Why skillshots are poor game design

largefish·4/10/2015, 7:43:48 PM·1 votes·765 views

Many champions such as Morgana, Blitzcrank, Thresh, and Lee Sin have skillshots that are incredibly important to their kit and are rather hard to land consistently. Of course, if these skills were point and click, they would be ridiculously toxic and highly unbalanced. Riot has stated that they balance their game to "the highest skill level". In an absolute highest skill level match, skillshots would either be able to be dodged or not be able to be dodged (assuming instant reflexes). In the aforementioned situation, high mobility champs would be impossible to hit with skillshots unless otherwise ccd, and low mobility champs could be hit at any moment. Skillshots such as blitzcrank's grab would be highly unbalanced and absolutely overpowered. Ergo: Riot ignores its highest skill design philosophy to use sub-par player skill to hide how insanely overpowered many abilities could actually be. Riot is exhibiting poor game design by trying to hide flaws in their system through ignoring their principles.

6 Comments

Leti the Yeti4/10/2015, 7:52:11 PM1 votes

the horror... the absolute horror if blitz had a point click pull :CCCCC

Puri Puri Taric4/10/2015, 11:47:43 PM1 votes

i actually thing that skillshots are better in any way. Skillshots allow you to proc sheen all the time whereas point and click could never enable the sheen procs at all.

IwfiKe3qjM4/11/2015, 3:13:20 AM1 votes

I thought some skillshot can be better than point-and-click and some point-and-click can be better than skillshot... i think the game-changing abilities should be skillshot and the one that doesn't not skillshot... for dash/blink maybe if they want it to be escape mechanic better direction-targeted and if not... point-and-click...

and I read some comments about skillshot and point-and click at other similar forum and found:

  • mobility counters skillshot (since they have higher chance of avoiding that)
  • point-and-click counters mobility (since they can't avoid that)
  • skillshot is stronger than point-and-click in terms of range and damage
SwiftKitten884/11/2015, 3:46:52 AM1 votes

so skillshots are op?

nid spear is "op" when it hits for 1k but when a jinx auto attack rocket hits for 1k its perfectly fine?

i fail to see how skillshots are op