I'm surprised nobody's talking about shields.

ModCaptainMårvelous·May 15, 2017·3 votes·396 views

Nothing feels worse than seeing 50-75% of an enemy's lifebar turn white because of a Lulu/Ori/Ivern comp. It doesn't help that it also makes them even harder to kill because most supports who have shields use windspeakers. Not to mention the only counters are either to:

A: Wait it out (Which is almost impossible in a teamfight)
B: Deal about 1.5-2x the damage you expected to do (lul)

Can we have some sort of shield counter? Maybe make it so shields don't stack as well? It'd just be nice to not have to worry about such strong defensive abilities.

And no: Nerfing shields doesn't mean damage has to stay the way it is.

6 Comments

FooDangMay 15, 20171 votes

{quoted}

A: Wait it out (Which is almost impossible in a teamfight)

Why is it impossible?

IMPblackbeltMay 15, 20171 votes

If a good team wants to fight, they're going to get a fight unless you have the right disengage tools. A strong shield team usually consists of some combination of Lulu, Karma, Ivern, Orianna, and Janna, and most of those champions have some of the best disengage tools, so you'd either have to counterpick to deal with it or take the fights when they engage on you or get engaged on. Most of those shields are also on a reasonable cooldown, outside of the item-based shields, so you're constantly trying to chew through one or two thousand white health in a fight while they hold you down for their carry between various forms of crowd control.

The counterplay as things stand is either counterpicking, which isn't always easy or possible (you'd have to know they're going for a shield comp in champ select), build pure damage to blow a target up (which leaves you open to CC if your team doesn't have some form of cleanse), or just rely on picks (and a smart team will eventually deny you that and just make you fight them as five).

SalronMay 15, 20172 votes

If the enemy has more than 1 shielding champion + Lockets, they can simply rotate shield cooldowns nonstop with maxed out CDR For example:

Lulu E has a duration of 6s, it has a 10s CD With 45% CDR, it has a 5.5s CD There is 0 downtime on this spell You cannot "wait it out" lategame

And if you try to engage, you'll be hit with a locket/redemption combo + her ult

Ivern's triggerseed lasts 2s, but has an 8s CD With 45% CDR, it has a 4.5s CD You'd have 2.5s there to capitalize on that CD

But if you go in?

Locket/redemption. By the time you cut through the healing/shielding from that(very unlikely), his E is back up

There is no counterplay to shields lategame You cannot wait them out, and you cannot reduce them in any way

Tell me How do you kill the enemy team with those items they have? https://puu.sh/vucD2/937a6b2f17.png 3 Lockets 3 Redemptions And Ori's shield to top it off

It's a very real issue in the game that people like to write off as "assassin main tears xd" when it fucks over anyone trying to kill anything

ModCaptainMårvelousMay 15, 20171 votes

To add to this, most assassin burst is now either delayed (Deathmark, Talon's bleed, Fizz W proc, etc) so it makes it even easier to rotate a shield out. Block the application, wait two seconds, shield to avoid further damage.

IMPblackbeltMay 15, 20171 votes

I've been thinking about this a lot, as well. The first response always feels like, "Well, let's nerf shields," but that doesn't solve the underlying problem. There aren't enough actual counterplay elements to shields other than pure damage, but most shield-based champions have solid disruption tools (Lulu polymorph/slow, Karma slow/root, Orianna shockwave, Janna being Janna) on top of the number of support items that offer shields, as well.

Why not offer itemization options? A shield-breaker item would be a very interesting way to offer meaningful counterplay to a heavily defensive team comp that you would need to opt into, as opposed to simply toning down shield power and shifting the entire meta all over again. You could even make it multi-capable by designing it as a potentially hybrid item:

Spirit Crusher Haunting Guise + Serrated Dirk + combine cost = 3000-3200 gold

250 health 25 Attack Damage 25 Ability Power

+10 Lethality Passive: Unique - Eyes of Pain: +15 Magic Penetration Active: Unique - Shieldbreak: For the next 6 seconds, you deal 10% bonus true damage against shielded champions that bypasses all shields.

It might just be an idea, but I feel like there needs to be some sort of itemization to counter the huge shield meta happening right now, because honestly, nerfing shields just make something else huge and OP.

SalronMay 16, 20171 votes