Riot should rethink their approach towards shields

And I'm talking about the temporary addition to your health bar, not the object held in front of you with the hope that this seeking to bestow violence upon you will be appeased by instead bestowing violence upon it.

Obviously a lot of players are frustrated by this shield-intensive support meta, but I think that's only one symptom of Riot's inconsistent and unconsidered approach towards how to incorporate shielding into League.

Let's start with tanks: When I play Nautilus or Sion, I want to press W when I'm going to take a lot of damage. I want to use my temporary, limited health bonus to absorb asany points of damage as it can before it disappears; and I want to feel like when I'm pressing it I'm thwarting those who would seek to harm me.

However, when I am incentivised to press W is when my opponent has finished unloading their damage, or otherwise is unable to damage me further. I am rewarded for sitting there and tanking as much as I can wothout my only real tank steroid before activating it. I am punished for using my shield to shield damage, and rewarded for carefully nurturing and protecting my damned defensive ability.

This is so insanely wrong. Imagine if Tristana's E did less damage as you auto-attack the target, to give them more tools to play around her. Imagine if Morgana's remaining Q duration went down every time she dealt damage to the victim. Imagine if Illaoi's E only slowed if the spirit expired naturally instead of getting beaten down. It punishes you for using the ability in a logical way, and rewards you for truly bizzare play.

As a side note, while Janna and Ivern are supoorts, everything in this section applies to them too. Morgana would fit in this category, but the on-demand utility in her E is way more important than the damage mitigation.

Malphite's passive makes a little more sense, but it still punishes you for trying to get as much value out of it as you can.

It would make so much more sense to punish your enemies for breaking your shield, to tie the effects to either the shield being popped or to extend them when it's popped (Naut would obviously need a duration nerf). I understand that the general idea was that it provoked aggro and Drew people to hit the tank, but it's so ludicrously easy for any damage class to break through these shields these days that what it mostly means is that past a certain point the abilities do nothing but shield. Reward tanks for taking damage (and timing their shields well) and let shields feel like a good tool to use when damage is incoming.

Now for supports: I already addressed how I think Ivern and Janna should be rewarded for using their shields to tank damage (instead of some complicated con that tries to "trick" enemies into negating their defensive ability by hitting it) but there's more too it.

Shields as they currently stand are a basic, fairly universal way for supports to do something "Support" with one of their abilities, usually with some utility or damage buff tied to them. This is fine, but I think the prevalence of shields has let them be watered down a bit. You see a lot of low cooldown, (relatively) high duration shields with massige uptime and (relatively) low low values. What this means is that either opponents have the raw damage to punch through shields, and they're worthless, or they don't,you and the target of the shielding is invincible. This is already how lifesteal and other heal largely works we don't need it for shields too. Shiels should protect from aggression, not poke.

I want support's shields to across the board be given longer cooldowns, shorter duration, and massively increased values. I don't want an assassin to jump in and say "ok gotta unload everything asap before I die so my team can fight the adc without shields for a second", I want them to dive in and say "Ok let's threaten the adc enough that the shields them, hold some of my burst, then unload when the shield wears off". Right now the counterplay to shielding is to unload as hard as you can into it, when it should be to hold your damage until it's gone. Locket already does this, which sounds good but because other shields are so refreshable it locks any aggression into a false choice where trying to wait out the shields doesn't work but neither does trying to burst them - and locket can be held until the refreshable shield has been popped, leaving it hard to bait out.

TL;DR gut shield durations but buff values and stick utility on the shield breaking/ending rather than on the shield durations itself.