I absolutely accept that those who build damage and %pen should be able to kill tanky targets

It is completely reasonable that if you build 100% offense and invest in a tank killing item to scale that offense further, you should have the capacity to kill a tanky target.

There’s a few problems with this though, allow me to explain:

1.) The relationship between offense and defense tips way too heavily in favor of offense, especially early and late game sans those without the capacity to proc aftershock, but even then that’s only a temporary state of durability early game. Meanwhile, all the other keystones have a much more spammable window of opportunity. And when late game arrives, and keystones stop mattering as much, then %pen and offense override defense way too much.

Honestly, does void staff really need to ignore 40% of my magic resistance when I can barely get to 130 mr? Not only that, it gives 70 AP, too! I’d have no problem with rabadons being cheaper if void staff only ignored 25-30% of magic resistance (let’s not forget that flat magic pen is much more efficient because targets rarely exceed 150MR).

In addition, we have two %Armor pen and %armor shred in BC (which should honestly be melee only at this point, that would fix a few things right away). One does 35% armor pen with a tank killing passive built in, the other does 40% and reduces healing, which is a big deal for several tanks/bruisers. While armor levels can exceed some ridiculous numbers in some cases, even doing 30% with critical strike amplifying AD and giant slayer passive go a long way in melting tanks/bruisers. And if they stack HP, BotRK is also an option. Do we really need to have numbers that high, especially with keystones that do further amplify damage (though most aren’t strong late game, but still - it matters)?

Defensive items do not need buffs. High value defense items just lead to abuse cases. Their numbers are fine, and in fact you could argue some armor items need nerfs (cough cough delete bramble vest). Unfortunately, they are necessary currently because they provide some mid game comfort before exponentially falling off a cliff late game because of all the %pen that exists and it’s ludicrously high values (honestly, I hardly consider conquerer a problem here, %pen with critical strike does way more damage than flat amped true damage that is easily countered by HP; still, conquerer is not a good keystone design [none are]).

As I stated previously, I respect that offense should beat defense - in fact, it’s necessary. But the relationship favors offense too much and that should be adjusted.

Leading me to point number two

Get rid of damage supports. Rework Pyke and scrap Pyke’s design entirely, supports do not need to be executing people because that’s just another damage source I can’t deal with as a front liner, especially when you consider that these items for defense were balanced around the idea of 4 damage dealers max on a team, not 5. Give utility a chance to be utility, because as it stands you’ve just bastardized utility so that anyone can get it in two items then go full offense from there. This is a horrible concept design because enchanters don’t feel good because of this, and tank supports are the only thing that can compete with this because they can at least fend off double damage bot lanes in the early game with aftershock.

This is another follow up point to point number two:

Stop letting offense (both AP and AD) double dip into defense so much. The only offense items that should double dip are bruiser items, and you can easily make these unattractive to AD champions by giving them passives that reward front liners for staying in fights and make several key conceptual items melee only (BC). As it stands, not only do glass cannons shread too much late game, they actually become unreasonably difficult to kill because they get modest amounts of defense (remember, non glass cannon champions - typically the biggest threat to glass cannons - are not building %pen).

This is why I feel like damage really feels out of control. It’s because the system is rigged to favor offense and you’ve done nothing bad add additions to this game that further increase this divide without toning down offense (again, you shouldn’t tone up defense, you need to tone down offense). I actually think you’ve done a lot to reduce snowballing and make base defense feel real, but the problem is that games just deathball too quickly once teamfight do happen - which leads to people being afraid to even fight in the first place. I think if these things got adjusted, you could actually make the game feel reasonable balanced. So yeah, that’s just food for thought.