I brought this up a while ago on the VCW Discord server involving Braum upgrades, but to give context, Legends of Runeterra shows a feat of Braum blocking an avalanche with his shield:
Feat in question: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTnVvmqB9fY
For those wondering how much energy this would take to pull this feat off, it would require 7.1 Tons of TNT for a generic avalanche .
Now, the more that I look at this feat in question, the more that I realize how much it can be accounted for several champions in the Freljord. Braum is the obvious one, but it's also worth looking into the context for the Warmother performing the feat. Based on how the feat was presented, she used the power of the True Ice in her weapon to cause the avalanche. Why is that important?
Simply put, she is an Iceborn. In the Freljord, the Iceborn are people born with resistance to cold and the ability to wield True Ice, which even a small portion of it can allow the users to create and manipulate ice at will. It's also worth noting that True Ice is NOT an easy thing to do, even for a trained Iceborn, as claimed by Ashe herself.
While this makes True Ice dangerous to wield, the sheer power to use it properly makes it worth using as using it grants the wielder incredible ice and cold capabilities. It's also possible that since wielding True Ice and being an Iceborn can have an impact on the physique of the user, it may lead to the power created by the Iceborn being reflected back on the user's body, even if only partially. Now, there are likely to be some concerns about applying this feat at all, so I'll try to address these questions as best as I can.
Q: Would this feat truly scale to the Iceborn's physique? After all, they need to use True Ice in order to perform these feats in the first place.
A fair point to bring up, and one that I've thought about myself. While I wouldn't say that the feats performed using True Ice are exactly one-to-one scaleable to the user, I still think that there should be some capacity of the Iceborn being able to withstand the potency of these weapons. In addition to that, we do see True Ice having physical changes to the user, most notably with Ashe when her hair changed from blonde to white when she picked up the Bow of Aravosa.
Plus, the Warmother survived being in the epicenter of the impact she created to cause the avalanche to happen in the first place, so there at least has to be SOME resistance to that feat.
Q: Wouldn't this feat be seen as an outlier?
Not really, as several other Iceborn has shown either feats that are either lower, but not too extremely low, or feats that are comparable and exceed this feat.
- Ahse's ice construct feat (which, now that I think about it, I REALLY need to recalc)
- Lissandra freezing a large Void rift in a large glacial barrier that "would never be melted" (incalculable due to the nature of the feat, but should be a lot higher than the avalanche feat)
- Braum's shield can freeze a lava-flow solid (Probably only applicable to Bruam's shield, but dispels the idea of the avalanche feat being an outlier)
With this in mind, as well as how explicit the feat was, I don't really see any reason for this feat to be an outlier.
Q: Couldn't this be considered cold resistance rather than a feat of durability for the user?
It could, but at the same time, it doesn't change the fact that the power of True Ice was able to perform such a feat. And again, True Ice is dangerous to wield even for trained Iceborn, so it should still have some impact/recoil when it's used. Not to mention Iceborn have been shown to take hits from one another with True Ice weaponry, so it's not unlikely that the physique of the Iceborn are too drastically different.
With all this information in mind, I believe that this feat is 100% usable for powerscaling across the Freljord.
WHO SCALES TO THIS FEAT?
Iceborn/True Ice Weaponry: Easiest scaling point to cover since this feat was done by a nameless Iceborn woman. I could list all the known Iceborn with names, but to keep things simple I'll only list the champions who are confirmed to be Iceborn:
- Ashe
- Lissandra
- Sejuani
- Braum
- Trundle
People who scale to Iceborn: Given basic powerscaling, anyone who is able to fight on-par with or surpass an Iceborn should be able to scale to this feat as well. This includes:
- Olaf (Fought on par with Sejuani long enough to snap out of his Berzerker state)
- Tryndamere (This one's more of a "maybe" since he presumably defeated other Iceborn, but the only explicit feat we see is Braum blocking his attacks with his Shield, of which Braum himself is unable to damage)
- Sylas (Currently, he managed to copy the ancient power of True Ice, thus he should currently be able to achieve similar feats and has shown as such with the canon Freljord Sylas skin)
There's probably a few more champions that may or may not scale to this feat, but right now these three are the ones I know right off the top of my head.
CONCLUSION
If this feat ends up being accepted for upgrades, this would actually be very substantial upgrades. It would make the Freljord not only more powerful overall, but also give a better light on League as a whole in terms of versus debating.
Freljord still has crap for speed, but eh, one step at a time.