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new tank designs are fuckin garbage

Big Lincoln··45 votes·2,477 views

before poppy most solo lane tanks had a little bit of CC and respectable base damage (exception Nautilus )

after the poppy rework, the majority of tanks have the same or MORE CC as support tanks, champions who give up plenty to have that CC... while keeping high base damage. you see this in the Galio rework and all of the tank updates, too; an ABUNDANCE of CC comparable to support tanks dedicated to providing it while still having really good damage compared to the damage they actually build. and surprise, every single one of these tanks has ended up busted as hell. First it was Poppy, and then it was Nautilus after power was put into his E, then Galio, then the tank update hit and we went from Sejuani being god-tier, then it was Zac with Maokai being an AP support, then it was all 3 of them as tanks with Chogath 's guest appearance (give a death touch champion tons of CC why dontcha), and now it's just Sej, Zac, and Cho. Nautilus has been rocking a nice 46% winrate for a few patches now, Galio sucks ass anywhere outside of pro play and even there he's utterly mediocre now (and still being nerfed), and Zac is now unable to clear his jungle at any reasonable speed.

probably the most irritating thing about the post-Galio tanks is the completely forced team reliance, especially after saying they find it problematic when champions are too good in pro play and mediocre in soloQ Shen. Sejuani not only requires melee teammates to make her stronger, but she needs them to actually go and hit other people so she can pop multiple stuns off, because she's so shit at doing it herself, she's just a one-man lockdown bot if her team decides to fuck her in champ select. Before his E buff Zac was dog shit because he NEEDED a teammate to provide CC so he could charge his ult; they change that and immediately, he's broken. Galio needs his teammates to not be stupid to make his ult really count.

These champions are now completely unbalanceable. Ever since their reworks they have swung from "disgustingly overpowered" to "near useless." because this is not a healthy design; these champions CANNOT have this much CC, damage, and durability and be fair, especially when so little of it has any meaningful counterplay beyond 'don't be near them,' but you can't nerf any of that without either destroying the champion or making the rework completely pointless. Do they have meaningful niche? No, not really; they still crowd each other out based on just being objectively better at the one job all of them now have -- CC bot. I'd say the pre-rework kits had far more compelling niches that just needed to be emphasized; instead, Riot threw all of them out the window and replaced them with these abominations. When I heard there was a tank rework I was expecting shit closer to Sion, or most of the new juggernauts; having big telegraphs with big payoffs or having a specific win condition. What we actually got was something way shittier.

tl;dr the tank update fucking sucks

67 Comments

BALDG1VEN BOOMER16 votes

Their CC is what makes them able to engage team fights differently from divers (with Zac being the only exception of a diverish tank) and be a frontline disrupter/peel, if they had little to no CC they'll just be like Malphite who's useless without his ultimate and can get kited to oblivion and can't do his job for peeling for an ally effectively.

So if they aren't allowed to have CC for their durability then what is an ideal tank in your context?

Big Lincoln7 votes

none of these tanks needed more CC than what they had originally to be good at initiation

the frequency and reliability they have now (and the fact that Zac/Sej have traded their slows for displacement/stun, respectively) just makes them obnoxious after they've already initiated

BALDG1VEN BOOMER6 votes

And? That means they're doing their job as intended.

It's not like they don't have counter play though, tank junglers are extremely vulnerable early on and tend to have slow clear, tank junglers are meant to scale so invading early is an option.

Zac elastic slingshot can easily be nullified and is what his kit revolves around, and with recent nerfs his early clear is very slow and makes him vulnerable.

Sej permafrost is melee which means they have to put themselves in harms way to proc the CC and you actually know when the stun is coming unlike other champs that blow their load (Leona) so yeah that's a nice interaction, her ult is a linear skill shot and is her only good engage as her Q is pretty low range so if she's walking up to you then that's kinda obvious. The only thing I would say about Sej reduce the size of the ult.

Big Lincoln2 votes

And? That means they're doing their job as intended.

did I say anything to the contrary? Stay on point; I'm saying this philosophy is terrible for tanks and for the game. The old tank designs for all 3 of the tank reworks would be much easier to work from than "let's slap hard CC onto every spell."

BALDG1VEN BOOMER1 votes

So I'll return to my original question which you didn't really answer.

So if they aren't allowed to have CC for their durability then what is an ideal tank in your context?

Big Lincoln4 votes

So if they aren't allowed to have CC for their durability

i said they have too much, not that they shouldn't have any

an ideal tank in your context?

old sej

BALDG1VEN BOOMER1 votes

Well I mean Riot wanted to give them more follow up and IIRC that's what they wrote for the vanguard update, and in a game where almost every champion has CC it's only going to get worse so how much CC would be a fair amount?

Big Lincoln3 votes

i don't see how they have more follow up, it's still the same strat of dumping all CC as soon as you can. they just have more of it

and in a game where almost every champion has CC it's only going to get worse so how much CC would be a fair amount?

it depends on what kind of CC you have, damage, durability, etc. like I've said, I think the older designs of 'slightly above average' are better, because they give much more room to fine-tune. One or two spells' worth of CC if they're meant to be high-impact, maybe three if it's soft CC. Having three hard CC spells is too much, in my opinion, especially for the champs who have a slow on their fourth ability Poppy Sejuani it would then be unreasonable for them to have good damage, but you can't nerf their damage because they wouldn't function in their intended lanes without it. that's why it's bad design

a champion like Sejuani whose biggest CC was on her ult and was not innately durable could afford to have above-average damage for a tank Nautilus low damage gets to have high durability and a lot of smaller CCs

the biggest issue with the older tanks was that they had less counterplay. but riot didn't give them the same pattern but healthier; they chose a new direction altogether.

BALDG1VEN BOOMER1 votes

Well their follow up given is pretty much doing more after using their engage, exmaple would be Zac E, R but now he can use his Q, or Sej R Q, but now has R E W Q but in a sense you can still look at it as that I suppose. If you threw old Sej into a 5v5 scenario with her ult down she wouldn't be doing much in a team fight just hoping she lands her Q.

Three CC spells is fine by me as it gives more peeling potential but I'll agree with you on the slows if they removed that then there would be more kiting involved in trade of for the CC which is a fair trade if you ask me having a slow followed by a CC is bread and butter.

This is just my two cents though I'm open to opinions.

LankPants4 votes

If you threw old Sej into a 5v5 scenario with her ult down she wouldn't be doing much in a team fight just hoping she lands her Q.

Did you play any games on old Sej ever?

Old Sej had more to do in a fight than new Sej, her W let her transition from being a tank to a bruiser in effect as the fight continued, once she blew her Q and her R her tank strengths ran out, she instead moved onto her bruiser strengths, high sticking power with her short CD E and high persistent damage on her W in order to continue fighting.

Sej had about 70% of the DPS of any other bruiser, she lacked damage when compared to someone like Shyvana, and she lacked CC when compared to someone like Nautilus. She was both a tank and a bruiser, yet neither a tank nor a bruiser, she filled the middle ground between the two and that is what actually made her teamfighting so strong.

New Sejuani often ends up with nothing to do in a fight. Her W has about the same effective CD as her old E, while that CD was short for a secondary damage ability it's painfully long for your primary damage ability when it's a one-and-done ability like Sej's W is now. The old slightly longer CD for her old W was fine because with CDR that ability would come up less than a second after it ended meaning Sej always had something to do.

Her E is also very restrictive in terms of doing things in a fight, you can never personally stack your E on more than one person unless they play utterly abysmally and line up for your W. You rely entirely on your team to stack your E on multiple people for you, showing that Sejuani's been studding the Steve Carell school of leadership, doing not very much while relying on others to get things done for you rather than being an actual leader. Even on any other level though there's no play involved in this ability, you see a guy with 4 marks you press E, it may as well be a passive that auto stuns at 4 marks for all the thought Sej puts into it.

LankPants5 votes

I just hate how homogeneous tanks have become. Every tank updated past Sion (inclusive) just has the exact same output in a teamfight, you go in, you CC dudes and you're hard to kill with your generic tank steroid. There's nothing more to the class than that anymore it seems.

Ralanr4 votes

before poppy most solo lane tanks had a little bit of CC and respectable base damage

Don't understand why you're ignoring Sion here.

Edit: Though I think the increased amount of CC was to make them the better choice for CC over some support or mage classes. But idk.

Big Lincoln5 votes

because Sion pays for his CC with a long-ass delay to make his Q strong that also roots himself, and a globally-announced ult that can be countered with vision and easily avoided because he can't turn quickly

Sion is a huge exception to tanks

Ralanr5 votes

And sadly his unreliability makes him too difficult to use in proplay not just compared to other tanks but every other pick.

Sion is great design in league, but there are times he feels like he's designed in a game too fast for him at the higher tiers of play. So as much as I'd like tank design to better reflect him, I fear doing so would make tanks mainly unviable in higher tiers.

Personally I don't mind Poppy's design. I think her ult could just have no damage scalings but the only CC in her kit that has no conditions are her Q slow and her E knockback. Her E stun does require walls which I feel is good design, having a requirement to gain better hard CC.

That being said, even I feel Riot is upping the hard CC in this game and it does help against mobility, but it hurts immobile champions more. Imo Riot should be trying more alternative utility and CC. Like the grounded CC, or the ability to attract missiles to themselves from their allies. Or maybe a Warden that uses fear CC?

Hell, why not give a tank a silence?

Big Lincoln2 votes

They don't need to have the same unreliability as Sion, where they lock themselves in place and hope you don't move. But if they're as reliable as they are they shouldn't have the same or close to the same reward.

There are numerous other ways to introduce unreliability to tanks, and much more interesting 'win conditions' than champs like Sej have now with that copied Braum passive.

Ralanr3 votes

Care to share examples and ideas?

Big Lincoln2 votes

ok

make Sejuani ult either an initiation spell that puts the aoe slow down and then requires her to follow up to stun people affected by it (retains the good 5 man ult feeling of old but isn't fire and forget, still similar to her current kit but lets us move power out of E and into ult) or make her do something to mark people and THEN ult, which makes her a very strong anti-disengage pick.

we don't have a 'zone' tank on the likes of Illaoi, Heimer, or Zyra, either; champion who hunkers down in one area and threatens you with CC if they get nested would be interesting, imo

and there are tanks who could be given other stuff entirely. silences, blinds, nearsights, terrain, buffs and debuffs, etc. it doesn't JUST have to be hard crowd control to define a tank.

Ralanr1 votes

Wouldn't it be a bad idea to tie a tank ult to a requirement? Considering Vanguards are supposed to be teamfight starters, having an requirement to use their ult (which is normally their engage) would make them weaker at their job.

I would like to see a terrain making tank. Sion had a design like that in development with with Q.

Big Lincoln1 votes

i dont think so, depending on how you do it

if it's the first concept for sej then she might only need to hit you once to stun while you're in the circle, so it just requires her to jump on you while giving you time to flash away. or you could put the stun on the 'explosion' of the circle, etc.

if it's the second then you could just use her frozen mechanic to declare that a champ hit by her ult after being frozen recently is stunned, otherwise it's just a slow.

anything that completely gets rid of her E as is is fine by me tho

LankPants1 votes

I have 2, one which involves reworking Sej from a pre tank rework state with a completely different direction and one that involves taking post tank rework Sej and working her in the direction of pre tank rework Sej. I'll probably separate these out into more detailed stand-alone threads eventually, but for now.

Revert>Rework

Passive: Frost Sejuani's basic attacks and abilities slow for 10% stacking up to 5 times

Q: Arctic Assault No changes

W: Flail of the Northern Winds No significant changes

E: Frost Armour/Shatter First Cast: Sejuani shields herself in frost armour, gaining armour/MR based on the number of Frost stacks on nearby enemy champs and large monsters. She can reactivate this ability within 1 second to cast Shatter. Second Cast: Sejuani Shatters her Frost Armour and all nearby stacks of Frost on enemy units, dealing damage based on their max HP and causing them to take increased damage from Sejuani's attacks and abilities based on the number of Frost stacks they had but losing her bonus armour/MR. Enemies Shattered are immune to Frost from all non R sources (gain 1 stack from R, cannot gain more, stack drops off when they leave R) until the Shatter debuff wears off.

R: Arctic Storm Sejuani throws her bola creating a storm on the first enemy champ hit. The storm gains size based off of distance travelled. If it does not hit a champion it will fall to the ground, detonate into a max range storm after 0.75 seconds pass. Enemies in this storm immediately gain 1 Frost stack and they have the slow from Frost increased by 10/20/30%. Enemies Sejuani auto attacks or W while in the storm are stunned for 1.25/1.5/1.75 seconds, enemies can only be stunned once.

Rework from new Sejuani

Passive: Frost Armour No significant changes Passive: Shatter Sejuani Shatters targets she stuns dealing damage equal to 6/7/8% of their max HP (200 VS monsters). She also applies a Shattered debuff to her enemies, causing them to take bonus magic damage equal to 2.5?% of Sejuani's max HP whenever she damages them, auto attacks can only proc this effect once per second.

Q:Arctic Assault No significant changes

W: Winter's Wrath Probably a scaling drop and a small CD drop, deals magic damage rather than physical.

E: Permafrost Stun duration reduced from 1/1.25/1.5/1.75/2 to 1/1.125/1.25/1.375/1.5, CD per target reduced from 10/9/8 seconds to 8 seconds, now scales down with CDR. Allies can no longer stack E, instead Sej's Q and R can apply 1 stack and 2 stacks (impact/detonation) respective.

R: Glacial Prison No longer locks Sejuani out of her E stun, instead removes Sej's ability to apply stacks during the stun duration, she can stack E immediately when the stun ends.

I think both would be a huge improvement, but the rework from old Sej is vastly superior.

Big Lincoln1 votes

50% reapplying slow seems a lil' excessive but i prefer the first iteration

i think W could stand to be more interesting, too. keep the AA enhance, but add a lil' something to the flail spinning like what she's got now. or combine 'em; keeping the DoT lets you do more reliable damage but less, fishing for skillshots yields better rewards but can be dodged.

LankPants1 votes

50% reapplying slow seems a lil' excessive but i prefer the first iteration

Possibly, I was working off the assumption that this is basically all of her non-ult CC in many cases though. Her only other CC would be on her long CD R and longish CD Q. Additionally it's not always going to be applied, if Sej wants to maximise her damage she throws the slow away.

There's also other things that could be done, for example the passive slow could be reduced to 5% per stack but doubled during the duration of Frost Armour so she's effectively choosing between tank, with her reliable CC and durability, or a more kitable bruiser with significantly better damage, which was the idea of the rework. Or it could just be changed to scale up with her level.

i think W could stand to be more interesting, too. keep the AA enhance, but add a lil' something to the flail spinning like what she's got now. or combine 'em; keeping the DoT lets you do more reliable damage but less, fishing for skillshots yields better rewards but can be dodged.

If I was going to do something like this I'd have the DoT start on cast like Shyvana's W and make it so that at the end of the DoT she slammed down her flail as she does now, allowing her to reselect a location up to 1 second before the end of the DoT where she'd lock the direction and slam down as she does on live. I don't see a huge need for it though, as she should have significantly higher barriers to play than pre rework Sej anyway with the choice inherent to her E and less reliable R.

Big Lincoln1 votes

coming back to this I thought of things for the other tanks who were reworked. I was gonna make a thread about it but feel like people are sick of me making new threads

Maokai make his ult last for a shorter duration and redirect damage to himself instead of reducing it outright (the damage return is also mitigated, so he doesn't kill himself or put himself in 'very easy to finish off' territory except for extreme circumstances) and then give him a reward for using it well. Basically make him a very strong anti-wombo/anti-burst tank who can sponge for his team and then turn it around on the enemy

Lasts, let's say 3 seconds instead of up to 20(?) Damage storage much higher -- instead of unleashing it all as a recast burst in his ult, the damage is added to his spells and basic attacks for the next 8 seconds or until he drains the damage. All spells cast on him/his teammates in the circle will count towards his (new) passive, and he'll store multiple charges of that, too, to compensate for his best-case scenario being him eating a huge amount of damage for his team.

Zac make his E's cone visible as it charges up OR make maxing E first much less appealing, so that his strongest ganks come at the cost of damage, or he has to wait until mid-game for his sniper-range initiates.

Make LET'S BOUNCE a 3-cast spell, with each bounce being a separate cast. Adds counterplay because disables will now prevent him from throwing more jumps at people, and it lets us lower his base damage because he'll indirectly have higher POTENTIAL damage by way of using his Q and basic attacks between each bounce, so he can either maximize his immediate disruption or he can try for as much damage as possible and risk getting CC'd and losing both his damage AND his jiggles.

Sejuani should retain her power-curve as the late game bruiser-tank with a strong initiate who becomes bruiser-y after starting a fight. Like Darius I don't think she needs to be explicitly unreliable through hard-to-land spells, but some other condition she has to 'unlock' to achieve her highest potential. LankPants put an idea I really liked in another post

NineTailedMystic1 votes

Hell, why not give a tank a silence?

stop right there criminal scum

Sire Hippington3 votes

well, the concept of haveing them all cc, no damage just doesn't work for lol, as the only position that works with little to no damage is support. The other thing is that makeing each tank a cc monster also makes i hard to really differntiate them, similar to how adc are all rather similar once critscaleing kicks in due to them all beeing about sustained AA-dps.

A big issue for unique tank designs is that riot stays away from more subtl power and goes all ham on visible power, so buffs/debuffs which would be a way to contribute to fights other than cc or damage are not really an option for them.

THE RlVER KlNG3 votes

[{quoted}](name=Big Lincoln,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=Y34jm6EQ,comment-id=,timestamp=2017-07-29T17:52:26.185+0000)

probably the most irritating thing about the post-Galio tanks is the completely forced team reliance, especially after saying they find it problematic when champions are too good in pro play and mediocre in soloQ Shen.

These champions are now completely unbalanceable. Ever since their reworks they have swung from "disgustingly overpowered" to "near useless." because this is not a healthy design; these champions CANNOT have this much CC, damage, and durability and be fair, especially when so little of it has any meaningful counterplay beyond 'don't be near them,' but you can't nerf any of that without either destroying the champion

item 3070TahmKenchitem 3070

SzGamer2273 votes

cough Sion cough

Hard cc solo lane tank since 2014.

Rexxiee3 votes

Old naut was one of the most balanced tanks in the game (by old i mean season 2).

He had a shit lod of cc (still has) but virtually no damage without his shield up, with his shield up he was threatning but he had counterplay, you pop the shield and now he loses most of his damage (and it had a decent cd so he couldnt just pop it back up and laugh at you), but he wasant useless because of his sheer utility on cc, it did not feel unfair to play against that naut because there was actually interaction btw him and his opponent.

This is how you properly balance tanks utility and cc with their damage potentials, old maokai wasant too bad either as his ult was a lot more situational and required ton more skill to use well, he had an hybrid tank/ap bruiser playstyle, then they reworked him into a generic press every spell in your direction generalist tank, they also removed most of damage from naut shield and placed it into his E who all he has to do is press it over and over regardless what happens with shield, make him braindead aswell.

Its not just tanks though, when you see shit like kalista, azir and camille being designed you can see riot game designers are shitting on the bed right now, probably because most of the original designers have already left the company, the game was also a lot more balanced when morello was the head of the balance team.

Big Lincoln1 votes

i miss old naut. didn't play old mao as much but it always confused me why they moved his ult from something he had to place to something that just followed him. i don't know how this made him any healthier, and i don't care for his new ult either

it's just so boring to me; every tank is now just this massive CC pump, and I'm just left to wonder "why would I pick any but the ones with the best CC?" there's no respect for subtle things like a power curve (late game tank Sejuani is no longer late game).

i'm really irritated about a lot of these reworks. i wanted them to play up what made the tanks feel good, and to make them feel fairer to play against so i didn't have to see a million and one posts bitching about tank meta if they were good, not just.. homogenize them and make them all do the same thing (CC everyone as many times as possible) but slightly differently

Ariel the Cruel1 votes

it always confused me why they moved his ult from something he had to place to something that just followed him.

They addressed this when they changed it, actually. They wanted the "safe zone" to follow the action; rather than trapping his team in it. Centering it on him made it easier to track in hectic fights.

PapaGreg213 votes

I hate the new Sejuani. All of her power is in one ability so she has to be a goofy tank assassin now does cc and damage to one guy.

Big Lincoln3 votes

yah sucks a lot

i want my late game queen back

Sire Hippington3 votes

Yea, it's once more a rework that takes everything a champ had and throws it out of the window. Old seju was a lategame sclaeing champ with very strong teamfights, useing a high uptime soft cc to keep enemies with in her rather high aoe dps. New Seju is an earlygame monster with high singletarget lockdown and burst that mostly snowballs with great pick potential of her strong earlygame, while her lategame teamfighting is horrible. She's currently more similar to elise than to a teamfighting tank in what she does...

ZT Xperimentor2 votes

Sounds like it's needed with all the mobility creep.

The Yetii Rider2 votes

You're ignoring the other champions that have been updated since Poppy. Like Amumu, who is now a very interesting niche jungler who functions very well in magic-damage based team comps. Or Rammus, who has had his clear speed shoot through the roof. Or Nunu, who is a monster of health and OOC move speed that gives him unchecked map control. Of these updates, only Rammus got increased CC.

Actual tank players, and not FOTM junglers and top lane players, are having a great time with this tank update. Cinderhulk is amazing, Stoneplate is fantastic, Knight's Vow works on everyone, Abyssal Mask gives the Eternity passive that tanks need with some resistances on top, and most importantly: Divers are not abusing our shit anymore.

There are a few divers building Stoneplate itself, but they don't touch Sunfire, they don't want Randuin's, they don't want Knight's Vow or Abyssal Mask or Adaptive Helm. Tanks have their own gear and their own niche now and tank players love it.

So go ahead and rail on all the problem updates you want. The itemization changes were fantastic, and the updates themselves have been amazing (Leona and Alistar are both far more useful and more fun to play than they ever were before).

Big Lincoln2 votes

almost none of this has anything to do with OP, and you certainly haven't convinced me on the tank update being anything other than a steamy pile. i ignored them because they hardly changed enough to even be called reworks; they're just doing the same thing they always have but better.

Actual tank players, and not FOTM junglers and top lane players, are having a great time with this tank update.

who wouldn't enjoy overpowered items and a meta where their champions are the top dogs? just me, apparently

Divers are not abusing our shit anymore

the ones that are actually not troll picks right now definitely are "abusing" "your" (LOL) items. JarvanIV Kled Renekton are all using Stoneplate and Locket, any of them can buy Knight's Vow. The only good diver who isn't using these items is Camille, and she might as well be an assassin.

but they don't touch Sunfire

they weren't doing this before, either; sunfire sucks eggs. And so does Adaptive; if it was actually worth a shit against the champs it was intended to be built against bruisers would build it when they need to.

they don't want Randuin's,

yes they do, what are you on about? it's still a key item for any bruiser who wants to build against crit champions.

Tanks have their own gear and their own niche now and tank players love it.

who are you speaking for, exactly?

Ahristocats1 votes

before poppy we did not have solo lane tanks

Big Lincoln24 votes

Sion and every tank jungler is included in the 'solo lane'

Malphite and Maokai and Shen too, what are you on about?

Ahristocats3 votes

malphite was garbage since season 2 before poppy after season 3 he never got played in competition/high elo

same with maokai, he started to be picked TOP around s5 after his ult got broken by riot, he was played in the jungle before

and shen i will give you that didn't know that sion vgu was before poppy, thought it was after

basically around season 3/4, only shen was played in solo lane as a tank everyone else in the jungle (naut maokai cho ect...)

Ralanr15 votes

No dude. Sion's VGU was before the rift update.

junglerboy161 votes

Sion VGU started the current era of champ redesign at Riot, every rework prior to his was a mess, but since then they have steadily improved.

Jamenawerl9 votes

It really bugs me out when you talk with such confidence about things you clearly dont know shit about. Which is most of the time.

Maokai, Alistar, Sion, Zac and Gnar were spammed toplane at some point during s3 or s4. Add your Shen and you already have 6 tanky solo-laners, which were like 30% of all the existing tanks at that time.

Sun Wu Ryuumoku1 votes

the most irritating thing about the post-Galio tanks is the completely forced team reliance,

This complain lmao. A tank be team reliant is totally legit to begin.

Big Lincoln3 votes

it's hard understanding what you're trying to say sometimes, not sure if you agree or disagree

Sun Wu Ryuumoku1 votes

sorry not my first primary language [zombie-nunu-bummed]

but i agree with ur analyze of tank (forced to rely on their team), but for me, its what's the game should be for this class. When u ask to most of this board, they will point Sion as the tank design. Even him is relatively team reliant.

chipndip11 votes

The new approach to tanks is better for pro play health, but worse for solo queue health. Poppy can still see occasional LCS play, and Galio sees play too...but the effect on their solo queue strength is pretty harsh.

pixelvoxel1 votes

Poppy feels so bad to play and I'm being taunted by the knowledge that she used to have damage.

I don't want to be a pro player just to have my champion kit not screw over my teammates more than it helps me myself.

chipndip11 votes

Poppy was designed to have a bit of oomph in her attacks, but everyone hates a tank that hurts, so Riot kept trimming all her damage off. What we have is the result of all that nerfing with no compensation buffs.

She was ALSO supposed to be able to jg, but then they removed 100 range on her main gank tool, her E, so she hardly jgs either. Remember that all this was done with hardly any compensation.

Arkilusal1 votes

Personally? I consider this symptomatic of Riot not taking the time to figure out healthy 'active' defenses that isn't mobility. Like okay, high base resistances&HP is just stat-checky and falls prey to the Garen problem-powerful at low ranks but up high doesn't have the oomph to make it work. The trouble is, Skirmishers&Assassins atm from what I can tell are actually the guys with the awesome defensive moves-look at Wind Crab Yasuo 's Windwall, or Duel-ditz Fiora's Parry trick, or for older examples, Fizz's Playful Trickster, or the Terrible Times of Tank Ekko. Not to say that we DON'T have some things, shields in general, Taric's Ultimate, the old area barrier ult Maokai once had, and the interesting anti-dash zone Poppy has now. We just need more of that, muuuch more, because CC remains the premier method of stopping an enemy damage dealer, and I personally am willing to bet that as long as that's the case, then Tanks will continue to be painfully team-dependant.

...What might be interesting, is if we got a mage that was defensive but NOT interested in trying to be a support/ill-suited for it. I'm thinking things like proactive if not outright aggressive defensive options that only fail him if the opponent decides against trying to fight him...

chipndip11 votes

  1. Assassins and skirmishers have defensive mechanics because they're expected to die fast. Tanks don't have those more than they have defensive stats, although wardens can have things like Braum's wall, Shen's anti-AA zone, and Kench's gobble because they're defensive, not offensive, tanks.

  2. A defensive mage that fights by establishing an area of control and dares you to try to make a move, threatening you with high damage...is Zyra. Basically Zyra.

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3 Refunds per season, upvote if you want 3 refunds per season.
Gameplay156 comments
3,510
votes
UPVOTE FOR URF
Gameplay606 comments
2,440
votes
Yes plz.
Gameplay456 comments
1,721
votes
3 Refunds per season, up vote if you want 3 refunds per season.
Gameplay114 comments
1,716
votes
When is ANYONE at riot going to address the awful new player experience?
Gameplay634 comments
1,383
votes

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