Why I fear the new keystone conqueror will ruin the state of the game

Although I have not played the game for a while due to my computer not working so I’m typing this on my phone, I have been reading patch notes to see the changes added to the game and things riot has tested on the pbe. One of the things that I greatly feared being added to the game was the addition of the conqueror keystone being added to the game. But why should I hate this keystone, shouldn’t it bring more balance to the game, especially since top lane is considered to be in a bad position right now? So I guess I’ll explain now why I think this keystone should have not been added to the game.

1. Very few champions can work well with this keystone: I’ve been hearing many complaints on how bruisers have few keystones to work with and people were trying all sorts of keystones to find something that would work but I think that’s what was so great for bruisers. There wasn’t one clear keystone that was always the perfect choice unlike the other roles that have a keystone that’s always perfect for them and there will never be a better option. What do I mean? Let’s take a look at a few other keystones.

In my opinion aftershock is a poorly designed keystone because it is the perfect choice for tanks and only tanks take it. All it does is allow the tanks to be tankier because it scales best with max health the best, but scales poorly with ap and ad. However what if they changed to where aftershock activates when attacking an enemy champion. Also what if it was changed to where if you picked this keystone you could choose to have it scale off of your max health or your ad/ap and the ad/ap were given higher ratios. This way there would be more roles that would want this keystone, maybe an adc would want this to have better chance of surviving a team fight.

Another badly designed keystone is Guardian. It is the only keystone tanky supports with little cc will ever take since there is just no better option. Examples: Braum and Taric. And of course no one else will ever take this keystone since you need to be near an ally champion to activate it. But what if this keystone was changed to where it could activate upon taking damage, even if you were alone or if you dropped below 30% of your max health. This way maybe other roles would want to take if they wanted to be a little more tanky, like bruisers who are willing to give up a damage keystone. But then of course it would compete with aftershock for the same job. My answer to that would be that guardian gives a large shield but goes on a long cool-down while aftershock gives a small extra defense but has a shorter cool-down. This way there is more diversity for which keystone would be a better choice for what you want regarding a defensive keystone.

Now what is an example of a well designed keystone? In my opinion the best made keystone goes to Summon Aery. Despite this keystone being made for enchanter supports to give a shield when buffing allies or applying a little extra damage to auto attacks and abilities, there are many different champions that take this keystone for what it does. Examples: Teemo, Soraka, Pantheon, Jayce, Ivern, Lux, etc... plus the keystone does well to compete with arcane comet.

So going back to conqueror, what do these keystones have to do with conqueror? Well with the examples I have given, you can see with what I mean by how aftershock and guardian go to a very specific group of champions and how they are terrible choices for any other role, and I fear conqueror will fall into the same fate as the other two keystones especially since it only refreshes on melee champions, meaning it is mostly useless on ranged champions, why would a ranged champion ever take this over press the attack, fleet footwork, or lethal tempo. Even worse, it doesn’t even grant ap, meaning not even any ap champion will ever take. I really was hoping conqueror would be changed in a way on pbe where there would be a large group of champions that would take it but unfortunately that does not seem to be the case.

2. Conqueror does true damage which means little counterplay: The title to the second argument speaks for itself. Yes I get it that tanky top laners can just stack armor or get bramble vest to become unkillable but that problem is because of tank items and not bruisers being too weak. Ninja Tabi’s passive or the armor it gives should be made weaker while bramble vest’s reflective damage passive should just be removed, only thornmail should have the reflective damage so tanks don’t have the reflective damage too early.

However with the keystone conqueror being added, now there is just less counterplay to deal with bruisers. Now instead of building armor to survive their damage, the only way to deal with them is buy rushing a health item like warmogs. Plus true damage should be something given to champions that can rarely take advantage of it like Kog Maw’s passive and not being able to consistently proc it like Vayne’s W (cough cough, that ability is bull crap).

3. Bruisers are already strong enough: Wait wait, before you say “WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT BRUISERS ARE SO WEAK RIGHT NOW” let me explain.

In my opinion I really hate bruisers and I honestly think they are op. I don’t think it is fair that they can have the damage of an assassin with the durability of a tank. The biggest problem they suffer from are the wrath of heavy cc tanks and peel supports like Janna. However if the enemy team comp does not have a heavy cc tank or a peel support, bruisers can just rip through everyone and no one can kill them since they are too tanky. Players are forced to pick specific champions just to counter one bruiser. And now I know you are asking “Shouldn’t juggernauts suffer from the same issue”? The answer to that is juggernauts ironically have a better gap closer than bruisers thanks to a certain item called righteous glory. Not only does it give them movement speed but it also gives a slow after the movement speed ends and juggernauts also usually have some form of cc to stay close to their targets unlike bruisers.

So the problem with bruisers is not that they are too weak but rather their counters are too strong. The answer to the counters should not be to give even less counterplay around bruisers by giving them a powerful keystone but rather to weaken the counters themselves. Tanks should not be able to just stack cc on top of more cc and peel supports should not just be able to just stack multiple heals and shields on vulnerable allies. There needs to be more ways to counter the high amounts cc that exist in the game like buffing cleanse to make you immune to cc for around 2 seconds or something like that.

4. Conqueror will have very little effect on tanks and just allow bruisers to blow up squishes even faster: While yes, it may deal true damage, tanks will get heath items to survive the true damage while squishies don’t have that luxury and can only get guardian angel which gives armor, which is useless against true damage. The only other option they have is frozen mallet but that is only for adc’s and if they do buy it, they give up too much damage to be useful in team fights.

But the argument to that is “But conqueror takes 4 seconds to activate so brusiers can’t just jump on a squishy to blow them up”. However what brusiers can do in team fights is just attack a tank for 4 seconds, wait for conqueror to activate and then use their gap closer to blow up the squishy once conqueror activates. The only counter play to that is once again a heavy cc tank or a peel support, and I already explained that stuff in my third argument.

Conclusion: I was very disappointed when I first saw this keystone on the pbe, hoping that it would be scrapped for something much better but sadly conqueror has come to be part of the game now and I fear it will greatly damage the state of the game and cause future patch notes to damage the state of the game even more by nerfing and buffing champions revolving around conqueror in an endless loop that will overall make brusiers become as poorly designed as the newest version of Ryze. All I can hope for now is that either I am wrong or that conqueror will get removed which I doubt. But we will have to wait a long time to see if my predictions of what the future of brusier champions could be are true. So in the mean time, enjoy dealing with true damage Yasuo and Riven.

Sincerely, A Gold V Support main: NY64