Riot, how about Medivac ult?
Using it is incredibly fun and does require some planning to use well since if you plan it poorly, you can be setting your and your entire team to be rolled over (lots of counterplay) OR you splinter your team and waste the spell. If you think HotS is stupid, then Pitlord ult. Tahm Kench's ult is a less powerful version of Io's tbh. Comparing Io's to Pitlord's just isn't feasible.
Now, for the rest of you knuckle dragging, low forehead sloping neanderthals who have no idea what the hell I'm talking about:
The ult functions as such:
You cannot act for a long period of time but can be killed. Allies can interact with you, which ccs them and also allows them to be killed. If you're still alive after X amount of seconds, you can reactivate the spell to mass teleport virtually anywhere on the map from anywhere on the map.
Ryze's ult does not have nearly the range to accomplish the niche. That is 3k. I'm thinking somewhere between 7k and 9k range. The idea is that if you are pounding on the enemy's bottom inhibitor and doing a base race but starting to lose, the guy can cast the ult and all 5 of you can be at your own inhibitor to do a 5v5 teamfight within 4-6 seconds. If that's too extreme of a range, then this ult should be able to allow you to kill baron and then defend your nexus within 4-6 seconds lag time as well.
Further potential counterplay measures:
- You team is slowed by 25%-75% for 3 seconds after exiting the Medivac or portal.
- You team take 10-20% more damage from all sources
- You team has reduced vision range upon landing
- You team is pacified for 1 second upon landing
- The beacon at which you land can be killed by enemy players, cancelling the ult completely
- Global taunt to signal that you're Medivacing
- The beacon cannot be hidden by the fog of war and will tell the enemy team exactly where you are heading and where the beacon is to be killed
- Players who have taken damage within the past 3-4 seconds cannot enter the portal/ship
- Taking non-minion damage could cancel the channel or at least delay it
- The cooldown has a static (not affect by cdr) cooldown of 300/270/240 seconds and CDR instead reduces the delay between cast and soonest take-off time
- The travel time of the ship/portal is not instant like in Ryze's case but has a delay of 1-2 seconds
- Killing the portal destination during travel time stuns all champions in the portal upon arrival for 1.5 seconds (harder to kill this portal than beacon pre-lift-off)
I personally like number 5, 6, 7, 10, 11 and 12 since it puts agency and pressure on the enemy team to REALLY screw you over while still being flexible and rewarding the player for pulling off a carefully planned ult.
I have been on both sides of the spear in both heroes' cases. It is incredibly fun to use and it honestly doesn't feel cheap to have it used against you (even though it looks like cheese heaven on paper) because there are satisfying ways to deal with the cast that REALLY fuck over the user and his team.
But I'm not a Rioter. What are you guys' thoughts? Do you think this kind of mass transport ult for responding to enemy maneuvers (not engage) could be workable and balanceable in League?