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Boards, Riot Balance, let's run a Thought Experiment or two

mi ramfan·2/16/2015, 5:20:33 PM·24 votes·2,914 views

There's been a lot of discussion about mobility on the forums lately (especially as it pertains to Kalista/Yasuo), and I thought I'd like to see just exactly how much each and every one of us values mobility.

To help us consider the value of mobility, let's consider both a champion losing mobility but gaining power somewhere else, and a champion gaining mobility but losing power somewhere else.

Let me introduce you to our lucky mobile champion of the day:

http://i.imgur.com/vHtIzOM.jpg

"What? But mi_ramfan, Shyvana isn't mobile!"

That's where you're wrong. Shyvana has TWO mobility abilities; her W, Burnout, and her ultimate, Dragon's Descent. Burnout grants a 50% movement speed buff that decays over 3 seconds, while Dragon's Descent's active is a 1000 range dash! And before we write Dragon's Descent off as her ultimate, consider the fact that Dragon's Descent can theoretically have a cooldown as low as 15 seconds!

(This is, of course, ignoring a tiny issue with the above numbers: Shyvana must be continously attacking with 2.5 attack speed in order to get the cooldown that low)

So, now that we've introduced our overly-mobile bruiser of the day, let's take away her mobility! It adds too much to her kit and is bad for the game, after all. Of course, since mobility is a significant form of power, we'll have to give Shyvana some form of compensation.

##The Basic Case: Burnout

For now, let's assume that everyone agrees that Shyvana's dash on her ultimate is acceptable. It's her massive movement speed buff on W that's bad for the game. It simply makes Shyvana inescapable when she's chasing you and impossible to catch when she's running away.

Let's fix those problems right now. (All numbers below are identical to live unless stated otherwise).

W: Burnout Active: Shyvana surrounds herself in flame for 3 seconds, dealing 20 / 35 / 50 / 65 / 80 (+ 20% bonus AD) magic damage to enemies within 162.5 range each second and gaining bonus movement speed. The bonus movement speed decreases by 15% of its original value per second. Damage is increased by 20% against monsters. [Total magic damage: 60 / 105 / 150 / 195 / 240 (+ 60% bonus AD) to 140 / 245 / 350 / 455 / 560 (+ 140% bonus AD) at max duration]

Dragon's Descent Dragon Form: Shyvana now scorches the earth where she walks, leaving a trail of fire for 5 seconds that will continually deal the same magic damage per second to enemies that pass over it.

Shyvana's autoattacks extend the duration of Burnout by 1 second, to a maximum of 4 extra seconds.

You are on the Live Balance team, and these changes have just been handed down by Design.

  1. Using only Shyvana's existing balance levers (no adding new utilities or ability functions), what would you consider appropriate compensation for the loss of Shyvana's movement speed buff?

##Another Case: Dragon's Descent

Now let's imagine a completely unrelated hypothetical scenario. Design has gotten a bunch of complaints about mobility from the forums, and they've decided to start with the overly mobile bruiser Shyvana. Her ultimate simply provides too much mobility for a champion with as much bulk and damage as Shyvana has. Therefore, they've decided to make the following changes:

R: Dragon's Descent Passive: While in Human Form, Shyvana passively generates 1/2/3 FURY every 1.5 seconds. Shyvana's basic attacks generate 2 FURY, even in Dragon's Descent Dragon Form or against structures. (same as live)

Active: Shyvana transforms into a dragon and dashes to a target location. Enemies along her path take 175 / 300 / 425 (+ 70% AP) magic damage and are Airborne icon pushed toward her target location, dealing 175 / 300 / 425 (+ 70% AP) magic damage and slightly displacing nearby enemies.

While in Dragon's Descent Dragon Form, Shyvana's FURY decays at a rate of 5 per second. Once her FURY is depleted, she will return to her normal state. Dragon's Descent has no cooldown or initial cost but can only be activated when Shyvana has 100 FURY. (same as live, minus the dash and the nuke)

So, in other words, Shyvana's ultimate would retain all of its current functions (slight displacement/channel breaking, magic damage nuke, transforming into a dragon) EXCEPT for its dash.

Time to go back to the Live Balance Team, also known as the Boards!

  1. Using only Shyvana's existing balance levers, what compensation would you give Shyvana for the loss of the dash on her ultimate?

  2. Using only Shyvana's existing balance levers, what compensation would you give Shyvana for the loss of BOTH the dash on her ultimate and the movement speed buff on her W?

##Wrapping up

We've seen in LCS games, our own games, and in theorycrafting how big an effect mobility has on a champion's kit. It makes champions better at dealing the damage they already have and reduces the time enemies have to kill them before they can reach a safe place. The difficulty in balancing mobility comes entirely from finding a way to value these traits effectively against innate damage and bulk. In Shyvana's case, her mobility allows her to reach targets easily (especially post-6), but doesn't give her many tools at all to help her stick to targets. Hopefully, thinking about what Shyvana would lose without her mobility will help put the mobility creep discussion in a better context, so that we can analyze the mobility debate in the proper context:

  1. How much is mobility worth, in terms of damage? How much in terms of bulk?

EDIT

More interested in discussing the VALUE of mobility than what mobility does. We all know what mobility does. But if we can agree on a range of values for any given mobility tool, then we can look at any given champion and say "this champion doesn't pay enough for their mobility" or "this champion should get compensation for being immobile".

That's why I chose Shyvana as an example. Her mobility may not be "unhealthy" or "overbearing", but because her kit offers numerous levers for us to weigh that mobility against, she's a good example to use for the purposes of this thread.

53 Comments

Zazusha2/16/2015, 5:33:01 PM12 votes

The problem with Mobility (mobility as most see it as Dashes/Blinks) is that there's no direct counter to it. Move speed is countered directly by Slows.

and Sure, Hard CC (roots/stuns/knockups/suppression) counters Dashes, but How many of those are as Reliable, and spamable as dashes/blinks?

Kalista has infinite dashes, Yasuo has as many dashes as there are Enemy units nearby (which resets after a few seconds), LeeSin has 2 different skills oriented on dashing (including ward hopping), 1 with an AoE slow mechanic, and 1 on Displacing an enemy. Leblanc has effectivly 4 dashes (W+R and the ability to return to her original point) Zed has 2 Blinks

If High Move Speed alone was what people consider good mobility,Gangplank Hecarim Shyvana would be Great, But all of them lose to true mobility.

McAllister2/16/2015, 7:24:05 PM7 votes

I'm going to pretend your questions are numbered 1, 2, 3 and 4, instead of 1, 1, 2 and 1.

  1. I think getting to people and attacking them is an important part of Shy's playstyle. I could add damage to her Q or turn the bonus damage on her E up way higher, but I'd prefer to boost the tank on her passive. I'd start by doubling it and see where that goes. We want to incentivize her to continue buying AS and tank items: if she's running around with full damage builds, we made her too tanky. Triforce, Wits End and 3 tank items might be good.

  2. I would increase the speed boost on the W to 30 per rank. Given how much better dashes/blinks are for jumping walls, dodging skillshots, escaping Cataclysm etc. I think speed boosts should be buffed across the board. I'm not convinced Garen's gapcloser should be less effective than Xin Zhao's.

  3. I would prefer to talk to the Design team's management to continuing to work on the champion under these constraints. Olaf is able to function with no mobility because he can slow his target and ignore anyone's ability to stop his own mobility. Mordekaiser is able to function (currently, and as much so as he is) because he has great burst. Mundo and Singed, aside from great speed boosts, have ranged slows and AoE magic damage. All of the aforementioned have top-tier sustain. I think Shy might be able to be balanced with no mobility or CC, but she could she be healthy? She'd need to be balanced around the assumption of ~3 mobility/CC spells/items (Flash Exhaust or Ghost, Chilling Smite, Triforce, BotRK, Randuin's, Frozen Mallet lol, Furor boots double lol), which would make them mandatory, which would not be fun.

  4. The problem is that a mobile midlaner annoys Zed, and abuses Anivia. The problem is that junglers can't healthily have enough damage to justify applying it much less reliably than Lee Sin, Vi or Jarvan IV do. The problem is that if you can't beat Gnar or Rek'sai in an all-in, they will chase you all the way down the lane with enough speed left over to run if your jungler shows up. The problem, in short, is that the value of mobility is variable, and more mobility is deeply painful to the champions against whom it's very effective.

Mandang02/16/2015, 6:57:36 PM4 votes

First off, awesome post - I love how it motivates the question you pose at the end.

The answer of what you give up should differ somewhat from class to class, but I don't think bulk is a fair trade for mobility, as mobility itself provides safety. Just look at HOW damage is dealt these days - very rarely do you see sustained damage like Shyvana's, but instead everyone bursts. For a burst champion, you don't really need any more bulk than it takes to get your reel off on your target. Mobility also helps that champion reach their target, lowering the need for bulk, but mobility adds in a bunch of utility that bulk doesn't. Maybe for a sustained damage champion, trading bulk for mobility makes sense, but I think those champions will just not see play (look at the melee ADCs not named Yasuo).

I think you need to trade damage for mobility, a trade that would make the oft-championed "outplays" actually worthy of their name. If a mobile champion can do similar damage to a champion who has none, you haven't outplayed them so much as you've out-advantaged them. Here you could argue that more bulk on an immobile champion might change things, but mobility grants the other champion the decision of when to end the engagement (or when to take it), which I still can't see the immobile champion winning. At best, you end up with a situation where the mobile champion decides not to waste his time on the immobile champion, and where the immobile champion can only squat someplace and hope to force the mobile champ to come to them. This probably isn't interesting unless one team is already pretty far ahead (needing to contest 5th dragon, defending inhib, etc). Lastly, especially with the assassins, this question of enemy bulk ignores all the other potential targets on the enemy team - the mobile champion will just pop your ADC or support instead of needing to worry about his immobile counterpart's greater bulk.

Ultimately, I think this ties in well with another question I've seen posed lately: What's the counterplay to mobility? That's what Riot needs to create with the exchanges you've mentioned, and I think it can't be accomplished by exchanging bulk (differences in base stats are small anyway).

ProfDrDeath2/16/2015, 7:08:30 PM4 votes

You chose an interesting case here with Shyvana - imo, she already features trade-offs for her mobility.

First, consider how Shyvana works, especially how she deals her damage. You'll notice that her damage comes almost exclusively in over-time form, with low bursty spikes compared to other champions. This is due to the way her Burnout deals over time damage and one of her ability cooldowns gets lowered by auto-attacking and sticking to your target.

However, despite that need to stick to her target, her only tool to do so is a speedboost. She does not possess chasing CC of any kind, and her jump is on quite a high cooldown, and she really can't use it in the same fight twice, as being in the fight actually prevents it from going off CD when in Dragon Form - as appropriate for an ultimate.

Decaedeus2/16/2015, 7:10:25 PM4 votes

Only using Shyvana's existing balance levers would instantly make her an impossible to balance champion. I think the choice of champion for your experiment is particularly poor, as without mobility, she is literally ALL STATS. No impactful CC (Dragon's Descent isn't particularly strong without the dash). Either she can catch up to the ADC and instakill him, or she can't and then... she's useless except as a disruption tank.

Answering your question?

How much is mobility worth, in terms of damage? How much in terms of bulk?

Mobility is priceless. You can't equate it with damage or bulkiness, because it creates inherently unhealthy situations where either you catch up to them and instakill them, or you get kited forever and are completely useless. The closest thing you can equate mobility to is utility in the form of CC. For example, if we were to remove the speed boost on Burnout, a slow would need to be tacked on to maintain Shyvana's impact while not making her kit ball-of-stats binary.

BTW, great post, really meaningful discussion; I just don't think Shyvana's the right champion to experiment on because of how insanely binary her kit would be without said mobility.

Luigrein2/17/2015, 7:10:20 AM3 votes

I think it's very hard to assign a value to mobility abilities because their value to the kit as a whole changes depending on what the rest of the kit can do. Overall I think mobility qualifies more as a force multiplier than a raw stat value. It's closest stat comparison in that regard would be critical strike, which adds more damage based on how much you were already doing before it. The difference between them however is that critical strike can be easily mapped out in potential value as it's a linear force multiplier. Mobility...is not. For starters, not all forms of mobility enhance kits in the same way. Over the course of a lengthy chase Udyr's speed boost may help him gain more ground than Ezreal's blink can create. But Ezreal can blink over intrevening terrain to create more effective distance gained than the raw value of the blink distance. I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing, but it makes it very difficult to assign a value to mobility when it can interact with the rest of the game in different ways depending on which form of mobility you are considering.

In the end however, I think the main difference is what they affect. Going back to the crit example, crits value changes as your attack damage changes, but crit still only affects one end result: damage. Mobility doesn't directly impact your end damage/defense stats. Instead mobility in all of it's forms is about manipulation of the options available to you. The different forms of mobility do it in different ways and with varying effectiveness depending on the situation, but the option to manipulate the opportunities available at a given time will always be HUGELY important, but it's value relative to stats changes depending on the situation.

In light of the above, I think mobility is actually much more comparable to CC, with them essentially being inverses of each other. Mobility is about giving you more options, CC is about taking options away from your enemy. I think perhaps instead of the issue being fighter-A has comparable damage to fighter-B AND is more mobile, therefore we should reduce fighter-A's damage, we might want to try and reach a point where fighters A and B have similar damage but while A has superior mobility B has superior CC. Now, what is a dash worth compared to a stun? I'm not sure I know the answer to that but I think it's a better starting place then what's a dash worth compared to 25 AD.

So to go back to the Shyvana questions. Within the bonds of not adding any new utilities to her kit I'm not sure you can adequately compensate her for the loss of mobility. It doesn't matter how strong her numbers are if she can't get an opportunity to use them, well maybe if you went so hilariously overboard that Shyvana just sort of walks down the lane as an unstoppable dragon devouring all minions and towers in her path it would matter. But if we were to ask how big of a slow would have to be added to flame breath to compensate for burnout losing it's speed boost seems like a much more solvable question. Easy to solve? Not necessarily, but compared to how much Armor/MR is the speed boost worth?

Narasimha2/16/2015, 8:44:32 PM3 votes

Just to jump in, its not so much mobility itself the issue. Hell, its not even mobile champions. Its the immobile ones that cause an issue. By its very existence, an immobile champ has to compete on a level playing field as a mobile one. This means that the immobile champ has to have a lot more tuning and number play done. This counts double for melee champs. Give the guy too much, and he's unstoppable. Give him too little, and he's useless. With mobility based champions, there are more levers with which you can adjust their strengths and weakness. With immobile champs, all you can do is hit their numbers until something works, or give them a rework.

Celeste Benal2/16/2015, 8:44:29 PM2 votes

tbh, there really is no compensation for removing mobility abilities. Without them, a champ has very few ways to initiate or escape a fight. See Veigar and Jinx.

I also think it is patently unfair to remove an ability (or two) and say compensate her without adding any new abilities. If you remove her speed boost and gap closer, she has 3 options left, increase tank, damage, and/or base movement. In the first two cases, she will basically become a big immovable block of HP and dps, none of which will matter if she cannot get into range of the enemy. Base movement boost while technically viable, could get out of hand. But in most cases, she would just get shit all over by mobility/utility champs like Lee Sin or J4.

In short, Shyv would become a tanky melee fighter/jungler with nothing to distinguish her from any other ball of stats.

Knight SoIaire 2/17/2015, 11:02:17 AM2 votes

How much is mobility worth, in terms of damage? How much in terms of bulk?

that is a fail here mister

its not how much mobility should you have compared to your damage, but how much mobility you sohuld have compared to yuour cc

the damage can vary but no champion in this game can be all about damage without any utility mobility or crowd controll, the reason is simple if darius oneshots people no melle can get in his range, darius simply removes all interaciton that others can have with him because he just kills you, and he builds tank so kiting wont do much thats why darius or mordekaiser whos kit has asicaly only damage have their damage upped only by a medicore amount that wont make them untradeable

int the end the battle is beetwen mobility and crowd controll, those 2 mechanics stand on 2 diferent corners and are thematicaly and gameplay wise contradicting eachother mobility is a way of increasing you capability to change position crowd controll is contrary we can even say that there are 2 types of those mechanics soft cc impairs only movespeed, while soft mobility increases only movespeed hard cc causes you to fully stop in place, hard mobility causes you to change your to specific spot or dash in a direction

the problem we know as mobility creep is not all there is to it the stats need to be ballanced across the board since the diference in stats might kill the capability to interact

the real thing that causes the problem is overall owerloading champions with usefull stuff compared to others,

-kalista has infinite mobility, realy epic utility, built in smite, hard crowd controll and soft cc, -jarwan has steroids to both his offense and defense, shield, 3 skills with cc (q+e combo, w and ult), 2 skills with mobility -lee sin is just like jarwan

  • yasuo, anti poke shield, hard cc with barely any cooldown, capability to prolong any knockup by one second, infinite gapclosing, a windwall, a steroid causing his damage to go through the roof,

-darius has a pull, end of story -mordekaiser has a ghost, end of story

so in the end guys above push guys below out, cause they just do more stuff owerall

the champions who we consider being wrecked by mobility creep arent wrecked by just mobility, they are wrecked by champions who compete more to the game with their kits and who have more tools owerall to deal with diferent opponents

why are j4 and lee sin kings of the jungle ? because they do everything and they can adapt to everything, their kits are usefull in any suituation, so lcs pros who pick what is the best in this game pick the guys who do everything good (thats why people cry about jungle diversity, because we have tank/assasin/support hybrids running there and being better at everything)

FLY Slotmachiner2/17/2015, 5:53:38 PM1 votes

I agree with your post 100%, the term: "...There is a method in his madness..." is what practically sums up this post. I can't remember the last time I had a Lee Sin in my games(not saying he is not viable) Mobility is something that definitely needs to be retouched, I have been played league since the beginning of S1 and I can honestly say Mobility is necessary to a certain extent.

You have champions likeLeeSin that have a little bit more mobility than others and then you have champions like Shyvana that has quite an extent of it, but not as strong likeRiven /LeeSin once again. It comes down to which form of Mobility is best or what not; whether it be flat movement speed or a dash, mobility is mobility.

Now back to your questions in hand, How much is mobility worth, in terms of damage? How much in terms of bulk? Answer: Mobility is necessary in order to reach a high-mobile champions or to catch up to a ranged carry. I dislike that some kits have too much damage output + mobility for the icing on the cake. The most infamous example is the legendary LeeSin, a champion that was designed to be for early leads but instead does not fall off as intended. LeeSin itself has a lot of disgusting base damage and ratios, that going tank is better than going full glass cannon. As you used Shyvana to explain mobility, I will use LeeSin.

As much as most of us dislike LeeSin , we can't help but to point out that LeeSin is a perfect example of a Perfect Champion, before you start down-voting me let me explain. LeeSin , as we all know, is not balanced at all, due to his damage and wrong entities within his kit (talking about you W-Spell Vamp >.

Stephenizgod2/18/2015, 4:07:24 AM1 votes

Well i agree that Mobility is hard to judge on how much actual power it gives. There are only 3 exceptions to this that i can think of Kalista ,Yasuo ,LeeSin. It is very obvious how powerful just their Mobility is, it can easily be judged and you recognize its power immediately.

Kalista is pretty much immune to slows, impossible to hit with slower skillshots, and unless you have at least 3 dashes and hard CC she is immune to melee as well. Why is it immediately apparent her Mobility is its own section of power? Kalista has an entire kit that could do very well in League without her infinite dashes. Infinite stacking Rend, low cooldown AoE knock-up ult, %health damage with her oathsworn, moving wards, and a long range poke. With this Kalista would be on the level of Ashe or Varus, but probably slightly better thanks to her potential infinite damage. Add in her Dashing and you have one of the most broken champs in terms of design philosophy, not necessarily in-game overpowered. Any champion that has a dash or 2 at least has to pay something for it (some more then other and the other 2 exceptions are a different story) Kalista not only makes their dash irrelevant she pays absolutely nothing for it. That moment when no matter how much movespeed or how many dashes you have Kalista still gets away... and after a good 8 second chase she now has enough stacks of Rend to kill you. Other then instantly erasing her with someone like Talon or keeping her in place forever like Morgana (if you can hit her), there is not much one can do.

Yasuo is like the prototype for Kalista, a champion with almost limitless mobility. Yasuo is not an issue because of his Mobility though, at least not in my opinion. The problem with Yasuo, to me, is his double crit chance. Crit gives you the chance to deal double damage, thus making it the strongest form of AA damage. To counter it being too strong, you can only get a little bit of it unless of course you stack all the crit chance items, but then you lose out on maximum potential damage. Yasuo takes the limiter to crit chance and throws it out the window, at the cost of a small amount of crit damage. That by itself is somewhat Overpowered, but add in (potential) limitless mobility and you have the hardest hitting champion with no way of escaping them. So what does Yasuo pay for his Mobility? I think most can agree he has a weak early game against most match-ups, the problem though is he is actually compensated for this weak early game with a god-tier late game, there is this huge freaking spike in his damage all of a sudden. So he is being compensated for his compensation for his Mobility... I dont even... like what?

Lee Sin... I dont actually think Lee Sin is overpowered but i do think he is broken, those can be one in the same and sometimes two different things. Lee Sin pays for his Mobility with... idk. Some say "Well he is squishy" to which i always reply "Then why could none of my team kill him while he murdered our entire team..." they never have a response for this. Others say "He falls off late game though" and yet again i reply "Really? its 50 min and no one can touch him, plus he just murdered half our team by himself" and of course i get no rational reply. The thing is though, Lee Sin does have a high skill cap and the most someone like me can do with him is assassinate one person then die over and over again (because im bad). The problem comes when you have Mobility+Damage+CC+Tank/Sustain, yea Lee Sin is less efficient in all of those then other champions but the thing is when those elements combine they create a new element that is stronger then any single element. Yea he isnt a mobile as someone like Yasuo, yes his damage might not be as high as someone like late game Vayne, his CC is inferior to someone like Mao'kai or Malphite, and his Tank/Sustain is less then late-game Trundle but when you combine a portion of all of these you get the ability to bypass the weaknesses and only take the strengths. The weakness of Tank champions is they tend to lack damage, the weakness of damage champions is they tend to have no tank, the weakness of CC champions is they themselves come with very little mobility, the weakness of mobility champions is they dont usually come with a lot of CC. Lee Sin has all their strengths and none of their weakness and pays absolutely nothing for this. Now his skillcap, to me, does make him not Overpowered, but in balance and design he is broken.

KaisadiIIa2/16/2015, 11:45:14 PM1 votes

There are tons of problematic mobility champions in this game, but Shyvana isn't one of them. That was a really bad example, you could consider doing the same with: LeeSin Zed Vi Leblanc Katarina Akali Kalista Yasuo...

MrBuffington2/17/2015, 1:13:46 AM1 votes

This is a pretty cool discussion

Using only Shyvana's existing balance levers (no adding new utilities or ability functions), what would you consider appropriate compensation for the loss of Shyvana's movement speed buff? Using only Shyvana's existing balance levers, what compensation would you give Shyvana for the loss of the dash on her ultimate? Using only Shyvana's existing balance levers, what compensation would you give Shyvana for the loss of BOTH the dash on her ultimate and the movement speed buff on her W?

A crap load of damage or tankiness, probably. To me, Shyvana's mobility is a trade off for her having no CC (aside from the displacement on her ult). To compensate the skill itself, probably something like buff the crap out of her passive and increase the duration/decrease the cooldown on burnout so she just becomes this unstoppable tank, since she probably won't be able to get on top of her target. Beef up her E also, since she can't get on top of people. Also increased duration on her ult/decreased fury loss or something, so she just becomes this monsterous tank

How much is mobility worth, in terms of damage? How much in terms of bulk?

I think there are more factors to consider, like utility, CC, the distribution of these across abilities, and direct gating via mana or cooldowns or some other mechanic (ie. if it's targeted or a skillshot, AoE or single-target), just to name a few. I think it's a bit of a red-herring to look at these sorts of elements in isolation, more look at the champion's kit as a whole, what they're supposed to accomplish, and how they're supposed to interact (and others are supposed to interact with) the champion.

SmokingPuffin2/17/2015, 1:24:25 AM1 votes

Shyvana W is not objectively that powerful a button, but within the context of Shyvana's kit it is her entire solution for the uptime problem. Even very large buffs (e.g. double the damage on W, or half the cooldown on Q) will not be sufficient to offset the loss of mobility. I would go so far as to say it is not possible to produce a balanced Shyvana minus W speed buff without a rework.

However, this is not generalizable; if you look at Lulu's objectively stronger W speed buff, removing it entirely from Lulu's kit would require considerably less buff.

DomainSpecific2/17/2015, 5:54:44 AM1 votes

When I was typing this, I realized what I think you meant to prove:

Every change that I tried to do hurt melees way more than ranged. After thinking harder I have some ideas:

  1. If W's MS was removed, I would move it to the ult, though reduce how much speed she gets. Also, W would reduce incoming damage by 8% of the attackers' range.

Example: Trundle, with its glorious 125 range, attacks Shyvanna while she uses W. She takes 10% reduced damage from him. Kalista attacks her with 550 range, and Shyvanna takes 44% reduced damage. Sounds brutal in paper, but realize that in practice, W will only last 3 seconds against her and she will never catch up with any ranged champion unless she ults.

  1. If Shyvanna lost the dash on her ult, I would increase her MS when running towards enemies while in her ult form. Moreover, the farther the enemies are, the faster Shyvanna moves. Also, move the damage to the end of the ult & heal her for a percentage.

  2. For both, I would just combine both 1 and 2 (ult gives her MS and her W gives her the damage reduction).

  3. Mobility, in terms of damage or bulk, cannot be directly calculated.

lDontLiftIcarry2/17/2015, 8:17:59 AM1 votes

mobility wasn't an issue Until they nerfed tank items. No more tanks with point and click CC like nautlis or nunu being played to permaslow/lock down gapcloser champions.

No one wants to play nerfed tanks. No one.

Old Man Teeto2/17/2015, 10:56:18 AM1 votes

Case 1 - Burnout movespeed removed: Increase passive armor and magic resist by 5 base. Increase base movespeed by 5. Increase the duration of her W for landing auto-attacks onto champions by a maximum of 2 seconds.

Case 2 - Ultimate no longer has a Dash: Increase size of her W's AoE when activated in Dragon form by 75%. Ignores slows and roots while in Dragon form. Damage increased to 200/325/450.

Case 3 - Both Removed: Implement both ^

Stark60002/17/2015, 3:45:06 PM1 votes

[{quoted}](name=mi ramfan,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=ALWMebdQ,comment-id=,timestamp=2015-02-16T17:20:33.134+0000)

There's been a lot of discussion about mobility on the forums lately (especially as it pertains to Kalista/Yasuo), and I thought I'd like to see just exactly how much each and every one of us values mobility.

To help us consider the value of mobility, let's consider both a champion losing mobility but gaining power somewhere else, and a champion gaining mobility but losing power somewhere else.

Let me introduce you to our lucky mobile champion of the day:

http://i.imgur.com/vHtIzOM.jpg

"What? But mi_ramfan, Shyvana isn't mobile!"

That's where you're wrong. Shyvana has TWO mobility abilities; her W, Burnout, and her ultimate, Dragon's Descent. Burnout grants a 50% movement speed buff that decays over 3 seconds, while Dragon's Descent's active is a 1000 range dash! And before we write Dragon's Descent off as her ultimate, consider the fact that Dragon's Descent can theoretically have a cooldown as low as 15 seconds!

(This is, of course, ignoring a tiny issue with the above numbers: Shyvana must be continously attacking with 2.5 attack speed in order to get the cooldown that low)

So, now that we've introduced our overly-mobile bruiser of the day, let's take away her mobility! It adds too much to her kit and is bad for the game, after all. Of course, since mobility is a significant form of power, we'll have to give Shyvana some form of compensation.

##The Basic Case: Burnout

For now, let's assume that everyone agrees that Shyvana's dash on her ultimate is acceptable. It's her massive movement speed buff on W that's bad for the game. It simply makes Shyvana inescapable when she's chasing you and impossible to catch when she's running away.

Let's fix those problems right now. (All numbers below are identical to live unless stated otherwise).

You are on the Live Balance team, and these changes have just been handed down by Design.

  1. Using only Shyvana's existing balance levers (no adding new utilities or ability functions), what would you consider appropriate compensation for the loss of Shyvana's movement speed buff?

##Another Case: Dragon's Descent

Now let's imagine a completely unrelated hypothetical scenario. Design has gotten a bunch of complaints about mobility from the forums, and they've decided to start with the overly mobile bruiser Shyvana. Her ultimate simply provides too much mobility for a champion with as much bulk and damage as Shyvana has. Therefore, they've decided to make the following changes:

So, in other words, Shyvana's ultimate would retain all of its current functions (slight displacement/channel breaking, magic damage nuke, transforming into a dragon) EXCEPT for its dash.

Time to go back to the Live Balance Team, also known as the Boards!

  1. Using only Shyvana's existing balance levers, what compensation would you give Shyvana for the loss of the dash on her ultimate?

  2. Using only Shyvana's existing balance levers, what compensation would you give Shyvana for the loss of BOTH the dash on her ultimate and the movement speed buff on her W?

##Wrapping up

We've seen in LCS games, our own games, and in theorycrafting how big an effect mobility has on a champion's kit. It makes champions better at dealing the damage they already have and reduces the time enemies have to kill them before they can reach a safe place. The difficulty in balancing mobility comes entirely from finding a way to value these traits effectively against innate damage and bulk. In Shyvana's case, her mobility allows her to reach targets easily (especially post-6), but doesn't give her many tools at all to help her stick to targets. Hopefully, thinking about what Shyvana would lose without her mobility will help put the mobility creep discussion in a better context, so that we can analyze the mobility debate in the proper context:

  1. How much is mobility worth, in terms of damage? How much in terms of bulk?

EDIT

More interested in discussing the VALUE of mobility than what mobility does. We all know what mobility does. But if we can agree on a range of values for any given mobility tool, then we can look at any given champion and say "this champion doesn't pay enough for their mobility" or "this champion should get compensation for being immobile".

That's why I chose Shyvana as an example. Her mobility may not be "unhealthy" or "overbearing", but because her kit offers numerous levers for us to weigh that mobility against, she's a good example to use for the purposes of this thread.

I think it would be easier to watch a professional or high level match. Shoot you could just sit down and watch a plat game. They play all the high mobility champions. Why? Because they are high reward and low risk. Watching these games a team typically has 3 champions that can dash in and get the kill/start a fight, and then dash out immediatly after back to safety. It's funny because, while this does have counterplay in the form of hard CC, hard CC counters everything and isn't always available. Take someone like ahri. Looking at her numbers she doesn't seem like a strong champion. However she can secure a kill and get out, essentially getting fed. Then she becomes difficult to stop. Zed, in and out. Leblanc, fizz, kalista, comes in to kill you and you can do nothing without CC, then they leave.

Gaminon2/17/2015, 4:48:27 PM1 votes

Honestly I'd say comparing mobility to other things is impossible because the things mobility allow you to do are too complex to assign a simple value like "100 damage".

There are also different types of mobility. A movespeed boost is very different than a dash or a blink in terms of the what it allows you to do and what opportunities for counterplay an opponent has. That's why people rarely complain about movespeed boosts, but blinks and dashes are a constant source of grief.

Personally, I think rather than trying to balance mobility against things like damage, it'd be better to try and value the various forms of mobility relative to each other and against various forms of CC (the opposite of mobility). Then build and balance champion kits so that the mobility in their kits is somewhat balanced against other champions, whether by duration, power, cooldown, or some other mechanic. Maybe get away from the whole immobile vs mobile champion idea and simply make it a matter of "how can this champion affect movement?"