Tough Skin and Indomitable too strong?

Posted on at 2:58 AM by Moobeat
It seems Tough Skin and Indomitable, two abilities available in the defensive Mastery tree, are on Riot's balance radar and may see some changes coming into Season Three.

Statikk had something to say about these two abilities. how they currently effect the top lane situation, and what Riot is currently tinkering with to fix it:

"The flat damage reduction Masteries -- Indomitable and Tough Skin -- completely shake up the dynamics of lane control. They effectively allow players to tank the minions at very little cost which is used to "freeze" the minions position with respect to the lane. What this effectively does is completely zone out the losing lane given them no chance to come back as the creeps will never effectively rebound (reset) to a more neutral position in the lane. This natural rubberband mechanic that existed before is key to keeping lanes from completely snowballing out of control.

In anticipation for Season 3, we are currently testing revamped versions of Indomitable and Tough Skin that do not affect lane minions and we're quite happy with the results thus far. "

64 comments

  1. Replies
    1. Dyrus had a nice, sorta about this quote about this a few months ago. It was, i believe, in a guide and was something like "and we go 9/21 because i don't ****ing know ask Riot why its so powerful"

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    2. Its in his newest Jax guide.
      http://solomid.net/guides.php?g=10154
      "You will never pick 21-0-9 or 9-0-21

      You will always pick

      9-21-0 because it's the best right now, why? I don't know ask riot." -Private Dyrone

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  2. I use Tough Skin to jungle though..

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    1. That's why they said the versions they were testing would be affecting 'lane' minions.

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  3. They are totally right. It is so annoying to see someone solotop that stays in the minion wave to farm and has quite the control over his lane. Excited to see though how will they change them.

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    1. It's not cause of the masteries that you actually can freeze the lane, those are not the problems at all.
      The problem is that only few players can actually manage good the lane and those changes will NOT change anything, since that's not the reason.
      It's not because you are a tank and you can tank creeps, all the lanes can do that without problem and without these masteries.

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    2. Maybe the could alter the mastery and make it so you take reduced damage only from neutral minions (baron and dragon excluded), so the junglers won't lose this mastery which helps them quite a bit.

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    3. Marco is half right. This isn't the only reason lane freezing is an issue, but getting 25% damage reduction against a full minion wave is pretty destructive. I see Irelia players stop an entire wave before it hits their turret once, and be almost unaffected.

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    4. they come up with these changes by watching the tournm. they are all good, skilled ppl, so when they see them do it all the time in the tourny they feel like its the right move. so your judgment about the changes are kinda low when compaired to clg, lgn, and many others

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  4. ^ it means u are bad then

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  5. -4 damage, too strong. Cloth armor too expensive.

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    1. -4 damage from an entire wave, not just a single minion. It can mean a lot.

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    2. Building armor does the same thing... will they nerf Amumu now because he has a whopping -10 damage on his E?

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    3. Amumu is amumu, he is meant to be tankier than most of other champs. And this mastery point is tree Tier 1 which means anyone can pick it without going deep into defense tree.

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    4. Mostly junglers... I'd consider it rather pointless, despite playing aggro heroes like Singed or Garen a lot. >.>

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    5. People don't seem to realize just how broken -4 flat damage reduction is. Let's say you freeze and tank a lane with 10 minions. Having Indomitable and Tough Skins means you will be taking 26.8 damage less per second AFTER armor kicks in. This can literally bring damage from minions to 0 at certain points in the game or at the very least to a point where it can be outsustained by Doran's Blades.

      Moreover, this also affects trades as you will take damage from minions as well most of the time.

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  6. i Find this kinda far fetched.

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    1. it ends up being about a 25% damage reduction from minions on any sort of bruiser...

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  7. Sure, those masteries are a big deal, but I really do not think that changing them will make people stop freezing the lane. Almost every champion has some sort of sustain or shield so freezing is easy anyway even without those masteries.

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    1. It'll make it harder to freeze the lane, but they are probably also looking at the other factors as well. How the waves push and pull eachother might be looked at. How cheap armor is compared to how effective it is might also be looked at.

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  8. 4 damage reduction per creep when there is a whole wave ur stopping is alot of damage reduction as there are 6 - 7 creeps thats like 24-28 less damage per sec. Received its a huge advantage.

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    1. That's sort of the thing. Melee Minions are like 12 + 1/minute damage and casters are 25/2min or something. Without factoring armor or hp regen, that is a HUGE hit to minion damage and it lets a lot of champions trade without worrying about minions very much.

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  9. 25% less damage from minion waves too strong.

    I'm assuming they are just going to change the masteries to only work against neutral camps. Regardless, I can't wait for Season 3.

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  10. Tough skin is a big deal in jungle (especially for some champions) so if they completely remove it or nerf it... it could hurt.

    They can change it like "reduces damage taken form monsters by 2" (hard lane nerf) or "reduces damage taken from monsters by 2 and minions by X". We junglers really need this mastery and it's not OP in any point (jungle monsters don't cry about its op-ness on official riot forums :D).

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    1. Removing the minion part would be the best thing to do rather than changing everything. Let's hope that Riot will come with good news in Season 3.

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    2. In anticipation for Season 3, we are currently testing revamped versions of Indomitable and Tough Skin that do not affect lane minions and we're quite happy with the results thus far. "
      -some people need to read the fine line, at the bottom

      they know this and they wont make it a nurf on jungle, just minions trollin at top smoking teemos shrooms

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    3. It doesn't mean they will leave it like this. I read it carefully and just showed my opinion.

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  11. But I like ganking with lane aggro..

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  12. I love seeing people comment sounding like they are pro tier. "It's quite horrifying to see various champions soloing top directly within the minion wave while taking minimal damage to both them and their surroundings. Riot is indeed correct to take a look at this problem. A problem I have witnessed throughout my entire LoL career".

    You never looked at a solotop and said "Hey he's freezing the wave because of this broken mastery".

    So don't just look at the mastery and see it says reduced minion damage or whatever and start posting like you've known this all along.

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    1. Dude you're making yourself look stupid, anyone who read any decent in-depth guide on any solo top champion knows why these two masteries are crucial.

      Common knowledge, really.

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    2. I never read any in depth guide... yet I've been solotoping for a year without these masteries np.

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    3. ...and your elo is?

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    4. My solo-top masteries have been 15/15 since I've asked Cruzer about how to play some champs, and YES - Indomitable is very broken. I've tested it myself. You gain a resilience against creep waves that it isn't normal. It makes you win earlygame duels quite hard since people don't realize you take a lot less damage from the creeps than them.

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  13. They should increase the damage the minions do by a few points so you actually have to worry about minion aggro.
    And Increase Tower damage and health so you cant have people tower diving before lvl6.

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    1. Why would you want to take away low lvl tower diving from the game? It's risky and hard to pull off right but pays off if done right, I can't see what's wrong with this.

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    2. If they increase minion damage then this Tough Skin mastery would become a MUST on every champion, and if You decide to go without it, trades would end in your death.

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    3. "And Increase Tower damage and health so you cant have people tower diving before lvl6."

      "lvl6".

      So, you wanna just.. skip straight to late game while we are at it?

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    4. Lol let's make towers soo OP you cant dive till level 18. And minions deal 400 damage. great game huh?

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    5. basically if you're solo top against two chunky bruisers who've gotten an early double on you and that failed jungler you got stuck with (sounds familiar, don't it?) generally they'll be able to dive you full health on lvl 5-6.. depending on the champs even as early as lvl4.. not seeing the skill req. there.

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    6. towers are already strong enough, it doesn't need a buff. -_-

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    7. Penguin I don't know where you got 2 bruisers top but we are talking about competetive play and rankeds here.

      AND even if you face 2 bruisers top if you died 2 times already it means it's YOU who are not doing well.

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  14. is indomitable really that good? I always said to myself "wow a whole 2 damage blocked, so good"

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    1. it is a big deal for minions and jungle creeps, especially wolves/wraiths

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    2. oh ok. I'm not trying to diss on it because i never tried it in my 9/21/0 build because i always thought "Honor Guard" would outclass it.

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    3. Honor Guard is actually very weak and few tanks take it mostly because the benefit of % based DR won't really have an impact early game; late game it is still pretty negligible because items make up the core of your defenses. You dump those points into the flat armor or movement speed talents for a better early game(movement speed should be self explanatory.

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  15. My Fizz build is going to die =/. Hate you Riot always messup with my builds!

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    1. You must be very important to them.

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    2. Ohh my god fizz was one of the best at this his passive was is so good

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  16. please tell me that you all noticed this before it was pointed out

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    1. Sort of? I usually play jungle so I had these talents already and I noticed I could hold lanes extremely well but I had just put it down to being built tanky over two talents giving me a 25% minion damage reduction.

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    2. I picked up lane freezing pretty early on but I never used these masteries since they become pretty useless around lvl 5-6. Basically anyone 'capable' of soloing top can handle freezing, masteries or not.

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  17. If they remove the minion component maybe they will buff the monster DR and give some squishy junglers a little easier time of it.

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  18. -4 damage x minions on lane, in other words, if you have 10 minions attacking you, you have -40 damage in total. That is OP, for just being a little runes.

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  19. But... these two masteries are key to tanking... if they nerf or revamp them then it's removing one aspect of being a tank, tanking minion waves. They really shouldn't do anything to these in my opinion.

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    1. But you're missing a point, Tough Skin works against monsters as well, making jungling easy. And indomitable is reducing all forms of incoming damage by 2 points. Sure, it's good for tanking and all, but it does have a major affect in the long run.

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    2. That's probably why they are skeptical about changes because it will nerf champions that need both mastery in order to tank.

      Then you have tanks that come from jungle in order to gank while tanking the aggro from lane.

      I believe people are looking way too far into this when this couild be solved by two observations.

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  20. a nerf to taugh skin and indomitable could make vlad, kennen, rumble too strong in top lane, since magic damage doesnt aggro creep waves, they wont notice the increased minion damage as much as other top laners will.

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  21. I think the biggest problem with top lane is that its a solo long lane. The lane is too long for the lane to reset in a reasonable amount of time and since most top lanes have a gap closer it becomes incredibly simple to zone the losing side while freezing.

    Freezing top lane is too easy not just because of -4 minion damage but because the lane is long.

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  22. Those mastery talents aren't too strong. That warlord shen skin is too strong though:)

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