Best and Worst designed Champions?
Who do you think is the best and worst designed champion?
Just a fun little thing I wanted to do to see what you guys think :D
44 Comments
Magical Zoe6 votesBest: Orianna
Worst: fizz and soraka, legit, fuck these broken champions.
Pika3105 votesBest design? That's hard to say. It has to be someone who's not OP, or doesn't seem like it. Yet remains strongly viable, even if people don't realize it. Someone who's just sorta "there" if you know what I mean. I'd like to think a good example of this is maybe Bard? He was a competitively viable champ in LCS as early as his release. Yet in spite of being Aphromoo's preferred pick, the usual sheeple of this game kept repeatedly calling him "weak" and he's been repeatedly buffed despite already being a top-tier support the entire time.
Worst design? By what standard? Most toxic? Most unusably unplayable kit? I'd have to give the crown of most toxic champ to Rengar hands down. Uncounterable, enough damage to 100-0 ANYONE, single-handedly wins any game he's picked in by turning it into a 5v4. He can't be balanced, his design just has a complete lack of counterplay.
Most unusably unplayable? This is Sona, unarguably. Between her stats and complete lack of CC or defensive tools, she's debatable the squishiest character in the entire game. Yet in spite of this she has a melee-range kit. Of the support class, she's the only in the ENTIRE game without a from of reliable pre-6 CC and even has less pre-6 CC than most off-supports. This combined with the fact she has the lowest damage output of the entire support class, has no form of sustain or damage mitigation and is completely immobile. You may as well play a fucking caster minion, at least they don't feed the enemy team 300 free gold every time they get farmed and they're probably tankier too. She has the lowest real winrate in this entire game, falling all the way below 35% in diamond+ and has the lowest professional pickrate of ANY champ played support, going as far back as Patch 4.13 when she was removed from the game. Picking her is synonymous to turning the game into a 4v5.
Masala Chai2 votesRengar has some form of counterplay in that his early clear (especially when clearing first buff) is so horribly awful, as a result, he is prone to early invaders such as Rek'Sai and Elise (also another reason why we don't see him in pro that often). His kit is pretty toxic, I will concede that, especially as he is one of the only assassin's winrate that scales up over time and scales (also Talon) much better with crit than any other assassin in the game . (His empowered Q hurts almost as much as a Spinning Axe AA, it's a AA reset too). imo, the worst designed champion has to be Yasuo, he gets way too many free stats and free add ons within one kit that it feels like you're playing against a Janna, an ADC, a Fiora, and an Assassin all at the same time. Kalista also takes some brownie points for that because Fate's Call doesn't belong on ANY ADC, add the Sentinel active and you practically have a champion that is permabanned in competitive, and nearly unplayable in solo queue.
After reading your points on Sona over the course of several months, I think I will give you my revised opinion.
She's a terrible support, she builds as many AP items as Zyra, Vel'Koz, Brand etc. and does around half as much damage in a realistic game as all 3 of them. She does similar damage to support who normally builds just the Zeke's and Zhonya's. Her utility is so lacking that her highest winrate build has her build Zz'Rot. Add the fact that AP scaling utility is a rather horrible stat that should only belong on Utility Solo Laners, she really becomes an inferior support. She's easily the worst champion in competetive. For a champion whose kit is so simple, yet having a high skill cap, and playerbase so small, you would expect her to have a better winrate in Diamond +, but sadly that is definitely not the case.
But she still has one thing going for her; her heal, it isn't strong and it's a lot worse than her old heal, but most other supports don't have any form of healing outside of Relic Shield (which is 40) and Mikael's. She needs a IP/ RP cost reduction (as well as Katarina) if she is to be considered a "beginner's support". She's easily the worst champion in competetive.
The worst champion in the game right now is Kalista in SQ, with the new W passive, you can't make any plays with your ult with an playmaking support, especially against a smart support, she'll watch your attack speed, and if the attack speed goes up for some random reason, then you literally know where her support is, and she'll tell her ADC to back off. 90% scaling auto attacks, negative scaling with crit, mediocre base stats for an ADC in addition to her scaling being quite bad too. Her playerbase has been reduced to only her most loyal fans, after the nerf to almost every single spell in her kit a few patches ago. The only good thing in her kit is her E, which automatically outscales Twitch's E. She has mobility, but her mobility is limited outside of combat, (unlike Quinn, who is at least OK in the general sense due to her extremely low playrate), and a good Vayne can quite easily outkite a Kalista. With no communication in SQ, you aren't going to be making the best out of her R or W, and you've basically given your support, another AD damage support to support, hence her dopey 46.17 winrate in Platinum + (her winrate drops the lower elo you go), inexperienced players have her on a 43.18% winrate. There is almost no reason for you to play Kalista over the likes of Vayne or Twitch in a Solo Queue scenario.
Give Sona her old auras back, if you were so concerned about "clarity", Fearless, just make their hands glow when empowered by her auras, if "clarity" is what you were aiming for. If anything, she's become less oriented around supporting her team, and more about "I need to build more damages", just a clunkier kit, and overall, much less satisfying.
Secondly, where do you get your statistic for falling below 35% in winrate in Diamond+? I'm using League of Graphs which says she has a 48.9% winrate, op.gg where she has a 48.7% and LolKing.net which averages somewhere around 48% - 47%.
Pika3104 votesThe winrate comes from discluding builds that abuse artificial numbers, since the problem with these items are multi-layered. Firstly, they are NOT support items, no other support in the game is forced to build them to the point where they actually appear in top-built items and their fake numbers skew the graphs by artificially inflating the numbers.
You can't trust third-party sites, their figures are unreliable and don't give a clear picture of the actual game. Take for example Leona: literally well over half of her damage output comes from her passive. The problem with this? HER PASSIVE DOESN'T COUNT TOWARDS HER OWN FUCKING DAMAGE OUTPUT ON THIRD-PARTY GRAPHS. Rather, it counts towards her allies' damage output and is single-handedly the reason why other champions' average magic damage increases when she becomes popular, but decrease when she disappears. Those champions' damage outputs aren't increasing or decreasing, they're being artificially manipulated by Leona's passive and third-party sites don't take into account major factors like these.
Hence why I said Sona's "REAL" winrate. It's her winrate when not being directly manipulated by artificial factors that third-party sites fail to exclude.
L0ve Is Blue4 votesbest 
Require skills, always usefull, AOE stun, great burst, rewarding to learn
worst
Just because of his E really. You shouldnt be able to aoe slow, dash over wall, dash twice, be untargetable AND deal a shit ton of damage in one ability. This looks like we could just take all the parts of his E and make a champion with it since there is so many uses to it.
LankPants5 votesbest
** Require skills**, always usefull, AOE stun, great burst, rewarding to learn
Welp, scratch that. TY Rito.
L0ve Is Blue2 votesWell of course a bad syndra will still do damage and be annoying because she has a good range and relatively good self peel.
But the difference between a good Syndra and a bad Syndra is very large. The good syndra can land a 4 man stun with one Q+E if she position well, she can kite like a godess, interupt dashes with her E, stack her balls before ulting, reposition them with W so she can stun if needed... Someone who only played her a couple of time won't be able to do all of this.
LankPants2 votesWas more talking about the PBE changes which devalue a lot of the skill required to play Syndra. I'd certainly agree that right now Syndra's quite high skill, on the PBE she's pretty easy to play though.
Penguin Eclipse1 votesWas more talking about the PBE changes which devalue a lot of the skill required to play Syndra. I'd certainly agree that right now Syndra's quite high skill, on the PBE she's pretty easy to play though.
She's just dumb on PBE. They completely destroyed her balance and playstyle. And wtf is all I can say to her W changes.
Nameless Voice3 votesBest designed: 
Worst designed: 
H 32 votes[{quoted}](name=Nameless Voice,realm=EUW,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=PxXbrgRi,comment-id=0000,timestamp=2016-04-22T21:26:11.892+0000)
Best designed:
Lux is n00b just spam e.
BeeCuz3 votesFavorite support: 
Soraka has early game harass and yet can maintain long range from enemy engagements while supporting the ADC
Worst support:
Sona has slow movement speed and a short-range aura kit that would need a high-mobility tank to be useful.
Slamurai Jack2 votesI'm looking forward to all the best designs being a bunch of mages and tanks and all the worst designs being assassins. Let's see it Boards.
LankPants1 votesThere's a good reason for this.
There's a lot of very well designed mages and a lot of very poorly designed assassins. There's also some poorly designed mages like Ziggs and Vlad but they're a lot fewer and further between and generally diluted out by some of the best designed champions in the game like Syndra and Orianna.
Conversely the assassin class is overall horribly designed. Every assassin in the game has major problems, be it with counterplay, frustration issues, or lack of real gameplay. Most assassins actually have a mix of these 3 problems in varied proportions.
Girard2 votesIn general? 
.
-Moderate mobility with semi-QSS -High base damages -High total/base AD scalings -Flat damage reduction ability on a relatively low cooldown with an insanely disgusting passive, where he gets innately tanky for doing the same thing every other champion in the game does. (csing) -Technically a point and click silence -Point and click execution ult that scales with missing health AS WELL AS doing Magic Damage, or TRUE DAMAGE if you're unlucky enough to kill someone, because you should get punished for that, right? -No resource bar -Relatively low cooldowns compared to other champions of his class -Massive waveclear and dueling potential thanks to E
'Tanks' shouldn't be able to cocking do that, Riot. That's not how games work. It's okay though because the balancing team is too lazy to do anything about that massive trainwreck of stats and snowballing, so they just pull out their handy label maker, tape the word 'Juggernaut' on to his forehead and everything is fair and fun. He's almost as bad as 
, except HE doesn't get to nearly unkillable levels, but don't even get me started.
-lifts up fedora and wipes sweat off of my face-
JafarThePanda2 votes
- gud
Everyone else - bad
MunchCrunchLunch2 votesBest : 
worst : 
OurLestrade1 votesWe talking gameplay wise or artistic direction? :O
Furor Nexis1 votesBest: 
. He's actually very well balanced game-play wise. Natural spike in early-mid game but falls short during the late-game phase.
Worst: 
. Quite literally. His code is totally spaghetti, and the hitboxes for his ghouls are absolutely non-existent. Not only that but he becomes obsolete as soon as the mid-late game phases start and everyone can start DPS'ing to oblivion or far, far out-sustaining the damage he can deal.
Archen21 votesbest:
because how high was the champion design team when they created this sadistic man eating creature.
worst: it's a old lady with a sword nothing special
Rico Nasty1 votesI think OP's talking gameplay-wise, not visual design.
WeFlyNoLie1 votesRecently?
Definitely
I feel that he's balanced and he has a lot of tuning levels to keep him balanced.
His kit is thematically cohesive and every skill feels useful and satisfying.
His voice work is A-MAZING.
His ultimate is probably one of the coolest skills I've ever seen and shows that Riot can still come up with awesome new ideas 7 years later.
His models, animations, etc are all perfection. (pun intended)
He's just a cool dude.
runedara1 votesRelease vlad was pretty bad. His Q healed him 1 for 1 of the damage. With spell vamp is was impossible to push him out of lane.
WoonStruck1 votesHim healing 1 for 1 is incorrect. He healed for 25% of the damage done.
Also, I'd say he's one of the better designed old champions of League for the simple fact of how he scaled. His overall power curve was quite brilliant, and though it had to take minior adjustments over time, the base was always kept intact.
Yes he's simple. Yes his mechanics, overall, are simple. Yes, he's reliable. He was one of the only successful AP DPS champions; one of the only successful hyperscaling mages in the game. There was nothing he did that an ADC did not, and ADCs often did it better. He was tankier to make up for that.
In fact, if you compare Vlad to Azir, Vlad's design starts to look quite good.
9L9L9L9L9L9L9L1 votesBest? Kindred Worst? Ekko, the dude is over saturated with everything
Rico Nasty1 votesBest: 
Worst: 
Xelnex1 voteshate assassins?
LankPants1 votesWell he's right, the assassin class is pretty terribly designed overall.
Irelia Bot1 votesOr do they just do their job? you know assassinating targets is kinda what they should be doing given their name.
My biggest issue is when an assassin gets literally no counter play free reign of town but most do not have that unless the enemy team is all squishy or the squishy is really out of place or the assassin in question is already far ahead.
As such I will say is the worst designed champ in the game. You get unrealistic "counter play" because you see a ! above your head just before he is about to jump an a targets head. When he jumps on a squishy targets head they can often get killed in under the average humans reaction time.
Xelnex1 votesSaying a champ is best would mean it is op and undefeatable but every champ can be countered if played correctly (even against counter champs)
But i can list a bad champ, not because he/she is op, but ... kinda annoying. Its .. " "
Xelnex1 votesSorry " 
" had his passive on ....
[slayer-jinx-unamused]
Old Man Teeto1 votes - best design in past 3~ years.
- best "classic" champion design
** A nod towards TF but he is quite different from his original self, despite a consistent design since season 0
- worst "classic" champion design
- worst design in past 3~ years.
** A nod towards Soraka but she does have aspects which are worth salvaging. (MS Steroid/Ultimate mainly imo)
A final nod towards...
Any 100-0 instagib champion with ease of execution. Tends to be more because of item's/base stats/masteries being too strong offensively, but when it happens, they have some of the worst kits in the world with the most abuse cases by far. Lots of this from Season 3->5, so I wouldn't be surprised to see lots of LB/Rengar/Zed/Talon/Fizz etc posts despite their kits being fairly interesting.
Vistha Kai1 votesWorst:
1st place for
2nd place for
3rd place for 
LankPants1 votesFor me I'd say best and worst 
Ashe is a great example of a champ who has a very clear role that works great with her identity, she has clear strengths and weaknesses and is generally a pretty interesting champ who's unique in her role.
Lee is the opposite of this, he not only has the kitchen sink thrown into his kit, but also the rest of the house. His kit is incredibly lacking in actual weaknesses and he's a champ who when strong seems to become utterly dominant by default.
ficoZz1 votesi gotta agree with this.
iTaLenTZ1 votesBest:
Worst: 
Yaskamasandwich1 votesThe list is too huge but to think of the two off top of my head
Best: Sion I actually like the in built counterplay and he is a average skill champion. Not pro level hard or too easy to use just average middle.
Worst: Kalista just because of her passive, the rest of her kit is fine imo but just her passive ruins her.
Spoofghoul1 votesbest design
Shrek Luigi1 votesI think that the champion that had the most poorly thought-out kit upon being released is Yorick. The sheer amount strength/sustain offered through his E, and the subsequent nerfs to his mana/skills/item buys of choice reduced him to little more than a beefy Ult slave as far as the second half of the game is concerned.
I also think that Urgot has a MUCH worse kit overall, but that has more to do with the fact that he's an extremely dated champion with a kit that hasn't evolved at the rate the rest of the game has. I will never forget you Urgot, the OG Harass Champion of the League. 
Voluug131 votesI could say amongst the worst are 
The best are IMO 
Archen21 votesbest:
best support EuW
worst: who thought this guy up.why would this guy be legal anywhere.
Miku Lv991 votesWorst designed:
Really though IMO Kalista is probably the worst of them all with her massively overloaded kit that is just way too OP if the person playing her is good. She doesn't have nearly enough counterplay for how strong he is other than just hoping that she messes something up.
Best designed:
for being so rarely ever complained about and not that unbalanced most of the time, barely need any balance patches, and yet they still bring something different to the game than other champions do.
AlwaysByMySide1 votesBest: 
Worst: 
ficoZz1 voteswell, if you moved fiora, yi and darius down there, your list would've been true to most people.
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