I believe that Bruisers Lack a Viable Keystone

Neferpitou·Nov 29, 2017·5 votes·294 views

Champions like Jax, Darius, Camille, Irelia, Kled, Aatrox, Renekton, and Fiora all feel like they lack a keystone that really works for them. Press the attack has basically been what they all resort to, but thats getting nerfed now and none of these champs were doing well with press the attack besides maybe Irelia (51% wr) to begin with. I think Riot should add a keystone to the game at some point that helps address this issue. Bruisers are my favorite class of champions by a mile, and it sucks that I feel so crappy in lane to things like Teemo, Panth, Ornn, Maokai.

3 Comments

SuperLuigiLXIVNov 29, 20171 votes

To be honest, I'd like to see the Predator keystone changed to something along the lines of:

-Hitting enemy champions with abilities causes your autoattacks to do increased damage (AD scaling). -Hitting enemy champions with autoattacks causes your abilities to do increased damage (AD scaling). -Damaging enemy champions refreshes the cooldown on both passive effects, up to a threshold. -You cannot critically hit while either effect is active.

You're therefore rewarded for weaving autos and abilities together to pound on an enemy champion. I would think, given the nature of bruisers, that the damage bonus would be LOWER, but the trade window would last LONGER. No AP scaling means most tanks won't want it, while locking out critical hits prevents most ADCs from taking it. The major issues would be heavy caster ADCs (MF, Lucian), any tanks that make use of AD (Sion, Poppy), and, of course, assassins, who are probably going to see equal benefit from any rune build for bruisers.

However, if you design the damage around being put out over a longer period of time than assassins are comfortable staying in the danger zone, while keeping the damage low enough that the rune is more of a "sustained damage window" than burst, you can potentially keep even assassins from wanting it.