Let me tell you something.

For all of you Blitz haters who think he's just a goofy, bumbly champion who kinda sucks if you miss his pulls?

You're wrong.

In fact, once Blitz gets geared, there aren't many champions that can even fight him at all.

He can literally just walk at you and eat you alive.

Shall we explore the strengths and weaknesses of the robot?

Let's.

APRIL FOOLS!

BLITZ HAS NO WEAKNESSES YOU SIMPLETON!

This is a complete and total package right here.

1) Landed yanks with competent team mates are almost guaranteed kills.

2) Pop up = the hardest CC in the game currently. You can't cleanse it, you can't CC reduce it, you can't QSS it, you just pop up and wait to fall back down.

3) Overdrive in combination with Trinity force is going to have you moving FAST and hitting OFTEN. You might be surprised at how much damage you can dish out with a farmed robot.

4) He has a freaking AoE silence? Oh, and the longer you wait to use that silence, the more damage the enemy takes from the passive effect. WHAT!? LOL!

5) His passive makes him almost literally impossible to kill when you Off-Tank. It's very hard to spike down a champion with decent resistances. In fact more often than not you can just let your passive activate and kill whoever thought they were gonna kill you. It's pretty great.

In summary, mobile, tanky, good burst and sustained damage, and 3 CC's...

WTF!? How many champions in the game have 3 CC's...? That's right... Think about it.

Janna. Yes. She has 3 CC's =) Go Janna woohoo.

Jarvan. Bet you didn't think about JARVAN as a CC monster, but he is =)

(Weird, J champs are full of CC's @_@)

Malphite, he's got 3. Slow, ATS debuff, ult pop up.

Leblanc has 2 but can mimic them with her ult?

Anivia? Sorta...

Galio... Almost but not quite. He has lots of shields and slows and buffs, but not 3 CC's, just 2.

Kas, just 2...

Lee Sin has his slowing ATS/Move speed, and his ult will turn you into a projectile and pop up enemy champs as well. Kinda?

Rammus, no...

And nothing else. So, 4 champions have 3 CC's. Just 4 =) And Blitz's are among the hardest CC's of the 4 listed.

THIS CHAMPION IS JUST AMAZING IN 3'S!!!

If you don't believe me, take him to a 3v3 match and try this build out.

You're going to slime all over the other's teams face. It's ridiculous.

People talk about Mundo or Tryndamere being OP in 3's...

I laugh =P

Blitz... Is so good in 3's... *Tear of joy covered by sunglasses.

Stop throwing out random yanks first of all.

You might notice even when you land them, it doesn't matter. Sometimes you or your team mate will end up taking more damage if you yank the wrong guy at the wrong time during laning phase.

What you -should- do, is learn to be awkward.

Move at people along the outside edge of the creeps randomly, to make them think a yank is coming, and then last hit. Even when dodging a yank is not important, people still move to avoid yanks. Even if you have no intention of yanking, moving as if you did will make the opponent react and second guess themselves.

Move as if you were going to farm a creep, and run directly at the enemy, only to turn around and last hit, and then run right back at them when they feel safe and pop them up.

Pretend you're playing basketball, and you want to confuse and juke your opponent.

Laning with Blitz has it's ups and downs. You beat almost all melee champs, and you have a way to beat a lot of ranged champs, but it won't be as easy against the ranged champs.

If you're playing in 5's, you might end up roaming. The downside is that you won't farm very much, which actually is a pretty big downer because Blitz scales so excellently with gear. People will do it because he doesn't -need- gear to function. That's part of what has given the robot his reputation. People think he's like Nunu. You just use his basic skills and that's good enough and you let everyone else get gear cause he's just a yank a pop up and a silence.

While there is truth to that, and that is a way you -can- play this champion, you could also play him as a freight train of an Off-Tank and do amazing damage and have amazing survivability.

I see a farmed blitz as a lot like a more mobile version of Nasus, and I like his CC's a lot more as well. He and Trundle are actually the reasons I would probably never play Nasus in competitive play. Granted, they aren't the same champions, and Nasus may counter -certain- champions better.

If you're in 3's, you won't roam, the map isn't big enough, but you might gank. If you gank, be sure that your team is ready to take advantage of the yank, and be sure their team isn't -better- at moving through the map than yours. Champions like Tryndamere and Shaco make ganking very risky business in 3v3.

You will want to save your yank. There are times when you should yank right off the bat, to initiate a team-fight, but it's not often.

I prefer to run straight into the fight, and once I have some HP and mana, let the opposing team attack me first. You're not the squishy on your team anymore, your mana shield makes you deceptively tanky.

Run right at whoever your preferred target is, and use your pop up. With sheen or trinity, you're going to deal a crushing amount of damage.

When they try to run, yank them back in and keep pounding on them.

Save your ultimate as long as you can. Don't run in and blast it off right away.

Try to get as much out of the damage on the passive effect as possible.

If Nunu begins to ult, obviously, stop him. If you have no yank and no pop up ready, use your ult. You -will- outlive your team with this build. So when you see some nasty channeled ult use your skills to save your mates, because they will stop focusing you when they find you are actually almost impossible to kill. (In 3v3 that's pretty much true if the playing field is even when you finish Banshee's veil. Disgusting survivability)

Using your ult properly, is as important, or even more important than using your yank properly.

Blitz is a very skill-intensive champion, and the better you are, the more you can do with him. He takes a lot of getting used to, you're going to need to practice extensively and not everyone ever gets really good at Blitz. I was pretty good at him the first time I tried him, but I'm much better at him now than I was before.

He scales well with gear, but he doesn't need it to be successful.

His large amount of CC's make him multi faceted, he can interrupt your opponent's time and time again.

Not to mention, he pumps out the damage with just Trinity force. =)

The way resistances work in League of legends, is sort of a "Diminishing returns effect" ... Allow me to try to explain in a simple way.

Go into a custom game, and buy 5 Thornmails. You will find that as you get higher armor and higher, the % of damage reduction begins to scale up more and more SLOWLY.

Amazing LOL left a comment on how the actual process works and I'll leave a few examples using the same math to show the progression and how it tops out.

---

It's simple math. Take your armor, for example, and divide it 100 times + your armor, then multiply by 100.
Example:

I've got 20 armor. So 20 / (100+20) = 0.17 x 100 = 17% reduction.

On higher armor values, like... 350: 350 / (100+350) x 100 = 78% reduction.

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So, I'll leave some example using that math now, to show the progression and how you get less and less reduction the higher you go.

20 / (100+20) = 0.17 x 100 = 17% reduction...

...

20 / (100+20) = 17%

(The next 20 armor provides 11% more reduction.)

40 / (100+40) = 28%

(The next 20 armor provides 9% more reduction.)

60 / (100+60) = 37%

(The next 20 armor provides 7% more reduction.)

80 / (100+80) = 44%

(The next 20 armor provides 6% more reduction.)

100 / (100+100) = 50%

(The next 20 armor provides 4% more reduction.)

120 / (100+120) = 54%

(The next 20 armor provides 4% more reduction.)

140 / (100+140) = 58%

(The next 20 armor provides 3% more reduction.)

160 / (100+160) = 61%

Etc...

350 / (100+350) = 78% reduction.

...

So, as we can see quite clearly, you're buying the same amount of armor, and getting less in your % of DMG reduction for each point. =)

Because of this, Flat armor or magic pen items in early and mid game are incredibly powerful. They remove the best part of damage reduction, the low numbers give you the highest amount of reduction, and flat pen breaks that early.

That's why when you pick up ARP runes and a Brutalizer you deal about the same damage as if you had AD runes and a BF sword to some targets. The amount of armor pen will have you dealing true damage or perhaps if you pen all their armor, even increased damage.

Against targets with low resistances, AKA, a carry or something like that, the impact is still substantial in the end game, because you might still be cutting through 1/4-1/2 of their resistances with something like 20-40 ARP. (Most carries won't break 80 resistances.)

However, in the same way that flat bonuses have a large effect against carries, their effect gradually over time carries less, and less impact against highly armored and resistant targets.

Flat Mpen or flat ArP eventually begin to have their effect reduced, because of the way resistances "Top out" after a certain point.

For example, if you have so many resistances, that you've begun to "Top out" already, you're not getting the best returns on your investment... Right?

Not necessarily.

Most players will run ArP reds and quints on their AD carries, and Mpen or AP on their AP casters and buy sorc boots for the Mpen later.

This means that most AD carries and AP carries will have between 20-35ish ARP or Mpen, even at very low levels. Some of it is invisible, you simply have to know it's there.

This means, your armor and Magic res is not as high as you think it is. You have to build more to get the full benefit of "The sweet spot" as I call it. You have to build about 20-30 resistances farther at least into the area where you begin to "Top out" and get poor returns on your investment, so that after the opponent's reductions are factored you're still comfortably taking advantage of the high resistances you get early.

I judge that area to be around 130-150 resistances or higher. When a champion buys an item like last whisper, you might need to get up to as high as 170 to make up for the difference, or just build a bit more damage so you can kill them or render them unable to sit and attack you, and force them to run.

The reason people are not succeeding as tanks with "Tanky DPS" champions, is because they're simply building health and a banshee's veil or two, and calling it a day.

But, the amount of resistances they build leave them vulnerable to items like Youmuu's, SotD, Black cleaver, Starks, and others.

However, if a player were to build -more- resistances, and -less- damage items, they would get their resistances to start topping out.

This would cause the other player's armor pen to only lower them back down to "The sweet spot" of resistances, where every point is still making a large difference, and therefore, your resistances will still be very high.

This is the concept behind an Off-Tank, and this is what makes it work.

This is why I tell people so often, don't refer to them as the same thing, you're hurting yourselves and the community. A Tanky DPS is a carry with some HP and some minor resistances. You're building damage, and your intent is to carry.

An Off-Tank is a tank with some damage. Your intent is to tank, and also mix thing up. Their carry's should never feel safe, and your team should feel confident following you into the fight.

Trust me, Last Whisper and Void Staff will help a lot against an Off-Tank, but it's not going to take an Off-Tank out of the game in one item. There is no easy solution to beat a well farmed off-tank, who has planned their resistances and their source of damage well.

Also, another thought. People seem to forget that items like Randuin's and Banshee's veil are both great items in regards to stats, but also in regards to their "utility" effects. Randuin's greatest source of damage reduction, is not the 75 armor it provides, but rather the 35% slowing to attack speed and move speed. Banshee's veil protects you from a spell, which in the end game could be up to 500-1000 damage, or a CC that leaves you exposed to tremendous damage.

Those effects double as resistances to some extent as well, by protecting you in more ways from the incoming damage. When you finally add all the effects together, the result is quite impressive how difficult you are to kill, and both teams will feel the difference.

And all you have to do, is top out your resistances just a little bit, so that you're actually getting the most out of them, and use the utility effects on your items =)

Blitz-tank is the way to go (Sunglasses), but we know now that Off-Tanking is the key to victory.

Trinity tanks are the best Off-Tanks, and Blitz is tailor made to the role.

No more of this, giving away farm business. Be a little greedy and win the game by yourself ;)