Mechanics that have been unhealthy to LoL Gameplay and Balance

This post is just going over what game mechanics have historically caused problems in gameplay, generally through causing extreme variance in a particular champion's performance.

1. Resets: Ever seen a fed Kat wipe an entire team? Jinx guaranteeing no escape from the fights?

Resets are problematic because they cause extreme variance in teamfights, where once a team with a reset champion gets 1 kill in the fight, the fight can often snowball out of control because each kill can nearly guarantee an additional kill.

2. Executes: Executes, that is to say, abilities that deal MORE damage as the target's hp goes down have caused serious balance problems on EVERY champion that has had them. Riven, Volibear, Garen, Darius, Kha'Zix (pre- Q rework), Lee Sin, Jinx, Elise, etc... Every single champion with one of these abilities has gone through multiple buffs/nerfs, until eventually settling on fringe playable, and good for pub-stomping. The exceptions to this are Lee Sin and Jinx, who, while still good for pub-stomping, are reliable enough in other areas that their performance variance isn't that high across games. While they have still gone through many buffs/nerfs, they are in a position of viability, though still incredibly frustrating to play against.

The problem with the Executes is that once a champion with an execute ability gets ahead, it is incredibly hard to stop them from snowballing out of control because they can guarantee kills if a trade happens. Because the other player CANNOT trade with a champion with an execute that is ahead without risking death, they are forced to miss more farm than they would against other champions, causing them to fall further and further behind.

3. Excessive mobility: Champions with high mobility generally benefit more from Flash, which is by far the best summoner spell in the game. This is because flash allows them to move a greater distance near instantly than a champion with low mobility, giving them a much higher threat range, and they rarely need flash to chase or escape, allowing them to save it only for when they want to do something unexpected or have no other options.

In addition, because lower mobility champions CANNOT escape from high mobility champions, but also cannot chase them down, the high mobility champions are much more likely to get fed and snowball out of control.

Generally speaking, these champions have been extremely powerful for periods of time, until eventually being nerfed to have either extremely low damage as a whole, or to fall off or be very weak for long periods of the game. Kassadin: was overpowered for an extremely long time and was pick/banned in competitive. Currently, kassadin's damage output is so low that his performance is extremely polarized. Either he gets ganks and is fed kills to snowball out of control, or he does close to nothing because he doesn't scale well, has no CC, isn't tanky, and has low base damages so he is still required to build damage.

Nidalee: Always seems to be either pick/ban or unplayed competitively, and in casual play is either overpowered or too weak to bother with.

Riven: Combines the problem of having an execute with high mobility... Safe to say, Riven has had extremely high performance variance, widely regarded as being feast or famine even before the nerfs to her early game.

4)Excessive burst damage: Champions such as Le'Blanc who have massive amounts of upfront burst damage can easily create an oppressive laning phase, where one player is unable to contest without risking losing half of their HP near instantly. Champions with massive burst have the easiest time securing kills, and so, also have the easiest time snowballing a lead, which has been widely regarded as one of the biggest issues in League since it's release. While GAME snowballing to a reasonable extent is not a problem, individual lane snowballing can be oppressive and incredibly frustrating for the player that is behind. While it can give the player ahead a sort of high, it's not necessarily FUN. After enough times of the game going one way or the other, the extreme punishment/reward for kills can lose it's shine. It's fun to fight other players, but when dying once to them means you cannot contest your lane opponent until the laning phase is long over, it creates a VERY long period of time where what would likely be considered the most fun part of the game is not available if you want to win.

1 kill giving a slight lead for similar champions, sure. But there should still be plenty of out-play potential regardless of the champions in question, and those that don't have much play making potential should be outright stronger in a straight up fight to make up for the fact that they cannot do as much in the way of "outplaying" their opponent.

5. Stealth: Bypassing wards, and being able to gank with no possibility of the other team knowing that you are there is an incredibly powerful mechanic, and both of the champions that have had long duration stealth have received major reworks and are still seeing trouble with balance. In some other games, this problem is dealt with by allowing stealthed characters to be seen as shimmers on the screen, making them difficult, but not impossible to spot, with the primary effect being that they are immune to targeted effects and auto attacks until struck by AOE.

6. Randomness (Crit and Dodge): In a PvP game that is not built around it, RNG has little or no place. There are no instances of a game where RNG is not a core mechanic, and critical hits are beneficial.

Dodge was removed because lucky dodges could mean the difference between survival and death, often allowing a player to win a fight that they shouldn't have.

Crit... It has the same problems that dodge has and then some. With crit being in the game, multiplicative scaling on basic attack damage is at critically high levels, to the point where AP also needs multiplicative scaling. This pushes Hybrid builds out entirely because they cannot receive the full benefits of the multiplicative scaling that one gets from focusing in one area, and causes Defensive items to be much weaker in the late game relative to the early and mid game.

It also polarizes the game to a point where champions that rely on basic attacks for the majority of their damage need more items than any other type of champion before they can be up to par in teamfights. This means that Defensive items, which have diminishing returns, are much more efficient early in the game, but much less efficient late in the game. This is the reason that "League of Bruisers" occurred in Season 3 with the Atmogs build. Bruiser champions could afford to focus on health early in the game, then build Atmas in the mid-late game to capitalize on the lead they gained by building defenses early on.

If Crit was removed, and the items that currently provide it buffed, ADC damage output could have a much more reasonable performance curve throughout the game, which could in turn allow defensive items to be of similar efficiency to damage items late in the game, and for Hybrid builds to be viable on the champions they are intended to be viable on.

7. Excessive stats from items. In LoL, your character is defined almost as much by the items that you purchase than by their kit, and their role even more so. There is something to be said when champions are given scaling that is so low that purchasing those damage/AP items will never be worth it to force them into their intended role, because the scaling of ability damage is more important than the effects of the abilities or their base damages when deciding role.

Early game snowballing is defined by the strength of items, and as it stands currently, even a 300 gold lead can be a massive advantage during the laning phase.

This lends itself to the conclusion that the stats from Items are too high. With reduced stats on Items, the stats on the champions themselves could be more reasonably adjusted to balance the game and enforce roles with less restriction on itemization.

8. Extreme Power Curves: Having different power curves is alright, but they should not be to the extremes that they are in League for a number of champions. Many champions are excessively dominant or weak at specific points in the game, and IMO, those points of extreme performance one way or the other are not particularly fun. Garen for example, is incredibly strong in the early-mid game, but late game he is incredibly weak. In both points in the game, it can be oppressively so. A relatively simple fix for those champions with extreme power curves is to make their abilities scale with level in addition to rank (think Viktor Q), to reduce the polarity of their effectiveness.

Of these problems, the ones that could be resolved relatively easily are RNG from crit, and stealth. A significant change on item stats would require a massive stat adjustment for every champion in the game, and significant changes to champion mobility, burst, scaling, resets, and executes would require reworks on a large number of champions.