5 Comments
Let's not be too hasty here. There's a lot of things wrong with this video.
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You picked Ashe. An ADC not known for her damage on basics, but rather utility through her spells.
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You picked Garen. A tank-bruiser who's W amps up his bonus Armor and Magic Resistance, which you built quite a lot of. You also activated it during the video, giving Garen 30% damage reduction for a majority of the basic attacks. He was not taking the full amount of Ashe's damage.
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Ashe casted zero spells. Surprise, Ashe's W and ultimate deal damage as well. No Ashe is going to walk up to someone and just start hammering away at them for ~15 seconds while they have Thornmail without at least casting one spell.
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Garen did not fight back. Where's the fighting at? The counterplay? Both champions just stood there.
Summary: This is not a true in game scenario, therefore your assumption that "Thornmail is overpowered" is null and void.
That being said Thornmail is underrated. It is a very good item, especially against a heavy AD team with many Auto-Attackers or on champions with taunts. I'd say it's overpowered on Rammus, and that's it. However, it is otherwise meh at best since it strictly provides Armor.
Thats not very overpowered considering the way it works is by returning damage taken as magic dmg. So you took 4k dmg and ashe only had about 2k hp. If you had any less armor you would have died first, say merc treads instead of tabi.
Thats not entirely Thornmail being the issue. That's a related issue of the current meta where building full tank can quickly outscale damage potential. Most people will tell you to get a Botrk when you run into this situation which would be fair but it doesn't change the fact that the options for cutting through HP are limited(botrk), inconsistent(liandry's torment)or somewhat unappealing for laner's(SoteL).
You can't really blame Thornmail for being appealing when it rewards stacking defense options with extra damage.