I think a big issue for tanks is having 0 rune choice

Moody P··50 votes·14,977 views

I've been debating over how to frame this topic between the tank angle or just outright saying that I don't think keystones should have any damage ratio at all, but since the idea relates to tanks mostly anyway I think I'll go from this one.

Tanks have almost no variety between which primary tree they're allowed to take because of how the Resolve tree is set up. They have a little more wiggle room with their secondary options but Resolve primary is basically mandatory. You can take Grasp or Aftershock in your lane and maybe Guardian as a support. But the first two dont really give tanks the versatility of rune selection that could help them opt into better laning, because both of them require that you get into melee to use them meaningfully, while fighters have a rune that directly counters one of them.

For contrast, on my usual champions, I have at least 3 pages with keystones in different trees that I can opt into. Illaoi has one in all five trees that she can use well. Juggernauts probably have more versatility in Runes Resorted than any other class, and it does a lot to improve their viability that I don't think I'm vocal enough about appreciating. I can choose what I want on a per game basis and I am rewarded for using the system smartly.

A big part of this comes down to scaling. Keystones are a pretty big driver of damage creep not just because they add so much base damage, but also because they scale so well. This actually hurts the variety of choice more than it helps; because tanks are completely barred from non-Resolve choices due to not having the damage to make them valuable after ten minutes, while simultaneously losing too much in durability because they didn't run Resolve primary(which is another topic I'll cover later). You couldn't really justify, for instance, taking Comet on Ornn against a ranged champion so you have better odds of winning a poke war, because a big part of Comets value is in the scaling. The only time this wasn't true is when a poke spell on a tank is completely out of line and extra damage just adds insult to injury, like Sions E.

To me, keystones should be a lot more minor, with their power mostly being in an early game contribution and then your items taking the main focus. Removing their ratios would actually open them up a lot to a lot more champions, in my opinion, because there's less of an opportunity cost in what you're missing out on. And tanks, particularly solo lane tanks, would benefit massively from that sort of change.

60 Comments

arowin24220 votes

compared to S5 tanks tank nowadays look more like S5 bruiser (medium tankiness, good sustained damage and good splitpush) rather than S5 tanks (nearly unkillable, good CC, debuffs, damage meant to poke in lane or clear waves/camps.)

the general balance of the game has gone completely out of whack and needs to be reeled in. removing runes could be a good step, as it would show blatant overtuned / overpowered champs. items too have been powercreeped.

CDR used to be an support/tank stat. bruisers build some HP and good sustained damage (old trinity gave 10% CDR, steraks and titanic didn't exist yet) if you wanted more CDR, you had to sacrifice damage or other utility in order to attain it.

i can go on but allot of things are not right now, when playing sion with item 3748 anditem 3053 becomes better than item 3068 anditem 3194 you know something is going horribly wrong.

That's all.

Xavanic4 votes

{quoted}

compared to S5 tanks tank nowadays look more like S5 bruiser (medium tankiness, good sustained damage and good splitpush) rather than S5 tanks (nearly unkillable, good CC, debuffs, damage meant to poke in lane or clear waves/camps.)

the general balance of the game has gone completely out of whack and needs to be reeled in. removing runes could be a good step, as it would show blatant overtuned / overpowered champs. items too have been powercreeped.

CDR used to be an support/tank stat. bruisers build some HP and good sustained damage (old trinity gave 10% CDR, steraks and titanic didn't exist yet) if you wanted more CDR, you had to sacrifice damage or other utility in order to attain it.

i can go on but allot of things are not right now, when playing sion with item 3748 anditem 3053 becomes better than item 3068 anditem 3194 you know something is going horribly wrong.

That's all.

This is because tanks don't help speed up the game...riot wants games to be ending at 15 - 20 min....since it means they can get more attention on the lcs....as so long as the lcs remains popular their bringing in tons of revenue...this is why nearly all the runes give tons of dmg or utility but very limited survivability

arowin24212 votes

correct, tanks are meant to be frontlining in teamfigths, helping his teammates by CC'ing, debuffing and tanking CC or damage. however game accelerators like Herald, towerplates, rageblade, spear of shojin, ludens ect. make this pointless. games are already decided far before the actual team fights start.

older LCS games had team running comps that could ensure that they either won lanes and won the game trough a snowball, or a comp to stall the game and attain late-game power. top lane was mostly a pick/skill match ups, nothing important was there except the lane so junglers would be making play mid or bot or where content with farming and scaling up.

since riot's takeover by tencent the game has been getting progressively faster - which keep in mind - might not be such a bad thing. only they have been contiguously sacrificing fun gameplay elements or champion diversity for faster games, which was achievable through buffing overall damage. - keep in mind that in Asian game marketing flashy plays and big damage are preferred over slower gameplay and skirmishes -

which leads us to league current meta: and why i find playing treeline to be more enjoyable (games can last LONG, comebacks exists, interesting champ picks are viable as are off-meta builds)

That's all.

TheMythHimself2 votes

{quoted}

correct, tanks are meant to be frontlining in teamfigths, helping his teammates by CC'ing, debuffing and tanking CC or damage. however game accelerators like Herald, towerplates, rageblade, spear of shojin, ludens ect. make this pointless. games are already decided far before the actual team fights start.

older LCS games had team running comps that could ensure that they either won lanes and won the game trough a snowball, or a comp to stall the game and attain late-game power. top lane was mostly a pick/skill match ups, nothing important was there except the lane so junglers would be making play mid or bot or where content with farming and scaling up.

since riot's takeover by tencent the game has been getting progressively faster - which keep in mind - might not be such a bad thing. only they have been contiguously sacrificing fun gameplay elements or champion diversity for faster games, which was achievable through buffing overall damage. - keep in mind that in Asian game marketing flashy plays and big damage are preferred over slower gameplay and skirmishes -

which leads us to league current meta: and why i find playing treeline to be more enjoyable (games can last LONG, comebacks exists, interesting champ picks are viable as are off-meta builds)

That's all.

Riot was taken over by tencent in season 4 lmao, and before that, tencent owned a majority of riot games anyways. The staff in charge for maintaining the game did not change, so tencent owning riot was not a factor at all because they dont balance the game. Anyways, back in the earlier seasons. People ABSOLUTELY HATED the top lane meta back then, right now things are Much MUCH more chill, bruisers were the single most useless thing in the game for the longest time, since they literally had no lane to fit in (and this was especially present in season 7, after the new runes rework) tanks were just so much more of a better option taking top that you would never see ANYONE from pro play taking bruisers at all, games were stale and boring as hell, tanks right now are in a great spot, and it should be kept that way, making them much more fatter is just a big no no.

arowin2422 votes

riot's being taken over by tencent influenced executive decisions, and therefore general game direction. and also balance.

bruiser before season 5 had Atma's impaler which combined with item 3078 gave 40% crit and AD scaling on HP built. this made the metagolem a thing, which to this day remains one of the strongest builds ever. only in preseason 5 did atma's get removed and bruiser where left with little cohesion in their build.

until the release of item 3748 anditem 3053 tough juggernauts dominated that patch, bruisers suddenly got 2 strong items to built into. The 5.22 patch changed item 3057 to no longer give AP but mana instead, fixing mana issues somewhat and adding on CDR - a rare stat beforehand.

as for top lane meta's it was like season 1: sustain, season 2: METAGOLEM but became a moscow5 related meta in late season 2, preseason 3: LEAGUE OF CLEAVER, season 3: elixers season 4: trundle/shyvanna/renekton holy trinity. season 5: hypertank/cinderhulk

correct me if i am wrong but out of all of these only season 2 and 5 (to a degree) seems likeable. and season 2 favored bruises champs like irelia, jax, nasus, yorick, garen, darius. ect.

bruisers have never been favored in proplay due to their nature to stick to splitpushing and skirmishes. teamfightting is key in proplay, bruiser's do not really have a spot in that.

That's all

ArtumisPrime1 votes

Tencent bought a majority stake in RIOT in 2011, season 1.

I also disagree with some of your assessments of what each meta was.

Season 3 was heavily assassin based. Those were the days when you would see people like Faker pick an assassin every single game (FAKER WHAT WAS THAT Zed play was during S3), and blow up the support. I also do not believe this was the League of Cleaver era. I am fairly certain (like 99.9% sure) that was after its changes in season 5.

arowin2421 votes

League of cleaver was in effect during the first preseason 3 patch - it had AD HP CDR combinded with %armor shred and flat armor pen. The league of cleaver lasted only a single patch so like 2 weaks.

And yes season 3 had a assasins meta whoever my reply is based on the top lane meta, which at the time revolved around the op elixers(could be bought at level 1 and gave insane boosts)

Huh tencent has owned a majority from S1 onwards? Well you learn something new everday i guess.

That's all.

ArtumisPrime1 votes

Ah. I missed the part where you said "top lane meta" in your other post.

Can't argue with any of your distinctions then.

As for the Tencent acquisition, yes. It was a majority stake in 2011, then they bought the remaining shares for complete ownership in 2015.

arowin2421 votes

no problem man,

and yeah the complete ownership change in 2015 was noticeable with the ekko's launch, and the infamous juggernaut and 5.22 patches. i personally think that 2015 was the point that league's quality took a big dip.

That's all.

ArtumisPrime1 votes

I completely agree that it started to be noticed in season 5. However, the game was still fun during this season. It wasn't until the keystone additions in season 6 that the game REALLY started to spiral downwards IMO.

After the changes to the talent trees in WoW, the very next expansion after Ghostcrawler took over, I attribute the entirety of the rune/mastery changes to that dude, rather than Tencent's acquisition.

arowin2421 votes

yeah season 5 was fun, running around as an 6000HP sion, with 200+amror and MR was hilarious. (eating 1500 damage nidalee spears however, not so much.)

lets not begin talking about whom did what. season 6 masteries where fun, but horribly unbalanced, this combined with various reworks and the preseason 6 patch (5.22) made for a bad game state. this trend has continued on, and will continue on if PBE changes are anything to talk about.

currently some runes massively favour certain types of champions or playstyles or in general have too much synergy with some build. this causes that only about 40 out of the 140+ champs are actually viable. increasing variety would be a good step to take in order to improve league's situation.

That's all.

ArtumisPrime1 votes

To be fair, I don't know if it's actually Ghostcrawler's fault or not. I don't work at RIOT, and can't say whose fault it truly is with any certainty. What I said above is still my belief regardless. We need not discuss this further.

It's true that runes reforged synergize too well with specific champions while leaving others weak. My main problem with them lies elsewhere--the raw power they provide, and how damage focused they are.

Current keystones give roughly the power of a champion passive, while minor runes give incredibly significant bonuses as well. On paper this isn't necessarily a negative, however when coupled with the minor runes it's just too much power.

I had a brutal experience the other day where I didn't put a single rune in one of my trees and was defaulted to Glacial Augment Inspiration primary with Resolve secondary on Vel'Koz. The difference between that and how it normally feels to play the champion is simply staggering.

Way too much power in runes ATM.

arowin2421 votes

absolutely, another problem is that keystones aren't anywhere NEAR the same power level as each other, same goes for minor runes / stat runes.

per example: why use fleet footwork when you can abuse lethal tempo on AA champs and conqueror on melee's or PTA on on-hit champs / early bullying. the attack speed rune is so good, just about any champ wants it (unless they use AP)

little runes are also too important, things like biscuit, manaflow band, TRIUMPH.

these are just a few, runes like future's market, approach velocity, overheal, presence of mind, unfliching are all VERY powerful, but others are simply more applicable / grant more direct power, which is preferred over actual good utility.

and there we are: utility, what runes actually should be. the rune + mastery system before season 6 where merely small stat increments to help farming, get a bit of CDR on champs whom usually dont buy it. get more tanky early. ect. (or ofc the now-infamous 1% crit rune)

playing with incorrect runes puts you at a disadvantage GREATER than playing without runes in season 5 did. this is ridiculous: the power budget for each champ has gone completely out of control which allows champs with enough tools in their kits to abuse things to degree's that where never intended to be exploited that way.

i look forward to discussing with you possibilities to balance current runes instead of straight up removing them: that would have to be the last option.

That's all.

ArtumisPrime1 votes

i look forward to discussing with you possibilities to balance current runes instead of straight up removing them: that would have to be the last option.

I think there are other, larger problems that need to be addressed before this is even possible.

For example, the imbalance in gold efficiency between offensive and defensive items. Tank items have been nerfed far, far too much--tons of HP removed, lots of armor/MR removed, stronger items (FoN) removed entirely. This has happened while damage items have been buffed, and purely defensive items have been given offensive power (Banshee's, GA, etc.) Fixing this would be the first step. From there, see where the chips fall.

Another massive undertaking would be readjusting the power of champions as a whole with runes reforged in mind. As in "Garen would love to take Conqueror or Aftershock, but doesn't have any real way to use these runes. How can we fix this?" I have no ideas for how to fix that, it's just an example.

Unfortunately, in recent years I have lost all faith in RIOT to even be able to achieve this. When a problem champion arises, they have a bad tendency to dance around what the actual problem is, and nerf other things repeatedly...only to eventually nerf/remove the root cause, and leave the champion in a dumpstered state. Akali is an excellent example of this. She's still good in pro play, but is awful in solo queue because of this exact mentality.

After taking care of these two gigantic factors, it would simply be a matter of moving power around within the runes themselves. IMO, hopefully lowering overall damage in the process. I'm not a fan of the current TTK. Killing someone or dying in less than 2s feels bad on both sides. But, some people like it. So, subjectively, I would prefer lowered damage. In that vein, I do believe nerfing the damage of runes slowly over time could potentially balance them...but only if the other two things are done first.

Without taking steps to fix the underlying problems in the game, I don't think they can be balanced, and would have to be outright removed. It might make for a better game overall. After all, runes reforged were created under the guise of having "more interesting choices" but really there are very few actual choices. The power in runes reforged have created far too many optimal situations.

arowin2421 votes

good wording and yes those are real problems that the game is facing, just like older champs (teemo, garen, wukong, ect.) needing some desperate work in order to make them better to play as / against.

unfortunately it seems that the underlying problems are just amplified by the current rune system, this and riot repeated showing of only caring about the pro scene has made a great disconnect between riot and the actual customers.

per example: previous week a VERY interesting document was posted on the boards, an 80-page long powerpoint about possible balance changes to non-summoners rift gamemodes. this document had tons of possible changes that would breath new life into those game modes, pulling in more players and attention towards this game in general. here's the link

these changes are revolutionary, but they will most likely never see the light of the day, much to my shame to admit it: riot does not care about both treeline and dominion any more.

as for the 2 elephants in the room as to speak of them: the first is a problem that ties into the game state in general, if defensive items are more effective than offensive, games will last too long, due to unkillable tank sitting in front of a tower and making it impossible to take. alternatively (and what we see now) have more effectiveness in offensive power / diverting defensive into offence makes games too quick: matches are effectively decided before they start, or the moment first blood is taken.

offensive being better then defensive also leads to champions with more tools in there kit (riven,akali, irelia) being highly contested picks because they can exploit offensive items in different ways. other champs such as garen might have stronger individual tools, but lacks flexibility to do anything meaningful with them. Riot's disability to address this factor is blatant.

despite that even RIOT is forced to rip out tools from champion's kit: akali lost her heal and is about to lose true stealth, irelia lost her disarm and total dmg reduction AND shield-breaker. despite that they are STILL viable and contested picks! which leads to the question: was removing those mechanics a solution? NO!

for every mechanic they remove they shift power also back into the kit, by buffing stats, damages, ratios ect. these champs are consistently problems in balancing, and if they stay will continue to get nerfed to, indeed end up so bad that not even their OP mechanics will save them.

this is also where there is a disconnect between new and old riot: about a month or so ago riot released their nerf/buff scheme: it was completely based on winrates. now take this quote form late-season 4 riot:

We bet nobody saw this coming.

Warwick's popularity (and subsequent insanity in the win rate department, even though we don't like using win rate as a statistic because it's loaded with so many other variables but let's not get into that) is a perfect storm of changes to preseason systems, the jungle, and the latent powers within his kit. We all know Warwick should be lowered a peg (or two. or five.), so we've decided to focus on Hunter's Call and Infinite Duress.

We're going to be monitoring Warwick heavily to see if we need to go harder, but we're confident this reduces his power enough that you might actually be able to compete with him in games. 60%. Never forget. Now let's not talk about win rates again (seriously though, win rates are a correlation of game health, not a cause).

end quote. (this was a quote on a heavy nerf on old WW, reducing ult damage by 100 each rank and reducing his E duration by 4 seconds.)

i think this speaks for itself.

ArtumisPrime1 votes

RIOT has actually been majority owned by Tencent since 2011, season 1.

Ralanr1 votes

How do turret plats accelerate the game?

njrk975 votes

{quoted}

How do turret plats accelerate the game?

Multiple Payouts of Gold early game if you can bully a target out of lane (Or hey screw that just run demolish and get those free plates while they are sitting under it), you get more gold so more items, so you can push ahead more so your opponents have to leave more giving you more turrets plates to get even more gold, to push even harder so by First turret your ahead by a huge margin in terms of gold so you can snowball even harder and blah blah everything becomes Aram mid and its all the same BS we have dealt with since Runes Reforged. Keeping in mind of course that Turrets still only tickle you and have the strength of Tin Foil so even a single back post 5 minutes can cost you 3 plates in one go, or the entire Turret if you got killed by a gank and the jungler hangs around.

Turret plating was never intended to be anything but more snowball fuel, because League of Snowball has been the name of the game for the last 2 seasons.

arowin2422 votes

correct, each plate is worth 160 gold so destroying the turret before 14 minutes gives a total of 160x5 = 800 gold in plates alone, combined with first turret it will give about 1200 gold the equivalant of 60 CS (calculating 20 gold per CS)

this fuels snowballing or get a scaling champion closer to its goals. using herald to get the plates makes it even easier: there is almost no way the enemy team can rotate in time to defend the turret.

That's all.

DuskDaUmbreon3 votes

Damn, dude, are you trying to hit the minimum word count of an essay with buzzwords alone?

Xavanic2 votes

{quoted}

Damn, dude, are you trying to hit the minimum word count of an essay with buzzwords alone?

what? what the fuck are buzzwords?

Leetri3 votes

Words that are meant to sell a product/argument or to build hype. They sound important so it makes simple people buy into your argument and makes it look like you know what you're talking about. Roadmap, immersive, 4K, ray tracing, gluten free, millennial, etc. Those are common buzzwords you'll see everywhere. On the league boards, common buzzwords are (but are not limited to): LC$, revenue, hyper mobile, int, damage meta, Tencent, oneshot, true damage, community. Want to sound more important? Complain about how Tencent has forced a true damage oneshot meta with hyper mobile assassins meant to push LC$ to increase revenue. Doesn't even have to be related to your topic, just tack that on and people will agree with you because it sounds smart.

TheMythHimself1 votes

{quoted}

what? what the fuck are buzzwords?

Words that are popular on the internet, for example the word "abuse". The league community loves using that word for everything that's viable, if someone's using an item or a skill or a champion the way it's intended, some people like to say they're "abusing" that specific item skill etc.

Xavanic1 votes

{quoted}

Words that are popular on the internet, for example the word "abuse". The league community loves using that word for everything that's viable, if someone's using an item or a skill or a champion the way it's intended, some people like to say they're "abusing" that specific item skill etc.

that's dumb....i only brought up the lcs in my post as that's what riots balancing the game around, to make lcs more interesting....otherwise tanks would be 3-4 times harder to kill while doing 40% of the dmg they currently do (legit, full tank malphite can nearly 1 shot squishies with his current dmg, including...wait for it..................yasuo...the champ everyone seems to cry about)

TheMythHimself3 votes

{quoted}

compared to S5 tanks tank nowadays look more like S5 bruiser (medium tankiness, good sustained damage and good splitpush) rather than S5 tanks (nearly unkillable, good CC, debuffs, damage meant to poke in lane or clear waves/camps.)

the general balance of the game has gone completely out of whack and needs to be reeled in. removing runes could be a good step, as it would show blatant overtuned / overpowered champs. items too have been powercreeped.

CDR used to be an support/tank stat. bruisers build some HP and good sustained damage (old trinity gave 10% CDR, steraks and titanic didn't exist yet) if you wanted more CDR, you had to sacrifice damage or other utility in order to attain it.

i can go on but allot of things are not right now, when playing sion with item 3748 anditem 3053 becomes better than item 3068 anditem 3194 you know something is going horribly wrong.

That's all.

Hell fucking no, do you have any idea how strong tanks were in S5? People ABSOLUTELY HATED the top lane meta back then, right now things are Much MUCH more chill, bruisers were the single most useless thing in the game for the longest time, since they literally had no lane to fit in, tanks were just so much more of a better option taking top that you would never see ANYONE from pro play taking bruisers at all, games were stale and boring as hell, tanks right now are in a great spot, and it should be kept that way, maybe bring some more versatility in there but making them absolute fat monsters is going to be a terrible choice.

Lovelle4 votes

I rather enjoyed S5. Easily my favorite season after S2. Both defensive masteries and itemization were sooo good.

Trundle I could actually be tanky without ulting someone, and became practically immortal late game, since literally everyone was tankier.

Exin01 votes

{quoted}

compared to S5 tanks tank nowadays look more like S5 bruiser (medium tankiness, good sustained damage and good splitpush) rather than S5 tanks (nearly unkillable, good CC, debuffs, damage meant to poke in lane or clear waves/camps.)

the general balance of the game has gone completely out of whack and needs to be reeled in. removing runes could be a good step, as it would show blatant overtuned / overpowered champs. items too have been powercreeped.

CDR used to be an support/tank stat. bruisers build some HP and good sustained damage (old trinity gave 10% CDR, steraks and titanic didn't exist yet) if you wanted more CDR, you had to sacrifice damage or other utility in order to attain it.

i can go on but allot of things are not right now, when playing sion with item 3748 anditem 3053 becomes better than item 3068 anditem 3194 you know something is going horribly wrong.

That's all.

I dont thing that tanks have good sustained damage and splitpush but i digress. Even without nerfing tanks will be outclassed by juggernauts, class buffs, anti tank rune, same tankiness, better damage up to burst levels, better target access there is no brainer.

arowin2421 votes

while its true that juggernauts beat tank in splitpushing and damage levels, mobility and target access remain points which tanks WILL outclass juggernauts at just about every turn, which leads to their teamfighting prowess. tanks also have access to %hp damage, which helps to push the wave and demolish can often take 1/3 - 1/2 of a towers hp around mid-late game.

and no tank do not have that good sustained damage, its more like ,small burst 2-4 seconds downtime, small burst. ect until thye can all-in you. tank can also kite pretty well due to their CC.

bruisers in season 5 where also like this - using trinity procs and crits (because trinity still gave crit back then) to either all-in to trade a bit until they can all-in (season 5 is where buisers where generally speaking at their weakest tough.)

but yeah, currently there are only a few tank considered playable, and a few as counters to some champs / mechanics (like how poppy kinda counters mobility) but their inability to remain in a fight for an extended period renders them almost useless as a disrupter who stay in the enemy lines and are a threat due to CC or debuffs.

That's all.

Exin01 votes

{quoted}

while its true that juggernauts beat tank in splitpushing and damage levels, mobility and target access remain points which tanks WILL outclass juggernauts at just about every turn, which leads to their teamfighting prowess. tanks also have access to %hp damage, which helps to push the wave and demolish can often take 1/3 - 1/2 of a towers hp around mid-late game.

and no tank do not have that good sustained damage, its more like ,small burst 2-4 seconds downtime, small burst. ect until thye can all-in you. tank can also kite pretty well due to their CC.

bruisers in season 5 where also like this - using trinity procs and crits (because trinity still gave crit back then) to either all-in to trade a bit until they can all-in (season 5 is where buisers where generally speaking at their weakest tough.)

but yeah, currently there are only a few tank considered playable, and a few as counters to some champs / mechanics (like how poppy kinda counters mobility) but their inability to remain in a fight for an extended period renders them almost useless as a disrupter who stay in the enemy lines and are a threat due to CC or debuffs.

That's all.

There are some tanks with good cc and some are with poor cc thats why ocasionaly you get amumu or seju in jungle, good for ambush catch but they are not played in solo lane. Rest is practicaly not touched and if so players opt for full damage bursty builds trying to be wanabee juggernauts. There is nothing in their kits nor nieche to fill for people to pick them and its sad that someone like malphite is reduced to walking full AP ult to be relevant in game.

ADC Yuumi8 votes

I don't want to be that guy, but as of late; tanks almost never take thing from the Resolve tree.

I've seen people going electrocute much more often on tanks, and bruisers have been seen taking aftershock.

Moody P5 votes

Can you show me that match? I don't really watch competitive so I must have missed the shift.

Karoloooo7 votes

Actually electrocute rune is viable on Sion. Hitting an enemy with 'e' + minion counts as 2 abilities, and 'q' one ability....so you can proc electrocute with 'e' (+ minion) +'q'...just with 2 abilities. You can add in 'Cheap shot' to deal even more damage. This rune tree is only good vs enemies with no mobility and a matchup where you need damage, like vs a Nasus or Mundo. And with the last runes of the Domination tree you can either decrease your ult which is very nice or decrease items cdr, which is my favourite because I use a lot of active items on Sion, support items, slows, depends.

Glacial augment is another good rune.

But to your point I agree the resolve tree is absolute dogshit for tanks. Font of life, shield bash, over growth, revitalize, conditioning are very under powered runes. Demolish is an overpowered and toxic rune.

DuskDaUmbreon3 votes

Just Sion? Or other tanks as well?

Karoloooo1 votes

I only play Sion recently, don't know about the rest and prob they don't use electrocute.

flibitydoo1 votes

Galio when he was played mid/top, if you looked up any rune pages for him on sites like opgg or championgg, aftershock was the most popular, but this weird electrocute keystone build was the highest winrate+second most popular rune page.

I've never taken that keystone myself, but I can only assume it works since galio's natural trading combo involves E->passive->w->q->passive which is plenty for triggering electrocute (and obviously it works well with aftershock too).

Beerstein1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Moody P,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=TrLacBkA,comment-id=00000000,timestamp=2019-07-13T10:52:40.104+0000)

Can you show me that match? I don't really watch competitive so I must have missed the shift.

Look up top amumu players, they rarely take Aftershock.

Beerstein4 votes

TBH people called riot out on the lack of defense and jungler options the day rune reforged was released.

Tahminatrix 4 votes

That and they nerfed the resolve tree to make it "more usable for other classes" without nerfing other trees to make it more usable for tanks. (im not suggesting this I just think it would be funny if riot did that)

Example Overgrowth got changed from % to base, making it pretty crappy on tanks who build hp, even with that single % max health spike that they kept

I still don't see other classes taking that rune btw...

Ofc they are still keeping aftershock in its current state, even though the only tanks it helps are A the ones that can only cc 1 or 2 people, B Ones who have a tendency to die faster than any other tank in the game. Or C are not building full tank and are building damage items.

FlameHalbrdOkido1 votes

Nerfing or changing a tree dedicated to defense...so that non- defense dedicated champions can use it is the most shoehorned/dumb/backwards thing I've ever heard. If u wanna have some defense and use the defense tree... then play a defense champ and don't ruin it for those that do, instead deal with being squishy bc that's the type of champ u decided 2 play. If this is really what happened I'll be really annoyed

Linna Excel4 votes

TBH I think riot should just toss the rune system out of the window. You aren't wrong in that tanks don't have the right runes despite being a class, but if you think about it, klepto still exists despite being too good on a handful of champs. So Ezreal gets a rune just for him, but an entire class is screwed over.

BigFBear3 votes

That's so fucking true. In every row there are 2 hardcore niche runes. As jungle tank you have only one option per row.

Pika Fox2 votes

Comet is a good tank rune choice as well, so your only option isnt "just resolve".

Crashyy6 votes

Comet is bad on tanks because it's not supposed to be for them. The rest of the runes in the Sorcery tree aren't good for tanks either.

Sire Hippington1 votes

Comet is bad on tanks because it's not supposed to be for them

That's a rather stupid argument. Comet is bad on them cause it scales poorly without ad/ap past the early lane. It doesn't matter if it's 'supposed' to be for them.

The rest of the runes in the Sorcery tree aren't good for tanks either.

I disagree, more mana is quite usefull for many of them, some of them benefit alot from the ms after ult, the CDR is quite nice and frees up your built, Waterwalking is supprisingly good for roams and objective controll, and scorch isn't bad as it's all base damage and doesn't need ap/ad to scale.

Lovelle2 votes

Hardly any of the Resolve runes scale well into late game, which kinda sucks seeing as they aren't that strong early game to make up for this. Ranged casters seem to make better use of the Resolve tree than the champs it was intended for.

I don't think the game will ever be balanced until either keystones or %based penetration are removed. One of them has to go for tank itemization to actually scale well.

Adcs wouldn't be hurt by this change, since they would do tons of damage late game regardless. They didn't need %pen in S2, and they definitely don't need it now

Sire Hippington1 votes

They didn't need %pen in S2, and they definitely don't need it now

...i don't think you played in S2, did you? LW with 40%oen was THE core item for any ad-champ, and it wasn't a big issue as tanks were tuned around that and raw damage overall was lower, especailly from non adc sources. Supports would barly scratch tanks, same for other tanks, and mages had actuall CDs so they tried to get them on high priority targets rather than the tanks, leaving mostly bruisers and adc as threats for them.

Now we have supports like pike executeing them at ~20%hp, mages are a dps class and tanks them self all have %hp damage to hurt each other ontop of adc doing even more damage while tanks have less effective itemisation.

Crescent Dusk2 votes

Runes have jackshit to do with it.

The issue is bruisers and fighters have similar survival in lane to you if not better and better damage, which means they can zone you off xp and CS all lane long and set you back by as much as 1-2 items.

And since ADC's have been buffed to all hell back again because they cried about mages in their lane, tanks are getting melted not only by bruisers and AD assassins with BC+LDR, but the ADC's and the likes of Yi, Udyr, etc.

And in the rare circumstance where tank stats matter again, Trundle will become meta and make tanks feel terrible if they don't ban him anyways.

Tanks need to feel like actual tanks and they need to be able to stay relevant in CS and xp without buffing their damage.

Honestly, armor pen should not exist for any champs but ADC's, and % health damage items like BoRK need to be deleted.

Wacky92 votes

%health damage should be designed like QSS: it exists, but only on items that are so crappy the only value they offer is %health damage. I still think people should have to itemize against tanks, I just think that in order to do so, they should make some sacrifices.

Crescent Dusk1 votes

{quoted}

%health damage should be designed like QSS: it exists, but only on items that are so crappy the only value they offer is %health damage. I still think people should have to itemize against tanks, I just think that in order to do so, they should make some sacrifices.

I'm of the mindset that archetypes matter, and only ADC's and specialized bruisers should be disposing of tanks in TF.

When a Zed can treat a Poppy on full armor items like butter with BC+LDR and just with BC alone negate any armor a caster or ADC will have, that's just busted.

Assassins should never be 1v1'ing tanks, period. And building armor should matter and not be completely trivialized by 2 items.

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