The Risk Of Buffing Doran's Shield

Right now we see more and more ranged or semi-ranged toplaners bullying the melee ones out of the meta. It is super frustrating to play against them and they aren't really what a toplaner is supposed to be, so something needs to be done about them sooner or later.

Most people think that buffing Doran's Shield and its passive would be a nice way to do that since it too is an item that is outperformed by most of the other starting options and it is specifically made to deal with getting bullied out of lane with ranged autohits and ranged single-target spells.

The reason why it super risky to buff it though is actually the botlane.

There was a time when most supports, especially the tanky melee engaging kind of support, started with Doran's Shield instead of the supporting items because of how hard it counters ADCs in the early game. After a lot of nerfs it became what it is today with the side effect of it also completely disappearing from toplane.

With the early game now being much more important than ever before, buffing Doran's Shield just holds the risk of it dictating the botlane meta even though that was not the intent of it.

I personally think it would be better to give individual nerfs to those champions. If you remember when mobile carry toplaners were getting too tanky not too long ago they fixed that problem over the duration of many patches to the point where they were back in line again - just take a look at the patch history of Yasuo or Ekko. Even though it took a long time it did not have the side effect of accidently nerfing or buffing other champions like changing items or game mechanics would.