The current changes to Sejuani and Ornn, and the impact on tank design

The current reasoning behind the changes to these champs has been that the difference between their proplay and solo queue rates is massive, and Riot wants to bring them closer together. It’s a noble goal, but this path they seem to be taking is wrong, and it can impct how people see tanks and how tanks end up being designed.

When subclasses were set up and class updates were being done, tanks were to be defined by windows of higher tankiness, their CC, overall durability, as well as, for most, lower overall damage compared to other classes, exerting their power in utility and locking down targets for their allies. Another factor was tanks should have an element of unreliability in their kits to allow for higher impact in their skills, citing Sion and the reworked Galio’s E and Ultimate as examples.

Sejuani was reworked, and part of it for a good reason, as a long range, potential 5-man stun was incredibly powerful and, similar to Malphite and Amumu with their ultimates, ended up locking up a good chunk of her power. Her new ultimate worked out a bit better, with a single target stun and then a slowing field, which did better if it was used at longer range for engage. Her passive was updated to help with engages, and her W became a skillshot. Her E bexame a big issue, forcing her to rely on melee alloes to help her get the stun. It seemed less about reliability, and more of a weird gimmick for team comps. It also didn’t help that this mechanic for the stun lead to a fairly large %max health hit. She became strong in proplay, where they could more easily build around her kit, and weaker in solo queue, where that didn’t happen that often.

Now, the plan is to minimize the difference there, by increasing her damage and some base stats, removing her slow on the second hit of W, and reducing the stun duration.

In Ornn’s case, he started out weaker, released as, essentially, the epitome of the tank definition: unreliable skills (everything could be dodged), low damage, moderate-high durability, and high CC. His W at the time dealth %current health damage, starting out fights strong but getting weaker over time, and his Brittle procs the only source of %max health damage, but requiring an Ornn auto or hard CC to proc. His W eventually got adjusted to %max health so the damage would be more consistent (a massive mistake in my opinion), and from there he became harder to balance. He got picked up in season 8 in pros, and was incredibly strong there with his whole kit, and oppressive in solo queue lanes. So he took quite a few nerfs, with now a fairly low solo winrate and pickrate, but still good in pros.

He’s now being more focused around that W damage, pushing him more toward a bruiser type champ, ironically a position similar to old Sejuani according to her mains, in order to make him better for players in solo queue.

So what could this mean? We might be moving into a season where tanks, since they cannot perform as well in solo, will be granted more damage at the cost of tank aspects in order to make them better for solo queue players and not as strong in coordinated. If they think it works for Sejuani and Ornn, more tanks may receive this treatment, further blurring the already blurred lines between fighters and tanks.

Or I’m just being a doom sayer (i forget actual term) on this. What are you’re thoughts? What direction should these tanks, and tanks in general be kept in? Is it bad that a class is good in coordinated while being weaker in solo play? Should that be avoided?