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Okay so we're in pre-season 5 and there's still no signs of a successful melee rework.

hashinshin··5 votes·1,280 views

So I'll try to keep this short (HAH...)

Every attempt you guys have made at bruiser revamps have failed. The closest you got was Maokai who is against all the principles of your melee reworks in that you wanted more counterplay but Maokai is a tank.

You guys continue to powercreep your game (8% more damage on dragon buff?) while nerfing bruisers. You then lop on counterplay (Read: Inconsistent champion) to bruisers/melee as a whole then render the champions incapable of competitive play. Or worse yet you remove what made them competitive in the first place. We are entering Season 5 and there is not ONE SINGLE melee champion who is viable who wasn't viable in season 2 (at least for top lane... but hell even the junglers are in a season 2 stasis with Lee/Pantheon/Jarvan.) Doesn't that strike you as odd? 2 seasons have gone past and the entire roster for top lane melee has been wiped clean of everyone that was viable except for Irelia.

The point is you guys have had time. A LOT of time. 3 years of time. How many viable bruisers have you produced through all your reworks/releases?

Let me go in to all of them that I can remember:

  • Olaf nerfed in to uselessness. Revamped. Still useless. Slightly useful after buf- NERFED IN TO USELESSNESS AGAIN. The fuck?
  • Aatrox nerfed in to uselessness. So much for that.
  • Skarner reworked... twice... still useless. I don't mean to sound insulting but I hope that by sounding insulting it might awaken some inner thought process of "wait... we reworked him twice and he still blows? How did that happen?"
  • Darius blows. You take a champion with a consistent laning phase, double nerf his pull, then lament how he's too weak against range. Sometimes I wonder if there is an invisible ghoul that balances LoL based on how many times Riot laments a change they themselves did.
  • Jax is the worst champion in the game at high ELO. Factually. S4 finals were the only finals that took place without Jax. (but hey, he's a success story according to Ghostcrawler so... there's that. Success at what?)
  • Trundle reworked. Still blows. Who'd think that a melee with no gap closer and low armor and high mana costs wouldn't be viable?
  • Sion reworked. Still blows. Please give him 3 HP on minions so he can top lane, he's not consistent enough to jungle. Do it for the children.
  • Shen. Riot thought Shen could be balanced while still retaining his global ult. Want spoilers? Nope.
  • Udyr reworked to blow harder.
  • Zac is rele- nerfed.
  • Yorick is nerfed.
  • Renekton is nerfed and then mages get powercreeped to top lane. Why not, you know?
  • Dr. Mundo eats nerfs after 2 years of no changes, much like Jax. 0% win rate at worlds!
  • Shyvana is revamped- nerfed in to nothingless. Then nerfed again. Then another nerf. Then bugfix nerfed. Riot adopted kill it with fire mentality (hah.)
  • Actually I'mma toss Sejuani in here too even though she's a jungler. She got a revamp. You nerfed her. Again this shows you weren't satisfied with her and wanted her out of competitive play. Another revamp wasted.

Anyway I'm tired of making that list so lets look at the current success stories:

You ever play a game of worms and rockets hit all around you and completely annihilate everything except what you're standing on? That's Irelia. She's standing there going "oh man, that was real close guys... guys?" The true irony is how much Riot hates Irelia and yet she's the last viable bruiser left. She's viable simply because Riot DIDN'T touch her.

Maokai!... because lets take all these melee champions, give them tons of counterplay... then buff the shit out of a melee with no counterplay for no reason. Maokai is the proof that the less counterplay a melee has the more viable they are. Also Maokai is a hard tank and not even a bruiser.

**Anyway I'll wrap this up: YOU HAVE NO SUCCESS STORIES IN THE ENTIRETY OF SEASON 3 AND 4. ** I'm applying what Dr. Phil would call shock therapy here. Everything you've tried, everything you've done, everywhere you've gone, it has all failed. You need to try something new or Season 5 is going to be very bruiser-less. It's become incredibly frustrating to watch you guys bumble around continually doing the wrong things. Do you need help?

6 Comments

Drogmyre5 votes

They need to make defensive items not suck massive dick, and they need to make AD items not blatantly pander to ranged champions.

On top of this, they need to MASSIVELY buff base stats for every single melee champion in the game: Base stats and scalings are what SHOULD offset the range advantage.

A melee champion should have significantly greater armor than ranged champions, and that goes double for tanks. Melee with gap closers/that are assassins should have lower armor (obviously) but bruisers and tanks like Darius or Nautilus should have significantly greater armor than their ranged counterparts.

Same goes for Magic Resist: yes, melee get MR scaling. Too bad that 22.5 MR at level 18 barely accounts for base penetration. Now, I don't think this needs to be changed remotely as drastically as armor, HP, and regen need to be, but a bit more MR on champions that are bruisers or are intended to be tanks would be ideal.

Movement Speed needs increasing on numerous melee champions, although some already have reasonable base MS, champs like Nautilus are absurdly slow.

Base HP needs a small buff, maybe an auto attack or two bonus HP (50-110 or so.) Same goes for HP scaling and base regen, it needs to go up.

As it stands, Ranged champions give up literally nothing valuable for being ranged. They might be a little squishier, but who fucking cares because they're getting in TONS more damage before you can even try to exploit that squishyness. That's why Lee Sin and friends are so popular, because they're the only fucking melees who can get in the 'hurr durr crits/spells for centuries, muh skills' range. That's why Lee Sin and friends are overpowered, because Range is so massively broken that for any melee to even compete with ranged champions they need absurdly bloated kits or broken mechanics/massive numbers.

Cale0171 votes

I do miss my carry Shyvana...

Kuroi861 votes

Has it occurred to you how tricky it is to balance bruisers? High damage, good defense, meant to be powerful early but scale poorly late so as not to be oppressive.

Done251 votes

Has it occurred to you how tricky it is to balance bruisers? High damage, good defense, meant to be powerful early but scale poorly late so as not to be oppressive.

How about the fact that most of them can be kited to Hell and back? Especially now that Kalista is here.

Kuroi862 votes

How about the fact that most of them can be kited to Hell and back? Especially now that Kalista is here.

Which has been one of their only significant weak points during the history of bruisers. Even late game, a bruiser has pretty significant damage, both burst and DPS. This coupled with both innate and built tankiness makes them dangerous champs to go toe to toe with. Their only weak point is in getting to their target. How many champs can go toe to toe with Darius and actually win without kiting/orbwalking/ect. In a straight out slug fest.

Done251 votes

How about the fact that most of them can be kited to Hell and back? Especially now that Kalista is here.

Which has been one of their only significant weak points during the history of bruisers. Even late game, a bruiser has pretty significant damage, both burst and DPS. This coupled with both innate and built tankiness makes them dangerous champs to go toe to toe with. Their only weak point is in getting to their target. How many champs can go toe to toe with Darius and actually win without kiting/orbwalking/ect. In a straight out slug fest.

Which is good. Otherwise slow moving AoE comps would explode everything. [Aniva middle, Karthus jungle, Kennen top, etc]

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