how to build defense, properly?

Guilty TealTiger·1/11/2016, 2:06:37 PM·1 votes·856 views

so i am a smite player, and coming from smite. a game where it tells you up front. which gods/champions are physical damage and which are magical. so building around the enemy team's comp is quite easy and understandable.

but playing league i feel like i am just thrown into the jungle (ha, no pun intended) and have no idea. what defensive items to buy in SR. no matter what the enemy team comp i am always getting CHUCKED by atleast 2 people on their team (i play shen) if that matters

11 Comments

Kotex1/11/2016, 2:17:49 PM2 votes

That comes from learning what type/majority damage champions do which unfortunately is learned from time.

Read up on a few champions on the main site; there it will tell you specifically the type of damage those champions will do--physical or magical when looking at their abilities. Or you can just ask your teammates about who youre facing. Otherwise its something youll just need to learn overtime and remember as you go on.

Nanuk Pihoqahiak1/11/2016, 2:07:55 PM2 votes

Defense doesn't matter in this game as much as it does in Smite. I've played both and I can say tanks in Smite FEEL like tanks.

WiegrafOfValor1/11/2016, 2:14:32 PM1 votes

Defense is useless, except for few champions that are adapt to it.

Rammus Transform AR to AD and his sinergy with item 3075 Garen Huge HP sinergy + deal enough damage without items TahmKench Convert HP to damage, and has grey shield that scales with your HP DrMundo Huge tank with absurd R that scales well with HP + item 3065 Volibear Passive similar to Mundo's R, great HP sinergy with his damaging skills Shen HP sinergy, great CC and % damage reduction. Alistar Insta Tank with his R and Heal.

The rest you can try, but mostly you won't be happy with the result.

darkmatchwaldo1/11/2016, 2:22:43 PM1 votes

Build your resist items before your raw hp.

Abyssphere1/11/2016, 2:56:01 PM1 votes

Normally if you're able to tank a few people and the others are still hurting you a lot, it's down to one of two things:

The people who are hurting you are doing a lot better than the rest of their team, so they have more damage
You've focused very hard on preventing one type of damage, so people who do the other type of damage are hurting you much more comparitively

The best advice I can give is to make sure you don't skimp on health - while you really do need to get armour and magic resist too, getting health alongside your resistances means that you're getting at least some bulk against both damage types. For example, buying a Dead Man's Plate is something you'll do to prevent physical damage, but the 500 HP on that item will also be a big help against mages.

The most important thing to remember when building defensively is that physical damage is much more important to itemise against than magic damage, in almost every case. Largely one magic resist item (Banshee's Veil or Spirit Visage, plus possibly Mercury's Threads for your boots) will be all you need to deal with the enemy team's mages, but you'll want multiple slots dedicated to armour. This is because mages do a lot less damage than ADCs overall, so if you have enough health and MR to survive a mage's initial burst, then that's all you need. However, ADC damage never turns off so you need a TON of physical bulk to be able to tank them for sustained periods of time.

A typical build for a tank like Shen can look like: item 3111 item 3068 item 3742 item 3065 item 3143 item 3083 - this build gives you about 2800 HP, 155 armour (will be 160 next patch as Sunfire is getting buffed), 70 MR, 10% crit damage reduction and a ton of health regeneration. Combined with your runes + masteries and natural tankiness and you become extremely difficult to kill no matter what type of damage the enemy is doing with this build.

NoPaxt1/11/2016, 3:05:57 PM1 votes

Take your starting items, and go into lane. After the enemy champs have been sighted, you can hit [TAB] to see their inventory. It'll tell you how to build defense according to their composition. Mandatory Items item 3068 item 3065 Items that I Prefer item 3078 item 3009 That leaves me two slots. AD Heavy Teams (3 or more AD enemies) item 3742 item 3143 drop tirforce add item 3075 AP heavy (3 or more AP enemies) item 3102 (you'll still need some Armor)

Thund3r Ang3l1/11/2016, 4:22:57 PM1 votes

My Shenpai Build Shen Vs Ap Heavy : item 3111 item 3068 item 3065 item 3748 item 3102 item 3742 If You are Kinda Fed, You can Rush Titanic Hydra And Dont Build Sunfire Cape At All And Maybe Take A item 3091 Instead. It Steal Magic Resist From Your Target. You can drop the Benshee Veil for a item 3190 or a item 3060 If no one In your Team have the unique passive.

Vs Ad Heavy : item 3047 or item 3111 item 3068 item 3742 item 3078 item 3075 item 3748 Once again, you dont really need to buy sunfire cape every game, pretty much a standard item on shen, however, if you're ahead and have a early Titanic Hydra, you can drop the sunfire cape and pick a item 3153 if they have more than 1 tanky champion and Change the trinity for a spirit visage. item 3075 Is very good Vs AD But if they have many Crit reliant champion, you can take item 3143

I Love Titanic Hydra more than sunfire cape. Shen profite of the attack speed because of his passive and you become a real threat :) If you're behind or not rly rich early, you still want to build sunfire cape Tho.

You are The only tank in the team? Dont build damage. When im the only tank I tend to build Only Defensive Item With A bunch of Cooldown so I can spam My Taunt in a teamfight.

By The way, Shen deal hybrid damage but you build him more in a AD way with attack speed and A lot of HP and defense. You can put Some AP in his Rune page so his ult is Stronger and His Q poke Stronger aswell.

The Bearded Bard1/11/2016, 2:14:10 PM1 votes

Health's a good neutral defensive option. It'll work against both physical and magical damage. Idk what else to tell you, I've been playing this game since Season 1, so I kind of just know what kind of damage each champion is doing. Short of doing some research on the champions, you could just press tab and check what items they're building.