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On the Topic of Tanks and Itemiation

LankPants··12 votes·1,955 views

A little while back I made a very general thread about tank itemisation and the general issues that tanks face compared to other classes (http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/gameplay-balance/JuiQHdgl-tanks-need-a-god-tier-core-item ). Here I wanted to go more into depth about the possible solutions that could be used to counter this problem. A quick disclaimer, this thread is mostly about JUNGLE tanks, it mostly ignores support tanks and not all of the points are applicable to all lane tanks although some of the changes will help all tanks regardless.

For anyone only interested in parts of this thread here is a list of the suggestions just control f the number with a bracket after

  1. Nerfs to Last Whisper and Void Staff
  2. Changes to the Juggernaut jungle enchantment
  3. Specific changes to certain tanks
  4. Upgrades to lower masteries in the Defence Tree
  5. Introduction of new tank items

These are ordered in the order of the most necessary changes IMO to the changes that should be left as later changes if other changes are not effective.

  1. Nerfs to Last Whisper and Void Staff

These two items are the main reason that tanks cannot be tanky. Almost every damage based character includes one in their endgame build, these two items will often take up 6-7 item slots in a game (unless there are tank top laners or junglers) and are just too effective at mitigating armour and MR even against squishy characters. Overall I feel like Last whisper is more game warping than Void Staff but they both have too much power at the moment and need their power shifted to dealing with people stacking resistances, not just melting shit quicker as an assassin.

Last whisper: Build path changed from item 1037 + item 1036 to item 1037 + item 1042 AD reduced from 40 to 30 AS increased from 0% to 20% Penetration changed from 35% total to 25% of bonus Penetration now doubled for auto attacks (50% of bonus armour)

These changes should help to make this item far less appealing for assassins and hopefully make characters like Zed actually have to use brain cells to instantly blow someone up. Additionally the item is stronger on ADC's only when hitting a tank, it will do little to nothing to help to burn down carries fast.

Void Staff Penetration changed from 35% total to 45% bonus

Overall far less problematic than Whisper. Should help to make Void a more reactive buy, once again helping to make it more of the anti-tank item it was envisioned as and less 'let me build this and slaughter everyone'.

  1. Changes to the Juggernaut jungle enchantment

The new Juggernaut enchantment for tanks feels very underwhelming, it's the second worst jungle enchantment at the moment after the (overnerfed) devourer enchantment. The item is 110% gold efficient without its tenacity, but the tenacity just feels underwhelming. Juggernaut just can't compete with the early powerspikes offered by Warrior (137.13% with A-pen included) or Magus (158.22%). I feel like an early juggernaut should be saying 'I'm a big tanky guy who's going to be a pain in the arse to kill' not 'I live an extra quarter of a second'.

There are a few ways to change Juggernaut that I feel could help to make it give an early powerspike in durability. (trailblazer is used to represent any jungle item, not just trailblazer)

Change 1: Build path changed from item 3713 + item 3067 + item 1028 to item 3713 + item 1029 + item 1033 + item 1028 Hp changed from 500 to 350 Armour changed from 0 to 30 Magic Resist changed from 0 to 30 CDR changed from 10% to 0% No longer grants tenacity

Overall this enchant now serves as an early bulk-up item. Makes you tankier earlier and you should now be able to survive early fights a little better. The gold efficiency has increased from 110% to a more typical of the jungle items 142.07%.

Change 2: HP changed from 500 to 400 No longer grants tenacity New unique active -I'm the Juggernaut Bitch (if you think of a better name feel free to post, I'll probably put it here thumbs up for reference though :) ) Gain 20% resistance to damage for 2 seconds, reviving damage from a champion increases this duration by 0.5 seconds up to a max of 5 seconds. 20 second cooldown.

Gives a similar boost in early power to Change 1 but also grants better late game scaling. One good aspect is that it offers an option to the other team, if they were trying to focus you down they can drop their focus for 2 seconds while the active wears off. Unlike change one this does not bring the gold efficiency up to par, bringing it down to 92.06% but the effective gold with the active up should go up in almost all cases.

Change 3: HP changed from 500 to 600

A simple change, the tenacity doesn't 100% need to be dropped, this change just gives the effectiveness a kick in the pants bringing it up to 127.53%. While this is still lower than Magus or Warrior it still has the tenacity so it's gold efficiency should be good. This is still my least favourite change, as it doesn't make the item live up to its name of Juggernaut quite like the other two.

  1. Specific changes to certain tanks

Self explanatory really, and unlike other points it looks like Riot is actually doing this one, the Sej changes were great. But regardless of how good the changes to Sejuani were she's only one champ, there are still plenty of tanks who need major work done Galio Hecarim Malphite Nautilus Skarner Shen Volibear Zac or who could use minor buffs Amumu Chogath Rammus Shyvana Singed. With itemisation changes some of these champs might not need changes, but if there are no itemisation changes for tanks some buffs to these champs could go a long way. also I'm not going to go into specific numbers because I don't play very many of these champs so any numbers will probably be wildly off.

  1. Upgrades to lower masteries in the Defence Tree

Some of the lower points in the tree just feel bad. (Runic Blessing anyone?) Some changes could be made to this tree to help bring it up to the level of offence.

The masteries which don't seem that good lower down the tree are Perseverance -not bad per-say but takes too many points to reach its max, probably better with 2 points and identical values Swiftness -This could do nothing and no-one would notice, once again not bad in theory just really hard to notice, probably best just to scrap this. Evasive -4% reduced AOE magic damage, just to specific, it might only effect two spells from the other team in the game, I think something like 3% reduced magic damage would be better. Runic Blessing -The joke mastery that could work with minor changes. Just change shield to 4-5% and have it reset on b, you could even justify this as 2 points. Tenacious -Would be good, but everyone has knock-ups now and tenacity feels kinda bad, an OK skill, but not as the final skill of the tree.

Ideas for new skills (feel free to contribute if you have differing opinions, if they're good I'll probably add them New (mostly) jungle mastery in place of swiftness, doesn't require bladed armour (only due to tree layout), Each time a unit attacks you their AD is reduced by 1%, caps at 5% doubled against jungle creeps (capped at 10%) New final skill -take 5% reduced damage from all sources when bellow 50% hp

  1. Introduction of new tank items.

Some of these aren't going to work with certain upgrades for the Juggernaut enchantment, but eh they're probably worth mentioning. Several of these items I am going to give credit to people from my other thread to.

Force of Nature item 3024 + item 3067 + item 3211 + Combine Lots of HP, solid MR, decent armor, +20% CDR for more CCin', and +10% movespeed.

thanks to Rebonack (NA) Just a generic Allround item, geared towards tanks who need to stick to a target, like Sej and Mumu

The Shield of Retribution or Whatever (Melee Only) (Make A Better Name on Your Own) Builds From: item 3801 item 3028 item 1031 + 700 Gold = 3150 Gold +350 Health +40 Magic Resist +75% Health Regen +50% Mana Regen +55 Armor UNIQUE PASSIVE- Mana Font: Increase your mana regeneration equal to 2% of your missing mana. UNIQUE PASSIVE- Shield of Righteousness (better name): Whenever you use a spell, you gain 4/5/6% (Levels 1/6/11) damage reduction.

Thanks to Inept Maverick (NA) Overall a later game tank item, expensive with good stats, while stats are good it's mostly there to give mana dependent tanks a way to maintain their mana without poaching blue from the midlane (if jungle)

item 3801 + item 1029 + item 1033 + item 3044 = [ insert name ] >> 25 MR + 20 AR + 400 HP + 20 AD + 50% HP REGEN // UNIQUE: RAGE + 20 M.SPD + 15 HP(3 per second) + 10 MANA( 2 per second) per hit for 5 seconds, Half for ranged(* 10 M.SPD, 7 HP, 5 MANA).

Thanks to WiegrafOfValor (NA) Kind of like the FON remake from earlier, but aimed a little more towards bruisers than tanks and with a use for Phage, a heavily under utilised item.

Cloak of Honor +20 Magic Resist +20 Armor item 1033 (400g) + item 1029 (300g) + 100g Combine (800g Total)

Demacian Great Helm +400 Health +20 Amor +20 Magic Resist Unique Passive - Rectitude - Gain 2 health regen for every nearby enemy champion. Unique Active - Headstrong - Grants a veil that absorbs 10% of incoming enemy champion damage for 1 second. 40 second cooldown. Cloak of Honor(800G) + item 1011 (1,000g) + 200g Combine (2,000g Total)

Thanks to Aheadatime (NA) An early Item to provide power with a late game build path, one of the better item ideas from my thread.

I think a better way to design this item would be to drop the passive and make it work a little like old Warmogs. Change the recipe to item 1029 + item 1029 + item 1033 + item 1011 and drop the stats to 400 HP, 35 Armour and 35 MR then add a passive stacking mechanic where each stack gives 0.25 Armour, 0.25 MR and 3 HP. Have each CS give one stack, each large monster give 5, champion/baron/dragon kills and champion assists give 10. The max stacks would be 100 giving 700 HP, 60 armour and MR. Also possibly add the damage resist as an active giving 10%+(0.1% per stack) so you have a way not to blow up in early teamfights when rushed

As for the gold efficiency it clocks in at 77% gold efficient when unstacked without the active and 133.19% gold efficient when stacked, it should hit aproximatly 100% gold efficiency at 50 stacks. (would you believe I didn't plan this)

The stacking mechanic delays the powerspike of the item, making it less attractive as anything other than a rush (think tear and ROA) and bruiser shouldn't want to rush it early as it gives zero damage stats.

Edit: knew I forgot something, I dropped the price to 3200 in my calcs because I think 3600 might be a bit pricey.

My Idea for an Item, created from a modification of Spitemaster (NA)'s Item. Designed to be an early rush with early power and late game scaling, designed to rival the likes of IE, possibly too much though, but easily tunable.

Feel free to leave any item suggestions in the comments, I love reading through and discussing these, it doesn't even have to be a tank item, leave a mage item and I might use it if I ever go on a 2000 word rant about mage itemisation :P.

Edit: God damn it, 2000 words double checked and there's a spelling mistake in the title QQ.

79 Comments

Leti the Yeti6 votes

Penetration now doubled for auto attacks (50% of bonus armour)

youfockingwotm8?

LankPants3 votes

50% bonus armour pen is the same thing that Yas has.

Basically what it means is that if you're a level 18 Sejuani with your passive on, a sunfire and a randuins (no runes or masteries included) you have 80.5 base armour and 140 bonus armour for a total of 220.5. the 50% bonus pen hits the 140 bonus while ignoring the 80.5, leaving you with 150 armour. It would currently bring you down to 143.34 armour on live. This is a case of moderate armour stacking where it evens out, In less extreme cases such as an Ashe it does less, in more extreme cases such as chucking an F-heart into the build it does more.

Kingsgrave2 votes

{quoted}

50% bonus armour pen is the same thing that Yas has.

Basically what it means is that if you're a level 18 Sejuani with your passive on, a sunfire and a randuins (no runes or masteries included) you have 80.5 base armour and 140 bonus armour for a total of 220.5. the 50% bonus pen hits the 140 bonus while ignoring the 80.5, leaving you with 150 armour. It would currently bring you down to 143.34 armour on live. This is a case of moderate armour stacking where it evens out, In less extreme cases such as an Ashe it does less, in more extreme cases such as chucking an F-heart into the build it does more.

so whats stopping Yasuo from picking this new LW up and going super ham with armor pen? I guess he already kinda does, so maybe this question is stupid.

LankPants1 votes

If I have 80 base armour and 320 bonus Yas with this one hits me as if I have 160 armour.

With the live LW he hits me as if I have 156 armour.

With lower numbers the difference gets bigger.

With 120 bonus it's 110 with mine and 91 with Ritos

kanacho1 votes

It's based on bonus armor not all armor, but the real problem is what happens when they pick up FLAT armor pen runes/masteries or items like Ghostblade or Cleaver? That would become so toxic it's unreal. You would be going through a HUGE junk of bonus armor, and then the flat would pen even through base armor making you do huge damage to pretty much anything... Throw on an I.E./BotRK can you got yourself an officially broken build system.

The issue here is that things like that could easily be abused... Especially since Cleaver can solo easily be built into a lot of kits as your luxury item due to the CDR and Bonus Health. That would make a standard BT/I.E./Phantom D/LW/Cleaver/Boots build nearly unstoppable... Could be even worse if you threw on a botrk instead of an i.e. for hypercarries like trist and vayne. You would be exploding tanks for days so quickly that it's not even funny...

The thing with armor is that the damage reduction scales exponentially if I remember correctly, which means that if someone has 300 armor, and you pen 50% of that, it would make A MASSIVE difference in comparison to 150 armor and pen 50% of that. Still being able to reduce tanks to such a low armor value would make buying armor nearly useless against ADC's which are the main reason you probably want to build it in the first place. ADC's are already strong as it is, and we don't need to make them stronger imo...

LankPants1 votes

You need truly excessive amounts of armour for a carry with a whisper to be doing more around 260-320 depending on champ I believe, unless you're thresh in which case it's 64.

If Yas picks up Cleaver and Whisper he's sacrificing something he already needs IE and SS, therefore if he buys both he gives up his vamp item or his durability item.

BT/I.E./Phantom D/LW/Cleaver/Boots

Except by that one thing that tanks have in abundance, if that build gets CC'd its in a lot of trouble as you gave up your GA or Scimitar.

Could be even worse if you threw on a botrk instead of an i.e. for hypercarries like trist and vayne. You would be exploding tanks for days so quickly that it's not even funny...

Are we playing the same game? You're losing 400+ damage in crits for the 8% current HP (320 damage at 4000 HP) also as an on hit it's not actually part of the AA damage, so it only benefits from 25% pen. It's good on Vayne because she scales so hard off of AS, but even Vayne doesn't replace IE most of the time, she just puts it off until late game.

if someone has 300 armor, and you pen 50% of that, it would make A MASSIVE difference in comparison to 150 armor and pen 50% of that.

It's bonus pen, If someone has 300 armour you pen 50% of between 210 and 230 of that and the 70-90 base is left alone. The values don't change a ton at high values, they only change a lot at lower values.

The issue here is that things like that could easily be abused

.

The attacker has 38.9% armour pen and 30 flat pen

75.3*(1-0.389)=46.0083~46 46-30=16

Is that not an abuse case? That's done using the current LW values with a Ghostblade and a brute. 38.9% comes from LW + the 6% mastery.

FantasySniper1 votes

And so giving everyone one of the reasons we hate Yasuo solves... what?

LankPants2 votes

Last I checked people hate Yas because of his cooldownless resourceless dash and ability to completely mitigate most ranged champs with a single ability. Not because of his pen.

kanacho2 votes

The problem I have with him is the overloaded passive which forced his base stats to become absolute trash making him one of the easiest champs to stomp early game if not THE EASIEST. He's like a complete reverse Lee Sin.

Kingsgrave4 votes

The LW change makes it appealing on Zed still and unappealing on literally everyone else that is Melee.

Not a bad change though, but I don't like the AS on it. The penetration change + reduced AD on it would be good by itself.

LankPants4 votes

The thing about LW on melees though is that they don't buy it to break tanks, they buy it to help them blow up squishies. The change is geared towards making worse on assassins, as lets be real the only melees who ever try to bust tanks are bruisers, who would probably prefer the AS and definitely shouldn't be building LW and Yi+Tryn who like the AS anyway.

I was trying to make the item more of a reactive 'they have a huge tank I need to melt through' buy for carries, at the moment its an 'I need more burst' buy for assassins and spell based carries.

Kingsgrave1 votes

{quoted}

The thing about LW on melees though is that they don't buy it to break tanks, they buy it to help them blow up squishies. The change is geared towards making worse on assassins, as lets be real the only melees who ever try to bust tanks are bruisers, who would probably prefer the AS and definitely shouldn't be building LW and Yi+Tryn who like the AS anyway.

I was trying to make the item more of a reactive 'they have a huge tank I need to melt through' buy for carries, at the moment its an 'I need more burst' buy for assassins and spell based carries.

LW is useful for both of those things honestly. You can rush it on stuff like Pantheon and never really have a downside to doing so.

LankPants3 votes

And that's a problem, LW shouldn't be an item that you pick up to deal with squishies when it's also THE anti-tank item. That's like moving the spellsheild from banshees onto an armour item, it would just do everything to well.

Besides casters have a pen item to build that isn't LW (item 3071), I'm sure if they turned out too weak (they wouldn't) it could be buffed.

Also on the Zed and Panth breaking tanks front, they shouldn't. Tanks are meant to have an innate advantage over assassins.

Kingsgrave1 votes

{quoted}

And that's a problem, LW shouldn't be an item that you pick up to deal with squishies when it's also THE anti-tank item. That's like moving the spellsheild from banshees onto an armour item, it would just do everything to well.

Besides casters have a pen item to build that isn't LW (item 3071), I'm sure if they turned out too weak (they wouldn't) it could be buffed.

Also on the Zed and Panth breaking tanks front, they shouldn't. Tanks are meant to have an innate advantage over assassins.

People on this thread seem to think Tanks should beat Carries, Assassins and Mages. All I ever see is people saying that Tanks should be basicly gods of CC and health/resists, but they have to have some sort of weakness.

LankPants1 votes

It's called compromise, at the moment tanks lose to assassins, carries and mages. Tanks should be good versus burst, which means that they should beat all assassins (as it is a class centred around burst) burst mages like Syndra and Veigar and more caster based carries (at least until later in the game) like Graves and Corki. They should lose to Bruisers, who bring higher damage with similar bulk, Melee carries, AA based ADC's like Caitlyn and Trist, and DOT mages like Malzahar.

Tanks should be basicly gods of CC and health/resists (spelt basically as in ally, friend)

What the fuck else are they going to be? If carries and assassins can have god like damage why can't tanks have god like durability?

but they have to have some sort of weakness.

Compared to assassins to tanks for a second I'll use Zed as an example, at the moment Zed beats Mages, Carries, Tanks, Melee ADC's and some Bruisers (a class designed beat other classes). Where's his weakness?

Narasimha3 votes

Just going to jump for a tick, Zed is not every single assassin. He is literally the anomaly, the only one that sticks out. In almost every other situation, there isn't an assassin that can take down an evenly leveled and funded tank in a decent time span.

Knight Devout1 votes

Well, I'm not sure about that, Zed doesn't really want attack speed, and the loss of armor pen from Shurikens and botrk affects him.

Kingsgrave1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Knight Devout,realm=EUW,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=ANqyoElA,comment-id=00010001,timestamp=2014-12-23T15:49:54.080+0000)

Well, I'm not sure about that, Zed doesn't really want attack speed, and the loss of armor pen from Shurikens and botrk affects him.

Most Zeds I see in game build both Botrk and Ghostblade. Both of those items give quite a bit of Attack Speed.

Knight Devout3 votes

Yes, but he doesn't buy them for the attack speed.

Ghostblade has 20 flat armor penetration, Blade of the ruined king damage from both active and passive will be mimicked by Mark for Death.

kanacho1 votes

The reason ghostblade makes sense is the flat pen + MS active boost to chase. Could easily put more distance between him and his clone allowing him to TP out A REALLY big distance after the effect ends and after he assassinates a squishy. Otherwise BC is better imo. CDR + Flat Pen + % Pen + Health. All good stuff, and no gold wasted on AS.

Knight Devout1 votes

What you say about the movespeed is true, but Attack speed isn't gold wasted. If you want to kill something, it's health that is stat wasted. Yes, it helps you surive a little more but on assassins you don't want to "survive a little more"

And the build path is also better.

LankPants1 votes

If he was buying ghostblade just for the pen he'd buy black cleaver. There's only 10 difference in the armour pen, and the cleaver gives better AD and the shred passive so it would seem like he cares about the attack speed a little more than you think.

Knight Devout1 votes

BUT!

Ruby Crystal vs Avarice Blade. 200 Bonus Health vs 15% Critical attack chance. Yes, 15% critical strike chance isn't much but it's still damage, compared to health .

Also, that 10% critcal chance can be banked earlier, even if you don't have the money to complete the Ghostblade recipe, while until you get the full 1663 gold you are stuck with a brutalizer and max a ruby crystal.

LankPants1 votes

But if zed cares about the crit chance it means he's auto attacking and by extension cares about the attack speed.

And hey 40% attack speed isn't that much, but it's still damage, compared to health.

To be honest I don't think he really cares about avarice crit much at all, if he really didn't like the AS he'd just leave it as a brute until late game, and some zeds do.

LankPants1 votes

The melees who would be least affected by this change would be Tynd, Yi, and Yasou. (who is why we can't have nice things) Overall this is an intended nerf to assassins and a situational nerf to carries. I think that the change could easily be supplemented with flat bonus pen, around 30 and won't affect base if you don't have enough bonus. This would give a more strategical choice to pen.

Against the guy with no armour you buy flat pen Against the guy with a bit of armour you go for flat bonus pen Against the guy stacking armour you buy %Bonus pen

However if more items were introduced I'd also say revert the pre-season 3 changes to the order of applied pen to make stacking inefficient.

kanacho1 votes

I really think more itemization choices could fix this nicely, instead of completely reworking the current items.

LankPants1 votes

At the moment there's never a reason to not buy a last whisper. It definitely needs a rework to make it less effective VS squishies or there will never be a reason to pick up another A-pen item without stacking them.

Messaiga3 votes

I feel like a lot of the item ideas put in here seemed quite..... overloaded with stats. Lots of MR + Arm. + HP items to say the least. My take on this would to try and introduce a few item niches (then find items to fill them). Tanks need an item for multiplicative scaling (likely a % health increase), an item with high MR and little to no health (the MR version of Frozen Heart, kind of), a few other niche items that a tank would need in some games, and buff or rework a couple unused items (rework Zeke's Herald, maybe turn Sunfire Cape from an early game item for auto-winning lane to something actually useful late-game, buffs for things like Iceborn Gauntlet). I do like your ideas for Void Staff and LW though, those sound very good. Now, here is what my idea of a tank item revamp would be:

REWORKS

item 3050 : Recipe changed to item 3801 + item 3801 + item 1031 + 780 Gold = item 3050 (2700 Gold total) 400 HP 100% Base HP Regen 50 Armor Unique Passive: 25% Bonus Health

Suddenly tanks can now scale into late game (and not require a jungle item to do so like the old SotAG). Posted this idea in another thread originally.

item 3068 : Recipe stays the same, armor increased to 50. Unique Passive: Deals 20 + 1.5% of your maximum health (health of the person who owns the item) as magic damage per second to nearby enemies.

Tanks are really the only ones able to use this item to it's best since they'll (obviously) be the tankiest dude in the game (allowing them to stick around long enough for this to deal damage) and they will have more health than most bruisers (scaling the damage better). Nowhere near as extreme as Atma's used to be.

item 3056 : Unique Active: Causes nearby enemy towers to deal 50% reduced damage to you and your allied champions while reflecting 100% of the damage dealt to you and your allies (after the 50% damage reduction) from the turret(s) onto nearby (800 Unit Range) enemy champions as well. 5 second duration, 90 second cooldown. Cannot affect the same tower more than once every 10 seconds.

This is a lot better for turret dives now, though there is still risk and requires you assess a few things (do the enemy team look like they will live longer, who will tank turret aggro, do we destroy the turret, etc).

item 3709 item 3717 item 3721 item 3725 : Recipe changed to (Jungle Item) + item 1028 + item 1031 + 380 Gold (2250 Gold Total). 300 Health 60 Armor 10% Cooldown Reduction Unique Passive: Tenacity - Reduces the duration of all disabling (crowd control) effects by 35%.

BUFFS

item 3025 : Armor increased to 70.

Just a tiny buff to it's efficiency.

item 3083 : Unique Passive - Restores 1.5% of your Maximum HP every 5 seconds (doubles to 3% after being out of combat for 8 seconds).

Also to make this item a bit better in combat, still very strong out of combat once you are out of it for 8 seconds.

NEW ITEMS

Force of Nature: Recipe -> item 3028 + item 3067 + item 1033 + 400 gold (2750 gold total). 250 Health 75 magic Resist 50% Base Mana Regen 10% Cooldown Reduction Unique Passive: Mana Font - Restores 2% of missing mana every 5 seconds.

Kind of like the Magic Resist option of Frozen Heart, this grants good mana sustain, CDR, and heavy MR. Grants a bit of health (from Kindle Gem) since it was the only way to work CDR into the build path. Maybe now MR itemization isn't awful.

And now I'm gonna steal a name from OP cause I can't come up with any for this one:

Shield of Retribution: item 1031 + item 3140 + item 1028 + 880 Gold. 200 Health 60 Armor 60 Magic Resist Unique Passive: While an enemy champion is disabled by your own crowd control effects, gain 10% movement speed and 20% slow resistance.

Unique Active: Remove all debuffs from your champion and grants 50% movement speed for 1 second (90 second cooldown).

This item is going to be really useful when you are against some mobile champions that are difficult to stay close to (Lucian, Akali, Lee Sin) or against a champion with a CC that basically means you're dead (Morgana, Malzahar, or champions with suppression ultimates). Also nicely supplements health you have built up (possibly you just happened to have enough health from the reworked Zeke's Herald above that you could really use the resistances from this).

Well, that's my 2 cents. I think I just wasted like an hour and a half writing all this, lol.

LankPants2 votes

Shield of Retribution: 200 Health 60 Armor 60 Magic Resist Unique Passive: While an enemy champion is disabled by your own crowd control effects, gain 10% movement speed and 20% slow resistance.

Unique Active: Remove all debuffs from your champion and grants 50% movement speed for 1 second (90 second cooldown).

Yeh that one's complete bruiser bait. Probably best not to give them an all round tanky item that lets them ignore CC.

The reason why a lot of them have HP/Armour/MR is because the thread was geared at making a way for tanks to survive early fights, in order to do that they need something that gives general damage resistance. There are two ways to accomplish this, you can have an item give all 3 defensive stats or put %Reduction on it somewhere.

I do like the Zeaks and Sunfire ideas though.

I think I just wasted like an hour and a half writing all this, lol.

I think I wasted like 3 on the OP :p

Messaiga1 votes

Maybe the idea for Shield of Retribution should just not have health and instead something to replace it would be better? For that item I was thinking of an item that would be good for keeping up with mobile champs, and also giving tanks a QSS upgrade they could use. Honestly I think just finding a passive that rewards tanks for doing their job (Crowd Controlling their opponents, trying to keep damage dealers locked in place or out of the fight, peeling for your own damage dealers) could be a really interesting item, its just a matter of finding a niche that bruisers can't abuse.

LankPants2 votes

It's not really the passive that would cause any problems, It's just that tanks mostly don't give any fucks about CC so having a tank item with a cleanse is questionable at best.

I'd say that a better way to handle the item would be this

Shield of Retribution: item 3024 + item 1057 + item 1028 + 800 Gold (total 3000) 250 Health 250 Mana 55 Armor 55 Magic Resist 10%CDR (122.73% gold efficient) Unique Passive: While an enemy champion is disabled by your own crowd control effects, gain 5% movement speed and 10% slow resistance, stacks up to 4 times.

Overall I added a bit to the stats in the HP department, added some mana and CDR (I love glacial and think it should build into at least one more thing). I had to drop the armour and MR a tiny bit because otherwise it was almost 4k gold worth of stats. by making the passive stack it becomes weaker on bruisers as they tend to lack the huge AOE CC's that tanks can bring.

Messaiga1 votes

I think I'd be on board with this. It would be great for Glacial Shroud to build into more things and this seems like an appropriate item to do so with. Nice chunk of defensive stats and it would definitely be relevant late game if you can land your crowd control spells.

Dryditch2 votes

looks at Zeke's herald... starts crying

Zeke's plus Sion's old ult was just amazing. Teamfight--Enter at 1 health, entire team leaves healed.

I really like the new itemization you've proposed, though.

SmokingPuffin3 votes
  1. Nerfs to Last Whisper and Void Staff

These two items are the main reason that tanks cannot be tanky. Almost every damage based character includes one in their endgame build, these two items will often take up 6-7 item slots in a game (unless there are tank top laners or junglers) and are just too effective at mitigating armour and MR even against squishy characters. Overall I feel like Last whisper is more game warping than Void Staff but they both have too much power at the moment and need their power shifted to dealing with people stacking resistances, not just melting shit quicker as an assassin.

I think assassins buying Last Whisper is a serious design flaw. The item is just too good at killing squishy targets because the %pen is a pretty solid reduction amount even against just base armor. Fixing that isn't all that likely to make tanks feel better about life, though.

The new Juggernaut enchantment for tanks feels very underwhelming, it's the second worst jungle enchantment at the moment after the (overnerfed) devourer enchantment. The item is 110% gold efficient without its tenacity, but the tenacity just feels underwhelming.

I think this is mostly about Tenacity feeling like a poor investment. Tenacity is super important on divey champions like say Irelia, but if you're Nautilus, do you really mind the enemy using CC on you? Seems like Tenacity shouldn't be on a core item, and tanks should buy a niche Tenacity item if they want it.

LankPants1 votes

The LW changes do make a tanks life a bit easier, at least until you get to extreme values of armour (you need 15% of your bonus armour to be worth more than 35% of your base) and this is only for autos.

Honestly if I want tenacity as a tank I'll just grab merc treads, Having the tenacity on a core just feels bad.

kanacho1 votes

That's usually want I think... Tenacity on anything but merc treads tends not to be something I would like for tank itemization. However, for non-tanks I really like the idea of adding tenacity to other picks that can be situational and helpful like Mercurial Scimitar.

kanacho1 votes

Actually LW is a horrible pick against squishies who tend not to build armor at all. Black Cleaver is a MUCH MORE solid pick. It gives CDR/FLAT PEN/% Pen/Health. All the stuff you would want as an assassin. Being able to pen that little bit of bonus armor they have is not as good as the flat pen that would tend to work better... Not to mention BC can build up to nearly the same % armor reduc as his suggestion for the new LW on abilities. This would give Assassins even more incentive to buy BC, as if it wasn't already the better choice.

The thing is that if I remember correctly, Armor scales exponentially meaning that the bonus damage you get from penning 50% of 300 armor is more than penning 50% of 150 armor (and that's not just with the flat value of the armor you are cutting off, the exponential factor makes penetrating tanks' armor way more efficient apparently). That being said, flat pen is better when the values you are penetrating are going to tend to be low like on squishies, and the ability to build up the 25% armor pen ontop of the flat pen on BC can make people like Yi and Fiora even less fun to deal with... Though you are talking about assassins like Zed, but even in that case, they just need to land a few autos against a tank to end up dealing with that...

Shouldn't give them anymore reason to pick up BC. LW's gold cost is its primary selling point. It's relatively cheap for how much penetration power it gives you, and can be added to a build quite quickly and easily, and it's good for people who are behind, that way they can itemize to try and deal with the bonus gold the enemy team could be spending on survivability.

Knight Devout2 votes

You know where Arpen/magipen items drop the ball? They want to keep symmetry between penetration items. 35% on both item 3035 and item 3135 . It's easy to understand, the cost is also similar (2300), and it's essentially makes easy for newbie to understand how much resistances those 2 item shred. Here is why trying to balance last whisper and void staff at the same time is not viable.

#1. Armor and MR have different itemizations. You wanna stack armor? item 3075 Thornmail, item 3110 Frozen heart, etc., together with the base armor, give you solid armor values at all stages of the game. Magic resist, on the other hand, is zero per level on ranged champions, and has usually a weaker build-up without serious magic resist item (we used to have FoN but was removed). But this is ok, because of point 2.

#2. Physical and Magic damage have different availability and scalings. Physical damage from autoattacks stack with three stats, Attack Damage item 1036 , Attack Speed item 1042 and Critical Strike Chance item 1051 . In short, lategame all of your autoattacks, both as an ADC or a melee carry will carry out massive damage. On the other hand, spells only scale with Ability Power item 1052 , and , to a certain degree, cooldown reduction. What I mean is that, for example, a Ryze/Syndra benefits more from cooldown reduction than a Karthus, due to the nature of their kit. So, we have weak first, massive later physical damage against magic damage which is more dependable but cannot scale as well. Where that does lead us?

In short, where does that lead us? I understand that both types of damage needs some way to ignore the enemy resistance, both to prevent enemies from stacking resistance and negating a type of damage, and to create strategy between what you need to buy and in which order, but trying to keep them balanced at the both time is ridicolous. Void staff, for example, is in a good place due to how the damage scales, and the value of MR items. When a karthus with void staff ults, I know it will hurt, and I cannot mitigate that more than to a certain amount due to low mr on items, but he cannot ult me twice in a teamfights! On the other hand, Armor Penetration is in a bad spot. On assassins, last whisper is both a good item against tanks that squishies.

In my opinion, Riot should try to differentiate items depending on who is going to pick them up. for example, if we want to keep last whisper as an anti tank item, I'd make it so that it ignores a large amount of Bonus Armor, but does nothing against low armored targets(i.e. doesn't ignore base armor). Assassins have brutalizer and ghostblade, 10 to 20 arpen are really effective in increasing damage against low armored targets.

LankPants2 votes

Assassins have brutalizer and ghostblade, 10 to 20 arpen are really effective in increasing damage against low armored targets.

If they really want a pen item for assassins it should be BC, make them work a little more for their pen, since when they get it I die.

I also did add an Asymmetry to Void and LW, I had void at 45% bonus with LW at 25% for spells and 50% for AA's, In short LW isn't going to help you burst a tank, rather DPS them down.

MrSlowDie2 votes

{quoted}

  1. Nerfs to Last Whisper and Void Staff

why nerf LW and void, when

item 3031 item 3153 item 3128

are the real tank melter.

LankPants1 votes

Because LW and Void should be tank melters, at the moment they're everyone melters. As odd as this sounds even if they were made more effective VS tanks but then were made utterly useless against everyone else it would help tanks out a lot. This is due to the fact that if as a tank I force the enemy carry to build an item that helps them against me but not my team I've lower the damage they can deal too my carries.

Also do you really think DFG melts tanks? Just because something deals %damage it doesn't mean it's most effective VS tanks. DFG's amp makes it stupidly strong when used by a high burst champ onto a lower durability target.

MrSlowDie1 votes

{quoted} at the moment they're everyone melters.

no, let me tell you

Caitlyn base AD 101 Build 1 item 3031 Build 2 item 3035 item 1038

vs

Ahri base armor 80 build 1 item 3143

Math 1 ((101+80)x3+(101+80)x2,5)x100/(100+80+70) (181+181+181+456)x100/250 400

Math 2 (191+191+191+191)x100/(100+0,65x(80+70)) (191+191+191+191)x100/(100+98) 386

Let's assume somehow, the enemy has 300 armor

Math 1 (181+181+181+456)x100/400 250

Math 2 (191+191+191+191)x100/(100+0,65x(300)) (191+191+191+191)x100/295 258

see? your squishy team has to has 300 armor to make LW does more dmg than IE. What assassin/ADC/APC build to make that 300 armor? usually they just go glass cannon or GE. And oh yeah, IE scale with AD, it's just like AD rabaddon, difference is it's +150% AD per 4th attack. That's mean, the higher the AD is, the more armor needed to break even with LW

let's say our ADC has 300 (IE+another build) vs 310 (LW+BF+another build)

Math 1 (900+750)x100/400 412

math 2 (1200x100)/295 406

for DFG, well, haven't done math, but stacking MR is harder than stacking armor, so I assume the efficiency of void will far less than DFG.

LankPants1 votes

our squishy team has to has 300 armor to make LW does more dmg than IE. What assassin/ADC/APC build to make that 300 armor? usually they just go glass cannon or GE. And oh yeah, IE scale with AD, it's just like AD rabaddon, difference is it's +150% AD per 4th attack. That's mean, the higher the AD is, the more armor needed to break even with LW

The problem with LW isn't that Cait can abuse it, That's just fine, AD's need an option to deal with tanky targets, the LW I suggested still does this quite well. The problem with LW is when a Zed or a Kha'zix picks it up as a cheap source of armour pen and uses it to decrease a squishies armour to near zero in combination with other A-pen items.

No-one rushes Last whisper on anyone, you'd need crazy bases with near zero ratios for that to work. but to give you an idea of LW power VS squishies a level 15 (this is a fair level for the build, maybe even a bit ahead of the curve) Ashe with armour seals has 75.3 armour, with a LW, Ghostblade and Bruitliser (I think we can agree this is an OK AD assassin build) and that one pen mastery.

The attacker has 38.9% armour pen and 30 flat pen

75.3*(1-0.389)=46.0083~46 46-30=16

So our poor Ashe now has almost zero armour to defend herself with, Ashe is a sort of middle ground carry in terms of armour, 16 armour is only a 13.79% damage reduction from 42.95%

Lets say Ashe get tiered of getting blown up, so she buys a GA, she's also 18 now, but our assassin's finished a black cleaver.

With zero stacks

138*(1-0.389)=84.318~84 84-30=54

Resistance is lowered from 57.98% to 35.06%, this one isn't to bad but it's still a fairly significant drop and finally with full BC stacks.

1380.75=103.5 103.5(1-0.389)=63.24~63 63-30=33

In this somewhat extreme case the resistance is lowered from 57.98% to 24.81%

But as I'm sure you can see here the biggest issue is just how effective LW can be against an un-armoured target this means caster based champs can go one major damage item (item 3153 item 3074 item 3004 for example) then just rush into fucktons of pen and reduce the carries armour to near zero.

There are two main ways to stop this situation, the first is to return pen to its pre S3 state which makes the first calc

75.3-30=45.3 45.3*(1-0.389)=27.67~28 for 21.88% mitigation

The other is to make it scale off of only bonus armour which makes it 66.3+9*(0.5)=70.8~71 71-30=41 for 29.08% mitigation

Personally I like the second one because it is a significant nerf to an overall problematic class whilst overall helping tanks far more as it might not always be optimal to buy the LW even if it's stronger vs their tank.

MrSlowDie1 votes

{quoted} The attacker has 38.9% armour pen and 30 flat pen

I don't have much words for this, assassin meant to delete squishy right? So you ask assassin nerf and indirect ADC and tank buff. Well it kinda complicated but if you have assassin that isn't AD caster, I am pretty sure he will deals more damage to your squishy with IE rather than LW (hi shaco), you can do math for it.

30 flat pen to a 70 armor equal to 40% too.

and some last words from me, ADC is your biggest enemy, assassin afraid of you (well except he's overfed). Nerfing assassin just bringing the nightmare of tanks. Trust me.

FantasySniper1 votes

And now bruisers reign supreme because you wanted to make LW and Void Staff work only on bonus resistances.

Why do you think that making it easier to take down tanks with these penetration items will improve anything?

LankPants2 votes

How does this make bruisers reign supreme? Any bonus stats on their kits are still translated across as bonus. This change will make tanks and bruisers stronger against casters but weaker against DPS.

FantasySniper1 votes

You'll be removing significantly less armor than before.

They'll need at least 333.3~% armor (that's the total compared to base) for the new change to start being better. With the 50% bonus penetration, too. The 25% penetration will never exceed it. I actually rarely see tanks get more than ≈275 armor, so it is in fact a huge nerf that will make it more difficult to kill anything and everything, especially squishies since you no longer have the same power over what little resistances they have.

Void Staff, too. It would take 450% magic resist for it to be at all worth it. Completely unreasonable amount.

LankPants1 votes

The idea was to make things harder to kill, It wouldn't be much of a tank buff if they died quicker.

It's not as simple as 'here's a number at this number it becomes better' it depends on the base armour of the champ. I did the calcs for 80 base armour, it works out to ~185 bonus armour or 265 total armour being the point at which the new one is stronger. Considering how quick tanks die now that's probably OK, but if its not the number could go up to 30% (60%).

450% is incorrect, it's closer to 400%. It seems unreasonable but that's only 210 for Melees or 120 for ranged, seems more reasonable when it's put that way doesn't it.

It's also worth noting that at the moment Void and Whisper are never the wrong choice, this change is meant to create a situation where they can be bad buys.

FantasySniper1 votes

Yeah... That's what I said. 80•3.33~ = 266.66~

No, it's 450%. (3.5•0.55)+1 = 4.5•0.65

Tanks don't die quickly. If I can survive 5 times longer than the next guy, than it sounds like a damn long time, right? In LoL, it is. A teamfight usually doesn't last any longer than 5 seconds before it becomes clean-up duty, and considering it's the tanks that even drag it out that long, they're doing a pretty good job already.

LankPants1 votes

You're right I made the mistake of using 0.5 instead of 0.55.

It's numbers though I didn't really gauge it I just pulled a number I thought would work, If Riot implemented this change and it was too low they have an entire balance team to work it out.

Tanks don't survive 5 times longer at all, under focus they die just as quickly, and while focusing them isn't a good idea as you blow cooldowns it's still the fact that they die very quickly to focus unless they're Ali.

It still only makes the lv 18 MR numbers 240 and 155, if these numbers are too high then you can start looking at changes, but they are meant to be high because at the moment void is a core item on all AP's when it should be a situational anti-tank buy.

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