Omen used to be the Anti-Kiting item

Rebonack·Dec 17, 2014·76 votes·5,559 views

But the the slow was removed because reasons.

Now it doesn't really have any unique identity aside from being that big HP and armor item. The attack speed slow made sense along with the movespeed slow, but now it's kind of redundant with Frozen Heart doing the same thing, except better.

To that end, I would like to suggest an alternative. Change Omen's passive to a physical damage version of Odin's Veil from Dominion. In other words, it reduces physical damage by 10% and stores that damage up to a cap. When you pop the active that damage is release in a big slowing nuke of doom. The more damage stored, the stronger the slow is.

That would give Tanks an actual item to build against folks like Zed who have been gleefully popping Tanks like paper bags filled with gravy.

72 Comments

PyroDec 17, 201433 votes

The problem here is that:

Omen is already used by fighters like Vi as a one-item wonder "I'm tanky now". This would only give them more damage, as the 10% damage reduction is pretty much equally strong on both tanks and fighters.
On-hit MS slow was too strong because it didn't just prevent kiting, it also made it hard to chase a champion with Omen. This hurt the melee champions in particular, who absolutely need to stick to their target.

A much better Omen passive would be flat damage reduction from basic attacks, calculated after resists (so tanks would benefit from it more than bruisers), based on the distance from the attacker (so it would be strong vs ranged, weak vs melee).

Example:

Randuin's Omen

+50 armor, +400 health
UNIQUE Passive - Cold Steel: When hit by basic attack, slow the attacker's AS by 15%
UNIQUE Passive: Blocks 10-50 damage from basic attacks basing on the distance from the attacker (10 block at 300, 50 block at 700)
Reduction applied after resists, so this would make tanks with armor rating above 200-300 immune to ranged basic attacks from champions with no bonus AD.

Base stats significantly nerfed compared to the current Omen, but the new passive makes it a godsend against ranged carries.

The active slow could move on to Frozen Heart (item would need to lose 10% CDR or increase its price) or a new item.

A good followup would be adding an alternative item reducing damage from crits (Kindlegem + Glacial Shroud, would make a lot of sense if the changes to Frozen Heart were also applied as the substitute 20% CDR item).

I'm gonna repost the contents of my latest blog post on Wikia on the Boards soon.

RebonackDec 17, 20145 votes

{quoted}

The problem here is that:

Omen is already used by fighters like Vi as a one-item wonder "I'm tanky now". This would only give them more damage, as the 10% damage reduction is pretty much equally strong on both tanks and fighters.

If it puts folks like Vi over the top then my feelings wouldn't be hurt much if she got some targeted nerfs to compensate for it.

PyroDec 17, 201420 votes

I think you're missing the point.

There's a whole class of fighters - Lee Sin, Vi, Irelia and Jarvan are just a few examples - who start with damage items (Warrior enchantment, Trinity Force), and then get a nice "I'm as good as a tank now" bundle with Omen and Mercury's Treads.

Giving Omen a damage active doesn't buff tanks as much as it buffs bruisers.

SaiannaDec 17, 20142 votes

Don't you think damage reduction for melees is bit too low? Afterall when they manage to get to you they could hurt even more than some rangeds. For example Yasuo with 100% crit. Or Yi with true damage. Both of them melt tanks. In Yi case you can't even slow his attacks.

Also what about AD poke? Maybe allow this Omen passive to also reduce damage from AD abilities?

JamnonDec 17, 20143 votes

I think crit is another monster entirely, honestly. It is a problem, I agree. I do not think it should be addressed with one item.

The thing we all agree on is that melee have a rough time.

PyroDec 18, 20143 votes

The idea is that Omen would protect against ranged, FH against melee. Crit could get entirely another counteritem.

SaiannaDec 18, 20141 votes

Allright, sounds reasonable :)

But when i've tanked alot i always felt that no matter how much armor i build i still am getting hit too hard by AD abilities (Riven/Varus/Cait). As we know spells dont trigger shields passive (slow) so.. any ideas on that?

I often lose more than 1,5k hp(!!!) on ad skillshots alone. Ofc I am ARAM dedicated player and i dodge 90% of all skillshots :)

IlyaK1986Dec 18, 20141 votes

Riven and Varus need all the help they can get, thank you.

Edit: ESPECIALLY in ARAM, in Riven's case. Varus, OTOH, is pretty amazing in ARAM but trash everywhere else.

PyroDec 18, 20142 votes

Thats another issue entirely. Anti-poke is provided by health regen and that's where Warmog's and Righteous Glory come into play.

LeeDarkDec 17, 20142 votes

The problem is the fighter class, not the items. Nerfing the items makes true tanks completely non-viable, while not doing anything to significantly hurt the fighters.

PyroDec 18, 20141 votes

State of the fighter class is a sum of both champions and items.

LeeDarkDec 18, 20141 votes

Yes, but in that equation, there is one variable for the champions and one variable, shared with all other classes and champions, for the items. Nerfing the defensive items, as they have done, has made numerous pure tanks completely non-viable, as I said. This has been going on for a long time, ever since Garen stacked Sunfires, and each defensive nerf to items due to fighters has resulted in either ADCs or Assassins completely dominating the meta. Tanks couldn't stand up to ADCs, fighters got nerfed whenever they could, so it became only a matter of whether or not the assassins that hadn't been nerfed were any good in general. With nerfs to numerous assassins in the past season, the state of the game is quickly becoming "Only the ADC matters."

doubleguacDec 17, 20148 votes

I'm curious why you think flat damage reduction would be better than %. Unless the flat damage reduction scaled with level, this could lead to some really wonky results.

Additionally, ADCs are typically the only class to stack a lot of crit chance, which increases their damage multiplicatively as the game goes on. Flat damage reduction would hurt auto attackers who don't have crit more than it would hurt ADCs.

Scaling the damage reduction off range would also hurt long range, low mobility ADCs (kog, varus, ashe) more than it would hurt someone like Vayne or Lucian. I don't think an "anti-marksmen" item's effectiveness should vary according to the max range of the marksmen in question.

If you want to redesign randuins as the "anti marksmen" item, it seems like the best way to do it would be to reduce its base stats, but add a unique passive that decreases damage taken from critical strikes. This would reduce Randuin's effectiveness as the go-to "I'm tanky now" one-item wonder, but it would allow tank survivability to scale a bit better against marksmen in the long run.

Of course, this wouldn't help at all against the assassins (fizz & zed) who are currently tearing through late game tanks.

OyddAWqJ5rDec 17, 20144 votes

On-hit MS slow was too strong because it didn't just prevent kiting, it also made it hard to chase a champion with Omen. This hurt the melee champions in particular, who absolutely need to stick to their target.

Sooo just make the slow only apply on ranged opponents then right? But that's not why it was removed. It was removed because it apparently messed with marksmen's attack and move patterns (which was kinda the whole point of the item to begin with).

MartyrofsandDec 17, 20143 votes

Sooo just make the slow only apply on ranged opponents then right? But that's not why it was removed. It was removed because it apparently messed with marksmen's attack and move patterns (which was kinda the whole point of the item to begin with).

No it was removed because when it was around the only purpose Marksmen served was to hit towers from range. No class of champion should be completely invalidated by a specific item like ADCs where back when Randuins was at it's strongest. It's kinda like what Last Whisper/Black Cleaver are doing to tanks, in combination with penetration mechanics and fighters doing what tanks do but better. Some serious changes do need to happen but the changes don't involve tank itemization.

JamnonDec 17, 20141 votes

I agree, penetration and I think that also item 3153 item 3151 are in this same vein of problems, but like what sort of changes do you think need to happen?

MartyrofsandDec 17, 20143 votes

Liandries and BoTRK are fine, you do need something to work through tanks stacking health, and as for what I would do to fix how things are? I would do a couple things.

1--Revert the Penetration stacking changes back to how S2 worked, IE flat penetration is accounted for first and then % based. This makes the two work against each other, as the more flat pen you have the less your % base penetration will reduce. This should stop people from building both which is important for step 4.

2--Change Black Cleaver to apply 10 armor shred and only stack up to 2 times, IE 20 flat armor debuff, and another 10 for the individual using it.

3--Last Whisper would be reduced to 20% armor pen, increase it's cost.

4--Add new items to the game that make penetration a build path and one you have to specify for. Namely if you want to kill a squishy flat armor pen is what you will build into since they will have very little a 40-60 flat armor pen will tend to go through 60-70% of their defenses. % based armor pen would be a build path you go to kill tanks and front line opponents. Generally at around 3 items you should be looking to have ~40-50% armor pen. Doing this would also make ADCs and assassins rather different. Assassins would generally build the flat armor pen to kill the enemy squishies while the ADCs who will often hit front line opponents more would be building the % based armor pen.

5--Remove crit and buff some flat AD items. ADCs should be dealing consistently high damage not high damage that spikes into insane damage at randoms times.

Might find some other changes but this is where I would start.

OyddAWqJ5rDec 18, 20141 votes

No-no. Riot literally said it was removed because it was messing with ADC attack and move patterns. I can't seem to find the post though as they didn't state it in the patch of removal.

RebonackDec 17, 201410 votes

I feel foolish.

I forgot to add the Yes/No/Walrus poll =(

Blue Moon WolfDec 18, 20142 votes

hmmm, walrus. definitely walrus :p

metaworldpeace10Dec 17, 20147 votes

Tank itemization is the worst in the game. When Assassins are too strong, tanks become useless. When Assassins are too weak, tanks become unkillable machines. Honestly, the issue between tanks/assassins comes in itemization. Assassins have penetration in order to counter armor/mr stacking, but tanks really don't have anything to counter penetration stacking. Its either.. keep building armor/mr or keep building health, which stacking health is becoming more and more useless due to everyone and their mom having %hp dmg built into their kit, or easily accessible through botrk. I would like to see changes to tank itemization, rather than play whack-a-mole nerfing/buffing tanks/assassins.

JunkοDec 17, 20143 votes

Would you really want tanks like Mundo to buy anti penetration items?

JamnonDec 17, 20142 votes

DrMundo goes where he pleases.

Agree that's scary, but like idk still feel like its a problem that needs to be addressed on some level.

PatMcGroynDec 18, 20141 votes

{quoted}

but tanks really don't have anything to counter penetration stacking

Well, there's only so much penetration you can even build. Void Staff, Last Whisper & Black Cleaver are the only significant pen items against hardcore tanks, and Black Cleaver really isn't even that common these days (as many assassins are opting for Ghostblade for the active & Crit Chance paired with an IE).

Once you hit 300 armor and 150 MR, flat penetration items are pretty inefficient.

HayaishiDec 17, 20144 votes

You can blame bruisers for not allowing tank items to be strong.

Vi, J4, Lee Sin with their bruisers builds killing everyone and no giving a shit needs to stay gone.

AlorasenceDec 17, 20148 votes

{quoted}

You can blame bruisers for not allowing tank items to be strong.

Vi, J4, Lee Sin with their bruisers builds killing everyone and no giving a shit needs to stay gone.

Pretty much.

The problem is that "off tanks" do enough damage and are mobile enough to function as both damage dealers and tanks. Which is why you see these hybrid builds be so much more effective than a full tank Shyvana, Naut, Mundo. I mean short of insane defensive steroids, pure tanks just suck right now.

SammystormDec 18, 20141 votes

mundo is good as a tank (less as of the athenes nerf and every one building morellonomicon). Champs like mao kai are definately the only true tanks playable atm

Blue Moon WolfDec 17, 20143 votes

isn't item 3800 an anti-kiting item, I mean it works in the opposite way as in giving you movement to an enemy, but that's only till you activate it again and it creates a slow field like item 3143 did.

OyddAWqJ5rDec 17, 20142 votes

Righteous Glory is a pretty glorious item. I love it. Sadly it costs too much. As in, like, literally it costs too much. The stats gained don't amount to the cost. Once they reduce the cost it'll be the glorious item it should be.

Blue Moon WolfDec 18, 20141 votes

I tend to have an easy time building it, then again, that's with Braum , item 3302 and an Item set that literally is me buying ether item 1006 , item 1028 or item 3801 every other time I go to shop (I end up with over 160 armor and mr with possibly over 5000 hp if I get the chance to reach full build).

OyddAWqJ5rDec 18, 20141 votes

Statistical Value

500 health = 1333g
300 mana = 600g
100% base health regeneration = 360g
Total Gold Value = 2293g

Statistical Efficiency

The base stats are 91.7% gold efficient, without its passive.

But now I realize the problem was never Glory's cost, but Catalyst's. Makes sense. it's only worth 600~700g without the passive. Guess that passive is worth 600g o.O

Brenticus12Dec 18, 20141 votes

Yeah, it's a great alternative. Just wish the stats were better for the cost. I've started to pick it up in place of Sunfire and Rand when I play top lane bruisers if only for the active.

RebonackDec 17, 20143 votes

Randuins is fine where it is now and frankly so are ADCs.

This topic is not about ADCs.

This topic is about creating an item that can actually mitigate some of the damage from percentile armor shredding tankyderps like Vi and Jman. Or Panth. Or Zed. Or what have you.

IlyaK1986Dec 18, 20141 votes

You're not supposed to be able to really counter their abilities that easily. If a Zed/Panth/J4/Vi are in range to attack you, your entire team is in range to attack them. Their offense had better BE super-strong to reward them for that risk they take.

MartyrofsandDec 18, 20141 votes

{quoted}

You're not supposed to be able to really counter their abilities that easily. If a Zed/Panth/J4/Vi are in range to attack you, your entire team is in range to attack them. Their offense had better BE super-strong to reward them for that risk they take.

Yes because

THIS

and

THIS

is all justified by "he's got to be in the middle of them." Because that is just a downside when your damage is high enough to kill 4 of 5 people on the enemy team.

RebonackDec 17, 20142 votes

If you want to redesign randuins as the "anti marksmen" item, it seems like the best way to do it would be to reduce its base stats, but add a unique passive that decreases damage taken from critical strikes. This would reduce Randuin's effectiveness as the go-to "I'm tanky now" one-item wonder, but it would allow tank survivability to scale a bit better against marksmen in the long run.

Of course, this wouldn't help at all against the assassins (fizz & zed) who are currently tearing through late game tanks.

Well, clearly it wouldn't help against Fizz. He deals magic damage. It would help against Zed, though, since it would be knocking a chunk of damage off that isn't impacted at all by all that armor penetration he buys.

This would be a generalist anti-physical damage item. Not an anti-ADC item (though it would help against the most AD caster-y ADCs). There are already three anti-auto attack items. Tabi, Heart, and Thornmail. There are no items to deal with penetration-stacked AD casters/assassins.

WolfBVDec 17, 20142 votes

item 3075 item 3143

JakethenightDec 18, 20142 votes

For a second I thought you were referring to the scrapped champion.

MartyrofsandDec 17, 20141 votes

{quoted}

But the the slow was removed because reasons.

Because negating an entire class because they did what they where suppose to do, IE attack you, was one of the dumber mechanics riot ever put into the game, right up their with releasing any champ designed by CertaintlyT.

Randuins is fine where it is now and frankly so are ADCs. The problem really has never been them the problem has been armor pen changes that got made back in S3. With those changes it doesn't matter how tanky you get Black Cleaver+Last Whisper means you will be squishy and life will suck for you. This is the reason mobile bruisers like Lee/Vi/etc out class tanks to heavily as they will have the damage to gibb a squishy they get to before the squishy can gibb them. Tanks on the other hand can build as tanky as they want the squishy will still kill them before they kill the squishy.

OJ191Dec 17, 20141 votes

{quoted}

Because negating an entire class because they did what they where suppose to do, IE attack you, was one of the dumber mechanics riot ever put into the game, right up their with releasing any champ designed by CertaintlyT.

At least he tries to do something new with each of his champions.

Live balance needs to get a clue and actually balance them before release. If that means delaying them then so be it.

MartyrofsandDec 17, 20141 votes

At least he tries to do something new with each of his champions.

Live balance needs to get a clue and actually balance them before release. If that means delaying them then so be it.

Not gonna have the conversation here but if you want to know how I feel about CertainlyT and his champs I'm gonna refer you to a thread a posted a while back....

http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/gameplay-balance/lWERERXZ-certainlyt-always-1-thing

OJ191Dec 17, 20142 votes

{quoted}

Not gonna have the conversation here but if you want to know how I feel about CertainlyT and his champs I'm gonna refer you to a thread a posted a while back....

http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/gameplay-balance/lWERERXZ-certainlyt-always-1-thing

my point is there are things live balance could do to make things more fair and even without gutting the ideas behind the designs. It's CT's job to come up with the ideas not to balance them except beyond the most broadest of broad means. To take your Kalista passive example:

-they could change the way her actual dash (as opposed to the passive as a whole) works in any number of ways -they could give her passive a cooldown -they could make her passive only work for chasing/sideways movement -they could increase her autoattack windup animation and reduce the decrease in windup for increasing her attack speed

That said I could be just talking out my ass, I have no idea how much power live is given to actually change things, one would think that so long as they keep the spirit of how something works it would be OK, that would be the sensible thing to let designers to their thing and still have it be balanceable, but i don't work at Riot so....

I won't go on with this argument it's not the right place for it.

Silents429Dec 18, 20141 votes

If by live you mean PBE, Then well, PBE doesn't get much a say in anything.

OJ191Dec 18, 20141 votes

{quoted}

If by live you mean PBE, Then well, PBE doesn't get much a say in anything.

No I mean live because PBE has shown a distinct lack of changing anything important ever in a reasonable time frame, it takes months, or they change it but it gets reverted, or they make it worse...

that and they're almost certainly the same team anyway, since for the most part NOTHING goes straight to live yet riot talks about the live balance team all the freaking time.

Silents429Dec 19, 20141 votes

I don't see the point in your comment, its obvious live has an impact on how riot changes things.

ErijianDec 18, 20141 votes

Because negating an entire class because they did what they where suppose to do, IE attack you, was one of the dumber mechanics riot ever put into the game, right up their with releasing any champ designed by CertaintlyT.

God forbid Marksmen have an actual counter.

MartyrofsandDec 18, 20141 votes

God forbid Marksmen have an actual counter.

You mean like Zed/Ahri/Talon/Leblanc/Rengar/Kha'zix/etc who press the buttons of their kit and laugh as the ADC died after getting off like 1 AA? Sorry but ADCs have counters its just now they can actually be a threat instead of you buying Randuins and laughing as they become completely irrelevant for the rest of the game.

ErijianDec 18, 20141 votes

{quoted}

You mean like Zed/Ahri/Talon/Leblanc/Rengar/Kha'zix/etc who press the buttons of their kit and laugh as the ADC died after getting off like 1 AA? Sorry but ADCs have counters its just now they can actually be a threat instead of you buying Randuins and laughing as they become completely irrelevant for the rest of the game.

If they were irrelevant, then why were Marksmen still being chosen before Randuin's was nerfed?

Anyway, yeah certain classes counter certain classes, but as of right now we have no direct items that counter Marksmen like other classes do. That's all.

MartyrofsandDec 19, 20141 votes

If they were irrelevant, then why were Marksmen still being chosen before Randuin's was nerfed?

Anyway, yeah certain classes counter certain classes, but as of right now we have no direct items that counter Marksmen like other classes do. That's all.

Because they where the only class that could reliably get damage on a tower during a siege, it sure as hell wasn't for their team fighting when Kha insta-gibbed them just to jump out taking next to no damage. There is a reason while Randuins was in it's heyday the primary ADCs picked where Lucien/Sivir/Caitlyn/Jinx all of which either excel at taking turrets or keeping a team ahead when it comes to rotating. Since Randuins got nerfed, and BT as well, we have seen the reemergence of ADCs actually doing damage to players with picks like Twitch/Lucien/Corki/Graves/Trist/Kog and hell even Ezreal is making a limited come back.

Um please do tell me, what are these magical items that counter champs like Talon/Zed/Lee/Kha/etc all of which can blow people up, or if Lee in the late game completely displace you ensuring your dead? Items don't counter champs, they haven't in a long time, outside of a select few rare cases, like QSS on Malz. Items may help you against a champ but they don't invalidate them. As it stands right now the only things items counter are themselves, LW/BC counter armor, BOTRK/Liandries counter health. You are not countering champions so much as you are trying to counter champion builds. I'll be the first to say it's kinda of a lame set up that I wish would change but that is pretty much where items sit as of right now.

Brenticus12Dec 18, 20141 votes

Maybe you should protect them by using CC so the marksmen can do what he's supposed to do, sustained high damage?