Listing a Champion's Strengths/Features

Mira Arya Enthe·Apr 23, 2017·93 votes·3,854 views

"OMG He has a knockup, slow, ranged poke, AoE CC, durability, a Karthus passive, a global fucking CC and damage, AoE damage, a huge fucking shield and ranged AoE poke! Literal Cross Map mobility! Sounds problematic to me!"

This is not how you argue against a champion's design or balance. Why did I use Sion? Because most people can agree he is probably the most fair tank in the game. You can make anything sound absurdly broken and unfair with this style of argument. Or the good old exaggeration "Sion 100-0s full tank Malphites in .5 seconds while building full tank wtf!!?!?!?"

It isn't the correct way to address game design, balance, statistics or fairness. It just makes you sound like an angry, salty player who recently lost to this champion and think the world is going to agree with your venting. If you have something to say, do some research and provide an honest and fair assessment of what you think is wrong with a champion many many other people enjoy playing, and how you think you can fix what is wrong with them without ruining the champion for their audience.

That is all I wanted to say, goodnight.

100 Comments

Troll for TrumpApr 23, 201752 votes

Conversely, listing all the champs weaknesses doesn't dictate them being balanced

LeetriApr 23, 201711 votes

Imagine that, people need to look on both sides of the coin before declaring it has only heads or tails. Sadly that kind of common sense isn't that common, especially not when people get all fired up emotionally.

Mira Arya EntheApr 23, 201710 votes

No. But listing counterplay is more helpful to players having a hard time vs that champion than just venting off all their strengths.

To get a truly unbias view you would need to look at, with an open mind; win rate, play rate, playerbase experience distribution, ban rate, win rate by game length, strengths and weaknesses in laning, strengths and weaknesses overall, counterplay, potential to counterplay others, design intent, item builds, skill curve, rune and mastery choices, matchup data and the overall meta.

UnboundCreatorApr 23, 20173 votes

[{quoted}](name=Mira Arya Enthe,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=Tq2BaYHl,comment-id=00010001,timestamp=2017-04-23T13:02:40.157+0000)

No. But listing counterplay is more helpful to players having a hard time vs that champion than just venting off all their strengths.

To get a truly unbias view you would need to look at, with an open mind; win rate, play rate, playerbase experience distribution, ban rate, win rate by game length, strengths and weaknesses in laning, strengths and weaknesses overall, counterplay, potential to counterplay others, design intent, item builds, skill curve, rune and mastery choices, matchup data and the overall meta.

ban rate doesn't correlate to how strong a champion is.

XikiniApr 23, 20175 votes

But it does correlate to balance.

UnboundCreatorApr 23, 20173 votes

{quoted}

But it does correlate to balance.

No it doesn't. A champ can have a 30% banrate just because people don't like playing against it. Stuff like Lee and Yas. both aren't even strong yet everyone hates them and bans them.

JunkοApr 23, 20175 votes

Lee isn't strong? What? He has been the king of jungle for 6 out of 7 seasons in the game. And the one time he wasn't viable he got a 12-18% max health nuke to everyone hit by the target you ult because Riot loves Lee so much. He is literally the posterboy for Riot's LC$BIGPLAY$ look on balancing.

Finn Teh HumanApr 23, 20173 votes

Lee Sin and Yasuo ARE Strong. The fact Lee has a great early/mid/late and dueling. Great engage/escape. Yasuo can be crushed in lane and still come back in 2 items. Lee Sin has ALWAYS been strong.

KnoyleApr 24, 20176 votes

it does correlate to how much anyone would rather not see them.

The EcdysiastApr 23, 20172 votes

The calling card of Darius proponents who don't play other juggernauts because the other juggernauts have actually had the nerfs they needed.

Troll for TrumpApr 23, 20171 votes

But Darius did get nerfs during the CoTC mini meta. And many people in high elos felt that the passive nerfs were unjustified.

Besides Darius, I like Illaoi and occasionally Garen

Everything else is kinda boring.

The EcdysiastApr 23, 20172 votes

People in high elos shouldn't be able to play Darius as effectively, as with Garen and Illaoi. The design of the juggernaut subclass is intended to be very friendly to unskilled/new players. Hence why Garen is almost unseen at that level of play-- where mechanical skill is high enough to add reward to harder champions.

Be it 30 or 40 AD, it's still enough more than anyone attempting to duel him. Without a hard counter in the form of a ranged champion, Jax, or Pantheon, there's no counterplay against it. The only option is playing under turret as if you'd already started feeding before the game even began. The real kicker is that he was in a fine spot before the unjustified addition of said passive. With the additional heal, he doesn't need extra stats for free like that. Though some Darius players will argue that he's the "least stat-checky of all the juggernauts," he's actually the most. He may have one ability that requires you aim it in the right general direction, but other than that he's just a check on whether or not he has more AD/armorpen/healing than you. Which he generally does.

Troll for TrumpApr 23, 20171 votes

People in high elos shouldn't be able to play Darius as effectively, as with Garen and Illaoi. The design of the juggernaut subclass is intended to be very friendly to unskilled/new players. Hence why Garen is almost unseen at that level of play-- where mechanical skill is high enough to add reward to harder champions.

mhm, and the game is balanced mostly around plat+

Be it 30 or 40 AD, it's still enough more than anyone attempting to duel him. Without a hard counter in the form of a ranged champion, Jax, or Pantheon, there's no counterplay against it. The only option is playing under turret as if you'd already started feeding before the game even began.

That's if you go into extended trades with him. He's supposed to thrive in extended trades, like every juggernaut. If you're going for an extended trade against a juggernaut, and you aren't a duelist, skirmisher, or another juggernaut, you're purposefully setting yourself up.

If your ADC mispositions, they're setting themselves up to get dived, etc.

The real kicker is that he was in a fine spot before the unjustified addition of said passive. With the additional heal, he doesn't need extra stats for free like that.

He never had only a heal. He got the heal and the passive with the rework. There was never a point where he had one but not the other. I thought he was better off pre-juggernaut rework, but apparently not, according to other people.

He may have one ability that requires you aim it in the right general direction, but other than that he's just a check on whether or not he has more AD/armorpen/healing than you. Which he generally does.

He only statchecks melees. People always make statchecking seem like a bad thing; it really isn't. It's a double-edged sword, like binary champs. It's fine.

The EcdysiastApr 23, 20173 votes

He has the strengths to force champions into extended trades, while the other juggernauts do not. The others don't have his pull+slow combination. The pull is what really sets him apart from the rest of the class in that you're forced to die fighting him or die bleeding and running. As I said, the only counter to this is to sit under tower-- which for any other matchup you'd only have to do if you were already feeding.

What I said about the heal didn't suggest that it and the passive ever existed at separate times. What I'm saying is that he most definitely did not need both added at the same time during a meta where he was already slightly above 50% winrate.

"He only statchecks over half of the champions in the game, and more than 75% of top laners." That speaks for itself. It really isn't a bad thing when there's play around it. In his case, however, it is not a double-edged sword. It's quite fittingly an AXE.

Troll for TrumpApr 24, 20171 votes

Not really. Most juggernauts have some way to force extended trades. Garen Q Olaf R +cc immunity + Q slow(axe spam) DrMundo Q slow spam+R Ms boost Nasus Wither Trundle Q slow, E slow, W ms boost Shyvana MS boosts Udyr E+Passive+E stun Volibear Q flip, E slow Yorick E slow, W cage

The ones that don't are and Illaoi which are supposed to be trading the stickiness/cc for something even better. It works out for Illaoi, and she is the best counterengager in the game. Mordekaiser is Morde.

Basically all Juggernauts have some form of stickiness

His pull range doesn't outrange the turret. He can only pull you if he chooses to fight under the turret, which almost any juggernaut can do. He has less range, because he has no poke ability, but he is generally stronger than most juggernauts at melee range; he trades the range for better melee combat.

What I said about the heal didn't suggest that it and the passive ever existed at separate times. What I'm saying is that he most definitely did not need both added at the same time during a meta where he was already slightly above 50% winrate.

Well, no. He had sub-50% wr at high elos generally, and it was the first class rework Riot ever did. They wanted to fix Darius. They took power away from his kit and redistributed elsewhere. They weren't just added, there were tradeoffs. If you take away one of the add-ons, you'd have to give Darius something else.

"He only statchecks over half of the champions in the game, and more than 75% of top laners." That speaks for itself. It really isn't a bad thing when there's play around it. In his case, however, it is not a double-edged sword. It's quite fittingly an AXE.

Yes there is, you literally just don't play aggressively. It's like playing against Pantheon, except far less oppressive, because Darius isn't point-and-click.

What, he's a lane bully, do you expect him to not be a bully?

As a bully, he's a little bit worse off lategame than some other champs. That's where the other half of the axe is.

Generally, all juggernauts are primarily early-game based and fall off later, unless things are set up otherwise. This is true of almost all juggernauts

The EcdysiastApr 24, 20171 votes

It's always funny when in a talk about juggernauts, the proponents list Udyr, Olaf, Shyvanna, and other bruisers, that are not juggernauts. They are the class of fighters who can be more defensive than divers. What they are not is a sub-subclass of juggernauts

The only two juggernauts you listed as having ways to force extended fights, Garen and Nasus, have half as much ability to force extended trades as Darius does. And as we already discussed, their lack of a second form of cc is exactly why Nasus and Garen aren't seen in high level play. Heck, saying Garen comes close is a long-shot, since the silence only effects certain matchups and he's slowed if he hits minions during his Q.

The only tradeoff added in Darius' kit was the addition of a cast time for his Q, which was only added to offset the heal.

And you're doing a fine job of listing all the ways Darius is in fact too much stronger than the other juggernauts, to the point that he does not fit the intended strength of the class. I

Darius is a lane bully, but where other lane bullies trade a moderately higher strength in lane in exchange for a falling point mid-late, Darius instead trades complete melee dominance for a falling point that occurs long after average game time. Darius is in fact not worse off late than other lane bullies.

His win rate has consistently shown that there is no point at all where he falls off. At no point in his winrate/length graph does it dip below 51%.

The only two things Darius players must worry about are:

The possibility of a ranged hard-counter, which can be easily avoided via trading.
The possibility Darius is banned/taken, because #1 means he's a high priority pick, and he remains a constant high-priority ban.

He should be a lane bully, I agree. But the trades a champion makes in game for their strengths in game should come in game, not in the form of possible counter-picks. That said, even his counter picks are far more risky to bring to top lane than he.

Troll for TrumpApr 24, 20172 votes

It's always funny when in a talk about juggernauts, the proponents list Udyr, Olaf, Shyvanna, and other bruisers, that are not juggernauts. They are the class of fighters who can be more defensive than divers. What they are not is a sub-subclass of juggernauts

Nope, they are juggernauts. Riot has said so before. Udyr was even considered for the JUGGERNAUT CLASS UPDATE.

The only two juggernauts you listed as having ways to force extended fights, Garen and Nasus, have half as much ability to force extended trades as Darius does. And as we already discussed, their lack of a second form of cc is exactly why Nasus and Garen aren't seen in high level play. Heck, saying Garen comes close is a long-shot, since the silence only effects certain matchups and he's slowed if he hits minions during his Q.

No, wither is much more effective for sticking power. It also has an atk speed slow, which is huge for trading. Garen is lacking in general.

The reason they don't see high lvl play isn't because they lack cc, it's because they're both extremely binary. In high elo, you're limited more by the champ than the player skill, as everyone is around the same skill level. Champs like Garen or Nasus are worse there. So is Darius, but Darius is harder to play, and has a higher skill ceiling than those two, so he sees more play.

The only tradeoff added in Darius' kit was the addition of a cast time for his Q, which was only added to offset the heal.

Please actually look up the rework

Darius is a lane bully, but where other lane bullies trade a moderately higher strength in lane in exchange for a falling point mid-late, Darius instead trades complete melee dominance for a falling point that occurs long after average game time. Darius is in fact not worse off late than other lane bullies.

Darius has less bulllying potential than some bullies, but falls off less hard. It's a more evened out power-curve.

You have the extreme bullies: Renekton Pantheon Quinn Then you have the moderate bullies: Rumble Illaoi Darius

His lategame isn't as good as you make it out to be. It's not good, but it's not bad. His bullying isn't that good, but it's not that bad. His E range really isn't that bad. You can play safe vs him more easily than you could vs most bullies.

He does have in-game weaknesses, kitability, and being the most general of the juggernauts.

And grevious wounds. Those things shut him down hard, but no one ever does that. Instead, they stupidly get Giant Slayer.

Just treat him as you would any juggernaut.

MarshbouyApr 23, 201713 votes

@ literally anyone who complains on the boards

badoogaApr 23, 201711 votes

"OMG HUGE AOE SLOW + SUSTAIN, A SHITTON OF FREE HEALING, AN AOE SILENCE AND AN AOE ROOT WTF"

Soraka

The EcdysiastApr 23, 20172 votes

But you picked an actually problematic support.

SoryInAdvanceApr 23, 20178 votes

how is soraka problematic...

The EcdysiastApr 23, 20171 votes

She wasn't in a good spot until they introduced items that make it so everyone can match her ultimate's healing.

SoryInAdvanceApr 23, 20177 votes

sorry..what?

ClementineApr 23, 20172 votes

das me

StandgroundingApr 23, 201710 votes

Yasuo dashes everywhere and has tons of crit zomg! He has x2 times attack speed since his Q is an auto attack. Penetration He has a knockup, tons of OP broken lifesteal, and aoe point and click nuke on knockup targets. And finally, he can block any ranged move from enemy team for 5 seconds!

He's OP AF nerf pls

Yaśuo MainApr 23, 201715 votes

not to mention that he has free shield as a resource bar and can SOLO 5 barons at once with just IE and PD!!11!!!1!

plus his wall makses you throw ur entire ranged rotation at it so u los game!!:131313!!!

StandgroundingApr 23, 201712 votes

Not to mention his kit tilts enemy team, causing them to go afk/troll/feed/surrender, giving you UNFAIR ADVANTAGE!!!!!!!!1111111@@@@@@@@@@@@3

chipndip1Apr 23, 20173 votes

Dude...

...YOU FORGOT THAT HIS DASH CAN BE USED IN ANY DIRECTION LIKE A BAJILLION TIMES AND IDK WHY THAT IS SO I'MA ASSUME IT'S BECAUSE HE'S USING NIPPON STEEL HOLYSHITNERFTHISDUDE.

IncarcerationApr 23, 20176 votes

DW, you still forgot that he can solo your nexus at zerOOO ITEMS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Legacy HydralphaApr 23, 20179 votes

Wow a champion with 4 second stuns, free heals across the map, unlimited dashes, a way to stop entire teamfight, AND able to get free mana and movement speed? And why do they deal more damage with their basic attacks than I do with my whole kit? 100-0 my ADC so OP rito nerf.

Yeah, it's Bard .

Trying to make a champ sound OP is sorta fun. No wonder everyone on the boards likes to do it.

Teridax68Apr 23, 20176 votes

I think an important feature that many players fail to account in lists like these is reliability: in the Sion example, he can afford to have an AoE knockup on a basic ability because it's extremely telegraphed and difficult to pull off successfully. By contrast, a champion like Malphite, who has only one source of hard CC on his kit, makes up for it with some of the highest reliability in the game, allowing him to basically knock up the entire enemy team near-instantly if they're clumped up and in range. Gnar is also a champion who often gets all of his strengths laid out (usually without any of his weaknesses being mentioned either), without it being brought up in the OP that all of his strengths are unreliable and, to some extent, even partially out of his own control, a drawback no other champion possesses.

The fact that posters on here keep making these mistakes when supposedly addressing Riot, who's generally well enough aware of their own champions' strength/weakness profiles to not be convinced, strongly suggests that those threads aren't really being made to get Riot's attention, so much as they're designed to simply gather approval and upvotes from players in a similar mood. While it's customary for game forums to be far more negative than the playerbase as a whole, the League boards are somewhat unique in that their upvote system encourages players to play to the crowd, rather than work with actual facts and evidence to make a positive contribution. Threads like the ones OP criticizes are easily shot down in the comments with basic logic, but they still succeed because they consistently gather enough upvotes to be on the front page, however briefly.

Several months ago a Rioter showed interest in addressing this kind of issue, but seeing how this problem has been left unresolved for years, and continues to degrade the quality of the feedback players can provide here, it's unlikely to be fixed anytime soon. What surprises me is that the devs have mentioned many times that the feedback-to-noise ratio on Gameplay, and Boards in general, is usually too low for them to glean useful information on any consistent basis, which would signal an urgent need to improve on that, yet no effort has been made on Riot's part to do so. Even GD, which is pretty much the Boards' designated space for random conversation irrelevant to the game, has received more attention than Gameplay when it got upvotes disabled on there, a change that could easily solve a lot of issues on here too. Whichever team is in charge of Boards, or at least Gameplay, has been silent for way too long, and it would be useful to at least get some official statement on what Riot's opinion is of this space.

Mira Arya EntheApr 23, 20175 votes

I am trying to change that mold. See posts like League Then Vs Now. League is a Triforce of Strategy, Skill and Stats. Why Failure is good. And so forth. I have some shit tier posts because I am human. But mostly I try to raise the quality standards of discussion. Thank you for your input.

Teridax68Apr 23, 20172 votes

This is true, and as much as I've taken issue with some of your posts in the past, I do think you have a consistent track record for posting interesting, thoughtful threads on Gameplay, and make a special point of challenging conventional thoughts and tropes on here. Keep on fighting the good fight. :)

Mira Arya EntheApr 23, 20172 votes

I am neither always correct, nor should everyone agree with me. I enjoy being challenged, free and open debate brings out truths and ideals in people. As a writer it is my solemn duty to seek the truth at all costs, that includes being wrong, quite often.

AlmightyApr 23, 20175 votes

Anything can sound "BROKEN OP" if worded correctly.

I cannot even believe there is a champion who has: An AOE damage spell.
An AOE stun. A movement speed boost. A movement speed increease. An ability that resets all of his coolodowns. And ontop of it all a free revive spell that he can use on anyone. And he can also give free levels to his allies.

... Yeah, Zilean is very problematic.

[slayer-jinx-unamused]

Almighty.

StandgroundingApr 23, 20173 votes

A movement speed boost. A movement speed increease.

Logic mistake detected.

6SfoolApr 23, 20172 votes

I actually do hate Zilean. His ult is so hard to see, and it's basically a guarantee that whatever fed champ they have stays fed. On top of being very versatile in engage/disengage/harass.

zeskgamesApr 23, 20173 votes

"He's got automatic crits, movement speed off autos, insane poke, a ROOT he can CROSS MAP you with, a 7 million range damaging slow, Teemo ult (its just his E not his ult), and building crit and attack speed gives him more AD!!!!!!!" Jhin

TimX24968BApr 23, 20173 votes

Riot, this is unbelievable

Tryndamere he has a passive THAT GIVES HIM CRIT, MAKING HIM BROKEN, he deals more damage than yasuo lategame, He has a gapcloser that can go down to a 3 SECOND COOLDOWN, he's stupid good at dueling AND sieging, he can HEAL UP TO HALF HIS HEALTH WITH ONE BUTTON, and TAKE AWAY MY AD, ALL WHILE NOT BEING ABLE TO DIE. RITO NERF THIS SHIT I SHOULD BE ABLE TO WIN AGAINST HIM WITH MY FIORA AND MAOKAI AND EVERY AD CHAPION.

I SHOULDNT BE FRUSTRATED WHEN I FIGHT HIM, I SHOULD BE DOMINATING HIM ALL GAME.

and i'm automatically going to get downvoted because the boards is full of people from the elos where he stomps in.

SnowplosionApr 23, 20175 votes

We can agree he needs a rework because that isn't health gameplay, right? He's not overpowered in any sense, just really toxic.

TimX24968BApr 24, 20171 votes

idk man, i thought riot determined what counted as "healthy" gameplay...

but if you say so...

Its like shaco. He seems super unfair, but he is suprisingly fair when you compare his advantages and disadvantages.

SnowplosionApr 24, 20172 votes

Technically Riot determines EVERYTHING, but that doesn't stop people from trying to use logic and labeling things a broken. The problem is the boards doesn't believe in logic, and labels pretty much everything broken.

TimX24968BApr 24, 20171 votes

exactly. Thing is, the definitions between unheathy, broken, and toxic are pretty much just used to describe something the person hates, regardless of whether it makes sense or not. Not too much of a real definition on these terms, and its hard to put one on with a game this diverse.

SnowplosionApr 25, 20172 votes

The funny thing is each of those words has a slightly different meaning when referring to gameplay. Broken means unbalance-able like Aatrox and Morde, toxic is really unfun and sometimes unhealthy game play like Singed, and unhealthy means not good from a balancing perspective like Xayah and Rakan's forced synergy.

LuggApr 23, 20172 votes

I have to really disagree with you on Sion. He is definitely too strong right now. He really only needs one damage item to do bruiser level damage. His base numbers need nerfed pretty bad so that he has to actually build damage items to do that much damage and that he will be squishy if he does that. He has good CC, so he doesn't need that much damage.

Now Taric is a great example of a fair tank in the game.

Mira Arya EntheApr 23, 20172 votes

Fair =/= number balance. Yi technically does meh but a fed Yi is still unfair. Fairness is in the design, balance is in the tuning.

LuggApr 23, 20171 votes

Number balance is just part of balance. Take for instance the CC removal on GP's Remove Scurvy. It has zero numbers but is incredibly strong.

As for Yi, he is a broken champ that needs reworked. He is basically unstoppable if you don't have hard CC and complete garbage if you do.

TimX24968BApr 23, 20174 votes

I'm 90% sure that your second sentence is part of this post.

I can name plenty of champs that get unfair when fed.

LuggApr 23, 20171 votes

We aren't talking about fed champs at all. We are talking about champs that aren't even fair when behind.

TimX24968BApr 24, 20172 votes