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The term, 'counter-play'.

NONCEHUNTERS··12 votes·777 views

Random rant that you don't need to care about inc.

I mourn the days before this idiotic phrase was ever coined. While it may have had some legitimate usage at its birth, it feels like it's now just become a scapegoat for bad play, or those who specifically dislike the champion/mechanic at hand.

"Riven has no counterplay (insert generic passage about laning strength here)..." - Yes she does, it's called not feeding her in lane (arguably her strongest part of a game); just as you wouldn't try to all-in a Pantheon at level 3 and expect to win it.

"Annie has no counterplay (insert generic flash-tibbers comment here)..." - Yes she does, even with Distortion and Summoner's Insight, it's still an over 2 minute cooldown. If you don't accommodate the extended range and get hit by it as a carry you've missed the counterplay opportunity; good job.

"Nidalee has no counterplay (many Hiroshima spears from fog, much damage)..." - Hard engage on her. Considering the only viable Junglers right now are all perfectly capable of hard engaging, this shouldn't be an issue. Pick Vi, press R and either 3 hit her with a full tank build + Tri-force, or zone her so far out of a fight that her already mediocre teamfight potential is reduced to nothingness.

"Fizz has no counterplay (trollpole2stronk, such mobility, wow)..." - I fucking hate the fish, but it's not like he isn't subject to getting exploded out of his E (just as he should be). If he's made it to your backline in a proper teamfight, you've once again, missed the counterplay opportunity.

The list is endless. The very notion that Veigar was left so crippled that he only had 2 out of his 4 skills (couldn't reliably land E, and by extension of that his W) for any length of time (let alone how long it was) under this concept of 'counterplay' counfounds me. Thankfully he's in a better spot now, but the fact remains that if a champions job is to punish somebody who's out of position and 100-0 them, he/she should be able to do that without being called "oppressive" by the people who are incapable of dealing with that style of play. This isn't Tumblr, a champion isn't "oppressive", they might be anti-fun, sure, but oppressive is just comical.

The possibly only real legitimate complaints about counterplay I've seen in a long time were about Katarina, and even then they were a long shot. With the mass homogenisation of mid lane, and the likes of Talon, Kassadin (although he could still interrupt her), and LeBlanc losing their silences, it's only natural that a champion otherwise particularly weak to that form of CC could see a surge in popularity and success.

Nothing about the general presence of tanks and other CC heavy champions coming out of the support role losing anything there though, they were still perfectly capable of stopping a Katarina. Even so, her average laning phase got nerfed and her early game weakened, to appease the mindless hordes of complaining, then the drivel mostly went on its merry way. Nothing really changed with Katarina. She can still go bot lane at level 6, pick up a double kill with some coordination, and snowball out of control along with the game; and you know what? That's okay.

The way some people use this term, it makes me wonder how the game will end up if it's actually listened to. Every skill is going to end up as a skillshot, all reward for playing well will be gone, and the punishment for poor play abolished.

Counterplay doesn't mean having the right to win a fight that you had no business winning when their Riven was 15/0/0 at 20 minutes, or their Annie just flash-beared your ADC, APC and Support all huddled together at the same time 2 centimetres behind your frontline. Winning that fight is called outplaying. There's a difference.

/Rant off, kek.

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7 Comments

Lugg4 votes

I know I will get flamed for this, but the truth needs to be told.

I always hear people say "They are only OP when they get fed". The problem is that they get fed BECAUSE they are OP. Riven is VERY strong in lane. With her innate kit, she is a nightmare to deal with in lane for 95% of the champs in the game. That is why she gets fed and snowballs into a nightmare. This is not good counterplay when the vast majority of champs in the game can't really do anything to her but die or get no CS.

Annie can be counterplayed if you take cleanse or build QSS (hopefully she isn't up 10 kills by the time you can afford it) to be able to get away from her or CC her before you are dead and hopefully turn it around. But the burst is pretty hard to survive for most of her opponents.

Nidalee probably has the strongest ability in the game. The damn spear. Yes, it is slow moving compared to most projectiles. However, once you consider that with CDR she can throw one every 5-6 seconds and that it will literally take half your health when it hits if you aren't a tank. The law of averages states that she is eventually going to hit you. It does more damage than 75% of the ults in the game and is on a 6 second CD. So if you think this is fair, then let's make Veiger's ult into a skillshot able to fire every 6 seconds and see how people like that. Let's not even mention the fact that Nidalee is most often played in the jungle so you don't even see the damn spear coming from the fog in time to dodge it. Your idea of counterplay was to "hard engage on her". Good luck with that considering she is one of the top 3 most mobile champs in the game so she can easily escape you or easily chase you down after the damn spear.

Fizz. Ah, good ole Fizz. The champion whose weakness is a weak early game. Too bad all Fizz has to do is start flask and potions and his early game is quite safe until he gets a couple ranks into his E and then he simply laughs at all your attempts to counterplay him the rest of the game.

I was all for the nerf on Veiger's stun. There was almost zero counterplay to it and I'm glad Riot did it. However, they didn't compensate him enough to make up for that HUGE loss in his kit. He still needs a small buff to even him out. I just don't understand why this philosophy isn't implemented on all the other cancer champions and abilities in the game.

Counterplay is a very good thing. Every champion in the game should have a decent chance to win against any other champ, even hard counters (it's just that your skill level will have to be significantly above your opponents). This makes strategy from Champ select to the end of the game just as important as mechanics. This makes the game more fun. I had a game last week where I was able to outplay a Zed with a Bard. It was awesome using everything in my kit to harass him, wall hop, heal, and stay alive until a teammate was able to get to me and kill him off before he finished me. This is what we should want.

If people would open their minds to this concept, the game would be much more fun for all. End of counter-rant.

NONCEHUNTERS3 votes

{quoted} snip

I'm surprised I'm actually getting amiable responses considering all I did was type out a rant and proofread a few times. Not going to call you wrong, every game is different, but personally I'd have to say:

The "OP when they get fed" argument is backwards, I'd agree. Never thought that was a legitimate complaint either, myself.

Regarding Riven. She was designed to be strong in lane. Alot of her inspiration was drawn from Marth's portrayal in SSBM (Super Smash Brothers Melee), a zoning, spacing reliant character who can quickly punish and juggle you if you don't approach him correctly. Riven isn't any different. This isn't a game of 1v1, as much as some soloq'ers would lead to believe. If a champion is repeatedly zoning you to your tower, that's when you call for your jungler. If your jungler doesn't capitalise on an overaggressive laner, that's the fault of the player, not the game design.

Losing cs is perfectly acceptable, that's being countered and/or outplayed (and nothing to be flamed about). I'd rather a top laner who lost their tower and be 50 cs down, than one who's equal on cs and still just about has their tower because they flung themselves at Riven and gave up 3 kills in the early game to do so. I honestly think that anyone with a good head on their shoulders would do the same. Unfortunately, this mentality is lost on any soloq I've seen, so I guess there aren't many people queuing with good heads.

There is no excuse for feeding in lane. Don't get me wrong, Platinum isn't any better, but the amount of senseless feeding I saw in Gold, especially in top, where somebody would have a legitimate opportunity to 1v1, mess it up (that's fine, everybody makes mistakes), but then continually attempt to fight the enemy laner despite the fact that they just forfeited an early lead, truly confounded me. If you're Shen (idk), and you nearly kill Riven at level 2, but she just manages to outplay you and you die. That's fine, that's human. Don't go back and try to fight her again at level 3, that's idiocy. This is exacerbated by laning powerhouses such as Riven, Pantheon, dare I say even Urgot; who will take the slightest advantage and then proceed to shit burning fury all over you if you don't adjust your play accordingly.

If I were you, I wouldn't just buy a QSS or Cleanse against Annie and expect it to see you through if you're a carry. You're much better off going for a Banshees Veil as it utterly destroys any nuke potential she has against the target, forcing her to blow a Q (which can do upwards of 700-800 damage lategame) to pop it, a stun if she hadn't prepared properly, and a whole lot of time since if she immediately continues the combo, her Bear or W will hit first, eating the Banshees instead. It's complete and utter aids to deal with from Annie's POV. If you go for the Cleanse route, she'll still oneshot you. Save that for champions where the CC matters; like Malzahar, or Ahri.

Nidalee is a tougher one to answer. She isn't overpowered. She's anti-fun. The invisible spears are a longstanding issue, and incredibly fucking frustrating to play against (srsly fix that shit), but let's not forget that they aren't intended to be invisible, as incompetent as Riot are. There's always going to be an issue with the likes of Nidalee and Blitzcrank, the "miss all but one" logic where as soon as one good spear/grab lands, the results can be catastrophic. It's hard to balance in the traditional sense, but that's not to say it has no place in the game, it adds variety.

Making Veigar's ult spear range is a terrible comparison considering it can technically oneshot an APC with 0 of Veigar's AP behind it, and his kit is balanced around being short ranged and vulnerable to exploding with zero mobility.

Don't try and tell me you can't engage on Nidalee. Her spears are long ranged, but they aren't that long ranged. A few champions of note would be Vi (always fotm), Sejuani (fotm for a while) and Leona. Not to mention that pretty much any champion with engage potential has the means to delete Nidalee with help from summoner 4. Is Flash justification for her safety? Yes, probably. It's so widespread that everybody takes it, we might as well use it as a means for neutralising her just as people use Flash bear as a means to claim Annie is overpowered.

Fizz, Fizz... I fucking detest the Flask Pots start on any champion in any lane, but it definitely sees no better use than on the likes of Fizz and Kassadin. I find it degenerate that they would cap potions to 5 whilst simultaneously allowing you to start with what is effectively 9. I think it needs to be removed from the game, but that's just me. Unfortunately you can't shut him down early very easily due to this, and if he gets a few kills from roaming early he can snowball a team into submission, but he's far from invincible.

Unless he's exceedingly fed (you did it wrong and deserve to have to deal with him), he won't be able to kill somebody with a Lichbane Q, meaning at some point his E is going to have to be used offensively, assuming this isn't a 1v1 in Narnia where the enemy team won't be around to support his target, in which case (again) you did it wrong.

Trollpole is infuriating, and his mobility makes for dribble-proof comebacks in most soloq games where coordination and team focus is far from at its prime. Next time you come against a Fizz though, depending on your champion. Wait for him to kill himself by using E offensively, then actually kill him.

There was zero justification for nerfing Veigar. There, I said it. Zero. The fact that champions like Vi, Kassadin, Yasuo, Diana, Akali (not calling ANY of these overpowered, remember) are allowed to run around on a daily basis with huge point and click damage, ludicrous mobility within the mobility creep meta, non skillshot CC (again, I'm not advocating that shit needs to be made into skillshots, but you get the idea) and innate tankiness built into some of their kits? Yet Veigar wasn't allowed a hard to hit, mediocre at best ranged stun, that still wasn't long enough to reliably combo off of? **Let's not forget, Merc treads actually meant the target could get out of his stun, and simply walk away from the area before his W would even land. **

This isn't even an Annie stun, where a well placed one combined with Flash could stun an entire team. This, for all intensive purposes was a glorified single target "please wait whilst I throw my ult at you". His cooldowns were so extortionately long that oftentimes he'd only see one combo before he literally just sat around as living bait in a teamfight.

It really does beg the question, if being able to let your frontline go in first and disrupt, as per their job, is too difficult a concept to grasp, where are we headed? You mention that you're all for counterpicks, yet not so hard to the point where they're unwinnable, and yes, I agree, I want that too!

But how can anything be a counterpick when slowly every champion, every outlier immediately gets twatted by the nerf bat because they've become the new fotm to complain about on GD and people simply are unable to, or don't want to, approach them differently to another.

Lugg2 votes

I agree with the losing CS and not feeding against Riven, that is the best option. But that is exactly why she needs nerfing or rework, you are still far behind after the laning phase.

I feel your pain on the feeding issue. I can't go 4 games without having some guy who dies, and then keeps playing like things are still even. They then proceed to die 4-5 more times and you are pretty much screwed at that point unless you were able to pull off the same thing in your lane. I often will have games where I go over 25 minutes before my first death.

I agree with the Banshees against Annie, it just takes time to farm enough to get it and you are so vulnerable until then.

I mostly agree with your comments on Nid, but it boils down to a huge problem in the game. You shouldn't give high mobility champs high damage unless they have a HUGE weakness that can be exploited. That just makes them low risk/high reward which is the ultimate anti-fun. Perfect examples of this have been Riven, LB, Zed, Lee Sin, Fizz, etc. With his ward hopping, I am honestly amazed that Lee Sin EVER dies.

League is a team game but you have to balance between having champion 1v1s and teamwork. Nothing is more frustrating than champions that basically require teamwork to take down when your team isn't on the same page. That makes it almost impossible for you to overcome by yourself regardless of your individual skill level.

Great discussion.

OperationDEEZ11 votes

This bronzie says you're right.

LaowPing1 votes

People confused counter play with annoyance. Fizz is annoying as fuck. I'm we can agree with this. We people lose to him because they say it's due to counter play. The reality is that they have to play differently against a Fizz then they would have to against other champions. People aren't used to adjusting their play-styles. When the usual doesn't work, they assume it's due to lack of counter play. Everyone has counter play. Even before Kalista was nerfed, she had counter-play (I still have to tell some of my friends she is affected by slows).

Troy2426211 votes

Hence the usage of the word "Insufficient."

Sachabot1 votes

Perish the thought that I should have to use my brain for something.

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