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A response on bruisers being in need of buffs

The Cane Master·11/19/2017, 1:06:55 AM·22 votes·3,466 views
Quick Gameplay Thoughts: November 17

In the given link, Riot Meddler said:

> {quoted}

Possible Champ Buffs Riven, Darius, Camille All are bruisers struggling in the new ecosystem, in particular because attack speed's not so valuable on them so Precision keystones are less applicable. Possible other candidates should also be considered here, also possible there's a missing rune needed to support some of these champs. Or that buffing them in general and letting them pick from a wider range of runes is the better call.

I can't speak in terms of all bruisers (classified as Fighters), but I have already posted regarding the whole subclass of Juggernauts being underpowered throughout the whole Season 7 i.e. Juggernauts having no meta champions (excluding Chogath for many reasons). So as Darius was mentioned, I feel like Yorick and Urgot are in no need of buffs, however others' problems are covered in the following wall of text:

1. CC creep being too high

Added to omnipresent damage creep, this is the biggest issue of Juggernauts. Big majority of these have no dashes, innate mobility (mov. speed steroids), and no hard CC (with exception of Riot's favorite Darius ). This means they all get CC-ed for days until they reach the backline, and by then they are too low to do anything. There in comes tenacity as a rescue, right? Wrong. Displacement effects (pulls, knockups) knockbacks), supressions, immobilizations(Amumu ult), ground Cassiopeia W) and terrain interactions Anivia AzirCassiopeiaTaliyah Yorick Trundle are not affected by tenacity. That being said, Riot recently released many such champions Galio Rakan , Ornn ,Kayn , Ivern Taliyah ), which alongside Aatrox Blitzcrank Chogath Fizz Gragas JarvanIV Kalista Kled Maokai Nautilus Poppy Singed Sion TahmKench Thresh Tristana RekSai Riven Velkoz Vi Volibear MonkeyKing XinZhao Yasuo Zac Ziggs Zyra make the complete list of champion against which Juggernauts just can't do much against to free from the chain CC. And if you take a look at how scary this becomes do, see EDG-SKT 9:0 with 10k gold lead into clean ace for SKT. This is not balanced, and hurts Juggernauts the most, as they are fully immobile and even with 100% tenacity it doesn't help as much. Therefore I would like to see a Jugernaut item that gives immunity to displacement effects for X seconds. Or even an ability, for example Nasus ' ult could grant immunity to displacement effect, he has no mobility nor dashes nor hard CC, after he eats all slows, stuns, snares, silences, polymorphs and finally reaches melee range of the backline (the only effective range), it's not fair that a little Yordle like Tristana can use her mini cannonball to shoot the big raid boss 1000 range back, nullify all that work done and reset the torture (which she can again prolong with W). Furthermore, maybe tenacity should affect all forms of cc, it's not like tenacity options are plenty and viable. Or maybe tenacity should stack additively (and not multiplicatively), at least it would help against original forms of CC, which's effects are actually lowered by this stat.

2. Shielding way too strong

This is already a known issue, Riot said they are working on lowering the power of Janna Lulu item 3190 overlapping and granting full immunity to death even with perfect initiation. To me, one way of fixing this is disallowing shield overalapping, so that supports need to have proper timing when using shielding (and not mashing all the keys on the low target as fast as possible).

3. Mobility creep too high

We can all agree that from Season 5 onwards, dashes and movement speed steroids have become omnipresent so this too doesn't help the cause either. Paired with cc and shielding creep, it's clear where from the inspiration for the topic appeared.

**4. The most common item being Morellonomicon item 3165 **

The passive reads: UNIQUE: Dealing magic damage to an enemy champion below 35% health inflicts Grievous Wounds icon Grievous Wounds to them for 8 seconds. I don't see how and why Riot decided to grant this to the item, it's not like there is a problem with sustain in mid lane, and if Vladimir ever becomes an issue again, one could always bring summoner 14 or item 3123. This is the same thing that's happening with Galio right now, Riot tried overcompensating for a nerf and fucked up the overall balance of the game. Again, I don't see the reason for existence of this passive other than shitting on Juggernauts, most of which rely on lifesteal as their form of durability.

5. Meta being too teamfight centric

Needless to say, the bonus gold for first turrets only emhpasized the importance of gangbangs of bot lane (4v2 or even 5v2) that became the staple of competitive LoL. That being said, Juggernauts are better duelists than teamfighters, it would help if Riot incentivized playing around top side of the map more (other than stupid Rift Herald). Drakes became way more important and Baron buff is like a holy grail that whichever team gets wins the game (if the game is even or close ofc). With point no1 (CC Creep being too high), engaging becomes way easier these days, mid-late game all revolves around aram-ing and setting up that wombo combo, against which Juggernauts have no defense nor contribution to. This way top lane revolves all around utility, which makes like it as a secondary support role, which isn't what these champions are about. Oh and of course, damage is not lacking at all nowadays, so there is no need from top to contribute to that category, thus Juggernauts serve no purpose.

I'm sure there are minor factors that contribute to the topic as well, however these are major transparent points with which I want to raise the issue.

101 Comments

Tychusfindlay91811/19/2017, 2:01:18 AM23 votes

Mostly good, but the drivel against darius was moronic.

"Riot's favorite" is sitting at 46% wr on a good day with POTENTIAL buffs on the way while nasus literally gets super hard buffed in his ult form.

"Darius the only jugg with hard cc" biased load of croc. You seem to be forgetting about udyr, urgot, shyvana, volibear, and trundle to a lesser extent.

The fact that you defend executioners and mortal reminder over morellonomicon is INSANE. Execs and its more powerful counterpart have been fucking juggernauts way harder because they dont have any requirements beyond just smack people with any kind of physical dmg. At least morello requires you to be 35% hp or below. Juggernauts would benefit greatly if mortal reminder was straight up removed (not that it should be btw).

Other than those gripes, your post is fine and pretty spot on. But your seeming dislike for darius ought to be noted and ridiculed.

Also, your post was 100% silent on brambles vest which fucks juggernauts alongside fiora btw.

Trap or a Trick11/19/2017, 3:02:56 AM10 votes

If Darius was riot's favorite he wouldn't be in such a shitty state for such a long time :/

GigglesO11/19/2017, 6:50:42 AM4 votes

[{quoted}](name=The Cane Master,realm=EUW,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=TKJ26Big,comment-id=,timestamp=2017-11-19T01:06:55.032+0000)

I'm sure there are minor factors that contribute to the topic as well, however these are major transparent points with which I want to raise the issue.

High mobility, high CC, high damage all destroy juggernauts/bruisers...

Void Baboon RF11/19/2017, 3:55:57 PM3 votes

I love how that one riven player on riot's balance team managed to worm her into there like she's a bruiser or in need of buffs

what a joke

AirKingNeo11/19/2017, 3:30:11 AM3 votes

bramble vest

hehe

"OUTSKILLED!"

Troll for Trump11/19/2017, 10:22:14 AM3 votes

Morello's isn't near as much of an issue as bramble and executioner's. I'd be willing to say morello's isn't even necessarily a hard counter. If you're below 20% hp as a juggernaut, you're probably screwed anyways. The grev wounds on morello's is to prevent adcs from lifestealing their way out of burst.

In addition, there tend to be a lot less AP champs top, especially those that take morello.

Runes are bad for many juggernauts because there isn't anything that they can slot into really well

Teridax6811/19/2017, 7:18:21 PM3 votes

I agree with most of this, and I think it's also worth mentioning that damage creep also plays a large part in negatively affecting the viability of juggernauts. As a class, juggernauts are meant to have durability on par with tanks, but are also meant to output damage instead of major crowd control. However, when tanky champions take too much damage in the time it takes for them to approach their targets, they can't really have much of an impact on fights. Tanks can usually still do okay because many of them have dashes and/or ranged CC, but juggernauts really have to walk up to their opponents most of the time, and if they can get killed just within that interval, let alone mid-fight, there's nothing they can really do. As you also mentioned, Juggernauts are meant to be prime contributors in damage, but when many other classes can output comparable damage far more reliably, they don't really have a place in team comps.

I also think the major culprit behind a lot of this feature creep, namely CC and mobility creep, is CDR creep: a few seasons ago, cooldown reduction was a much rarer stat, to the point where pretty much only supports could reliably afford to max out on it. Mages, tanks and marksmen all had to make major tradeoffs for the stat, and had more successful builds that incorporated little to no CDR at all. This was already a time where juggernauts were struggling, because even with this kind of setup, they often still got kited too hard. Now, though, pretty much any class can easily max out on CDR, and it's even become difficult to avoid building the stat, particularly when items like Zhonya's and Morellonomicon are essential to most mage builds. Whereas damage at least always had a tradeoff between raw strength and uptime, gapclosers and hard CC have no way to scale except with CDR, so with this also came a massive increase in kiting power. At a time where most melee champions struggle against ranged opponents, it is no surprise then that juggernauts struggle the hardest.

Beyond that, though, I think one of the biggest setbacks for juggernauts is that Riot still thinks of defenses as meant to be ultra-reliable and easy to apply, whereas most forms of offense (besides ranged autoattacks) have become progressively more difficult to land. As with the example of Tristana, whereas a juggernaut has to soak up a ton of damage just to be able to get to her, she can just press two buttons and instantly create 2000 units of distance between her and her opponent. She's not the only one able to do this kind of thing, and in the end this has created an environment where ranged champions often have multiple tools to save themselves if they mess up (i.e. if they let someone get within melee range of them), but where most melee champions don't have those fallback options, particularly since they often get killed even when they play fine (e.g. when they have to go into the enemy team to fight, and get mowed down within seconds). This is a point in Riot's design philosophy that is still tremendously muddy, and that has remained unresolved for years, which is also why melee classes still find themselves in weird balance and design spots.

Elkington11/22/2017, 10:18:25 PM2 votes

I think they should buff runes for bruisers first before directly buffing Riven and Darius. Darius in particular has a history of lording over the entire bruiser line when he's strong. Even now, Darius is still one of the more reliable bruisers, whereas most of them are always niche picks at best.

Mimr11/20/2017, 12:16:48 AM2 votes

Easiest solution would be to simply let tenacity reduce the duration of ALL forms of CC. I don't think it's that hard to let knockup duration and distance scale (or rather, de-scale) with tenacity code-wise.

Mordepool11/20/2017, 2:46:25 AM2 votes

Riot Hire this person

Nefas11/19/2017, 4:18:42 PM2 votes

Grevious Wounds exists on Morello because Mages need some way of keeping people they’ve bursted to stay down. We can argue about whether the threshold is too high and it definitely could be. But cooldowns mean mages lack sustained, highly reliable DPS that ADCs have, so if they use a combo on someone and that person survives, the combo still needs to have done something when the cooldowns come off again. Health and sustain are natural counters to mages as it is; they need something to ensure that getting someone low will be meaningful.