How a 'Mobility Tax' can Increase Champion/Strategic Diversity in LOL eSport

Rhlax·Feb 4, 2015·4 votes·1,622 views

Champions with gap closer, that can jump over walls and jungles are consistently played more in LOL eSport.

Champions such as Zed, Ahri, Kassadin, Lee Sin, [insert adc with mobility], etc are much more popular. The reason?

There are actually many factors that determine how good a champion is in pro league, but mobility is a consistent and key factor as we have seen in the past few years. The reason why mobility is often favoured is because of 'safety'.

Mobile champions are safer to play, in the sense that they are harder to kill. Champions such as Lee Sin and Kassadin is very difficult to catch/kill even in enemy's jungle with a team!

**What is Mobility Tax **

Suppose you killed that fed Lee Sin, a shutdown kill for a grand total of, say 500 gold. A mobility is modifier for the amount of gold the killer(s) is rewarded. Suppose the mobility tax for Lee Sin is 15%, 500 * 0.15 = 75. The killer gets rewarded 75 extra gold. Suppose the support got an assist, she is rewarded an extra 15% as well.

**How High and how Low would the tax go? **

Urgot would not be taxed. He has no mobility, so 0. Kassadin needs to be taxed high, how high is hard to say.

**What are some draw back? **

Once this is posted, people will come up with many. For one, off the top of my head, the net gold in game is increased. Two, added hidden complexity into the game.

**Why I really think this is a great idea: **

We can now tax FLASH!!!

Less Flash can make Lol eSport more interesting:

Multiple Teleport/Smite in a team.

SLUG FIGHTS!!! Tons of heals and exhaust. Little mobility, high stickyness and tankiness.

12 Comments

turbofeed9000Feb 4, 20152 votes

CC isn't properly balanced, nor is Criticals, CDR or hypermobility.

RhlaxFeb 4, 20151 votes

Good points.

The problem of CDR is due to the rise of non-mana and non-energy champions, where there is an unequal level of benefit from CDR.

turbofeed9000Feb 5, 20151 votes

Bingo. And skills that lower CDR make it also much more valuable because it reduces a greater percentage of the skill now.

turbofeed9000Feb 5, 20151 votes

Which is why Youmuu's with 20 armor pen is so broken.

turbofeed9000Feb 4, 20151 votes

Interesting idea but it's a little situational.

Why don't we just give flash skills appropriate cooldowns like they did in season 1.

RhlaxFeb 4, 20151 votes

Sorry I'm not sure what you mean.

Looking at the history of flash, do you mean a cast time?

turbofeed9000Feb 4, 20151 votes

I mean hyper mobility skills.

They used to mostly have 20+ second cooldowns. When you used them, you were fucked for a while on mobility. Now Yasuo can jump everytime he sees an enemy. He would've won every game season 1.

RhlaxFeb 4, 20151 votes

Yasuo jumping around can be pretty frustrating to play against. And yes, for past few years, a lot of champions have gap closers/escapes.

I would say ultimately, it comes down to fun. We, personally evaluate fun individually, while Riot with data can evaluate what is fun collectively.

FebruAhriFeb 4, 20151 votes

then why not tax cc aswell? I find champs with ridiculous amounts of cc way more annoying than mobile champions

RhlaxFeb 4, 20151 votes

Morg Q comes to mind. Yes it is a problem. It is different kind of problem. Personally, I think it is best to just remove any hard cc more than 1 second long.

turbofeed9000Feb 5, 20151 votes

Morg is awful in low elos though. Those lucky Q's are all they get. They should start restricting champs to elos in ranked. That would fix a lot of balance issues but it doesn't make sense from a money standpoint.

Like riot needs any more fucking money though

smh

RhlaxFeb 5, 20151 votes

They should start restricting champs to elos in ranked.

Thumbs up. Unlock champions (or even items) as you are ranking up could be a great solution to lower -tier balance. Some champions are simply too hard to deal with and cause a lot of frustration for less experienced players.

Now, this is the eSports section. Mobility is a problem in eSports. It is almost all mobile compositions and 99% Flash usage. I wish more people give feedback on the idea of mobility tax.