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Why are items allowed to counter certain champions... but not invisibility?

Smithy2Q·3/26/2018, 2:11:34 AM·55 votes·3,715 views

If you listen to LCS long enough, you'll hear how someone bought a QSS as paying the Skarner tax (or the Malz text, etc). The idea is that these champions have such a strong ult, you need an item to counter it... and by countering it, you make the champion useless.

Think back to the (ridiculous, imo) justification for changing invisibility. Champs like Vayne and Akali have invisibility as part of their kit, and having an item completely negate that was seen as unfair. Now there is no counter to those abilities.

The question, then, is why the discrepancy? Why are game-changing ults allowed to be countered by an item, whereas Akali's cloud or Vayne's tumble is not? True, a QSS is a (full?) item whereas a ward is a ward, but both require gold and item slots, and both are built to completely nullify another champ's abilities. Why is invisibility special?

I'm not arguing that one or the other needs to be buffed or nerfed (though seriously, an 8sec uncounterable invisibility cloud at lvl2? Come on rito), but I am arguing that there is a disconnect here. Should items be allowed to hard counter champion abilities or not? If yes, then invisibility should have a counter. If no, then the game-changing ults and abilities should not be countered. Other balance changes would certainly need to happen as well, but there should be a consistent philosophy when it comes to items.

90 Comments

Akali is SO HOT3/26/2018, 5:26:50 AM40 votes

Buying a QSS doesn't make Skarner and Malz ults useless because they can just ult someone else or still ult you and make you blow a 90s cooldown item in a teamfight. The only way to make their ults truly useless is if everyone on your team bought QSS which would be a total of 6500 gold. There is actually a cost and skill involved in countering their ultimates and prices to be paid in order to do so.

Having a single person on your team spam buy pink wards for 75 gold a piece to invalidate an entire champion has almost not cost attached to it and takes absolutely zero skill to use. You still have to keep track of your QSS cooldown and use it at the right time in order for it to be effective. Buying a pink and dropping it down in a fight takes 0 skill and has almost no price to be paid. Can't really compare the two. If you played during Season 3 and 4 you would understand how huge of a difference there is between those two.

Tf 4203/26/2018, 2:17:06 AM22 votes

pink wards cost 75 gold and have no cooldown and qss costs 1300 gold and has a 90s cd

Pika Fox3/26/2018, 3:33:45 PM9 votes

Most invis reliant champs literally cannot play league at all if their invis is hard countered. Most are short ranged assassins who need the stealth to dive the backline and have a potential at living.

Skarner/malz etc. all have kits where if their ult gets QSSd, theyre still useful. Malz still has range and high sustained damage, skarner is still ontop of you with good damage and is tanky as fuck, etc. Suppression is also extremely potent and long lasting CC.

Sire Hippington3/26/2018, 2:15:49 PM6 votes

I think the design of QSS and suppresion ults is ratehr questionable and what should be looked at rather than invisibillity. It's not fun to have an integral part of your kit removed because you're opponent picked up a specfic item, especially if that item is quite good on it's own(scimitar was a damn stupid idea), or on a trivial cost(pinkwards) At the same time, beeing forced into an item that has no other purpose than countering that one abillity is pretty unfun aswell(QSS on any non-AD) Hardcounters are just not a great concept.

Not saying invisibillity couldn't use some work, but hard counters like old pinks or even oracles are a horrible idea and got removed for a good reason and QSS should really be looked at.

Glory973/26/2018, 12:47:50 PM6 votes

I think a 75 gold pink ward completly destroying a whole kit is not good for the game. But i think a 3000 gold item that has a passive effect of revealing a stealth champion if you hit a skillshot on them would be a great addition. I just hate those stealth mechanics of, oh i even know where that teemo stands, but i need to kill him with skillshots only, because i can't target him. Or that akali shroud that she jumps in right before my lb e snares her, so that she's stealth while being snared and untargetable for most spells and aas.

Wolfeur3/26/2018, 2:15:56 PM6 votes

item 3341 item 3364

Unseen units, as well as visible traps and wards will be displayed as a red silhouette. This does not render them targetable.

realDRdeal3/26/2018, 4:19:30 PM5 votes

"Think back to the (ridiculous, imo) justification for changing invisibility. Champs like Vayne and Akali have invisibility as part of their kit, and having an item completely negate that was seen as unfair. Now there is no counter to those abilities."

The difference is that buying a qss requires a player to spend a significant quantity of gold. The items that countered invisibility/stealth before were oracles pot (300g? and no slot use), pink wards (75g), red trinkets (FREE). To be countered by an item that was so cheap any one could have it is unfair. Now, what should be done? I would love to see a defensive (probably hp/armor) item that has an active with something like a 45-60 second cooldown that when activated gives you a short period of time where you reveal invisible/sheathed units (maybe something in the 5 to 10 second range?). Such an item could be balanced because it would have a significant gold cost, take up an inventory slot, and be skill-expressive since it is an active (can be baited into being used too early).

TL;DR: Items countering stealth weren't fair becasue they were cheap/free and/or didn't take up item slots.

Serika Zero3/26/2018, 12:56:52 PM5 votes

I would like to get an item that costs 75 gold or so, and its effect is: block all auto attacks, just like shen's spirit refuge

Since you know, point and click auto attacks have no counterplay or counter build!!!! And don't dare you bring up item 3143 item 3047 item 3075 , these three are as good of a counter to auto attacks as item 3364 or item 3341 are counters to invisibility.

Raiyza3/26/2018, 5:59:50 PM4 votes

Why dont we just remove qss as a whole and make tenacity better?

DuskDaUmbreon3/26/2018, 6:08:17 PM2 votes

Because QSS is a counter to a fairly strong, but non-essential part of their kit. As said by Pika Fox, Malzahar and Skarner both have kits that function without their suppression. It's a lot more damage (And generally a certain kill in a team fight), but they can still deal a lot of their damage without it. But, most importantly, their suppression is a point and click offensive ability. It's also the same concept as buying item 3102 - it's a devoted item slot to durability.

Meanwhile, looking at, say, Akali, her W is her only real survivability outside of killing everyone. And she will have zero chance to properly reposition without it. This means that Riot has to buff her to the point where her W doesn't matter. Which was highly problematic, because she just curbstomped your entire team, or she was countered by anywhere from zero to 75g. This is the equivalent of getting a Banshee's for the cost of a potion and a half.

Tomoe Gozen3/26/2018, 12:18:15 PM2 votes

QSS has been updated in the past to not remove debuffs like Zed's and Fiora's ult.
Vayne, Twitch, Shaco, Teemo, Nidalee and Akali can all be soft countered by the Oracle's Lens. If you can outline a champion once per second, you pretty much know from where to expect them from and give you sufficient time to respond to their attack while not fully blowing their cover.

QSS is in the game for a specific reason - to give you an opportunity to not instantly die in a single CC by having subsequent overlapping CCs thrown on top of you. If QSSing a valuable CC is an issue, perhaps increasing the CD on near Zhonya's levels is an appropriate response. Or perhaps, gating the item after a certain level threshold, much like Ornn's upgrades (lvl 13), Elixirs (lvl 9) and trinket upgrades (lvl 9).

big boi edri3/26/2018, 9:12:41 PM2 votes

What about an inefficient item like GA with an invisible reveal active?

Similar to QSS, paying the price to reveal invis by purchasing an item with a short duration invis reveal mechanic.

Could work kinda like Quinn’s sight reveal, although I’m pretty sure it’d be a noob trap item. Or an “oh fuck somehow Shaco got fed” item.

Bern3/26/2018, 3:20:42 AM2 votes

Like someone else said, the Skarner/Malz tax is way more debilitating than dropping 75g on a pink. (A 1300g delay on your buildpath plus forced slot inefficiency on multiple members of your team is crippling.) It also matters that anyone can drop the pink, whereas the person targeted by Skarner or Malz MUST be the one buying the QSS.

Think of it this way: even if Skarner or Malz ult gets QSS'd, you made them blow 1300g on the QSS in the first place. Just by existing as that champion, you slow the buildpaths of the other team and force them to itemize to negate you or risk dying repeatedly. THAT is the real power of those ults. The other team has to react to you or pay the price.

Andrey03453/26/2018, 6:04:05 PM2 votes

Because without their invisibility they would be useless. They are generally squishy and removing invis means it's a free kill if they get caught. And champs with these strong ults, such as Malz/Skarner are still doing a lot of job without their ults.

Saezio3/27/2018, 12:13:09 AM1 votes

The only way i would find invisibility counter fair would be to have it on a long CD active skillshot item for supports, like a GLP kind of activate that if you hit the stealth champion you reveal them. 5v5 teamfights are hard for all invisible champions as it is, having it negated by a single trinket (if red trinket made them targetable) or a single control ward even worse would be a huge nail in the coffin on all of those champions. Only kha is really strong because of his invisibility on the R passive but that could be easily changed by making it a normal stealth and not true invisibility.

Bârd3/27/2018, 3:13:48 AM1 votes

QSS exists because there are only four champions with innate cleanses and an assload of champions with CC to cleanse.

There isn't a hard counter to invis in items because there are so many counters elsewhere.

If you absolutely must have one through items, red trinket is a soft counter. You can see their position, allowing you to hit them with skillshots and not get juked.

The Shimmer mechanic means that anybody with a skillshot or DOT can achieve a similar effect. Even if you don't have a DOT innately, you can run ignite to get one anyways.

Also, there are a lot of champions that counter invis by having true sight as a part of their kit. 13 total champions have true sight as a part of their kit, compared to 8 champions who have invisibility.

Morticianjohn3/27/2018, 4:41:22 AM1 votes

In ARAM there is a 300g potion that I use when I'm facing teemo or sometimes on shaco. I call it paying the teemo tax. I usually have to buy 3-4 of them. That's 900-1200 gold. Sometimes multiple players on a team buy 3 of those potions. We wonder why Teemo has such a high winrate in ARAM but just by his existence puts your team down 3000 gold sometimes.

I do think that as long as there is a balance between strength and the gold tax that items should be able to have an impact on a champion's effectiveness.

Smithy2Q3/26/2018, 2:14:59 PM1 votes

Just to further add, the whole point of picking Skarner et al is the game changing ult. You aren’t picking him because you think his Q is awesome. You want to run in, grab someone and take them down. One item completely negates the purpose of playing him.

Most invisibility champions don’t have this same association. People play Akali because she can destroy squishies in seconds; her shroud is a bonus. Similar with Vayne: people play here because she three-shots everything, with invisibility being a nice bonus. Eve is the exception, as stealth is her thing, and I suppose Twitch, as his whole shtick is popping out of invis and shredding everything. Whether that’s healthy is another thing.

If you look at the above, it doesn’t make sense why the core reason to play certain champs is countered by QSS and yet the ‘bonus’ parts of other champs, invisibility, is deemed too important to counter.

MorBidMike3/27/2018, 5:55:29 PM1 votes

well honestly i need to disagre, because with skarner ult and malz ult and for the sake of argument of this lets add leonas ult aswell, the champ will die instantly because when played corectly, a skarner can time the r and malz can follow up on damage and leona has more CC in her kit. well invis champs can get penta kills when invis like akali, vayne and now kai'sa are all close range, to counter them get a sweeper ward, cc, target ,burst down i mean com on people there is a reason they dont give champs with mad cc invis and thats because you can only have the best of ONE world not two,so yea it is extreamly fair because the shut down is needed and btw crybaby that 1 qss not 10 so how about burn it before u skarner ult u bronze

I Main Swain3/26/2018, 8:25:50 PM1 votes

honestly im still annoyed that qss builds into an adc item and nothing else. imo it should build into a TANK item and nothing else if they really want it to be on only one item. ad itemization is already way too forgiving and adaptable to just about any situation you can think of.

as for the point of the thread, i have mixed feelings about it because on the one hand its beyond ridiculous that you just straight up cant do anything about their stealth, but on the other hand being able to just pink it would make it feel totally useless. that being said, i am much more in favor of letting pinks reveal them, although id be ok with akali having true stealth if they removed the stupid blink on her w.

Troll for Trump3/26/2018, 9:40:11 PM1 votes

Skarner/Malz ult are key parts of their kit. When u disable it with QSS, they lose a lot of their impact, and become borderline useless (moreso skarner than malz).

If you negate invisiblity on some champs, the same thing applies. If you just buy a pink ward, you're nullifying key parts of a lot of champ's kits, and that makes them feel like crap.

ForFoxSakes3/26/2018, 10:13:48 PM1 votes

QSS counters other CC too, not just Skarner so if someone gets caught by another CC and needs to blow QSS then Skarner is useful again. Also his ult has a much shorter CD than QSS, so the item isnt making the champ useless

Invis is coutnered by AoE. They can still take full damage, just not from point and click stuff

BBW Chaser3/26/2018, 11:37:16 PM1 votes

cause god forbid riot actually nerfing KHA...even on duskblade nerf kha recieve 35% increase damage +20% bonus ad ratio and +15% total ad ratio

hahahhahahh Riot balance