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Let's Talk about Skillshots, Point and Click, and Counterplay

mi ramfan·4/15/2015, 7:44:04 PM·73 votes·10,457 views

This is an extremely long post, so long that I've put the TL;DR at the top.

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##TL;DR -in general, skillshots have more counterplay than point and click abilities, which is why we're seeing more of them -skillshots can be made more powerful than point and click abilities because of the possibility of failure -point and click abilities are still good to have when a champion absolutely cannot function without the ability's effect being 100% reliable

Ever since the Ryze rework was revealed, there's been a lot of discussion on the game health of skillshots versus point and clicks. Unfortunately, much of it has been plagued by misconceptions about Riot's intentions when switching point and clicks for skillshots, and many commentors have just been throwing around buzzwords like "strategic diversity" and "counterplay" without really understanding what they mean and why they actually make the case for skillshots stronger.

"But mi ramfan, Riot greatly reducing the amount of point and click spells reduces diversity and makes mobile champions have no counterplay!

Yeah. No.

##What is this counterplay madness you speak of?

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Counterplay is the actions available to one player that deal specifically with reducing the effectiveness of their opponent's options. We can say an ability has high counterplay if there are more ways than usual that opponents can reduce its effectiveness and low counterplay if some of the usual methods of playing against an ability are weak or ineffective.

For any given champion or ability, we can break down their counterplay into three main areas:

-Preparation: Everything you can do BEFORE the encounter with the champion to improve your odds of success. This includes champion selection, rune/mastery/summoner choices, and item purchases; other stuff like warding may also be included. -Gameplay: Everything you can do ONCE IN COMBAT with the champion to reduce their effectiveness. This includes dodging skillshots, correctly choosing the timing and order of your abilities, and choosing proper timing and means of engagement. -Strategic: Everything you can do AS A TEAM to reduce the champion or enemy team comp's effectiveness. For example, you could run a siege comp against a strong enemy dueling team, or a pick comp to avoid full 5v5 fights against an AoE comp.

Ideally, we want every ability and every champion to have all three of these counterplays available. While it's impossible to ever reach a state with "too much counterplay" globally (just like it's impossible to reach "perfect balance" unless you're playing rock paper scissors), we can always strive to improve the amount of counterplay in the game.

Let's briefly look at an ability like live!Ryze's Q from a counterplay standpoint. We can quickly and immediately find the following:

> Preparation: > -Any champion with a spell shield can cancel the spell > -regular shield or heals can block or restore HP loss > -Magic Resistance from runes, masteries, or items reduces damage taken, HP allows you to take more Qs before dying > -Banshee's Veil and Zhonya's Hourglass can block or neutralize the spell > -Doran's Shield reduces single target ability damage > > Gameplay: > -Remaining out of range of Ryze's Q prevents him from harassing with it > -If Ryze's mana is low, he may not be able to cast Q > > Strategic: > -Ryze is vulnerable to gank pressure in the early game > -Ryze has limited mobility and can be shredded down by a long ranged back line with appropriate support

This is a pretty typical list of counterplays, actually. There's plenty you can do to make Ryze's Q less effective before you encounter him, and a few strategies to deal with him on a macro scale. He's a little low on gameplay counterplay, but it's not unusually bad

Compare that to rework!Ryze's Q counterplay:

> Preparation: > -unchanged! > > Gameplay: > -Remaining out of range of Ryze's Q prevents him from harassing with it > -If Ryze's mana is low, he may not be able to cast Q >-Can be avoided by remaining inside minion wave or by juking in open space > > Strategic: >-unchanged!

Making Ryze's Q a skillshot, then, is a net gain in counterplay. It increases the amount of gameplay available to Ryze's opponents without reducing counterplay in other areas.

##Strategic Diversity

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Point and Click spells don't add any of this, really. Many posters have said that point and click spells are necessary to deal with mobility creep, but I'd argue that Yasuo and lategame Kalista are the only champions who are so mobile that skillshots don't always deal with them properly. Even then, a skillshot based team can still effectively limit their options in most situations.

Additionally, most point and click spells, despite targeting differently from other spells, do not really contribute to increasing the number of viable champions. In fact, there have been a few point and click spells that, at their peaks, were large contributors to decreasing the viability of entire classes of champions. Some examples of this are Ryze (low cooldown Q harass + instant targeted snare was unwinnable for many melee champions), Vladimir (Q's heal + hextech revolver= infinite sustain), Taric (400 range circle around him you can never enter because of stun), and Akali (point and click instant burst combo).

That being said, some point and click effects are necessary for their champions to function properly-hence the next section.

##Are all point and clicks bad?

If you've read everything thus far, you probably think I want to remove all point and click abilities. And to a certain extent, I'd support that. Skillshots provide more gameplay options for both sides pretty much all the time and make the game less binary in many situations. However, as the game stands right now, there are quite a few point and click functions that...we just can't get rid of.

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Obviously point and click autoattacks are not going anywhere; they're a standard component of RTS and other MOBAs and there's probably no other way to make melee attacks work. But there are also a few cases where a champion just...wouldn't work without a targeted ability. My favorite example of this is Rammus' taunt. Yes, in theory we could make Rammus taunt a skillshot. In practice, however, Rammus simply couldn't function without the ability to reliably make people attack him in Defensive Ball Curl, because it would be easy to just completely ignore him in teamfights.

In general, making an ability a skillshot results in a decrease in reliability; since skillshots can be missed, it's reasonable to assume that they will occasionally fail. To compensate, skillshots are usually stronger when successful than point and click, because point and click can't fail. For an easy example, the only reason Blitzcrank's pull is allowed to have the range, damage (300 +1.0 AP?!), and effects that it does are because it's a long cooldown skillshot that's easy to whiff. If Blitz's pull was point and click, it would probably be 500 or less range, deal a fraction of the damage it currently does (if it dealt damage at all!), and that's if it remained a regular ability; something that powerful in point and click might have to be an ult to be balanced.

Also important to consider are targeted mobility spells. Skillshot mobility spells are much more powerful than targeted ones because they grant champions much more mobility than they would have otherwise had. Giving Irelia, Xin Zhao, or Yasuo the ability to dash without targets would probably instantly break them by greatly improving their disengage options. Additionally, making autoattack modifiers or melee range spells skillshots wouldn't really work.

With the above factors considered, we have a good set of criteria for determining where it would be appropriate to leave point and clicks skills in place, as described below. Keep in mind that with as with any set of quick rules, there will be a gray area where it's debatable whether the skill is better suited to being a PaC or a skillshot.

> Point and Click > Skillshot > > -It is MELEE or an AUTOATTACK MODIFIER. There's no realistic way to make these skillshots. > -The spell being 100% reliable is ESSENTIAL to the champion's gameplay. Most damage spells don't fall into this category, but many CC spells and shields/heals fall into this category. > -The spell is already powerful for reasons other than its point and click, and the buffs required to balance at a skillshot would break the champion in the hands of skilled players. > -The spell interacts with the champion's other abilities in a complex manner. One excellent example of this is Zed's Death Mark. At first, it may seem like a simple targeted burst ability that would be ideal in skillshot form, but the way it interacts with the rest of his kit is very complex due to the shadow it spawns. As a result, it's better to let the focus of the ability be on planning the perfect kill rather than worrying about whether you'll even land it. > > GRAY AREA > > -The spell is mobility-related. Skillshot mobility replacing targeted mobility would be a massive buff to many champions who are already mobile. As such, this should be done only in extremely special circumstances. > -The spell interacts with terrain. On the one hand, skillshots are easier to line up in the way you want to with terrain. On the other hand, do you really want to have worry about aiming a skillshot when it's hard enough just interacting with the wall in the first place? > -The spell has crowd control on it. While there are certainly some CC spells that are so important that they must be point and click, there's just as many if not more that caused counterplay issues with point and click. As a result, changes in this area are very delicate. > > Skillshot > Point and Click > > -The spell is low cooldown. Low cooldown point and click spells have a long history of being overbearing in lane and difficult to balance, while low cooldown skillshots have much fewer issues. > -The spell is a basic nuke with one or none extra effects. There's little reason to keep these skills point and click unless they are extremely complex or play an important role in champion gameplay as discussed above. > -The spell has a long range. Long range point and clicks can create issues where they can be cast on enemies who have literally no way to ever actually reach the caster, harassing them down with absolutely no counterplay. For this reason, anything intended to be long range should be a skillshot, period. >

##Conclusion:

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If you've made it this far, congratulations. I probably could have made this post shorter, but I wanted to make sure I explained my rationale behind every one of my stances so that the comments would be focused more on gray zone cases than on "why do you believe X".

Hopefully this post has provided better rationale into why Riot made some of the changes they did on the Ryze rework, the recent Veigar rework, and some of their recent champion releases. If it hasn't, well, tell me in the comments and I'll be happy to debate specifics with anyone.

Thanks for reading!

117 Comments

JedenVojak4/15/2015, 8:48:04 PM24 votes

Your post makes a lot of sense, logically.

There's just one major problem that you overlook.

Skillshots are inherently less fun than targeted abilities because they miss, and missing isn't fun - I mean, they removed dodge.

Always hitting 100% of the time is fun, and I don't understand why it's okay for every ADC in the game to have manaless, 100% reliable, undodgeable sustained damage, but on click damage thats cooldown based and costs mana is somehow bad. If not for this enormous double standard, I might agree with this change.

Also I just really hate skillshots, but that's not a fault of skillshots in general.

Oh, and I just want to say, your post is very well written, and I enjoyed reading it. Although, I very much believe that you can have waay too much counterplay: I would put Soraka and Sion in that box.

Hellioning4/15/2015, 10:38:33 PM11 votes

Personally, there are two things I'd like to bring up. The first is that skillshots have another advantage over PaC; they don't require vision of the target. This means you can use them to facecheck, so you don't end up walking into a brush that has a Garen in it because you have to to deal damage with that garen (or ward it, but assume your trinket is on cooldown.) This is a major advantage to skillshots that I don't seen show up enough.

The second thing is that I believe you are understating the impact mobility has on skillshots. When you're playing as Lux or Vel'Koz, for example, someone who requires the ability to land a skillshot CC to solo-kill someone (or even just avoid dying), a mobility spell is one of your least favorite things. Let's take a relatively simple scenario: You, are Vel'Koz, are laning against LeBlanc. She Q-Ws to you. If you wish to trade, you probably need to land your E so you can land your double hit of W. Where do you E? To where she currently is, or to where her distortion would be? That in itself is not the problem (it's prediction and reading your opponent, both useful skills in a PvP game. It's gameplay!) The problem, however, is that the LB can react to your decision; if she sees your E heading towards her distortion spot, she can simply walk back. You cannot react to her reaction, however, because you already burnt one of your abilities, and you can't exactly beg for her to stand in W for two ticks and also land a Q.

Mobility is a distinct advantage when skillshots are common, and I believe you are understating their importance. Sure, maybe only Yasuo and a late game Kalista have an infinite number of dashes, or at least it seems like it, but several champions have one very important spell to land, and only one dash is enough to completely screw them over. I don't want to make this a mobility debate, but the existance of Yasuo/Kalista/Zed/LB/Lee/everyone with more than one dash is my primary argument for keeping a bunch of things PaC.

UPfreely4/15/2015, 8:50:31 PM4 votes

Alot of people just don't like that champions are getting harder because it gives a bigger edge to twitch reflex players.(looking at you katarina mains) Alot of us just want to play a game with easy to play champions where we stand a reasonable chance against our opponents.

TotalJerk4/16/2015, 3:56:22 PM2 votes

There's a problem I noticed with League starting out. Riot has a nasty habit of overestimating the difficulty of landing a skillshot, so they overtune them to compensate. The abilities that are skillshots are almost always the ones with far superior utility, damage, and range. Even though I was a noob, I developed a preference for skillshot heavy champions because of the fact that the range, power, and efficiency meant that if you were talented at landing them, the champion was just automatically better than champions without skillshots.

The absolute worst recent example of Riot underestimating skillshots is Sion's new E before its first nerf: Safe, 25 mana at all levels, ~1500 potential range, large amounts of magic damage, almost undodgeable, REALLY good rank scaling, slow, armor reduction, low cooldown

I'd rather lane against Yorick than that shit. Note that some of the most "Broken" champions in the eyes of the community tend to either be the skillshot heavy ones, or the champions that are hard to hit with skillshots.

Mr Comet4/15/2015, 9:19:24 PM2 votes

I got 3 of your pictures, Kil la Kil, Star Trek, and Sword Art Online :D Ziggs

Drunk Rummate4/15/2015, 8:33:40 PM2 votes

Agree with most everything you said, +1

I'd like to discuss the following point a bit because I believe it also has a bit of a grey area that you didn't mention.

[{quoted}](name=mi ramfan,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=IhlpFEdq,comment-id=,timestamp=2015-04-15T19:44:04.420+0000)

> -The spell is already powerful for reasons other than its point and click, and the buffs required to balance at a skillshot would break the champion in the hands of skilled players.

In regards with a champion like Veigar, his old Q overlaps quite a bit with "low cooldown, basic point and click nuke," but it also brought a lot of utility to his kit in the form of stacking AP. The ability was counterbalanced with it's low range, much like Ryze's Q.

Compare this to say, an ADC who can click on a target with 4+ items and deal 300+ damage (especially if they crit). This is a low range, targeted 'nuke' with a very low cooldown. So what made Veigar's Q 'toxic' enough to change it to a skill shot? I would argue it was the synergy with the rest of his kit. His ultimate also being a point and click nuke, combined with the consistency of his Q, made his burst pattern completely lacking in counterplay for champions who were forced to walk within his range.

Few would call an ADC's ability to auto attack overpowered. Nobody would suggest that we turn auto attacks into skill shots (to my knowledge). What keeps ADCs balanced is their lack of burst damage via the rest of their kit and the low accessibility of AD items relative to AP items (~300 AD full build vs 650+ AP full build).

So at what point can we take a look at AP itemization and say "hey, maybe there's too much AP available in the game?" Or maybe "hey, AP scaling abilities scale too much" and then suddenly point and click abilities on ap champions become just as balanced as an ADC's auto attack. But the problem then arises that we would lack a dichotomy between AP mages and ADCs. One auto attacks for 300 damage every 0.8 seconds, the other "auto attacks" with a targeted ability for 300 damage every 0.8 seconds.

I guess the point I'm trying to make is that a lot of issues with counterplay in this game arise from the burst patterns of champions.
--Why was the Ahri rework so successful and healthy after they removed DFG? Because they removed her ability to 100-0 burst an enemy player in the space of time that she landed charm. Now Ahri has to land her skill shots multiple times, giving her opponent opportunity to react or even outplay her in combat. However this increases the requirement for Ahri players substantially! No longer are you rewarded heavily for landing that charm, you have to land everything and you have to do it multiple times! So you then buff the champion by giving it movement speed and more responsive animations.--

That creates another problem however. Must every champion in the game revolve around sustained damage and multiple rotations of their abilities? Where is the assassin's place in all of this? I can't really tell you because I don't know the answer myself. Sustained damage builds have obvious and clear counterplay while burst damage builds are very binary in nature. I'll leave that to others to speculate on.

YOU BEEN WARNED4/16/2015, 12:04:07 AM2 votes

Ok so why are ranged crits allowed? ( point and clicks)

I can understand melees, you can kite and CC them much more easily. Besides it takes them commitment and risk, unlike Graves Caitlyn Lucian Es for example.