Two mages intentionally weak to mobility

The Ecdysiast·May 18, 2016·8 votes·1,319 views

Anyone else a little confused by this? Sol is countered by your position, and Taliyah's only CC is in a small radius with a delay.

I'm all for balanced champions, but if they only way to balance a champion is to give them a crippling weakness to combat mobility (arguably one of the strongest aspects an opponent can have), there's something wrong with the design.

Perhaps Taliyah's knockup should be a 20~ units smaller, but targeted. That way mobile champions can still get away in order to prevent their allies being knocked up, but aren't completely immune to the ability.

28 Comments

Dark Star ChoMay 18, 20167 votes

Most mages are weak to mobility

The EcdysiastMay 18, 20163 votes

That still deals with champion design. Why design a "mage" when the most popular picks counter them?

Teridax68May 18, 20163 votes

Because champions aren't designed to respond to the most popular picks, they're designed to add to the game as a whole. Mages are weak to mobility, but can contribute meaningfully through magic damage and crowd control nonetheless, enough for them to be valuable to their team even against mobile opponents. Similarly, many champions were released at a time when people didn't think they'd fit into the meta (e.g. Bard, Tahm Kench), and subsequently became successful once players understood them better.

The OP is incorrect on Taliyah, btw. Her E slows and deals massive extra damage against enemies who dash over it, so if anything she's one of the best mages for countering mobility. She's super-squishy and has a moderate combat range, so she's likely weaker against other mages, but when she puts her kit to full use (i.e. Worked Ground's bonus movement speed, her knockup, her area denial) she can defend herself pretty well against mobile opponents.

MhihnjMay 18, 20163 votes

Taliyah is weak to assassins with a blink like Zed or Talon

Teridax68May 18, 20161 votes

That's true, Zed's an especially strong counter to Taliyah, and I guess you could add Katarina to the list as well, even if Taliyah can fight back by saving her W for Kat's ult. Taliyah reacts very poorly to burst, imo, so if you can get someone up close to her or lock her down she'll die very quickly without being able to fight back. Assassins aside, I think battle mages are the most likely to counter Taliyah as well, since she doesn't function optimally when harassed and given a smaller space to Q with, and isn't really the strongest at all-out duels.

The EcdysiastMay 18, 20161 votes

Don't forget that her W has a "short" delay. As in, "almost the entire duration of Katarina's ultimate." It's a little disappointing that her ultimate doesn't deal damage, too. I'd think getting hit by a giant mass of rocks (Malphite, anyone?) would deal some damage.

Teridax68May 18, 20161 votes

Thematically speaking, yeah, it's a little weird that a massive high-speed rock wall deals no damage, though it's more about her weaving it along a path than violently pushing it forward. There are gameplay reasons to it being damage-less, though, and I think at some point Zenon mentioned that there were enough choices with her current ult (e.g. when and when not to use it, which direction to point it to, whether or not to ride it, etc.) that giving it damage on top might actually make it feel unsatisfying or otherwise restrictive in its use (i.e. you'd have to use it as a long-distance nuke or it wouldn't be worth it).

The EcdysiastMay 19, 20161 votes

I was thinking it should deal at least a little, like Poppy's. Poppy's was given low damage because it's meant for map control. I feel like Taliyah's should be the same way, where you can use it for that 100-300 little extra damage if it's not needed for the wall.

YumaS2AstralMay 18, 20161 votes

{quoted}

Taliyah is weak to assassins with a blink like Zed or Talon

Any mage not named Malzahar, Lissandra, Annie or Lulu is weak to those assassins, though.

The EcdysiastMay 18, 20161 votes

But designing to be specifically weak against popular picks reduces how much they actually add to the game. If you can't pick them for fear of being hard countered by champions you already hate to play against, then they lose impact.

The E may punish, but that doesn't affect blinks and that doesn't cut through Yasuo's shield, though it will pop it. (One could argue as to why she'd want to counter Yasuo anyway, since they're friends.) It also doesn't outright stop the dash like Poppy's W. In fact, combined they'd actually reduce the effectiveness of each other, since stopping the dash removes a lot of the damage from Taliyah's E.

She's an alright mage for countering mobility, as long as you can absolutely read when the enemy is gonna all-in and place your delayed knockup on yourself. Aside from that, she doesn't have the range to harass well and her wall can be dashed over or blinked past.

Teridax68May 18, 20161 votes

{quoted}

But designing to be specifically weak against popular picks reduces how much they actually add to the game.

Maybe for the time they're popular, but even so, historically many champions have found their niche and success despite being "off-meta" the moment they were released, e.g. Bard, the roaming support, being released at a time when the most popular marksmen were hypercarries in need of babysitting, like Jinx or Vayne. Champion popularity states are, ultimately, short-term and mostly fairly variable, whereas champion additions are long-term.

{quoted}

The E may punish, but that doesn't affect blinks and that doesn't cut through Yasuo's shield, though it will pop it.

That's true, her E has no effect on blinks and that puts her at a major disadvantage against several assassins, but it's a strong ground control spell nonetheless. I'd strongly advise against designing a champion specifically to counter potential meta counters, since champions like Yasuo are precisely what you tend to have as a result, which ends up causing a lot of frustration in the long run.

It's bizarre how Boards can have such extreme opposites in mentality side by side: overloaded champions like Ekko, Yasuo, Kalista, etc. are hated because they have so much agency that they end up never feeling truly counterable, but the moment a champion doesn't have an answer to all of the current meta picks, they're considered worthless and/or weak.

The EcdysiastMay 19, 20161 votes

Maybe for the time they're popular For a few champions, it's been an issue that they're always popular because Riot hasn't nerfed them effectively.

The big issue with making a champion that counters meta picks is that, to counter those strengths they often have mechanics that counter everyone anyway. Yas's wind wall is magnificent for sinle-projectile champions like Zed or Riven, but it does just as well against an ADC or any mage.

And I just thought of something Taliyah's E could do that would solve all those problems without making her overpowered; it's something that Smite has had for years and that League just recently implemented on Casseiopia-- a Ground. If Taliyah's E grounded enemies in its area, it would do very well without having an adverse effect on less-mobile champions.

ProfDrDeathMay 18, 20166 votes

Taliyah also has her E to combat mobility. That thing slows and punishes dashes.

RalanrMay 18, 20164 votes

Isn't TF and Karthus weak to mobility?

The EcdysiastMay 18, 20163 votes

Karthus isn't as weak to mobility, since his best abilities are a huge radius and a global radius. TF isn't as weak to mobility because his stun is targeted.

And that's why they shouldn't be designing champions to be so reliant on ally CC in order to land their own CC, or on enemies having picked completely immobile champions.

XanitMay 18, 20162 votes

Targeted disables and hard mobility like dashes or, God forbid, targeted gap closers, are cancerous game design, and Riot is only just now starting to learn that you can't balance around them. Skillshots and delayed abilities are beginning to come to light, and the least popular champions are being reworked to have less bad design.

They're just afraid to change the popular champions with older, unfair design, because they will alienate the HUGE number of people who abuse those champions for easy wins.

What you're seeing is a clash between Riot's attempt at a new design philosophy and their old, unfair one that will not die due to their sheer greed or ignorance.

The EcdysiastMay 18, 20161 votes

You've hit the nail right on the head, my friend.

BluePolarizerMay 18, 20163 votes

there's nothing unfair with targetted disables or hard mobility - as long as they're on separate champions.

It's when a certain subset of champs have multiple of these while another subset has none of these that it becomes an issue.

SithesisLordMay 18, 20161 votes

Except some champions need targeted abilities to actually do.....well.....anything. What is Kayle without her slow? What is Pantheon without his stun? What is Irelia without her gap closer and slow/stun? What is Annie without her 4th passive stack Q?

Riot doesn´t realize, but not every targeted ability is cancerous. Not every targeted ability needs to become a skillshot. Not every old kit is unhealthy. Some just need proper tweaks and small changes, not full relaunches.

Annie got her small, but very crucial and honestly pretty nice changes. However, i do argue that neither Kayle, Panth or Irelia(or even Warwick) need full reworks, just small changes. Think Caitlyn/MF to Graves level of changes.

MunchCrunchLunchMay 18, 20164 votes

because zed/fizz/leblanc/yasuo need more champions to hard counter in mid lane.

QuephaMay 18, 20163 votes

It would be nice to see a champion release where zed showed up on the "strong against" list, and not because the kit was overloaded with even more mechanical complexity and outplay potential.

The EcdysiastMay 19, 20161 votes

Yeah.