Fighters are officially dead - potential solution

-If you want to see my suggestions instead of reading the all the stuff at the top; scroll down to the second section-

Fighters have basically be extinct since the preseason patch. Quite frankly, there are so many reasons why that it's hard to keep track of. Many of the problems that were causing them to be pushed out if the meta have been solved, like Quinn being way too oppressive in solo lane against melees (she still is honestly. I'll briefly go over a few of their problems.

•Ranged ADCs have too many safety nets

It's bad enough that supports like Braum, Alistar, Janna and Thresh make it impossible to stay on top of an ADC. Well maybe not bad, in many situations, their job is to peel. But ADCs have too much safety on their own. Many of them are blessed with either mobility or long range. In either case, getting on top of them in the first place as a melee is impossible. So what's the problem outside of this? Let's go over it:

•Mercurial Scimitar/QSS:

QSS as an investment into a cleanse is a fair trade off. But Mercurial is still way too good of an item that it's still an absolutely must have. It has been nerfed and it's drop in power has made it bad to get it as a third item, sometimes second item. But regardless it's existence causes trouble.

•Steraks shield needs to be melee only:

On occasion, I'm still seeing some ADCs get this (mostly Kog and Graves but still). This was an awesome item last season for bruisers but it's shown that ADCs still abuse it. ADCs have the best defensive steroid in the game, range, they shouldn't have access to the defensive power steraks has. I understand how it works and how it [b]shouldn't[/b] be a good buy on ADCs but the fact remains, it still is.

•Maw is still god tier on drain tanking ADCs:

Lifegrip needs to be half effective on ranged. ADCs already build some form of lifesteal, they shouldn't be able abuse this.

•Graves still exists:

Graves rework was a mistake. He invalidates melees in lane and outperforms them in every single way as a duelist, drain tank the ability to blow up squishies while still having insane DPS plus one of the best defensive steroids in the game - all of this while still being ranged.

•Black Cleaver lost too much HP:

self explanatory.

•Deadmans was over-nerfed:

self explanatory.

Now, I'm going to get into the next big problem for melees, not tanks, but bruisers and light fighters (and it's why most light fighters resort to one damage item + full tank after because it's the only way they can survive).

With the Mage rework, many mages are starting to be played in both solo lanes again. That's fine, mages have been pretty weak lately and a small rework was definitely needed for many (and obviously larger reworks for others). Their itemization was still stale and a change to that was a nice change of pace. But keep in mind, mages are more anti-melee than ranged ADCs are because mages are still ranged while many of them have hard-CC, some having several forms of it. In conjunction with this, those same mages with hard cc also typically have soft cc and this all comes from range, making it hard for a melee to be in range of them and more importantly, stay in range of them on the first place. I'm not saying mages shouldn't have this, utility is what separates them from being immobile assassins. But regardless, it's still extremely anti melee and it makes the existence of fighters rather non existence.

Truth be told, the amounts of hard CC in this game since season 2 has tripled. Quadrupled. Gotten really big. You get the point. Since then, tenacity, which is the only way anyone can deal with hard cc short of being unable to be targeted (die fizz), tenacity has only gotten weaker by never really being updated in anyway to keep up with all the hard-cc (and soft cc as well) in this game. And many of these spells are also 2+ second cc's, making them and their ability to be stacked on a single target with no diminishing returns to be even more of a problem.

---

So these are the problems. I now offer what i feel would be very good, non abusive solution, or well, a few solutions.

1. Increase the tenacity on Mercs. Increase it to 40% for melees, remaining at 30% for ranged.

This is probably the most simple of solutions but it's also the most potentially abusive one. With the abundance of hard CC in this game from all fronts, I don't think this would be a bad change. But 40% tenacity is still pretty huge, with the tenacity mastery, I believe this would bring your tenacity to 44% (I didn't actually calculate this FYI, just a guesstimation). That's nearly 50% crowd control reduction, I'm sure we won't to go this route as straight reduction with no gameplay is rather lacking and likely a very frustrating outcome for the one applying the CC.

This is why I think the next solution would be better because raw, flat tenacity is dangerous.

2. make a form of tenacity that increases from x% to y% based on the amount of CC a single target is absorbing. This would likely be a keystone mastery (maybe you can replace this with storm raiders) because I feel it's too abusive as an item. Maybe not, who knows. But it would also be a mastery a fighter would consider taking over Grasp of the undying, making room for another mastery for melee top laners. Naturally, I would make this less effective for ranged champions.

If this wasn't clear, I'll give an example.

Let's say its new Stormraiders. Jax takes it. Here's how it'd work: Jax would get cc'd. Upon the next form of CC absorbed by Jax in the next 5 seconds, Jax would have increased tenacity of resistance to crowd control by a certain percent. This would stack up to say, 3-5 times and naturally you'd tune the numbers accordingly so this isn't obscenely broken.

The goal with this? One of the most frustrating things as a fighter is people just throwing out cc at you because you exist and getting chain cc'd into oblivion. It takes little to no effort for the enemy to do this, in fact because of all the cc that exists in this game, it's a very low decision making point for many enemies. This mastery would make the power of stacking hard CC on one champion a bit weaker and less frustrating for them. I wouldn't make the numbers too high because tenacity still exists but I'd make it good enough to make someone getting chain cc'd actually able to move. You'd be using this as your keystone so it's a big investment, which is why I wouldn't make it an item.

I know what you're thinking. "But HateDaddy, what about irelia? She'd abuse this so hard!" You're right and you know what? Fuck irelia. Can we please gut her damn passive and rework her so tenacity can't be complete shit? Let's not pretend irelia is well designed. We shouldn't allow one single outlier to make that much of a difference. Give her a new passive, name it Irelias Fervor (for each time someone says nerf irelia, morello is cursed to 1 year of nerf irelia memes in his house as wallpaper).

All jokes aside, I think this is a positive change for relatively immobile fighters and even mobile ones. Mobility is at an all time high, just being mobile isn't good enough anymore for fighters not named Jarvan or Lee Sin. I think this also makes crowd control reduction an interesting mechanic instead of being just a bland number with a bland outcome.

as always, thanks for reading friends.

P.S holy crap is wrote all of this? No tl;dr, I don't do tl;dr's.