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More Buffs Aimed Towards Fighters Please.

Best Ekko NA··3 votes·1,022 views

With the way damage in the game has been rising (probably as far back as season 7), the difference between champions who require defensive builds and those who don't has been affecting the game. Everyone is quick to point to damage being the big factor, but that's not exactly the problem with League of Legends right now as Juggernauts and Tanks are in themselves are doing quite well. These champions in-between, Fighters, have been in a rough spot for quite a long time now. There have been a lot of changes and buffs towards some, but so far I think all of the changes up to now have really missed the mark.

Currently Fighters are quite weak and mistakes get punished severely early into games. This has been forcing more and more Top lane players to shift towards non-interactive laners such as Garen and Sion, who can also handle a beating later into games.

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Riot recently reworked Aatrox, which aside from the bug at release, could almost be called a failed rework. Irelia is also in the same pool, being worse now than even before getting reworked despite getting buffed within the last patch.

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Olaf and Riven, buffed multiple times recently, neither doing any better than before.

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Gragas is doing so poorly in Top, he's stopped existing there, and is even becoming a Support.

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It's not much better for the entire rest of the champion pool of fighters.

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I'll leave out Yasuo since everyone hates him, but he's also not fairing any better.

Fighters are really the middle man champions who maintain the balance between Assassins, Tanks, and Marksman. When Fighters are weak and left in the gutters, those other classes are left unchecked and the entire balance of the game runs wild. I sincerely hope that more focus is put into getting these champions back into better spots to be successful in League. Perhaps not all of them needs massive buffs, but the majority of the class are struggling and could use some additional buffs.

I personally do not believe the balance of the game is extremely bad, but I do feel like Fighters being in such bad shape for so long (and getting reworked left and right to be even worse than before), is the biggest reason why things feel so terrible right now. Pushing players onto beef cows like Garen and Sion who can just AFK wave clear in lane isn't an answer players should have to create in order to be successful. More Fighters need to be strong and viable in Top lane, not just for Top laners, but also for the sake of all the other damages running rampant in the game with nothing to keep them in check.

2 Comments

Moody P1 votes

aatrox, irelia, and riven are expected to have low winrates due to skillfloor. irelia should probably be considered balanced right where she is rn. in addition, aatrox, trundle and ornn are priority picks in competitive, so soloQ doesn't reflect their true strength

it's just not a fighter meta. When tanks start making their way back most of these champs will start performing better.

Best Ekko NA1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Moody P,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=XEaFGqKj,comment-id=0000,timestamp=2018-08-27T09:53:33.669+0000)

aatrox, irelia, and riven are expected to have low winrates due to skillfloor. irelia should probably be considered balanced right where she is rn. in addition, aatrox, trundle and ornn are priority picks in competitive, so soloQ doesn't reflect their true strength

it's just not a fighter meta. When tanks start making their way back most of these champs will start performing better.

I don't know how I feel about a lot of this. Riven has usually been around the 50 percent mark or higher as far back as I can remember. It's only recently that her win rate has started plummeting so part of me questions the validity of that comment. Aatrox has just never been a meta champion, so his win rate varied over the years based on what the meta was. I've never bothered to check into Irelia as that was never a champion I had much interest in.

"When Tanks start coming back" --> Fighters are at their absolute weakest when Tanks are strong. Juggernauts and Tanks (at this point there is little separating the two as their identities are overlapping) are doing quite well. Just look at those snippets of Garen and Sion. Sure you could argue they aren't Tanks, technically they aren't. They do however have kits that highly resemble what a Tank is supposed to do. This whole notion is partly why other Tanks don't shine, but that doesn't mean Tanks are weak. This is a meta where Tanks are actually performing better because they're the only answer to the insane damage present in the game. If you pick a Fighter, by mid game you're dying without accomplishing much in fights.

Both high damage champions, and Tanks, are doing well. Argue that Tanks are weak all you'd like, but I personally have seen nothing that can prove otherwise.

As for the picks in competitive thing, just because some of the best players use a niche champion pick in communications oriented team play, doesn't make the pick strong. In reality, it mostly goes back to what I was saying before. What do you do to answer the insane damage in the game right now? You play a Juggernaut or a Tank. Why? Because that's the only thing you can be safe on. In the case of Ornn and Trundle, they aren't priority because they can hard carry a game. They're priority because they can set up other players to become carries, even when they are feeding. In competitive play, these champions are picked knowing that their jungle and carries will be able to make up for the weakness present in top lane. I haven't watched any professional scene for a while, but in the past everytime I've seen Ornn Top it's accompanied by a bunch of Jungle babysitting revolving from both teams around the Top lane.

I've played Top lane since Season 3, this is the worst it's ever felt, and this is the worst Fighters statistically have ever done. I have actually stopped playing Top lane altogether and started trying to Jungle because of how bad it is. If you want a chuckle, how about you look at Riven Jungle. Riven Jungle is doing better right now than Riven Top. Riven, who is known for being a Top lane bully in the past, isn't even able to succeed in Top lane anymore.

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Top lane fighters are in need of some desperate buffs. Call it how you will, but there's no statics you can show which are going to prove else-wise.

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