Please stop completely redesigning old champions (With Poll)

James T Rocket·May 15, 2015·3 votes·978 views

Balance is one thing, but when you completely change the champion's skills, you alienate long time fans. Every one of the changes riot has made has been a travesty. All the champions I used to play, from gangplank to sion to zilean to veigar (lol to those "buffs") and now ashe and karma incoming as well? Please stop. Just release new champions with those new ideas instead of taking away old ones. Taking away. Making less of this game instead of adding to it. It's a shame. I can't be alone in this sentiment. What say you?

18 Comments

JamareeMay 15, 20155 votes

It is a mix bag, sometimes you can't just buff these old kits with no amount of buffs really being enough to help them, realistic buffs anyway. That being said, some old kits for champions were just bad. I don't care how many people miss old Sion, he was badly designed, "oh, you just don't know how to play him, or oh, I went XXX/0/XXX one game, he must be fine." No, he was just badly designed. You build AP and half your kit is useless or vice versa with AD. So they attempt to rework, contrary to what these forums believe, balance isn't that is and it takes time and work to get working and proper, they mess up, but I still trust them doing it over the forums.

James T RocketMay 15, 20152 votes

Out of all of them, Sion is the only one that made sense even though I kinda liked the old sion. The others were inexcusable though in my book.

JamareeMay 15, 20152 votes

Zilean was a feast or famine champion, either he got ahead and didn't die, or fell behind and stayed behind hard. He needs a rework with his ultimate not gating his power, Veigar's stun was stopping him from being a thing, either he snowballed ahead and zoned the whole team with an AoE 2.5 second non ultimate stun, or he was once again, useless. What the reworks attempt to do is change that so they can still do something or have a chance if they don't do amazingly well. On top of that, they are removing the point and click abilities people used to whine were cancerous to the game.

James T RocketMay 15, 20151 votes

I don't buy this reasoning. Every champion in the game snowballs forwards or backwards. If anything, it applies less to zilean because his slow/speedup and ultimate were always useful.

And why are point and clock abilities cancerous? There's a pro and a con to having skillshot vs non skillshot abilities. By removing the diversity, they are making the game less interesting in my opinion.

JamareeMay 15, 20152 votes

[{quoted}](name=James T Rocket,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=7ppkOkPE,comment-id=0000000000000000,timestamp=2015-05-15T05:27:21.557+0000)

I don't buy this reasoning. Every champion in the game snowballs forwards or backwards. If anything, it applies less to zilean because his slow/speedup and ultimate were always useful.

Zilean's ultimate is truly stopping him from getting any meaningful power in the rest of his kit. Everything else in his kit however if he wasn't ahead, was honestly negligible.

And why are point and clock abilities cancerous? There's a pro and a con to having skillshot vs non skillshot abilities. By removing the diversity, they are making the game less interesting in my opinion.

Indeed, but had you been here about a year ago, you would have saw waves of forum post saying "omg, point and click abilities are busted, why do they get to do so much damage by simply moving their cursor over them, no counterplay to point and click gg."

Hinro HonatoMay 15, 20151 votes

Yes every champion can snowball but some can snowball so hard that the game is lost without the enemy making several large errors. Lets say you're up against a nasus or poppy and they start snowballing early. You have to focus every resource you have to try and stop the snowballing or at 25 minutes in they are at their lategame and there is nothing you can do about it. The game is lost already. More examples would be master yi, akali, fiora, and katarina. If any of them snowball you must climb a mountain and pray no one else has started snowballing while you work on shutting them down.

Some snowball harder than others.

BluePolarizerMay 15, 20151 votes

Every champ snowballs like that. LeBlanc: if she gets ahead, you can forget about walking away from the turret mid AND you can forget about your other lanes and jungle not feeding her unless they are stomping. Ahri: feed her a single kill, get zoned for the entire laning phase and watch as your front line melts to her Q while being undivable.

JamareeMay 15, 20151 votes

Legit, I have no idea what the fuck is going on with Leblanc, as for Ahri, she still has her charm even when behind.

Mega Annie XMay 15, 20153 votes

Karma and Xerath were the biggest abominations ever. Karma received no buff for 2 years and was still a viable mid. Xerath was an ASSASSIN unique to his style and they made him into some lame long range harasser who cant finish the job.

They could learn alot from smite.

They remade Ao Kuang and Sun Wukong BUT transferred their old kits to "new" champions with slight changes to not alienate the people who mained them prior.

I was really depressed when they stole my Xerath from me

Hinro HonatoMay 15, 20152 votes

Most of the reworks have made the champions more interesting so far. The sion rework has worked out pretty well for him. He was either completely useless or soooooooooooo far ahead he could oneshot your entire team with one shield. someone who was good with old sion was like playing against a zed akali and katarina in the same lane. You're not going to have any fun and you're going to die a lot.

Veigar's changes to q are great. stacking is faster and safer. His stun cage is incredibly harder to hit now without a doubt but when you hit it you're taking half the enemys life most of the time pre-6. easy to force a flash.

tristana...gods I want to like this rework but it's just not trist any more. her range is low as hell and so is her attack speed. It's just not right. Easily the worst rework so far.

The ashe rework is iunno yet. She feels better as a champion but I simply don't know yet. Give it a week or two and ask again. I feel like she is going to be strong despite not gaining any mobility. I will say her E cooldown is way to long as it is right now.

Never really played zilian before so I can't really speak on his rework but it seems decent enough.

Now for the upcoming karma changes, they seem like they are going to make her stronger in a new way. If I remember correctly her tether is going to give anyone who attacks the target more damage and %healing. I talked to a karma player and he can see how it can be insane so I'm looking forward to it.

Now there is a rework coming that I do worry about quite a bit and thats the poppy rework. I know she needs some reworking and quite possibly on the level of sion but damn I hope they keep her e and q in some way.

And just so there is no confusion I can sympathies with you about reworks since I lost trist who was my main goto champion and she's dead and gone. but when you look at the reworks without an emotional connection most of the reworks made the champions better even if they don't have the numbers balanced out yet. No one wants their favorite champions drastically changed but no one wants their champion to be completely forgotten as everyone else gets stronger to the point of being completely useless.

James T RocketMay 15, 20151 votes

I agree that there have been interesting ideas in the new reworks, but my argument is that they should be new champions for at least the ones that are significantly changed in gameplay. It's like you said for trist: "it's just not trist anymore" and that is my point precisely. Plus they killed AP trist, just like they killed AP yi. They decrease diversity of champions and options for play...why? Why was there even a need to change tristana? Now I see her even less than before the update. I NEVER see zilean or Veigar unless I play them now. Sion has been the only successful one that I've seen. I haven't seen a single ryze since they changed him...

I know that Riot means well, but they are adding buffs to underplayed champions by essentially removing those champions from the game and adding in a new champion with the same model. I like League of Legends, but their design philosophy is questionable sometimes

Hinro HonatoMay 15, 20151 votes

I wasn't around when ap yi was a thing but from what I've read they made him even stronger than he was before they changed him. Against the right team comp yi will pub stomp people which is kinda horrifying.

Tristana before her poppy nerfs was insanely strong and something needed to happen there. Unfortunately they nuked her so bad that she was becoming useless. Even more unfortunately even after the rework she was still in that same spot as before her rework. gutted. I can understand why GW was removed and the idea of her new E makes sense thematically. she just desperately needs some buffing at this point. Even if they won't give her any of her AS back the range nuking is what killed her the hardest.

As for not seeing veigar I'm kinda fine with that. I've been playing a lot of him lately(got final boss in a mystery gift) and he gets to be ridiculous. Still not a fan of his stun cage though. I don't think I've had a game with him yet where I haven't hit 900+ ap on him and oneshot every squishy or anyone with ap. veigar seems to be in a decent spot right now even if he is slightly harder than he used to be.

To be honest I like playing the champions no one else seems to want to play. There is a bit of cheese there in them knowing nothing about what you're going to do. I've played a lot of anivia and as far as I can tell down here I'm one of the only people who do with the exception of anivia free week. I don't really see a problem with other people not playing the champions I enjoy. I will confess that I would quite enjoy to see some of my champions played in the pro scene just so I can see what people far better than me can do with them but it's a double-edged sword. If they do good then I learn but then they may end up fotm. If they do poorly then the champ is shit and I get bitched at for picking them.

I agree with you that some of these reworks are just new champions using old models and it sucks. All we can really do is wait it out until they get the love they need or in some cases the nerfs.

Also sorry for rambling a bit. still sleepy.

James T RocketMay 15, 20151 votes

Anivia isn't unpopular. She is one of the best champions!

KrigjerMay 15, 20152 votes

I own a skin for Nidalee that was purchased before her rework.

I can't stand playing her anymore, and I'm unable to refund the skin. I feel cheated.

blkh1May 15, 20151 votes

sometimes the old kits just don't work well with new champs. The old champs then just kind of die off. They try to tweak them to make them more relevant. It is an organic change. New ideas and you have to adjust the old to work with the new sometimes. Though, sometimes you get the feeling the make a change just for the sake of making a change.

BeatzBoyFTWMay 15, 20151 votes

Old Sion was boring as fk.

WarlockLawMay 15, 20151 votes

Every champion they have reworked or updated needed the change to either make them more satisfying or make them something riot will ever allow to become meta. Sure they have had some misses but new ashe is amazing and the sion reconstruction is imo better designed and balanced then the last few champions that have come out. I think they just need to work on their following up of these changes as zilean and veigar seem forgotten and left to be terrible