I'll say it again. Tanks should have debuffs

Moody P··4 votes·1,698 views

This is a win-win for everyone.

  • Tanks gain more levers to balance with and won't need ridiculous amounts of base damage and/or CC disables to be useful to a team or worth picking at all. More levers is good, right?

  • Tanks would be less reliant on absurd numbers advantages to win, which is more of a soloQ problem but still highly relevant since we are all soloQ players here.

  • The purpose of a tank and the way the class is defined can be given more distinction from bruisers now that the modern bruiser is gaining more utility in the form of CC.

  • Damage creep reduced twofold; firstly because tanks can have their own damage reduced, second because they can directly reduce the damage enemies can do without the binary of "stunlock them or lose;"

  • Lower frustration vs tanks if obnoxious one man stunlocking is replaced with debuffing+some disables.

  • Off the above, snowball champions and soloQ powerhouses can be balanced better; now that the game is less "instakill before you're chain CCd and obliterated " we can 100% justify making Rengar's 0.2s delete button fuck off from the game and Darius wouldn't need obscene amounts of AD just to function.

  • Nigh infinite application; debuffs can impact literally anything you want them to. Literally free champion design.

  • Tank items having similar qualities of weakening opponents is also perfectly acceptable.

Typing on a phone is hard so I condensed it into individual points. I'm sure I can come up with more the next time I post this.

5 Comments

Saevum2 votes

[{quoted}](name=Moody P,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=LyfG3954,comment-id=,timestamp=2019-02-03T01:11:40.899+0000)

  • Tank items having similar qualities of weakening opponents is also perfectly acceptable.

You mean, like auras maybe?

kingDeDeDarius1 votes

Auras too, auras and single target, and aoe abilities. Anything really. Like for instance, for some time I've though it would be cool if Darius applied damage reduction to enemy champs by like 1-2% per stack (kind of like crippling them) and 5 stacks it jumps to 15 or 20%. In return some of his recent buffs could be removed (or whatever would need balancing). This would accomplish a few things, first Darius has utility to team besides pull, and purpose besides just damage. Second it would reduce total damage, third Darius would be able to fulfill fantasy of surviving and dunking once he reaches 5 stacks (because a champ that has to work that hard to get in range and stack just to be relevant should be rewarded and be able to beat scaling champs and kiting champs once he meets both of those conditions). Similar approaches could be taken on other champs like voli, alistar, etc, without fundamentally changing their kits a ton.

Saevum1 votes

JarvanIV has a slow aoe tied to his W. If we ever would tackle this idea of aoe extra aura cc, it would need to be a barely noticeable passive debuff otherwise I wouldnt vote for it. This is the closest example thing we have for Auras, even though is not an aura.

Now, about a stacking debuff, we have Braum as an example. This debuff (his passive) leads to a stun once requirements are met. And again, i wouldnt vote for this if the champion that we are tweaking already has a massive impact when his requirements are met. An example of this is Darius which can stack up with 5 bleeds everything that a good flash + Q can grasp after his passive has been triggered. And not only that, Black Cleaver also synergizes too well with it too.

kingDeDeDarius1 votes

Like I see your point, but darius's whole identity is A) stacking B) getting stronger throughout fight C) weakening and wearing down his opponent. Sadly the last aspect isn't well built up. I'm open to compensating nerfs for Darius, I just want him to be something other than an easily kited and counterplay Ed champ who only offers damage and a pull. I want him to have that debuff, along with his Q having delay removed after level 11 so he feels right. Afterall, it was only added to give him counterplay in lane, he's not even top tier lane bully anymore, so I feel his identity may as well shift to being decent scaling champ. Like I say though, he would need some nerfs too or else he would be straight up OP af.

kingDeDeDarius1 votes

I've been trying to suggest this concept for some time now, and really hope riot considers it, basically for the same reason you mention. I miss Darius having his attack speed debuff on W, but it wouldn't have to be that, like you say debuffs can be anything. Total damage, ap, ad, As, base damages, grievous wounds, blinds, CDs, etc. It would allow damage to be high, but allow sufficient counters to said damage and, as you say allow tanks to be useful without absurd base damages since champs like irelia and Jax have as much cc as many tanks.

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