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Strategic strengths and weaknesses need to actually exist

slippykitten··5 votes·1,089 views

People are complaining about the possible rise of the tank meta, but the problem is rarely explained.

The problem is when tanks can do more damage to you than you do to them, which defeats the purpose of building defense.

Strategic strengths and weaknesses mean that you have to sacrifice one thing for another. You shouldnt be able to build full damage reduction and end up doing more damage. This not only gives an advantage to particular builds, but it defeats the purpose of a tank. A tank exists to soak damage for your team, but if he is able (and more viable) at dueling, then you dont actually have a tank, you have a tanky member of your team that is off 1v1ing.

We need to press riot to exaggerate these strategic strengths. A tank, with a full damage reduction build, just simply should not be able to kill someone 1v1. If a champion has insane mobility, they need to not have cc and actually sacrifice damage for it! Kassadin didnt need his ult gutted, in fact he needed it buffed and have his damage reduced drastically.

We need to press riot to have core identities and stick with them. the only identity that has remained consistent is ADC, everything else, and every other champion has gone through hoops of nerfs and buffs because their strengths and weaknesses arent used.

Basically if champions dont have clear, exaggerated strengths and weaknesses, then there will always be certain roles that are weak and half the champion pool will simply be outclassed.

Strategy works like this. Kass has crazy mobility, but really low damage, xerath has crazy range, good damage, but is a sitting duck. When we try to equalize everything so that all champs have an equal opportunity to 1v1 each other, we remove the concept of strategy.

I fear that if we continue down this road, there will just be certain champs that are picked each patch based off what is strongest, without much consideration with strategy or the kits those champs bring to a team.... oh wait, thats exactly what the game is like right now.

20 Comments

Martyrofsand5 votes

Um tanks are consistently doing less damage that people who actually build damage. The issue you are having isn't how much damage they are doing but that they can survive long enough for their limited damage to be enough to kill you. A tank only has to do roughly 1500 damage to kill a squishy, mean while the squishy has to do closer to 5k damage to kill the tank by the time you account for resistances. If the tank is hitting you for 300-500 per hit while you are hitting for 800 or do a hit sure you are doing more damage than they are but they will still win the race because you have so much more health to go through.

LoLKiru1 votes

{quoted}

Um tanks are consistently doing less damage that people who actually build damage. The issue you are having isn't how much damage they are doing but that they can survive long enough for their limited damage to be enough to kill you. A tank only has to do roughly 1500 damage to kill a squishy, mean while the squishy has to do closer to 5k damage to kill the tank by the time you account for resistances. If the tank is hitting you for 300-500 per hit while you are hitting for 800 or do a hit sure you are doing more damage than they are but they will still win the race because you have so much more health to go through.

I would definitely say its this, its not so much that tanks are doing alot of damage, you just don't have any defenses built to survive what little damage they have.

Say your a squishy with no MR built (for the purpose of the example lets say Malphite is doing true damage just to make it slightly simpler), Malphite does his full rotation of ABOUT 890 damage (significantly more if he stacks nothing but armor and health), thats probably a little under half of your hp as the ADC / Mage

Meanwhile your standard ADC has to get through Malphite's 4k health (and 400 health shield), in the time it takes for you to kill Malphite, he'll likely have used Q and E a few more times, likely killing you.

Tanks need to do damage to squishy targets, otherwise you could quite literally just ignore them. That said, no tanks really have the damage required to take on anyone in the frontline without building damage themselves (seriously, have you ever seen 2 tanks fight? It takes FOREVER to end)

This is why peel is important, even if the only ones diving your backline are tanks (though thats a rather bad idea unless the enemy frontline has already been dealt with, since you won't have a frontline to protect your own carries)

galdamesh2 votes

The game does has tons of strategy, it's just people are very slow to adjust to it with the patches.

tank meta for instance hates split push strategy, they rarely have the burst to deal with the split pusher or the tower. or anti engage, very few tanks have meaningful poke.

but everyone sees, tank meta op i'm going to go tank. and you are removing the strategy you are asking for instead of adjusting to it

slippykitten1 votes

{quoted}

The game does has tons of strategy, it's just people are very slow to adjust to it with the patches.

tank meta for instance hates split push strategy, they rarely have the burst to deal with the split pusher or the tower. or anti engage, very few tanks have meaningful poke.

but everyone sees, tank meta op i'm going to go tank. and you are removing the strategy you are asking for instead of adjusting to it

Well the strengths and weaknesses need to be accentuated. Sej shouldnt be able to be unkillable, have insane cc AND blow me up at the same time. you should have to sacrifice one for the other.

Talon should do a lot more damage than zed, because zed should sacrifice damage for mobility

Cait should be able to out dps sej because sej should sacrifice dps for damage reduction.

etc. etc.

Frost the Reaper1 votes

I have 2 things to counter you with:

1: Talon already can stand toe to toe with zed very easily. 2: Zed should actually do as much damage as he does: because he's an assassin. He's only really good to nuke 1 target and then he can get out safely.

And while yes: Most adc's should be able to 1v1 a tank given time to actually AA: most of the time what you'll find is that instead, the tank is in your face and slowly forcing your health bar down because a tanks job is to break through the front lines and get to that adc.

galdamesh1 votes

Sej has all that but she can't push a tower, she's only strong in team fight situations.

talon does a TON more damage then zed his is just spread AOE.

Cait most assuredly can out dps sej, but if that sej has 4000 hp to cai's 1500 cait needs to nearly triple sej's damage output which again she can, but by using her strength range.

you seem to just want the strategy to be more individually biased then team wide strategies. also you seem to want adc's to be able to stand in one place and aa kill anything when not cc'ed

JedenVojak2 votes

Uh, tanks can't function in the way you describe.

Simply put, if tanks were to function as "PURE TANKS" and not be able to fight or meaningfully do damage on their own a number of things would need to happen:

  1. Tanks would need to be functionally unkillable. I'm talking being able to take all of the attacks/cooldowns/ultimates of the enemy team and still be at like 80% health level of tankines
  2. Since they don't do damage on their own, they have to be able to force enemies to attack them, cause otherwise they just get ignored. Think rammus taunt is annoying? Make that 4 seconds! Sejuani ult 6 seconds!
  3. Tanks that don't function mostly through CC and have utility buffs like shields and armor auras also have to be buffed since, the tanks aren't doing damage.

This version of tanks was deemed to be toxic. You can't interact with them meaningfully and they can't do anything by themselves - not fun to play because they're entirely dependant on other people, and not fun to fight because you can't kill them and they permalock you.

This is why even very tanky characters are still fairly killable (it's been a common thread on these forums that tanks can't tank anymore) and the way they chose to "fix" jungle tanks is by giving them a damage item.

Tanks need to be killable, and in being killable, they need to be able to fight and kill.

Kill or be killed.

TehNACHO1 votes

I would argue a tank's role is less damage soak, more damage negating. I mean, yeah Cho'Gath is a magnificent champ for face tanking, but I also am primarily going to abuse his Silence and longish range Knock Up to completely and totally shut down Spellcasters on the enemy team.

Funny enough, over half of this post is literally the "Fighter Problem" that Riot wants to address in the fabled Fighter Rework.

Frost the Reaper1 votes

To be blunt and clear: There is strategy in League of Legends, people just fail to use any..... However when it comes down to champion "Classes" Tank is usually an off spec. However there are main tanks (Sej, Amumu, ext) who are excelling at the jungle because of the new item. if your scared your fighter top lane is going to see a tank: Don't be. As for sacrificing damage to become tanky, that actually is un-beneficial because suddenly your not a threat and you have to build 2 damage items to even be looked at as a threat so they'll have to try to take care of you. Overall while yes, i agree being naturally bulky (Which honestly is just base stats everything else comes down to item builds) gives you some advantage: its not enough to justify a tank doing no damage.

TehNACHO1 votes

Off note: In my opinion, Kassadin should be less of a "weak but mobile" champion, and more of a dedicated Anti-Mage.

I mean, his PQWE all show this to some extent. His P and Q's spell shield making him particularly defensive against AP champs but doesn't help at all vs AD, his W allowing him to out sustain most Mages in terms of mana but is particularly not useful against Auto Attackers, his E is unlocked via spammed abilities, severely hindered when fighting against Auto Attackers. He already has weaknesses in his kit, all you have to do to balance Kassadin is to step on these already built in weaknesses and force them to be relevant. For example, his E looks like a primarily anti-mage ability thanks to the spell cast thing, but its AOE damage - AOE damage that does not discriminate over how AP based his target is or isn't, by the way - does nothing to really play on that theme. Imagine if instead of an AOE Nuke+Slow, it was a relatively short ranged Single Target Nuke that got stronger based on the enemy's spell casts or how much AP they have (I'm just spitballing ideas here). You are now emphasizing his strengths as an Anti-Mage while giving him that super distinct disadvantage in non-Anti-Mage scenarios (again, it was just an example. I don't mean to say it should be changed to a single target nuke, I'm just providing context to what I mean with "emphasizing on strengths while defining weaknesses"). There, strategic strengths and weaknesses.

slippykitten1 votes

{quoted}

Off note: In my opinion, Kassadin should be less of a "weak but mobile" champion, and more of a dedicated Anti-Mage.

I mean, his PQWE all show this to some extent. His P and Q's spell shield making him particularly defensive against AP champs but doesn't help at all vs AD, his W allowing him to out sustain most Mages in terms of mana but is particularly not useful against Auto Attackers, his E is unlocked via spammed abilities, severely hindered when fighting against Auto Attackers. He already has weaknesses in his kit, all you have to do to balance Kassadin is to step on these already built in weaknesses and force them to be relevant. For example, his E looks like a primarily anti-mage ability thanks to the spell cast thing, but its AOE damage - AOE damage that does not discriminate over how AP based his target is or isn't, by the way - does nothing to really play on that theme. Imagine if instead of an AOE Nuke+Slow, it was a relatively short ranged Single Target Nuke that got stronger based on the enemy's spell casts or how much AP they have (I'm just spitballing ideas here). You are now emphasizing his strengths as an Anti-Mage while giving him that super distinct disadvantage in non-Anti-Mage scenarios (again, it was just an example. I don't mean to say it should be changed to a single target nuke, I'm just providing context to what I mean with "emphasizing on strengths while defining weaknesses"). There, strategic strengths and weaknesses.

Exactly my point. the fact that we came to two different conclusions on his role, and what his strengths and weaknesses should be illustrates that they are not accentuated enough. I would buy your idea in a heartbeat over what kass is currently.

Frost the Reaper1 votes

Kassadin used to actually be defined by riot, as an Anti-Mage. But then they took away the 3 second silence and suddenly he's an assassin mage. -shrugs-

slippykitten1 votes

{quoted}

Kassadin used to actually be defined by riot, as an Anti-Mage. But then they took away the 3 second silence and suddenly he's an assassin mage. -shrugs-

I remember, but recently they have referred to him as the "mobility mage" which is comical considering his mobility is like 10th in line for mages.

Frost the Reaper1 votes

Yeah. Its just idiotic sometimes about how poorly riot makes some decisions. Honestly I'd be okay if they gave him that silence back... If they made it scaling to 3 seconds and severely nerfed his Q damage.

TehNACHO1 votes

3 second silence is not necessary to be an anti mage, to be fair.

This has more to do with a "play with weaknesses, not force your strengths" ideology. A now immobile-ish Xerath charging his Q is a sitting duck for damage, obviously that may be a good time to engage. An interrupt channel in this case is way more than enough to do the job. Or, given that mages are primarily skillshot and AOE users, his Ultimate already enables him to get around their offensive power. Ideally, Kassadin will never need a silence because he either can cancel channelled abilities or he will simply dodge them.

On the other hand, if he had a targeted silence, that's not meaningful playing with weaknesses anymore. All he has to do is get in range, and for 3 seconds then, the enemy mage can't retaliate. There's not a strategic layer of depth in that action really, all you're doing is opening opportunities for yourself without any way to significantly fight back.

Frost the Reaper1 votes

I get what your saying there. I was just making a comment on the past mostly. I feel like if they just gave his AoE nuke an enemy AP Scaling instead of his AP scaling it'd be better overall. That way he really is just an anti-mage

Kitten of Evil1 votes

You want to strategically defeat tanks? Uh how about:

Brand Malzahar Varus KogMaw item 3151 item 3153

Dazaruk1 votes

The problem though is that if your reduce the damage tanks do now (without the gromp buff) there would be little reason to peel them. Them building defense allows them keep up their "sustained" damage which is why they put out more damage over time than a typical carry in the average fight. The problem is two-fold however.

  1. Fights originally were too short and it made champs with burst damage a lot more popular than tanks. Items like Ludens Echo doesn't help either because it makes champs like katarina and Leblanc extremely dangerous and those champs do a lot of damage in a short time. With cinderhulk and the Gromp change it lets tanks, who do better in prolonged fights, become much stronger and lets them CC/damage longer making carries less effective at killing everything in 5 seconds. I'd argue that the strategic weaknesses actually do exist in this way because it's no longer "just protect the carries", you also have to worry about positioning and kiting. Not to mention no one in lower leagues picks up a penetration item before 35 minutes.

  2. "Muh Meta". It's been Sivir ,Jinx or Caitlyn moreso than Twitch ,Vayne ,KogMaw and surprisingly enough the last three do a lot better against tanks than the first three. The advantages of the first three was that they had utility or damage with a lack of late game dueling potential. I'm not counting "b-but doublelift" here because not everyone can kite with an immobile champ like he can. Cinderhulk junglers excel at killing the first three because of this. It stands to reason that the least three carries would do well here. No one wants to branch out.

Basically, strategic weakness and strengths are there it's just: A)No one wants to branch out because they only pick what's "meta" or B) Tanks are made good again because the new item allows them to be effective at their role

LoRdJeSuS69694201 votes

Well according to your logic, the full damage character has sacrificed their defense in order to build up damage, so even the tanky champion can kill them. It works both ways.

Compare the damage a tank does to another tank with the damage an ADC does to a tank, though, and you'll see a difference.

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