FEAR NOT, THERE IS A TLDR AT THE BOTTOM

I opted to create a new thread because I believe this particular point warrants discussion, as I wanted to go over the origins of damage creep (which is starting to take roll in GP&B and other league related forums, so to prevent uneducated bandwagoning I wanted to create a conversation that isn't limited to one or two pages in an unrelated thread.)

Most of our core problems in today's league is because of damage creep.

Before I continue, I want to establish some basic definitions. I know these are pretty obvious for veterans but through the context of my thread I want to make sure it's very clear what class of champions I am talking about.

Damage creep (or any other type of, 'x' creep) is where over the course of a game's lifetime, certain older aspects become outdated because game designers are pressured to create more unique experiences. This results in every new champions/cards/characters/abilities/items etc (throughout many different game genres, particularly notable in trading card games) being relatively more powerful than the last to some extent.

Tanks very durable champions that deal moderate to low damage but have high utility and generally CC. They often have defensive steroids and may or may not have mobility. This class of champion is often confused with Bruiser/Fighters because they are often tanky, but typically build 1-2 damage items then go straight tank. The primary difference is that Tanks provide disruption and that is their main purpose, not diving enemy carries. Examples: Sejuani, Malphite, Maokai, etc.

Fighters relatively durable champions that tend to reside Top lane. Their job is provide DPS and to dive enemy carries, in order to do so they have to have enough base damage and tankiness in order to successfully dive teams. Their primary weakness is mobility, but not all fighters share this weakness; Typically, mobility is inversely proportional to durability. The more mobile, the less durable. Fighters specialize in sustained damage. Fighters that are behind (and then typically lack either the defenses or damage to kill enemy carries) are normally relegated to peeling instead of diving, as they have enough damage or CC to help prevent other fighters or tanks from disrupting their backline.

Juggernauts are a subset of Fighters. The reason they have an entirely different section is simple, the juggernaut update. Riot wanted to make Fighters and Juggernauts more distinct, so they added various Juggernaut items (most notably Dead Man's plate and revamped Black Cleaver) and slightly to moderately reworked a number of champions. Their goal was that Juggernauts' main weakness was their ability to close onto an enemy team; but once they got there (paid the price however so, flash, team ulti, etc) they thrived in the middle of combat, outputting large amounts of damage and taking significant punishment. The way they implemented this (juggernaut items) contributes to the overall problem of damage creep.

Here's a good video by Extra Credits about power creep in general, useful to watch as it helps bring this thread into perspective.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bxszx60ZwGw

Onto the good stuff

In all of League's history, there have been many, many, many balance changes. Whole seasons worth. This helps keep the game fresh. The only problem with this, is that Riot has always preferred to buff weaker champions instead of gutting strong ones. Nerfs are issued all the time, but Riot normally tries to tackle an issue first by solving the underlying problems as to why that champion is so dominant. Typically these are additions of new items (or changes to items) or nerfs of a particular class or champion that kept that subset at bay. In early Season 5, Akali was extremely powerful because ADCs were extremely strong, and many of them had just been reworked (or still incredibly dominant as the case of Kalista) and were exceptionally mobile, so traditional assassins (who had fallen out of favor due to a very strong tank meta) were having difficulty killing the extremely powerful ADCs, so Akali rose to dominance. Her damage and reliability against highly mobile champions were unmatched, she was pick/ban until her range and reliability (the very reason she was picked) was nerfed.

That's just one example of the reason that certain champs rise and fall, but ultimately the primary balance lever that Riot utilizes is damage increases. Over the course of six seasons, champions deal way more damage than they used to, relatively to the ability for tanks to shrug off damage. In season 1 or two, a full tank shen could run most of the way from spawn to spawn while being pummeled by 5 people before finally dying. Now, he's lucky to last 5 seconds. If he's behind, he will be melted just as quick as a fed adc melts raptors, and with equal mercy.

Why is this a problem? Well, it's because damage has increased across the board. Once you're behind, you will never, bar few exceptions, match the enemies damage, the only way to come back is to catch someone out and force even fights because of that critical mistake. The reason that's the case is because base damage has increased and when I mean, base damage, I don't necessarily just mean the literal base damage of abilities. Just the damage that you'd expect any ability with part of or an entire core (not particularly fed, just on-track with reaching powerspikes at X time.) This being the case, damage items beyond the first (due to Juggernaut update, items with health and or other forms of durability, having also damage components) are incredibly strong, because you deal more damage than the enemy while also being simultaneously tankier than them, making it very hard for them to kill you. This just becomes even worse because when you're behind, you're not on-track to hit your power spike, so you take longer to reach a point that's already inferior.

So to truly understand damage creep, you have to understand tank creep. When S1 and S2 was around, again, tanks were fucking impossible to kill. The reason that Vayne was SO dominant is that because late game, she had the mobility and the raw damage to guarantee that she could punch through the enemies tanks. And as anyone that's high elo or has decent game knowledge should know, the team that wins a teamfight is the team whose tanks last longer (barring certain exceptions like carries being caught out and immediately killed) because they can peel for the backline to prevent their deaths so they can deal damage. So Vayne was strong late, but exceptionally weak early. This is a perfectly fine design decision and provides meaningful gameplay choices because if you opt to play late game, you should suffer verses early game bullies like Caitlyn. Well, then everything gets switched on its head. Vayne's late game gets nerfed because the base damage on her W let her kill squishies (which was there to help mitigate her crap early game) to help emphasize her late, except her late wasn't there anymore because she simply wasn't as effective as she used to be, and with moderate nerfs to tanks (introduction of the first iteration of black cleaver, improved last whisper, etc) she didn't warrant the weak laning phase.

This rose a problem with tanks still being hard to kill because certain release valves, like Vayne with % HP damage, to counter tanks building massive durability and being unkillable (while being fun for the tank, is really retarded for the enemy team to deal with) were gone. So they started to add those valves artificially back into the game. They added Botrk, Liandrys, etc. Various forms of % HP damage on champion abilities and on items, all to try and curb out the major problem; people were tanking too much and stalling games too hard. In my opinion, this is okay game design because all % HP damage does is help guarantee that you have certain contribution, granted it's not taken too far.

All of these things came together to obliterate tanks. They could no longer tank entire enemy teams due to the HP and resistances shred. And that's ok, except it left fighters in a really awkward state because they didn't have the damage to kill the carries in their now more-restricted time frame. Instead of 20-30 seconds, you have 5 seconds. Max. Fighters with few exceptions start falling out of favor, and in comes the league of assassins, in order to counter the insane damage of ADCs (who were that powerful in the first place in an attempt to kill tanks, (starting to make sense now?) but now instead of shredding tanks they were also OBLITERATING squishies which prompted the assassin meta.)

This is where the god-tier junglers of Kha, Lee, and J4 come into play. They were AD, so they had excellent clears, early pressure, and most importantly could snowball both top and bottom lane. Top so that if your top is ahead they could kill the enemy ADC, and bot so that if your ADC is ahead he can delete the entire enemy team. Yada Yada, and eventually Tanks had to rise again in order to peel for Carries (which they couldn't, because they felt like shit to play because they were completely outclassed in damage and ability to clear the jg) so enter Cinderhulk. Just about everyone knows what shit that started. Sej was buffed to include %HP damage and ran rampant, tanks started to delete squishies, etc. And the cycle continued, eventually culminating in the jugger update where damage items included HP.

OK, ENOUGH HISTORY PLEASE GET TO THE POINT / TLDR PLS

Alright alright. The problem with league at the moment is that damage items are inseparable from tank stats. Most bruiser/damage items include health of some kind. ADCs get lifesteal and a shield from BT, Tanks and bruisers and certain bullshit cigar-missing ADCs get health and damage from jugger items, etc. Basically, all of the high-ticket items that deal a lot of damage increase health to some degree to help counter that tanks deal fuckloads of damage now due to those jugger items in and of itself. This leads to the problem that when you're ahead, you're simultaneously building defense and offense, which is fucking bullshit. Damage creep has occurred mostly due to Riot's policy of buffing instead of nerfing and wanting for explosive games that are good for LCS viewership.

SOLUTION

Reduce damage across the board by about 20%. Rework items so that their focus is on defense or offense. If they are for both, then both need to be significantly weaker than items of that budget that focuses on one. (This is why rylais is broken.) ADCs should have to take time to kill tanks. Tanks should not be dealing much damage at all except to jungle or minions. They need to have DISRUPTION, not damage, be their primary way of engaging or peeling. Fighters need sustained damage, not burst. Reduce penetration of bonus defenses. Tanks stacking defenses should fucking mean something, and ADCs should not be able to have 2-3 tank items and still be capable of deleting people.

Thanks for reading. let me know what you think below.

EDIT: Okay, so numerically speaking (as in number of instances) Riot has tended to nerf more than buff. But what I meant to say (but will not edit for the sake of clarity) was that the impact of previous damage increases/buffs was much greater than that of nerfs. This leads to a slow but steady upward trend.