User blog comment:Willbachbakal/(Champion Concept) Skjold, the Shield Warrior/@comment-174.60.175.106-20130118081935/@comment-1330314-20130118164332

Thanks a lot for the detailed feedback! I'll reply as best I can:

1) Regarding Fury being an "anti-pattern": You would be right if you were talking about any champion type, except for tanks. The purpose of the tank is to soak up as much damage for the team as possible while making the opponents' lives harder, even if they themselves die in the process. Additionally, Skjold gains Fury by using his abilities well. The only way he'd be Fury-starved would be if he didn't tank properly.

Additionally, I made specifically sure that Skjold's Fury gain wouldn't be hampered by building tanky items. He gains Fury by taking damage equal to a percentage of his base health (i.e. before applying runes/masteries/items) before reduction, so building tanky items on him wouldn't decrease his Fury buildup.

Regarding the CDR being bad for itemizations, I think the opposite would be true. As a Fury-based character, he'd rely heavily on cooldown reduction to be effective, yet as a tank he needs to build tanky. Having up to 20% CDR on him would allow him to build more tank-oriented items, and max out his cooldown reduction more easily. The Fury system on Skjold is also supposed to be resource management, though in a much more active manner: he gains Fury by landing his abilities right, and needs to spend it to activate his silence and reflect, so he needs to make sure he lands his abilities right (As opposed to the other Fury champs, who worry less about accruing Fury and more about spending it all at the right time).

2) You're drawing a lot of parallels with WoW. Having mained a Warrior myself, I would say Skjold has a riskier playstyle. The cost on Shield Bash is intentionally supposed to be the gain from Shield Dash (assuming, of course, he hits an enemy). Suppose you initiate a fight by Shield Dashing to the enemy. Did you hit them? If so, then good, you've got enough Rage to silence them. By this point, you have at least 20 Fury. If you missed your Shield Dash then tough, you're going to have to get pummeled instead to gain the Fury you need.

Though I like the Warrior's Charge, I don't think it'd fit in LoL. In the latter you tend to gain resources only if you play your cards right, whereas in WoW you need to build up your resource somehow to keep on par with the other classes. Having a dash+stun+Fury combo on a League champ would be too easy to use.

3) You're right, I'll add a Fury cost to a second cast of his W. However, I disagree with the rest of your comment. Having AP scaling would allow him to benefit marginally from tanky AP items, though in the end he's a tank, and so isn't meant to deal huge amounts of damage. So you're right, the main utility of this skill is the slow, along with its synergy with Skjold's ult (it turns into a mass taunt). The fact that you can potentially slow down the entire enemy team by up to 50% would be incentive enough to level up this skill, though you'd have to weigh that against his gap closer (which would probably be the first skill to max out) and a wider Spell Shield (which'd probably be maxed out last).

Also, I mentioned that the apex is defined by the cursor's location (up to a certain range, anyway), so the trajectory would be a circle as wide as the distance between Skjold and your cursor.

Additionally, disabling his abilities while his shields are in the air has two advantages: first of all, on the technical side, he wouldn't have bugged animations (how would you shield bash without a shield?), and on the gameplay side it plays to his risk-versus-reward playstyle. By momentarily exposing himself, he'd be able to lay down mass slows and enhance his fighting capabilities in the immediate future. You'd also have to use your W carefully (i.e. "This guy's moving towards me. If I initiate with my W, will he be able to burst me down?")

3) This may be presumptuous of me, but I think your perception of tanks is the wrong way round. Tanks are supposed to take shots, and a barrier would allow him to mitigate his damage intake. The Fury he gains from this prevents it from becoming an anti-pattern, too.

You're also overestimating the ease of use of this ability. This is a very stationary barrier, not an on-champ Spell Shield. Place it too early, and your opponent can easily fire around it. Place it too late, and you won't block the ability. I probably didn't make it clear, but since this is a physical thing it only blocks/reflects projectiles (which does, admittedly, make him more situational). Charging through your Barrier while it's still up could work, though you'd be spending 15 Fury for a safer initiate.

4) You really need to read Zileas's post again. Most of the quotes you're paraphrasing from him, namely "Anti-Pattern", don't seem to be well understood. "Power Without Gameplay" would imply that he wouldn't have to do anything to succeed at popping his ult. However, his R's usefulness relies entirely on how well he's tanking. If you're tanking well, the enemy team will take a lot of damage. If you're not, you'll have wasted a long cooldown and wouldn't have enough Fury to reduce it for the next teamfight.

I don't see how "burden of knowledge" would fit anywhere here at all. If Skjold pops his ult, you'd visibly see he's got his ult up (as with all ults), so you'd know that if you'd nuke him you'd take massive damage too. "Anti-Fun" would only apply if enemies had no control over the fight. Take, for example: he has an easy 2-second taunt, plus an ability that causes attackers to damage themselves. Enemies will be forced to hurt themselves fighting him, but they can always try and escape at the end of his taunt. Same here, as Skjold's abilities are much harder to land and can only taunt enemies for a limited time. Admittedly, the taunt time shouldn't increase, so I'll fix that.

There is also no Anti-Combo to speak of, since the reflected ability wouldn't pass through Skjold's damage mitigation in any way (save for the ult's percentage damage reduction).

Overall, I'm very grateful you posted such an extensive comment, and parts of it were true. However, you're a little too eager to map Skjold's kit to Zileas's post you just read. You're also making a lot of assumptions, most of which run contrary to the general rules of thumb in LoL.