Skillshots aren't really skillshots anymore when you have mobility.

mi ramfan··9 votes·1,306 views

If Zed has his shadow and decides that he wants to hit you with a Q, he's probably going to do so.

If Ahri has her ult or Flash and decides that she wants to Charm->full combo you, she's going to do so because one charge of her ult will guarantee an E, which guarantees an increased-damage version of the rest of her combo.

If Leblanc wants to combo you, she presses W->Q->E while holding the mouse over you. The chain is basically guaranteed when she's in melee range.

I mean, you can call them skillshots, but when the champion also has an easy mechanism to get in and out of melee range, it's not really skillful.

That's why Ahri has been nerfed so much. Her E has always guaranteed her full combo-the problem is that her ult makes her E obscenely easy to land because instead of shooting it from 800 range (which the risk-reward of her combo was balanced around), she's shooting it from 150, making the whole "you can miss it!" thing moot. When Lee Sin wants to land a Q, he'll land one using some combination of his various dashes to get in melee range or to a position where dodging it leaves you worse off then getting hit. Anivia doesn't get a melee range guaranteed Q unless YOU give her one.

Whenever you have a champion with both A. a mobility spell and B. a skillshot, their burst damage MUST be balanced as if the skillshot was a point and click, because realistically, when you have mobility, a skillshot behaves like a point and click.

8 Comments

12tales6 votes

Whenever you have a champion with both A. a mobility spell and B. a skillshot, their burst damage MUST be balanced as if the skillshot was a point and click, because realistically, when you have mobility, a skillshot behaves like a point and click.

I have two main issues with this statement.

Firstly, it fails to account for the defensive mobility of whomever they're going after - if Zed has his shadow and decides he wants to Q LeBlanc... good luck to Zed.

Secondly, it fails to account for the opportunity cost of blowing your mobility just to land a skillshot. Imagine if LeBlanc's chain was point and click, but using it automatically put her W on cooldown - it'd be substantially less powerful than if it were just point and click. So, that's a weakness that can be balanced around.

Jay x Miku x32 votes

What the CD of Zed's W? Energy costs of W>E>Q?

Ahri's CD of ult?

Leblanc: you said "The chain is basically guaranteed when she's in melee range". Duh. Akali can also kill you if you get into melee range.

mi ramfan4 votes

The issue is not that the stuff is guaranteed, it's that the "it's a skillshot hurr durr" is used to justify them paying a much smaller price for their mobility then other comparable champions do.

Lapison2 votes

While I agree that some mobility spells make it easier to hit skill shots, I also don't think that simply having a mobility spell + skillshot makes it necessary to reduce burst damage.

As a general exception to mobility spells, take Blitzcrank. Blitz is almost entirely dependent on hitting his hook and dealing massive amounts of burst coupled with hard CC. He has a mobility steroid to help him do that, plus the obvious skillshot hook. Does that mean we should nerf Blitz’s burst?

I don't think so, mainly because the W (mobility steroid) has an obvious activation, and so does the hook (albeit more easily missed due to no channel animation). You also have to consider that Blitz gives up a lot to get such high burst; the most egregious one is probably that he's a melee champ, and thus absolutely useless if he can't hit that skillshot. (I’m also very biased, since hitting Blitz hooks on targets is so satisfying :P )

However, I assume when you talk about mobility you are talking about dashes/blinks. Here, I also think that something’s off about having to nerf their damage. Many dashes and blinks can be stopped or deterred by certain skills (Janna tornado comes to mind, although there are others). Many of these dashes are also limited by longer cooldowns/larger resources, as Jay has mentioned.

I can understand why it might seem like the skill shots are guaranteed. However, they can only put out so much burst in one combo, and they often spend a lot of resources to do so. If you survive the combo (and around maybe 75% of the time you should, don't quote me on that I'm not too experienced with Mid Lane), you've got a chance to counter-trade, and that seems like an OK balance to me.

OI0p5ajw7w1 votes

If you have to get into melee range in order to land your skillshots... then you aren't skilled. I LOVE Amumu, I suck with his Q and without being good at landing it, I am not a good Amumu player. I quite often flash in to land my Q. It's very bronze, and I'm okay with it because I'm getting practice to get better. But using your mobility to get into range to land your skillshots... you are defeating yourself.

mi ramfan2 votes

The issue is that getting in melee range makes them guaranteed, removing the tradeoff of it being a skillshot (that you can actually miss it. It has nothing to do with ability to land skillshots at ranged.

XanderJJ1 votes

Its called a Combo for a reason.

hyprformnce1 votes

I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks this. I used to enjoy playing vs lee sin top, for example, because it was fun to see if i could dodge their Q's and thus win trades when I did so successfully. That was until lee sin players realized they could just safeguard or walk up to my caster minions before Q'ing. As a result, what was once a hard to land skill shot was guaranteed to hit. I thought that was pretty degenerate because it meant a lee sin that was ahead in lane could force you to sit under tower or take a very unfavorable trade with far less room for meaningful counter play.

The same thing with happens against blitz bot. if the enemy AD carry is hitting his/her laning power peak and has some spike in damage potential, blitz can sit in front of your ranged minions, guaranteeing a pull if you approach the minion wave. some blitzcranks don't realize this and have far less laning presence

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