In response to the Frozen Mallet thread

Please take the time to read all of this, I worked pretty hard on it and would greatly appreciate constructive responses.

The reason I made this thread is because I'm tired of typing wall of text responses saying basically the same thing over and over when I can just plaster it on an actual thread. Malicious, I'm pretty disappointed that you would demonize already hated champions further and not respect their playstyle and why they would want this item. I don't really have an opinion on you as a person but I am greatly against the way you presented your topic.

Riot has said this about Frozen Mallet in patch 6.18:

Frozen Mallet’s the kind of item that often seems less effective than it is, thanks to an odd mix of stats only a select few champions really want. That said, seeing some of those performers come to light (Gnar and Tank Yasuo being at the forefront) has shown how powerful the item can be in the hands of our stickier fighters. As a result, we're shifting its statline to favor more defense than offense to align better with the item’s identity. **Mallet should be a strong (if occasional) pickup for when you want to opt-in to more of a disruptive role, rather than when you want to kill your opponents faster. **

In other words, surprise surprise, the item is meant to be good for something! And yet people want it to be unusable for ranged. Guys, look at who is building this item often:

https://na.op.gg/champion/gnar/statistics/top https://na.op.gg/champion/teemo/statistics/top https://na.op.gg/champion/kennen/statistics/top https://na.op.gg/champion/shyvana/statistics/jungle

Everyone else either builds it situationally (which means rarely at this point for Mallet) or consider the item complete garbage after its constant nerfspree. Champions want usable stats AND a usable effect. Riot did not intend for champions like Yasuo to be using it offensively. The item was made to overcome a gigantic lack of team utility, which holds true even for Gnar seeing as his Mini Form lacks hard CC. You should notice that Gnar is forced to build Mallet almost every single game practically in order to be useful to his team. It is a staple for on-hit Teemo which can be linked to Fervor of Battle usage more than the numbers shown per build. AP Kennen is dead currently so AD Kennen relies on this and is currently surviving based on the build. He is the only one that doesn't "need" Frozen Mallet, but that just makes the item situationally good rather than a "must buy." It doesn't change that he would want it if necessary.

It is an item, that does not provide a lot of intuitive gameplay and is most usually built in order to screw with immobile championsand/or melee champions while making the champions building it nigh-untouchable and inescapable.

This is false. If this item is core on a champion, they are either using it to easily land skillshots (the unhealthy interaction like Yasuo), or they are using it to be good with the team because their kit doesn't bring what a tank does despite being a top laner. These are not Fiora 2.0s and they do not suddenly do more damage than Quinn or Vayne, so they need to fall back onto defensive options for the majority of their games. These champions are also not unstoppable. Boots of Swiftness at its highest point completely prevented Frozen Mallet from ever being viable, and a Resolve mastery depletes the effectiveness further. For things like Kennen, Merc Treads is an all-in-one. He builds AD to at least make the Merc Treads lose value. It is also not strange for teams to run these champions down if they misplay, with long range artillery mages not having to worry about a 500 range enemy (less range in the case of Gnar). The bias for melee champions is huge and ignores how ADCs, 2v1's, etc. hold up. Lane strength is no longer the only thing that wins games unless it is severely oppressive.

And unlike the slow applies on every auto attack and isn't bound to hitting a spell, while also having more stats tied to it AND having a higher slow amount, DOUBLE that of rylais for melee champions.

That item was nerfed into the ground for being usable by nearly every mage in the game. And if you couldn't use it (i.e. Diana), your champion was considered garbage. Far from a good comparison to Mallet which has always been niche at best and seen rather small abuse cases in a handful of champions. Even in Season 3 the number of champions who used Mallet were limited.

With Mallet are some of the worst experiences to play against and Gnar in particular is being kept weak simply because he can really abuse the item to become the undisputed king of top lane whenever he's strong.

Is it the item, or is it the fact that he is a lane bully combined with everything a tank would ever want, making him a carry laner AND good teamfighter? :thinking:

Either way. You could say every bad matchup in the game feels like the worst experience ever. But then we'd be here all day making it so every champion is a wet noodle fight in their lane if we tried to fix that issue. Match-ups are important for determining skill too and the item costs 3100g. You have almost the entire laning phase to handle the champion before they ever get the item, and in cases like Gnar/Kennen, they want their damage items first typically because their base values are not enough to run people down.

Hell, even our favorite Weeb Samurai builds it, usually as his CORE, giving him even more sticking power.

The item is not core on Yasuo anymore and you can check op.gg or whatever site you wish to double check that. Not sure why you want to spread outdated information seeing as how people don't keep up with patch notes all the time. Just feels like blind Yasuo hate to get upvotes.

In fact, I think Mallet does provide these champions with a way to overcome their inherent weaknesses that they were balanced around like most of the ranged ones being weak to being collapsed on.

Oh I assure you, this item does not stop Sejuani or Fizz from landing ultimate on you and running you down under your tower. People who make this blind assumption have not played an ounce of the champions that use Mallet. Stormraider's Surge exists as well. Boots of Swiftness, literally a 900g item, was the primary counter to Frozen Mallet which is an item that costs over 3k. But no, the item is all-powerful right? Please do not put this item on a pedestal for doing its job which is giving pick opportunity/team utility on champions who are not tanks and cannot just call it up instantly.

So, isn't it about time to remove this item or at least rework it while finally being able to balance these champions around something that isn't a gimmicky item?

Why not play these champions and give actual suggestions instead of imply that we need suggestions? Politicians love to say "we need to fix this' and then DO NOTHING!

You spent the whole thread talking about how bad the item is due to its gimmick, did not reflect how these champions currently use it in an unhealthy way other than stopping melees in 1v1 and/or people who do not build / , ignored their negative match-ups but state that the gimmick should be removed because other champions find them to be a bad match-up (despite Frozen Mallet not being effective against ranged champions), and actually accomplished nothing on the information forefront of saying where these champions should be directed.

You've essentially demonized the item and the champions while giving them no defenses and no solutions either. You also spread outdated information too with mentioning Yasuo's usage of the item and misinformation through comparing a niche item like Mallet to Rylai's which was seen as core on many mages. Put some actual work and research into your topic toward the explanation and solution. I know you want the item to be handled but you gave literally nothing and suggested item removal of all things, which tends to only work for severe balance cases (DFG) or useless items (Atma's).

And to end this off:

The item is not balanced if you just gave it to every champion, melee or not, "situationally" just because they do not want to be kited. Every melee doesn't like being kited. Juggernauts are balanced around the idea that they can be kited, and unlike Darius, Garen, Skarner, and Mundo (the original Juggernaut), Shyvana has no hard OR soft CC on a basic ability. She only has a speed up and a gap closer locked into her ultimate, two things that allow to get easily kited in a gank and easily kited later into the game. She shares this issue with Teemo, she shares this issue with Kennen, and she shares this issue with Gnar. They all do not have easily accessible CC that can be used literally anywhere at any given time without blowing an ultimate, or in Gnar's case, accessing a very key point in time that the enemy can blatantly see in front of them.

If anyone wants to talk about the item's direction to allow advantageous usage of Frozen Mallet without it having so much consistent power, then let's talk about it. By all means I would like these champions to be more fun to play and Frozen Mallet really only helps sadists rather than encouraging outplays.