Riot, how are older champs who's kits aren't super overloaded supposed to survive?
A while ago, a couple of Rioters talked about power and mobility creep and how it needs to be addressed.
This needs to happen sooner rather than later, as it is hurting the game more than it is hurting it. This game has 122 champions as of the Kalista patch, and as of those, about 100 of them came out before power creep was a permanent fixture of new champs kits. They were balanced in their own way up until that point.
But now, in order for champs to seem fresh, strong and competitive, Riot has been just jam packing the kits of the last 20 champs. Double passives, passives on every skill, the amount of champs with 8 skills instead of 4 has more than doubled since Jayce came out. Insane mobility has become the norm, more champs are released that don't have a resource than those that do, cooldowns are trivial even on many of these champs. (Looking at you Yasuo)
The last 4 champions have all had mobility built into their kit, with Kalista taking the cake there. Gnar is an absolute mixture of lane bully ranged DPS and team fighting MVP tank that has as much damage as any and CC to match up with the likes of Naut and Leona. Azir has passives on top of passives. He has absolute zone of control, the ability to STOP gap closers, DPS that is insane and he can make a turret. Braum can eat ults. He can literally stop autos from hitting a target and get % damage reduction. He has a stun, a knockup, a slow. He's super tanky. These champs have almost no downsides.
My friends and I played a 5v5 game where we all picked old champs, the restriction being that they have to be one of the first 50 champs made. The team that we were matched up against picked all champs that had been in the last 10 released. We started playing and it was clear from the beginning; even though my team was more mechanically skilled than the other team, their champs provided so many crutches and free stats that it didn't really matter. We were able to drag out the game to 40 minutes and take an inhib just because we were more coordinated, but in the end we couldn't match up with their sheer mobility, damage and free get of dodge abilities.
Riot, something needs to be done about mobility creep and it needs to be done now. I don't know when you are going to figure out that having extra skills or passives that are better than skills are going to be the nail in the coffin for old champs that don't have all that stuff going for them. Take an early champ, Poppy, who was released in Jan 2010. Sure, she seems OP on paper and Riot would never let her be good now because her design is poor, but even if she was strong, she wouldn't be able to match up and do her job anymore. Current supports have too much CC where they can disable her for most of her ult, while ADCs have so much mobility that they could kite her for her whole ult.
Riot, if you don't address power creep soon, the game will continue along its current path where only the newest champs and those that are LCS favorites will really be viable.
,
and
, some of the oldest champions in the game with straightforward kits, have all been ultra-strong in the past season, to the point where they had to be nerfed. Even
and
, two immobile marksmen with steroid-focused kits, were dominant until they received nerfs to their early game. Right now, we have a problem with
being far too strong in the new jungle. By contrast, champions like
,
, the new
, or even
don't have spectacularly high pick rates.
is a good example of this, because she has massive amounts of invisible power and very little counterplay to her ultimate. She can't be allowed to just be buffed, because her kit is so toxic that a viable Poppy would be seriously harmful to the game. Other champions, like
and
, have critical flaws in their kit that force them to be sub-par, and need a rework before they can get buffed.
and
have all gone through periods where they have been popular and strong picks in either competitive play or solo queue.
free stats? A guardian is always prepared! I can get 90 armor, 90 MR and thanks to my free stat passive 45 AP too, plus a heal for every time I'm hit. I can 10-100 myself off the laser turret with ease!
are all from 2009 and have been strong picks at some point in the past year.