@Riot: Can we get an Ability Reorder Next Season?

SSmotzer·Oct 10, 2017·7 votes·330 views

It's kinda always been a pet peeve of mine that abilities that are functionally the same end up on different buttons on my keyboard on different champions.

Take for example Teemo and Kennen; they both have a sprinting ability, but Teemo's in on his W, while Kennen's is on his E. It can make you do a double take when you go from playing one to the other.

This is mostly a problem with older champions as most champions since like 2012 have all had their skill shots on their Q and their movement ability on their E.

5 Comments

Lord of MathOct 10, 20174 votes

Seems like a simple change to improve overall game health. Have an Upvote.

KaìjuOct 10, 20173 votes

But wouldn't that mess with players that already know the different champs spell orders? What you propose would solve an issue for you but also cause the exact same issue for others.

SSmotzerOct 10, 20171 votes

I guess you're right. We could just wait for the specific champions to get reworks and their order fixed with their new kits.

Broseidon25Oct 10, 20171 votes

You could also just rebind your abilities as a quick fix now while ya wait for changes in the future. Still would be a bit confusing with the ability icons in the wrong order. But that's all I can think of

LostFr0stOct 10, 20171 votes

They do try to synchronize that stuff on champions. When Teemo gets updated his skills will more than likely move around (as you stated, he's super old).

Here's the AskRiot on it:

http://euw.leagueoflegends.com/en/news/community/q/ask-riot-runes-splash-art-and-buttons Q: How do you decide which abilities get assigned to which buttons?

A: There are a couple of guidelines we try to follow with ability slotting to help players when they’re first learning a new champion.

First, if an ability is shaping up to be the bread-and-butter spell, the one that’s cast most frequently and ranked up first, we tend to assign it to Q. While players will eventually try all kinds of skill orders, we try and make sure that for a player trying a champion for the first time, maxing Q is a decent choice.

Second, some types of abilities have trended into certain slots, and we try to follow those trends. When working on Kled, for instance, we were prototyping an early version of Jousting, his dash ability. We looked at similar melee fighter champions like Riven and Yasuo, saw that their dash abilities were in the E slot, and followed suit with Kled’s dash. Similarly, his purely passive attack modifier, Violent Tendencies, has similarities to abilities like Vi’s Denting Blows and Vayne’s Silver Bolts, which both live in the W slot.

By following existing trends, we can leverage skills players have already learned from other champions to help get over the hump of playing an unfamiliar champion. It’s similar to how games in other genres follow shared conventions - if you’re playing a new, complicated FPS, for instance, you at least know that pointing the cursor and clicking the left mouse button will (generally) shoot your gun.