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One of the problems with new Assassins is the same problem people have with Yasuo

Eedat·Dec 30, 2016·7 votes·635 views

Take a look at the "Win Rate % by Games Played" graphs

http://champion.gg/champion/Yasuo

http://champion.gg/champion/Leblanc

http://champion.gg/champion/Rengar

http://champion.gg/champion/Talon

http://champion.gg/champion/Vayne

These champs can have win rates in the low 40's with inexperienced players, yet push mid-high 50's with experienced players. Essentially its the "feeder when on my team, but carrylord on the enemy team" mentality.

It also explains why you hear contradicting opinions on whether some of these champs are good or not. For example, a new player (to the champion) might play one of these champs and feel like they're garbage. Or you might play with/against an inexperienced LeBlanc (for example) and think they're weak because they played poorly or you crushed them in lane. The next person might play against a very experienced LB and get annihilated.

You can get one person saying "Rengar is trash" and the next saying "Rengar is OP"

The question I wanted to bring up for discussion:

#How do you properly balance high skill ceiling champions?

On one hand, do we punish people for investing a lot of time to learn these champions? How much is too much?

On the other hand, the experience of a player on a specific champion is a variable outside of your control. You getting matched against a 1 million mastery point Yasuo isn't something you control. But when you do, the game feels extremely unfair.

Opinions?

8 Comments

DivewingDec 30, 20165 votes

Secret Diary of an Azir Main.

Honestly I think that is supposed to be the intention, mastering a champion reaps benefits, it's when "mastering" occurs after 3-5 games (crit-Vayne) that it's an issue (especially in conjunction with a high playrate).

Sahn UzalDec 30, 20161 votes

Hasn't Rengar always been like that though?

EedatDec 30, 20161 votes

More or less. Except now he has a tool to bail out if things go sour. They wanted to rework him so he didnt one shot insta-delete people, but he still does. They just gave him more tools more or less

Sahn UzalDec 30, 20161 votes

Nah, he doesn't insta delete people like he used to, especially not since the nerf to Bonetooth Necklace. The change to his ult also made it so much more fair to play against.

It's just that the frustration of getting jumped by him didnt go down far enough to even out the new source of frustration they added to his kit: His Mini-Ragnarok on his Empowered Battle roar.

Asayake 5150glowDec 30, 20161 votes

We make it so the champion is shit if not mastered, but can still be fun, and make some room for counterplay against them. Try playing Shyvana into Vayne late game. Absolutely nothing you can do, unless perhaps if you run ghost, Bork, and red smite, but even then you'll still have trouble killing her before she vamps it all back and your buffs run out.

When the champion is mastered, give them room to outplay others but at least if 5 champions blow their ults, they should still die.

Or at least they should die to Pantheon+TF+Vi+Ashe+Braum. Which an Olaf might actually be able to 1v5 if fed enough, but meh.

PermabannedGarenDec 30, 20161 votes

{quoted}

We make it so the champion is shit if not mastered, but can still be fun, and make some room for counterplay against them. Try playing Shyvana into Vayne late game. Absolutely nothing you can do, unless perhaps if you run ghost, Bork, and red smite, but even then you'll still have trouble killing her before she vamps it all back and your buffs run out.

When the champion is mastered, give them room to outplay others but at least if 5 champions blow their ults, they should still die.

Or at least they should die to Pantheon+TF+Vi+Ashe+Braum. Which an Olaf might actually be able to 1v5 if fed enough, but meh.

Shyvana is not meant to be able to 1v1 Vayne late game, much like how Amumu isn't meant to be able to 1v1 Shyvana at any stage of the game.

Asayake 5150glowDec 30, 20161 votes

{quoted}

Shyvana is not meant to be able to 1v1 Vayne late game, much like how Amumu isn't meant to be able to 1v1 Shyvana at any stage of the game.

Meh, just give me a chance if I'm 13/0.

Teridax68Dec 31, 20161 votes

{quoted}

#How do you properly balance high skill ceiling champions?

This is a complex and difficult question, and there's currently no definite way of answering this. My personal, and relatively vague, opinion is that a champion's counterplay should scale on top of their own outplay potential: in the case of assassins, there should always be some basic moves players should be able to remember that should mitigate their effectiveness, e.g. retreating, finding friends, etc., and as player skill rises, each new move learned by the assassin player should have its own counter-move that their opponent could also learn against them. That way, two players of equal skill and experience should be about equally well-equipped against each other, not just by mastering their own champion, but also by figuring out how to counter their opponent's own advanced moveset.

Right now, though, the trouble with a lot of high-level play on champions like these is that mastering some moves actually tends to reduce their counterplay. Riven is one of the biggest examples of this: a player unfamiliar with her will not really know how to cancel her animations, which means her full combo will take more time, and thereby give her opponent more room to react properly to her. However, at high levels of mastery, and with proper animation canceling, Riven can chain her entire damage sequence in under a couple of seconds, which often leaves her opponent with little opportunity to react, if any at all. Her advanced moveset doesn't really carry its own specific counters, because it's not a matter of doing so much a matter of doing something new, as it is doing the exact same thing, only faster. Because mastering Riven's animation canceling is almost completely independent from any interaction with her opponent, it's an "empty" form of mastery that leaves no room for outplay, and also has very limited scaling. Much of this can also be said of Yasuo and his E+Q chain combos in lane, though I think he does carry more interaction than Riven.

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