@Riot can we discuss fighters [Warning Long]
To start some context:
Fighter is a board term in LoL at the moment it includes everything from assassins to tanks and I believe this ambiguity leads to confusion from a lack of solid vocabulary to use when discussing the different sub-types of fighters.
Those sub-types being: tank, bruiser, and assassin.
Tanks and assassins are pretty clear and relatively easy to understand, but bruisers again introduce muddled definition. So let's define some terms for this discussion.
Utility - non damage dealing effect/s of an ability/item that aid allies or impair enemies.
Personal utility - non damage dealing effect/s of an ability/item that aid only the user of the ability/item or makes enemies weaker (more vulnerable) solely against the user of the ability/item.
Team Utility - non damage dealing effect/s of an ability/item that aid allies (or user and allies) or impair enemies (make vulnerable to allies) to the benefit of allies.
Some examples of utility:
Personal utility: Self-Shields, Steroids (boost of a stat or effect usually [attack [AD/AP], defense, and movement]), resistance shred, cool down reduction, self-healing, life steal, spell vamp, etc.
Team Utility: Shields that affect others, Heals for others (Soraka, Janna, Nami), movement impairment effects (roots/snares, slows, knock ups), stuns, silence, armor shred (Black Cleaver)
Now that we have utility defined to an extent let's try to define the different types of fighters.
Tanks - High team utility, high durability, low damage (relative to adcs and assassins)
Examples - Sejuani, Allistar, Leona, Blitzcrank, Taric, Singed
Bruiser itself is too general so I think of them as either defensive or offensive. The difference between a bruiser and tank is that a bruiser brings damage while being more durable than assassin but less durable than a tank. I think right now this is where LoL has issues. Tanks with bruiser level damage and bruisers with tank level durability and/or assassin level damage and the most balanced champions feel like trash tier compared to the current meta gods.
Defensive bruiser - builds primarily defensive items, significant team utility, moderate personal utility, moderate damage.
Examples - Garen, Darius
Offensive bruiser - builds primarily offensive items, low team utility, significant personal utility, significant damage
Examples - Olaf, Yasuo, Pantheon
Assassins - builds primarily offensive items, low/no team utility, high personal utility, high damage.
Examples - Fiora, Master Yi, Tyrndamere, Kha'Zix, Rengar, Katarina
So now that's done and we have some level of vocabulary let's discuss the current state of fighters.
When I first read Morello's post on fighters, I didn't quite understand it. Why would he think fighters have overloaded kits, and say more nerfs were needed when it feels like they've nerfed every fighter in the game at least 3 times in the last year?
Then I thought about it. . . . If you took any fighter as is, made their attack range 575 (Jayce being the exception) you would have the most powerful Champion in all of LoL instantly. They'd build one offensive item, then stack defense for days be immortal have support level team utility, and still kill an adc in 5 seconds. Before you try to ignore my whole post, we've all see the IBG Nasus that builds no other offensive item, 3 shot an adc that couldn't kill him while tanking 2 others at once.
Fighter kits right now just have so much personal and team utility on them that it's insane. I hate nerfs more than most but look at 
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's kit right now. Those that don't have built in sustain have built in defense, all have some kind of movement utility, and such high base damage on their abilities that they only need to build one or two offensive items to do adc level damage.
Could you imagine a mage with spell vamp and an infinitely scaling Q? You're thinking Veigar right? But he can't spell vamp from auto attacks, and doesn't have spell vamp in his passive or a damage dealing aoe resistance shred. Not to mention the difference in base stats.
I love playing fighters too, but I’m not blind they are ridiculous. Right now fighters are effectively the rpg equivalent of tank mages.
What’s a tank mage; a character with the durability of a tank and the burst damage of mage, the penultimate of broken design. Because the tank mage does it all: he soaks damage, he kills the enemy and lives to talk about it. That sound like any type of character in LoL today?
So what should change? First how about defining the current fighters and then scale their utility and damage scaling to match?
I love playing Wukong, but between his defensive passive, armor shredding Q, escape invisibility W, gap closing attack speed steroid E and damage dealing knock up ultimate; maybe he has just more than a tad bit too much utility for his damage output. Wukong would be a great offensive bruiser. Lower his base damage up his scaling and/or switch to total ad scaling; make the armor pen on his Q (Crushing Blow) only apply to his own attacks and spells, and give him a passive that makes him a better bruiser not a better tank.
I can only speak from my own experience but I’ve never known NA players in a multiplayer game to be happy playing a no/low damage tank and not try to break the game and turn that tank into a tank mage. It’s what we as players do, looking for the missed over powered edge case that lets us win with the greatest ease. Riot can play whack-a-mole until the cows come home but we will always find, use, and abuse that edge case.
TL;DR I sadly agree with Morello about fighters being broken and I think unless fighters as a class see a massive design shift/rework there will be many more nerfs on the horizon.
I'm reposting this from GD because here I won't have bump it and want to see if this format really does lead to good discussions.
