Boards›Gameplay

Before declaring a champion healthy/unhealthy, ask yourself these questions...

Mira Arya Enthe··23 votes·2,762 views

Too many people confuse design health with balance. For example, a totally broken champion in terms of balance who is OP as hell, but can be brought in line through tuning some cooldowns or stats, is not unhealthy, they are just overtuned. And of course it goes the other way as well. So I looked over Riot's posts regarding unhealthy/healthy champions over the years and these are the questions I feel you should ask yourself before stating a champion is healthy/unhealthy. Of course, these questions only work if you are willing to be UNBIASED and OPEN MINDED in your answers.

01: Does this champion's kit allow for enemies to defeat them through having more skill, strategy and build knowledge? Yes? +1 for Healthy, no? -1 for unhealthy.

02: Does this champion's kit allow them to defeat enemies though having more skill, strategy and build knowledge? Yes? +1 for Healthy, no? -1 for unhealthy.

03: Can this champion's kit stay at a mostly neutral balance point through minor number/mechanic tuning by Riot? Yes? +1 for Healthy, no? -1 for unhealthy.

04: Is this champion's kit/playstyle entirely defeated by a single item/stat that enemies can easily acquire? No? +1 for Healthy, yes? -1 for unhealthy.

05: Is this champion rewarded for being ahead but still able to lose through mistakes or superior enemy play? Yes? +1 for Healthy, no? -1 for unhealthy.

06: Is this champion punished for being behind but still able to recover through enemy mistakes or superior play? Yes? +1 for Healthy, no? -1 for unhealthy.

07: Does this champion have more than one linear strategy/option for team fighting and defeating enemies? Yes? +1 for Healthy, no? -1 for unhealthy.

08: Does this champion have more than one linear strategy/option for enemies to defeat them in team fights and skirmishes? Yes? +1 for Healthy, no? -1 for unhealthy.

09: Does this champion's kit allow for them to interact with enemies and be interacted with by enemies during laning phase, teamfights and skirmishes? Yes? +1 for Healthy, no? -1 for unhealthy.

10: Does this champion succeed at fulfilling player fantasy to a reasonable extent regarding their lore, thematic and intended gameplay style? Yes? +1 for Healthy, no? -1 for unhealthy.

11: Does this champion's base kit design crowd out most other options for the same class/role regardless of tuning? No? +1 for Healthy, yes? -1 for unhealthy.

If a champion is scoring +1 on a most/all of these, like it or not they are likely a healthy design and can be brought in line through tuning in the forms of minor buffs, nerfs or adjustments.

If a champion is scoring -1 on a most/all of these, like it or not they are likely an unhealthy design and need large adjustments to their kit or a possible rework.

90 Comments

Malicious Metal17 votes

Mordekaiser <- This guy doesn't like this list.

Mira Arya Enthe7 votes

Sadly neither does Shyvana

She succeeds on a few fronts but fails badly on things like interaction, being linear and being able to recover when behind. She lacks the tools to succeed on those fronts.

Malicious Metal6 votes

Most Juggernauts have these problems, sadly.

Yorick does not but he lacks the AoE threat most other Juggernauts pose.

Mira Arya Enthe4 votes

I think Darius and Illoai are closer to ideal. Not perfect, nothing is. But closer.

Big Lincoln2 votes

Darius is perfect

only problem I have is W being a boring attack reset, why is this mechanic on almost every single fighter

Mira Arya Enthe6 votes

I find attack resets fun.

Big Lincoln5 votes

they're too common. the only fighters I can think of that don't have one are Volibear and Olaf.

would rather see more interesting spells, it's such a tired mechanic. half the reason I think Camille was a massive waste of potential

XeroKimo4 votes

I'm pretty sure Voli's Q counts as an auto reset

DunkinNoobs2 votes

It does, but how often do you get to use it that way? Same with Garen Q, for that matter.

Sire Hippington2 votes

actually pretty often in a mele vs melee matchup

Malicious Metal4 votes

Let's hope Morde is going to be the Ideal post VGU :^)

vOmvbrawfU10 votes

Instructions not clear. Organ stuck in toaster.

Glory ln Death1 votes

Which organ?

SilverSquid4 votes

Probably I can EnlighteN you about what it IS.

Glory ln Death2 votes

Hmmmm... it's a pipe organ, isn't it!

Dang big toaster you got there...

SilverSquid3 votes

Would I Ever Not Explain Riddles?

Do I Constantly Kill

Jokes?

vOmvbrawfU1 votes

The one that I can't put cuz rito will remove my comment.

DunkinNoobs7 votes

Damn, Yasuo gets a clean 11 points, at least in higher elo. Hell, the only one that's even questionable is number 1, and only in his absolute most dominant matchups.

Now here come the downvotes and rageposts telling me how obviously wrong I am and how unbearably oppressive Yasuo is.

Hell, Ahri gets a clean 11 points without question; I wonder why Riot lets her be good for so long.

Mira Arya Enthe2 votes

I agree, but well.. people hate anything mobile or bursty in this game.

DunkinNoobs5 votes

That's something a lot of people who play this game will never understand: the more tools you give a champion, the more counterplay you can build into their kit. The inverse is also true: the less tools a champ has, the less counterplay you can give them. Garen is probably the prime example of the latter: extremely straightforward and binary kit and extremely low counterplay when in favorable situations. On the flip side, Ekko has an absurdly overloaded kit but has large amounts of counterplay built into every part of it, save perhaps his E. Tank Ekko was so broken precisely because it allowed Ekko to outright ignore his intended counterplay and simply brute force people to death. Tank Yasuo was similar and nipped in the bud almost immediately. Now if they'd only hurry up and fix the cancer that is Bruiser Rengar.

Mira Arya Enthe2 votes

I like you, you are an intelligent and reasonable fellow. I have now met 4 Darius related people who are cool on the boards, and 1 asshole. Uhm... you are not the asshole.

TyrekGoldenspear5 votes

Thank you!

Now leave my Raka alone you healer haters. ;_;

50000000000000002 votes

Soraka fails a lot of those questions though, no? She can only do healing with occasional silence/snare, so she's pretty linear. When playing against her you need to focus her first, so that's also fairly linear. She's countered by Grievous Wound items, since even when it's removed with her Wish, it can be easily reapplied.

manbearswine2 votes

{quoted}

Soraka fails a lot of those questions though, no? She can only do healing with occasional silence/snare, so she's pretty linear. When playing against her you need to focus her first, so that's also fairly linear. She's countered by Grievous Wound items, since even when it's removed with her Wish, it can be easily reapplied.

Her appearance and lore don't really fit her gameplay either.

They need to give her a VU and change her into a walking cancerous tumor.

50000000000000001 votes

If that happens she needs to have one of the highest HP regen in the game

manbearswine1 votes

{quoted}

If that happens she needs to have one of the highest HP regen in the game

Well, her q is technically siphoning hp from her enemies to give to herself, so if she lands it she has very high hp regen, and as you know cancer needs a host, it's not really self sustaining on its own, it needs to leech off of something.

It checks out really.

50000000000000001 votes

And it slows the enemies too! You're right, it makes sense. You know what would make more sense? Make her Q a DoT, just like how her heal is HoT. Also, it has a chance to just keep going until their host dies, which then Soraka also dies.

Gameplay/theme cohesion ftw!

manbearswine2 votes

I don't really agree with all of these points

[{quoted}](name=Mira Arya Enthe,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=5L5t9ud5,comment-id=,timestamp=2017-01-30T18:21:04.617+0000)

01: Does this champion&#039;s kit allow for enemies to defeat them through having more skill, strategy and build knowledge? Yes? +1 for Healthy, no? -1 for unhealthy.

02: Does this champion&#039;s kit allow them to defeat enemies though having more skill, strategy and build knowledge? Yes? +1 for Healthy, no? -1 for unhealthy.

Don't all champions have this though? You see better players beat worse players on right about anything vs anything. (I don't nessecrily disagree, as I think that I understand what you intend to mean with it and agree with it, but it's not really stated that way)

03: Can this champion&#039;s kit stay at a mostly neutral balance point through minor number/mechanic tuning by Riot? Yes? +1 for Healthy, no? -1 for unhealthy.

I agree with this one.

04: Is this champion&#039;s kit/playstyle entirely defeated by a single item/stat that enemies can easily acquire? No? +1 for Healthy, yes? -1 for unhealthy.

Thing about this one, often that item is just poorly designed(Looking at you Qss), not the champion.

05: Is this champion rewarded for being ahead but still able to lose through mistakes or superior enemy play? Yes? +1 for Healthy, no? -1 for unhealthy.

06: Is this champion punished for being behind but still able to recover through enemy mistakes or superior play? Yes? +1 for Healthy, no? -1 for unhealthy.

So isn't too feat or famine? Seems about right.

07: Does this champion have more than one linear strategy/option for team fighting and defeating enemies? Yes? +1 for Healthy, no? -1 for unhealthy.

08: Does this champion have more than one linear strategy/option for enemies to defeat them in team fights and skirmishes? Yes? +1 for Healthy, no? -1 for unhealthy.

A lot of champions who are considered healthy are actually very one dimensional, take jinx for example: she just teamfights and when she wins these fights she takes down towers, her weaknesses are also one dimensional(kill the immobile squishy),I wouldn't call her unhealthy, especially compared to things like say vayne, who is more versatile(she can teamfight, she is also a good splitpusher, and is fine with looking for solo picks as well), things like sejuani or amumu fall into this category as well(strict team fighters), I wouldn't call them unhealthy either.

09: Does this champion&#039;s kit allow for them to interact with enemies and be interacted with by enemies during laning phase, teamfights and skirmishes? Yes? +1 for Healthy, no? -1 for unhealthy.

I'm fine with this one too.

10: Does this champion succeed at fulfilling player fantasy to a reasonable extent regarding their lore, thematic and intended gameplay style? Yes? +1 for Healthy, no? -1 for unhealthy.

Can't even slightly agree with this one, health is all about gameplay, nothing else lore, visuals and theme won't make a champion feel bad to play against, and plenty of people care little for them to begin with, meaning they won't feel bad playing them either, it's missed potential, but it's not unhealthy.

11: Does this champion&#039;s base kit design crowd out most other options for the same class/role regardless of tuning? No? +1 for Healthy, yes? -1 for unhealthy.

I don't think anyone can crowd out others regardless of tuning, hit numbers hard enough and anything can become irrelevant. Also at this point designs overlap so hard that most champions tend to crowd out most champions when strong(hence the "variety" in competitive play), it does seem like something I would consider unhealthy in the past, but right now so many champions work this way that I'm not sure how this would apply.(for example when thresh was released I considered him unhealthy exactly due to how heavy his kit was and how it made him overshadow most supports when strong, then they released things like braum,kench and bard, who are equally overloaded out of their ass and now thresh doesn't seem to bad anymore)

These are my thought on these criteria, anyway.

My Waifu Vanilla1 votes

The 1st one (imo) is more along the lines of match-up outweighing skill. When Gnar was at his prime it didn't really matter how good you were at the game if you were an immobile melee top lane since you simply would never win the match up against a competent Gnar (especially after a Phage effect and Mallet). The same can be said for when Darius was first buffed after his rework (the world's patch where he was near 100% pick ban). It didn't matter how good you were at the game when Darius had ZERO bad match ups besides Gnar due to his kit and numbers.

manbearswine1 votes

[{quoted}](name=My Waifu Chocola,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=5L5t9ud5,comment-id=000d0000,timestamp=2017-01-31T19:39:50.682+0000)

The 1st one (imo) is more along the lines of match-up outweighing skill. When Gnar was at his prime it didn't really matter how good you were at the game if you were an immobile melee top lane since you simply would never win the match up against a competent Gnar (especially after a Phage effect and Mallet). The same can be said for when Darius was first buffed after his rework (the world's patch where he was near 100% pick ban). It didn't matter how good you were at the game when Darius had ZERO bad match ups besides Gnar due to his kit and numbers.

It's funny that you are using those examples, as those were simply cases of champions being overpowered, nothing meaningful changed about the kits of either darius nor gnar since then, aside from numbers that is.

My Waifu Vanilla1 votes

And Gnar by design destroys immobile melee match ups (why he can't be buffed since then he crowds out damn near every tank) and Darius STILL is rather linear in his match ups. Darius doesn't "outplay" the enemy laner he just stat sticks his way through almost every match up with his healing and absurd base stats. The only "outplay" Darius has is hitting blade hilts and stopping dashes with E. Everything else is relying on your opponent to walk up and melee you to death like an idiot since you win poor engages on the enemy's part.

manbearswine1 votes

[{quoted}](name=My Waifu Chocola,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=5L5t9ud5,comment-id=000d000000000000,timestamp=2017-02-01T02:38:02.156+0000)

And Gnar by design destroys immobile melee match ups

I guess that's a fair statement, but it doesn't have too much with him being overpowered or not, which you sorta focused on in your example.

(why he can't be buffed since then he crowds out damn near every tank)

Eh, riot doesn't really work that way, in fact he was pretty dominant not long ago and didn't get very meaningful nerfs for it either. They mostly rely on his skillcap tanking this behavior, which it does...in the lower elos.

and Darius STILL is rather linear in his match ups. Darius doesn't "outplay" the enemy laner he just stat sticks his way through almost every match up with his healing and absurd base stats. The only "outplay" Darius has is hitting blade hilts and stopping dashes with E. Everything else is relying on your opponent to walk up and melee you to death like an idiot since you win poor engages on the enemy's part.

Well...not exactly. Darius's design is only a problem when darius is thrown against another darius type champion(immobile melee), at which point the one with the higher numbers wins. As long as you throw him against a champion with more depth, there's outplay potential via dancing around his e range+avoiding his q(or getting hit by his hilt instead), and for darius of course hitting his e and q.

I would say gnar's design is moronic, he has this amazing lategame, where he has the damage of a brusier+more cc than a tank, while being a bully in his laning phase, his only meaningful drawback is that he gets shat on in certain matchups, which imo is poor design. Darius however is fine as long as there aren't too many darius type champions in the game, which there aren't.

Doozku1 votes

Gameplay affects thematic. When you play Yasuo, you feel like a samurai. When you play Fiora, you feel like a duelist. When you play as Amumu, you don't really feel like your playing as a mummy, more as like some weird tanky thing.

manbearswine1 votes

{quoted}

Gameplay affects thematic. When you play Yasuo, you feel like a samurai. When you play Fiora, you feel like a duelist. When you play as Amumu, you don't really feel like your playing as a mummy, more as like some weird tanky thing.

Well amumu isn't about being a mummy, he's some sad mummy(also a kid?), he seems to pass that off decently.

Anyway it doesn't matter, how many times have you seen people say a certain champ is cancer because he is ugly, or doesn't fit his theme? Never. Game health and lore/theme have absolutely nothing to do with each other, game health is all about gameplay, sure visuals+theme are important, I'm not saying they aren't, but they don't make champions obnoxious to play against(Lux's laugh excepted).

Doozku1 votes

Game health isn't only about how to play against the champion. It's also about how fun it is to play the champion. Example: corki is really strong right now, but is very rarely played because he is not an interesting champion, nor does he feel like a bomber-airplane type of character.

manbearswine1 votes

{quoted}

Game health isn't only about how to play against the champion.

Really isn't for the most part.

It's also about how fun it is to play the champion.

Thing is that how fun a champion is to play is much more subjective and vague than how unfun a champion is to play against, it's not entirely arbitrary, but it's pretty close to that.

Example: corki is really strong right now, but is very rarely played because he is not an interesting champion,

If you're talking about the winrate spike, then you are getting VERY ahead of yourself, the spike is very new, people haven't been given much time to react to it, corki has been very popular previously when he was strong, so this is just senseless.

nor does he feel like a bomber-airplane type of character.

That's not really what he's about, he's just a crazy redneck riding a weird hextech machine, kinda similar to kled's identity(but lizard instead of machine), he is also more popular than kled.

I mean take ahri for example: her kit is actually pretty lame(a bunch of mobility, some aoe damage, some single target damage, some skillshot cc), nothing really interesting about it, what makes her popular(aside from her strength in the cases where she is strong) is her fanservice(same as sona), but that doesn't make her design amazing(mind you I'm not saying it's bad, it's just meh and all over the place), you could easily make most champions more popular by making them more fan servicey(Hell, Imagine what if we turned yasuo into a female wind samurai, his pickrate would implode and crash the game), but there's plenty of those already, so riot is now going into more niche appeals(velkoz being an obvious example of that, also stated by riot), and it's fine that their identity appeal to a smaller audience, hell far as I can remember, none of the champion I've played ever spoke to me thematically, it was always about the kit, maybe to a lesser extent the visuals not being shit, but that's not lore/theme either.

Big Lincoln1 votes

so.... rework sejuani

Mira Arya Enthe1 votes

Maybe, maybe not. I haven't analyzed her deeply. This list is just the 11 biggest things mentioned by Riot and top tier players in terms of champion health.

Angry Monster1 votes

link to the riot part?

Mira Arya Enthe1 votes

So I looked over Riot's posts regarding unhealthy/healthy champions over the years

These are commonalities in many of Riot's posts. Do you not read patch notes and rework pages?

Angry Monster2 votes

yeah and they change based on the weather and time of day. If you look hard enough you can find contradictions on anything produced by riot.

I was hoping for a design blog or something, not this is what i gathered by my experience. Like i said in my other post the fact you confuse outplay ability with the enemy screwing up is a problem. I know a lot of newer Rioters have this same problem and we get kits like yasou and ekko cause of it. I was really curious which Rioter took you on this questionable path.

Mira Arya Enthe2 votes

No, I said does the enemy have the ability to beat your through superior skill, strategy and build.

And, rewarded for being ahead but still able to lose if you make mistakes OR the enemy is better. Those are both options. But sometimes if you are ahead and playing perfectly, you SHOULD win. If you are ahead, and don't make mistakes, and the enemy does. You should win.

AmazoX1 votes

Zed item 3070

[{quoted}](name=Mira Arya Enthe,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=5L5t9ud5,comment-id=,timestamp=2017-01-30T18:21:04.617+0000)

Too many people confuse design health with balance. For example, a totally broken champion in terms of balance who is OP as hell, but can be brought in line through tuning some cooldowns or stats, is not unhealthy, they are just overtuned. And of course it goes the other way as well. So I looked over Riot&#039;s posts regarding unhealthy/healthy champions over the years and these are the questions I feel you should ask yourself before stating a champion is healthy/unhealthy. Of course, these questions only work if you are willing to be UNBIASED and OPEN MINDED in your answers.

04: Is this champion&#039;s kit/playstyle entirely defeated by a single item/stat that enemies can easily acquire? No? +1 for Healthy, yes? -1 for unhealthy.

Nymzo3 votes

Do you live in a cave or something? Quicksilver slash cannot cleanse Zed's ult now.

AmazoX3 votes

Judgemental much are ya mate? item 3157

Nymzo1 votes

oops, mb

AmazoX1 votes

[slayer-pantheon-thumbs]

I will obliviate2 votes

and what about AD champs? I main ADC... how the hell am I gonna live against zed? Woops... I forgot... ADCs aren't supposed to survive this season...

AmazoX2 votes

Not this again, This has been explained for the past 3 seasons.

My Waifu Vanilla1 votes

Not taking 3 shurikens to the face is a start. Zed has almost zero kill potential if he doesn't land AT LEAST 2 shurikens on the ult (unless he is super ahead). Zed has arguably the most counterplay out of all of the "assassins" now because there is more interaction than "don't get hit by a single LeBlanc chain" or "don't be within a 5 mile radius of Rengar or Kha'zix". If anything you can almost always flash to dodge his shurikens since they are extremely predictable (will come out after he ults on top of you) whereas flash will normally never save you from someone like LeBlanc or Kha since even if you DO flash they didn't burn anything meaningful and can just all in you again in less than 10 seconds.

More from Gameplay

3 Refunds per season, upvote if you want 3 refunds per season.
Gameplay764 comments
7,167
votes
3 Refunds per season, upvote if you want 3 refunds per season.
Gameplay156 comments
3,510
votes
UPVOTE FOR URF
Gameplay606 comments
2,440
votes
Yes plz.
Gameplay456 comments
1,721
votes
3 Refunds per season, up vote if you want 3 refunds per season.
Gameplay114 comments
1,716
votes
When is ANYONE at riot going to address the awful new player experience?
Gameplay634 comments
1,383
votes

More by Mira Arya Enthe

People who think Voice Coms will improve League
Gameplay354 comments
329
votes
Why Jhin should be gutted
Memes & Games73 comments
305
votes
Has anybody else just, ceased getting excited for new champions?
Gameplay435 comments
244
votes
"Counterplay"
Gameplay218 comments
232
votes
Some people actually enjoy simple kits...
Gameplay289 comments
229
votes
I genuinely feel bad for any nice people who main...
Gameplay414 comments
188
votes