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Range, and How to Balance It

BastionKross·10/5/2014, 5:55:28 PM·5 votes·2,098 views

Season 4 is almost over and Pre-season 5 is just around the corner. This is the perfect time for wide scaling balance changes, so let's take a look at one of the most difficult issues to wrangle; range. The problem with range in LoL is this: There are no meaningful disadvantages for the huge advantage of range.

Yes, melee champions are given better stats to try and compensate, but that method is flawed since those increased stats mean nothing if you can not apply them by closing the gap and then sticking to ranged opponents. This issue results in a section of champs that is both just plain better than their melee counterparts, and almost required for every team comp. With the recent nerfs to their natural predators (assassins), buffs to several ADC items, self-peel built into more champion kits, and the overall impotence of tank items (which is neither the fault of tanks or marksmen, but bruisers) ranged champions rule the rift. This is terrible in several ways, the foremost being staleness. Keeping the vast majority of melee champions off the rift because they can't compete with ranged attackers will result in seeing the same chunk of champions all the time. There's over 100 different champs in LoL, so variety should never be a problem. Even Garen , the supposed "immune to poke" guy doesn't actually become immune to poke until later on in the game instead of during the laning phase where he would need it most.

So how can we weaken the impact of ranged champions and make the rift an equal opportunity battleground for melees while still having range play a unique role in battle? There's several ways we can accomplish this, and I'm sure there's more that I haven't thought of.

  1. All champions have a maximum auto attack distance. But what if champions with a longer auto distance also had a minimum distance as well? This would create a "doughnut" shaped AoE for ranged champions, where they could not attack threats that are in melee range. This would still grant them all the benefits of range, but also grant them a significant weakness to be exploited and used as counterplay. Naturally, this would buff some ranged champions like Graves and Sivir and possibly Quinn as they could retain their ability to auto attack at close range as it is part of their identity to get up close to opponents.

  2. All champion auto attacks have a 100% accuracy rate unless under certain conditions like blindness. What if we give all ranged auto attacks a chance to miss? Naturally, this miss chance would only be valid against other champions and not against jungle creeps or minions. Some discussion would have to take place as to whether or not this miss chance should apply to towers or inhibitors, but the point would remain the same: If you have the advantage of range, you also get a chance to miss. You'd have to take the good with the bad, instead of just taking the good as it is now. Perhaps some ranged champs like Caitlyn or Ashe could have a lower miss chance than others, due to their identity as being accurate marksmen.

  3. Ranged attacks do less damage to buildings (tower, inhibs, and nexus) than melee attacks. This would decrease the ability of ranged champions to more easily damage and take objectives than their melee counterparts.

  4. New itemization that closely follows the same line of thought as item 1054 . These would be items that are only purchasable by melee champions, but don't have good enough stats to be purchased in all situations. These items would be tilted more for helping negate ranged harass. This could be something like increased health regen when struck by a ranged auto attack similar in effect to a item 3211 , or an active that grants damage reduction for just long enough to grab a few CS.

The goal of these changes is to give more meaningful disadvantages to ranged champions, and may even promote team compositions that do not require a ranged ADC. (I don't think we've had effective compositions like that in League for a long time, if ever)

34 Comments

redniwediS10/5/2014, 6:27:01 PM6 votes

A very interesting post, here's my feedback on it.

Point 1 would put tip the balance of ADCs fully in the favor of caster marksmen like Graves and Lucian. It would be the same old situation with a few new faces.

Point 2 is simply not a good idea. Randomness has been mostly removed from League, and for good reason. Skill should be far more important than luck in a competitive setting.

Point 3 I actually like. For quite some time melee split pushers have already been better at taking towers than an ADC. The only real advantage ADCs have is in a siege, where the ADC can take down a tower while the enemy team mills about. I've never really liked it when it's just an ADC taking a tower with four people ready to peel in case their enemy retaliates, and this could change things up a bit.

Point 4 is something I like but likely won't happen. A while ago someone from Riot mentioned they were trying to remove "melee only" or "ranged only" from items, and while I would be fully for more early game help for those in a melee vs ranged matchup I don't think this will be a direction Riot will take.

Zarkkast10/5/2014, 6:15:51 PM5 votes

My only problem is with 1)

Instead of a minimum attack range, make it so that point-blank shots deal less damage. Otherwise adcs could become literally useless against gapclosers, except for a few who can self-peel like Ashe and Tristana.

It makes literally no sense that champions like Ashe who use a bow can do just as much damage point-blank and from long range. But she could still damage you if you came close to her, even if that meant smashing you with her bow.

Centuros10/5/2014, 7:21:44 PM3 votes

If you give a minimum auto range, Marksmen without dashes would likely simply die if a melee gets in close, since they would otherwise have little way to actually fight back. CC could also work, but marksmen in general are not built around CC.

Miss chance is pretty horrible and random, and also if you could randomly miss cs because the game felt like it there would be much rage. I like how Thresh has different attack animations for close and long range, and maybe this could be used for a marksman melee mechanic, but if you wanted to do animations for all of the old characters, that would be a long time coming, and it would make less sense without animations.

Worgslarg10/5/2014, 6:12:57 PM2 votes

The blind zone i can see, but a miss chance is simply adding dodge back into the game, and as such, a very bad thing.

Kowe The Ewok10/5/2014, 8:46:27 PM2 votes

Are you serious? Ranged are only strong because they often have up to 3 or 4 guys to cover them. 1v1 a Jax, Xin or Kha Zix who's far behind on item will easily DESTROY a carry 1on1.

SpecterVonBaren10/5/2014, 8:55:42 PM2 votes

In my opinion, I think a nice start to balancing this would be a new item that has an active that causes blindness. There's only two champions in the entire game that can use blind, so I think adding more blinds would be good. Maybe have the item be expensive enough that not just anyone can buy it without potentially setting them back and give it stats that appeal to tanks and supports.

67chrome10/5/2014, 11:24:52 PM2 votes

1

Corki, Ezreal, and Lucian have been dominant carries for all seasons but the current one, where Riot actually made a committed itemization shift so that the most auto-attack reliant class in the game actually auto-attacked things to death, instead of being phys damage mages.

As abilities don't have a minimum range, they'd basically be the same deal.

Gap-closers and self-peel would be considerably more important for ranged champions, pushing back the already struggling ranged classes of immobile mages and marksman further into objectively weakned states.

I don't see this doing anything but harm the health of the game. Especially seeing as most ranged champions are in a world of hurt and serious disadvantage if a melee is sitting on their face as-is.

2

Random numbers really need a massive numbers to be balanced, otherwise you kill a lot of skill involved.

Critical strikes mostly circumvent the RNG issue with a large sample size, climbing to 55% end-game and generally being found in pretty solid chunks of 10~25%, where within 45 auto-attacks it's going to be the opposite of random.

For dodge mechanics to be balanced - you'd need the same massive sizes, make them big enough to be a constant factor, not a random smiting from RNGesus. Which means 33~50%, a rather massive %DPS loss in any realistic implementation.

And again, this doesn't hit abilities at all - which leads to a fairly awkward split in regards to comparing, say, Vayne to Ryze.

If you actually want a chance to "miss" attacks, going the Diablo route and making them all skillshots would be a lot better. Also, that would be awesome for orb-walking, as holding shift is a lot easier than the derp you have to set up with your mouse to do that properly in LoL.

3

This already happens.

Except the attacks scale with the actual range of a given champion, not just a black and white deal of "melee" or "ranged". In a face-tank fight, Caitlyn will loose to Tristana who will loose to Draven who will loose to Vayne who will loose to Tryndamere.

The shorter the effective range (including skills) of a champion with any reliance on auto-attacking, the more powerful their auto-attack steroids, and by extension auto-attacks, are.

As such - the critical strikes and life steal gains of champions tend to get larger and larger the lower their effective range becomes. Fiora will flat out obliterate anything she actually gets placed next to, where Caitlyn needs to take her time.

Problem with short-range vs. towers isn't the damage you deal either, it's the damage the tower spits back at you (and it's defenders).

4

Having better steroids, higher ratios, and more powerful skills means items will automatically scale to be that consistent level of stronger on a melee champion.

Such a change is also "melee champions are given better stats to try and compensate" as well.