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A Doran's Shield Buff to fix Top lane Meta

Bruised Ego·10/1/2016, 2:19:22 PM·107 votes·3,813 views

The top lane meta is very stale at the moment. Only ranged champions are truly viable (Gnar, Jayce, Gangplank, Kennen).

Many people have probably forgotten, but Doran's shield used to give 100 health instead of 80 and it used to give 10/5 regen instead of 6/5. I believe that if Doran's shield was buffed, we would see greater diversity in the top lane. Picks like Shen, Garen, Maokai, Singed, Mundo, Sion, Malphite could see much more play.

The biggest reason I don't build Doran's shield is because you can only buy 1 potion at the start. It simply isn't enough versus these oppressive ranged champions when you are playing a tank. Starting Doran's shield usually means you will run through your potion and be forced out of lane before the first cannon wave. As it stands, I would never build Doran's shield as my first item against a ranged champion, I would just buy corrupting potion every time.

Ideas for buff:

Instead of only blocking 8 damage from single target spells, allow it to block 8 damage from AOE spells too (ie Gnar boomerang, Jayce Q)
Lower the cost to 400 from 450 (this would allow you to purchase 2 health potions at lvl 1)
Revert Doran's shield to 100 health and 10 per 5 health regen.
Buff the damage blocked from basic attacks if the basic attacks are ranged
Add a tiny thorn-mail like passive (3 damage returned to attacker per auto)

Note: I am not suggesting all of these buffs, just maybe one of them. Doran's shield only needs a tiny buff to be viable and allow more tanks to be played without getting totally destroyed early in this meta.

96 Comments

Spoofghoul10/1/2016, 7:04:52 PM17 votes

on sion or other champs with high early base hp regen

i just get item 1006 + item 2003 x4

seriously good, if needed you can get the armor from runes and the minus 2 damage mastery thing and then you are suddenly plenty difficult to bully out of lane

even cloth4 is better then dorans

boots4 is better

hell youre better of grabbing 3 beads and a pot dorans shield is beyond trash really

Durfain10/1/2016, 6:46:15 PM17 votes

Doran's Shield is just in a really bad place right now. It's the only Doran's item that actually gets worse with items since for some unfathomable reason Rito decided that the block damage should apply before armor reduction which means building armor devalues the item (why when the block mastery reduces it after armor.. makes zero sense). A simple fix would be to make it 400 gold so you can grab an extra potion and, perhaps, also boost the base health it gives. I wouldn't risk increasing the hp regen for fear it would break it and make it be picked on supports again.

Mira Arya Enthe10/1/2016, 3:14:51 PM16 votes

Hmmm. I could take Shyshy top :3

Irelia Bot10/1/2016, 9:56:15 PM8 votes

What they should do as a buff 450 cost 90 health Unique: [3% damage reduction followed by 5 flat damage reduction from melee auto attacks and 8 flat against ranged attackers from ranged auto attacks or single target abilities. 33% effectiveness against Damage over time and AoE] +50% base Hp5 regen.

It does not scale as well as other doran items currently do. It doesn't need a huge boost but 10 more HP, +50% HP5 regen instead of a flat 6 hp5 and some changes to the damage reduction will make the item scale a little better past early game (in other words once it damage taken is above 100 stronger for the damage reduction). Will likely be slightly weaker early for some champs for the health regen though.

I don't want to see it made too strong since that would likely result in a must buy item that out class other options. Considering this it is the closest thing league has to STOUT SHIELD from dota 2 which is actually a worthwhile starting item to buy for melee expecially agaisnt ranged enemies Doran's shield could use soem help..

DunkinNoobs10/2/2016, 4:58:34 AM6 votes

I remember when Dshield was good. Early game aggression was nonexistent because both laners took it every single game and trading with your lane opponent was almost always a waste of time. Remember the Renekton, Shyvana, Mundo meta? That was the Dshield meta boys.

TFBaam10/2/2016, 1:00:13 PM4 votes

The top lane meta is very stale at the moment. Only ranged champions are truly viable (Gnar, Jayce, Gangplank, Kennen).

gangplank isnt ranged.

TyrekGoldenspear10/1/2016, 9:58:17 PM4 votes

As a melee top laner I approve!

World Ender10/1/2016, 10:01:01 PM4 votes

Would be nice to give it percent HP regen instead of just flat. It scales so badly into mid game, at least the life steal from Doran's Blade gets more effective as you get more AD. But come on, an extra 6 HP/5 on a tank that has 2000 HP means absolutely nothing. This would also encourage more tanks to build it because they already have high base HP regen.

Sohleks10/1/2016, 11:13:55 PM4 votes

I think a major major part of the problem is how sucky resolve tree mastery keystones are for melee versus ranged. Their best bet is grasp which has been nerfed. It's also hard to get in there with it.

SotA and Bond of Stone do so extremely little. Maybe SotA could be interesting if melee early game was patched up and was more consistent. Bond of Stone on the other hand is a completely terrible terribly designed mastery that is both invisible with almost zero gameplay optimization. Pro duo lanes almost never take it. Bond of Stone needs a complete overhaul/deletion IMO. And you know whats sad about it is I and some other spec bond of stone on some tanks on ascension and aram because grasp and SotA are so useless there.

TL;DR resolve keystones suck major duck. Meanwhile fervor giving thousands of gold of on hit dmg and TLD zaps from ranged over n over XD

I'd be happy to spec a tank keystone on Gnar and build maybe 1 more dmg item instead cause of it maybe but they suck soo bad compared to the other tree's keystones!

Evewynn10/2/2016, 1:16:12 AM4 votes

The reason riot didn't want it to be too good is because supports would take it to great success. With how good gold items are now, I don't think this would be as much of an issue, so a buff would be quite nice

WiegrafOfValor10/2/2016, 7:06:54 AM2 votes

They should just change the passive from:

UNIQUE: Blocks 8 damage from basic attacks and single target abilities from champions.

to

UNIQUE: Blocks 20 damage from basic attacks and single target abilities from champions. *Half for melee basic attacks.

With that they will give a small buff against melee champions, +2 reduction, and a huge buff against ranged champions, +12 reduction. Thus making laning against a ranged top laner beareable.