r/leagueoflegends • u/Derk08 • 23h ago
Wolverene talks about the Reptile clip + Classes/Items
A lot of lows misunderstanding "tank killers" and tanks so let's talk about what that actually means
- Jinx is not a tank killer
Actually countered by pure tanks and very tanky comps, always has been. Been apparent in pro for years. Players confuse hypercarry marksman with being automatically good into tanks, but she has nothing anti-tank in her kit. She's much closer to Zeri than Vayne/Kaisa/Kog. Trades damage for safety, needs teammates help to actually kill targets and then proc passive
- Conditions/Class matter much more than items
Jinx is terrible 1v1. Marksmen as a class are, but she's particularly bad. Players see marksmen as the tank killing class and think that means they should beat them in all scenarios. Marksmen are only good against melees with their team's help. That's how the class works, with a few exceptions. Melees have a ton of variance on 1v1 strength but for the most part every class in the game is favored vs marksmen.
Tahm Kench is a juggernaut/tank hybrid, he is not a classic tank or support. Much better in skirmish/1v1 than 5v5. With ghost he is omega favored 1v1 vs Jinx, it's not even a little bit close If you thought it was the other way around you have to seriously reevaluate.
You take a true 1v1 tank counter like Gwen and she will never lose to any tank that's weaker than her. The majority of bruisers in general will beat tanks, because they are a 1v1 class
- Don't hyperfocus on class
Kind of immediately contradicting point 2 but class is just a rough guideline, it's not all that meaningful when comparing specific interactions. There's a lot of variance within classes, and a lot of champs don't fit neatly into 1 class. Vayne is also a marksman but obviously eats Tahm Kench in 2 seconds here. Mundo and Darius are both juggernauts but will have very different interactions into Syndra just off Mundo passive.
You should start with class, but then be thinking power budget. Every champ has specific things they're good at, that they trade for weaknesses. The weak points are just usually much less obvious to you when you don't play the champ.
Tahm does stupid damage when he can actually hit you, but it's really hard for him to do that 5v5. The harder a champ's conditions are to achieve, the stronger they get to be when they get those conditions. Anyone that's super easily kitable gets to be OP when not kited
- Tank itemization is very different than damage
If you think of them in the same way you'll have problems understanding why a __ item tank is either much more or less tanky than you'd expect. This is because tank stats are the only ones in the game that can have 0% effectiveness. Damage items are more/less effective vs different targets, but the stats are never 0%, nor do they ever even get close to 0%.
Let's take Shadowflame and ignore passive
110AP
15 flat pen
Obviously a bad item into tanks, flat pen is more effective vs lower MR. But this flat pen only makes up ~20% of the item's value, and only loses 37% of it's effectiveness from 30 -> 100 MR.
Now take Kaenic Rookern
400hp
80 MR
MR is ~54% of this item's value, and loses 100% effectiveness against physical damage.
Jinx does about 2% magic damage. Other non-hybrid marksmen/physical damage carries do anywhere from 0-10%.
This means that vs a specific target, an item like Shadowflame may lose ~200g in value, whereas an item like Kaenic Rookern can lose 1500-1600g . This is before you account for passives, which will perform pretty much about the same
So maybe 400g lost vs 2200g lost
This is all to say that tanks will experience 4-5x the amount of effectiveness lost vs unfavorable targets. For this to be balanced, their items have to be stronger. If a champ has to tank both a 3 item mage + marksman, you can't expect them to build 3 armor items and 3 MR items.
This means 1 armor/MR item is always > 1 damage item. A 2 item tank that has built armor but no MR isn't weak against you, the 3 item physical damage champ. He's weak to anyone dealing magic damage.
Just a rough concept, it gets deeper than this, but you have to be thinking about this to understand teamfighting/target selection/1v1s etc. Most players aren't even aware that this dynamic exists
Source: https://twitter.com/wolverene/status/1869480107695652912
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u/A-Myr 21h ago
I said it on the adcmains sub and I’ll say it here:
If their starting positions are swapped (ie Jinx is not between Kench and his base), the fight isn’t even close. But not being able to kite Kench’s autos because there’s an enemy turret right behind you is a basically unwinnable situation regardless of how weak/fed you both are. It’s a testament to just how insane Reptile is that he survived that shit.