When is Lee the garbage monk going to get checked out? THE IDENTITY OF LEE? [IN-DEPTH] [LOOK, READ]
NOTE BEFORE YOU READ EVERYTHING ELSE: When I first started typing this I was just typing, I didn't really organize much and I'm too lazy to go back and change it so sorry about that. It's still informative, but if you wanna skip it that's fine. I organized my thoughts better the more you scroll.
NOTE AND REMINDER: I'm a Lee Sin main, and while low elo, I know the in's and out's of this champions, all match-ups, and consider myself a decently skilled jungler. I don't understand why a champion that has such a high skill ceiling deserves to be garbage tier, while champions with little to no difficulty whatsoever can be top of the line. I don't think that it should be a linear deal, meaning that a harder champion should be superior to one that's easier to play. It's just highly disappointing that I honestly don't even pick Lee anymore due to the sole fact that I truly feel like I know that I'll be handicapping my team past 20ish minutes, I'm literally forced to pick other jungler's because Lee right now is obsolete.
ANUTHA NOTE: I'm gonna put a lot of effort into this thread, so I'd highly appreciate any feedback on it, whatever it is. Also if you have questions feel free to ask, any comments are more than welcome.
If he's supposed to be a fighter, what's up with his weird ass scalings? Buff all of his scaling base stats, so he can scale decently well like literally ALL the other junglers similar to him. It was a different story when Lee was borderline oppressive early game, but I'm serious when I say, and ask other Lee mains, that nearly all junglers are stronger than him early. Why is it fair that Lee has a mediocre early game, same scenario mid game, and a shit late game?
I say let him scale more like J4 and Gragas (although I think Gra is a bit too strong), he should be like these junglers. Lee does nothing special at all points in the game.
Make his shield scale with AD so he doesn't fall off COMPLETELY late game. Buff his health scaling/lvl Give him back his AS slow so he'll still function as a support/peeler late game and not a damage dealer, but still be relevant. Because all he can do late game unless super fed before everyone hits 6 items is use his mediocre shield, peel with his ultimate which is really a complete waste because of it's potential, although that's all you really can do because to pull off a good multi-man kick nowadays is damn near impossible with all the shields and cc in the game.
I can't compare Lee to all junglers, but talk to any experienced Lee Sin players, and they'll confirm that he can't outduel almost all junglers that are played right now. With all the mobility in the game, his ganks pre-6 are literal shit unless the enemy laner is really shoved.
I can't do an in-depth comparison to all junglers, so I'll go with a meta pick: Gragas. Let's look at both of their kits for a minute.
NOTE: I'm picking Gragas to compare to Lee because they have similar kits, and try to accomplish the same things, although in my opinion Gragas is vastly superior in almost every single way.
ONE MORE NOTE: Been working on this post for a while, and above I gave a pretty vague description of what changes I feel would be best for Lee to truly balance him, making him strong while not overbearing, and rewarding the dedicated Lee players who truly put a lot of time and effort into him.
ANOTHER NOTE: After the analysis between Lee Sin and Gragas, I'm going to go more in-depth with some of the things that I mentioned with the "Brief Thoughts:" part of each part of Lee's abilities. For this section, I'm just giving an overall view of how I see the skill.
-------------LEE SIN------------ MOVESPEED: 345
Passive; FLURRY: After using an ability, Lee Sin's next 2 basic attacks within 3 seconds gain 40% bonus attack speed, returning 20 energy on the first attack and 10 energy on the second.
Brief Thoughts: Good for clearing the jungle, and is definitely useful early-mid game for dueling. Although with Lee, he's an AD-caster and also reliant on his autos, which I feel is very awkward (not in an of itself, but I'll be mentioning things like this throughout this thread and hopefully you pick up on what I'm talking about, if not I'll explain at the end).
-----------GRAGAS------------MOVESPEED: 330
Passive; HAPPY HOUR: INNATE: Gragas heals for 6% maximum health upon using an ability.
Brief Thoughts: Gives a decent amount of sustain throughout his jungle clear, and scales extremely well throughout the game with Gragas being a tank.
---------LEE SIN----------
TARGET RANGE: 1100 SPEED: 1750 COST: 50 ENERGY COOLDOWN: 11 / 10 / 9 / 8 / 7
SONIC WAVE: Lee Sin fires a sonic blast in the target direction, dealing physical damage to the first enemy it hits and granting True Sight icon true sight of them for 3 seconds. PHYSICAL DAMAGE: 50 / 80 / 110 / 140 / 170 (+ 90% bonus AD)
Brief Thoughts: Lee's bread and butter skill, well the 1st part of it. Not much to say about this one, it does decently high damage, long range, the speed is good, and I honestly wouldn't change much about it other than certain parts of the scaling (discussed later). Also useful for checking cleared/uncleared jungle camps, and maneuvering around the map.
If Sonic Wave hits, Lee Sin can cast Resonating Strike within the next 3 seconds;
EFFECT RADIUS: 1300 COST: 30 ENERGY
RESONATING STRIKE: Lee Sin dashes to the enemy marked by Sonic Wave, dealing physical damage, capped against non-champions. 50 / 80 / 110 / 140 / 170 (+ 90% bonus AD) (+ 8% of target's missing health)
Brief thoughts: Again, I'm pretty content with this skill other than the scaling. His scaling's in my opinion are all over the place, more on that later though.
-------GRAGAS---------
TARGET RANGE: 850 EFFECT RADIUS: 250 SPEED: 1000 COST: 60 / 65 / 70 / 75 / 80 MANA COOLDOWN: 11 / 10 / 9 / 8 / 7
BARREL ROLL: Gragas rolls a cask to the target location, granting Sight icon sight around it and fermenting over 2 seconds, increasing its damage and Slow icon slow strength, up to a maximum of 150%. MAGIC DAMAGE: 80 / 120 / 160 / 200 / 240 (+ 60% AP) SLOW: 40 / 45 / 50 / 55 / 60%
Brief thoughts: Super strong ability, large radius, and even early game waiting no time for it to ferment it does massive damage to squishies. Also provides a slow, which Lee's Q does not.
BARREL ROLL (RECAST): After 4 seconds or upon reactivation the cask explodes, dealing magic damage to all surrounding enemies, reduced by 30% against minions, and Slow icon slowing them for 2 seconds. MAXIMUM MAGIC DAMAGE: 120 / 180 / 240 / 300 / 360 (+ 90% AP)
Brief thoughts: Tanks cap CDR extremely easily and Gragas is no exception. With 40% CDR, after your cask is fully fermented you can throw another barrel in I believe one second. Now you'd think, "who would get hit by a barrel that's sitting there for 4 seconds? When team fights are going on it's extremely hard to keep track of everything going on; this is an extremely strong ability, even without Gragas building ANY AP items it does massive damage.
----------LEE SIN-----------
TARGET RANGE: 700 COST: 50 ENERGY COOLDOWN: 14
SAFEGUARD: Lee Sin dashes to the target ally or friendly ward. If the ally is a champion, both they and Lee Sin are shielded for 2 seconds and Safeguard's cooldown is reduced by 50%. Lee Sin can self-cast Safeguard to shield himself.
SHIELD STRENGTH: 40 / 100 / 160 / 220 / 280 (+ 80% AP)
Brief thoughts: Extremely weak shield throughout all early stages of the game, and Lee's only form of defense. The shield lasts for only 2 seconds, which is negligible at best. Lee being able to shield his allies is definitely a plus, though as well as this being his way to dash in and out of fights with the cooldown being reduced by half. if targeting an allied champion. Honestly though, I don't understand Riot's logic on the 80% AP scaling on this ability. This is another critique I have of Riot's vision of Lee Sin? eg, his identity. If he's supposed to be a bruiser, why wouldn't he have a shield that scales off of AD? Or bonus AD? This is one of things with Lee's kit that I have the most problem with. To do damage as Lee, he needs to be in the middle of a fight, and this is his only means of survivability. Why would they make it scale off of AP? I'm not on the balance team so I'm not gonna discuss a lot of numbers in this thread, just bring it up for discussion. Maybe someone who reads this can enlighten us and give some decent numbers and scaling on what would be appropriate; strong, but not overbearing.
IRON WILL: For 4 seconds, Lee Sin gains bonus life steal and bonus spell vamp.
BONUS SUSTAIN: 10 / 15 / 20 / 25 / 30%
Brief thoughts: Definitely helps Lee sustain in the jungle, and among early trades, mainly versus the enemy jungler can potentially have him come out on top in a 1 vs. 1. Again though, because Lee normally can't build more than 2 or 3 damage items, the life steal and spell vamp is negligible. I come back to the identity of Lee Sin, which I will fully discuss at the very end of this thread.
---------GRAGAS-----------
EFFECT RADIUS: 250 COST: 30 MANA COOLDOWN: 8 / 7 / 6 / 5 / 4
DRUNKEN RAGE: Gragas reduces incoming damage for 2.5 seconds and channels for 1 second, retaining his ability to move but becoming unable to use abilities or basic attacks for the duration.
DAMAGE REDUCTION: 10 / 12 / 14 / 16 / 18%
Upon completing the channel, Gragas' next basic attack within 5 seconds deals bonus magic damage to the target and nearby enemies, capped against monsters.
BONUS MAGIC DAMAGE: 20 / 50 / 80 / 110 / 140 (+ 8% of target's maximum health) (+ 30% AP)
Brief thoughts: Extremely strong ability from Gragas. Does max % health damage, low mana cost, low CD, and it's AOE. Helps him clear the jungle extremely fast, while also being able to deal consistent damage to all champions while building extremely tanky. I haven't even mentioned the damage reduction he receives for nearly 3 seconds. This ability alone allows Gragas to be a superb duelist, with the, like I said, low CD, damage reduction percentage, and % max health damage. This is honestly what I call an overloaded skill. It does too much for just one ability.
---------LEE SIN----------
EFFECT RADIUS: 350 COST: 50 ENERGY COOLDOWN: 10
TEMPEST: Lee Sin smashes the ground, dealing magic damage to nearby enemies and granting Sight icon sight of them for 4 seconds.
MAGIC DAMAGE: 60 / 95 / 130 / 165 / 200 (+ 100% bonus AD)
Brief thoughts: An extremely underwhelming ability IMO. It's niche was the true sight granted, which although was a somewhat rare case, it was extremely nice to have when their was a fed akali, twitch, or shaco on the enemy team. I honestly don't know why Riot removed it. You max this last, so it's honestly only worth using when you need it to sustain your passive. The damage is extremely weak, even at max rank, considering all it does is a small AOE, being only 350 units. None of Lee's abilities as of now are fantastic, but this is by far the weakest, and I'd honestly rank it among all champions being extremely lackluster and high on the list of shit abilities. I also think that the cast time is much too long for how little it provides.
EFFECT RADIUS: 500 COST: 30 ENERGY
CRIPPLE: Lee Sin Slow icon slows all enemies in range and marked by Tempest for 4 seconds, decaying over the duration.
SLOW: 20 / 30 / 40 / 50 / 60%
Brief-ish (;o) thoughts: I didn't play League back when Lee had the AS slow on this ability, so I'm not really sure what to say on that. I will say one thing though, and that it needs to be buffed. I believe the AS slow went up to 60% when maxed, which seems like a little much. But in my opinion, something needs to be done. Paired with tempest, this skill is maxed last. A 20% slow for 4 seconds, sounds decent for level 1, but it decays over the duration. An idea I came up for Lee (which contributes to my overall vision of him as a much healthier, stronger, but like I said, HEALTHIER) would be to hone in on a more specific role for him. What follows right now should probably be posted at the very end, but I feel like I can start talking about what my overall intention of this post is; although I won't fully get into it, I'll mention the idea I had for modifying cripple. If it's truly crippling enemies, Lee should aim to hit as many people as possible with this ability, therefore encouraging him to dive into fights and tempest/crippling as many people as possible. As this is obviously a risky play, why not give him bonus armor for a short amount of time to give him survivability in the midst of the fight depending on how many enemy champions he hits? I'd also modify the slow percentages, giving Lee a higher percent slow in the early game and possibly keeping it around the same late game.
Gonna break this into two paragraphs because it's getting long. Like I said, I won't get into numbers because it'll get too confusing. People have this preconceived notion that Lee is the god of ganks early game, which simply is not true. If you don't hit your Q (NO, i'm not saying to lead with Q, that's the worst thing you can do), the gank most likely will fail because that's literally all your early game damage. Unless you're in decently close range, it's fairly hard to hit; especially in laning phase if people are aware how Lee works they can play around their minions. Another thing that the increased slow at lower levels would do is again, well the same thing, help him with more successful ganks pre-6. Off the top of my head, I can't think of any other fighter-style junglers that don't have a hard-CC ability like Lee Sin; all he has is a slow. Even the pros say that Lee's power spike is at 6, which is honestly pitiful, considering he's supposed to be the god-tier of early game junglers. I'm gonna stop there, this post is getting long and I really want people to fully read it. On to the next ability...
NOTE: One more thing I forgot to add, I find it odd that this ability stays at a stationary 10 second cooldown with no reduction with leveling it up.
---------GRAGAS-----------
TARGET RANGE: 600 SPEED: 900 COST: 50 MANA COOLDOWN: 16 / 15 / 14 / 13 / 12
BODY SLAM: Gragas charges forward, dealing magic damage to all nearby enemies upon colliding with one as well as Airborne icon knocking them back and Stun icon stunning them for 1 second. Body Slam's cooldown is reduced by 3 seconds if Gragas hits an enemy.
MAGIC DAMAGE: 80 / 130 / 180 / 230 / 280 (+ 60% AP)
Brief thoughts: Again, an extremely strong, well-rounded ability. It provides mobility, high base damage, and it's an AOE knock-up. And I wouldn't say conditionally AOE, it's not difficult at all to get a 2-3 man knock up multiple times in a team fight. Like I said earlier, Gragas easily gets max CDR. He can consistently knock up (not reduced by tenacity) multiple enemies at once, multiple times, throughout a team fight. Not only is the cooldown extremely low when you have max CDR, if you hit an enemy it's reduced by another 3 seconds. I've been playing Gragas pretty frequently and if I remember correctly if you have max CDR and hit an enemy the cooldown gets reduced to a ridiculous like 3-4 seconds. Body Slam can go through most walls on the rift as well, and if running away, he consistently heals due to his passive healing him from using an ability every few seconds. If you pair it spirit visage it turns into a pretty substantial heal.
NOTE: Keep in mind, if you've read this far, that Lee Sin is supposed to be the god of early game jungling/ganks; heh.
----------LEE SIN-----------
TARGET RANGE: 375 COOLDOWN: 110 / 85 / 60
DRAGON'S RAGE: Lee Sin roundhouse kicks the target enemy champion, instantly Root icon rooting them for 0.25 seconds, dealing physical damage and Airborne icon knocking them back 1200 units over 1 second. Enemies hit by the enemy-turned-projectile receive bonus physical damage and are Airborne icon knocked up for 1 second.
PHYSICAL DAMAGE: 150 / 300 / 450 (+ 200% bonus AD); Enemies the target collides with are knocked into the air for a short duration and take 15 / 18 / 21% of the target's bonus health as physical damage.
EXTENSIVE thoughts: With the recent nerfs to the base damage and cooldown, in my opinion Lee's ult just doesn't feel the same. I mean it does, it's the same skill, but this is what gave him the ability to snowball games despite the numerous nerfs he's received over the years. With that being said, I don't agree with it. The thing was, when Lee's other skills were nerfed, his ult base damage and cooldown were so low that you could just powerfarm till 6, quickly stack CDR, and every time your ult was off CD, if you and your laner had a decent idea of what you were doing it was almost a guaranteed kill. That, in my opinion, is unhealthy gameplay. I did forget to mention the buff, with the bonus physical damage being taken to all who were the one's that suffered the knock-up from their teammate, based on the target's bonus health. And this may seem cool and all, but honestly, it's just simply not realistic.
Lee Sin's ultimate is so hard to use effectively, let alone consistently, that although the potential for extremely high damage is there, it's just too difficult to execute. The majority of Lee Sin's, even high elo's, I've watched plenty of them, it to finish off a solo kill. Use your combo, kick, q back to them for the execute damage. If it was moderately difficult to pull off it'd be a different story. That "buff" was just a fetal attempt to honestly... I have no idea. If you're not in the jungle where it's extremely cluttered, it's just not attainable. To use that effectively, you have to prioritize the highest health champion, somehow reach them, and if you somehow miraculously do that, not only do you now have to angle it in a way to knock up as many champions as possible, which is usually at MOST 2, you have to perform the round house kick, which is a 1 second wind-up. It's just simply unrealistic.
There's a difference between being difficult and being overly and unnecessarily difficult to even use it to a slight percentage of what it could do.
------GRAGAS----------
TARGET RANGE: 1000 EFFECT RADIUS: 400 COST: 100 MANA COOLDOWN: 120 / 100 / 80
EXPLOSIVE CASK: Gragas hurls a cask to the target location exploding on impact, damaging all nearby enemies and Airborne icon knocking them back 600 units from the epicenter of the explosion, while also briefly granting Sight icon sight of the nearby surroundings.
MAGIC DAMAGE: 200 / 300 / 400 (+ 70% AP)
Brief thoughts: After Gragas ult nerf, for those who don't know, before there was no cast time on it, so you could essentially insta-burst someone if you knew what you were doing. I feel like this was a justified nerf, and he still stands as one of the strongest junglers. Lee and Gragas ult can both disengage, but Gra's is much easier to utilize, and also has a lot more uses. You don't have to get in melee range to use it, unlike Lee you don't have to flash to redirect where you want your enemy to go, and, haaaaa this one makes me laugh, the base damage at level 6 is higher than Lee Sin's. Gragas can be an engage, disengage, nuke, and the list MIGHT go on.. I can't think of anything else off the top of my head right now, but trust me when I say it's a much better ultimate ability than Lee Sin's.
AFTERTHOUGHTS:
So why did I take the time to type this out? Lee's one of my favorite jungler's, and I feel like he suffers from an identity crisis. All other jungler's know what they're supposed to do in game; literally every single one, at least the one's that I've played.
Lee Sin is like a lost puppy dog. Instead of trying to give him a shitty identity of this garbage assassin/garbage bruiser identity, modify his skills, and maybe base stats to keep his identity as a strong early game jungler by buffing what I've mentioned, or whatever you guys decide to, then ACTUALLY transitioning into a utility/peeler into the late game? I feel like no matter what happens, his late game damage needs to be buffed. Instead of giving him BONUS AD ratios, why not try giving him just AD ratios? Why not instead of an 80% AP scaling shield which will literally never be used, give him a small AD ratio on his shield so he has more survivability? Why not reward him for getting into the middle of a team fight by letting him debuff the enemy champions if he somehow survives long enough?
SPECIFICS:
The Q buff I mentioned, all I said was to try, honestly not even try, but I'm wondering how regular ad ratios instead of bonus ad ratios would work on Lee. He's a bruiser, let him function like one. The W buff, I think this is well deserved. He has absolutely no form of survivability with shit scaling base stats to boot. He doesn't have the AOE type damage like J4 when he can just wait for the enemy team to group up and press R. The E buff, would also help his survivability in the middle of a fight, which is really what Lee Sin needs considering his early game is far outclassed by many other junglers now, that also VASTLY destroy his late game in terms of teamfight potential. For his R, I would consider getting rid of the bonus damage from knocking up tanks. It's just not practical whatsoever, if it happens it's usually stupidity on the enemy team, or you just got plain lucky. Maybe give him some of the lower CD on his ult back. Maybe even all of it honestly, champions like Gragas are better than Lee at literally all stages of the game.
Why'd I go through the trouble to type this? Well I hope you guys enjoy it, I thought it was pretty interesting to re-read. I just want all the lee sin haters to understand that Lee SUCKS right now, and it really annoys me that a champion like gragas, which is brain-dead easy to play, is vastly superior to someone like lee sin, who is decently hard to play but extremely difficult to master.
ANOTHER REASON: Lee has completely lost his identity. He's no longer the gankaholic he used to be; he can't with the CD nerf on his ult. With all the CC coming out with literally every new champion, it's even harder for champs like lee that only have 1 hard CC on his ult, which is an unorthodox knock back, to really function well at anything in the mid-game other than making picks. And everyone knows that Lee's late game has always sucked; in a way patch by patch it seems like Lee's mid-game is becoming the same as his mid-game.
With tanks running rampant and all this CC, it's hard for Lee to even function at all.
Sigh.... If you got this far, I really appreciate it. Thanks guys, and I chose Gragas to compare just because I feel like he's somewhat similar to Lee in what they both do, but better in almost every single way. Except Lee has slightly more mobility due to his q.
