Hard Counters unhealthy for ranked play

Stormoid·2/15/2017, 5:45:26 AM·1 votes·772 views

Just finished a game as shen vs teemo. Lane phase I got far behind in farm gave up one kill from flash ignite (my b) but after that i stayed alive. Jungle told me he wasnt ganking a teemo as olaf. The rest of the game I had to farm under tower watching the bot lane die over and over again. I used to be gold 3 and im now trying to climb in out of low silver but its so hard when you get hard countered so you cant get ahead from lane phase then when you actually do get out of lane phase your bot lane died 6 times. I think riot should stop making champions with hard counters takes all the skill out of the game if you've lost the lane in champ select. To make it all worse teemo was wearing the little devil skin.

4 Comments

RyukLikesApples2/15/2017, 7:30:39 AM1 votes

I wouldn't call it unhealthy. The pick/ban phase is a part of playing the game as much as anything else. You cannot expect to pick whatever you want and not have anything standing in your way, you need to utilize bans wisely to ban the most oppressive counters to what you want to play and also choose your own champion wisely. If you're an earlier pick before your lane opponent locks in, you will need to consider if you want to play a safe pick that can perform well even when behind. Sure, I can't see many people banning Teemo, but in the case that you are hard countered you will absolutely need to strategize ways to get around it, like heavily pressuring elsewhere or picking other champions who in turn counter the enemy champs. Olaf not ganking Teemo is what I would call a tactical error, but that's another story.

That being said, it's not possible for 100+ champions to be unaffected with each new champion. Riot does mostly make an effort to install some sort of limitations in kits (Yes yes I know, Camille and Lee Sin, they're not perfect). New champions need to have the upper hand in some aspect of gameplay in order for anyone to consider playing them competitively, and I don't think putting a complete stop to new releases is reasonable either.

Colton1472/15/2017, 8:04:46 AM1 votes

I play a hard counter against a hard counter, such as Karma, Quinn, Illaoi, Fiora, etc. :)

KiyoYoshimaru2/15/2017, 8:08:10 AM1 votes

pick things that can't be hard countered. Play Karthus top, last hit with q's farm by turret, then start farming kills with your ult.

Quepha2/15/2017, 8:29:01 AM1 votes

Teemo v. Shen isn't even that hard of a counter... If that Olaf ganked for you he should have been able to get free kills left and right.