Bruiser's issue is that they don't have a niche, not that they can't compete with tanks or adcs

Zero Skill Tank··1 votes·1,864 views

A typical bruiser: - will have quite some bulk and utility, though not nearly as much as a tank - will have some mobility and burst, though not nearly as much as an assassin - will have quite some dueling power and DPS, though not nearly as much as a skirmisher

Do you see what I'm trying to say here? In any particualar scenario, a bruiser is a decent choice among melees, but it's is almost never a best choice - unless they are straight up broken and are the best choice all the time. Bruisers are basically a class designed to be screwed in a team game, because there is nothing they are really good at, and there can't be - without completely screwing the rest of the game - because there is nothing they are really bad at like other classes.

And I know that there are some immobile bruisers, but other then that they are really more of the same, I mean half of Darius mains say that he should be able to outduel anyone, and other half say he is supposed to be a teamfighting monster carry.

tl;dr conqueror is not a solution

9 Comments

The Ecdysiast1 votes

I was planning on starting my own thread about this, but the thing is Juggernauts ruin itemization for both bruisers and tanks. If tank items are strong enough, Darius and Garen can just build full defense and their base damage is enough for anything. And if fighter items are strong enough, they can just buy those and their kits' built in defense means they aren't subject to the downsides of not building full defense.

Moody P1 votes

Juggernauts don't ruin anything and haven't been particularly offensive with any items not "meant" for them; tank items are, indeed, meant for them, because they're meant to want to buy durability. Sterak's was designed explicitly for them and not Divers. Divers have provably been bigger troublemakers when it comes to taking items intended for other champions, whether you look at any point in time Lethality was a strong enough stat that burst-focused Divers turned into assassins, or J4/Kled/Renekton stealing Gargoyle's Stoneplate, or even right now with how they've basically hijacked Sterak's after the bonus AD change. If you wanted to complain about Juggernauts being annoying on full tank builds you should have listed Mundo and Olaf who warp into top tier champions all the way up the ladder as soon as defense is good enough for them to work.

their kits' built in defense

Darius does not have built in defense; nothing in his kit reduces damage he's going to take. Most juggernauts do not have superior innate defenses compared to a Diver or a Skirmisher, which is why they're incentivized to build heavier into defense and why their base damage is higher to compensate. Juggernauts generally rely on sustain to keep them alive, otherwise they might have a shield. Shyvana has barely any defenses at all. Garen is the odd one out with % damage reduction, which is compensated by him being Garen.

The Ecdysiast1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Moody P,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=VBu1sHNO,comment-id=00000000,timestamp=2019-01-19T02:26:55.592+0000)

Juggernauts don't ruin anything and haven't been particularly offensive with any items not "meant" for them; tank items are, indeed, meant for them, because they're meant to want to buy durability. Sterak's was designed explicitly for them and not Divers. Divers have provably been bigger troublemakers when it comes to taking items intended for other champions, whether you look at any point in time Lethality was a strong enough stat that burst-focused Divers turned into assassins, or J4/Kled/Renekton stealing Gargoyle's Stoneplate, or even right now with how they've basically hijacked Sterak's after the bonus AD change. If you wanted to complain about Juggernauts being annoying on full tank builds you should have listed Mundo and Olaf who warp into top tier champions all the way up the ladder as soon as defense is good enough for them to work.

Darius does not have built in defense; nothing in his kit reduces damage he's going to take. Most juggernauts do not have superior innate defenses compared to a Diver or a Skirmisher, which is why they're incentivized to build heavier into defense and why their base damage is higher to compensate. Juggernauts generally rely on sustain to keep them alive, otherwise they might have a shield. Shyvana has barely any defenses at all. Garen is the odd one out with % damage reduction, which is compensated by him being Garen.

That's backwards reasoning. No, tank items are not designed for them. In the same way that critical hit items are not designed for Tryndamere. They're mainly balanced and designed around the main class intended for them, with the smaller subclass abusing them because they can.

Juggernaut is not a class that belongs in a 5v5 team game. Just because they're described as raid bosses who are supposed to take more than one enemy to beat doesn't mean that that's fair to the enemies who now have to 3v4 the rest of the team.

And your comparison for divers isn't really suitable. When divers built lethality, it just made them into what many already had listed as secondary roles-- assassins. But when Darius, Garen, or Illaoi (who do have both higher innate defense, and the very high in-kit healing that you seem to not count as defense) build Trinity Force, they aren't sacrificing anything noticeable because their sustain is built-in. When they can instead build tank items, which haven't been strong for a year and a half now thanks to the Tank "Update", they have the reverse problem, as I said.

Aside from that, it isn't genuine to take the retroactive naming approach to what you call a juggernaut. Shyvanna is not a juggernaut, though she may be a beefy bruiser she lacks the common threads the actual juggernauts share. Plus, simply saying, "Garen is Garen so it's okay," doesn't mean anything.

Critmaster Garen1 votes

{quoted}

Juggernaut is not a class that belongs in a 5v5 team game. Just because they're described as raid bosses who are supposed to take more than one enemy to beat doesn't mean that that's fair to the enemies who now have to 3v4 the rest of the team.

its fair because they have an equal trade off in utitlity, mobility and target access.

champion power budget isnt just defined around offense and defense.

juggernauts are right now the most fair carry archetype in the game. their kits are designed around mechanics that have counterplay independent from the champion youre playing against them. illao? dodge her tentalces. garen? fight him in his cooldown windows. darius? dodge his q and rotate tanking him to drop his stacks and not let him reach 5.

plus, every class has access to slow items to be able to kite in and out of their threat range.

the fact that juggernauts are "too fair" is actually part of their problem, because it makes them unreliable compared to other carry types. why would you pick a carry with counterplay that can be outplayed when ahead, when you can pick one without or with very little?

marksmen are just designed around getting countered by champion picks, because their kits generally dont have counterplay themselves. how do you outplay vaynes w and q? or tristanas attack speed steroid? how do you outplay a 500 to 700 threat range on champions with mobility and target agnostic damage who literally ignore the fact that you built defense? you dont. you outpick them with assassins and divers but you need a specific champion type to fight them and not just a strategy dependent on the marksman.

this is why this game feels like shit to play for everyone when its centered around marksmen. either their counters can reliably take them down, and marksmen hate the game like they do right now, or their counters cant take them down because marksmen are too well protected and everyone else hates the game, because no one can deal with them and the game becomes better adc wins.

and before you start to argue, rioters have aknowledged and mentioned themsleves that marksmen are systematically overpowered.

Moody P1 votes

Yes, tank items are designed for them because they are designed to buy tank items. This has been true since the beginning of time and only changed when Riot started to jank with the items. Tryndamere is indeed designed around crit and crit is an intended stat for him to use; this only changed when Riot began altering the stat without him in consideration. Crit was not a stat only marksmen bought until Riot removed it from items like Ghostblade or took out of the game entirely (Atma's, SoTD).

Juggernauts do not force you to send multiple to deal with them unless you can't duel them. Even then most of them have very obvious counterplay of either avoiding delayed skillshots or kiting them, either until their buffs wear out or getting them off of their buff zones. They pretty much universally struggle into skirmishers and they have plenty of harder matchups into divers as well. Considering out-of-lane interactions control/waveclear mages are an easy counterpick against pretty much all of them from the mid lane. The only time you can't handle them 1on1 is if you've fed them, you don't understand their counterplay, or if you're a champion they're intended to counter -- which is mainly tanks.

But when Darius, Garen, or Illaoi (who do have both higher innate defense, and the very high in-kit healing that you seem to not count as defense) build Trinity Force

Trinity Force is not an 'offensive' item for these champions to buy. They still fit into the wide bruiser umbrella and have kits that clearly let them apply it to good effect. Why you would say this is abuse of an item is beyond me. Why is my comparison for divers not suitable? They've abused items from both ends when they are intended to be their 'own' class.

who do have both higher innate defense

Negligible base stat differences in the very late game are not what I would call higher innate defense in any way that matters. Comparing to recent Divers who I consider the standard other Divers will be updated and designed around, a Juggernaut being able to heal decently if they play well or the enemy plays sloppily does not measure up to getting to completely ignore all damage from beyond a circular radius, an on-demand damage reduction, untargetability, adaptive shielding, etc. Even older Divers have generous shielding like J4, who I would consider to be a very durable champion. Most means of Diver survival can not be easily reduced by debuffs like Grievous Wounds, and any healing they DO have is generally not their only way to stay alive, AND they're usually on-demand compared to someone like Illaoi having conditional healing or Trundle having conditional durability on his R, because it's based off the stats of whoever he ults.

The juggernauts you've listed don't out-survive these champions except for Garen, and he needs that because he lacks the killing power the other two have while lacking the escape potential of more mobile fighters. Again, if you wanted to make this comparison you should not be using Darius or Illaoi for it. Udyr, or Urgot, or even Mundo's absurd healing would make better cases for it. Divers still have very generous innate defenses and this is part of the problem with Sterak's being rebalanced for them to want to buy it. Many divers can have the durability of a juggernaut now, which is admittedly not much in season 9 but still "enough," then juggernauts lose their main advantage which is having superior defensive itemization.

Shyvana is officially listed as a Juggernaut by Riot and has been since season 5. I don't know what you're accusing me of; I'm using Riot's official classification for her.

The Ecdysiast1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Moody P,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=VBu1sHNO,comment-id=0000000000000001,timestamp=2019-01-19T09:36:01.823+0000)

Yes, tank items are designed for them because they are designed to buy tank items. This has been true since the beginning of time and only changed when Riot started to jank with the items. Tryndamere is indeed designed around crit and crit is an intended stat for him to use; this only changed when Riot began altering the stat without him in consideration. Crit was not a stat only marksmen bought until Riot removed it from items like Ghostblade or took out of the game entirely (Atma's, SoTD).

Again, no. Tank items are designed for tanks to do their job and survive. As I said, Tryndamere is a good comparison.

Critmaster Garen1 votes

{quoted}

Again, no. Tank items are designed for tanks to do their job and survive. As I said, Tryndamere is a good comparison.

juggernauts are supposed to buy the same items.

the only exception is item 3193

theyre supposed to become almost as beefy as tanks while dealing carry damage. the ideal jugger build is 1 or 2 ad/health items like item 3078 item 3071 item 3748 item 3053 into defense.

thats because the win condition for most juggernauts is to get close up into the enemy team. without health/resist items this would be impossible.

Moody P1 votes

juggernauts are the antithesis of marksmen in that they're meant to be team dependent; at least, the carry-style champions like Darius and Illaoi, who are meant to rely on their mates to help them get in and do their thing. thing is they don't actually replace a marksman basically ever, so they're competing for teammate resources in a way that they'll never win, because they're also generally occupying the same lane you'd put your tank in.

You can fix this easily by shifting whichever juggernauts you want to be carry-like into being more gold-dependent than XP reliant. Some juggernauts are already quite like this (Volibear) and struggle bot lane primarily due to just having bad item choices.

Paroe1 votes

... This thread is under the assumption that a combination class like bruisers SHOULD be unique in and of itself. This is not true.

TANKS and FIGHTERS need to be separated from BRUISERS. Because theres so much overlap in their kits and riot themselves dont seem to care about differentiating them, the best solution to do this is to rework tanks and slightly buff fighter items. Sylas is actually the best example of a true 'fighter' we have at the moment - a conditionally mobile melee champion who deals high amounts of sustained damage.

As for tanks, ive always preached +500 base HP for all true tanks; This means tanks who scale with resistances and health and who largely lack mobility and sources of damage. Poppy, gragas, and Maokai, under this definition, are not tanks (as they shouldnt be - they are bruisers). Then you reduce HP of bruisers to 2100 or so and add caveats to HP+resistance items that require champions to have a certain (scaling) HP threshhold which tanks naturally meet. You also nerf HP+AD itemization from 400+ to 200250 so they cannot simply buy as normal to reach the HP threshholds and are forced to devote most of their itemization to tank items to BE tanky.

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