PSA: Please try a champion before you call them easy to play

A Liberal·Jan 25, 2016·18 votes·1,676 views

One of my pet peeves is when I play champions with moderate to high skill floors and get told "lol go find a real champ noob".

Like please, tell me more about how Katarina, LeBlanc, Nidalee, and Yasuo are champions that require zero skill.

I would take a guess and say half the people who get their jimmies rustled because im playing a "no skill champion" would feed to hell as any of these champions if they never tried them before.

So, next time you want to call someone out on playing a noob noskill character, at least make sure you've tried them before?

55 Comments

LuggJan 25, 20163 votes

I wouldn't say any of them (except possibly Kat since you only need to know the right time to ult) are easy to play. However, they are all easy to win with once you do master them. That is why they are all in the top 10 of toxic champs in the game.

SeargentAnusJan 25, 20164 votes

Good luck finding someone that knows how to play them lower than Diamond lol

LuggJan 25, 20161 votes

You don't even have to know how to use Kat, LB, and Nid to win in lower ELO. Kat is faceroll up to Plat, LB is super safe to play, and you just have to chuck spears with Nid.

SeargentAnusJan 25, 20162 votes

For some reason people don't understand that you can simply snowball your lane pre 6 as a mage vs an assassin. Most low elo assassins think they can farm pre 6 against something like Karthus Anivia or Velkoz . Most low elo mages don't understand what zoning is, so naturally they get screwed over.

LuggJan 25, 20161 votes

I completely agree with you. I play mainly mages mid and I don't have too much problems with assassins since I play smart and zone them off of me. But I have success when I do play assassins into mages since I know to snowball early.

TotalJerkJan 25, 20161 votes

I have the opposite experience against low elo assassins. They are so hungry for a snowball that they don't temper their aggression with proper judgement, leaving them wide open for me to ruthlessly punish them.

A LiberalJan 25, 20162 votes

Literally you are the exact type of person this thread was directed towards.

LuggJan 25, 20161 votes

Not really since I have played those champs and I know exactly how hard they can be. I have been playing since season 3 and I have a really good grasp of the game at this point.

AbyssphereJan 25, 20166 votes

{quoted}

I wouldn't say any of them (except possibly Kat since you only need to know the right time to ult) are easy to play. However, they are all easy to win with once you do master them. That is why they are all in the top 10 of toxic champs in the game.

Kat has a surprisingly large learning curve statistically, I think she gets a bad rep because she's particularly strong against people who are bad at the game and they're also the people who will shout the loudest about a champ being broken/easy/freelo etc. But I think people are unfair on her - consistently team fighting correctly as her does require a lot of understanding of what your champ and the enemy champions are capable of, as well as what cooldowns are up and down. And getting optimal use of resets is somewhat mechanically intensive in the sense that you have a -lot- of buttons to mash in a very short (possibly multiple very short) periods of time. You need quick fingers/reaction times to get the most out of Kat.

LuggJan 25, 20162 votes

Kat is in the same situation as Master Yi. They are way too strong in low ELO, but not really viable in high ELO. They both need reworks to be viable at all levels without being super OP at certain ones.

TehNACHOJan 26, 20161 votes

Actually, Yi's pretty solid in Platinum+ Elo.

6th highest win rate of the Junglers with the third highest playrate, and when compiling the rest of the data, champion.gg states him to be the second best Jungler in that range.

Katarina's pretty much meh though.

LuggJan 26, 20161 votes

I agree that Yi is good in the jungle at all tiers. I was referring to him laning though, I should have clarified that.

Yi jungle brings up a huge problem in league as a whole. Champs with weak early games (Yi, Jax, Fizz, Diana, etc) are absolute beasts as junglers since it's very hard to take advantage of their main weakness while they are jungling. That's why I like fo the jungle to be harder for champs like that. It slows them down enough that your team has a reasonable chance against them.

TehNACHOJan 26, 20161 votes

Or you could actually counter jungle them.

LuggJan 26, 20161 votes

I absolutely agree, but it seems there are very few junglers who are good at counter-jungling.

LatetotheRaceJan 25, 20163 votes

The only champion there that I found required any skill to dominate with was probably Yasuo. The timing was the only thing I personally had trouble with. As far as Lb and Kat go, button order, shunpo and whip back timing are the only difficult things about them. Nidalee I suppose has a hard spear throw, but if you learn to use your traps well, you won't need the spear to engage.

A LiberalJan 25, 20161 votes

Still, all of those things make it so that you have to learn them, indicating that some amount of skill is required.

For example, your probably going to do worse your first game as katarina as opposed to someone like annie or lux.

Slamurai JackJan 25, 20162 votes

Sure. Winning as Katarina is all about knowledge, not mechanical skill. Champions that require commitment to fight always have a steeper learning curve no matter how mechanically easy they are.

A LiberalJan 25, 20161 votes

Okay, I can conceed to that. Still not a easy no skill noob champ x.x

iamleburkJan 25, 20161 votes

Katarina does take some mechanical skill with her resets, once you go in it takes some skill to jump around getting off constant Q procs.

AquaWayfinderJan 25, 20162 votes

No champion is 'easy to play'. Some of the champions mentioned do require skill because you need to know when the right time is to go in with Kat since any CC will render her ult null and void. If you have no knockups on your team apart from yourself, you need to know what angles to throw Yasuo tornados. You need to be able to aim to some degree on Nidalee because your passive won't be applied, you won't get the boost for your jump range and you need to know how to survive when you jump in on a champion.

People deem champions 'easy' because the people who play them have played them enough to know what to do in certain situations, how to counter a difficult champion, when to go in and not when to go in. The only champ I'd classify as 'easy' is Master Yi because you could shut him down early and he would still be useful late game to the point where he one shots ADC's (every supports worst nightmare). #FreeloYi item 3070

A LiberalJan 25, 20161 votes

Personally I feel like a lot of champions are easy, but I dont think any champion is "no skill"

Also, generally speaking the lower the skill floor on a champion, the lower the skill cap.

Except teemo.

Fuck that guy.

Very Hard EngageJan 25, 20161 votes

ive played all of them, the only difficult one is nidalee, figuring out abilities combos etc. leblanc has a rotation, some wiggle room in "outplay" but learn it and you're golden.

kat and yasuo are literally just dive at the right time and aim in their general direction.

A LiberalJan 25, 20161 votes

Really? Personly I think nidalee is the easiest. Shes moderately safe and has a straightforward playstyle. Granted, I have 30k in her so I maaay be forgetting what I felt like to start off.

Kat has to time her dives perfectly and if caught by any amount of cc is useless, and yasuos kit is the most convoluted bullshit in this game. To be fair, ive only played him like twice, but everytime i see a yasuo get fed SOMEONE starts bitching.

LatetotheRaceJan 25, 20161 votes

" if caught by any amount of cc is useless" That is the weakness of assassins bud.

A LiberalJan 25, 20161 votes

Yes, but from my experience its especially devastating on katarina who has no escape if she doesnt kill something. Lb, yasuo, and to some extent nidalee all can escape if they dont assassinate their target, but if you fail a dive as katarina you're sol.

bobsenbobJan 25, 20161 votes

honestly, from those 4 champions, leblanc is probably easiest since she has so much mobility, nid is second easiest because you just land her spear and do 1 combo, also you have a ton of mobility as well, yasuo is pretty hard to properly play so I cringe every time someone on my team plays yasuo and proceeds to feed, kat is easy in lower elo but probably one of the hardest champs to play at higher elos

MiraweaveJan 25, 20161 votes

I literally played two games on Kat, took her into ranked, and got two back to back pentakills.

She's easy as fuck.

SwerzzJan 25, 20161 votes

I will call Annie an easy champ and i won't have to play a game to figure it out.

Tyrone LannisterJan 25, 20161 votes

Yasuo is one of the hardest to play "well" the amount of bad yasuos ive seen is pretty sad

Dominick DestineJan 25, 20161 votes

Having played Yasuo, Leb and Nidalee, I can tell you they require significantly less skill than someone like Syndra or Cassiopeia.

If you screw up badly with Yas/Leb/Nid, you have multiple methods of escape to bypass the punishment you could have otherwise received; This translates to a very large margin of error (aka Extremely low skill cap due to forgiving gameplay).

Comparatively speaking; If you are in a bad position or otherwise make a mistake as Syndra/Cassiopeia, you are very unlikely to survive (I.e. Very unforgiving gameplay/Very low margin of error). The two most important things in the game, that differentiate skilled from unskilled players are TIMING and POSITIONING, not spamming skillshots. The characters OP mentioned have a very flexible, very low skilled timing/positioning requirement and thus, are easy/low skilled champions.

(Lee Sin has the largest margin of error in the game, making him the easiest, lowest skill champion)

A LiberalJan 25, 20161 votes

Once mastered, but they still have high skill floors, which makes them ready to play hard to learn. I will agree there are a lot harder champions, such as cass and syndra that you mentioned. But all im saying is that they do take skill to be proficient in, as opposed to someone like annie, whom you can most likely do well on your first game as.

Disclaimer, im using Annie as an example here a lot, dont get my erong I love annie but anyone can agree that she is easy to learn.

SeenanJan 25, 20161 votes

[{quoted}](name=Dominick Destine,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=7j6FEO4F,comment-id=0009,timestamp=2016-01-25T17:58:05.821+0000)

Having played Yasuo, Leb and Nidalee, I can tell you they require significantly less skill than someone like Syndra or Cassiopeia.

If you screw up badly with Yas/Leb/Nid, you have multiple methods of escape to bypass the punishment you could have otherwise received; This translates to a very large margin of error (aka Extremely low skill cap due to forgiving gameplay).

Comparatively speaking; If you are in a bad position or otherwise make a mistake as Syndra/Cassiopeia, you are very unlikely to survive (I.e. Very unforgiving gameplay/Very low margin of error). The two most important things in the game, that differentiate skilled from unskilled players are TIMING and POSITIONING, not spamming skillshots. The characters OP mentioned have a very flexible, very low skilled timing/positioning requirement and thus, are easy/low skilled champions.

(Lee Sin has the largest margin of error in the game, making him the easiest, lowest skill champion)

Having played Yasuo more than you, Yasuo just dies if you fuck up. He's a squishy melee glass cannon. Any cc and a sinch of burst and he's dead. Whenever I pick Leona against Yasuo (Leona as the support obv)...I literally just have to E->Q him and he dies by anything. Especially if there's no creeps around. Nida is probably the hardest to play 'well'...since you have to be in melee range to actually delete someone, and going into melee range if you don't have even moderately tanky gear is pretty dangerous.

There's a thing called skill floor, and skill ceiling. I've also played Syndra more than Yasuo and even when I'm out of position, you still have the valiant Q->E combo to stun at least 3 of them and potentially delete one. And hell, you might even survive if you kite them appropriately as a Syndra should.

HellioningJan 25, 20161 votes

I did!

Played Zed. Won three games, lost one, got bored of him.

TotalJerkJan 25, 20161 votes

Katarina is heavily dependent on how bad her opponents are. I hate playing her because her play pattern revolves around capitalizing on a series of critically poor judgement calls from the enemy team. I have no problem calling Katarina easy on low elo. But in high elo where people aren't inclined to repeatedly give you windows to destroy them, she is one of the harder champions to play, period. It's comparable to Master Yi: he's braindead as fuck to play in Bronze, but once you climb the ranks very very few people can play him consistently.

VekknaJan 26, 20161 votes

Honestly, she's even one of the harder champs to play in low elo since playing a bruiser/tank effectively neutralizes Kat punishing you for bad judgment unless she's insanely ahead. And the only way you're getting insanely ahead is if you have a Rammus or Amumu feeding you kills in lane.

math crabJan 25, 20161 votes

leblanc is free

SH AzykanJan 25, 20161 votes

Leblanc actually has a decently low skill floor (took no time at all to pick up on her patterns). her skill cap really isn't the highest either.

Nidalee jungle is surprisingly more difficult since her nerfs...sadly they made lane nidalee worthless at the same time (RIP top Nid </3) but once you get used to her clears, and can do so healthily, she is basically chuck spears and sustain your team. enemy is low from a spear, R>W>E>Q to kill them. Lane Nid was a higher skill floor because of how her laning went, but jungle nid is not a high skill floor champ.

Yasuo's skill floor is lower than it should be because of how his windwall functions. But I do agree you should play him several times, if for no other reason than to understand how to deal with him.

Honestly harder champs to play are ones that are less safe, and weak early. Akali is harder than kat, even though she is point-click for most her damage. Because her laning phase is atrocious and her safety options are pretty lacking. She has to snowball just like Kat does, but it is harder for her to do so. Viktor and Orianna are probably the 2 hardest champs I play. Both are rather short range mages. yeah they have a lot of damage and skills are straight forward. but having to focus on positioning and using their skills correctly without getting blown up yourself is more challenging than playing Leblanc who is just "blow someone up, get back to safety" My kda on LB is way higher than on Viktor and Orianna, simply because she is ridiculously safe and her job is way more straightforward.

A LiberalJan 25, 20162 votes

Personally I feel like ahri took me the most games to feel like I was actually doing anything with.

Some others that I think are pretty hard to learn are cass, syndra, and bard. (In addition to ori)

Personally I don't think viktor is that hard. The biggest curve for me was aiming the laser, but other than that idk I picked him up pretty quick.

Also, rip lane nid.

I feel you ;-;

iamleburkJan 25, 20162 votes

Viktor needs to be good with positioning, like Orianna. He's kind of like a mid lane Miss Fortune now, absolutely god like with good positioning, very exploitable with anything less.

SH AzykanJan 26, 20161 votes

yeah syndra is definitely one of the harder ones, and I play her a lot. Honestly her skill floor is rather low though. Her skill cap is obscenely high, but she is rather safe and straightforward to learn.

Cassiopeia I feel isn't worth learning yet, I was gonna pick her up but she got reworked, and based on the community response I expected another rework to come in the future (looks like I was right on that). She just didn't have the draw because I felt like work I would put into her would have the potential to get wasted if/when she got changed again. (no comment on bard, I just play Thresh, Janna, Alistar, and Kennen when I support. I know how bard works, and that's all I really need)

I have always used Ahri as a kiting/utility mage, not as an assassin. So I have had the benefit of an easier yet still highly effective playstyle with her that actually got reinforced with the dfg removal and later AP item overhaul.

Viktors kit is easy once you learn the laser, but his positioning and choices you make can really make him tougher to use efficiently. Most people I see play him I feel would actually do way better with someone like Ziggs, or Lux. Because they are either playing to far back (where those 2 would be stronger) or too aggressively (where they wouldn't be quite as far up with those 2 and are safer by default). Viktor has that sweet spot that can be hard to get used to. Also item 3100 Viktor 4Life

VekknaJan 26, 20161 votes

Akali is more prone to ganks than Kat, but I wouldn't say her laning is worse. Akali's sustain is a pretty big deal, and the "bad laning" ends for Akali at 6 when she has really high chance of getting fed in lane. Kat's bad laning never ends, and there's no way to even build for sustain.

Leblanc is, in my opinion, one of the hardest champs to play well, particularly against skillshots. It's harder to get early kills with Ori, but it's not required on her. If somebody else is carrying on your team, you can support them and collect free assists.

DaxanaterJan 25, 20161 votes

I believe yasuo is a easy champ, for me at least. I think people have tried them before but in all honesty people are just pissed at these champs and just dont want people playing them because the majority can't play against them.

Mael broJan 25, 20161 votes

People think that LeeSin is very hard to play. However i do agree that he has a high skill ceiling and a skilled Lee player can do some crazy things. But at his most basic level he's so easy to use. I remember trying him out on free rotation back before he was OP (back before when his E had attack speed reduction and his shield lasted longer). And i gotta say wow...Took first blood and proceeded to go 5/0 in the early game. Lee in early game is so damn easy and forgiving.

AezanthyaJan 26, 20161 votes

yasuo got 2 shield (resets with his ult), dashes, insane damage and his wall. Plus a hard cc. He can ult from afar without having to do anything.

nidalee is just a question of learning to use her spears/traps effectively in order to assassinate.

Katarina : you have to know when you can go in. If you go in and don't kill anything : you're useless and dead. "but you just need to wait for the ennemy team to be low hp and it's gg" yeah well.. that means the ennemy team managed to get nearly killed 5v4 against a team with no midlane carry.

Itadaki SeiekiJan 26, 20161 votes

First time I played Yasuo I went like 12/13

Only died 13 times because I kept split pushing and trying to 1v2 etc when I knew I was dead regardless.

\o\ He's not hard, but his base skill needed is low.

His skill cap is high though.

IronwallJacksonJan 26, 20162 votes

Going 12/13 is nothing to brag about. The fact is, you fed 13 kills.

Itadaki SeiekiJan 26, 20161 votes

{quoted}

Going 12/13 is nothing to brag about. The fact is, you fed 13 kills.

Didn't brag about it. Just said I went 12/13.

\o\ I was no way experienced, didn't ward, didn't give vision, didn't actually respect enemy jungler and Ekko.

The kit is easy enough for anyone to learn, but hard to master.

DeathBurstJan 26, 20161 votes

Well, then you have people like me, who play Garen, Annie and Mundo, and who laugh at the faces of people saying "noob champs" with "but I win" :D

EDIT: oh and I forgot Sona

Vistha KaiJan 26, 20161 votes

The fact you put Katarina there speaks aganist you.

The only "skill" required about her is knowing when to jump in, which is true for every champion in the game in one way or another. So in comparison, she indeed requires "no skill". Yasuo, understandably yes. Nidalee and LeBlanc... I'd say not that hard.

Yes, I played all of them.

Icestar1186Jan 26, 20161 votes

There is no such thing as a universal no-skill champion. There are champions that you find easy to play, and champions that you find difficult to play. As a tank main, I can take just about any tank, whether I play them or not, and do reasonably well with them. For me, tanks don't require a lot of skill. Give me any assassin, though, and I will feed. Hard. Other players might be much better at assassins, but not as good with tanks. It's all relative.