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Tanks: A Few (too many) Words

DrTemptragon··10 votes·770 views

Warning: This is really long. Probably far too long. There's a TL;DR at the bottom.

Tanks should be the end-of-year class to be updated.

Tanks have caused some complaints when they're in meta. When they're strong, they're the worst sort of "stack-check" fights. Historically Tanks have only been strong when they can double-dip multiplicative stats, like Sejuani's insane synergy with release Cinderhulk and the early season Mundo issues. You die slowly because they're a massive ball of stats and you can't win, or the tank player blows all of his CC and dies, which doesn't really feel very tank-like.

Currently building tanky is the most efficient way to output damage for a lot of top laners, opting in to extra damage over time and CDR in lieu of traditional scaling. A lot of people are pointing at this and saying "it's a tank meta", where it's really more of a Juggernaut meta. Some of the characters opting in to builds like this bypass traditional Juggernaut weaknesses, such as low mobility and no escapes, and are very frustrating as a result. Even the raw tanks that are thriving in this meta tend towards the higher sustained damage tanks, such as Naut, Poppy, Rammus and Maokai.

It's interesting to see the multiplicative stats are here too, though less straightforward than in previous seasons. Sunfire gives you more damage from both Grasp and in raw magic damage, while giving resists. IBG gives you CDR, the multiplicative stat, and makes the health you have and can steal through Grasp more valuable than the health on someone building damage, though resists. In a sense, the stats are build into the system; CDR and resists are inherently multiplicative stats and it's worked fine so far. Grasp is giving them a higher effective base to work with from the start of the game, which is what I believe to be the issue.

This doubling-down on stats is basically the safest way to snowball out a game, but the reliance on these sorts of levers is the biggest issue with the Tank class. They have no access to a consistent lategame fantasy, as they're either strong enough to be unkillable and to murder everything around them or they blow all their CC and die. It pushes slow damage tanks or tanks that don't scale as well with CDR out of the meta and means they can't ever come back while there's this emphasis on raw efficiency, unless a very strong abuse case is discovered. There's some room here for expanded itemisation and less of a damage and raw stat focus.

Ideas for Dedicated Tank itemisation:

Obliterator's Stranglehold Giant's Belt, Spectre's Cowl 3000 Gold (Combine Cost 900 Gold) 650 Health 40 Magic Resist

Unique Passive - Stranglehold: Immobilizing enemy champions generates Oppression stacks, up to 100. When you reach 100 stacks, your next basic attack splashes, applying a 90% slow to all enemies for 0.5 seconds. In addition, gain 1500% base health regen for 1 second.

This gives tanks a chance to itemise into their fantasy, crowd-controlling immortality, while the item power is locked away from bruisers and Juggernauts. It rounds out tank MR itemisation with a selfish option that doesn't feel bad to buy if you don't have a kit with healing or a Warmogs. Perhaps most importantly, it doesn't paper over any weaknesses; it doesn't solve initiation for tanks who have a hard time with it (Galio), it doesn't prevent tanks being kited (in fact it's just accentuates that weakness), it doesn't provide extra damage.

Obliterator's Stranglehold is pretty type agnostic, desired by Defenders and Controllers especially, but still very good for Isolators.

My concerns about the item as it stands are mainly that it doesn't seem a particularly good first buy for tanks, as it lacks CDR, which is generally highly desirable. Replacing Giant's Belt with Kindlegem and lowering the health total could resolve this, but at that point it might crowd out all other itemisation for a first buy, though potentially it's one-sided resists would prevent that. However, the item fantasy shouldn't be a first buy; it's a multiplier fantasy, like Deathcap.

Road Crusher Raptor Cloak, Glacial Shroud 3000 Gold (Combine Cost 800 Gold) 70 Armour 20% CDR 350 Mana

Unique Passive - Point Runner: Builds up to 20% Movement Speed over 2 seconds while near turrets and fallen turrets.

Unique Active - Pave The Way: When near an allied or fallen turret, leech it's power to create an area around you where allied stuns, slows, taunts and roots are 10% longer (120 seconds cooldown) (500 Range).

Once again a chance to opt into extra crowd control, though in this case, it's very strong effect that is extremely situational. The Raptor Cloak line of items is a little unusual in that they generally require a strategic reaction from the enemy team. Zzrot provides splitpush threat and Ohmwrecker changes diving parameters. Road Crusher is significantly stronger than either of those, but similarly pushes a strategic set of plays. Unlike the other two, it's a lot stronger defensively. It's only usable in territory your team "owns".

Road Crusher would be highly preferred by Defenders over the other two types, though Controllers can make a claim. Knockups and Suppression have been deliberately left out, as they are unmitigatable, so their duration is very important to their balance.

This item's potential issues are potentially that it's too good defensively and doesn't allow the team to make plays, while shutting out too many options for the enemy team. It strongly encourages the enemy to splitpush rather than deathball down mid. I think there's a bit of an opening to try to push strategic diversity this way, to force enemy reaction rather than trying to sort your own team.

Variety in Tanks

In addition to all of this, several champion kits have significant overlap, putting their selection down to whoever is stronger at that point.

Classifying Tanks: There are several champs people commonly call tanks that... really aren't. Mundo, a Juggernaut, is probably example number one. I'm also going to ignore J4, who's very rarely played as anything other than a diving fighter.

The following are assumed to be features of tanks in general: - The ability to initiate. - The ability to absorb a large amount of damage. - A crowd control focus. - Low, but consistent and target agnostic (% health) damage.

Mundo, for example, doesn't offer strong initiation, doesn't have a crowd-control focus and has rather high damage.

The following champions are listed as primarily tanks by Riot: Alistar Amumu Blitzcrank Cho'Gath Galio Jarvan IV Leona Malphite Maokai Nautilus Poppy Rammus Sejuani Shen Singed Sion Zac

Most of them have some solid roles they've carved a niche in, so I'm trying to identify the problem children.

I've spilt them up into the following divisions, based on what I see as the champion's specific niche: Defenders (tanks focusing on peel and assisting other champions, usually carries): Alistar, Galio, Leona, Maokai, Poppy, Shen.

Isolators (tanks focusing on lockdown of a single target, usually for a long period): Blitzcrank, Cho'Gath, Nautilus, Rammus, Singed

Controllers (tanks focusing on AoE CC, teamfight wombos and teamfight disruption): Amumu, Malphite, Sejuani, Sion, Zac

My personal opinion is that the several tanks have significant overlap, but the following are the worst examples: Amumu and Sejuani. Consistent, high, damage in a small AoE, semi-reliable ranged initiation, AoE lockdown ult. Zac, Sion and Malphite. Long-range initiation that is beaten by spreading out, extremely strong from Fog of War. Major CC is un-mitigatable but short, padded out with slows. Their strongest differences are that Malphite is generally better against physical damage comps and Zac against magic damage. Alistar and Leona. Ali's WQ is basically a stronger version of Leo's EQ and also can replicate the functionality of Solar Flare, but on a lower cooldown. A properly staggered Leona combo will do more damage, but Ali ult gives similar damage and doesn't require staggering or micro. In addition, Alistar has lane sustain for him, his minion wave and his carry. Leona's only strict advantage is that her single target combo is longer, but it's also mitigatable and cleansable, and Ali Headbutting opponents towards his team is often significantly better regardless.

I seriously believe the end-of-year update should be Tanks and not Assassins. They've no late fantasy beyond needing the enemy ADC there to kill them and whenever tank itemization is good it causes serious game health issues and a lot of frustration.

TL;DR - People building items that give them health and CDR does not a tank meta make, but tanks being reliant on those sorts of items means they're in a bad place. Tanks need different itemization.

40 Comments

Teridax684 votes

Obliterator's Stranglehold looks pretty nice, Road Crusher looks alright, though perhaps a tad situational (which is probably fine, considering it's a Raptor Cloak item). I like that you're discussing tank itemization, and imo I think one of the biggest problems with tanks, right down to the way we perceive them, is that there is no real tank itemization. There's tanky itemization, all of which contributes towards making its recipients more durable, but the effects attached to those items don't explicitly reward tanks for doing tank things, as you mentioned, like peeling for allies, locking down targets or laying around lots of disruptive CC, which you've encouraged in your above items.

Riot's been making recent efforts to differentiate itemization between classes, but currently there is no major difference in item choice between tanks and bruisers, which is partly why tanky builds are so good on everyone (anyone capable of surviving for some time can make really good use of tanky items), but also why it's very difficult to tell the difference between a tank and a tanky fighter, especially because bruisers often fill in for tanks in their contributions.

On a side note, I think it could be really cool to make champion size a stat tanks could build. Increasing a champion's size means increasing their ability to body-block champions and abilities, as well as their disruption radius and threat, and would synergize really well with many tank abilities (e.g. Braum's Unbreakable, Poppy's shield pickup radius, various champions' body-based collision effects, etc.), while not carrying too much effectiveness for bruisers and juggernauts, who are tanky because they need to survive long enough to lay down their damage, and who'd rather kill their enemies directly rather than take more damage from them. If there's any class that deserves to be the largest and most imposing in the game, it's tanks.

The Whamboozler3 votes

Here's the thing... the real issue isn't with tanks. Naut and Maokai are strong, but they're tanks. They might need a slight reduction in damage since they have VERY strong durability and CC, but they're pretty fair.

The problem is with high utility, high mobility champs building those hybrid tanky items and becoming absurdly hard to kill while still outputting crazy damage. The problem isn't Maokai ... it's Ekko. It isn't Nautilus it's Akali. These assassins can build tanky and still put out pretty assassin-level damage, it just takes them slightly longer. But the lack of vulnerability more than makes up for it. They're doing something they're not supposed to do and it's broken. Assassins are supposed to be high risk, high reward picks that need kills to stay relevant, are vulnerable if caught out or if they mess up when attempting to get at a carry, and that need to choose their fights carefully to succeed.

Nah. Not anymore. Just build tank Ekko and you can dive in fae-first... tank three people, kill the carry AND the support and press R to pop back out and heal up to 2/3rds health. It's not just him too, he's just the worst offender. Assassins have no risk to them anymore. No trade-offs for their absurd burst. And now, they're not even fragile. They're bruisers. Bruisers with extremely powerful mobility, that is.

DrTemptragon2 votes

Yep. Maybe I wasn't clear; I agree this is an issue. But it's an issue because tank itemization relies on these multiplicative stats, which means when they're sufficiently strong then anyone can abuse them and bypass the weaknesses their class is supposed to have.

Thus, new and different tank itemization is required.

A tank class rework, particularly with items, would solve a lot of problems with the splashback into other classes, while not making tanks almost completely redundant, like the majority of Season 3.

The Whamboozler3 votes

That's the problem though. The "tank" role just... isn't valuable compared to pretty much any other role with a few tank items slapped onto it. People want to use these high utility champs with overloaded kits, not big, slow juggernauts and CC machines that don't die.

It's not an MMO. There isn't aggro. People will avoid targeting a tank unless that tank is a threat somehow, and riot has pretty handily failed at making them threats. In a REALLY dumb way, tank Ekko is a better tank than half of the big, slow tanky suckers out there. He is too strong to ignore and too tanky to kill. Overpowered as hell, yes... but he fills the job of a tank perfectly. Of course, his kit is so overloaded he can fill ANY role pretty well, but then that's the problem isn't it? I have NO idea what the solution is.

DrTemptragon1 votes

I really like playing Tanks in League, as a large part of being a tank is pulling that threat.

My image for Tanks in League is they should be targeted because getting past them is extremely difficult. They're a goalie of sorts, preventing access to the back line or forcing fights through teamwork and CC. Drawing targeting from raw damage despite being tanky is a bruiser/Juggernaut thing, and while I totally agree tank Ekko fits that critera, the lack of being a threat in any other way is what leaves tanks in such a lurch; if their itemization is good, they're not even the best at using it.

The Whamboozler1 votes

I agree, I just don't know the fix for it. Any item introduced for tanks will be stronger on people with more mobility and utility heavy kits. Big, slow meatshields just aren't as good as the guy with 3 dashes, a shield, a slow, an execute and % damage on-hit or what have you.

They need to change the kits of these big, slow tanks to make them valid choices over the spastic hyper-mobile tanksassins running riot right now. How? No idea. Can you think of a way they could make big slow meatheads more valuable?

DrTemptragon1 votes

The idea with Road Crusher and Obliterator's Stranglehold is to multiply existing CC.

Road Crusher is a defensive item; allies stand in the zone and dives are way more risky.

Obliterator's Stranglehold is offensive, someone's locked down and they stay locked down.

Both of them scale with existing CC, hopefully meaning a lot of the characters who just build tanky and act as bruisers couldn't make much use of them, as they like to purchase more CC instead (i.e. Iceborne Gauntlet).

Ekko might still be problematic, but I think they'd be inefficient purchases on him. Well, that's the hope.

Hopefully that provides enough CC that true tanks can be picked just for their lockdown, which will let them be good against the bruiser/assassin mishmashes floating around, as they rely a lot on flexibility. I don't know if it'd be enough on it's own and I'm not sure what else could be done, but I think it's a start.

LankPants1 votes

I agree, I just don't know the fix for it. Any item introduced for tanks will be stronger on people with more mobility and utility heavy kits.

I'd say buff up Rand's and put a long duration self ground, around 10-15 seconds on its active. Sure it fucks with tanks a little but I'd be OK with buying a powerful item with this downside on people like Zac, Sej and Naut who do rely on some mobility but not that much while the item would become unbuyable to people like Lee Sin and Ekko.

I think this is how tank items should be designed, a powerful downside which has a larger effect on mobile bruisers than on tanks.

Another example would be putting negative offensive stats on items. As a Sej I give 0 fucks if I lose 30 AD or 50 AP to buy a Sunfire for example. My AD is pretty unimportant after my first couple of clears, If I get a Sunfire with say +50HP, +5 Armour and -30 AD that's going to be an advantage for me, it's not going to be for any bruiser looking at the item since it's a fair loss of AD.

I actually love the idea of negative stats and downsides on actives on items. It allows you to tailor the champs who you want to buy them, want to make Gauge really bad on ADCs? Give it -50% crit chance. It's now an atrocius ADC item but no-one else really buys crit so no-one else really cares.

LankPants2 votes

I have NO idea what the solution is.

There's a few, I refer to them as the Nautilus, Sejuani and Maokai route.

The Nautilus route is just to create a champion with such a huge amount of CC that he can't be ignored, these champs normally fit the support role better than any other since they bring immense amounts of peel.

The Sejuani route is basically just to make a bruiser with better CC but a bit less durability than average for a tanky. This champs are high damage and you really can't ignore them as they'll just wipe your team by the end of a fight if you do.

The Maokai route is to give a tank some sort of other utility which makes removing them an attractive option. As long as Maokai's alive his whole team is tanky, as long as Braum's alive he's a walking shield ect.

I think Riot's done a reasonable job at getting tanks to work in the game TBH. Their bigger problem is the design of mobile utility champions. Why would I play a tank when Ekko and Lee Sin exist?

TheJinxedOne1 votes

honestly, I think both items you named would make ekko more broken

DrTemptragon1 votes

I dunno. I can't see Ekko spending 3k gold on either of those items, as he's got easier access to CDR and a combination of tankiness and damage from other items already.

Road Crusher particularly would be a weird item to opt into, as a massive part of Ekko's strength is his mobility and target selection and Road Crusher has anti-synergy with that.

TheJinxedOne1 votes

an area around you where allied stuns, slows, taunts and roots are 10% longer (120 seconds cooldown) (500 Range).

his q w and passive would all be 10% longer for how long?

DrTemptragon1 votes

Yeah, but it's only close to turrets. His natural hunting grounds of river areas and mid-lane wouldn't be usable with Road Crusher.

It's very possible I didn't make the idea clear enough. It's a great anti-dive item, but Ekko's a diver and likes small areas, like jungle pathing.

Ralanr3 votes

As a tank player, I support this idea of a tank rework over assassins.

Anything to get people to stop calling Garen, Darius, and Mundo a tank.

DrTemptragon1 votes

Yeah, this annoys me too; it has a lot of health? Must be a tank!

I think part of it is because tank lines can be really muddied; someone pointed out that Cho's played more like a burst caster, generally, but is still extremely tanky and CC-focused.

LankPants2 votes

Amumu and Sejuani. Consistent, high, damage in a small AoE, semi-reliable ranged initiation, AoE lockdown ult.

This is because Sej and Amumu aren't really true tanks. They're a cross between Bruisers and Tanks. They wouldn't function as champions if you took their damage away from them and there'd be no reason to ever pick them over someone like Naut, who brings more CC than them while also being far tankier.

I think the best way to think of tanks and tank like champions is by visualising them on a triangle, I drew up a crappy example here but I think it gets the message across. Bear in mind that "durability" and "damage" are relative terms. A squishy, high damage tank is still tankier and lower damage than an ADC for example.

http://imgur.com/p7BUxQs

While I don't disagree with you thread I think it's important to consider where tanks should deal good damage.

DrTemptragon1 votes

Yeah, I agree. There's nothing wrong them them having their extra damage, especially since they both give up a fair chunk of reliability on their CC to do it. My objection is more that they play very similarly.

I would however, say they're both true tanks. They've got more CC than damage, and a strong initiation focus. Bruisers tend to lack both of these; the only example off the top of my head with both is J4, and he definitely straddles the tank/bruiser line.

LankPants2 votes

I would however, say they're both true tanks. They've got more CC than damage, and a strong initiation focus. Bruisers tend to lack both of these; the only example off the top of my head with both is J4, and he definitely straddles the tank/bruiser line.

They're a cross between different types of champs IMO. Sej and Amumu are a cross between AP bruisers like Rumble and Vlad and true tanks while J4 is a cross between Lee and Irelia and true tanks. Sej and Amumu are very caster-ish as a result where they deal most of their damage through abilities while J4 is very AA focused and deals less damage with his abilities.

My objection is more that they play very similarly.

I'd agree with that one. To me they should be separated mostly by who they are better at dealing their damage to. Amumu should be an equaliser, he should get strong %based damage and MR shred to help him deal with tankier champs. Sejuani should be a bully, she should use her HP ratios to put out large sums of flat damage that make her more adept at killing squishies.

The seeds of this are already present in their kits, I just feel they need to be expanded upon. If Amumus passive was a little more noticeable and more anti-tank than anti-carry and his E dealt at least some %hp damage and Sej's W didn't deal %HP damage but she had higher ratios I feel like this would give enough of difference between them to create situations where one was better than the other based off of the enemies comp. Obviously they'd still be quite similar, but I feel like that's OK as long as they fill slightly different niches.

DrTemptragon1 votes

That's along the lines I was thinking too, though a little bit more radical. I actually knocked together some kit changes, but they're not very polished and I dunno how satisfying they'd be.

LankPants2 votes

I've done a Sejuani one before with some moderate shifts to abilities. I can't find it because it was ages ago and the boards search function is not good but I'll put the basic ideas here.

Passive

Now the first half of Sej's W rather than terrible. Deals damage based off of Sej's HP, I think it was 4/5/6%+ a small flat bonus VS monsters Activates on next AA after being in combat for 4 seconds, AA buff lasts for 2 seconds so it can be kitted out.

W

Now activates immediately when used similarly to Shyvana's burnout, no longer has the AA buff attached. new: Enemies CC'd by Sejuani take bonus damage from the ability.

That was the general idea anyway.

DrTemptragon2 votes

My ideas were along the lines of the following:

Sejuani: A huge amount is made of Sejuani's endurance and hunger for war in her lore and quotes, but she's also the leader of her tribe. She is one of the more aggressive tanks, charging into the frontline and pushing out decent damage, but initiation is her only leadership trait. She's a warlord, she leads a massive band of raiders through some of the harshest lands in Runeterra. She has to push into enemy lands and scatter the weak, crush their houses and farms and take what the Winter's Claw can lay their hands on. So this was pretty easy; push her initiation and ability to crush past the enemy frontline, to plunder and destroy. In exchange, she has to commit harder than ever, with her survivability and damage pattern extended.

Frost Armor: Damaging an enemy grants Sejuani bonus armor and slow resistance, increasing for every second she's in combat. When Sejuani has been out of combat for more than 1.5 seconds, all stacks of Frost Armor are lost.

  • Increases based on time spent in combat.
  • Easier to lose it's effects.

Arctic Assault: Cooldown lowered to 12/11/10/9/8 seconds from 15/14/13/12/11. Damage reduced to 40/90/140/190/240 from 80/125/170/215/260.

Sejuani and Bristle charge forward, dealing magic damage to all enemies hit. Sejuani stops on contact with an enemy champion, knocking them up and goring them.

Gored enemy champions cannot be knocked up by Artic Assault for 10 seconds, but no longer stop Sejuani on impact.

  • Solid initiation tool remains.
  • Can now penetrate the front line in elongated engagements.
  • Cooldown lowered.
  • Less damage.
  • Knock-up still takes a long time to repeat.
  • Bristle has to work harder.

Fail of The Northern Winds: On-hit damage changed to 40/70/100/130/160 (+0.6 AP) from percentage of target's HP. Aura damage changed to 2/3/4/5/6% (+0.2 AP) Sejuani's max health per second, for a maximum of 8/12/16/20/24% of her HP.

New Passive: Dealing damage with Flail of the Northern Winds applies Frost to enemies for 4 seconds.

No other changes.

+Typically more damage overall.

  • Less burst.
  • Less effective on defence-stacking enemies.

Permafrost: Removed: Sejunai's abilities and basic attacks apply Frost to enemies for 4 seconds.

Active: Sejuani consumes Frost on all nearby enemies to deal them magic damage and slow them for 1.5 seconds. For every enemy champion affected, the cooldown on Artic Assault is reduced by 1.5 seconds.

  • Increases her ability to crowd control the back line.
  • No longer applied by basic attacks or most abilities, notably Glacial Prison.

Glacial Prison: Stun duration reduced to 1/1.37/1.75 seconds.

Ideally new Sejuani is focused on crunching through the front-line to reach the squishies, though this may take her some time. Glacial Prison's use case is now stronger if you only hit the front line, as you can continue the charge and push forward. Sejuani still synergises with everything she ever has: health and radiating damage, but now needs to be stopped. On the flip-side she'll probably find it harder to burn down the enemy team frontline if she can't get through.

Amumu: Amumu's character is really straightforward. He's lonely and wants friends, but sheds caustic tears and can't control his tantrums or curse. The Curse of the Sad Mummy video is exploratory of his motivations (and also very pretty). Honestly, he exemplifies this really well already. The direction I took with Amumu was what you're already encouraged to do: Make as many friends as possible, all at once. Unlike where I tried to go with Sejuani, who just wants to shove aside or break everyone in her way, it's important for Amumu to be target agnostic. Amumu also already has great highs, hitting Bandage Toss and Curse of the Sad Mummy feel great.

AP Amumu was also something I tried to preserve.

Cursed Touch has been remade. New Passive, Let's Find Some Friends: While Amumu does not have direct vision of any enemy champions, he becomes Lonely. While Amumu is Lonely, he takes reduced physical damage and gains Tantrum stacks twice as fast.

Upon an enemy champion entering his vision, he gains a burst of movement speed when moving towards them, decaying over 1 second.

Bandage Toss: No changes.

Despair: No changes.

Tantrum: Removed: Amumu takes reduced physical damage. Tentrum's cooldown is reduced by 0.5 seconds every time Amumu is hit by a basic attack.

Cooldown reduced to 9/8/7/6/5 from 10/9/8/7/6.

Passive: Amumu gains stacks of Tantrum every second he is in combat, at a rate of 0.5 a second, up to 10.

Active: Amumu releases his anger, dealing magic damage to all nearby enemies. In addition, he deals 1% (+0.5% per 100 AP) of the target's max health in additional magic damage per stack of Trantrum.

Curse of the Sad Mummy: No changes.

Amumu's changed very little, just gaining a little bit of flexibility on the use of Tantrum while losing some raw, but hidden, damage from magic resist reduction.

LankPants2 votes

Arctic Assault: Cooldown lowered to 12/11/10/9/8 seconds from 15/14/13/12/11. Damage reduced to 40/90/140/190/240 from 80/125/170/215/260.

Sejuani and Bristle charge forward, dealing magic damage to all enemies hit. Sejuani stops on contact with an enemy champion, knocking them up and goring them.

Gored enemy champions cannot be knocked up by Artic Assault for 10 seconds, but no longer stop Sejuani on impact.

Solid initiation tool remains. Can now penetrate the front line in elongated engagements. Cooldown lowered. Less damage. Knock-up still takes a long time to repeat. Bristle has to work harder.

At least on net amount of knockups this is a substantial nerf because CDR is a stat that exists. It also distinctivenesses flanking and makes is stupidly difficult to keep a Sej off of your back line. It seems like an overall less effective spell in most scenarios that's unfair in the few cases where it works out. Not really a fan of this one.

Permafrost: Removed: Sejunai's abilities and basic attacks apply Frost to enemies for 4 seconds.

Active: Sejuani consumes Frost on all nearby enemies to deal them magic damage and slow them for 1.5 seconds. For every enemy champion affected, the cooldown on Artic Assault is reduced by 1.5 seconds.

Increases her ability to crowd control the back line. No longer applied by basic attacks or most abilities, notably Glacial Prison.

I don't see a point in not having AA's apply her E. I also don't like not being able to E after an ult, that's actually where a lot of Sej's lockdown comes from.

Glacial Prison: Stun duration reduced to 1/1.37/1.75 seconds.

So you're making Sej's early-mid game even weaker? Seems questionable.

I don't particularly like this rework because it adds needless complexity to the kit while reducing counterplay if you work out ways around that complexity. You're basically making it far harder for a front line champ to block Sejuani. You're also polarising Sej's early and late game to amounts beyond Vayne. Everything you did is basically an early game nerf and a late game buff.

The thing about my one is that while it's very basic there's clear counterplay introduced. The reason why the buff is short lasting is to create a time where if you can stay away from Sej she losses damage. The CC damage increase also creates gameplay too, since it creates a scenario where Sej wants to lock you down while she's on top of you to maximise her damage. If she has to use her ult to chase you down she losses some damage since she's not applying her DOT to you while you're stunned. I imagine this change would come with a small drop in W's damage, maybe around 10-15% so if she uses the mechanic optimally it's a little higher but when used poorly it's a bit lower.

DrTemptragon2 votes

"Overall less effective but unfair when it works out" is an okay paradigm to support, I think.

That aside, Frost not applying on AA's or Ult gives a far harder engagement window for Sejuani to capitalize on, which means not being hit by Flail becomes far more important. I think a raw CC damage increase just exacerbates Sejuani's historical problems with overbearing early snowball.

In addition, I don't think Flat Damage/Percentage Health damage is enough to differentiate Sejuani and Amumu, though it's certainly more than they have now. I'm also pretty okay with Sejuani breaking the body-blocking counter-play to tanks in exchange for less immediate reliability.

Having said that, you're right in the this is a lot more complicated of an overhaul and could probably be trimmed down to meet the same goals. It's also probably not something that would be well recieved by existing Sej players and as you've said may make her too binary depending on phase of the game.

LankPants2 votes

"Overall less effective but unfair when it works out" is an okay paradigm to support, I think.

I've never liked it personally. It tends to create gameplay that's not overly rewarding in the majority of cases and is just very frustrating to have to deal with. It's basically the Katarina effect where 9 times out of 10 you die horribly but the enemy always needs to focus on you to ensure you never succeed.

That aside, Frost not applying on AA's or Ult gives a far harder engagement window for Sejuani to capitalize on.

Her ult not applying her mark just fucks with her ability to engage on mobile champions, if you ult you can more or less close the distance in its duration but that means nothing if they can just dash away.

On AA's it really doesn't matter 99% of the time. The only thing it would do is fuck Sej out of her ability to start E, which sometimes allows you to secure kills at level 1.

I think a raw CC damage increase just exacerbates Sejuani's historical problems with overbearing early snowball.

Sej isn't really a snowbally champ, she's a late game 'carry' tank. It's kind of like having a Vayne in the jungle, she can snowball, but she never should. Your changes would probably just make it so she never could, which would mean her late game would need to be utterly absurd to compensate.

Sejuani breaking the body-blocking counter-play to tanks in exchange for less immediate reliability.

I'm not, this is the majority of the counterplay to Sejuani and it actively encourages her to attempt flanks. This removes both counterplay and gameplay, which I don't think is a good direction.

It's also probably not something that would be well recieved by existing Sej players

Nope, not at all. I'm very reluctant to see major changes to Sej, they really don't end up helping her in the long run. Personally the only thing I really want to see for her is a new passive, which is kind of what the "rework idea" I posted was getting at. I literally just moved some power around to free some up for an actual passive.

Melledoneus1 votes

Can I make a small correction? Shen is actually more reliant on initiating and locking down targets for brief periods of time, opting to pick which opponent to whittle down with his Q. He is a dueling tank that can switch to becoming a peel tank on a dime. Just my two cents.

Also, can we have an item that gives CDR but not mana? Almost every CDR tank item gives mana, which is wasteful on the likes of Shen and Zac.

DrTemptragon1 votes

While I agree that Shen does have a lot of strengths in initiation, I've run under the assumption every tank has a way to initiate a fight if need be and Shen's kit is definitely more defensive in nature, with his ult and AoE AA block.

Spirit Visage fits that niche for Zac already (to a certain extent, it's not all the CDR he could possibly want), but I agree Shen's CDR itemization is really wonky, with the only real choice being Locket, which is usually picked up on Supports already, making it inefficient because of the auras, or Spirit Visage, which is hard for Shen to lever the passive on.

I'd say Locket's probably fine as it stands. More non-mana CDR would be nice, though, admittedly.

Melledoneus1 votes

Actually, Shen's playstyle is more than often agressive, since his ultimate is what he uses to protect allies. After which he locks down enemies offensively to allow carries to melt them. Not to mention he mostly used his W to prevent severe punishment from long-range ADCs like Caitlyn by blocking damage while he gets to work. While Shen can easily switch to peeling for carries, he's mostly aggressive.

That being said, Locket is far from being optimal on Shen, considering it's taking up an item slot to provide minimal stats and an aura he can't utilize too much since he is the vanguard more often than not. Shen's only real CDR options are Frozen Heart, which the mana is wasted on Shen, and Spirit Visage, which doesn't provide much since it was nerfed.

Just to make things clear, I extensively play Shen, and he is my most played champion for over 2-3 years of playing.

DrTemptragon1 votes

Okay! I'll bow to experience, having only played ~20 or so games. Locket does feel like a bad purchase on him, though I think it's probably not actually too bad. Some more non-Mana, non-AP CDR would be nice, admittedly, but I'm worried about it's effects on other manaless characters.

I also wasn't setting out to solve Shen's itemization problems. :P

Melledoneus1 votes

You do have a point about him being defensive at times, since that is the job of any tank. You weren't completely wrong, you were just emphasizing on the defensive aspect a bit too much. That being said...

I feel like forcing items to have stats like mana in exchange for stats that tanks in general could use better is not the best idea. I understand frozen heart and Iceborn Gauntlet being that way, but I feel those should be some of the only mana tank items, seeing as how tanks that require much more mana (i.e Maokai) build items such as RoA and the like. Tanks don't generally need too much mana because they don't spam like mages do, and tanks that don't use mana in general just miss out completely.

With that in mind, yes, I am heavily biased towards Shen. However, I speak for all tank players when I say that we don't have enough tank itemization that doesn't infringe into bruiser and juggernaut territory.

DrTemptragon1 votes

{quoted} However, I speak for all tank players when I say that we don't have enough tank itemization that doesn't infringe into bruiser and juggernaut territory.

Yeah, that was my concern. It's a very unfulfilling niche.

Sasogwa1 votes

It's good, but.. Tanks are better than Juggernaughts right now, the black cleaver being weaker than before; and sunfire/iceborn being really strong; a buff to tanks itemization would be really problematic more than anything tbh. IBG/ Sunfire is not really juggernaught itemization. In general , juggernaughts scale better with health and AD than with CDR and resists, with just Nasus as the exception. Also, these items do not solve the problem that no matter what happens, tanks are very (too?) tanky midgame yet get absolutely slaughtered in lategame. Also they could just start with IBG/Sunfire and then take those items, they'll both have good damage with great CC fantasy. I think it's risky.

DrTemptragon1 votes

It's less about buffing tanks as a whole and more about giving them a base of itemisation that can't be abused by other classes of champions. Tank Ekko and Akali are things because the base of itemisation for tanks as it stands is about cost-efficiency, usually double-dipping or triple-dipping in stats.

My personal opinion is this is because offensive stats are generally strictly better gold for gold than defensive stats, but defensive stats have better internal synergy, and the non-existent budget tanks were forced to work with in seasons 1 and 2, where they were all junglers or supports and had no gold. Multiplicative stats worked then, for a few reasons, but with gold budgets being considerably more even now, access to more of those efficient stats means they feed a lot into other classes and cause serious issues.

Mages, Assassins and Juggernauts are generally poor tankbusters; Tanks being killed lategame is because ADCs exist; I don't enjoy that, but it's not unreasonable. Games need to end somehow.

Sasogwa1 votes

{quoted}

It's less about buffing tanks as a whole and more about giving them a base of itemisation that can't be abused by other classes of champions. Tank Ekko and Akali are things because the base of itemisation for tanks as it stands is about cost-efficiency, usually double-dipping or triple-dipping in stats.

My personal opinion is this is because offensive stats are generally strictly better gold for gold than defensive stats, but defensive stats have better internal synergy, and the non-existent budget tanks were forced to work with in seasons 1 and 2, where they were all junglers or supports and had no gold. Multiplicative stats worked then, for a few reasons, but with gold budgets being considerably more even now, access to more of those efficient stats means they feed a lot into other classes and cause serious issues.

Mages, Assassins and Juggernauts are generally poor tankbusters; Tanks being killed lategame is because ADCs exist; I don't enjoy that, but it's not unreasonable. Games need to end somehow.

I think Ekko is something different because he has the crowd control to be actually considered a tank. And Akali is strong but overall not that dominant

DrTemptragon1 votes

I don't disagree; one piece of strong AoE CC and some slows are probably enough to edge into that, especially since he's pretty easy to initiate with and has % health damage.

But because he was designed as an assassin, he's hugely oppressive built as a tank. Any changes to itemization the re-enforce his ability to be a tank means he's being put into a role he's a nightmare in. It was like that on release, too.

It's possible to change this through adjusting the champion; that's what they did with Fiora earlier this season, by making her tank build much worse. But as long as tanks are reliant on this system weird edge cases like Ekko will continue to crop up and be really obnoxious to play against.

Nyhver1 votes

tbh i really dislike high defensive stats when damage stats are available, high defensive stats make the game experience worse

LankPants6 votes

No. Without strong defensive stats the game turns into an assassin clusterfuck where actual strategy ceases to matter and the game becomes purely about who can burst who quicker. That's a horrible state for the game.

Nyhver1 votes

{quoted}

No. Without strong defensive stats the game turns into an assassin clusterfuck where actual strategy ceases to matter and the game becomes purely about who can burst who quicker. That's a horrible state for the game.

not really

you're confusing state of fighting with state of strategy

you can have champion interactions between players in fights that aren't meaningful, (how most champions are right now) or you can have them be very meaningful, this has no influence on the rest of the game, the rest of the game has proper strategy/etc based on team set up, map and other factors, but that's something that primarily exists outside of champion interaction

people don't seem to understand that you can have every champion as yasuo or riven or draven and have the same strategy essentially

league's strategy isn't very complex either, but then again most of the player base seem to be at a bronze or silver level which is really disappointing...

DrTemptragon2 votes

I think you're missing any nuance. Admittedly macro strategy, particularly at low level, can be somewhat limited, but there's been a big, and IMO, successful push towards making champions having an independent strategic niche.

Skias1 votes

Cho is basically an AP Carry now because of all of his damage buffs.

ZT Xperimentor1 votes

I don't mind assassins getting reworked first on one condition; they can't build tank and still instantly kill. Diana was the first to noticeably abuse this, then fizz and now ekko; seriously does riot not take notes on their failures? I like the proposed items though they seem rather situational.

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