Apparently Melee ADCs are notorious for this and get gutted to keep them in control. At least that's what people say about Yasuo. Just recently, Jinx got nerfs to control her snowball potential. I'm not the most experienced with LoL terms, but I was wondering if it were ever possible to make the design enjoyable.
Erockandroll6 votesRemember when assassins where meant to farm champions and not minions? they were feast or famine.
The thing is Yasuo and Jinx arn't exactly feast of famine, because they scale into the late game. Even if they can't get snowballing, they can make a comeback if the game gets stalled out. Jinx being so snowbally for being a hyper carry probably wasn't the best balancing riot has done, which is why they're trying to change that now.
Chromatic Eagle1 votesSee, I wanted to talk about hypercarries too, but I didn't know how to phrase it. Hypercarries shouldn't be as snowbally as Jinx is currently right? How do you feel about Vayne? Isn't Draven intended to be FoF too?
If assassins aren't meant to be FoF, what do people think about Katarina or Fizz?
What about ADCs? Are they or should they be FoF?
I know bruisers like Xin Zhao or Irelia can be like that, or at least that's what some people have said.
Erockandroll2 votesI haven't seen a lot of Kat in My Elo. I have seen some fizz. They really can't farm as well as say a siege mage, but they have their own problems (with mana regen) Assassins are in a real intresting position. because they will out damage a siege mage early game. and have higher play making potential. But as the game progresses Their glass cannon build becomes apparent and they will struggle to kill tanks. So their actual power is focused in the early/mid game. But as of now, their snowball potential is a bit more team oriented because of the increased importants of Dragon and Baron. So they don't exactly snowball by farming champs.
Last time I played against vayne, I was playing Ez. in which the early game sucked because she continued shoving the wave into my tower (and I couldn't shove as fast) making it hard for me to cs. (though in a team game, this would be punished with continued ganks.) I spiked in the mid game, then fell off late game, being woefully inequiped to deal with vayne.
ADC's are almost never feast or famine because of their ability to farm. And even if an ADC falls of late game, they are almost always useful in a team fight. Late game Hyper carries are more of a YoloQ problem because the lack of team coordination makes it difficult to close out a game early.
junglerboy162 votesIn a sense, every champion in every single match is feast or famine to a certain extent. Every champion (depending on how they are played) has the opportunity to do really well, really badly, or somewhere in between. It isn't a question of FoF or not FoF, it is a question of how FoF a champion is. Having that tension between being able to get going really hard and also be shut down to being useless is a really strong point of tension that helps improve the overall game experience (otherwise you might as well just play a game on your calculator and see who can add numbers together better, because that is essentially what it would be without that tension), and balance of the game is basically built around controlling how much a champion feasts, how much they famine, and what points in the game they do either.
For example, many players didn't like Zed for a really long time because it felt like he was always feasting and never famished, so they nerfed his R last patch, now he has a higher likely-hood of becoming a famine champion any given match. Someone like Poppy on the other hand has a very extreme feast or famine pattern, and some players (like myself) find that incredibly rewarding. However, it is also so binary that it is unhealthy for the game (because when Poppy gets going she really gets going) meaning they have to keep her nerfed quite hard so that she isn't constantly OP.
TL;DR: FoF is an aspect of every champion's kit, and game balance is basically tweaking how FoF a champion is any given match.
Teridax681 votes
can catch up pretty easily, even if his itemization quirks do make him somewhat snowbally early on. 
also has the option to splitpush if he does get behind, so it's not terrible if he loses early. Champions like 
and 
, on the other hand, have extremely variable performances, though when they get nerfs and tweaks it's often just as much due to the range of other gameplay issues they have (e.g. Fiora's low-counterplay ultimate, Tryndamere's super-cheesy early levels) as it is to their binariness.
Overall, while truly feast-or-famine mechanics tend to be bad due to how binary the early game becomes (it's an issue with a lot of assassins, especially early game-heavy assassins like 
or 
), it's also bad to have the early game make no impact at all, since it means nothing you do truly matters at the start of a match. Ideally, if a champion goes ahead or falls behind early on, that impact should make itself felt throughout the rest of the game, but either side should also always have the opportunity to catch up or contribute at every stage.