See:
Because so far all I'm seeing is that being resourceless is the laziest way to make a character unique while making them even harder to balance because they pay next to nothing for their power.
TehNACHO7 votesBy concept, different resources have different effects on champions.
Mana for example is a resource amazing at doing a shitton of things at once, sometimes in a continuous stream. Burst mages for example are the prime definition of this as they can often throw at least some spell at a solid pace for long periods of time before dropping their entire kit on the enemy's head. It also provides early game gating and late game freedom, as early game you may have to consistently worry about your mana, but by the later stages of the game you quite frankly do not care about it anymore.
Energy is a resource that, if you are careful about, acts essentially resourceless. You can not fire large amounts of your kit consecutively like a mana user can, but you can drop an entire rotation of spells on the enemy's head after pacing your abilities in a way that your fast energy regen kicks in over time. Energy lacks the ability to build out of this restriction however, so if an energy based kit is designed to max out on energy with only 2 rotations of the champ's spells, you're not going to ever get around it no matter how you build.
Cooldowns, finally, have two significant weaknesses depending on how the champion is built. If it's a champion like Garen who is restricted by longass cooldowns, or on the opposite end of the spectrum Katarina with weak ass spells, resourceless champs are often balanced around the fact that they perform subpar to energy and mana in very specific matchups. Katarina for example is straight up weaker than Talon in many raw damage scenarios if you consider that her ult is easily interrupted and Talon can rely on multiple auto attacks with far more power than the former.
The reason why resourceless champions exist is to put a different spin on a kit than energy or mana could allow. Yasuo's design quite frankly is impossible with mana or energy because his Qs are essentially auto attacks and as his main combat skill damn near mandatory towards his damage potential. Wind Wall was designed as a reactive skill and therefore giving mana or energy is nothing more than a damning limit to using the ability in emergency situations. And don't even get started on trying to make his E function off a resource.
ModCaptainMårvelous1 votesWow.
That's a pretty damn terrible reason. I mean, honestly, a good chunk of these designs would be entirely possible with mana or energy. Hell, even Yasuo can be given something like energy.
MisterHealYoGirl1 votesThey're just different ways of regulating a champion's power. You've named a whole bunch of champions across a whole range of strengths (Dr. Mundo and Aatrox don't really belong on the same list, in those terms), and the design of their kits limit them in different ways. Do you want a more specific example?
Erockandroll2 votesWow.
That's a pretty damn terrible reason. I mean, honestly, a good chunk of these designs would be entirely possible with mana or energy. Hell, even Yasuo can be given something like energy.
All resource systems have different balancing levers. And it's a folly to believe that every champ should be balanced around having a long run limiter like Mana.
Energy is considered to be the short term limiter. As you have an aggressively small pool, but with fast regeneration. I'd argue that this would be more balanceable from a champ to champ perspective, since it can't really be affected by items. (Actually, it limits how useful CDR is on said champs)
Furry system is a bit different. Where the "pay for your power" doesn't directly come from spells cast, but rather how they play. And that is aggression. Furry champs don't have power if they are not hitting someone. Which forces their play style into farming minions/jungle, or Dueling the opponent, and limits their options.
As for health. I just have to say this, Health is a resource for every champion. Regardless of whether they use it to cast spells. Health represents, how many hits you can take, how able are you to survive a dive, (or getting dived, and even how long before I have to go back. And Ultimately that's very similar to Mana, a decent limiter in the Early game, and has many build options in the late game.
Aeolian Melodies1 votesWow.
That's a pretty damn terrible reason. I mean, honestly, a good chunk of these designs would be entirely possible with mana or energy. Hell, even Yasuo can be given something like energy.
Variety in champion design isn't good enough of a reason for you?
insaiyanbacca2 voteswell technically speaking rumble runs on his heat resource that he has to manage, and aatrox mundo zac vlad and morde all use health as a resource(thought vlad and mundo have such good sustain it doesnt really matter tbh.)
esmelar1 votesI dont think anyone want to see Riven using Sheen effectively, she will destroy everything