What I would have loved to see with the Sandman buff
To preface this, the buff that we got was decent, but it could have been so much more... What we got was a slight change here and there to make his rotation more flexible.
What I would have loved to see would have been them leaning into the brawler aspect of his kit. Pretty sure I heard the designer of Sandman state they wanted him to feel like a brawler in one of the streams too, making it all the more relevant. He is on the slower side, but has great consistent dmg (fair trade off imo). He has that offensive part covered.
When I think of Sandman, I think of a bulky attacker with utility. He already has the latter. He has some bulk with his indestructible while heavy-ing, but there are other areas that can be worked on for sure. It would've been awesome if they had bumped up his hp (already above average, but more), his block prof (the main one imo), and resistance up potency. Making him a really bulky attacker, but also making him stay alive longer on defense.
Speaking of defense, his defensive value is pretty much non-existant, mainly because he can only gain resistance up passives by actually landing hits. In fact, taking hits make his resistances go away (like why? what's the point of this? He even loses it twice as fast if skill attackers are inflicting his immunities on him. He ain't gaining any so why???). The dude is not a good defender whatsoever, which is fine as not every champ needs to be one, but he doesn't need to be that useless either. Atleast make him gain resistances when hit...
I know this thread is painfully late (buff is out and final), but take it as my feedback I guess.
