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How To Add Shield Counterplay

XDDD·8/30/2017, 3:30:26 AM·6 votes·1,067 views

So it's been apparent to most of the playerbase that shields have been excessive for several patches now and it's recently come to Riot's attention so currently they're debating ways to add counterplay. The issue is, that sometimes shields are fair and balanced [Skarner] but other times they're oppressive as hell [item 3193 + item 3190 + item 3504 with Karma / Lulu on a glass champion (generally marksman/mage). It's pretty fair on most tanks where they need self shields to lane and their champ is balanced around it but it's pretty messed up while shielding allies since the shield has nothing to do with the kit of the champion being shielded and thus isn't integrated with balance. Basically what I'm saying is it's not fun playing a diver when their AD gets 2 extra health bars of shields since the enemy Sejuani went Stoneplate + Locket.

What we SHOULD do:

  1. Limit the shields received to a % of your max HP, permanently. This way, a glass champion can't have more than say, 20% of their HP bar in shields. It's the biggest thing we can do so we don't have to witness the horror of seeing nothing but gray on the enemy Trist's HP bar when you're playing a diver especially.

  2. Limit/remove shield stacking. This is kind of an alternative/addition to #1.

  3. Add a decay factor when shielding ALLIES so that timing is actually paid attention to rather than having a meta where Janna shield has 100% uptime (every supp item at this point pretty much gives CDR). The concept is similar to item 3053 but a less rapid decay perhaps.

  4. Limit shield power when the champion being shielded has a numbers advantage in champions. This is a better way to encourage diving rather than slapping item 3193 on JarvanIV and saying go nuts.

What we SHOULDN'T do:

  1. Add an item/mastery that provides shield piercing. Then we'd have a lot of balancing issues if we made the item 3123 of shield champs. I don't even want to start with how bad it feels being stuck building item 3140 vs. Malzahar or item 3123 vs. Soraka because build path is your counterplay. We can't all make use of the stats those items give optimally, don't like burning a slot, and don't like sinking multiple kills worth of gold into a fix for these shields.

I don't want to get in a discussion about the meta in general but in higher MMR, when the AD knows how to position better and utilize the dozens of peel tools available to them, it turns into "whichever botlane wins lane wins the game" and the rest of the players get to feel like sacks of shit getting dragged to victory/defeat. That's why I'm even bringing this up.

What do you guys think? What's the best way to address this shielding problem?

8 Comments

Teridax688/30/2017, 6:23:24 AM3 votes

I think there are currently four core problems with shields as they are implemented:

  1. Item-based shields are too common: Bloodthirster and Locket of the Iron Solari are both very popular picks, and those items alone are enough to add a lot of shielding to team comps. BT at this point I feel could just provide bonus health, as it would functionally achieve the same purpose, and Locket I think needs to be made much more niche, as currently it's often picked on full-on tanks, and not just tank supports.
  2. Too much support scaling goes into shields: The main culprit here is the bonus healing/shielding passive on a lot of support items, which has made their shields far larger than before. Additionally, there's also currently the Stoneplate + Locket combo, which hinges on the fact that Stoneplate's bonus health gets severely abusive whenever it interacts with health scalings (at this rate its bonus health should probably itself get turned into a personal shield instead). Supports need to at least be given the option of scaling into other forms of power, namely offensive utility and abilities that enable aggressive plays, instead of being almost always forced to bolster their defensive effects.
  3. Supports too often have easy shielding in their kits: This kind of goes with point number 2, but a recurring issue with many supports, particularly old-school enchanters, is that many of their kits feature at least one healing or shielding effect (often both). In addition, this shielding generally tends to be on-demand and ultra-reliable, contributing to defenses that ultimately don't give much room for interaction. Some supports I think could have their protection toned down in favor of more offensive utility (Lulu in particular I think is just a few tweaks away from being an incredible offensive enchanter), and some need to have their kits looked at so that their protection entails legitimate interaction with their teammates and with their opponents.
  4. Shields are often boring and uninteractive: Currently, the most common type of shield lasts 4+ seconds and gives practically no incentive to be broken, other than the beneficiary usually being a high-priority target like the marksman. It is difficult to make this kind of shielding even more boring and less interactive than it currently is, because in practice these shields mostly function like an extra health bar, rather than a well-timed barrier against a particular instance of damage. At one point there was a move to tie secondary bonuses to the shield staying up, giving players an incentive to break the shield in order to disable that power early (Janna, Sion and Skarner all have this mechanic), yet for some reason that idea has not been applied to many shields, such as Lulu's E and Pix, FotM's own shield and its explosion, Karma's E and its bonus movement speed, and so on. Many of these shields need to have their durations slashed, and shields with effects attached should, as a standard, lose those effects when the shield breaks. This alone will not make all of these shields as interactive as they need to be, but it could at least go a long way in doing so.

Right now, I think we're in a particularly bad state for shields, precisely because we're in a meta that heavily favors marksmen piling on damage and personal defenses, on top of having even more shields stacked onto them via support abilities, support items, tanks buying the Stoneplate + Locket combo, etc. Making shields less overbearing and more interactive could help improve the situation, but we also need to change this meta so that more offensive options get picked, instead of items that provide healing or shielding. I personally oppose imposing caps on general mechanics because those tend to feel neither clear nor particularly fun, and usually tend to act as a band-aid to effects that themselves are in fundamental need of improvement. Perhaps shields could function like slows, and only the strongest shield would remain on any given champion, but even then it's not a perfect parallel to slows, as shields often carry additional effects and are closer to heals in how they're meant to negate damage, whereas CC in general isn't meant to overlap.

RavenMagus8/30/2017, 6:11:50 AM2 votes

Add an item/mastery that provides shield piercing.

I was going to suggest it, but you make a really good point, honestly.

What if shield piercing was simply a part of some champion kits, esp. assassins? i.e. Shadow Kayn passive could provide shield piercing for a few seconds, or Talon's bleed could pierce shields, or... something along those lines?

Critmaster Garen8/30/2017, 4:11:17 AM1 votes

just limit the shield stacking.

when youre affected by multiple shields, only the largest shield applies at a time.

the worst they can do is add an anti-shield mechanic to the game and fuck up shields just like healing vs. grievous wounds is always fucked up in some way.

Ahri Body Pillow8/30/2017, 4:06:17 AM1 votes

Just nerf locket

Fairyfleur8/30/2017, 4:07:00 AM1 votes

If need be, all they need to do is lower the duration but buff the power of the shield, so that good players are rewarded for using them at opportune times. This would help a lot with champions like Janna , but I'm not sure what to do with item 3190 item 3193 , if not the same thing.

Pommel Knight8/30/2017, 8:33:34 AM1 votes

Make shields have very small base values and the rest into % bonus hp. This way adcs wont benefit as much and might push bruisers bot.

PokladnicaZla8/30/2017, 10:38:31 AM1 votes

Why aren't shields shorter in duration like 2-3 seconds?