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Click-and-point gapclosers on Hard Snowball Champs

Sansix·10/22/2014, 2:43:44 PM·1 votes·1,295 views

(Title Edit: Click-and-point gapclosers on Hard Snowball Champs)

Hello, I'm SixthiS, and this is my first balancing post in my time on the boards. I'm a silver 4 player who's played for a solid two years, and am open to any kind of feedback or suggestions for not only this post, but for gameplay in general.

I haven't taken the time as of yet to see if this topic has been visited within the posts, so I'm kinda being selfish I guess by visiting the topic on my own without searching previous to my posting. Whoops. Guess I just wanna free bump or something.

Champions that depend solely on lane success (Yi, Akali, Riven (ish), Fiora, Fizz, Zed, Katarina) and that snowball extremely hard usually have some form of click-and-point ability that allow for an easy gapclose. This makes for a very balls-to-the-wall type gameplay. The normal set of approaches to keep these champions down are to ward and request a camp from the jungle. As it stands, you can also itemize against a few of those I listed-- namely Fiora and Riven, thus making them next to useless in teamfights or in general. However, others have scalings that allow for much more crippling damage- such as Fizz, Akali and Yi. (EDIT: Reason being, Fizz builds a lot of mpen and has high AP ratios. Akali also builds for mpen, has high AP ratios, and heals off of the damage she deals via passive and items. Yi deals true damage, itemizes for armpen and critchance.) These three also have a click-and-point ability of sorts that tends to deal a significant amount of damage, and allows them to close gaps on demand.

I'm not asking for a reduction in numbers. If anything about their numbers happened to be reduced, they'd be useless altogether and wouldn't fit in the aggressive balls to the wall style of play. I feel though, as a player, that their gap-closers shouldn't be as cut and dry as to just click on a target. I feel if their gap-closers were made into skill-shots, it would make for a more skill-based approach as supposed to a exceedingly reliable way to close the distance. Reliability should be frontloaded into their ability to deal damage, not their ability to click-and-point. Not to mention that as the game progresses, it is a near guarantee that these champions will be able to snowball because their kits allow for non-skillshot gap-closers.

Yi's Q could be reworked into the following:

Master Yi lunges in the target direction and upon contact of an enemy will become untargetable, dealing damage to the the initial target, and the three closest targets. If there is no collision with an enemy, Yi will return to his initial position.

Perhaps there could be a range increase to compensate for losing the click-and-point targeting.

Fizz's Q could follow the same line of rework, save that he won't return to his initial position, and the range without going through an enemy can be shortened. His E works perfectly as a form of escape, and thus his Q shouldn't allow him to go through walls.

Akali thrives on assassination, and thus her R is the most important thing that ever happened to her. She needs three stacks in order to be viable as a damage dealer, yet the only part of her kit that is oppressive is the fact that she can click-and-point in order to deal her damage. Perhaps if reworked again like Yi's Q, save for returning to the initial position, Akali can be rewarded for landing a skill shot rather than clicking on her target. Maybe if there is no target, 2 stacks of her dash are consumed. This way, she has a potent escape, yet has to regard her stacks as more of a resource. i.e. Should I use 2 to evade the minion wave and then the last to close upon my target? Should I engage then disengage? Is this a situation where I can consume all my stacks without fear of reprieve? I feel this change will not only allow more windows of opportunity, but reward significantly both player and opponent for skillful play.

I'm not demanding for rework on these champions, merely calling for discussion on the matter. What do you think, reader?

TL;DR

I feel as though click-and-point gapclosers should be made less reliable, and more rewarding for skillful players-- thus made into skillshots. Thoughts?

10 Comments

Kuroi8610/22/2014, 3:28:04 PM3 votes

There's a big weakness to a point and click gap closer though, actually two for all of the champs you listed lol.

A. You know where their gap closer will land them.

B. Each champ is highly squishy.

Of the champions listed, they all need to either be fed, or get a lot of farm before they really become dangerous. Lvl1 they all have to either try to poke their opponent down or go for short trades to try and whittle their opponent down before going in for the first kill. It's not until they have two or three kills that they can begin going all in without poking or trading.

AmazingGoat10/22/2014, 6:29:12 PM3 votes

This is a great post and related to something I've been meaning to post for awhile. There is a class of champions (you have identified them) who snowball incredibly hard and are very oppressive at low ELOs if they get even slightly ahead.

The issue, imo, is that the amount of skill needed to play against them if they get even a slight lead is MUCH MUCH greater than the amount of skill needed to play them. Playing against them requires coordinated play and teamwork - something which is very hard to pull off in low ELO games. The result is that many of these champions, once ahead, can easily snowball a game and win it by themself in a way that other champions simply can't.

I have a pet theory that these type of champions actually seriously contribute to the phenomenon of "ELO hell" that people complain about.

First and foremost, this is the case because these champions are designed for all in play that frequently results in lots of kills being generated. This can have one of three results. This can either result in the snowball champion getting fed, the opposing laner getting fed, or both champions getting fed. Regardless of what outcome occurs, the result is that that lane now is much more fed than any other lane and will have a much bigger impact on the outcome of the game than the other lanes.

Perhaps an even bigger issue is that, in a game with these type of champions, it frequently isn't that the best player or players win, instead it's often that the worst player loses. If you have a player that repeatedly makes mistakes, these champions will easily punish those mistakes, get fed, and it will become very hard to win that game.

Obviously, I'm not advocating eliminating these types of champions, but I do think there is something weird going on here that would be worth taking a look at. In my opinion, there is something wrong with having a class of champions that rarely sees competitive play but is known for stomping low ELO games.

My understanding is that "counterplay" is a big part of the design philosophy of LoL. Many of these champions, once they get slightly ahead, have little to no counterplay. To the extent that these champions aren't played in higher level play, for many of them it isn't because they wouldn't be effective if they got ahead, it's because the team can play in a way to prevent them from getting ahead.

Because, to be honest, even the best, most organized teams have trouble against these champions if they snowball. Look at the time Akali was played in LCS. She was completely shut down in lane, then got a couple of kills and snowballed out of control.

The problem is that the "counterplay" to many of these champions is to not let them get fed. This isn't really possible in low ELO solo queue where there will always be bad players to get fed off of.

xDingwithsalad10/22/2014, 2:57:45 PM2 votes

no.

Han Chuljoon10/22/2014, 5:53:12 PM1 votes

As long as AD carries rely on targetted damage from range then targetted gap closers of the same range will exist