An in depth look at the fighter rework and itemization rework for fighters

As a guy who plays mostly fighters and tanks, I'd like to take the time to say thanks riot. Not only did you give fighters a better feel to them while reducing the very lackluster, oppressive play pattern they've been notorious for in the past, you managed to clear up some of the blurry lines that fighters and tanks sat on where there wasn't a distinguished difference between the two. Fighters are in a great spot and tanks are still in a darn good spot.

So let's look at each of the direct changes here and I'll start with the first reworked fighter, gangplank.

: Fantastic overhaul of a kit that still preserves a lot of his classical playstyle while adding depth to it and giving his kit a feel of actual gameplay, not just a point and click Crit wall that either runs you over or does absolutely nothing. His E is quite possibly one of the most interesting abilities in the game and it doesn't actually gain power until about mid game, it's most often a farm tool early game. He also gained clear goals and clear moments of strength and weaknesses. His rework was a success, I'd say Sion rework levels of success honestly. These two reworks are quite honestly the best things I've ever seen from your company.

Gangplanks barrels are an absurdly powerful tool late game, don't twist it, I don't mean that as a complaint. But the fact they ignore a chunk of armor and can be detonated in a huge aoe radius gives him more relevance than press Q on squishy and hope it crits late game. It gives him tools to peel, to stack on top of other aoe and between that and his ult, gangplank is a monster come late game. He is considerably weak early, especially 1-7, but he has tools to farm through that. If gangplank is still a bit too overtuned, the next place to look at nerfing is potentially his early game safety. This could be reducing his heal on orange at early levels or even addressing some base stats, nothing major.

Overall, gangplank gets a 10/10 here.

Next up: Fiora

This was a pretty huge change with the form of new mechanics introduced to the game and making Fiora incredibly less binary and giving her more gameplay, basically she doesn't just click on you and press R. I know max %HP true damage isn't a popular mechanic in this game but I honestly think Fioras is well designed, but currently it is simply way overtuned. Her kit as a whole is 10x healthier than her previous Kit and the weak point mechanic of her kit fits her design incredibly well while granting her opponent means to outplay her without feeling like they're ran over by a wall of true damage.

I think her ult change is also very good and it gives her some team utility, even if the heal doesn't make sense thematically. again, there's a good chance she's just way overtuned and that can be fixed. I'd also like to see the debuff of her passive be a bit clearer, the dark red can be difficult to see clearly and some champions with larger models can cover it up, making incredibly difficult to see (Nasus ult, ren ult, stacked chogirth).

Great design, just overtuned and easily fixable. Great job here.

early on, he was released pretty undertuned. But they hotfixed in some changes and that seemingly addressed those concerns. Apparently his heal is bugged on his Q, healing for way too much. And I'd agree that's definitely his only problem currently. Darius is legit drain tanking in fights currently, which I'm sure wasn't the intent when adding the heal - it was to keep alive long enough to get resets, not to sit in the middle of a team, tank up damage and heal it back over and over with Q. But this is easily fixable and likely will be fixed.

Here's the deal, riot did an amazing job on this one. Anyone who plays melees top can tell you how ridiculously oppressive darius was in lane, even short ranged champions died once he hooked them. His AS slow, mixed damage that made him impossible to itemize against and the raw power front loaded into his Q and the ease of landing it made him way too powerful in lane, and his teamfight was lackluster as a result. This was a frustrating experience for everyone involved, which is why new Darius has a good mixture of decent lane phase and teamfight that feels less like he's running you over with stats and random mixed damage and more of an actual fight where you have a chance regardless of how strong he is.

No complaints, awesome job.

I was really against the idea of any changes to Skarner prior to the rework. I thought he was in a good place, I still do but I was mostly reacting with little information, more of an emotional response than a logical one. He had some hotfix changes in and he still might need some more nerfs and that's fine but the power of his kit was greatly enhanced while still having the same old weakness to being kited/etc. But they also helped his jungle issue, even with all the buffs, Skarner was still extremely mana starved. His new passive in the jungle helps this a ton, so it's not mandatory for you to take every blue buff now. And it's not life or death if you somehow lose your first blue.

His pre 6 ganks with red were pretty good prior to the change but they got a bit better here, which could be a problem, I'm not sure yet. His e seems harder to land. This is my greatest concern with his power budget right now and it's his E being an incredible pre 6 ganking tool, which is something I'm not sure Skarner should be having access to considering his post 6 ganks are obviously amongst the best.

His objective control just got absurdly better and it was already godlike. Skarner is one of the few champions in the game whom it's impossible to outsmite or should be. When a target is suppressed, they can't even use smite. This made outsmiting a good Skarner almost impossible short of an incredibly quick consume + smite from Nunu or flash feast + smite from Cho'Gath. But his access to this redonk power from his passive in dragon and baron can also be stolen, so it has means to be reduced in power, which is a good thing.

I'm still not sure about Skarner, I really don't want his kit to return to the old "this guy can't ever be good because when he is, he's too oppressive." His e scares me, this is the biggest concern I have with his kit. Access to an instant stun, even if short lived, is incredibly powerful and given his post 6 ganking, I'm really concerned about this prospect. Time will tell but I think you guys did a good job in solving some of his classic issues in the jungle with his mana constraints.

I'm going to be honest, I don't know. Laning against him when you aren't the villain, he feels like old Garen basically. But anything that is the villain is going to have an awful experience if Garen can get on top of them. This makes laning vs him such a hassle, if you ever become the villain, unless ridiculously far ahead, you literally can't be near him. I don't know if this is a good game mechanic at all honestly, it's very anti-snowbally which sounds good on paper but in reality, it's lame to play against. But I'm going to avoid talking further on this, frankly it's mostly an emotional response and not so much a logical one because I've had limited experience against Garen thus far.

This one here is the most interesting one. Quite frankly fellas, it's going to be a long time before we truly know if this was a success or not. In bottom lane, the combination of a ramhed ADC and support has been mandatory since season 1 worlds. The fact is, people probably don't remember how to play against melee bot lane carries or against them, add in his W change, dragon mechanic and his overall power shift investment from E to Q, and I just don't know how you can say in a short time whether this was good, bad or anything in between, much less a success. We need to see this in all forms of play, competitive and solo queue alike, before we have an idea of where this rework went. We can speculate but in reality, the sheer magnitude of how game changing this reworm was is hard to measure now and for a long time.

Let's talk about some items here to close this out. I haven't seen much titanic hydra, when I have it's been on Olaf with black cleaver and streaks and it's done some serious work. Of all the items, dead mans plate is the one I'm happiest about because this gives immobile melees more utility and power to start fights if they get off a good flank. I think the items overall are fine but streaks gage might need a slight nerf. It's pretty ridiculous , especially late game but nothing major probably needs done, perhaps a slight nerf to its shield.

That's all I've got today folks. Feel free to bash me, throw lava at me or buy me pax Jax. And as always, to close this out

Buff Nasus Nerf lux Give me all your RP

Peace y'all