Is Gragas a drunken fighter or a FAT Drunk TANK?

taleofsonata·Sep 2, 2015·1 votes·679 views

I though riot said they wanted Gragas to be more of a fighter than a FAT mage or a FAT Tank. I just don't understand why his W would get nerf :/. I know that he is mostly a jungler nowadays but he just counters the meta. He has always been constantly nerfed since his rework by riot over his damage and utility.

The reason is maybe because there is no items for Ap fighter? It seems that all the tanks has to be Ap for some reason.

Why not have an item that give a shield based on amount of hp and ap? I though riot reworked abyssal scepter :/. An Ap Hydra maybe? An Ap sterak maybe?

Another thing I wanted to add is when an AP Fighter wants to build AP and HP they just seems to be squishy.

3 Comments

KaxiSep 2, 20151 votes

The original concept of him being a fighter is fine, but he has too much utility. Gragas has naturally beef with his passive and W, which are all fine and dandy. However, we need to look at what defines the roles. Bruisers and Tanks both bring beefiness to the game, but their secondary goals diverge based on their kit. Does the kit have high utility or CC? If yes, then the champion is better off as a tank, regardless of the dps.

Both tanks and bruisers have the goals of soaking damage. That's why a champion like Mundo (who /is/ a tank for all reasoning) is actually a bruiser since he has only 1 soft CC, a slow, and no other utility. Similar to someone like Darius who has a melee-range slow and a short-range grab (however this can be argued since his slow is so immense...leading to controversy of his Utility/DPS ratios). Gragas has three CC spells; this qualifies him as a tank since he is a damage soak with crowd control. Thus, you need to specify him as either a bruiser or a tank. Since he has the CC spells that automatically qualify him as a tank, only changing his kit entirely would allow higher damage values and giving him the label of a bruiser. Thus, his dps needs to be nerfed to make him more fair as he is already an excellent tank.

Does that help explain things?

EDIT: On your latter point of "Another thing I wanted to add is when an AP Fighter wants to build AP and HP they just seems to be squishy." The issues arise that most AP champions are designed for dps and utility (either in mobility/CC/or both), which are the core building blocks for mages. Now, we must look at why they're so squishy: they don't have any innate tankiness. Since mages are at their core DPS+Utility, adding in the option to be tanky, as well, would bring them into the trouble spot we're seeing now with Gragas. They would have Soak+Utility, the building blocks for tanks, but they would also have high dps, which is why tanks were so good for so long. If the dps of hard tanks matches that of bruisers, then why would we ever have bruisers in the first place and not just have hard tanks all the time? That's why the "League of Tanks" was so rampant with Cinderhulk: Cinderhulk enabled high tankiness with cheap dps. While nice, it broke the balance. That's why we don't see AP bruisers. Almost all AP champs have high DPS+Utility, meaning that we can't also give them the option to be tanky, as well. Probably the closest thing we have to an AP bruiser is actually Dr. Mundo, despite have little AP scaling.

taleofsonataSep 3, 20151 votes

The thing about AP fighter is that their basic attack doesnt scale off ap like AD bruiser would. Soo they are constantly casting things, the only ap fighter I can think of are diana, ekko but they just doo soo much damage that they are considered assassins. Another thing about them is that unlike AD bruiser they dont lifesteal off their basic attack to sustain themself and only depends on ROA during the laning phase. Spellvamp items aren't very effective because they don`t heal as much and because the biggest problem why riot aren't making spellvamp useful for mage is because of this champion. Vladimir

KaxiSep 3, 20152 votes

You're confusing a "fighter" with a "bruiser". Now there is no such thing as a bruiser in League of Legends officially, but there is a small difference realistically. Fighters: Damage first, Soak second. Bruisers: Soak first, Damage second. Depending on kit and build, they are almost interchangeable, but there are differences. Typically AP fighters are champs with low CD spells or natural steroids but still can take a punch. Vlad, Diana, Ekko, Ryze, Swain, Akali, and even some magic tanks can be calls fighters if they build for damage since they either have sustain with their dps or shielding; however, their primary roles are typically damage-dealers. Now, we can change this all pretty dramatically with items. Substitute in a Spirit Visage or a couple of tank items in that build; suddenly that champion has a lot more soak with the sacrifice of damage. Now we're talking about bruisers, not tanks. Bruisers supply soak first and damage second. Tanks supply soak first and utility second. The issues that we begin to run into again is that champions like the examples of Diana, Ekko, and Swain offer a lot of utility with their crowd control combined with mobility (in the former cases). If we give AP champions the ability to dps and soak, since most already have natural utility with their CC, they will scale too much with being the beneficiaries of fighters and tanks. AP champions typically have more burst anyway.

It's practically a Catch-22. You either give them the abilities to take advantage of the same concepts that other bruisers and fighters get combined with their natural utilities and have them be broken, which is the state that needed to be avoided with Cinder-tanks, or you change their kits to fit the mold. In some respects, I find that Vlad, Swain, and Ryze are the ideals when it comes to AP bruisers since they have relatively consistent dps combined with their immense sustain capabilities. It's just really hard to balance said concepts...hence why champions like Vlad and Ryze are always on a knife's edge when it comes to being overpowered or underpowered.