So I made a spreadsheet of features in champions' kits the other day...

Teridax68·8/19/2017, 2:55:27 AM·104 votes·7,226 views
LoL Champion Kits

Here is the raw data. Basically, I tallied up the number of features innate to a champion's kit for the entire roster, accounting for things like CC, mobility, sustain, manalessness, etc. Keep in mind that these are only the features innate to a champion's kit, without accounting for items, masteries, summoner spells, etc., so all of this is being drastically underestimated relative to the state of those features in-game.

I invite you to look at the data and see for yourself, but here are some conclusions I think can be drawn from it:

  • The average champion has about 2 instances of innate crowd control: Typically this crowd control is one hard (i.e. a stun, root, suspension, etc.) and one soft (i.e. a slow, blind, silence, and so on), and the hard CC is more likely than not to be irreducible by Tenacity, as more than half of all hard CC is immune to Tenacity. This includes displacement and knockups, but also suppresses and stasis, less frequently. Effectively, complaints about Tenacity not being as effective as it should be are pretty justified, as just over 30% of all CC in champion kits is Tenacity-immune.
  • The average champion has between 1 and 2 ways of increasing their mobility: The most common form of mobility is movement speed boosts, but dashes, both targeted and free (targeted dashes require a unit to dash to, free-targeted dashes can be cast anywhere) come in very close, and together are more common than movespeed boosts. Even the least innately mobile classes in the game, i.e. marksmen and mages, generally have at least 1 mobility boost, and instant gapclosers make up over 56% of all mobility in champion kits. This isn't counting Flash, by the way, which is another instant blink on practically every champion, so there is actually a lot of mobility available to most champions. Those who do not have that same mobility are serious exceptions, rather than the norm.
  • Over 54% of manaless champions also have self-healing: By contrast, a little under 21% of champions capable of self-healing are manaless, as most champions with healing are supports and there are no manaless supports. As there are 12 champions with manaless self-healing, a little under 9% of the total roster is a manaless champion with self-healing, and just under 16% of all champions are manaless. There is effectively a decent, though not terribly enormous portion of champions not bound by standard resource constraints, including a fair amount of champions who are liable to be far too survivable early on if their kit isn't gated properly. As of now, 32.5% of all fighters are manaless, 65% of fighters have self-healing, and so 20% of fighters are manaless and can self-heal. This corresponds to many of the complaints players make about top lane, where a great deal many champions can hold on for very long without being affected as harshly by resource constraints as most other laners.

There are likely many more interesting conclusions to be drawn from the above data, but I think the bottom line here is that there is actually quite a fair bit of statistical evidence to back up observations and criticisms players have made about certain trends in the game: there really is a saturation of crowd control and mobility in champion kits, especially hard CC and gapclosers, to such a degree that having at least one instance of either is the norm, and anything below that is considered a deficiency compared to the rest of the roster.

The TL;DR conclusion I also want to draw from this is that there is a lot of feature creep in League of Legends: when each new champion design is released with either multiple forms of CC and mobility, or some other special feature to compensate for the lack of them, in order to remain competitive with the rest, it leads to a lot of repetition across kits, and to designs that feel more cookie-cutter than they ought to be. Not every champion kit has to be a bunch of pure nukes like Annie or Veigar (both of whom incidentally have hard CC), but when a champion needs to have mobility and/or CC in their kit just to be able to compete in an environment that is overflowing with both, doing so raises the issue of it contributing to a larger problem of game-wide feature overload, one that already feels like it's limiting design today, and that risks limiting it even further as more champions get released and updated.

135 Comments

AFilthyCaitMain8/19/2017, 3:07:39 AM46 votes

This. We need more in depth analyses like these posts. Sure we can CLAIM theres mobility creep, but actual research like this makes it more credible and really brings light to the problem.

Anyways,

Mobility and CC creep are a huge issue, especially lately. Xayah and Rakan are mobile as hell with a ton of cc, Kayn is mobile as crap, Galio is mobile and has a crap ton of cc, etc. Probably one of the newer champs that has avoided this the most is Illaoi.

I Q8/19/2017, 5:19:20 AM7 votes

Ekko has 2 forms of soft CC, not one. He has his forward Q, and his W slows before he activates it.

woodvsmurph8/19/2017, 10:24:06 PM6 votes

Ranged champs don't necessarily need as much as melee champs do. If melee champs don't have at LEAST mobility OR reliable HARD CC, they will just get kited and be useless except at low elo. Just look at all the darius games to emphasize this - pro play doesn't see him, but it does see a similar champ (renekton) thanks to more reliable hard cc and some LIMITED mobility. While I think adc's are overtuned (largely due to sup heal/shield itemization), most of them are not a problem on the mobility front. The one I have issue with is lucian. He has more snowball potential early than a renekton, yet scales better for his role. If he is constantly using his dash and spamming his spells, he was SUPPOSED to be designed to go oom very fast for that. Unless he goes essence reaver crit build. But he can go bork, cleaver build and spam more than long enough to decisively win a teamfight without going oom. This is a case of too much mobility in my opinion. Maybe not if he has blue buff, but even when he doesn't he still doesn't oom from such a fight. With the excess of peeling (hard and soft - plus exhaust and defensive summoner spells like flash and heal or barrier), this leaves assassins, and bruisers unable to do the job they were made to do early/mid game: dive an adc and blow them up. Now sure, not everytime should poor old lucian die. But if his team doesn't peel PERFECTLY and the diving bruiser and/or assassin plays it right, they should kill him no sweat. This is not happening. Part of it is due to heal/shield support items being too strong or available too soon into the game, part of it is due to champs like lucian. If you compare him to xayah, I would say xayah is a decent example of what a "mobile" adc should be. Her mobility isn't spammable. Her disengage via hard cc is able to be outplayed. Her ult is nice, but not overbearing. She can still die. And furthermore, to get this survivability, she trades off a bit of early/mid game damage compared to other adc's. Thus, I have zero issues with xayah being "mobile" as a bruiser/tank main.

IPromiseTomorrow8/19/2017, 1:15:39 PM5 votes

Dude more posts like this these please This is helpful as hell

jwebb01138/19/2017, 3:46:31 AM4 votes

i can say well done ... kudos for the time and effort to do this.

what would be good would be a bell curve graph based on these stats... apply a value to each category ( 1 for each ) and plot champs on a bell curve to see where and who falls to the extremes of the spectrum and who is bunch in the middle

Evewynn8/19/2017, 8:01:19 PM3 votes

Can you separate your data into seasons, and compare each season with the next? I think that would improve your point of showing that "x creep" exists.

Mordepool8/20/2017, 12:47:03 AM3 votes

#ReworkTenacity

Ahristocats8/19/2017, 11:49:59 AM3 votes

that doesn't mean anything

you do not take in account base stats and cooldowns, and mana cost for mana champions, and the range they have

all of those hidden things that help to balance the game

Blakiepug8/19/2017, 2:55:39 PM3 votes

What does "Can ghost" mean?

SteelMankind8/19/2017, 3:27:51 PM3 votes

There are some problems with the scoring system. Kled, for instance, is not more mobile than Ekko, yet he got a mobility score of 7 while Ekko got 4. Untargetability/invulernability is a very important tool that's highly coveted by the champions who have it, such as Fizz and Zed, yet it's not even a category.

zero3568/19/2017, 6:01:02 PM3 votes

I know it would take some time, but if you really want to demonstrate feature creep, order them by release date

kurthl33t8/19/2017, 10:22:56 PM2 votes

Good Lord, why are there so many Fighters in the game?

Also, what does "Can Ghost" mean in this context? I couldn't figure that one out.

THE RlVER KlNG8/19/2017, 12:42:29 PM2 votes

Just FYI you messed up on Tahm, his Q slows, so he does have soft CC.

TheGoomyGamer8/19/2017, 12:29:19 PM1 votes

The thing with sustain is a lot of manaless champs use health as a resource so need the self-healing.