Is Riot ever going to give anything to bruisers?

LupusNox·Nov 17, 2014·5 votes·875 views

Riots unspoken policy for more than a year now has been to take everything that bruisers love and nerf/remove it from the game.

Plus nerfing bruisers base stats/skills in addition to this.

Now bruiser mains basically have to play champs designed by CertainlyT or they can't compete. Is Riot ever going to bring bruisers back? Cause as it looks right now, they will become unplayble vs the super high damage and mobility of current ADCs/Mages/Assassins

13 Comments

Kuroi86Nov 17, 20143 votes

We'll just have to see what season five brings to the table. Bruisers have always been deceptively strong. Even now they are stronger than many think, they just don't realize.

SmokingPuffinNov 17, 20142 votes

The rule is that bruisers are amazing in January and useless in July. Has been true the last 3 seasons.

ProfDrDeathNov 17, 20141 votes

Interesting observation. What are the reasons for that?

SmokingPuffinNov 17, 20141 votes

I don't have a great answer for this. I mean, it's natural for there to be ebbs and flows and balance. This specific timing definitely isn't preordained.

The way it seems to work is that Riot tries to reshape problem points in their game every winter. That reshaping typically is looking at three areas of the game:

Support isn't fun / can't buy items / ward burden
Early junglers too influential / farming jungle not sufficiently rewarding / only a few viable junglers
Top lane is stupid / melee-ranged interactions

So far, the only one of these they've gotten to feel pretty good is #1, and that took two seasons to get it right. They're coming after #2 harder than ever in preseason 5, and who knows, maybe that'll work. #3 is borderline unsolvable, and that's the one that always gets us into trouble on this topic.

In any case, what tends to happen is that Riot overshoots the mark on whatever fixes they're trying to make to the game. In season 3, they wanted to move from a resistance-based tanking to a health-based tanking. That was a success, but suddenly the first guy to buy a Giant's Belt was crushing top lane and the League of Warmog's was on. Since bruisers tend to be the most broken thing about the game at any given time, it's only natural that we're trying to fix them every winter, so given this overshooting tendency in their attempts to fix things, it's not too surprising that bruisers come out overtuned every time their itemization gets tweaked.

That's my best guess for why the timing is as it is.

IceKingChernobogNov 17, 20141 votes

Check season 5, it's tank/bruiser meta

LupusNoxNov 17, 20142 votes

lol no

HellioningNov 17, 20141 votes

They're gonna get around to reworking the entire class. Eventually, of course, given Riot Time, but they've said they wanted to do it since...late S3, I think?

When bruisers are dominantly strong, you have the exact opposite problem; there's no point in playing a ranged ADC or a squishy mage when a brusier can be 10 times tankier than you are and do equivalent damage. Riot needs to rework either a bunch of champions or how the game works in order to get the melee/ranged in equal parity.

kaykalosNov 17, 20141 votes

Range is defensive aspect, if riot dont understand that, then they dont understand why bruisers must be tankier than squishy and do equivalent damage.

HellioningNov 18, 20142 votes

That'd be a better argument if most bruisers didn't have a gapcloser and some form of CC, which is the primary problem with them as a class. They have basically everything and are incredibly similar.

While I don't disagree with your basic point, as without CC immunity and turn speeds ranged will always be able to kite melee with some additional CC, that's the line of thinking that gives you Irelia and Xin Zhao.

Remlap1223Nov 17, 20141 votes

History of LoL shows that Bruisers have been a big pain in the ass top lane. You had Gangplank Season 1, Olaf Season 2, Renekton Season 3, and Ryze Season 4. The biggest issue with bruisers is that the only thing that can make them stand out from ADCs who outrange them, and assassins who deal huge amounts of burst damage and are more mobile, is to make them a big ball of stats. Of course, this leads to champions who are early game powerhouse lane bullies that scale hard into the late game (hello Ryze ).

So unfortunatley we're at this stage where it's either bruisers are outclassed by every other class, or it's the League of Bruisers. Riot said they're reworking bruiser itemization, but nothing really concrete has shown up. Until that happens, expect to see Pantheon the god of top lane, or completely obscure, never in that sweet spot of just right (TBH, I wouldn't say that any champ in this game is balanced, they're either OP or UP to varying scales.)

SmokingPuffinNov 17, 20142 votes

History of LoL shows that Bruisers have been a big pain in the ass top lane. You had Gangplank Season 1, Olaf Season 2, Renekton Season 3, and Ryze Season 4. The biggest issue with bruisers is that the only thing that can make them stand out from ADCs who outrange them, and assassins who deal huge amounts of burst damage and are more mobile, is to make them a big ball of stats. Of course, this leads to champions who are early game powerhouse lane bullies that scale hard into the late game (hello ).

You can make bruisers that aren't stat balls. Modern bruiser designs like Zac Elise have quite a lot of play and counterplay and lanes with them are not decided at first blood the way that lanes with Renekton Shyvana Jax are.