What Is Being Done to Address Mobility?

Kivolan·11/12/2019, 3:18:25 AM·41 votes·14,028 views

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What is being done to address the growing problem of too-mobile champions in this game? There are a lot of great champion designs that have mobility, while still offering some sense of fairness and counterplay. One or two dashes isn't a problem, but many of the newer champion designs have increasingly had more and more mobility. These champions also tend to have higher-than-average pick and ban rates in professional play, and tend to pose balancing nightmares as their overall win rates might not look all that impressive due to how frequently they're played.

One of the examples that comes to mind is, of course, Akali. With a total of four dashes, three movement speed bonuses, and her invisibility shroud, Akali has far too many tools at her disposal to "outplay" her opponents, whether it be to engage, disengage, or simply zoom around during the middle of a fight.

Blue form Kayn is another champion who I'm sick of seeing. His "signature mobility" of being allowed to walk through walls at literally 750+ movement speed for 9 seconds offers so little counterplay I'd rather go against a Kha or Rengar any day.

Other notable offenders include Irelia, Katarina, Pyke, and of course everyone's favorite Yasuo.

So what's being done to address mobility? Cassiopeia and Poppy both have abilities that stop the enemy team from jumping around, which were both great additions to the game. However, neither of these champions generally sees all that much play. Perhaps instead of continuing the nightmare that is attempting to balance too-mobile champions, the answer might lie in giving others the tools to remove that mobility for a short period of time.

Or, we could just keep adding more mobility to everyone. Because League's definitely more fun when you have six dashes, right?

75 Comments

Soul Dealer11/12/2019, 5:37:15 AM25 votes

The biggest offender imo is riven. She has 4 completely unrestricted dashes one of which gives her a shield.

Nanuk Pihoqahiak11/12/2019, 7:19:12 AM19 votes

I'd just like it if they pulled back on abilities that go over walls, cut ward jumping entirely (It's kind of silly that it's been removed for one of three characters, but not the other two), and adjusted base movement speeds accordingly. I actually think the latter is one of the largest offenders.

Why should characters that have a massive amount of mobility through abilities also have the highest base movement speed in the game?

Sucction11/12/2019, 9:26:07 AM17 votes

While I do think mobility is a problem, I don't think grounding effects are the solution.

They don't "fix" mobility, they just enforce hard counters and make the champions balanced AROUND their mobility completely bloody useless for several seconds. It's nearly an indefinite silence.

Instead, simply creating champions with less mobility options, or reducing the ones that currently exist.

I don't know if giving Yasuo's E an ammo mechanic would be a good idea, but it should be something that could be explored. Blue Kayn is unfair in general, and perhaps shouldn't be going so fast through terrain. He's not overpowered, just lacks counterplay and fairness if he's even slightly ahead.

Katarina feels okay because she's very predictable, similarly to Zed. Irelia and Pyke are also too mobile, though I don't know what I'd do to fix them.

BLIGHTBRINGER11/12/2019, 10:15:21 AM14 votes

It's even worse when Riot meme's about it too when they fully know how annoying Mobility is becoming.

In Qiyana's Spotlight for her E ability they said "It's just a Dash, that's it"...

Jaspers11/12/2019, 11:31:22 AM12 votes

Didn't you see? They are addressing it by adding mobility to champs who are older and can't compete anymore. See Annie, Fiddle and Heimer.

One of the biggest issues with modern/reworked champs is you can't lock them down, on reworks Akali has more dashes and movement speed than like 50% of the roster combined. Reseting dashes on Irelia, resourceless dashes on Aatrox and movement speed too. Then new champs Sylas has W 'dash' and E. Pyke is a joke. Qiyana has one that does damage.

The last champ released or reworked to have 0 movement buffs in their kit I think was Vel'Koz.

Sukishoo11/12/2019, 2:17:34 PM7 votes

Nothing is really going to be done. Riot likes high damage, high mobility, short games. So they just add MOAR!

Talisid11/12/2019, 6:28:23 PM6 votes

As a jungle main I honestly I have no problem with champions who need a target to dash to like Irelia or Yasuo or Kat, because they're much more predictable and its possible to chase them down by catching them away from targets they can jump to.

More problematic is stuff like Riven , Nidalee and Kassadin who can just blink or dash out of trouble on a low cooldown, so they can't really be caught unless they do something really dumb.

FrancisMuni11/12/2019, 9:09:00 AM6 votes

The obvious move would be to create an item for fronlaners that negates mobility, the same way other items negate CC or healing. Of course, we are talking about Riot Gam€$, so they won't do anything that makes their skin whores less viable so they can keep milking their chinese cows.

Example:

Hextech armorsuit (3300 gold) 400 Health 30 Armor 30 Magic Resistance 10% CDR Unique passive: When you are out of combat your bonus resistances get increased by 30%. The effect lasts 2 seconds after taking damage. Unique active, Seeking Drone: You shoot a Drone that gets anchored to a target enemy champion. The drone grounds that champion for 2 seconds and grants your team True Vision of him for 5 seconds.

Mhihnj11/12/2019, 6:44:57 AM4 votes

How about a tank item which allows you to create a grounded zone around you for a short amount of time? It could help tanks like sion deal with highly mobile champs.

for example:

frostmail:

+30 armor +30 magic resist

unique active: freeze- for 2 seconds create a zone around you that grounds all champions present(including teammates).

we could even change some of the existing items like frozen mallet, frostborn gauntlet and rylais to slow dashes by 10-20 % based on level.

This could've problems though.

Spooky Skeleton11/13/2019, 1:02:48 AM4 votes

problem with anti-mobility is that it punishes older champions who are balanced around it for the most part.

Grounding Akali isn't going to be anywhere near as detrimental as grounding Kalista or Alistar for instance.

So idk how they would fix it other than stop shitting out abominations with far too much mobility in the first place

Jennifer1711/12/2019, 4:18:12 PM3 votes

senna isnt very mobile. but she is overloaded. maybe thats riots solution

Śhunpo11/12/2019, 4:29:43 PM3 votes

Just revert Katarina at this point. I'm a Kat main and even I can admit to her being blatantly overpowered and nye-impossible to balance properly.

Daddy Ants11/12/2019, 6:59:06 PM3 votes

Crowd Control needs to be toned down significantly before mobility.

https://i.gyazo.com/5c6ab12c090d2814199aafb721354704.png

Being CC'd for 3.20 seconds of a 3.75 second fight doesn't leave much room for counterplay.

Ceasefire11/12/2019, 8:59:45 PM2 votes

Sucks when Cassiopeia Singed Poppy and i guess Veigar all have anti-mobility skills but you don't see them very often in games.

So I guess the most optimal solutions would be:

A. Release a new item that seals mobility options for a short period of time as 2 ppl on this post have suggested. B. Release a new champion that has anti-mobility skills or do something with the 4 champs above that would encourage ppl to play them more often. C. Lower the base movement speed of highly mobile champs and increase the movement speed of less mobile champs. D. Update some existing items and add a grounding effect to them (Randuins & RG would be the best candidates)

These are just some ideas and i'm sure there are plenty of other great ideas out there but yeah i HOPE Riot does something about the mobility creep because it is becoming quite excessive.

ModUlanopo11/13/2019, 2:30:29 AM2 votes

How about approaching it from the opposite direction and having highly mobile champions take increased damage from skill shots?

Theorex11/12/2019, 4:56:16 PM2 votes

N o t h i n g .