Honestly: Wtf is the point in Juggernauts?

Somewhere between the realms of "moderately mobile, melee ranged champs that are a lil bulky do damage" and "not too mobile, super tanky melee champions that have cc" are Juggernauts: Not too mobile, pretty tanky melee (or practically melee) champions that do damage and have fairly little in the way of cc.

Seeing how these posts of mine are meant to cut the filler and really just jump right into the problem, once again, I'm doing that here. That said...literally what is the point in the Juggernaut class?

Why would I want a jug when they don't peel and don't engage? Jugs rely on their team to get them in top form. However, their primary lane is top...which is where we send our tanks and divers...basically champs that are designed to do the engaging or peeling. It's similar to asking yourself "Why would I waste my support slot on Teemo when he doesn't bring cc, healing, shielding, or buffs in the slot dedicated for that type of champion?" In the same line of thought, why use the lane we send team engage/disengage on a champ that needs help engaging or disengaging?

Why would I want a jug when damage dealers are already very easy to come by? Your mid lane and your bot lane are normally two solid places to get damage output from. If not them, you can put a hyper carry in the bot lane and build your strategy around protecting that one person for about half an hour. Where's the need in having my front line be a mid-game spiking damage source when it'd be a safer investment if he was a tank protecting or enabling my back line damage sources? It's not like jugs serve as late game powerhouses since they fall off by mid game as they start to get kited in team fights harder and harder. So we just use the top lane slot, where we would have some form of tanky engage or protection for others, on a champion that accomplishes neither of these primary objectives, but also doesn't serve as a strong carry option like a skirmisher possibly could. Why would I do this, again?

Malicious posters aside, no one REALLY wants meta jugs. Most of them just..."run at you." Yeah, that's kind of the point of the fantasy, but that's also the source of the problem. When jugs are strong, they just run down your team and force ults and sums while not dying to the crap they burn and posing as a major damage threat. So now we got this dilemma here, because most people hate the shit out of tanky champions that hurt too much and won't die, yet this is the foundation of this class of champions as a whole. Now, we don't remember that we hate this because it's been 2 years since this was a huge issue, but trust me, we hate it when someone's super tanky, yet hurts super bad, and is shoving us five miles down the lane out of pure fear of eventually getting hit confirmed by something.

However, when Jugs are weak, we have walking wastes of space that can't peel, can't engage, can't deal satisfactory damage, and pretty much succeed through the failures of others . Not exactly the most appealing champs in my book. There's no real balanced state that's "just right" for a class that either feels literally insurmountable or useless and redundant in its purpose in the game.

Jugs kit designs tend to be worse than the fantasy, honestly. Way too many jug champs have too little counter-play and just have a guy running at 5 like a barbarian. The occasional one may come out with WAY too much counter-play. Riot doesn't really have a solid idea of what a jug kit should...well...accomplish, save for the occasional one like Olaf (and even that's just "running into the enemy team the best"). Not "thematic" wise, but rather "strategy" wise. What's the game plan of half these jug champs? Shyvanna had her mini-rework, but all Riot did was say "Go kill drag a few times"...but you can kill drag on any jungler...even Morde has a dragon-slaying gimmick which centers ANOTHER jug around that niche. Outside of that she has her now unstoppable ult, but Olaf has continuous immunity to cc while ulting. What the hell's Shyvanna even doing here!?

How about Mundo? All he does is run around throwing cleavers. He's strong when he's blatantly broken or Riot removes GW from the game, and generally lack-luster otherwise since literally most of his game play is "running around". Speaking of that, the HELL is Udyr still doing without a VGU? In terms of lacking direction in his design and lacking a general strategic niche, he's the worst offender out of all the jugs. He's just doing shit on the map. When Udyr's strong, the whole community loses its cool because he's tanky, has hard cc, has damage, runs fast as hell, and just outpaces nearly anyone while being super hard to kill. It's like "Melee Singed" going wild on the map, except he tunnels on pve even harder. Dude's whole kit is a catastrophe. And, once again, if we sit back and just remember the last time Udyr was relevant, you'd remember why we don't want him relevant again. There's no real objective to the guy...he just does shit. Riot wants to help the guy out, but avoiding what he used to be makes it hard to make him something at all in today's time.

Still, I'm seeing Riot making moves. They added tenacity to Sterak's and they're gonna add more sources of tenacity in the preseason. I'm thinking maybe Juggernauts will be set up as the class that breaks through massive cc chains and THEN runs teams down. It'd mean that you could pick a tank to up your team's overall cc, or you could pick a Juggernaut and be more resilient to cc with your front-liner that tears through tanks rather well. That...actually sounds decent, and playing this out in this manner isn't the worst...assuming they're doing that. However, right now, as far as I see, I can't see the strategic reasoning behind Juggernauts being in the game. I think Riot's gotta do way better in fleshing that out in season 8, otherwise that's quite a few useless champs we're gonna have sitting around for a minute.