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True damage is ruining the game for tanks

Sand Ähläm·8/21/2019, 11:09:50 PM·10 votes·5,594 views

I like to play tanks, a lot. There has been a certain trend in the games I play and it goes like this:

  • I have an enemy team with 2 ap 3 ad, pretty normal. At first I do not tank that much due to no items. Nothing new there. I am playing as a jungler.

  • At 15min I start to have a few armor items so I don't die that easily, again nothing special.

  • At 25min I notice that I die fast in teamfights after only building armor. I decide to build magic resistance now as they have two ap champions.

  • After building multiple items and having over 200 in both resistances I still die in a blink of an eye.

"How" I think, and the look at the death recap.

  • "True damage dealt: 2769" followed by a loud REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

What's the point of tanks if they cannot even tank? They can't have the ridiculous sustain like most of the conqueror users (I've noticed that those champions are a lot slower to kill than tanks too for some reason I cannot understand) And they don't have the damage to one shot enemy team either. Tanks feel like some CC vending machine that break after someone sneezes on them.

This especially applies to armour vs ad champions. Top lane is a conqueror fiesta. Have you ever had to play as a tank against Irelia for example? If you haven't, try it once. I guarantee that you will have a nice time staying under turret or looking at the grey screen. The difference between -insert tank here- and Irelia (or any other conqueror user) is also the lane sustain. Irelia can take both ravenous hunter and legend bloodline with conqueror resulting in a nice one sided malleting as the tank has no way to damage the champion more than he/she heals.

Another thing I really think about are assassins. Why are assassins able to also assassinate tanks? What kind of thinking is that? Aren't assassins supposed to move behind lines and attack the carries? Now they can attack whatever they see first and it'll work. It may be fun to play as but a real toxic thing for everyone else. Also wasn't the point of assassin rework to make people have more time to react to bursts? Where the hell did that go? Did someone just forget it at Riot?

True damage is fine as long as it's unique to the champion. Like take Darius. His ult has always dealt true dmg. Same with Cho'Gath.I didn't had a problem with it then, and I certainly don't have a problem against it now either. What I do have a problem against is champions that should not have true damage, having true damage. Mostly it's conqueror. I realized this after I saw an Udyr slap malphite (Note that Udyr isn't even that strong of a champion right now). The first hits dealt little damage, as they should as Malphite had a ridiculous amount of armour. Then Conqueror kicked in and malphite started losing HP like he had no armour at all. It was pretty clear what is wrong after seeing that. Remember that there exists armor penetration items as well! Lethality, armor penetration and true damage combinated makes armor paper. Arrmor penetration and lethality are enough thank you very much.

Will I still keep playing tanks? Hell yea I will. I enjoy being the one who protects and tanks (Even though the second is a bit questionable now) much more than I like to be an edgy ninjaboi who kills everything by just walking towards them. I just really wish my role could do what it was named after, tank.

21 Comments

Greenette8/22/2019, 4:49:19 PM3 votes

I think the issue is a complex spiral of high damage + evasion/dashes + true damage + high uptime of spells + no way to shut off enemy true damage

It really struck home how bad the problem is when a Flora ran me down and I had literally no answer. I was Garen, cleaver/steraks into full tank with phase rush. 4k hp, 200+ armor/mr, 0.75s of 60% damage reduction and 4s of 30% damage reduction.

She had done more than half my hp in true damage and had in fact done more damage to me than I had hp. I mitigated about 2k damage with W and (I presume) Steraks, can't remember the build only remember that I mitigated a huge number.

And there was nothing I could do. Fighting meant dying and running meant dying. There was no way to run due to her superior mobility and no way to shut off her true damage because its both innate and as an activated steroid that refreshes itself through damage. And it healed her. Imagine being an adc or mage having to deal with this, or any melee without multiple dashes or long cc.

The problem is you can't fight true damage champs, its difficult running from them, they have active heals and mitigation spells, and they have burst and sustain. Whatever weaknesses they previously had have been erased by conq, items, and buffs.

Teh Song8/22/2019, 1:54:52 AM2 votes

First of all, I agree that tanks can't tank anymore. But I don't blame true damage, I blame the whole damage meta and the runes as a whole.

See, I have no problem with true damage existing as a counterplay/counterpick to tanks. But I do have a problem with the sheer amount of damage of all types. I have been watching tanks, with full tank builds, die in .0001 seconds to enemies that didn't take conquerer or have any other source of true damage. Like you look up the person who nuked you in the post match stats and it says "true damage dealt to champions: 0"

Tanks don't exist because of this bs damage meta. And it's on both ends too. The tanks can't tank, and they deal more damage than any tank ever should, so they are no longer tanks on both counts.

Perhaps conquerer shouldn't give so much, it any, true damage, I don't see it enough to argue about that. People in my matches aren't taking it when I'm their lane opponent. That doesn't mean it's not happening every time I'm not the top, but when I am the top I'm seeing people with Grasp or Electrocute.

But in and of itself true damage is a necessary component of the game. Not that it makes much difference in this damage meta anyway.

WoonStruck8/22/2019, 5:26:21 AM2 votes

Point and click true damage nukes that have become overprevelant are ruining the game for everyone, not just tanks.

Nuking you for over half your health with damage you cant do anything about is just a little silly, even more so when you have 4k hp in some cases. Camille Chogath Darius Garen

Thats before even considering Vayne Fiora MasterYi or sources of needlessly high armor pen.

Daddy Ants8/22/2019, 9:18:14 AM2 votes

True Damage was fine before Conqueror existed.

Jimmy Rustles8/21/2019, 11:12:06 PM1 votes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdX5UDgQ8x0

Lovelle8/26/2019, 4:22:04 PM1 votes

Going against Darius as a tank isn't any better. Tanks are pretty much just CC bots at this point, which doesn't really feel that rewarding outside of coordinated play. If your teammates are below par there is literally nothing you can do to win the game, especially if the opposing team is full of real damage dealers. No matter what you build, you're still going to get demolished in 3-4 seconds max, while dealing no damage because you're playing a champ with low damage scalings and itemization that doesn't scale past the 15 minute mark.

OwlbanArmban8/21/2019, 11:21:48 PM1 votes

The reason top lane is a quote unquote "conqueror fiesta" is that almost all of the most-picked champions in the lane don't actually have another keystone. What should Aatrox take other than Conqueror? PTA? Yeah, sure, and fall off harder than old panth in late. Grasp? Maybe, and there are matchups where you definitely want it over conqueror, but 99.9% of the time, you might as well just take conqueror.

How about Riven? Press the Attack? With enough damage to kill you 3 times over in the early without ever once auto attacking you? How about Aftershock, since she has a lot of hard cc! Hmm... Well that doesn't actually do pretty much anything for you. Grasp? No, you lose out on even more than Aatrox does with PTA.

What about Darius? If you're into a lane bully, maybe you could make a case for Grasp, but other than that, Conqueror is the only truly viable keystone.

What about Irelia? Fiora? Renekton? On and on, the historically really popularly picked champions in the top lane game are only able to take Conqueror, because a lot of them are drain tanks (renekton, aatrox, darius, etc.) Or just don't actually have anything really more viable to take. Don't blame bruiser players for Riot only really giving us a single keystone.

Rıots Bad Client8/22/2019, 5:10:14 PM1 votes

Make a rune that give you 8% bonus MR and Armor Based on your total Armor and MR and make that number increase the longer you are in Combat. up to 20%. And when True damage is dealt to you, Heal for 50% of the true damage dealt over 3 seconds.

This way, most non tank users cant abuse it. Nerf tanks that might be busted with this make(I can guess ornn, Rammus, Jax would be the top contenders that I can quickly think of)

MagicTale20008/22/2019, 7:30:30 PM1 votes

I wanted to try Tank Annie bcs of her bully style and damage reduction in top lane:

Conqueror dealt %50 of his damage