User blog comment:Willbachbakal/(Champion Concept) Skjold, the Shield Warrior/@comment-5088437-20130119205028

Alright, I'm going to reply to these in seperate comments section by section as to break up the bulk of this reply. You've made some fair points thus far. Let's begin.

1a) While one of the requirements of being a tank is the ability to soak up damage, its not the greatest requirement.  Tanks are defined as champions such as Shen/Galio/Rammus who have enough disruption to interfere with the team and enough CC/support abilities to ensure Anti-Carry/Assassins can't get to your squishy, delicious carry.

Part of it I see is that he doesn't really seem to have a way, aside from that R, to protect his carry in a team fight. In fact, I'd say that R is the only real CC he's got going for him. Sure, he's got a silence on Q, but he'll have burned that silence by initiating (or at least the opportunity to use that silence), and he won't have it available later to block an Anti-Carry from nuking down his carry.

Additionally, in order to make use of that R, he need another ability off cooldown. That means, in order to use his ultimate to protect the carry, he'd have to save his W, and that's a bit unreliable.

1b) I'll admit I misread the bit about using his base health % for damage to rage, however that doesn't really invalidate my point.  Armor and Magic Resistance reduce the amount of damage he takes, and as such, he'll take less damage and generate less rage.  Sure, I'll grant you that using the smaller health pool helps mitgiate the issue, but the anti-pattern is still present.  However, making it tied to auto attack as well as abilities removes the anti-pattern entirely.

Additionally, it means that ignoring the tank will only allow him to gain rage, thereby increasing his ability to slow and silence. If he needs to take damage in order to gain rage, anyone with a brain will simply not attack him.

I've been picking over team fights at higher level play and one thing I notice almost exclusively is that the tank really doesn't take a ton of damage until the other team lacks a better target. Unless a tank purposefully puts himself into a situation where he's baiting the team to attack him to try and take him out of a fight as a way of reverse initiating, no right minded LoL player is going to ever put damage on the tank.

As a result, a tank needs more abilities designed at crippling or interfering with positioning and create opportunities by initiating to allow for your team to score crucial kills and plays while keeping a little bit in reserve incase of a counter play to target the carry.

1c) I think you may have misread my statement, but I'll clarify to be certain:  I didn't say CDR was problematic for itemization, I said CDR scaling from his rage would be problematic for itemization.  Specifically, it would be bad because it would be unreliable.

You have to make the choice between itemizing for full CDR and wasting the passive, or going with just 20% CDR, and having your abilities unavailable midfight when needed. A flat CDR bonus which improves by level (Say, 4/8/12/16/20%) would be a better fit and avoid having a 20% CDR bonus during the laning phase effectively for free. This prevents him from being a bigger lane bully.

Divorcing the CDR from his rage allows for the ability to fine tune either mechanic independantly when needed to balance something, and it also prevents the engineers from having to develop an entirely seperate cooldown mechanic for this champion only.