Talk:Garen/@comment-4094339-20120913200540/@comment-24.212.209.142-20120915063227

Personally, I feel like the early-game strength of many ranged-carries is a bit underrated when put up against melee-champions. If matched with an ally that can peel for them, a lot of melee-champions have little to no chance of doing much against them unless they get a laning-combo very specifically made to dive into the enemy-laners. It's probably why the squishy-support/ranged-carry combo stayed dominant on bot-lane for so long since a kill-lane was highly-risky strategy and difficult to make without heavily-compromising your team's lanes until the squishy-supports got nerfed a bunch for the durable kill-laners to make an appearance. Were it not for the risk of jungle-ganks, I feel a lot of solo-tops would be more commonly counter-picked by some ranged-carries.

On that note, I still personally feel like the current bruisers' power-level is very contingent on snowballing, though. They may be able to do enough damage to turn the enemy team's heads while surviving a good bit even when the enemy does decide to mid-game, but that doesn't tend to really happen when the fighter loses their lane or both of them largely give up trying to really push their opponent out and farm instead (A probable possibility for most people being up against Cho'Gath or Shen) against from some very choice ones with a large amount of utility (who can thus rely on focusing on durability over damage in a desperate situation with the hopes their utility will let them pull through, and the top-laners which fulfill this category tend to be more arguable on how much of an archetypical bruiser they are). Even if they're doing fairly good, they tend to be pretty reliant on an ally initiating for them because even 3/0 Riven is unlikely to hold up well as the first champion going in a big fight.

I actually somewhat fear for bruisers now as the "tanks" are making quite the splash these days. A draft-pick match that leaves Shen, Malphite and Alistar unbanned and unpicked is a rare match indeed, and the junglers that can initiate and peel tend to be fairly popular (Especially as the jungle tends to leave a champion fairly starved for gold compared to the lanes unless very fed, so having as much utility as possible makes them much safer for when teamfights roll around). I enjoy both however, and hope the changes for season 3 will lead to better gameplay around the fighters champions.