The recent champion trend and why it's a good thing

I've seen a lot of threads lately, usually complaining, about the new champions and recent trend about making champions that can "make plays". It's a vague description about what this means, exactly. Then like Archimedes, it hit me while I was in the bath, though I didn't run down the street naked shouting "EUREKA!" Because I'd get arrested.

This again ties into issues we had with Gen 1 that has, for the most part, faded away as more and more champions get reworked and updated, and at its core, our gripes with characters like Katarina and Leblanc. We don't want champions that can "face roll", or mash all the buttons at once and still be productive. Not just because of the lack of skill it requires to face roll, but also because there's no strategy, finesse, or FUN to that tactic.

Let me put this another way. A champion like Mordekaiser has next to zero utility; his only source of utility is his W, and he has zero crowd control and mobility-related skills. Other than that, he deals straight up damage and there's basically no reason to not mash the buttons in a random order. That's boring. There's no finesse to it, there's little reason to think about your next move on a tactical scale (tactical scale: half the size of a lane, or the maximum range of a teamfight), and you don't feel the satisfaction of playing your skills at the right moment aside from being within range of the enemy for them to actually mean something.

Take a character like Zed or Yasuo by comparison. As much as I have problems with them and people always playing as one of these two, there are reasons you play one skill or another at what time. There's a distinct consequence (for better or worse) for casting Wind Wall at the right or wrong time. Zed telegraphs his ult from a mile away, so there's a reason to wait until Nami burns her Q before taking her or her carry out. Even MASTER YI, of all people, has a degree of finesse, deciding when to use your skills to maximize your impact.

Some of the facerolling aspects are resolved with something even so slight as a single skill change. Tristana used to be an all-in AP assassin who throws her entire kit down on a squishy target, knocks them away, and lets her AP-scaling Ignite (and Ignite itself) finish off the target without risk or repercussion. Now she's a demolition expert who needs to focus on a single target to maximize her damage, and the only thing that really changed was the active on her E.

If you think about it long enough, you'll realize the new champion direction is a good thing. Despite Riot's hit and miss on some champions (they're only human, after all), it's a far cry different from what Gen I champions used to be like in a very good way. Champions shouldn't have the same difficulty curve, but they should feel differently from one another, and there should be a distinct difference between mashing your keyboard like a scrub playing Eddy Gordo and playing your skills in a tactful, precise manner.