/dev: New Tank Items in Patch 4.1

Hello everybody, I’m Nick “Endstep” Frijia, a designer on Systems and Balance for Wild Rift, back to talk about some new items and other changes to the tank item system. While some tank itemization improvements shipped in Patch 4.0, Patch 4.1 is bringing in three new items and some changes for some of our classic tank items.

AMARANTH TWINGUARD

Currently, tanks that are able to find a lead in their games don’t really have the options in the shop to help them try to make a big impact on the game. Mages are able to pick up items like Rabadon’s Deathcap or Void Staff and Marksmen are able to buy Infinity Edge or Lord Dominik’s Regards. These items give them the opportunity to make big plays or even completely take over a game. Amaranth Twinguard is a capstone item for tanks (similar to Deathcap for mages) that allows them to multiply their effectiveness during combat as long as they can stick it out long enough to get the benefits of Endurance.

• Total cost: 3200g
  • Builds from: Chain Vest (900g) + Negatron Cloak (900g) + 1400g
• 55 Armor
• 55 Magic Resistance
• PASSIVE - Endurance: While in combat with enemy champions, gain a stack of Endurance each second. When you reach 5 stacks of Endurance, gain size, 20% Tenacity, and increase your armor and magic resistance by 30% until you leave combat with champions.

MANTLE OF THE TWELFTH HOUR

Sometimes, committing with your team and dying for the cause is the right thing to do as a tank. However, we think there’s some room to add a tank item that makes it a bit easier to maneuver and escape from tricky low-health situations. Mantle of the Twelfth Hour grants a burst of healing, movement speed, and slow resistance when your health gets low to give tanks a fighting chance at escaping or running down one more kill.

• Total cost: 2900g
  • Chain Vest (900g) + Negatron Cloak (900g) + 1100g
• 50 Armor
• 50 Magic Resistance
• PASSIVE - Lifeline: If you would take damage that would reduce your maximum health below 35%, heal for 200 + 50% of your bonus health over 3 seconds, and gain 50% Slow Resistance and 30 Movement Speed for 3 seconds. (90-second cooldown)

SEARING CROWN AND SUNFIRE CAPE

Currently, Sunfire Cape is the only choice for tanks that want to opt into more aggressive damage against champions. However, it also serves as the only tank item that offers meaningful wave- and jungle-clearing power, which puts it in a space where it’s serving two different niches at the same time. This makes it hard for us to make it definitively strong at either one—so we’re giving Sunfire a sibling. Searing Crown is being added to Wild Rift, and it will be your new go-to pick for when you want to burn your foes to a crisp.

• Total cost: 2700g
  • Bami’s Cinder (1300g) + Chain Vest (900g) + 500g
• 300 Health
• 50 Armor
• PASSIVE - Fiery Touch: Dealing damage with an Attack or Ability will burn the target for 3 seconds, dealing [1.6% for melee / .8% for ranged] of the target’s maximum health as magic damage per second.

ABYSSAL MASK AND THORNMAIL

On top of the new items and the changes to Sunfire Cape, we’re also making changes to Abyssal Mask and Thornmail to help them fit better into the new tank item system. Abyssal Mask will have its generic magic damage amplification removed in favor of a new passive that allows it to store a percentage of magic damage taken, which can then be released as an explosion upon enemies when the user immobilizes a target. Boom! This change is intended to make Abyssal the aggressive, damage-oriented item amongst the magic resistance items.

We’re making Thornmail cheaper and removing some of its health to make it a clear Grievous Wounds purchase, rather than an item so powerful on its own that Grievous Wounds isn’t a major consideration when buying it. Additionally, we’re lowering the armor ratio on the damage reflection and adding a bonus health ratio so that Thornmail isn’t too powerful on champions with armor steroids like Rammus and is more accessible to the majority of tanks..

We’re looking forward to seeing the impact of these new items and item changes, so please send us your feedback. We’ll also be keeping a close eye on the impact of these items and are prepared to make changes if needed.

For now, that’s it for us from Systems and Balance! We’re cooking up some more updates for the future and we have to get back to it, but before we reave perhaps we can drop a hint or two. Thanks for reading, and see you next time!