[{quoted}](name=The Sword Dancer,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=YHn0UT5K,comment-id=0002,timestamp=2016-01-25T04:30:00.222+0000)
- More so than being a targeted ability, the unhealthy part of vlad's q is that it is a low cooldown manaless hp draining ability. The fact that it heals vlad significantly, when paired with its range, cooldown, and reliability, means that if vlad faces 1000 champions back to back in 1v1s without basing, as long as his healing is enough to survive the burst of any one of them one on one then he will never die. There is no possible way to outplay him if you are even slightly behind in gold or levels. You either have the raw power to beat vlad before he heals up or you don't and lose.
Build any amount of lifesteal on an ADC, boom. Identical with a shorter CD. Slightly less healing, but just build a bork and BT and you'll heal even more than Vlad.
- Swain relies on a delayed aoe skillshot snare to keep people from just walking away from him and waiting for him to turn his ult off or go oom and riot has talked about wanting to rework him in the future, annie's w and ult are not targeted spells so she can miss them or you can use mobility or flash when she flashes to dodge her damage, literally everything in riven's kit aside from auto attacks can be dodged or avoided or kited out, etc.
Swain's Q and E are not a skillshot, and his R is auto-targeted. His snare is irrelevant after he gets a couple items. He can just click on people and walk around as they die.
Annie's W and R are "skillshots," sure, but they're also instantaneous and can't be blocked in any way. You can't dodge them unless she just misses with her mouse. So her counterplay is hoping she's bad.
And, most of Riven's damage comes from her empowered AA spam with that fucking bug that Riot refuses to fix. Take away her AA spam, she does very little damage outside of her ult's execute effect.
- Riot doesn't have infinite time and resources, they can only fix one champion or one small set of champions at a time. Hence the juggernauts, recent adc pass, and upcoming immobile mage pass. Just because something currently exists doesn't mean that it's not on riots backlog of things to get around to at some point just like they got to Sion, Gangplank, Poppy, Fiora, etc.
They made over a billion dollars in profit last year. That means they covered their costs, and then made a billion more. Yet, the pace and quality that they work at makes a construction worker look diligent. Thing is, that's how an F2P company works; you put actual content and meaningful work on the back burner, and focus on what makes your money (in this case, skins and hype for champions / reworks). And, here's the other thing: If balance was actually a part of this game, and every champion was viable, then Riot would lose money. They have to make waves of popular champions or risk not making $1B+ a year. Add onto that the fact that today's society teaches you that effort and thought are evil -- if Riot made it so that you can't just right-click on people and win, then very few people would throw money at Riot for skins, since they don't feel like they're good at the game and don't have fun.
So, they have the resources and means to actually balance their game with some form of logic, but, they just don't care enough to do so. Say thanks to the latest generation and the F2P scams they created.
- Design philosophies evolve over time as people learn and gather data. What seemed like a good idea 2-3 years ago isn't good enough nowadays in many cases, that's why we have patches and an evolving game.
Yeah, sure, but when you have a champion around since launch that Riot refuses to even talk about anymore (Yorick)... that shows that they're just not really doing much of anything but spinning their wheels and telling lies.
- Your tinfoil hat about game companies is showing.
It's not a tinfoil hat. I watched gaming come to life, I saw it become great, and then I saw it get stabbed in the back and killed off by entitled brats and money-grubbing assholes. Watching the slow death of your childhood hobby that you always dreamed of as having as a career (not playing, development) ever since you were little is more than just painful.
