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Removal of pink wards actually made invisible champions unbalanceable.

BluePolarizer·3/11/2017, 9:07:17 PM·89 votes·10,169 views

Previously, if you had pink wards, against invisible champions such as , there was clear counterplay: you could instantly down a pink (at the cost of a slot and 75 gold) in battle to reveal them, which puts the fight on an even footing.

Now, with the removal of pink wards, we've essentially found that invisible champions (not camoflauge champions like that mostly use invisibility to evade wards) they will either be OP (Shaco having 2nd highest win rate in the jungle, Vayne having 4th highest win rate in a lethality/utility ADC meta) or useless (none of them so far because their numbers are too high, but if they get number nerfed, this is where they go).

http://champion.gg/champion/Shaco/Jungle http://champion.gg/champion/Vayne/ADC

This is because if they get ahead, they can 1 shot anyone with absolutely zero counterplay, both strategic and tactical: you can't even run away from them or stay out of their range, since they can invisibly gapclose to you. If they are behind, they are absolutely useless and use invisibility to escape only.

Without any form of invisibility reveal, you cannot peel for your ADC, you cannot engage them, you cannot disengage them. There's nothing you can do about it if they get ahead.

118 Comments

Twitch Chat3/11/2017, 9:49:39 PM43 votes

how are you supposed to balance a champ around being elusive with stealth if you add mechanics that just turn off stealth over the entire teamfight area

Aeszarck3/11/2017, 10:19:57 PM14 votes

You're missing the point. Riot can't balance invisibility when it can be negated so easily with a cheap item. They can either make Champions with invisibility really strong and assume people will be smart enough to always put down a Vision Ward, or they can make Champions with invisibility balanced around the fact that people are not going to put down a Vision Ward, where they'll be weak whenever someone puts down a Vision Ward. Either way, there's going to be a huge disparity between different MMRs because higher MMR players will be more consistent in dealing with invisibility Champions by putting down Vision Wards. Riot wanted invisibility Champions to be relatively equally viable in both low MMR and high MMR, so they reworked invisibility.

Now invisibility is actually balanceable because higher MMR players can't make invisibility Champions useless so easily. Riot can balance around one scenario instead of two.

This is because if they get ahead, they can 1 shot anyone with absolutely zero counterplay, both strategic and tactical: you can't even run away from them or stay out of their range, since they can invisibly gapclose to you. If they are behind, they are absolutely useless and use invisibility to escape only.

Champions that are fed are strong, and Champions that haven't farmed well are weak. That's a universal truth of League of Legends, and it's not applicable to these Champions only. You're not mentioning the part where these Champions are on the same level as everyone else. This is where these Champions should be balanced, and this is the level that they cannot be balanced at if we revert the invisibility rework. When it's so easy to negate their invisibility, they can never be on a level playing field. They can either be too strong or too weak. With the current state of invisibility, they don't need to be so polar, because Riot can balance around the fact that they're not going to be instantly revealed and lose a part of their kit.

DrugsForRobots3/11/2017, 10:42:05 PM12 votes

They're not unbalancable. Riot has yet to give us fair ways of counteracting them. A cheap or FREE item that counters a champion's core ability is so ridiculously unfair. Imagine if there were a 75g potion that granted a 5s spell-shield effect or cleanse effect. It'd be an insult to an entire class of champions.

There are a number of ways Riot can make invisibility more fair to play against, but they need to be creative. Having an AoE of True Sight that you can drop at instant speed is very boring and has very little counterplay.

You might remember that item 3092 did grant (or still does???) grant True Sight of invisible units that the ghosts encounter. But it actually has good counterplay. The invis champs can see them coming, can try to outrun or outplay them somehow. Effects that aren't immediate would go a long way toward making the invis champs less frustrating to play against.

There's also the issue of tell-tale signs and aural / visual clues for players to pick up on. Some of the invis champs have them, some don't. Shaco has his puff of smoke and evil laugh upon disappearing. If Riot actually played up those as a means of alerting aware and perceptive players, they might have a chance b4 Shaco one-shots them. Rengar is the only champion that has a special visual indicator, audio cue, visual overlay cue, and can be seen at close range. Why don't Eve and Twitch have the same sort of counterplay built in? Why can't we HEAR Eve or Twitch sneaking up on us? A better question: Why is no one asking for this kind of counterplay?

Matake3/11/2017, 9:31:36 PM10 votes

you are clearly stuck in a mindset of noobish thoughts

try being the invisible champion for once and you will see how wrong you are

Spoofghoul3/11/2017, 10:04:49 PM9 votes

invisibility has become a free kayle ult

Sire Hippington3/11/2017, 10:40:57 PM8 votes

It's the exact opposit: Those vision changes actually make it so that you CAN balance stealth champs. It's just that riot put very little effort into balanceing it afterwards.

Haveing Pinks(or anything like that) as hardcounter actually makes a mechanic like stealth unbalanceable.

macromite3/12/2017, 1:58:27 AM6 votes

The four assassins having stealth is fine, it doesn't change what they are trying to do and it doesn't change the play you should be taking against them, predict what they are going to do and be ready to intercept. it is no different from zed or lb jumping a wall into a full combo.

Wukong is a fighter, but he's actually really reliant on his mindgame jukes to function on any decent level, so him having it is fine. plus if you know what you're doing it doesn't help him.

And vayne shoul probably just hav ehers changed to untargetability during her dash. It is essentially that, but much stronger and creates a void of proper counterplay beyond perfectly predicitng her, which isn't counterplay, it's outpredicting.

L Psy Kongroo3/11/2017, 9:50:35 PM5 votes

item 3364

MonkeyMadness3/12/2017, 9:43:27 AM2 votes

What??? If anything the exact opposite is true. When pink wards were a thing, a single 75g item was enough to utterly counter the entire mechanic by which these champions functioned. This meant that in order to be viable, stealth champs had to have the ability to function even when they couldn't take advantage of stealth. The problem is this: they were balanced around being revealed by pink wards. But, if those wards are absent (cough bronze cough cough), they become UTTERLY OVERPOWERED. Now that there is no reliable way to reveal these champs with any real consistency, Riot can balance them around the fact that they will certainly be invisible. With this MASSIVE increase in consistency, balancing these champs is definitively easier. The issue with the majority of the champs you listed above is NOT due to stealth, but due to other elements of their gameplay being unbalanced, and potentially due to lethality abuse.