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I really don't know how to feel about OTPs anymore

AngelNipata·11/19/2016, 1:58:14 AM·10 votes·3,173 views

Taking advantage of the whole "Support Singed" controversy, I want to ask a question.

Where do OTPs(one trick ponies) fit in League?

With this controversy, I pondered the question of OTPs because some of them do fall out of meta and out of the favor of the community. This made me think of whether OTPs were a good thing in league and if they were, where do they fit? I've never been sure so I'll just state my case.

Personally, I've never really been a fan of the whole notion of taking one champ and playing them like they were the only champ in the game. Me being a low elo support main, I have always held the idea that you should try to synergize with your team and make up for something your team lacks like engage or peel. I see OTPs, and I don't understand where they fit in. All the OTPs I have seen are the typical carry type OTP playing someone like Yas, Riven, or Vayne or they're the super meta resistant champions like thresh and lee sin, because they're complex kits stop riot from ever making any noticeable changes out of fear of accidentally gutting the champion or making them too strong in higher elos. I can understand where these champions fit in, but I never can understand why someone would pick into their counter or pick a champion who doesn't work with their team comp.

One the other hand, I have always believed that people should play what they want to play. I understand why a person would want to learn a champion to the extent that they know how to get the most out of the champion and I know that they try to use that knowledge to win, or at least not feed, against their counters. I feel like this is the main reason why people play carry-type champions or the meta resistant playmaker champions. I feel that they try to use their knowledge to make up for what their kit lacks through build paths and tactics.

Despite understanding that some people like to master a champion and then proceed to carry, I've never understood why having a handful of champions that you can play well for different situations is in any way inferior. It may be my personal bias shining through, but I've always thought that flexibility and the ability to adjust to what your fighting with or against. Really, I just want to know what you guys think about the matter.

TL;DR: Where do OTPs fit in league? Is it better to have mastered one champion or be good at many?

37 Comments

Spicy Rice11/19/2016, 3:53:57 AM4 votes

I'm guessing for a lot of otp's, like myself, playing anything other than their main champ just isn't as fun/satisfying.

Sure, we might not win as much as we would if we meta-whored, but at the same time, we are just trying to win and have fun.

PiVoRx11/19/2016, 5:33:45 PM2 votes

I prefer to be otp than fotm reroller. Thanks to otps you dont see only most overpowered shit out there, you want more vayne, rengar, lebroken or lee sins ?

Attticus Finch11/20/2016, 12:40:05 AM2 votes

OTPs have always been cancer because League at the end of the day is a team-game and team comp is incredibly important. If you don't pick the champion that fits the situation and your team's composition then bringing down 4 other people for the sake of your enjoyment, which is selfish.

DrCyanide11/19/2016, 5:28:57 AM1 votes

I think there's a point where experience on a champion is more valuable than what's meta. That's where One Trick Pony's shine. Someone who goes to a random website to look up what counters Xerath isn't going to do so hot against someone who's got hundreds of games on Xerath .

Anonagon11/19/2016, 5:34:33 AM1 votes

in the past I would have argued against one-tricking, and would say it had no place in a team-oriented game where champion picks should be strategic choices

but the way queues are set up now almost exclusively promote being a one-trick, with at the most three backup champions being able to almost always secure the role you want to play completely negates the need to know more than a couple of champions

Shuriman Curator11/19/2016, 7:48:59 AM1 votes

I pretty much just play Nasus now, my most played champ is Shen(main) but he's just not fun nor good anymore(imo). Old Shen felt more like a tank than his rework, I could be wrong but it really felt that way. I played a good amount of Malzahar, Vel'Koz and Garen too. Vel'Koz was my number 1 mid laner but than again I feel that his mini rework was unnecessary In my opinion.

So I have 4 runepages for Nasus, both on different play styles. One is normal grasp stack q, the other is srs max e(quas build) and an armor/mr for both.

Pretty much no other champ stands out for me anymore so I just play Nasus. To me I find him super fun to play and has a simple kit.

Seenan11/19/2016, 9:43:31 AM1 votes

There's people like Annie Bot and people like Imaqtpie. Annie Bot is...yeah. And Imaqtpie does play many champs. 1v1'd Gosu and beat him in pretty much every occurrence.

Athenes Lulu11/19/2016, 9:51:36 AM1 votes

I need to remind people here that Singed player was banned not because he was simply breaking the meta, but because he stole ally jungle camps and leave his ADC 2v1 forever. Ok, fine, roaming isn't much, but stealing ally jungle camps... yeah that looks more like trolling at this point.

Anyways... I've been pretty much a Lulu support OTP since the darkest ages of season 3 ward bot support and season 4 kill lane botlane ages, and a lot problems came from people trolling simply because they saw an OTP, not because an OTP's said champion/role is banned/taken. Support. Champion that's hardly ever played. Do not pretend his teammates are not at fault.

It also depends on what the OTP was, where he usually goes (so if it's mid it's gonna be a bigger problem than say, support), and how good/bad he is in the meta. Some champions can be literally picked into anything and against anything, while some others require a kinda specific comp/matchup to do very well. The latter, though, is why people hated OTPs.

Just randomly throwing thoughts, but after one-tricking for 3 years, I'm seeing more problems among the players that think it is perfectly okay to troll and automatically target ban their own teammates mains. Though I might have been super lucked out because 1) hardly anyone ever fights for support, 2) hardly anyone ever plays Lulu even during the horrors of Lulu mid/top hype, and 3) Lulu support can fit into almost any team comp.

DeathTheHorseman11/19/2016, 11:23:33 AM1 votes

{quoted}

TL;DR: Where do OTPs fit in league? Is it better to have mastered one champion or be good at many?

Dunno about general but I as an Akali OTP don't really FIT in league anymore.

If I had mastered many champions I wouldn't be completely destroyed as a player by 6.22

The nerfs to Akali mean that I am back in gold (where I was before i started to one trick her)

If I had focused on 3-4 champions instead I would probably play them at plat level by now (2 years of Akali 80% of my games)

Now I have my diamond MMR and Elo gravity champ and will proceed to suffer for 100-200 games until I demote there....

_**

Bottom line is:

Being OTP is truly more fun than playing lots of champions. The whole Git Gut feels good.

However, when Riot decides to murder your main you are just lost and it feels damn terrible.

So you have 2 choices:

  • play it safe and try to have fun with a few champs (then pray Riot doesn't destroy them all in one season)
  • Or start being an OTP Git Gut and have fun and then Get Rekt when Riot changes your main.
Cocho11/19/2016, 6:34:45 PM1 votes

As a Katarina OTP myself, I find that I can play better against Kat's counters with kat, rather than just a champion that I picked because that champ counters the counter in that lane (makes sense? lol) Also, I don't feel like I can play the mid/late game as well with my other champs, where the "counter" doesnt matter as much.

I don't really care about the team comp most of the time since if I get ahead, I could carry, so the comp doesnt end up mattering. I just play kat because that's the highest chance of me winning. And I like to win.

OTP just works in a solo queue environment, since in competitive you will just get banned out. Playing like 3-5 different champs is good, but I wouldn't be able to keep that many at my personal best. If another person could, then that would obviously be better objectively, but I cannot.

Come to think of it, that would probably explain why my other champs are fairly simple, Amumu, annie, lux, sona. I guess its just preference and whats best for you.

WinTheWarOnPants11/19/2016, 8:12:39 PM1 votes

other than the singed player being a OTP, his situation has nothing to do with OTPs otherwise. what i mean by that is that he wasn't just filling sup because he didn't get top. although sup is honestly probably the best secondary roll for singed other than maybe mid???? his problem was that his playstyle was completely at the expense of his ADC. he picked sup, but he did pretty much zero actual suping. this was his choice. he could have just as easily stayed in lane like a normal sup and tried to make it work, with a little bit of roaming like all sups do if they can. Instead he completely sacrificed his ADC to the enemy bot lane so he could go fuk around in the enemy jg. sup and adc both are unique in the they are design to not function without the other so him leaving his ADC to 1v2 is very toxic behavior.

With that said there is nothing wrong with being a one trip(coming from a one trick XD) i can play almost all the champs in the game pretty well i just like playing BAE Evelynn the most. the only problem that some one tricks have is when they one trick as abomination like Yasuo which really isn't technically possible simple because how do you one trick a champ that's only available 20% of the time XD. another problem comes when you one trick a champ that isn't really playable in other roles(i don't have this problem). Fiddlesticks Singed are the only one that i can think of other than some sups which are kind of an exception since they will always get their role(idk if one trick sup mains even exist tho tbh).

In conclusion as long as you're not playing at the expense of someone else i see no problem.

GULAG 4 U11/20/2016, 2:28:26 AM1 votes

Tldr:

You OTP Yasuo

Boards lynch you

done

Sanctimonious11/19/2016, 5:20:02 AM1 votes

(Sorry for the long post, i rewrote this like four times. I'm still not happy with my english, but this isn't english class.)

 One day, i didn’t just choose to be a one trick pony. It could be said the stars lined up perfectly and that it was destined for me to love this character so much. It’s not that i can’t play other champion’s, it’s really that i don’t enjoy them. I don’t want them, i want Kayle. Kayle represents a lot to me, and if anything ever happened to her i don’t think i would play this game anymore. To me, Kayle represents a lot. She represents a Friendship, a competitive grade champion, Right wing politics, and community. Over time, she has meant more to me and changed shape multiple times. 

 Let’s start with the friendship. In high school, i was a fairly nerdy fellow. I was lost, in multiple ways. I was never a communicative fellow. I’m introverted, a Nerd who always got too invested in one thing to allow for diversity. I grew up with a rather bittersweet distasteful view of society, that people were evil things and that they needed to be put in bound by something above them. I was never really shown kindness from society, so i didn’t show society kindness back. I never had much for friends in my head. Coincidentally, one day i was trying to test streaming because i wanted to test it out and in the chat box i seen the words “Eric?, Eric, is that you?” to which, i replied, “Yeah, it’s me man, who are you?” to which i realized that it was one of the newer sophomores to my school. He had also played kayle, and it was through him i started a friendship where we talked about Music, Video games, Electronics and such. Likely one of my only high school friends i still talk to. 

 The next year, i had became increasingly interested in Politics, Far-right philosophy, and the conservative movement in general. As a Canadian, it makes no sense that i would grow up to be an Individualist, but rather a collectivist. More of a Liberal Democrat in a sense, like my family. Well, most of my Family. I don’t know what my Grandma was, but she always had books laying around. “Politically incorrect bedtime stories,” a satirical book which i never read but later on i eventually looked up the words on my own. I learned of figures such as Vox Day, Stefan Molyneux, Milo Yiannopoulos,  Etc. To me, Kayle really seemed to be a representative of the American far right political spectrum. 
 Since i’ve climbed to high platinum on Kayle in season 5 (Bronze to high platinum), i decided to help people in the community with builds on her.Now instead of having one close friend, i have multiple aquaintences who love her. (Although, i don’t think they’ll ever love her as much as me.)

 In a gameplay sense, she’s flexible and smites people with a fireblade. She protects her allies from the tyranny of others and those would do her harm. She’s a carry / support and embodies the same flexibility as the American constitution. It’s not whether she would fit into a team (She fits into every team composition.) but how the enemy can deal with her. When you understand her to a crisp in one role, the rules change completely in another. She has a lot of depth, and a lot of possible gameplay patterns. I think it’s possible to do this with several champions.
EndlessSorcerer11/19/2016, 5:22:21 AM1 votes

Never really been a fan of OTP, but that is largely because I know I would get bored of continually playing the same champion.

I would probably recommend building a pool of champions for your preferred role, learning them well and picking whichever is most suitable or you feel like playing at the moment.

Kewlipo11/19/2016, 3:48:35 AM1 votes

I am an one trick pony, but I know how the hell to play other lanes.

Don't play off meta picks in ranked, play your role, and don't be so dependent on one champ that you lose the game for others.

WoonStruck11/20/2016, 12:53:04 AM1 votes

OTP Vladimir main. I get an S- or greater practically every game.

item 3001 item 3158 item 3157 item 3116 item 3089 item 3135, not tank.

I don't feel bad about picking him into any match-up except ignite Irelia or ignite Yasuo. Every other match-up you can afk farm in easily. It doesn't matter how bad your team does because you just clear waves so the enemy team can't push, or solo engage and 100-0 their back line, provided you aren't behind.

Vlad fits into literally any comp due to being tanky, providing massive AoE damage and pretty absurd 1v1 burst, as well as his ability to clean up fights that you thought your team was losing. His ult only pushes this further.

Against squishy comps, he can 100-0 the entire team 1v5 if he uses his abilities to dodge CC properly and sidesteps easy skillshots (which you should be doing on anyone). Against most tanky comps, they just can't kill him. 100-0 the ADC/mage and you're golden.

This said, I don't agree with the support Singed player because he was funneling resources out of both his ADC and jungle, essentially. He was setting his team back to get ahead and hope he could carry without really assisting them.

Ind311/19/2016, 9:31:36 PM

OTP-ing goes several ways. It can be cancerous if you take for ex. someone like singed420 who despite being honestly somewhat entertaining i stopped watching because of the fact that no matter what role he gets he'll take top.

Now theres also people who OTP for ex Boxerpete who will go where there role calls for and they play accordingly. If he's put mid as Tryndamere he will play accordingly and so on and so forth.

My basic gist of the thing that bothers you is that OTP-ing can go one of two ways. You either gain a hell of a lot of experience with them and learn to play them into anything you face or you learn a few back-up champs as well for your counters.

As a sidenote i play tryndamere into even my counters because i wish to learn how to play against them and hopefully one day deal with even my counterpicks. Like Spicy Rice says I simply derive enjoyment from playing my favorite champion more than i could playing any other champion. There's only two rules in my book i feel a OTP needs to follow:

1.Play to win the game 2.Don't be toxic (I get this should be a given but when people get matched into counterpicks and are OTPs the flame gets real)

Play by these rules and regardless of team synergy and meta-slaving everything should play out in a fair enough manner. Remember OTPs make up a fascinating section of the community and fan-bases really breathe into the game the consistent never ending life we see.

[slayer-pantheon-thumbs]