Tanks and Bruisers, or How Riot Can Teach Players to Stop Worrying and Love the Cinderhulk

Big question: does the game 'tag' ALL CC debuffs with its source? Because if it does, there may be a way to limit Cinderhulk's power on Bruisers (besides lowering the %Bonus Health by at least 5%, which is necessary but not the only needed change) without harming the more support-based Tank junglers. The answer lies in what makes Tanks different from Bruisers.

Bruisers and Tanks are similar in that they are both very resilient and they like being in the middle of teamfights, and that is what Cinderhulk reinforces (a little too well; the %Bonus Health needs to be toned down by 5%). The Immolation passive, however, is a bit too giving on the Bruiser side. Tanks need it because they lack the damage, but bruisers gaining additional damage becomes overpowering. In order to balance this item out without bringing the Tank Jungle back to near-unviable is to focus its power into something Tanks have that Bruisers don't: Crowd Control.

Crowd Control, in this context, is the inhibiting on a entity's ability to act, currently in the form of slows, blinds, silences, snares, stuns, etc. Both Bruisers and Tanks have CC, but Tanks have it in spades. Shyvana, a Bruiser currently known to effectively run Smite/TP, has one CC source, and it's a Knockup strapped onto her Ult. Hec has his Fearing Ult and a small Knockup on his E. Rammus? He has a 2.25 sec Taunt and a high-speed Knockup. Maokai? Two Slows (with one carrying the potential to be a Knockup) and a Snare. Zac? A long-range Stun on his E, a 2 sec Slow on his Q, and Knockback on his Ult. Nautilus? Two Knockups, a Slow every four seconds, and his autoattack can Stun.

So what does this have to do with Cinderhulk? Well, to reiterate the point, one of the item's current problems is it give Bonus damage to champions who already put out good amounts of AoE damage without any drawback for doing so. This makes Bruisers powerful simply because, as once stated, "if they ded, they controlled." Why bother with bulky champions who make it easier to kill enemies if there are bulky champions who can just kill enemies? However, if Cinderhulk's Immolation was reworked so that it was more effective when used in conjunction with CC, it would take some of the power away from the Bruisers without weakening it for the Tanks.

Therefore, the best course of action (on top of reducing %Bonus Health Increase) is to reduce the base damage of Cinderhulk's Immolation by 50% (from 16 + [1/Level] > 8 + [.5/Level]) and create an addendum into it, worded in one of two ways:

• If the game does not 'source' CC effects like it does with Debuffs: "Whenever this champion impairs an enemy, Immolation's damage is doubled for five seconds."

• If the game DOES source CC effects: "Whenever you impair an enemy, all damage it would receive from Immolation during the next five seconds is doubled."

The idea is to gate the damage aspect of Cinderhulk by having it rely on the champion's CC. Champions without it will see a 50% drop in Immolation damage, while Tanks will not see a change so long as they remain in combat as the item already intends.

This change does create a few problems. First off, there are still some who can abuse it outright in either form. Sejuani has the awkward curse of being both a Bruiser and a Tank, being able to inflict CC as well as dish out damage. Nerfs are indeed needed for her, though only to compensate for the likelihood that all Sejuanis will pick up Cinderhulk. Second, Rylai's Crystal Scepter and any other that items that carry Soft CC can help champions bypass this addendum. This, however, would only apply to champions who buy these sorts of items early, if at all. Amumu is the first that comes to mind, and he would have to be monitored.

TL;DR: Cinderhulk can be nerfed for Bruisers without over-nerfing Tanks in the process by having its Immolation damage tied to the champion's ability to perform CC.

Any suggestions? Factors I did not take in? Proposals?