When would you build defense on a damage-oriented champion?

Solo Q Memes·Feb 23, 2019·1 votes·1,496 views

If you play a damage scaling champion, where basically the core build type would be damage, under which situation would you build defensively?

Would you build defensively based on the type of team you are going against? Or would you build defensively only if you are falling behind? Does that mean that you are dying, or that your team is behind in general, but not you specifically? Even if you yourself are falling behind, and losing the lane, would you build defensively early or later into the game? Because you could always just play it safer in lane I guess.

I am just curious, I am trying to optimize my builds. I play Wukong, but I think this is more of a general question than anything else.

5 Comments

The thigh guyFeb 23, 20192 votes

Never. Because defense is worthless now. The only defense that is acceptable is more offense.

Kai GuyFeb 23, 20192 votes

When I don't enjoy being 1 shot by a champion on the other team. Note, I am counting items like item 3102 item 3157 item 3026 As defensive items.

Solo Q MemesFeb 23, 20191 votes

That seems valid, I think those are perfect defensive items in this meta. You can't afford to not have damage in your build I think. For me the defensive items would be item 3156 item 3053 item 3800 item 3814 item 3143

SaezioFeb 23, 20192 votes

When behind, never buy defence. It will never outscale the opponent's already superior offence. Just go all in on damage and try to surprise them.

When you are far enough ahead and can afford it it is nice to dip into a GA or a MAW just to make sure you don't give up that 1000g bounty without a fight.

BoatwhistleFeb 23, 20191 votes

What champion, what defense, and what enemy? Vs a high cc team comp tenacity/cleanses are imperative for everyone, an ADC can get away with not getting such IF the support builds a michaels crucible... How ever if we are talking cc galore then a quick silver sash or merc treads simply cant be a mistake. If the enemy builds full AD or full AP then the counter resistance becomes as efficient as it can get so each team member buying 1 resist heavy item can practically make team fights fool proof. If I am playing a very assassin susceptible champion and they have more then 1 bursty champ then I will not hesitate to build the appropriate dmg/resist item asap. If you are playing a dmg heavy champion though, odds are you are only useful to your team dealing dmg, so you wanna try to build only a necessary amount of defense as yeah sure you wanna survive but if you aren't dealing dmg then your team will not thrive in fights effectively being down a half a champ or more. You aren't like a support or tank where you can make it up with cc nor would you even likely have abilities to synergize with tank stats.

Just remember what ever champion you are using you need to know what your job is and build on a fine line of "what will make me more effective at this job" and "What is necessary to allow me to do this job". You don't wanna be greedy and build full dmg but playing anymore safe then you have to is a waste and can make you lose games just as easily.