The current "tank meta" is the result of an over-abundance of damage this season.

TheThundersRoar·6/28/2016, 3:48:33 AM·190 votes·10,734 views

The power creep ("reworks" that increase power, keystones, items) is huge this season.

You don't need many damage items to 1-shot a squishy, and champions who aren't tanky simply get 1-shot. Hell, even tanks can barely survive late game fights.

The result is that anyone who isn't an ADC builds tanky. AP mages have more HP than bruisers now. The tank playstyle has become that of an assassin's: Get in, 1-shot the carry, and get out before you melt. It's a mess.

There is way too much free damage. Damage all over needs to be gutted. Then:

Tanks will no longer 1-shot.
Assassins will actually need damage items to kill.
Tanks will actually survive more than 5 seconds in a teamfight.

251 Comments

Arthimetes6/28/2016, 6:50:09 AM36 votes

I think there should be at LEAST a 25% reduction in base damage ACROSS THE BOARD, leave scaling alone.

I mean back in season 5 you couldn't one-shot someone at lv 3 unless you were an assassin that already had an item, yet almost everyone can now in season 6 just with their base damage alone (not to mention horrendously balanced keystones)

I mean I main and once I hit lv 3 with just doran's ring, if I hit all 3 spells to proc my passive and ignite, unless the enemy laner has barrier or bubbles, they're dead. Deathfire doesn't count here since it only ticks 1's until you have a lot of AP Back in season 5 a full combo plus ignite would maybe be HALF their HP. (I know you're gonna say the new passive but they heavily nerfed brand's E and Q and R damage to fit in that passive and even through the nerfs he still does one-shot damage now.)

Assassins are the BIGGEST offenders of base damages because almost every assassin I see now can build 100% tank (MAYBE one damage item) and still one-shot anyone under 2k hp.

Also I've noticed Taric has way too much base damage too, maxing E first in lane can easily chunk 30% or more HP from a squishy, then the empowered autos.

TLDR: 25% nerf to BASE damage AT THE VERY LEAST, rebalance keystones, DESTROY tank assassin builds.

EDIT: Got accused of "Lying" about what I said about Brand there, so here's a Gif of a game I JUST played of me doing exactly that with nothing but a doran's ring: https://media.giphy.com/media/EZqx1SkwZBBnO/giphy.gif

OneExit6/28/2016, 8:10:47 AM30 votes

CAUTION: OPINIONS AHEAD

I play all three: tanks, assassins, and bruisers. Full tanks don't feel tanky enough because of the abundance of damage, and %hp bullshit. Bruisers feel more like tanks, because of the abundance of sustain. Assassins just one shot anything in front of them at this point.

Carnarius6/28/2016, 10:49:07 AM24 votes

this topic is so on point. riot increases and increases damage throughout recent seasons but they don't see the consequences. tanks instead of being tanky deal a lot of damage and damage dealers have way more than before. new penetration items are also broken

to be honest, i feel like new masteries messed up things even more. we are left literally with no defensive options, even in resolve tree we have grasp which has nothing to do with tankiness

mby in season 7 they'll remind themselves good times (s3/s4), because this game is all about making your enemies explode as fast as you can right now

The Yetii Rider6/28/2016, 6:40:50 AM20 votes

The existence of Thunderlords Decree, Fervor of Battle and Grasp of the Undying, as well as Sunfire buffs and the Iceborn Gauntlet rework gave lots of free damage to champions. It's a but odd. Not sure how Riot can fix it.

Totalis6/28/2016, 2:52:57 PM15 votes

keystones were the worst decision Riot ever made imo

SaltyKracka6/28/2016, 5:50:16 AM14 votes

Oh, it still thinks that we're in a tank meta.

How cute.

Lovelle6/28/2016, 10:52:58 AM12 votes

I've never seen a full tank Nautilis one shot an ADC, not even fed. Malphit and Amumu can't even do that unless they build damage.

LegitBusinessman6/28/2016, 9:31:35 PM10 votes

I was saying this since the Caitlyn rework which is the oddest thing to me. You can't take a champion that was balanced, had clear strengths with a mid game power trough, than make her headshots proc on E and W, add a few hundred range to them, and give her amazing seige potential by spamming multiple traps at once.

You slapped mechanics that gave the champion the ability to do 2x the damage it did before, then did that across the board on nearly an ENTIRE CLASS, then somehow expected the game would remain in the balanced state it was in Season 5?

The reason LCS and playing the game in general is boring, is teamfights last no longer than a single skill rotation. Go back and watch Season 4 footage. The teamfights lasted longer, it gave people more opportunities to make plays and show off the strengths of a champion kit. I remember back when you had to win maybe two trades before you could all in for the kill.

This is my favorite forum post of the entire season. Thank you OP.

Enraged Piglet6/28/2016, 4:30:11 PM9 votes

if anything the tank meta is the result of mobility creep destroying all nonmobile champions which these immobile champions are usually the ones that can put out enough constant damage to make tanks useless but they are squeezed out of the meta by mobility.

Sire Hippington6/28/2016, 4:13:36 PM8 votes

Damagecreep has been going on since S3, but it really accelerated alot this season. Especially the keystones ad so much more damage to the game while hardly giving proper defense. The item changes also contributed to more damage overall, especially the LW changes, as strange as it sounds. But the new %pen items just deny any tankiness later in the game. No chance getting even decently tanky vs 45%pen. Also, why the fuck did they just slap another 15-20 ad on each adc built in 6.12??? Slaping % damag on every tank %pen or truedamage on everyone else with every rework doesn't help either...

I think it's mandatory to fix the absurd damagecreep befor the assasin-update. As it is now, assasins need to oneshot targets really fast and reliable or have a really save way out, else they don't work. If an assasin doesn't kill it's target in a splitsecond(talking about lategame teamfights), he will die on the spot him self cause an adc can 3 shot them at that point, which barly takes more than a sec. The reason why tank akali and so on became a thing is that, unless really fed, theri damage pattern is to delayed to go glasscannon, and with the current amounts of damage, bruiser is nearly the same as glasscanon, it won't make you tanky enough to survive for another rotation.

The damage creep is also a reason why tanky dps like shy struggle alot, beeing melee with sustained damage patterns doesn't work in a world where a fulltank can die within <3 sec if focused.