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Can we give Tether indicators to other champions besides Morgana?

BottleCapster·3/2/2016, 4:02:14 AM·250 votes·6,357 views

Ever since you guys gave Morgana her nifty Ult range indicators to help her and her enemies know just how far they need to stay/get out of range I have found it to be such a satisfyingly fair skill to work around, and I'm really curious as to why no other tether using champion gets this treatment.

Its a win-win for clarity, as the users of the tether get to see how far they need to keep you in range, and enemies get to see how far they have to go to break the tether! Its a really satisfying little detail that I feel could make so many more skills feel so much better. I mean think about how many times you've felt cheated by 's chains because you flashed but not quite far enough to stop the root? How many times have you played and just had to hope to dear lord that you were still in range by the time your root finishes? Play ? ? Wouldn't it be nice to see how far away the enemy can walk before your tether stops working? Wouldn't it be nice to see how far away you need to run from the big bad when he starts channeling nightmare fuel into your champion's head?

The only potential reason I could see not to include this would be potential clutter if multiple tethering champions were in one game, and honestly that's a pretty flimsy argument. After all, is the only champion in the game with a multitarget tether, and the only people who need to see the indicators are the caster and their victim. Theorhetically if you ran a team full of the stuff and tethered one person it might look a little strange, but the circles would follow the specific champions and its not like the tethers aren't distinct enough from one another to distinguish one circle from another.

Please Riot, I really feel like Tether spells as a class would be so much more satisfying, both to use and fight, if we could see those indicators like you do for Morgana. Its a great idea for her, so why not for the spell class as a whole?

89 Comments

Renascent3/2/2016, 5:45:03 AM53 votes

In my eyes, that's a good idea. It would indeed remove a lot of the frustration both sides feel.

yay nibbers3/2/2016, 6:09:55 AM23 votes

Pretty much can't Flash away from LeBlanc tether unless you're already on the egde. The tether length is well over double Flash range...

It's fruatrating to say the least.

burritomomo3/2/2016, 5:41:38 PM7 votes

Varus got something like that for his ult. Before season 6 it wasn't like that

Maratsune3/2/2016, 5:57:11 PM4 votes

Karma's W is always shorter than I think it'll be, even though I play a hell of a lot of Karma.

It Hertz When IP3/2/2016, 12:15:28 PM4 votes

Not Nocturne. Part of the impact of his ult is that if he's coming out of the Fog of War, no one on the enemy team knows who he's going for. I could pop ult to gank top lane and until I go all in, bot and mid are forced to play defensive just in case it's going to be them. Adding an indicator would actually be a nerf to his early game power, albeit a minor one.

Jungle Lux God3/2/2016, 6:08:49 PM2 votes

Generally I think this is a good idea, but I see arguments against Swain's tether and Fiddlesticks' tether.

In both cases, the tether lasts from a fixed location (Beatrice or Fiddlesticks, respectively) to your current location. Because the tether length only varies with one champion's movements, it's easier to learn the length of the tether mid-match to escape its range. It's also easier for these champions to lock you in the tether range due to their hard CC abilities (Nevermove and Terrify, respectively), and it's not very useful to know how long you need to travel in order to break the tether when you physically cannot move. That's not to say they shouldn't get one, but it's not nearly as necessary to know.

An important thing to note about Morgana's tether is that the cast indicator is super important for Morgana if she hits multiple targets on opposite sides of the tether. The Morgana player then would to juggle being in range for both tethers, and this can be super difficult without a range indicator. No other tether user needs to worry about that.

Decrit3/2/2016, 4:06:32 PM2 votes

For some champions yes, but not too many due to visual clutter; let' s look at Morgana R:

Is an ultimate, meaning it has high cd and that brings great power to her kit. So the indicator highlights her most powerful moment and does not happen so often.
Has a great impact. This is a different thing than power, it means that the ulti power happens all in a sudden ( at the end of the timer, where damage and cc happen).
Affects a large radius for a long enough time, meaning that the player has time to think over it and it's very visible, and also it's harder to mistake it for a radius of another aoe or tether.

Now, how many champions meet there requirements?

Leblanc's tether has low cd and has a not so large range, but is impactful. It can also be cast as an ultimate, so somehow it is also powerful.

Fiddlestick's is powerful even with low cd, but it happens often and is not impactful.

Nocturne's happens quickly and at low range, and is impactfulish.

These just some examples.To me, only Leb one is worth of the tether and i am unsure about the others.

NZzNoIrcSy3/2/2016, 4:59:27 PM2 votes

great idea!

PaladinNO3/2/2016, 10:33:14 PM1 votes

Those range indicators would then be the same as those that ruined Syndra (and Morgana too for that matter) - distance gauging, as well as direction indicators, should be optional. Sure, implement them so they can be active or disabled at will in AI games for practice (same as tower ranger indicators), but some champions should have something that marks them as actually difficult to master.

Syndra (to use her as an example) didn't get the distance indicators on her E until quite late, but after she got them, she went from entertaining to boring, especially as I have yet to figure out how to turn them off. And she got her skill estimation lowered from 10 to 8 as a result. Morgana's ult is much the same - it wasn't hard to get a feel for how far away you had to be to either ensure capture (as it were) or escape. And I lost much care and respect for Morgana after those cheats were implemented for her.

Any player worth their salt can mentally measure this on his/her own. And if cheats like this are needed, then, well, we all end up where we're supposed to be on the ladder.

If Rito wants to fix something like this, they can work on character models vs. hitboxes vs. range indicators instead (Blitzcrank's Q and Xerath's Q to name a few); something real, and not just something purely cosmetic just to make the game easier.

LycopolisKing3/3/2016, 5:31:47 AM1 votes

Karma please. This would be great for maximizing the spacing.

Idroold3/3/2016, 8:16:16 PM1 votes

there is a difference between a normal ability and an ultimate ability

Triple Tee3/4/2016, 5:33:30 AM1 votes

The thing is, even if you had the indicator,you would still play the exact same way, that is, HOLY SHIT GET ME OUT OF HERE. Wheter you have the indicators or not, you will still act the exact same way

JRobin313/4/2016, 6:02:43 AM1 votes

{quoted}

The technology used on Caitlyn's extended range headshot indicator could be used to avoid showing a big circle each time the ability is used.

I think this is a pretty good idea if people feel that a full circle is too much. Caitlyn uses this indicator fairly often too without it being considered too much clutter.

{quoted}

Does the the tether indicator even matter? With or without if your going to be moving away.

It could be the difference between deciding to use flash or not.

{quoted}

Or you know, you could just have the circles only appear to the person being tethered and the person doing the tethering. The only situation in which you'd see a bunch of circles is if there are a bunch of champs tethering you, in which case you'll want to know their ranges so that you can break the tethers.

There's your explanation, it was pretty obvious I shouldn't have had to elaborate you could figure it out yourself.

Stellar if it's really a problem for everyone to see it.

{quoted}

My biggest problem with proliferating tether indicators on non-ultimate abilities is that it will add a ton of noise to teamfights that are already pretty noisy to begin with. Morgana's was given the indicator because of how devastating and high-impact her ultimate is on top of it being a long-cooldown ult. When you're being hit by a bunch of spells with a 5 or 8 second cooldown and your screen is covered in a ton of circles every fight, it just gets in the way of what's going on for the sake of "clarity". This level of "clarity" ultimately results in the opposite effect. Sure, you have that ring telling you information in the lane and that might be fine, but once fights break out that clarity is now just clutter.

Not everything needs to have effect rings. Champion familiarity will give you the information that you need. I'm trying to avoid the "dumbing down the game" argument, but it's frequently just the inexperienced player or the unwilling player who demand things like this. I'm not necessarily against things that make the game easier overall, but I am against changes that fill the screen with so many indicators as to block out the real important things just for the sake of lane clarity. I do think there needs to be at least some amount of player knowledge required to showcase your skill with a particular champion and these sorts of changes would hinder that.

I think another good example to look at here is the range indicator on Darius which is very obvious and used often in combat. By your argument, showing this indicator would impose too much clutter and players should just know Darius' range. But it seems clear from playing the game that showing the range for Darius isn't imposing too much clutter.

To to recap, there are some good suggestions here to consider as possible refinements on the OP's idea and there are already examples of low cooldown abilities in game that use range indicators (arguably ones that don't really need them) without cluttering the screen. It seems the OP has a strong argument to add tether range indicators for clarity.

9kPluzZ3/2/2016, 4:21:56 PM1 votes

Does the the tether indicator even matter? With or without if your going to be moving away.

ForeverLaxx3/2/2016, 7:31:54 PM1 votes

My biggest problem with proliferating tether indicators on non-ultimate abilities is that it will add a ton of noise to teamfights that are already pretty noisy to begin with. Morgana's was given the indicator because of how devastating and high-impact her ultimate is on top of it being a long-cooldown ult. When you're being hit by a bunch of spells with a 5 or 8 second cooldown and your screen is covered in a ton of circles every fight, it just gets in the way of what's going on for the sake of "clarity". This level of "clarity" ultimately results in the opposite effect. Sure, you have that ring telling you information in the lane and that might be fine, but once fights break out that clarity is now just clutter.

Not everything needs to have effect rings. Champion familiarity will give you the information that you need. I'm trying to avoid the "dumbing down the game" argument, but it's frequently just the inexperienced player or the unwilling player who demand things like this. I'm not necessarily against things that make the game easier overall, but I am against changes that fill the screen with so many indicators as to block out the real important things just for the sake of lane clarity. I do think there needs to be at least some amount of player knowledge required to showcase your skill with a particular champion and these sorts of changes would hinder that.