What does a Bruiser Keystone look like?

ModAzure Ole·2/12/2018, 4:59:18 PM·12 votes·2,494 views

Before we get a keystone to address bruisers added, we need to have a concept of what a bruiser needs/synergizes with.

All you Jax players out there, what's your idea for a keystone that Jax benefits from more than any existing rune?

Challenge mode: keep your keystone idea from being op/exploitable by other classes.

What would work on a variety of bruisers? Is there something out there that would help Jax, Irelia, AND darius? Renekton?

How about a minor rune to start with: Inspiration rune that grants an item to start the game with. This item is melee only, and provides an active AA reset, but has extremely limited stats. Builds into titanic.

79 Comments

Trestani2/12/2018, 5:09:22 PM26 votes

fervor of battle

Håppy2/12/2018, 5:59:38 PM8 votes

"Keep it from being exploitable by other classes"

Impossible. Every rune can work with any class, but every rune has a specific class it caters to...

..except bruisers/fighters.

Dr Dog2/12/2018, 5:09:53 PM5 votes

fever was literally the perfect one

DeathBurst2/12/2018, 6:55:39 PM3 votes

I like this thread, OP, but you needed to write it a month or so ago. A Bruiser Keystone, or as Meddler put it "a Keystone well suited to Bruisers, but not exclusively for them", is already in development and should be released soon. It's a bit too late to ask the community for inspiration.

woodvsmurph2/12/2018, 10:00:07 PM3 votes

Renekton just needs his spells rebalanced. His q does less damage than his aa without items. He deals no damage to enemies with armor values stronger than ninja tabi until he completes cleaver. He does not benefit from the cleaver components nearly as much as others because all he wants early on is DAMAGE. Pure, raw ad. Darius benefits from the components more since he just wants a long fight to get his passive stacked up and active - which hp gives you the ability to do. I don't think jax and irelia are in near as bad a spot - especially jax. He's kinda in a similar situation to aatrox... with people just whining for buffs until he's too op when he's really ok the way he is (still have people claiming aatrox is an auto-loss; open your eyes). Jax has a range of options depending on opponent team comps and what his goal is (split vs teamfight). While he might not be the top tier toplaner, he's definitely not garbage. Irelia is similar to jax in items and in the runes she tends to take... to a point. She might not benefit as much from some of them since jax gets tons of basically free damage via passive (attack speed), low mana cost w, and passive on his ult (3rd hit proc); irelia needs her w active.

Darius's problem is he gets kited too easily and either deals no damage even when he proc's his passive in teamfights because he can only hit tanks or he deals damage because he has 2+ damage items but is generally focused and killed before he can get his passive stacked up and start ulting. This can be somewhat addressed by either adjusting melee movespeed items to scale off %movespeed (instead of flat; crit gives %movespeed) and keeping that movespeed in combat or by making crit movespeed NOT stack and also fall off in combat (except pd - as it's movespeed unique passive is specific to in-combat) to keep equality with melee movespeed items like righteous glory or deadman's plate.

Renekton's problem is both runes AND his kit. The champ has weak scaling compared to everyone else while currently also needing to OUTPLAY scaling champs in order to win early. To put a comparable example in place - a FICTITIOUS one - that highlights how stupid and problematic it is, let's use the following... vayne's q is turned into an aa reset that does 2/3 the damage of a regular aa. Her w can only be procced once every 15 sec on a target. Her q scales off ap. Her w scales off attack speed, her e and aa's scale off ad and attack speed. By late game, her ratios, cd's, base damage, and items combine to let her COMPETE WITH (not outscale) other adc's. She needs to outplay a cait to beat her 1v1 late game and straight up loses early/mid by half her hp bar. She's mildly stronger at teamfighting, but not by a respectable enough margin to warant picking her over caitlyn. If such a scenario were true, who the hell would play vayne? Yet this is exactly the way renekton is treated... only the early game vs late game is flipped and of course cait is instead other fighters/bruisers and sometimes even tanks in the toplane.

Renekton either needs to be returned to the early game status bar - if you are good and play properly, you can lane vs him (not win, but survive just fine and outscale) or needs much improved scaling and honestly lower late game cd's more on par with a riven (2-5 sec) not 4-10 sec (it's been awhile since I've played him; I don't remember the exact numbers).

I may not be challenger, but I sure as hell know renekton. I know him well enough I have carried 3 teammates who fed their asses off for 17 min straight while I was 1v2 winning my lane (with tp) vs an ignite counter-pick toplaner more times than I care to discuss. I know him well enough to adjust my builds going into the game based off enemy team comps to maximize both splitpush and teamfight potential and predict which one I will be doing more of. Enough to beat decent jax, camille, yasuo, trynd, ww (jungle), etc. players a full 2 items after I should be losing to them no-contest. The champ needs some love, some updating. His basic abilities are great and have some of the best synergy in the game. But the base stats, the ratios of abilities, the cd's, etc. are not so good. A champ at his strongest point in the game - one made to duel others - should not be losing to other champs at one of their weakest points in the game unless massive outplay is involved.

junglerboy162/13/2018, 12:11:34 PM3 votes

What Juggernauts really need from keystones is either strong windowed mobility (stormraiders as opposed to phase rush) so that they can get to their targets on occasion, selfish tankiness (not tied to hard CC or shielding) so they can build damage a bit more freely, or strong damage that encourages them to get deep in a fight (old fervor of battle or a version of grasp that isn't weak af).

Personally I'd change Grasp to combine the resolve rune, so instead of just 5 bonus health it also gives you ~.1% increased bonus HP

Now when it's late game and you've worked to stack all game (say 300 bonus health, or 60 procs) you also get +6% bonus HP.

HalcyonDweller2/12/2018, 5:32:08 PM3 votes

I like your inspiration rune idea, that's a really cool rune and it's one that I know I would make use of with a lot of my favorite bruisers.

Although I do have a slight concern about it synergizing with Press the Attack and Electrocute a little bit too well.

ChargeItDownMid2/12/2018, 5:42:19 PM3 votes

[deleted]

Teridax682/13/2018, 12:18:22 PM2 votes

Just to pick a few current Keystones:

Aftershock: activates on basic attack, max health scaling reduced, now scales with total AD, rather than bonus AD.
Suddenly, many more juggernauts would get to use this, and even divers would get to scale with the effect better. Tanks should not have more damage anyways, so this effect shouldn't be conditional upon applying tank-ish crowd control.
Grasp of the Undying: no longer increases max health, grants a small amount of bonus armor and MR instead. Perhaps reduce max health ratio on damage, add adaptive AD/AP scaling.
Because fighters naturally stack health, resists here would be more attractive than just more health. Additionally, putting an emphasis on a mix of damage and durability, rather than just raw durability, would benefit fighters more than tanks. As with Aftershock, more damage is not something tanks should generally be able to access.
Press the Attack: just increase the damage amplification for melee champions relative to ranged champions, as before.
There was once a time where PTA was good on fighters in testing, when the effect had a melee/ranged split that allowed both to do well with it. Riot decided the separation wasn't needed, and eliminated the split. PTA got nerfed, and no longer became good on fighters. Now that it's been proven that a split is needed, it would be better to add it back.

And for some new Keystones:

Precision: Definitely Not Fervor of Battle: Basic attacks and spell hits against enemy champions increase your damage by X% and give Y armor and magic resistance, stacking up to Z times (indefinitely?) and lasting a few seconds. Ranged champions only gain increased damage, and not increased resistances.
Basically FoB, as proposed by many others, but with an upgrade to the level of current Keystones, which would offer a damage/durability split desirable to fighters. Could potentially work on ranged champions as well, but purely as a damage boost, rather than a source of durability.
Inspiration: Dark Ruler Rod: Gain three charges of the Dark Ruler Rod, an item whose active cleanses you of all crowd control and grants crowd control immunity for 1 second afterwards, incurring a large cooldown. The Dark Ruler Rod is consumed upon its final use, and ranged champions only gain one charge.
Black King Bar from Dota 2, basically. Again, melee/ranged split would allow this to be balanced more around fighters than around anyone else. Could give mages a "free" one-use QSS for when they'd really need it.
Resolve: Actually Live Forever: Upon taking champion damage that reduces you below X% maximum health, gain a shield equal to Y% of your maximum health, which decays over Z seconds and incurs a large cooldown. While the shield holds, you gain increased attack speed, and your basic attacks against enemy champions pause the decay by 1 second. Ranged champions gain reduced/no bonuses while the shield holds.
The basic idea here is that you get a Lifeline effect from the start that could save the life of a fighter in battle, while also giving them an attractive enough bonus that they could get to pop off in heavy fights. As with the above, a melee/ranged separation could allow fighters to be balanced in a manner that wouldn't benefit ranged champions as much, particularly since the bonus AS here might be too good on marksmen (though not good on most tanks).

Jinx Hunter2/13/2018, 10:19:29 AM2 votes

There is no keystone, we know riot is lying and just scooting things along until they decide to slap something half assed in. If they weren't then it would be on the PBE since the start when it was "noticed" that there wasn't one. [slayer-jinx-unamused]

Shuriman Curator2/12/2018, 9:02:43 PM1 votes

In my opinion, it's not necessarily a keystone problem; but rather an itemization cost/base stat adjustment problem. An example would be Darius, he can use a decent amount of keystone's. Fleet Footwork, Grasp, Aftershock, Phase Rush all work.

I play mostly juggernauts Darius Garen Nasus and recently Trundle .

Maybe more scaling health? Scaling AD? Lower the cost of cleaver, Titanic Hydra and steraks would help?

This is just my opinion though

PopcornBunni2/12/2018, 7:28:05 PM

Heat of Battle Resolve Keystone While within 400 range of an enemy champion or epic monster, gain 0.8 - 8 AD or 1.3 - 13 AP (adaptive) and 1-10 Armor and Magic Resistance each second, up to a maximum of 8-80 AD or 13-130 AP (adaptive) and 10-100 Armor and Magic Resistance. These bonuses fall of each half second after being out of 400 range of an enemy champion or epic monster for 4 seconds.

Compared to the old Fervor, this lets fighters gain stacks just by playing in close proximity to their opponent, rather than being focused specifically on trading blows with them. Since fighters are often lanebullies against tanks whose defenses are lacking in the early game, this plays into that even more so than the previous version while also solving the marksmen issue. Marksmen wanting to take advantage of the rune need to be playing in an unoptimal range and make themselves vulnerable to melee users of it.

It also fits more nicely into the resolve path by granting defensive stats as well, something which both trinity/sterak's main users enjoy, and tanks wanting to try out an off-tank style can feel comfortable with.