How to make champion durability more engaging.

In terms of interesting, engaging interactions in the game, durability is easily the worst aspect. Buying armor or MR doesn't inherently effect the way you play the game in the way changing between AD/AP and CDR/AS would. You just look at the enemy team, notice that they have a ranged AD, and generally pile on a load of armor until you get bored and buy a BV.

This's something that could be heavily improved upon. I've suggested pretty staggering changes to AD itemization that'd make it better, ways to improve sustain options for all champions, yet none of it even slightly compares to the change that'd be necessary to make defenses truly engaging.

But hey.

Easy things aren't fun.

Anyway, useless preamble aside, I have a point. The concepts of armor and MR should be thrown away. Such stats are useful in prototype builds or games that exist mostly for their simplicity, but you should really be able to make a better system than the one pokemon uses. Replace them with two different forms of resistance that are effected by gameplay.

First, blast resistance. The burst counter. The value would start exceptionally high, reducing the first hit you take exceptionally well. However, whenever hit, the defensive value would fall, causing quick, successive hits to be more effective. It would regenerate over time, quickly regaining its initial value. This would prevent instantaneous assassination, heavily reduce sporadic poke, and be exceptionally valuable in short skirmishes. However, its value would be neigh nonexistent in forced extended engagements, where it would be quickly removed by more sustained sources of damage, thus allowing enemies to take advantage of its weaknesses.

And second, reinforcing resistance. The sustained damage counter. Essentially, the opposite of the above. This would have a low initial value, meaning that sporadic harassment would be exceptionally effective against a champion building it. However, any time when hit, it would increase, causing the enemy's damage to gradually fall off. Next to useless in short skirmishes, it would shine in extended engagements, giving the holder a far greater advantage as a fight went on.

Both would be useful in various situations, such as using the former against Leblanc and Nidalee and the latter against Olaf and Yi. But at the same time, it wouldn't be a situation wherein you simply buy the stat and suddenly the enemy is useless. Against a champion building the former, Leblanc and Nidalee wouldn't be able to rely on simply getting off free harass, but they would be able to extend an engagement to deal more damage. And against the latter, Olaf and Yi would be able to use their abilities in short skirmishes and fall back to wait for the resistances to wear off.

Which, far's I can tell, would be far superior to armor'n MR as they are.