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The price of mobility

AnCa·11/26/2014, 8:19:42 AM·4 votes·1,043 views

Because Vayne, Lee Sin, Nidalee, Riven etc. is still catch-able. And for a good laugh we must have something Udyr can't ever reach with bear stance, hence Kalista. Kappa.

Jokes aside, I played a normal blind game with Nasus locked in and matched up with Kalista. Man was that not fun. I won the lane but only because she was constantly shoving the lane to harass me under tower (mind you Kalista was relatively out of tower range and never ever remotely close to have to take a tower shot) and my jungler and mid laner was smart enough to notice and come help me at top lane. Thx guys :D

This probably would have play out similarly if my lane opp is not Kalista but other adc top like Vayne and Quinn. Kalista just took it to the next level of oppression. But adc top is really another topic for another time, so lets just focus on the problem of her mobility. And if it was a real rank game, I would not have picked Nasus into a match up that atrocious.

But this got me thinking, she was not really un-catchable like everyone is raging about. It does usually takes more than one person to do it if you are playing a melee champ with no hard cc, gap closer or no summoner spell advantage. (In the case of summoner spell, you got to outplay her previously so you will have yours up and she does not.) So is this really fine? Maybe yes, maybe no.

Relocating an extra person is basically giving your opponent free time to do something else on the other side of the map. Jungler and roamer does this in laning phase already, and its the natural course of the game. So it is Ok? However with Kalista it feels like you really have to be forcing this issue, with no outside of lane intervention, some match up are just really skewered toward Kalista's favor. This case is only apparent when she is in the solo lane. In the bot lane, this is less apparent since the double teamwork is more important there than a single champion kit. So again it is Ok then? But EVEN if Kalista is bot lane, in mid game skirmishes this becomes really apparent for those aforementioned melee with no range cc/gap closer.

To be honest, we have been slowly building up to this. Kalista just showing us how far we have gone in the mobility creep spectrum. Champions that does not have a dash or jump just feel so sluggish. At the moment it seems the fix is if you are melee you need a gap closer, if you don't have one you either get rework or left unchanged by Riot. And we pretend you are not there like that co-worker at the work place Christmas party that no one talks to. So are we ok with dumping all these melees and start a new page in league where mobility is king? And those poor melee are just the small crowd of champions we take out occasionally just for fun? This probably depends on what the community wants and what Riot thinks is health for the game.

We can definitely have a small minority of champions not being viable and semi-forgotten. (I would be very very sad, since I like playing melee champions and some of my favorites fall into this category) Or we can have all those reworked to have mobility in their kit. (This is gonna take so much time and effort, not even sure its worth it. And there is always gonna be good rework, bad rework, and the ugly rework.) Or Riot can make an item that cater to this problem. (This feels like the best option. Lots of things can be done here. Maybe with items being purchasable by a selected group of champions. Or active that are not useful to champion with mobility in their kit already. Or like the new jungle item/boots, where it can have different active as enchantments for upgrade. Riot item design team probably have a better idea than me. pls rito.) But we definitely cannot go back to the start where adc and mage are like ashe and annie who have 0 mobility. We are so used to the intensity Lee Sin insec and Zed outplay bring to the table we can no longer go back to those low intensity plays.

So yeah Kalista is the pinnacle of the mobility creep. But is nerfing her mobility to the ground gonna fix everything? Probably not. As much as I hate hate hate Kalista, I don't want to just see Riot nerf her q mobility completely, I rather see them fix this whole mobility creep issue with some master plan and let us in on the plan. No full details necessary, just some scraps of info that it is being done is fine, it comfort our wayward soul torn apart by being constantly kited around the Rift.

So what do you guys think? Should Kalista just be nerfed and we call it a day? Should this whole mobility creep be looked at as a macro issue? Or should we just forget thinking about this and take the shot to the face and stop playing some of the melee champions and leave Kalista be?

P.S. Side note, not really related to mobility creep, but no cap on Kalista rend? Really, so why do we have smite duals again? This one I really do not understand.

P.P.S. Before I started the Nasus game. I watched the preseason spotlight 2015. And when it was in the loading screen(*Edit grammar) I remember they said in the video, quote "The big focus for 2015, strategic diversity. In other words, its giving you more paths to victories so your in game decisions matter just as much as the champion that you pick." Then I got locked into Nasus vs Kalista top. I felt really trolled by Rito at the time. Hahahah. XD

24 Comments

WeihGuy11/26/2014, 2:43:29 PM3 votes

The problem is that nothing but her skill limits her kiting ability.Every champion with mobility have something to limit their kiting potential. However Kalista ignores those rules and can dash whenever she attacks and when she's not, she can Q to get an extra dash. It's ok to be mobile and annoying, but Kalista just defies all logic (not to mention her W passive is very very strong). Strategic diversity is a joke. In a perfectly balanced game, every champion should have some room to outplay anyone, including their counters. I guess Kalista is just a big middle finger to less mobile champs. I wrote a post explaining more in detail and with possible ideas to tune her down. If you want to check it out: http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/gameplay-balance/cUKB7TH3-ideas-to-tune-down-kalistas-mobility

SmokingPuffin11/26/2014, 7:21:22 PM3 votes

Kalista is an anti-melee champ. She's supposed to make you angry as a bruiser, because she gets dunked on by most ranged things. Quite similar to Vayne. I don't think she's really the problem; it's just that people are spamming the new champion so the problem we've always had is more noticeable.

I think that we should give up on the idea of immobile bruisers being able to kill marksmen. That job has now been taken by the assassins and they clearly do it better. Darius should be designed to dunk on people who try to come near his squishies, not with the idea of walking towards Kalista until he inevitably dies.

Some melees are already doing this and it works well. Nasus is happy with his life as a big scary immobile dog. DrMundo has approximately a 0% kill rate when trying to dive the enemy marksman, not that he minds. Rumble makes his living by roasting other melees, and never thinks of diving.

Basically, I think the problem here is that some melee champion kits are just incoherently designed. Olaf makes no sense. Garen will never be good as long as he wants to chase carries. Rework melees without gap closers so they want to do something else -- defend your squishies, kill their tanks, block skillshots, zone the opponent.

Immobile melee champions designed to dive the enemy carry have honestly never worked well, and they're working even less well now than they were 2 years ago.

MyGhettoFantasy11/26/2014, 9:35:20 PM2 votes

Give her a new passive. Move her current passive to her Q and give it the Ashe (Q) treatment; costs x amount of mana per auto. Problem solved?

Knight Devout11/26/2014, 10:46:36 AM2 votes

Mobility is increasing too fast, while melee champions are getting too little to counter them.

The idea behind Righteous Glory is nice, but what if the team that already excels in mobility picks it?

While they nerf melee, they should also bring tank supports to acceptable level of threat, since hitting people with a wet noodle is never fun.

Stephenizgod11/26/2014, 9:15:25 PM1 votes

Well Kalista's passive is certainly annoying, but what annoys me more is her slow... You finally catch up to her and BAM! she slows you then continues her onslaught, by now you have around 100 spears in you... BOOM you are dead... Seriously? a champion that can dash after every basic attack, effectively making her immune to slows, can also slow you should, god forbid, anyone actually catch up to her...

The best example i have of this is when i went Fiora against her Top. I have two gap closer buts since she can dash i would only get 1 basic attack in before she jumped, so the combo went like this Dash>AA>Dash then i get slowed and she starts dancing around me because now i have no way to attack her, since Fiora ult has a small range i cant do much more then riposte and hope its enough to survive... It should be Dash>AA>Dash>AA>Ult if needed and then back off using Riposte to help get away safely if she survived. That seems like a fair trade, because mind you she is turning me into a pincushion as im attacking her. I won lane hardcore though, this Kalista didnt know exactly how to use her and i took advantage of every wrong dash, plus their jungler didnt know that diving Fiora when she has her ult and you have no CC is a bad idea, and he never learned thank god...

AnCa11/26/2014, 9:32:30 PM1 votes

Thanks. Cool let me try this.

> this is a line > this is another line > this is a third line

If you want to delete some stuff, you just delete that part of the text as you would in Notepad. Like this:

> this is a > this is a third line

And then you type below it and you're all good.

Ashe feels really underwhelming at the moment. The harder to position and placement issue is somewhat even more apparent in laning. (In team fight you can position yourself easier using your team's tank and support) It makes shoving and controlling the lane creep with her a thing you have to constantly keep in mind. Where other adc with dash and wave clear can shove more safely. If you are across the river at the wrong time say a roam or gank happen. You are almost 100% dead. Where adc like corki can valky away. So yeah I do agree with you on this one

AnCa11/26/2014, 9:37:08 PM1 votes

Er I tried it and somehow the quoted msg went out side of this mini-conversiation and went to the bottom of this overall post. But thanks for the tip :D.