Thornmail Shred Suggestion (No, NOT the paper kind) and Other Adjustments
STATS:
- 50 armor
- 250 health
- Passive: Return 15% of auto damage taken before mitigation + 25%** + 0.5% per level** bonus armor
- Passive: Upon being autoattacked, reduce opponent's magic resistance by 4 for 3 seconds. Stacks up to 5 times. Stack-timer refreshes with each hit.
MY REASONING:
Why Change Thornmail at All?
My guess: Rito wants thornmail to only work on tanks. In the past, thornmail could help ANYONE if things got out of hand botlane. When mpen annie dueling an adc returns a thousand thornmail damage, something's wrong.
The Problem With the Current Respec
Thornmail is not UBER nerfed from Rito's change, but it IS definitely nerfed: BEFORE: returning a 1k crit from an adc = 300 damage AFTER: returning a 1k crit = 160 + ~60 even with 300 total armor = much less for every freakin' tank except MAYBE rammus at 500 armor, who... wait no it's still less.
The Dilemma
If you re-up damage-taken scalings, you risk it being hax on squishies/fighters again. If you buff bonus-armor scalings, that, counter-intuitively, causes the SAME PROBLEM when thornmail BY ITSELF gives 100 armor. A blue thornmail ezreal has nearly 200 bonus armor.
How To Rework Without Breaking It All Over Again
Step 1: Enforce defense requirements MORE: Removing armor but upping bonus-armor scalings means thornmail requires MORE tank items bought to be effective, but still does MORE damage on tanks than in the current post-Rito-rework state.
Step 2: Synergize with tank BEHAVIORS: A stacking defense shred not only synergizes with tank offense items, like sunfire and wit's end, but also with tank PLAYSTYLES. Squishies aren't gonna soak a half a dozen hits to build stacks.
To Summarize Changes And Why
- Boost armor scalings more, to keep the tank respec but avoid a nerf.
- Massively lower armor provided, to ensure additional armor-building is still required.
- Replace armor with other stats, otherwise, the item is crap without 100 armor.
- Add shred passive, to emphasize SUSTAINED tanking, and tank-offense.
Post your thoughts! I promise not to cry...