Nerf Kench's Tankiness Instead of His R Damage

LaughingStapler··2 votes·249 views

I think it's really interesting to have Kench as a massive damage dealer when he gets into range and it gives him other viable lanes like Top and Jungle too. If his damage is nerfed, his clear times will suffer and I think the main issue people find with Kench isn't just his damage but rather how hard he is to kill.

Anyway, I'm pretty sure he's overrated. I mained Kench JG a few months ago and while he was certainly good late game, he also had many weakneses that make me believe he's not the best pick. For one, his clear especially pre-6 is awfully slow and a bit vulnerable. Secondly, his ganks are mediocre (especially until you get Dead Man's Plate). Of course, they can become very good if laners overextend enough for you to use your ult. but overall, his ganks are not particularly strong. Moreover, while he is insane in skirmishes, he falls off a bit in teamfights since he does get kited and lacks strong AoE. I dare all the "Tahm Kench OP" players to try him out a lot more because I'm sure he doesn't deserve quite the ban rate he has. He's annoying but he's not as strong as he seems on paper.

2 Comments

1374341 votes

The reason people have an issue with how hard Tahm is to kill is because of the damage he is capable of. If he was hard to kill but did no damage there would be fewer complaints (because you could just ignore him).

So there are three options:

  1. Nerf damage and keep tankiness
  2. Nerf tankiness and keep damage
  3. Nerf tankiness and nerf damage

Tahm is _suppose _ to be a tank. Of course Riot is going to go with option 1 over 2, although they looked into option 3 with the now reverted shield duration nerf. It may suck for jungle Tahm, but Tahm was intended to primarily be a support or top laner.

He is a little too strong atm, although I do agree that there is some hysteria on the boards about just how strong he is (par for the course for the boards though).

coeurloyal1 votes

Jungle Tahm isn't the problem. It's support Tahm. He gets too much in terms of free stats without any real gold investment, and he provides extremely reliable protection for carries with no tradeoffs or risk-rewards decision making. The problem is he can deal decent damage, he can peel, he can engage, and he can move across the map very quickly without even once having to wonder whether his decisions will lead to his death or cause a real negative impact.

No character should have a tool for every situation, but Tahm does. At least when you pick him in top or jungle you make a conscious decision to trade some of your team's overall DPS for the security. As a support player your team gets everything he has to offer with no negatives as compromise.

You're right that jungle Tahm isn't that strong, but in the current meta jungle is his least preferred role. He's much stronger as a top or support.

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