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Hey Riot (And Community!), let's chat: Meaningful Weaknesses

ZylotheWolfbane·3/9/2015, 8:44:05 AM·1 votes·868 views

So, there's been a lot of... let's call it 'discussion' to put it lightly around the recent balance changes, the way some champions are balanced, and others are set aside. There's a lot of things flying back and forth, from both the community, and from Riot itself. I think that anyone who actually plays League, and reads these Boards, then they can actually see that Riot DOES care about this game. Riot truly loves League, and they love the community. They WANT to make the game fun, enjoyable, and balanced.

However, I think that many times, Riot can't really talk about changes they're working on, they can't give the community the peek into the back rooms of Riot where all the balance changes, buffs, nerfs, and re-works are made. Riot just can't reasonably do this all the time, because if they did, it's likely that the community would be constantly back-lashing against every little thing. Either Riot would have to revert changes, and nothing would happen, or the community would too heavily influence the direction, and things might get skewed. So I understand it, I get it, really. Riot simply can't show us every single tweak they're making, and what their plans are.

That said, Riot still needs to talk to us, they need to show the community that they are aware of the problems, aware of the issues that the community very much sees everyday. So, here's what I want with this thread. I want to have a talk about Meaningful Weaknesses. This is something that is ALREADY in the game, and is something people can see, and that Riot can talk about. All champions should have meaningful weaknesses, and Riot agrees. That's the point, that's Counterplay, that's what almost all of their balance work is focused around. So let's talk about meaningful weaknesses. Not just Riot, but everyone, go and talk about it.

Discuss:

  • Champions that have TOO MANY weaknesses. (Ex: Veigar , or Ashe , or Poppy )
  • Champions that don't have ENOUGH weaknesses. (Ex: Zed , or LeeSin , or Leblanc )
  • Champions whose weaknesses aren't clear, or easy to take advantage of. (Ex: Nidalee , or Kalista )
  • Anything else concerning the weaknesses, or lack thereof, of various champions.

Please, keep discussions polite, reasonable, and calm. This is to promote discussion, to make sure that we don't devolve into a rage-filled pile of screams, rants, and angry people. That's not going to help, it's not going to be a good discussion, and no one is gunna end up happy. So lets stay reasonable.

4 Comments

Misticaltom3/9/2015, 8:51:15 AM1 votes

I feel that adding a sort of Global ability cooldown to Ward placement, at least on Sightstone and Trinkets, would affect the way champions like Lee Sin and.....other Lee Sin's use their W as a flash. Oh look at me! I'm a Pro Lee Sin player! You just macro your W to your 4 and WHAM! Flash on demand.

For Zed...give him slightly better tells. Once you know how much Zed relies on his Ultimate and how it's used to kill a target, playing around his Ultimate is a rather exciting and fun challenge.

But if you can't see the Shadow, playing against Zed is like being punched in the face by....a shadow. You need to be able to see it, if it's not visible enough then players don't know they have to play around it. Not everybody has an amazing computer...hell, some people can't even see his Shadow when watching LCS streams. That's just not enough clarity.

And I believe Veigar is just fine. He's getting some reliability buff's for his Q and he feels really cool now. The incoming changes feel really awesome. However, visual update him yo! He needs one, it'll be so sweet.

Divewing3/9/2015, 12:35:45 PM1 votes

At the moment the main issue is Riot wants to change how the game is played. They want everyone to have outplay potential via more skillshots in combination with mobility, this leaves some older champs (a la veigar talon) whose counterplay was more along the lines of positioning/not-screwing-up-so-hard in an awkward situation where you will be mercilessly punished for 1 mistake, and you have NO CONTROL OVER THE OUTCOME (because you effectively killed yourself by solo farming that lane talon was in 15 seconds ago).

On the other side of the fence, mobility champs get it really good since their "twitch reflexes" (LB dash, Zed shadows, Lee's whole stupid kit [salt intensifies]) are more effective with every new skillshot created.

Then for stuff like Nid/Kali.........I reckon Riot just thought: this sounds good on paper, tested it very quickly without thinking outside the square (eg: what if kalistas build ruunaans? Better make sure we have a champion capable of 1v1ing that...), resulting in some pretty stupid situations.

Myself personally i feel riot's getting really caught up in nerfing numbers/ratios, nerfing the wrong abilities, and/or (creating) skillshots, and not actually fixing the problem, EG: Talon and Fizz nerfs Talon: Insta-death with no counterplay. Silence replaced with .25 second 99% slow.