Thread:Willbachbakal/@comment-6016076-20140625164717/@comment-1330314-20140627003519

I saw the PBE notes. I'm a bit confused, considering health and resistances already multiply themselves and so wouldn't require another multiplier, but hopefully this should mean tanks get a proper chance at clearing the jungle.

Overall, I think Hunter's Machete is showing itself to be increasingly outdated: whether on live or on PBE, as a base component it only really benefits fighters/melee assassins (i.e. champions who autoattack a lot and whose defenses make sustain more valuable), and it branches out into items with vastly different functions. Spirit Stone's item progression from its base components is bizarre, and it makes little sense for it and Madred's Razors, two items with no stats in common, to build from the same item. I think jungle itemization would benefit by changing into a set of item lines similar to the current support trifecta: junglers could choose between one of four 300 gold items, one for tanks, one for fighters, one for mages and one for carries.

While % bonus health is going to benefit tanks especially, I think it's going to have strong overlap with bruisers, who might take the new SotAG along with items like Randuin's Omen, Frozen Mallet and/or Warmog's Armor along with a damage item or two. I don't really see an issue with bonus health ratios, since they're already there for certain tanks or bruisers to deal more damage as they build tanky, but I think fighters getting the PBE SotAG might just make them even stronger than they are in the jungle now. In general, fighters as a whole are too powerful, and the overlap between them and "pure" tanks (i.e., , , etc.) comes from fighters typically having enough free stats to be about as tanky as tanks while also dealing more damage. Riot's planning on nerfing them all in one go, and in doing so making each fighter more clearly defined, so hopefully the end result should be that fighters and tanks would have very distinct roles and would accomplish very different functions.

I don't really think AP-to-damage ratios on supports really ties their roles together: sure, champions like Soraka and Lulu became popular AP mid laners, but that was mainly because they offered little counterplay in a solo lane. In the end, building AP gives them more damage, but they still remain utility-focused champions, and a lot of the AP-based power they get is focused there. I think the reason why supports typically don't build much AP is because there's no real AP itemization path for supports as of yet: items like Ardent Censer, Frost Queen's Claim and Twin Shadows do give nice amounts of AP, but there are no real other support-friendly items to build after that to get additional AP. You could build a Rylai's Crystal Scepter or even a Deathfire Grasp, but those are extremely expensive, and so give way to cheaper items like Mikael's Crucible. The way I see it, there should be a clear set of AP utility items (perhaps with Ohmwrecker brought back into the mix) that supports could use to fill out on their core requirements (mainly CDR, regen and team utility) while offering satisfying amounts of AP, in exchange for less defensive utility (the cleanse on Mikael's and the shield on Locket of the Iron Solari, for example).

I saw the Spirit ratios on your blogs. The Spirit stat you suggest was a very popular idea at the start of Season 4. If you talk to Emptylord, he even redid the ratios of every support on a blog post to include "utility power" ratios. Personally, I'm not too much of a fan of the idea: unlike AD and AP, which mostly have direct applications to nearly every champion out there, Spirit would have no application other than for a few instances of utility. While you may not agree with me, I think the utility scalings on current supports do their job well: tanky supports have some of their utility scale off of tanky stats (health, armor, MR), and so naturally scale as they go for a tank build. Caster supports may not build much AP (or any at all), but the AP ratios to their utility allow them to scale as well. Even if they get additional damage, the low damage ratios prevent them from turning into actual mages, and keep them focused on supporting their team.

In terms of itemization choices, I don't think there's always going to be a real choice to spec into offense or defense, nor should there be: if you're playing, for example, you're going to be building pure tankiness, which is just as well, considering a functional Leona with damage in addition to her hard CC would have little counterplay. The choice here would be mainly to choose which tanky items to get for the appropriate situation. The issue here is that you would only want tanky utility champions to have divergent options if you don't want the tankiness and utility to scale at the same time: for that, you could always give the tank AP-to-utility ratios, which would force the champion to sacrifice tankiness in order to gain utility. Generally, though, you're going to want tanky utility champs to scale well on just one track.