Bruisers with no utility or tools to work with in their kit like Darius and Olaf will forever be bad

Kingsgrave·Dec 19, 2014·11 votes·1,108 views

and Riot will make sure of it and they honestly should

Why?

Because when they are strong they are just a bunch of numbers and the only way they can be useful is to destroy the enemy without effort. Sure Lee Sin, Rek'Sai, Kha'Zix will sometimes be overtuned and have too high of base damages sometimes but when they are nerfed they are still useful because their kits have useful tools and something to work with rather than "bleed + aoe damage + slow + pull + execute"

Nerfing scaling on Rek'Sai isn't enforcing "hurdur bruisers must be tanks" its making her scaling not so obscene because of the amount of things she can do. They had to nerf the scaling on Darius because all he does is shit on people in lane and does nothing else. Rek'Sai can duel, teleport, has mobility, has meaningful CC, has sustain etc.,

9 Comments

The Red WardenDec 19, 20146 votes

I still wonder though why when they did the Olaf rework they opted to just exchange his stat boosts for other stat boosts when they could have instead given something actually interesting. I also find it very strange that almost no Rioter ever addresses that Olaf still needs fixing.

Teridax68Dec 19, 20143 votes

Olaf's rework was an emergency fix. He still ended up being a ball of stats, but at least he was a ball of stats that didn't deal massive amounts of damage just by building tanky. I think Riot's approach to bruisers was a little different than it is now, and his rework likely predated the desire to overhaul the fighter class (it probably even launched it).

KingsgraveDec 19, 20142 votes

{quoted}

Olaf's rework was an emergency fix. He still ended up being a ball of stats, but at least he was a ball of stats that didn't deal massive amounts of damage just by building tanky. I think Riot's approach to bruisers was a little different than it is now, and his rework likely predated the desire to overhaul the fighter class (it probably even launched it).

iirc the fighter rework started with CertainlyT attempting to rework Garen but it was mostly them just slapping new properties onto champs so he stopped almost immediately

They are still doing the fighter project but only in pieces. Renekton got a bit of a rebalance on the PBE which is no doubt related to it

flibitydooDec 19, 20145 votes

People keep asking for Olaf to get his numbers buffed.

But I don't think these people ever played against a fed Olaf and understood how there is zero interaction to coming back to the game when Olaf is ahead because if he beats you in stats, the only way to get back is to beat him in stats which is straight up impossible since he wins every fight by being ahead in stats. All you can do is turtle under tower (which might not even be possible if he's ahead enough) or farm minions where he isn't (in which he does the same and you both keep going until you are both hit lategame and your stats equalize). He's not some squishy ADC who can get caught out of position, stunned and bursted. If he's viable, he can tank a whole team while dishing out a whole team's worth of damage on his own.

Rinky DinkyDec 19, 20141 votes

They don't know how to play him usually.

Darius either. I have seen both of these champs completely destroy in diamond - master elo.

However, the pro's who play them do all agree that their risk is not worth the reward, especially olaf.

Olaf is completely useless unless he gets ahead. Darius has his execute throughout the game, so he can be very useful in teamfights.

LupusNoxDec 19, 20142 votes

Olaf and Darius are great 1v1, but suck at everything else

KingsgraveDec 19, 20142 votes

{quoted}

Olaf and Darius are great 1v1, but suck at everything else

And they are only good at 1v1s because they make it impossible for you to fight them

Teridax68Dec 19, 20142 votes

I think the larger issue isn't so much that champions like Darius and Olaf lack utility (Darius technically has some utility in the form of his slow, pull and movement speed boost), but rather that they're built specifically to duel other melee champions, to the detriment of everything else. Often, this translates into tons of free stats and steroids (Olaf being the most egregious example, with his three/four separate stat boosts), and more generally a focus on raw stats and reliable fighting power versus more interesting and unique contributions. Going back to the ranged vs melee argument a while back, a lot of melee champions tend to suffer because they either get up close to their opponent and DPS them to death, or just get kited too hard to make an impact, and depending on how tanky they are will always tend to fall into one situation or the other over every game. It's the reason why ranged versus melee tends to heavily favor one or the other over the course of a patch cycle, and why melee top laners tend to suffer against ranged champions. We need each fighter to be able to do something unique besides duel, and have something to bring to the table besides raw tanky DPS. Even super-kiteable champions like Sion and RekSai can make an impact against kite-heavy comps, and bring unique power to their team that no other champion can replicate.

Darius technically has the tools to be a really cool and unique bruiser (he works like a time bomb, something Riot wants to bring out in him in his eventual rework), and Olaf might not even need that many fancy changes to become genuinely powerful and worth picking, but both need to have some outplay potential beyond just getting kited. A big problem with a lot of bruisers is that they're super-reliable, so while they don't have that much variance when it comes to using their spells (you can't really "miss" as a bruiser, in most cases), that also means there's a cap to their performance that limits how effective they can be (hence why a lot of bruisers dominate in lane but underperform in teamfights). While reliability can be a form of power, it can become very dull if it doesn't allow for high moments in a champion's kit: right now, there are very few high moments in top lane (pre-level 6, at least), since most fights turn into stat-offs (or slap fights), where the champion with the highest DPS and tankiest stats wins, but either side can just sit back and use their free sustain to heal back. Few abilities are impactful enough to make a lasting mark in top lane, and most bruisers are built to shrug off a large part of the damage they receive. As much as people like to complain about the likes of Gnar or LeeSin , whenever they initiate a combo, that combo hurts, and can't be healed back easily. They're capable of making plays even in lane, and create high moments for both themselves and their opponents. On top of that, they bring power nobody else can copy, whereas it's difficult to differentiate between the contribution a DrMundo makes versus, say, Olaf or Shyvana , despite differences in their kits.

NubeelDec 19, 20141 votes

Yeah in Bronze Darius and Olaf wreck because people don't know what wards are, overextend and don't understand the concept of "you just died to a lane bully so don't fight him anymore without help".