Shields need a counter

The Ecdysiast·Oct 29, 2017·6 votes·828 views

You can't just have items and masteries to increase both shields and healing, while the counter only decreases healing.

I'd suggest that GW also cut down shielding, since there are so many available to stack on top of each other with items and abilities. But decreasing duration might also suffice.

18 Comments

VoidStaresBackOct 29, 20177 votes

No.

The existence of Grievous Wounds already makes healing impossible to properly balance, because you have to balance around two possible states, making that for shields will make shields have the exact same balance issues.

Voluug13Oct 29, 20176 votes

The issue is, shields are already a counter.

Why give assassins counter to their counter.

archerno1Oct 29, 20174 votes

Shield= temporary HP. Shields have 2 counters. Either wait for them to expire or break them with damage.

CPU LyricaOct 29, 20171 votes

exactly. even rakan's shield can be broken. though i must say its super satisfying when the Rakan shield Kicks in the moment before jhin's 4th shot hits, saving my life -w-

NyarlathοtepOct 29, 20171 votes

Oh yes because we can totally wait when that adc ( or carry for that matter ) is obliterating us. Actually this goes mostly for adc's since they have the best sustained reliable dmg.

archerno1Oct 29, 20171 votes

{quoted}

Oh yes because we can totally wait when that adc ( or carry for that matter ) is obliterating us. Actually this goes mostly for adc's since they have the best sustained reliable dmg.

Then break it with damage. Shield doesnt make you immune just temporarily increase your hp.

NyarlathοtepOct 30, 20171 votes

Oh do more dmg. What a nice counterplay.

wyvern011976Oct 30, 20171 votes

Or learn positioning so that the ADC is not melting you. Funny how that works.

NyarlathοtepOct 30, 2017

Oh because its totally possible to be in a safe position thx to their range. Only a small handful champs can be away from their range when in teamfights.

The EcdysiastOct 31, 20171 votes

{quoted}

Or learn positioning so that the ADC is not melting you. Funny how that works.

tell that the pros, I'm sure they'd love your amazing insight.

Darkdemon653Oct 29, 20171 votes

{quoted}

Shield= temporary HP. Shields have 2 counters. Either wait for them to expire or break them with damage.

This is one of the myriad problems that resulted from Riot converting raw offensive power into cooldown reduction. Shields have a very high uptime now. It also doesn't help that there has been a huge reduction in burst capability. Let's look at some shield uptimes with 45% CDR:

Janna: 91% uptime
Lulu: 110% uptime
Orianna: 81%% uptime (with just 40%, as she doesn't get 45%)
Braum (while not a shield in the traditional sense, I think we can all agree that it's very similar in this context): 73%
Karma: 91%
Lux: it's a bit hard to calculate due to the travel time, but let's say the shield effectively lasts 4.5 seconds, giving 82%
Morgana: 61%

While shields still have the drawback of not being permanent, they do allow the shielded person to trade extremely effectively and very often. I'm not going to say shields are a problem, as I don't really think they are, but with the buffs to shields and nerfs to heals and burst, I think it's safe to say they're too strong compared to the healing and burst damage we have.

PennsOct 29, 20172 votes

Every champ has 2 counters. Either ignore them and tank all their stuff or just kill them. heh

KhristophorosOct 29, 20174 votes

No, this is a stupid idea. Grievous Wounds was a bad idea and the game is worse for it. It never put a dent in the lane dominance of Soraka, Alistar, Sona, and Taric back in the day so those champions needed to be reworked. There was no benefit to having a counter. All it did was make Swain and Mundo binary as fuck.

Similarly, now Lulu and Janna are top tier, and guess what? This wouldn't change. They'd still be able to stop aggression in lane because people have to farm before they can buy the counter item.

And just like with Mundo and Swain, a generalized counter to shields would impact a lot of shields which are balanced and healthy like Hexdrinker/Maw, Sterak's, and pretty much any champion with a personal shield.

The problem is specifically Lulu and Janna. They are so good at just stopping damage that they barely ever need to take risks to be effective, unlike most other supports or champions in general.

When something is OP it needs to be nerfed. It is really stupid to add a generalized counter which shits on everything that's balanced in an attempt to balance the few OP outliers. This is proven by history.

ClementineOct 29, 20171 votes

lol

Funkin DunkinOct 29, 20171 votes

Maybe we need more shields that are specific to either physical or magic? We have 2 right now but they are only passives. Maybe we need some of the point and click shields to only take 1 property too?