Reign of Gaming

Comments section discussion too long, didn't read. I'll just chime in with some thoughts as mentioned in the article itself...

While I wouldn't completely agree with Irelia being a ball of stats, the cool-factor of most of her abilities does pretty much come down to stats rather than visible effects. Hiten Style is, in my opinion, one of her defining elements, alongside her passive; it just feels awesome to slowly overpower your opponent in a duel with just autoattacks. Arguably, Aatrox has taken this for himself now, so she doesn't have that all to herself, but then again, Blitzcrank doesn't have grabbing all to himself either when there's Nautilus and Thresh to contend with. The elements of Irelia that make her "cool" are, pretty much, the fact that she wins duels without doing too much; she activates W to boost her damage and heal as she fights, she uses E to stun when she's losing, and that's about it. Some juking capabilities if there's minions around for her Q to eat, and R has nice synergy with Sheen, but otherwise she's straightforward. It just feels cool to win a 1v3 fight, but there's not much inherently cool about her as a champion.
I must admit, Irelia was my favorite right from when I first started playing League (she was free on the week I signed up), and she's been my favorite for the past two years, even though I don't play her very often now. I'd hate to see more nerfs for her or any big changes. But at the same time, I'd like to see her in a good spot, maybe given more of a skill cap; I'd love to see her Bladesurge get a change to be more like Yasuo's dash for example, or making it a skillshot, or something similar. If you moved her R over to her normal skill bar, maybe make it build charges (the blades would hover over her head like usual); hell, you could replace her Hiten Style, maybe even make that her ultimate and make the true damage %-based or something to make up for it. There's a lot of cool little things that could be done without taking away from what she has right now, though how to balance them still is an issue; an Irelia that's too weak doesn't really do anything other than farm and throw out some damage, an Irelia that's too strong just takes on the entire enemy team by herself. So I do understand why elements of her design are a bit toxic.

I still kinda just want her to be OP again, though. Not enough to get her perma-banned like Kassadin, but still auto-pick pubstomp. Is that too much to ask? =P

Bruisers I actually think are needed more than any other type of champion class. They are the only class that can go in on a fed APC or ADC and damage then while staying alive long enough for their team to clean up. As we saw in Season 3 where most bruisers weren't viable, heck everyone but Renekton top lane wasn't played in a solo lane when it came to bruisers. Assassins, ADCs, and Burst Mages ran WILD in S3, why? Because tanks couldn't do anything (thanks to penetration changes and removal or nerfs to items like Force of Nature), and Bruisers weren't there to balance out the fight.

Defining a Bruisers role seems like a great idea but I think instead you have to clarify the other roles better. For instance, a tank should be a flat out tank not someone who will die to an ADC in 3-5 seconds. Tanks should be able to be tickled at best against a teams main damage source, while only providing utility and damage soak. Assassins and AP Burst Mages should only be able to use their whole kit and kill a squishy target (ADC, APC, or Support), they shouldn't be able to do this against a Bruiser or Tank. Supports, or rather traditional supports are the most balanced of all champions currently.

What?

Irelia's signature move is her E -  its definitely quite unique and allows for some amazing plays. Thats what always made her unpredictable and difficult to deal with in the glory days. 

Her current state has much more to do with multidude of undirect nerfs rather then what was done to her numbers. Back in a day of resitance stacking tank would have 3k HP with 200mr/armor and she could melt through anybody. Nowt with the penetration and itemisation changes you're often looking at 4k and more.

Tenacity in defensive tree isn't doing her passive any favours because of the way how tenacity stacks. Abundance of new champions with tenacity-bypassing CC moves doesn't help either.

 

 

I was more thinking in her Q. She can farm more safely do to that, feeling almost like a ranked champ (at least for me) and that's unique. 

E is cool too, not a forgettable champ 

"Tanks and Assassins are the dominant picks and have been since basically most of S3 in the case of the latter? better keep bitching about how much I don't like Irelia/Xin/Vlad who are picked almost never in competitive play." -Morello

Morello is honestly a complete idiot an couldn't balance this game "competitively" if his life depended on it.

Also, there's a difference between bruisers/fighters and flat out tanks. (Only Renekton is the only true Bruiser still picked competitively and even now most of the time he's built almost full tank, this should say something.)

Sorry Emerald, sincerely I am, but this article just comes off as really misinformed at best and,at worst apologizing for yet another godawful rant post courtesy of Morello who doesn't even seem to watch his own game while the others on the balance team do the job he should be doing.

"Ball of stats" doesn't mean what you think it means. Bloodthirster is a ball of stats. Rabadon's Deathcap is a ball of stats. Irelia is a champion with built in tenacity, resetable dashes, a stun/slow, and true damage. She also heals damage on hit and has a ranged ammo-based ultimate.

There are many approaches Riot can take to "fix" bruisers. One approach would be to make all champions more like Irelia. Why? Because she doesn't have hard counters. She's useful with low income, and strong with lots of gold, but never becomes an unstoppable monster. She doesn't make any class of champion obsolete, and she doesn't require specific item builds to defeat.

If anyone at Riot were to ask me what I thought would be the best way to improve the game, my only suggestion would be to completely remove lifesteal and spellvamp. Just take them out of the game completely. Make all sustain from items on-hit like Doran's Blade. No more hyperscaling of sustain with damage. Then rebalance everything else with this in consideration. There would be no more need for Thornmail or Grievous Wounds. An Akali no matter how fed would have to continue playing well. Nasus wouldn't be able to 1-shot someone and immediately also heal from 50% to full. Bruisers won't have to do absurd amounts of damage with no items simply to get through the lifesteal on carries.

But hey, who's asking me, right :D

If they take lifesteal and spellvamp out of the game, champions with built in regen would completely dominate.  Think about how strong Mundo would be if literally NOBODY else had any regen.

Everyone has base regen stats. The issue comes from regen that scales with other things, especially in combat. So yes, Mundo would have to have some changes. As will Swain. Morg and Akali and Nasus would need new passives. Mordekaiser would probably need a second look. Grievous wounds could also be taken out, and Warwick would have his sustain nerfed to compensate.

The problem with lifesteal and spellvamp is that those are stats that allow a champion who is ahead to completely dominate. Against a fed Nasus, it doesn't matter if you do damage to him. If he's able to land one Q on anything, he heals to full. You can defend yourself from the damage with armor, but outside of Grievous Wounds, you can do nothing to stop him from healing himself.

Conversely, lifesteal and spellvamp prevent a user who is not ahead from being able to fight at all. A Warwick might not be able to hit you for a lot if he built full tank, but he can still sustain just fine. But an AD carry reliant on lifesteal for sustain has no hope when faced with a Thornmail Randouin's Olaf or Mundo. It's basically kill or die, rather than be able to fight a bit, maneuver, kite, or something.

The whole reason armor items are so incredibly powerful is that they were designed to allow bruisers to deal with huge lifesteal on AD carries. You take away the lifesteal, and you can take away those 50+ armor items that also pack tons of utility. Or you can nerf some aspect of them.

I don't think having much stats can't be cool. You can say Wolverine's, or T-1000's superior regeneration just high hp/5. It's still cool theme.

It might feel strange on Irelia tho to be ball of stats since she looks so fragile.

If you want to nerf Bruisers, stop creating items with resistances + health. Make it harder to solve tankiness in a few simple items and create a real risk vs reward between health/resistances and damage, and a smaller opportunity cost between health and resistances. 

Furthermore, mana and cooldowns have to be used as a gating mechanism far more extensively. A serious mana rework for all existing bruisers, and a review of mana across all classes should really be seriously considered as well as a possible cooldown review as well. So many bruisers are basically tanky AD 'mages' that either have good poke or good burst and are easily spammable.

Current AD builds are also generally in favour of mana-less champs, with the previous drawbacks of copping mana-regen as potential wasted stats extremely low. The restricted or sub-optimal builds of mana-less champions were meant to offset the ease they had in resource management, now there really isn't much a drawback in any way for those without mana. 

That said, manaless champs should not be from a power perspective weaker, but they need to have definitive drawbacks that are peripheral from directly addressing power. It's too much of a free steroid right now.

I have no problem with you on this topic, I think you make good points.

But if you start going on about Morello being right about supports, I will tear out your throat with my teeth.

I don't understand the issue people have with bruisers. Why is there no focus on ADCs? Their damage last season was stupidly high, and it is still too high. ADC items are generally just way too good, and any champion that can work with the ADC items will be viable (Yasuo is a prime example). Three items, and you can't deal with an ADC as a tank. It's stupid.

Quote from Jamial »

Three items, and you can't deal with an ADC as a tank. It's stupid.

As a tank.  A tank.

You're not supposed to be able to deal with an ADC as a tank.  You're supposed to annoy them and prevent them from killing your team while your team "deals with them."  Expecting a tank to be able to go toe to toe with an ADC and WIN is the entire problem with bruisers.  When you have mobility, tankiness, and more damage than an ADC, why in the world would anyone bring anything else to the table?

You are absolutely right. Bruisers have insane amount of tankiness, mobility and damage. They can basically go 1on1 against anyone in early, mid or late game. This is absurd.

The problem, however, is when you nerf bruiser damage, and nerf it hard, the top lane becomes an unkillable wet-noodle-fest, especially when bruisers have best sustain (some of them if not most are designed for jungle, you know). Personally I think jungle sustain should be incorporated in jungle itemization, runes and talents, not in champion abilities. No one will care if machete has OP sustain that works only on neutral monsters.