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What Exactly Is Making "Offtank" Builds Non-Viable?

Draehl··1 votes·477 views

This has frustrated me since I came back to the game with the Runes Reforged patch and am curious what the exact cause is. Before, I could play a utility support (IE Bard or Lulu ) and build 1-2 support items (IE Redemption and Aegis) and fill the rest of the build with Tank/CDR items as to focus on wading into the fight more and providing utility/CC/peel for my team without having to worry so much for my own safety. The damage output for these builds was terrible, but it was a viable playstyle. Now? No matter if I spec into Resolve and stack nothing but tank items I still melt to nearly any enemy champion in just a few seconds.

It's easy to just blame "the meta" but what has changed mechanically to make tank items so completely useless? I notice that inherently tanky champions are still able to take a reasonable beating via defensive skills, but defensive items seem completely useless.

Thanks for any insight you could provide!

5 Comments

Sohleks2 votes

Its been kind of trending that way for years.

The main thing in season 8 that triggers the fighter apocalypse (or is it the opposite of that?) is the removal of pretty much mandatory defense runes before that everyone ran. This dropped time to kill across the board. And it doesn't favor the guys running out with melee weapons in a gun fight. There are guys are... in. weird. melee tanks though. These guys are still blowing up things they touch because relatively their base damage got buffed comparitively while they still purchase their added item bulk ups.

IN ADDITION TO THAT. Most tanks got a fantastic keystone. While bruisers barely get one they can call their own. Unless they go full blow me up precision. But doing that as a melee carry is playing league in hard mode pretty much especially when you fight amazing tanks and ranged every game.

And stepping back even more. ADC which beat down on the melee classes have pressured some buffs oughta riot so they can stay on top. This happened because of some early 2017 adc meme where adc were mostly picking utility bots and having a hard time scaling up against tanks. ( The adc problem, imo is the role just isn't fun or impactful unless it's overpowered breaking its fair boundaries. ADC player rates decline as you go up in ranks. The way it's designed and with outside lane into bot lane influence and support dependence well I have said they might as well be played by robots or that's what it felt like during the early 2017 adc meme tier. But when adc's are overpowered it's all well n good. this is the perspective of someone who can play all positions at higher ranks. digressed...)

Fighter items are helluva expensive too. They are sort of a little bit more powerful slot for slot though..? Sort of.

Fighters lose sustained dmg carry items like sated devourer turned into rageblade. Then turn that guinsoo's rageblade into an item with equally prohibitive melee/ranged stacking mechanics (in otherwords ranged only). Wits end rebalanced and repurposed for magic dmg dealers mainly and these guys are mostly ranged. They even tried to give triforce 20% crit once upon a time.

Its come to a point that unless you can lean on balanced tabis item 3047 you're not tanking much with offensive fighter items. And fighter characters are expected to build these expensive and riskier builds.

And Gnar is a thing. He singular obscures a lot of fighters. Even though he is somewhat weak to super hard dive AD fighters (ex. wukong. and only in early lane). The problem is that kind of champ is just not at all viable in a pro level team game. And what if the monkey was? Is that just more broken?

Draehl1 votes

Yeah, that's definitely the case for jungle/top fighters with their itemization costing so much. That said even when building full tank on a support character that doesn't work either. You could be completely fed and have a lot of gold- but use that gold to build tank and it doesn't even matter. Splat!

Sohleks1 votes

In my opinion a bit of the ninja tabi power should be moved to actual full armor items. It's just a bit odd that I have at times called Ninja Tabi the best armor item in the game.

Even just a lord dom's nerf would effectively be the same. But I understand that lord dom's is meant to be a valuable decision point. And it would be bad if it was hardly worth it, or was an even sour-er pill that it used to be.

Actually. I wonder. What if we throw lord dom's out the window, and actually design CRIT to be anti tank/general dps. And this free's up a slot for adc to customize which with the 80% crit standard (3 crit), a shoe, a LW, and a lifesteal on average the normal marksman build feels stagnate. Gotta make sure there is the right amount of choices and decision making and balance in all that tho.

Purgë1 votes

yea lulu and other shit slave supports shuold never be able to build tanky

doodlebob6661 votes

It's easy to just blame "the meta" but what has changed mechanically to make tank items so completely useless? I notice that inherently tanky champions are still able to take a reasonable beating via defensive skills, but defensive items seem completely useless.

this is becauseEkko Fizz Akali Katarina (pretty sure this was a thing for 1 patch)Shaco abused tank items to the point where riot just nerfed the health of tank items in favor of resists, which meant that tanks who have health steriods like shields or heals got to have higher resists in their build while still having tons of health, while any bruiser who wants to build tanky gets shredded because they ussually had steriods for resists(Jax MonkeyKing Nasus Olaf) that didn't scale/didn't scale with resists and needed the health got nerfed

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