Thornmail: Is it a healthy item to have in League?

darkdill·5/15/2014, 4:10:10 PM·1 votes·450 views

Seems like Thornmail, despite being bad in cost efficiency, really goes against Riot's "power without gameplay" rule. Reflecting damage just for buying an item feels like it could be done better.

I know it's only intended as a hard-counter to 5-physical teams, but its implementation just feels bad. I'd personally love it if to get the thorns, you had to activate the item and it gave you, say, 75% damage reflect instead of 30%, but only for a few seconds.

Discussion would be nice.

2 Comments

Critkeeper5/15/2014, 4:26:03 PM2 votes

It isn't a good item for league of legends, and that is all that really matters. The statement "It is supposed to counter 5 Ad teams" came from xelnath, but he knows very well that its just a bunch of nonsense.

Regardless of the power level of thornmail, it isn't an item that league of legends should have in it based on the design criteria that all other items must follow. There are a bunch of ways to do what thornmail does in preventing all AD teams, and thornmail is the least interactive and least interesting one.

TheRealCoxinator5/15/2014, 4:21:09 PM1 votes

I think thornmail is perfectly fine, and in DotA2 there is an item that has the proposed active that you thought of. It also gives no health which is somewhat of a need against AP and some HP scaling champions. Also in all reality there shouldn't be any 5 man AD teams, because that's not the best of ideas.