Essence Reaver (3200) and Boots (Ninja or Mercurys, both at 1100) which would cost you a total of 11.283 (if you sell your Corrupting Potion and get a turret or something).

So despite the fact that even with a huge feed and good cs after 25 min as a Jax with this very common and suggested built, you would be barely tanky and therefore end up gettin shotted down shortly after your engage.

Why would you die shortly after your engage? -Because if you for example jump with jax Q on a Caitlyn and there is an Alistar standing next to her, you instantly get knocked up and then shotted down by the Ap carry. If you dont get shotted down by ap carry, Cait will just use E on you and kite you down shortly. Why kite you down shortly? Because now you dont have Q up anymore and you cant reset your Q because you cant basic attack anymore, because you are not in range anymore ( same principle with Yi btw...). And due to the fact that you only barely bought tankyness you wont survive the next few hits like a tank might do until you come in range again. And if there is no Alistar in enemy team? Then there will be a Lulu, or a Thresh or another supp with cc or knockback or polymorph or what ever...

So some people like many many missguided You tubers, who never played bruisers on their own and therefore dont have any sense about the subject because they just play different classes all day would now argue:

Well this is the trade you get if you dont buy more tank and just AD : You are able to shot somebody and then you die.

But this is why those people are just utterly wrong:

BRUISERS ARE NOT FUCKIN ASSASINS!

In generall Champions like Master Yi, Tryndamere, Fiora, Jax, Irelia or Xin Xao have one Close up. Surely they might be able to reset this close up if they basic attack or if they do have a relatively short cd on it, if they bought cooldown reduction. BUT if they get stunned or knockbacked or what so ever, after they used that close up on a ADC or AP Carry, they will die before they are able to cast that close up again. (Explained above) Unlike an Assasin like Talon, Bruisers like Fiora, Tryndamere, Irelia, Jax Xin or Master Yi apply their damage over time. Even if it only takes them 2.5 secounds to apply that dmg to kill somebody (if really fed) they cant delete somebody like Talon could in one secound and they dont have escape tools like Zed or Le Blanc. They dont come out of invisibility like a Rengar Wunkong, Talon, Pantheon or Akali and their close ups dont have the huge range like the one of a Le Blanc or a Zoe which can be recast as an escape tool.

The thing is that you can see the average bruiser coming and therefore you can prepare for his use of his close up and stun him more easyly. Also the average bruiser is not able to apply his dmg as fast as the average Assasin. As a result in the current state of the game without an item like spear of shojin, in 80% of the Teamfights in the end game a bruiser who mainly bought AD will be useless, even if he played a great game so far and is ridicoulusly fed.

Some people would now argue: Then simply buy tank Items. [zombie-brand-facepalm]

Here is why a bruiser should not be forced to buy Tank Items:

A BRUISER IS NOT A FUCKIN TANK!

If a bruiser should be a tank, he would have a different kit, more health and amour stats and therefore make use of those tank items more effectively. But thats not the fact. Fact is that the kit of a Fiora synergises with AD, her passive is useless without AD. Her kit is there to apply dmg over time and not to tank over time. Same with Yi, same with Jax etc... For all players who dont know, jaxs Ult synergises with Ad and Ap and not with Heath, amour and magic resist... So why should you be forced to buy tank items which dont synergise with your abilitys etc...? Also whats the point gettin fed in lane and then buy tank items anyway? As a result if you go as a Fiora like, Black Cleaver (3000), Randuins Omen (2900) and Spirit Visage (2900) and Ninja Trabi (1100), that will equal to 9.900 gold. So with 15 Kills and 270 cs after 25 min (10.980 total) you would be able to purchase those 4 items and you would only have 1080g spare to spent (thats not even enough for a Tiamat) But if we keep beeing serious, you wont be able to do 15/0 within 25 min as a Fiora in a average ranked game with a Black Cleaver only... Start gettin my point?

If you buy Tank as a bruiser you wont deal damage. And if you buy tank your Kit is kind of useless. In other words: You may be able to tank, but you are somehow like a Rift herald at min 15. In a fight you might be disturbing, but you are not lethal and the least target to worry about. You dont stun or slow enough to be a relevant faktor in fight and you are not able to kill the adc or ap carry either...

Now whats the result of all of my thoughts explained?

->In the current state of a game a bruiser is irelevant in team fight if he goes tank and even more useless (dead) in a team fight, if he goes AD.

->Therefore in the current state of the game it is better to pick a tank instead of a bruiser in the first place if you want to do teamfights 5vs 5, or to pick an assasin if your team already got one or two heavy tanks.

->So what you are saying is that you cant teamfight as a bruiser in lategame and therefore better pick another class if you want to do so? -> YES!

[zombie-brand-mindblown]

-> How can you say that you stupid noob who does not understand the game?!?!? -> Please read my article again i really tried hard to explain...

-> Fine and why should you pick a bruiser in the first place then and how do you explain the solid win rates of the bruisers, especially in higher elo? -> Well in the current state of the game bruisers are quite effecient, if they preform a very well executed split push taktic which requires your team to understand how split pushing works. Also there are those games where some teams are just not able to group and therefore bruisers are able to catch solo people somewehere on the map and then force the fight 5 vs 4 or 3 again and again.

But the conclusion of all those thoughts is, that in the current state of the game, without an item like spear of shojin, it does not matter how fed you are as a bruiser and how good you are at split pusing. If the enemy team is able to group sucessfully and if they are forcing teamfights they will be able to run down your nexus if they made it to the endgame. Because as explained above, if game comes past 25 min no matter how fed you are, you will be useless in a fight 5vs 5 and enemy will be able to run down your nexus if you continue splitting.

I am certainly not the worst player, I am currently on promos to platinum 2 soloque with 54% Win rate. I was platinum last season as well although my account got demoted at end of season to gold because of inactivity. Due to unlucky placement matches I was actually placed bronze 2 at the beginning of the season and it took me over 400 games to get into higher platinum again. I did not Duo Q and by playing bruisers only i was just not able to carry a big amount of games even in very low elo, because it did not matter how fed I was, if the enemy team manages to group and runs down mid, as a bruiser without spear of shojin you cant do anything useful in team fights.

In my opinion the current meta forces bruisers to spam games and hope for the very few games you can make an actual difference by an effektive split push. All of the other games are kind of a coin flip where the sucess of the game depends on if your team mates are better at grouping then the other team. Therefore my winrate with the same playstyle and attitude was actually the same in bronze 2 as it is now in plat 2, which is a complete joke.

Also I want to explain very briefly why the spear of shojin is not overpowerd in my opinion. This Item scales with AD, so you need to buy it as a 3rd or 4th item to be very effective. This means that you need to get ahead and very fed to make an effektive use of this item. It also only gives fighters the oportunity to not be useless in teamfights which should not be the case in the first place at all.

So therefore my fellow summenors: Please, for the love of the Game, for the love of the sport, please stop bitching about those new fighter items just because you watched a clickbait video of one of those You tubers who dont main bruisers at all and don`t have any sense what they are actually talking about.

I apologize for any spelling mistakes in advance, as I am not a native english speaker.

All the best and much fun in ranked, Playmakêr [slayer-pantheon-thumbs]