Skillcap isn't a weakness

GULAG 4 U··70 votes·3,366 views

Being hard isn't a weakness, because it can be fixed by being good at the champion. Skillcap is a balance problem more than a balance helper. Example: Champions such as azir will most likely be better than ones such as annie because a good azir can do so much more than a good annie unless azir is thrown into the garbage can (right now)

It also creates nearly powercreep situations, as Yasuo versus tryndamere for example. you simply can do more and will be more useful to your team on yasuo than tryndamere, and the only real trade off is early game RNG and sustain.

Actual weaknesses: Vulnerability to cc No mobility No burst/Dps Lack of CC Lack of engage (mainly for melees, but also applies to ranged too)

131 Comments

Sahn Uzal22 votes

Well.. It is and it is not. A champion like Warwick is not likely at all to fuck his ''combo'' up. Where someone like Gangplank can't get his damage off as reliably, for reasons the same reasons he has a high skill cap.

But if I were asked to say ''yes'' or ''no'', I'd be with ya.

GULAG 4 U26 votes

Technically, yes.

Skillcap comes with more outplay potential and more fuck up potential (Ex: Yasuo's Q missing/dodged versus Annie's point and click stuns)

Sahn Uzal14 votes

Pretty much. So glad you didn't mis-understand the message I was trying to get through, could've ended up in a rather unpleasant discussion

GULAG 4 U19 votes

Replying with salt never really was a good option honestly. If you don't understand the other person just put your ego away and ask what do they mean.

Sahn Uzal9 votes

Sadly, I rarely see people approach a situation like this with an attitude like yours :P

GULAG 4 U9 votes

Well I used to be relatively passively agressive at times but there's honestly no point when you could just act kindly or in a calm manner.

TheSingularity2 votes

I <3 you. Where've you been all this time?

GULAG 4 U4 votes

Shitposting for an aatrox rework : ^)

Carnerox1 votes

{quoted}

Shitposting for an aatrox rework : ^)

Allow me to fix this.

FUCK YASUO

GUT HIM

NERF HIM

DELETE HIM

FUUUUCK YASSSUUOOO

GULAG 4 U1 votes

I'ver never made any threads about Yasuo other than one teaching QQers how to play against him.

Marshbouy2 votes

I'm going to second this comment. skillcap should give you more things to do in a situation, but not so much that the champion becomes OP. Going off your WW example... Gangplank's barrels are a lot harder to land then a WW Q or R, but because of that he also has a global ultimate and considerably more AOE damage.

Sahn Uzal4 votes

Eh, Gangplanks kit is getting close to being overloaded, where Warwick is on the opposite side of the spectrum. A champion can be simple, easy, straight forward while also being overloaded.

GULAG 4 U3 votes

Well it depends on what you mean by "overlaoded"

  1. Many things in your kit (Yasuo is)
  2. Does 10000 different things (azir, rek'sai)

By definition 1 yi is technically overloaded as he has 14 functions, by definition 2 he is not.

TheSingularity1 votes

I feel I stand with option 1. As most champs can use their tools in different ways depending on the situation (generally peel vs engage)

Where as by inherently having more tools than everyone else, you in turn have more ways to use them in combination with each other based on the situation

Spicy Rice2 votes

But then you have to decide what is a proper amount of fuctions for a champion to have, and then rework all champions to fit said proper amount

Carnerox1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Tidal Tyrant,realm=EUW,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=NXtqB2Qq,comment-id=000100010000,timestamp=2016-10-08T16:03:35.335+0000)

Eh, Gangplanks kit is getting close to being overloaded, where Warwick is on the opposite side of the spectrum. A champion can be simple, easy, straight forward while also being overloaded.

GP has received 12 straight nerfs after his release.

LEAVE GANGPLANK ALONE!

http://i.imgur.com/XKIT9di.jpg

Sahn Uzal1 votes

I'm a Gangplank main

I never asked for Gangplank nerfs :v I am strongly against his abuse of the Bandit mastery tho.

Carnerox1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Tidal Tyrant,realm=EUW,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=NXtqB2Qq,comment-id=00010001000000010000,timestamp=2016-10-09T14:13:52.973+0000)

I'm a Gangplank main

I never asked for Gangplank nerfs :v I am strongly against his abuse of the Bandit mastery tho.

Still relevant doe.

NOO HE'S A PIRATE, HE SHOULD GET EVEN MORE BONUS GOLD FROM BANDIT!

Marshbouy16 votes

Thank you. This applies to AurelionSol too, but people just want to shove their fingers in their ears and act like his 70% winrate mains are perfectly fine

GULAG 4 U3 votes

Yes, a real weakness is something that can't be fixed unless you build items, not something that can be fixed by being "gud" at a champion.

Ex: Yi is squishy. To fix this, I build tanky. Yi has no CC. To fix this, I build frozen mallet and randiun's omen.

GULAG 4 U4 votes

Considering the fact the no1 Kr server player has proved that "diamond trash" have been rotting in Diamond until they started to main AS, and got to challenger, it's pretty clear aurelion isn't perfectly fine.

Marshbouy1 votes

Wait, is that actually happening?

Marshbouy1 votes

that's hilarious.

GULAG 4 U1 votes

Pretty much.

Jbels6 votes

{quoted}

Pretty much.

I love what he says about Yasuo, here : "Bullshit aside Yasuo is a broken champion. People say he's a high skillcap champion, but the secret with Yasuo is knowing how to control yourself while playing such a overpowered champion. Yasuo's weakness comes from the fact that he is too strong. His laning phase is so strong that after the laning phase people do not know how to keep calm and throw the game."

Couldn't agree more

KoKoboto1 votes

YES NOW I CAN SAY YASUO IS BROKEN WITHOUT FEELING ANY SORT OF BACKLASH!!

GULAG 4 U1 votes

You know, just because the No1 Korean player said it it doesn't mean he's exactly right. What he said is "Yasuo is so OP people throw and screw up on him. To be good keep your calm and don't do stupid things". This doesn't make him broken. I quoted his aurelion sol speech because he backed it up with evidence, but he doesn't really have any for Yasuo.

KoKoboto1 votes

I bet he does but I don't speak Korean and can't ask him still I will refer to this post if I ever get any backlash

GULAG 4 U1 votes

It doesn't looks like you understood what he meant, but whatever. If you do that you will receive backlash for mindlessly believing to what he says.

Arakk011 votes

{quoted}

Thank you. This applies to AurelionSol too, but people just want to shove their fingers in their ears and act like his 70% winrate mains are perfectly fine

People like you need to uninstall and not give gameplay feedback. Ever. Every champ has 70% winrate mains. Sol has them because other players are bad at playing against the champion, not because the champion or the players are especially good. A high skill ceiling implies you can close his weaknesses with skill- you cannot. If for any reason a mobile or CC champion gets within a certain perimeter of you, you're screwed. There are several champions that can consistently do this Ahri Akali Amumu Ekko Irelia Leblanc Shaco XinZhao To name a select few.

Sol's high winrate is not on his merit as a champion, but on the disarray he can cause in teamfights because nobody actually understands how he works except the players who play him. It's not even hidden power, it's deriving power from ignorance.

Leetri3 votes

Far from every champ has 70% winrate mains, from what I've seen most lie around 50-60%.

GULAG 4 U3 votes

The thing is most of aurelion sol mains are having a high winrate and even Dopa said aurelion sol players were boosted trash. It's clear there was a problem with Aurelion.

Arakk011 votes

{quoted}

The thing is most of aurelion sol mains are having a high winrate and even Dopa said aurelion sol players were boosted trash. It's clear there was a problem with Aurelion.

Most Ausol mains are very good with the champion. If the majority of players knew he HAD a 70% winrate for mains, that winrate would plummet like Zed's did when everyone was bitching about how OP he was.

GULAG 4 U1 votes

Well sort of and Riot even nerfed The drag right before the reddit post was made too. And yeah the low pickrate is important too.

THE RlVER KlNG6 votes

The problem with skillcap being the only thing holding a champion back is that once you get to a certain point with a champion, it now lies on you to fail for your opponent to win then for your opponent to play well, which imo is just really, really poor design.

BUT MAH OUTPLAYS Fiora Azir LeeSin Nidalee Riven Vayne Yasuo Zed

Champions that are traditionally hard to play should of course reward the people who choose to master them, but they shouldn't crowd out literally every other option once you do.

GULAG 4 U2 votes

That's the point.

THE RlVER KlNG1 votes

Yep, I agree with you, just reiterating my view of it.

GULAG 4 U2 votes

Skillcap becomes a problem when the champion mastered becomes simply better in almost every way than either another champion or may others.

Vistha Kai3 votes

It also creates nearly powercreep situations, as Yasuo versus tryndamere for example. you simply can do more and will be more useful to your team on yasuo than tryndamere, and the only real trade off is early game RNG and sustain.

You have no idea.

Tryndamere can be 0/10 and still force your hand, because otherwise you'll lose half of your base, if you don't send 2 people to fight him. Yasuo in the same situation can be dealt with with only one person with minimal effort and his team utility isn't much better than Tryndamere's.

agbudar4 votes

i would call a team wide knock up that lasts for almost 3 seconds a pretty fukkin powerfull piece of utility

and a wall that basically blocks everything also a gamebreaking piece of utility.

all tryndamere has is a slow and ad reduction.

GULAG 4 U2 votes

The wall doesn't block everything. It's not gamebreaking. It's good, he does have utility, but it isn't game breaking. Game breaking is more like Azir's wall before it's nerfs.

CerealBoxOfDoom3 votes

skillcaps are not a weakness skillshots are not a weakness skill is not a weakness skill floors are not a weakness

skill does not dictate power

building items is not counterplay picking champions is not counterplay

There are 3 primary facets of balancing anything, power defense and utility. It is perfectly reasonable to have extreme power and defense on the same champ

Just because a champ has "infinite dashes" does not mean they have infinite mobility.

no, gating that champion's spellcasting will not make your life better

W Flynn1 votes

Skillshots can miss. Therefore a weakness compared to something that is not a skillshot. IE Ryze q is flat out worse than Annie q without the rest of the kits, because it can be missed.
If skill didn't dictate in game power, there would be no difference between player's ranks, and there would be no winning or losing. Building items such as armor to counter a champion that does attack damage is the definition of counterplay, playing in order to counter the opponents abilities. Difficulty is a part of balance, because some things humans cannot do consistently. That is the entire basis on which people win games, how much more one team messes up compared to the other.

CerealBoxOfDoom1 votes

{quoted}

Skillshots can miss. Therefore a weakness compared to something that is not a skillshot.

A skillshot is not a weakness.

A skillshot does not miss, it goes exactly where you aim at each and every time without fail. There is no skillshot that I can recall that actually doesn't do this. Note that things like gangplank's ult are ground targeted and used to have some sort of randomness to it but regardless its technically not a skillshot and always does exactly what its supposed to do when it isn't bugged.

IE Ryze q is flat out worse than Annie q without the rest of the kits, because it can be missed.

false, ryze's Q does not ever miss and therefore is not weaker because of it. It will always go where you aim it. A skillshot is not a weakness designwise. Additionally it can be fired preemptively.

If champion A has an ability that will strike from 550 range that will absolutely kill the target in precisely .0000001 seconds if they aren't already dead and champions B and C both have an ability that will absolutely kill champion A with a range of 550 and a .0001 traveltime and champion B has a targeted ability while champion C has a skillshot

champion B will absolutely die with perfect play champion C will absolutely survive with perfect play

that you are unable to play like a machine does not make champion C any weaker. Skillshots are not weaknesses, they are alternatives that must be balanced differently than targeted abilities.

If skill didn't dictate in game power, there would be no difference between player's ranks, and there would be no winning or losing.

skill does not dictate in game power. This refers to champions.

If champion A is harder to play than champion B that doesn't mean that champion A needs to be stronger. In fact the difficulty and power have nothing to do with one another. At best, champion A should get something "cooler" but never anything that tips balance in their favor

Building items such as armor to counter a champion that does attack damage is the definition of counterplay, playing in order to counter the opponents abilities.

False, building items is not counterplay. The fact that you can only survive an attack from champion A by building 100 armor does not mean that you have countered champion A, it means that heavy armor is merely a symptom of champion A. If you attempt to balance a game strictly through how champions while creating champs that force you to build something to win, even if you manage to balance the game out it lacks counterplay.

Difficulty is a part of balance, because some things humans cannot do consistently. That is the entire basis on which people win games, how much more one team messes up compared to the other.

Absolutely false. Difficulty is not a part of balance What humans can and cannot do consistently is not a part of balance That is not the basis on which people win all games

Difficulty can be changed without changing balance. If azir became the easiest champ to play tomorrow it would not make him less balanced even if his winrate went up, even if it doubled. All that would mean is that the game was never balanced to begin with or the game is simply too hard for most people.

Whether or not humans can do something consistently says more about the spaghetti code and game design than the game balance. You can't expect anything healthy out of relying on human failure to balance your game for you.

Not all matches are won by waiting on others to make a mistake, oftentimes both teams are making mistakes and playing imbalanced champions that nobody can prove are actually OP. for all you know teemo is the strongest champ in the game and humans are simply too imperfect to abuse it. It doesn't matter though because the point is that this does not dictate who will win or lose the match. In the end it is decided strictly by who's nexus explodes first

W Flynn2 votes

Skillshots can miss often, because you cannot aim them perfectly. For example, in csgo people don't get headshots 100% of the time, because they cant aim directly on the persons head. Secondly, people can move, so a skillshot with travel time can be dodged if you do not predict it.

You are clearly bending the definition of "missed" to fit your idea of "skillshots never miss". What I'm saying is THE PLAYER, the HUMAN EQUATION, the reason that the game EVEN EXISTS, is missing. Making mistakes, such as MISSING, is human, therefore things can be balanced around the concept of, "this person will not be able to do something perfectly 100% of the time".

If champion A is flat out harder, and when played perfectly gets the exact same results, then there is no reason whatsoever to play champion A over champion B.

Building an item in order to survive something, is literally the exact definition of counter play, it's doing something in order to avoid the enemy player reaching their goal, in which this case is killing you. The fact that you built armor is a result of your own decision, it is not directly tied to champion A being in the match whatsoever, as you can do it without champion A in the match, or you can choose to not do it WITH champion A in the match.

If difficulty was not a part of balance, then the game would literally be equivalent to rock paper scissors. If the game had no difficulty, then there would be no skill involved in winning, and games would be decided purely by champion picks, which is clearly not true because lanes are not won or lost 100% of the time, simply because of champion picks.

All matches are won on the back of mistakes, whether it is you making few mistakes, or them making many, matches are won off of human error. This is the reason scripts are used, to compensate for human errors. Often times matchups or balance do help decide games, but overall the player is how you win. This is why people who abuse extremely overpowered champions can stay in bronze or silver, because they lack the skill and make too many mistakes in order to win.

The entire game is decided off of how well you play, skill is the most important factor that wins games, because every single decision your champion makes, is your decision.

NineTailedMystic2 votes

If champion A is flat out harder, and when played perfectly gets the exact same results, then there is no reason whatsoever to play champion A over champion B.

Ideally they would fulfill a different niche.

Dengeden2 votes

A good Trynd will crush a good Yasuo and you know it. He loses to any and all bruisers and can only hope they mess up CSing.

And honestly, with how few people are competent at all aspects of the macrogame and microgame, skillcap seems like a decent weakness to have. Or conversely, a low skillfloor and low skillcap is an acceptable trait on certain champs.

Onwodori1 votes

I wonder where Ivern will fall in all this. I've been adoring him since his release and playing him non stop with some people calling him OP and others saying he's trash

Hello I am Bird2 votes

Bard #2

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