My thoughts on Conqueror.

Fighters have always been designed to counter tanks.

- E armor shred + Missing HP scaling execute - passive true damage, E armor ignore - E armor shred + %max hp damage on R - %max hp true dmg - E armor shred -E armor ignoring/true dmg ult - True damage spam on E - %max hp damage on W and %HP based execute - Q armor shred - Maiden R %max hp damage - R HEAVY resist shred - W and R %max hp based damage - Armor shred on Q and % HP damage on passive - Armor shred on W+% max hp dmg -extremely high true damage on Q and % damage on R -extremely high DPS during ultimate -eats shields (including self-shields!) for breakfast and has "fevor" build up drastically increasing her DPS in a sustained fight. sidenote is she can also make great use of BoRK. - R gives 50% armor ignore

see because the natural habitat of tanks was toplane Riot made sure to make sure that almost every toplane fighter champion had a method of dealing with them. Now where things went awry is during the tank update where Riot started putting %max hp magic damage on every tank in the game in order to remove "wet noodle fights" from top in ADDITION to their strong tankiness AND additional items like baumi cinder/bramble vest that let tanks become a deceptively strong threat in melee. so whats essentially happened is the prey got stronger but the predators didnt resulting in a ecosystem imbalance. The Gazelle began to eat the Cheetahs! hence a couple seasons forward and Conqueror comes into play attempting to rectify the situation, a quick Stimpack meant to give fighters a surge of viability in the new season ( and hush a certain someone who was creating bad PR on Reddit on a weekly basis).

I think Conqueror introduction was a sloppy hackjob attempt at fixing this imbalance when what fighters TRULY needed was

1. a pass over on all "tank busting" abilities and passives ensuring that they have what it takes both in lane and out to deal with tanks in a 1v1.
2. new items BESIDES that helps answer tanky opponents. and are not really viable enough on most fighters and much more suited for glass cannon carries. Perhaps Atmas Reckoning item with a "Madness" effect ala (2% more damage per second in combat) was all they really needed to be viable once more?

CHAMPIONS and ITEMS should counter tanks. not RUNES ANYONE can switch up builds to adapt to threats but you literally cannot change runes once game starts meaning if you are playing blind pick Conqeror becomes mandatory because of Schrodinger's cat (or in this case Schrodinger Malphite!)!

Conq is a short sighted band-aid that further kills rune diversity (all fighters need to take it if they're going top less they be handicapped. If they DONT take conq then its as if they've literally received no buffs at all thus Ornn can still dumpster them in lane same as before) and hurts the game overall by warping HOW champions counter each other and HOW you are supposed to counter one another (whats the counter against someone with both Blade of the ruin king AND Conqueror?).

So please Riot. take it upon yourself to dig into the individual champion nitty gritty rather than constantly creating blanket solutions to everything. Conqueror does not need to exist. we just need to update the options that are currently available and add some more itemization.