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Strategic diversity? Counterplay? LC$ players want a tiny pool of terribly designed champions.

Holgranth··101 votes·4,894 views

LCS level players want the tournament scene to be a small pool of balanced champions with high reliability. Anytime a low counterplay high power champion like Irelia becomes viable they become insanely popular in the LCS.

LCS pro’s don’t want extra decision making, counterplay, strategic diversity or team reliance; they want powerful and obvious optimal strategies. I would say they are the worst group of players in the world to talk to about DESIGN. (Not balance.)

In their heart of hearts LCS players do not want to learn how to play against the full champion roster in a tournament setting, they don’t want abilities that have serious attached counterplay, they don’t want to have to co-ordinate perfectly to set up a play, they don't want to play champions with any real "risk".

The backlash from high level players at the removal of ward hopping on LeeSin is typical of that mentality. Ward hopping with safeguard removes a massive amount of decision making and team reliance. Remove ward hopping, extend safeguard’s range, slightly extend sonic wave’s range, suddenly Lee Sin has to make decisions instead of having an optimal skill path available 90% of the time.

Why the hell would someone who's career is based around winning games want to risk missing a Sonic Wave? If ward hopping was removed Lee would have to co-ordinate with initiators and safeguard to them have reliable initiation and make the LC$ big plays... blasphemy to someone who wants to make 100% reliable plays anytime, anywhere with any team composition.

Lee is a terrible design and it is time to stop making DESIGN decisions to cater to a tiny portion of the player base that only wants to win as safely and reliably as possible; fun and good design be damned.

75 Comments

SmokingPuffin33 votes

It is absolutely true that competitive players have little interest in good design values. They will vastly prefer highly general champions with low counterplay. You know, things like Irelia and Lucian.

The task of the designer is to force them, so much as is possible, to play a wide variety of champions situationally.

This is not really a different task than the task of a card game or board game designer -- the player wants to find an optimal strategy that works against everything, while the designer wants to provide a variety of strategies that are all good or bad situationally..

I will mention that the backlash against removing Lee's ability to ward hop was not an exclusively high level thing. Players of all skill levels came out of the woodwork to protest.

Holgranth9 votes

Its true that the backlash was hardly limited to the pro scene, but the pro scene definitely has the most to lose when the always good, zero counterplay champions get nerfed.

I don't know if removing ward hopping is the "best" decision or not, but it is a really good example of where the pro scene's interests lie.

SmokingPuffin7 votes

You're absolutely correct. Further, it doesn't follow that the best thing for the game is what pro players want. Sometimes, Riot will need to make a decision that makes the game better for the fans, rather than better for the pros.

Remlap12233 votes

But when you take a look at the statistics on that, it shows how much Riot favors the pros. Over season 4, literally all of the champions that were nerfed were played by the pros, with the exception of 1 (Jax) who was only nerfed because he was cheesing normals so hard he had a ban rate equal to Season 3 Kassadin's.

SmokingPuffin9 votes

Hang on, I think you misunderstand the situation. If we are seeing Riot nerf legitimately OP champs, that's good for everyday players and it's good for fans.

Pros play OP champion X. Riot nerfs X. This is generally bad for the pros playing X (which is approximately all of them in that role); they need to figure out some new way of winning games.

Holgranth17 votes

You are completely correct. I may have come off a little more LeeSin hostile than strictly necessary, but he is the hot issue at all elo's right now. In the pro scene he is useful in any team comp on the planet even if he is 0-5-1.

Why bother to master situational champions like Nautilus Trundle Chogath Evelynn Diana Darius Hecarim MasterYi Skarner Volibear when you can just use the hell out of LeeSin and JarvanIV ? There are barely any teams that they don't work with and they aren't truly ban-worthy.

Jasiwel8 votes

{quoted}

It is absolutely true that competitive players have little interest in good design values. They will vastly prefer highly general champions with low counterplay. You know, things like Irelia and Lucian.

** The task of the designer is to force them, so much as is possible, to play a wide variety of champions situationally.**

This is not really a different task than the task of a card game or board game designer -- the player wants to find an optimal strategy that works against everything, while the designer wants to provide a variety of strategies that are all good or bad situationally..

I will mention that the backlash against removing Lee's ability to ward hop was not an exclusively high level thing. Players of all skill levels came out of the woodwork to protest.

I can agree to this, but it does not feel like the designers are accomplishing the above bolded. There is no incentive for there to be diversity in the professional scene and every time there is the diversity is nerfed into nothingness. What a lot of us have noticed is that there is a certain group of champs that can simply avoid being changed for the better by the designers and ironically all of these champs stifle diversity, what we want in this game.

That said, a lot of diversity has also been slain because previous powerful champions (Kha'Zix, Elise, etc) have been gutted and are not viable nor in a good place despite what the designers say. Kha'Zix is a cockroach now and Elise is a harmless house spider. They are only two examples of how diversity has been flushed out by the playerbase as well.

Thryale4 votes

I think one problem is the fact that riot is too quick to nerf, and doesn't give the players any credit for developing counter strategies. I just finished reading a mega thought diary from a previous dota player, and he brings up many good points. Riot (in the past) has reflexively nerfed things before the players are even allowed to adjust to the champ/strategy. This has been repeated enough times that the players now rely on riot to make the decisions for them rather than actually using their brains to create a counter to the current FotM. Throw in the existence of generalist champs that have no solid strength other than being slightly good at everything, and you have the stale champ diversity problem we see today.

Nameless Voice1 votes

They're only too quick to nerf certain champions though. Most of the top-pick champions are ones who have hardly seen any real nerfs despite being extremely strong for a long time.

Thryale2 votes

It's also annoying how right designs champs with a primary role/lane in mind to begin with. I'm a big boy, let me figure out how to play my champ, don't spoon feed me how.

chumbler20 votes

LCS players just want to play what wins. It's the designers' job to make sure that isn't the same 10 champions and 2 strategies every time, and Riot is failing miserably at that.

Jaegybomb2 votes

Yea, only like 60 unique champions have been played in the first week and a half of lcs so far.

Albireo2 votes

It's like 20, the rest are like weird picks (Kalista inside) to try something new (not much, because they normally still have something like Lee, Corki, Kass in there just because you can't be that original)

Koreans are even worse than EU / China / NA in terms of diversity, is the SAME game over and over, well, they do have an obessesion to pick Xerath tough

mi ramfan18 votes

Well, if you were playing for a potential reward of hundreds of thousands of dollars, you'd pick champions with the least possible counterplay too.

Think of it as a challenge to Riot to actually give these champions counterplay so that more champions become available.

Holgranth4 votes

Well of course I would. And I would probably actively work against having those champions redesigned.

iamthegoatofwar5 votes

Warwick had they left him alone could have challenged lee sin with the new jungle...But you know lee sin has to rule with j4 as his right hand man.

Alpharite14 votes

Warwick was stupidly fucking broken. If you think he didn't need a nerf your rage for Lee is blinding you.

iamthegoatofwar3 votes

Nah man warwick is countered by hard CC when it comes to his ult also QSS.

ItemsGuy1 votes

I may be misremembering, but QSS/Cleanse no longer work on suppression (just as they do not work on displacement/knockups).

iamthegoatofwar2 votes

I think that was only with malzahar's ult.

Ratbert3 votes

qss still does cleanse never did

Rinky Dinky1 votes

I have a tip.

If your only argument for counterplaying a champion is "Just use hard cc", the champion is toxic/broken/antifun.

iamthegoatofwar1 votes

ok and yet people guard kata...?

Rinky Dinky1 votes

I dont lol

Zmuecat2 votes

Not really, it depends on the champion.

Katarina? Hard CC and/or exhaust at the proper time is the correct thing to remove her ult. WW and Malz you could say the same thing for. To me, these champions wait for the best timing/target to use their strongest abilities/combos which can be interupted by virtually anything.

If the tip is to CC the champion REGARDLESS of where they are and what they are doing, then that champion is a problem.

It's a fine line and might be hard to see, but that's my opinion on the matter.

Tusutaki11 votes

Devourer needed nerfed. Not the champion.

Cupkek3 votes

{quoted}

Warwick was stupidly fucking broken. If you think he didn't need a nerf your rage for Lee is blinding you.

Warwick was perfectly fine. The Devourer Enchantment in tandem with the Challeging Smite was what made him broken. They hit the wrong target with the nerf-bat on the first try. Now Warwick is about as threatening as a puppy.

Remlap122313 votes

This is pretty much as accurate as it gets, and why balancing around what the pros do is a train wreck waiting to happen.

Miku Lv9910 votes

I totally agree. It's so dumb that so many of the "decisions" they make in their games are so obvious that it feels like there are barely any decisions they actually have to make in the games. It almost feels like just watching 10 AIs play or something. Since they can do so many reliable, low counterplay things, then IMO the LCS has become dreadfully boring to watch because almost exclusively only the highly predictable happens. Their so-called "big plays" are only big plays to those that don't have that great of an understanding of the game. Lee can make what others call a "big play" very easily and reliably with little that can be done to stop in a lot of cases.

Holgranth3 votes

It is a huge advantage to be able to know exactly what the optimal play for you current champion is.

Narasimha9 votes

I always felt the entire issue with Lee is that he's RIGHT on that precipice of being blatantly OP. Its not so much that "Hey, this champ is better than Lee, so we clearly must nerf them." but more like "Woah, thats pretty damn super strong, lets tone is back a bit." Lee is basically the pinnacle, the last line. If you've passed him, then chances are, that champion is way too strong.

Granted, that being said, I think theres plenty of options to tune Lee while still keeping his core. Remove his spell vamp, make his Q1 cost more energy but have his Q2 refund some, and reduce the base damage of his ult considerably but have it increase damage for each unit the kicked target hits.

The Red Warden7 votes

Another example that I can think of: When is it a bad time for Thresh to throw out his lantern?

What if Thresh could not collect souls while the ability is on cooldown? Maybe not the best solution but it is a start.

AetherKingdom5 votes

That's actually a ridiculously bad idea.

The Red Warden4 votes

I never said it was a good idea, only an idea. Why is it bad though?

AetherKingdom5 votes

Because Thresh's only way of gaining armor is through souls. So, lets say you're constantly put in positions that require to use your lantern. You enter late game with 16 base armor compared to others 100.

PlaguedWings1 votes

He does have scaling armor and mres like any champ does. This is a bad idea more so that, his souls is his income on any kind early game tankiness. Removing the ability to gather souls while his lantern toss is on cd completely negates his lane presence/engage early as the longer he stays in lane, the stronger he gets. Like any champ, of course. But, say there's a Leona on the opposite team, right? The only way for Thresh to outscale Leona who can buff her current armor and mres by quite a bit is through the usage of the souls mechanic.

So, it's not that it's his only way of gaining armor. It's his only way of gaining any early game potency aside from his lock down ability, and can gap close through his lantern usage.

Edit: through* not throw

Junkο5 votes

Actually Thresh does NOT have scaling armor and MR. His base armor is always 16 and base MR is 30

Raptamei3 votes

[{quoted}](name=The Red Warden,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=UNXYZJyv,comment-id=0002,timestamp=2015-01-30T23:23:22.240+0000)

What if Thresh could not collect souls while the ability is on cooldown? Maybe not the best solution but it is a start.

Punishing Thresh because the adc constantly needs help is toxic.

ImpossibleGT7 votes

This is what happens with games where content is constantly being added. The cream rises to the top. No matter how hard Riot tries they'll never able to balance this many champions against each other to a degree most people would find satisfying. The champions that can do more with less will always have the competitive edge. If you want an analogue, look at Magic: the Gathering. In the entire 15,000ish collection of unique printed cards, only a few hundred actually see competitive play in the formats in which the entire pool is available, and even fewer than that see widespread play. The strongest ones always push out every thing else.

If Riot really wants to take a whack at shaking up the competitive scene without this ridiculous cycle of buffs and nerfs where nobody is happy, try segmenting the available champion pool at any given tournament, similar to the different formats in M:tG like Standard/Modern/Legacy. For a given tournament or match, force teams to chose from a semi-randomly selected champion pool of X champions. It will force pros to move outside their comfort zone and use a wider array of champions instead of the same top 20 or so that usually get played.

chumbler11 votes

{quoted}

This is what happens with games where content is constantly being added. The cream rises to the top. No matter how hard Riot tries they'll never able to balance this many champions against each other to a degree most people would find satisfying. The champions that can do more with less will always have the competitive edge. If you want an analogue, look at Magic: the Gathering. In the entire 15,000ish collection of unique printed cards, only a few hundred actually see competitive play in the formats in which the entire pool is available, and even fewer than that see widespread play. The strongest ones always push out every thing else.

If Riot really wants to take a whack at shaking up the competitive scene without this ridiculous cycle of buffs and nerfs where nobody is happy, try segmenting the available champion pool at any given tournament, similar to the different formats in M:tG like Standard/Modern/Legacy. For a given tournament or match, force teams to chose from a semi-randomly selected champion pool of X champions. It will force pros to move outside their comfort zone and use a wider array of champions instead of the same top 20 or so that usually get played.

The problem is Riot isn't even trying to balance the champions. They have a pool of like 20 at best that see competitive play in one strategy and that's how they like it, despite it being dreadfully boring to watch and more so to play. Also your MTG analogy doesn't work because on top of the whole common/uncommon/rare/mythic thing that sets card power, they also flat out just make bad cards because that's their business model. Unless you're willing to say Riot intentionally makes bad champions (which frankly, they do, or rather they obliterate the champions they don't want played), it's not a valid comparison.

Kalarepa5 votes

Remember, when Riot wanted to nerf Lee Sin, but Lee Sin players convinced them not to? One of their main arguments for Lee Sin being balanced, was the Diamond from Gambit said so. If someone who knows Lee Sin as well as Diamond, says that Lee Sin is balanced - then he must be balanced, right?

Well nope. Why would Diamond want his best pick to get nerfed? Of course he would defend it.

Fuaztin3 votes

You know something. At first i thought you were trolling hard but I very distinctly remember Voyboy talking and I had a hard time agreeing with any of what he said. The only time I was able to listen and not cringe was that he said DFG was a 'luxury' item and that makes sense. There aren't many champs that can afford such a power spike. However I for one think that AP itemization is garbage especially now. But DFG was never a core item except for Leblanc and maybe less than a handful of other mages.

This thread just opened my eyes to a new probability.

Holgranth2 votes

Phreak said something about Irelia while I was watching LCS and suddenly everything clicked. Reliability is KING in tournament play and everyone copies everyone else in the lowest risk way.

Silents4292 votes

Hey look another thread bashing the balancing and talking about the LC$ Pro scene. Guys look how original it is!

ImpossibleGT2 votes

{quoted}

The problem is Riot isn't even trying to balance the champions. They have a pool of like 20 at best that see competitive play in one strategy and that's how they like it, despite it being dreadfully boring to watch and more so to play. Also your MTG analogy doesn't work because on top of the whole common/uncommon/rare/mythic thing that sets card power, they also flat out just make bad cards because that's their business model. Unless you're willing to say Riot intentionally makes bad champions (which frankly, they do, or rather they obliterate the champions they don't want played), it's not a valid comparison.

It is a valid comparison simply by virtue of being a game in which a large pool of possible choices exist. The same thing happens with fighting games there the top 4 or 5 safest characters are tournament mainstays and everyone else is picked maybe once by a rogue player. I simply used MtG because it's the one I'm more familiar with. It happens with literally every game where players are allowed to select from a large pool at will.

Also; rarity doesn't actually follow power level, although it is a decent baseline indicator if you're new. However, a common from the newest set was just banned/restricted in every format, so there's that.

It's also not entirely fair to say Riot is intentionally making bad champions -- with the exception of the Eve tier where they clearly would rather just disable the champion until they're ready to rework them but don't so do the next best thing so nobody plays them -- but again, the cream rises. Olaf is not an objectively bad champion. He used to see good play up top with his true damage. The problem is he's terrible in relation to other champions that are commonly picked now. He has no mobility and can't really lane or jungle as well as others now, so he gets left in the dust. Or Shyvanna? She actually has a very quick jungle clear and pretty great AoE-DPS in a teamfight, but she still doesn't see play in a world where everyone and their mother has an escape ability tacked on. If the champion pool were segmented, it's very possible that an environment would happen in which champions like this suddenly because viable. That's something I'd rather see.

Biffolo1 votes

might I question what common got banned?I used to play pretty hardcore, then took a break and are starting to get back into it.

ImpossibleGT1 votes

{quoted}

might I question what common got banned?I used to play pretty hardcore, then took a break and are starting to get back into it.

Treasure Cruise. It's a 7U sorcery with delve that draws 3 cards. It's banned in Modern and Legacy, and restricted in Vintage.

Biffolo1 votes

Ah. Makes sense.

Strident1 votes

...Are you guys fucking high?

Holgranth3 votes

Do you dispute my logic? Seriously explain to me why pro players would want more diverse picks? Why they would ever want to play champions that can be shut down and aren't almost 100% reliable.

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