Riot, how do you hope juggernauts will fair with reworked defensive itemization?

Ralanr·Feb 1, 2017·19 votes·1,293 views

As many of you know, juggernauts are a subclass that is all about getting tanky but dealing a considerable amount of damage at the cost of being immobile and kiteable. They are meant to be tanky and hurt a whole lot. Since one of the goals of the defense itemization update is to prevent stuff like Tank Ekko/Yasuo/Fizz from ever happening again, I'm curious to see what this will mean for the intended high damage tanky champions.

35 Comments

ErockandrollFeb 1, 20173 votes

A lot of Juggernauts already get more benefit from defensive itemization, Mainly in the form of sustain. Darius has %HP missing sustain on his Q, Mundo has % max HP sustain both on his passive, and his ult.

That in mind, I don't think there's a strong connection between the Tank Assassin builds, and Juggernauts. Don't even really like the term Tank Assassin, their play style is more that of a Diver. And the reason why Fizz or Ekko make good divers is, as AP Assassins, they are designed to make uses of Lich bane. Because they are designed to make uses of the sheen proc, they can easily sub that out for Either TF or ICB, two items that offer a fair power spike, without needing other items to scale.

The other issue, (Applying more to Tank items, than Juggernaut items) is Sunfire cape. Items like Sunfire and ICB are quite good for tanks who lack the AoE wave clear to lane effectively. (Compare Shen to say Sion, in terms of wave clear) The problem with this is, other champions are now able to build defensively, using these items, without sacrificing wave management.

Big LincolnFeb 1, 20172 votes

good question I hope they keep this in mind when they rework sejuani

RalanrFeb 1, 20171 votes

Honestly I think they'll rework Amumu over Sejuani.

Big LincolnFeb 1, 20171 votes

nahhh nobody cares about mumu

sejuani has been a bigger balance issue too

TyrekGoldenspearFeb 1, 20178 votes

nahhh nobody cares about mumu

See comments like this is why he's a sad mummy.

Big LincolnFeb 1, 20172 votes

sejuani is more important than dead child

dragon1xxFeb 2, 20172 votes

He's a mummified yordle/ancient ruler/whatnot. He's not a child, and has lived for thousands of years...

PennsFeb 1, 20171 votes

No more tank fizz jungle? item 3070

EndlessSorcererFeb 1, 20171 votes

Didn't that pretty much disappear after they removed the percentage missing health damage from his W's passive?

PennsFeb 1, 20171 votes

It did but I started playing it a few days ago and win like every game with it lol.

Asayake 5150glowFeb 1, 20171 votes

{quoted}

Didn't that pretty much disappear after they removed the percentage missing health damage from his W's passive?

Wish they'd do that to Ekko -_-

RalanrFeb 1, 20172 votes

Yes, no more tanky with a low CD untargetable ability Fizz. Hopefully.

Because no offense to you, but it feels very cancerous when champions with such defensive mechanics (high mobility, untargetability, etc) that are meant to encourage risky plays with squishy builds suddenly build very tanky and start losing their risk factor.

ApocalypsicFeb 1, 20176 votes

{quoted}

Yes, no more tanky with a low CD untargetable ability Fizz. Hopefully.

Because no offense to you, but it feels very cancerous when champions with such defensive mechanics (high mobility, untargetability, etc) that are meant to encourage risky plays with squishy builds suddenly build very tanky and start losing their risk factor.

cough cough Bruiser Yasuo, Cleaver Ttianic fulltank Fiora

Bad times....

PennsFeb 1, 20171 votes

No idea how they would do that tho. I go item 1413 item 3748 item 3025 + tank items... Rito will never stop me! lul

DracocrashFeb 1, 20173 votes

see's your build

runs into solo que

SH AzykanFeb 2, 20171 votes

weakness of that build is it isnt cheap. titanic is a rather big gold investment so you are not getting that tanky very quick at all.

5000000000000000Feb 1, 20171 votes

I think tank Fizz could be healthy if he actually didn't do that much damage. He has a pretty good engage ultimate.

But then, he's probably not worth picking just for the ultimate when you have an entire class of Vanguards to choose from.

LostFr0stFeb 1, 20171 votes

Won't the line between health stacking and resist stacking separate this? You're making me wonder now...

RalanrFeb 1, 20171 votes

Not sure honestly. Personally I don't fully know the defensive formula now (like if I have 50 base armor and 100 bonus armor added, then have the max shred of a BC hit my armor, how much armor do I have left and how much actual works after LW?) so I can't fully comment on how I think it should work.

Juggernauts and tanks will always have similar item paths though, so changes to the items effects them both.

LostFr0stFeb 1, 20171 votes

Oooh just got an idea. Maybe they already though about it but the champs themselves after the update could end up with armor/mr scalings like every champ has for att spd and such.

SpoofghoulFeb 2, 20171 votes

you would have 100 left after BC

still have 50 base armor

so 45% or 52% of 50 so you would be left with roughly 75 armor

ProfDrDeathFeb 3, 20171 votes

Black Cleaver works by shredding your base Armor and bonus Armor in an equivalent manner.

If you had 50 base and 50 bonus (100 total), a full set of Cleaver stacks reduces that to 35 base and 35 bonus (70 total). Last Whisper penetrates a percentage of the 35 bonus Armor afterwards.

You can easily test Cleaver shredding both base and bonus by going into a custom with a bot as a target, building Cleaver and keeping an eye on the enemy's Armor values while you apply stacks.

Big LincolnFeb 1, 20171 votes

only if % damage items take a hit

otherwise juggs will continue to be better off with the resist items

HyperiönFeb 1, 20171 votes

They can't stop the champions from going tanky by changing items per say. That mostly falls under the base damages of the champion.

RalanrFeb 1, 20171 votes

I think they plan on finding a way to not let it get so out of control. Like no crit triforce Yasuo madness.

The Yetii RiderFeb 2, 20171 votes

[{quoted}](name=FF Hyperion,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=XcTO9BmJ,comment-id=0002,timestamp=2017-02-01T19:05:03.724+0000)

They can't stop the champions from going tanky by changing items per say. That mostly falls under the base damages of the champion.

It's pretty simple actually. They can do to tank items what they did to juggernaut items : have it increase by a % of the champion's base.

Change Randuin's Omen, Thornmail and Frozen Heart to give % base armor, then lower the base armor of fighters and juggernauts.

Tychusfindlay919Feb 2, 20171 votes

[{quoted}](name=The Yetii Rider,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=XcTO9BmJ,comment-id=00020001,timestamp=2017-02-02T11:42:25.210+0000)

It's pretty simple actually. They can do to tank items what they did to juggernaut items : have it increase by a % of the champion's base.

Change Randuin's Omen, Thornmail and Frozen Heart to give % base armor, then lower the base armor of fighters and juggernauts.

"Lower base armor... Juggernauts"

Absolutely not. Juggernauts like darius were INTENDED to have a near full tank build with maybe a cleaver or tri force in there, and were INTENDED to be huge stat sticks.

The Yetii RiderFeb 2, 20171 votes

{quoted}

"Lower base armor... Juggernauts"

Absolutely not. Juggernauts like darius were INTENDED to have a near full tank build with maybe a cleaver or tri force in there, and were INTENDED to be huge stat sticks.

That's fine, but juggernauts are intended to tank with health, not armor or MR. And notice how I left their big tank item (Dead Man's Plate) out of the suggested changes. This would let items intended for juggernauts be balanced for juggernauts and items intended for tanks be balanced for tanks.

Tychusfindlay919Feb 2, 20171 votes

[{quoted}](name=The Yetii Rider,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=XcTO9BmJ,comment-id=0002000100000000,timestamp=2017-02-02T15:32:09.636+0000)

That's fine, but juggernauts are intended to tank with health, not armor or MR. And notice how I left their big tank item (Dead Man's Plate) out of the suggested changes. This would let items intended for juggernauts be balanced for juggernauts and items intended for tanks be balanced for tanks.

Dead mans plate has been irrelevant for a long time. Most smart juggy players get randuins now which is just better in almost every way possible.

End game juggernaut builds usually have 200+ armor mr or 250+ armor and 150ish MR.

FeuerfalkeFXFeb 1, 20171 votes

I'm fine with any tank changes as long as we don't have another juggernaut page

Phoenix Kotori Feb 1, 20171 votes

Personally I think the best choice might be to do is something like the way health regen items work off base stats for Armor & MR (and maybe Health as well) so that they can tune it better so that defensive items intended to be tank items aren't universally the same value on every champion compared to basically every other stat in the game besides mana and boots and riot could leave some exceptions item 3102 or item 3026 for example that are intended as generalist defensive choices.

Thus tanks could benefit more from tank items due to their base stats than non-tanks going tank builds.

Tychusfindlay919Feb 2, 20172 votes

[{quoted}](name=Phoenix Kotori ,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=XcTO9BmJ,comment-id=0006,timestamp=2017-02-01T19:53:09.361+0000)

Personally I think the best choice might be to do is something like the way health regen items work off base stats for Armor & MR (and maybe Health as well) so that they can tune it better so that defensive items intended to be tank items aren't universally the same value on every champion compared to basically every other stat in the game besides mana and boots and riot could leave some exceptions or for example that are intended as generalist defensive choices.

Thus tanks could benefit more from tank items due to their base stats than non-tanks going tank builds.

Juggernauts like darius have STELLAR base stats. Hell darius makes most tanks look like ADCs. Illaoi is no slouch and garen and nasus are a relatively close third and fourth.

Mordekaiser has shit bases.

Jeddy017Feb 1, 20171 votes

Not just Juggernauts, but most Divers too. A majority of the Fighter class rely on tank items. I hope Riot doesn't forget about them when working on tank items.

Golden Tager XFeb 1, 20171 votes

That is fare, and since they just have so much damage built into their kits they should be fine.

ProfDrDeathFeb 3, 20171 votes

Most likely item candidates to get a hard look at during the Vanguard update, based on what Riot said about tanks being too resilient to sustained physical damage and too vulnerable to sustained magic damage and, as you said, some tanky damage dealers not being too healthy. Source - Preview of the Long Term, part In-game systems and Champion Changes.. Note that these are just my opinion on this stuff:

item 3068 : The most common Armor item right now. Suspect that it is simply overtuned and giving too much stuff for the single item slot it occupies.

item 3047 : One of, if not the, main culprit for tanks' high resilience to sustained physical damage, with its passive that reduces auto-attack damage by 12%. Could see Riot simply reverting the buff they gave the item a while back, when they changed the passive from 10% to 12%.

item 3078 : My qualm with this item is that it shifted from being an all-purpose item that gave a mix of sustained (AD, AS, Crit) and burst damage (Sheen proc) to one that gives mainly burst damage, both in a higher intensity (200% base AD proc) and with higher frequency (20% CdR). I hope that Riot sees this as well and takes a bit of power out of the Sheen proc and CdR and back into the sustained damage (possibly by swapping Stinger for Recurve Bow).

item 3065 : The only real tank MR item at the moment. Either will it be changed somewhat, or Riot might introduce a new tanky MR item.

item 3800 : Since it is the Vanguard update, this item might warrant a look.

item 3083 : Despite a lot of buffs over the years, this item is still not commonly seen. I really wonder if it was possible to turn into the true tank's staple, something akin to what Infinity Edge is (or is supposed to be) for ADCs or Duskblade for AD assassins.

item 3742 : If it gets any attention, changes to this item should be made rather carefully, as its passive effect is still one that increases the amount of burst damage in game (and thus contributes to the burst damage creep). Crazy idea: what if the passive was change to give an increase in attack speed instead of damage? Shifting it away from burst, into sustained damage...