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Let's try some constuctive theorycrafting on how to balance Lee Sin without gutting him.

JusticePauldrons·2/19/2015, 10:58:17 AM·6 votes·1,308 views

So as I am sure you know LeeSin is the subject of major controversy lately due to his extremely dominant role in the jungle since his release. He has for a long time been a stable champion in any pro event due to the sheer amount of sustain, tankiness, mobility, damage and crowd control he possesses that allows him to make important plays with little costs. So I was hoping that instead of us crying about "won't get nerfed because of LC$ playz" we could try to have a constructive debate on what exactly people find to be so powerful about him and offer suggestions on what can be done about it. I will start with a couple of my thoughts on it.

Hypothesis: Lee Sin's mechanics, mobility, high AD ratios and crowd control are all too powerful simply because of how often he can use them. If his energy was limited it would stop him from being such an incredibly safe pick while still allowing him to dive in and do his thing.

What can be done about it?

  • Idea One: Remove the 15 energy regeneration off of* Flurry*. The passive is already powerful by giving him a near permanent attack speed boost just by mashing skills.

  • Idea Two: Increase the energy cost of Safeguard. This is so it isn't an always available skill that allows him to escape bad engages easily while diving headlong into good ones for a free ult. This would force him to pick his fights more carefully knowing he may not have the energy to escape a turn around.

  • Idea Three: Give Dragon's Rage an energy cost. Right now it is a free skill that can be used at any point in a fight with no cost to him. There is nothing to prevent him from saving it the duration of the fight or managing when he uses it with his other skills at all. This itself is my favorite option, because it prevents Lee from using his excessive combo and mobility skills freely by forcing him to manage his energy. Do you want to get behind the enemy and kick them to your team, or save your energy to put out more damage during a teamfight? Those are the kinds of decisions that create counterplay and give he enemy a chance to respond to your actions and punish your mistakes.

Hypothesis Two: Lee's excessive damage ratios are the main cause of his problems, nearly all of his abilities have a 90% Bonus AD Ratio or higher (With Dragon's Rage having a 200%) , meaning that every bit of damage he builds now matter how small creates dramatic differences in the effectiveness of his skills.

What can be done about it?

Idea: Lower the damage ratios of his bread and butter skills like his Q. There is no reason for him to have a skill that has such a high AD Ratio and a built in execute with a small cooldown of 7 seconds.

Hypothesis Three: Certain utility mechanics about Lee Sin make him seem completely excessive and create the idea that his kit is overloaded. If these mechanics were toned down he would be healthier.

What can be done about it?

  • Idea One: Remove his ability to hop to wards using Safeguard, being able to hop to any friendly unit is powerful enough in lane, but having an on demand flash get's excessive quickly when his ultimate goal is to kick your backline out of position.

  • Idea Two: Remove or tone down the Spell Vamp/Lifesteal from Iron Will gaining a free 25% of both stats (on top of what you currently have) gets out of control quickly and allows him to recover too quickly from teamfights as well as sustain himself in them for too long for a guy who functions as an assassin most of the time.

  • Idea Three: Remove the execute from Resonating Strike. It already has an extremely powerful AD Ratio built into it and can be cast twice, it doesn't need to have an execute built into all that as well. It allows him to shred targets who attempt to defend against him too quickly for an ability with such a low cooldown.

Welp, that is what I got so far. Now keep in mind these ideas are all meant to be separate, I am not saying we should dump 50 nerfs on him and call it day but rather trying to find the best way to balance what seems like an overexcessive kit for a champion with little costs to his abilities. If you have suggestions or want to discuss points made by myself or others, feel free to do so in a calm and respectable way.

13 Comments

Bisaknosp2/19/2015, 11:02:25 AM2 votes

higher energy cost, reduce ult and q damage, reduce projectile speed of q, make e do physical damage done

Teridax682/20/2015, 12:19:48 AM2 votes

I agree with Hypotheses 1 and 3, and partially with Hypothesis 2: LeeSin is often frustrating to play against, especially in the early game, because he has an answer to everything, and has on-demand access to twice as many abilities as everyone else. He can do much more than any other champion, and runs into the issue where he snowballs extremely quickly when ahead, due to his generous AD ratios and massive bases, but still has a super-safe fallback strategy when behind (he can just go tanky and use his sustain to heal for free both in lane and in the jungle).

Generally, I feel that he does have really awesome features, though: his mobility is super-sweet when used right, and his utility makes him the most team-oriented bruiser in the game, which is a niche nobody else really fills. If he had to have an identity to be built around, I'd say he should be the team-oriented playmaker bruiser in the game. The most iconic features about him are the abilities he uses moment-to-moment, and I think those should be emphasized, at the cost of some of his more passive power (his sustain and DPS steroids, for example). Here are a few other ideas:

  • Gut his sustain: Like Riven , Lee has a ton of tools (even more, in fact) to avoid or block damage (or kick damage sources away), yet despite this he has some of the strongest sustain in the game. I think it would be healthier for everyone if he actually got flipped to having some of the worst sustain in the game, and not the best, by having Iron Will's life steal/spell vamp removed, and his health regeneration slashed. That way, he'd be forced to use his shield, dashes and kick in order to actively avoid damage, and not just enter and exit fights at will. While this alone would go against this thread's "no gutting" policy, I think this would give Lee the opportunity to have lots more power elsewhere.
  • Increase the initial energy cost of his secondary abilities to 50 / 45 / 40 / 35 / 30: You're right that Lee is frustrating to play against, at least early on, due to how effortlessly he can use all of his abilities: if he's winning trades, he can easily snowball them into kills using his CC and mobility, and if he's losing them he can just as easily jump out of a fight at any given point. A change like this wouldn't affect Lee's most basic abilities, but it would force him to choose which form of mobility or utility he'd want to access in early fights.
  • Reduce his true sight (invisibility detection) to normal sight: True sight is, at its core, a hard counter to stealth, and is there just so that Lee can override his opponent's plays, which he doesn't need to do. Giving him only normal sight wouldn't affect his normal play patterns (smack people and see where they are) but would give stealth champions a breather.
  • Flurry:
    • Increase the energy generation to 20: With the above cost increases, this would force Lee to autoattack and commit more to fights in order to access his full kit, and so would differentiate more between his powerful bursts of damage and crowd control/utility (which should then leave Lee extremely vulnerable for a window of time), and a more continuous stream of abilities, which would make him more constantly vulnerable in exchange for letting him access more abilities.
    • Remove the attack speed, but have each Flurry-enhanced autoattack reduce the cooldown of his last ability by 0.5 seconds: With all the effects he has, Lee does not need DPS, yet his attack speed boost gives him just that on top of super-strong early game burst. Having his basic attacks reduce the cooldown on individual abilities (not all of them at the same time, though) would allow him to access his burst more often without going into stuff he's not really meant to shine at. This would mean Lee could have better access to his abilities, but only if he doesn't blow them all at once (which carries its own kind of power). Overall, this would actually be a large buff, especially to Lee's late game where building CDR would give him near-constant access to his abilities.
  • (Maybe) Increase Lee's base attack speed: This would only be necessary if Lee really struggled to clear the jungle or apply Flurry to its full extent, but in the end I don't think it would be needed, since even with his base attack speed he'd be able to fully autoattack twice in the required time.
  • Sonic Wave/Resonating Strike:
    • Remove Resonating Strike's base damage and AD scaling: Resonating Strike's clearest purpose is as an enemy-oriented gapcloser and an execute. It doesn't need to be a massive nuke on top of that, and the decision to use it should be "do I want to enter this fight?" rather than "do I want to deal even more damage?"
    • (Maybe) Have Resonating Strike's execute damage scale with AD: I think an execute works on Lee because stealing objectives is something he's always been appreciated (and sometimes hated) for doing well. Perhaps building AD should make him better at cleaning up and capturing objectives.
    • Buff Sonic Wave's base damage, and buff its bonus AD ratio per rank (e.g. 100 / 110 / 120 / 130 / 140% bonus AD): Basically, this is shifting some of Resonating Strike's damage onto Sonic Wave for a fatter nuke, though the per-rank ratio increase wouldn't allow Lee to snowball as hard by going full AD as he can now. This might give Lee more poke than he needs, but then again he can deal massive amounts of relatively safe damage with a Q1 + Q2 + W1 combo right now.
  • Safeguard:
    • Split the shield and the dash, and make the dash/halved cooldown on champion use/shield on champions its secondary component: Doing this, along with removing Iron Will's sustain steroid, would make a clearer distinction between the most basic component in Safeguard (the shield) and its more interesting effect (the dash), especially since right now the dash is so cheap that Lee can bypass it just to get to his shield. Along with the above changes to energy costs on secondary abilities, it would also make it a bit tougher for Lee to get out of fights. The overall theme here would be that Lee would get cheap access to his most basic mechanics (ranged poke, AoE damage, a shield), but the act of using a secondary ability, which would offer a lot more power (a gapcloser/execute, an escape-oriented gapcloser, an AoE slow) , would also have a much larger cost, and would be a major decision in and of itself, at least in early fights.
    • Significantly buff the shield, and make it scale with bonus health: With Lee's steroids gone, he could afford to not only have much stronger situational defenses, but also better team-oriented utility (stronger shields for his allies), which would also scale much better. It would synergize with Lee's bruiser build, which involve a fair bit of health-stacking (if only through the purchase of item 2049), and would allow his team contribution to genuinely scale, rather than just stop at the Insec kick.
  • Tempest/Cripple:
    • Shift Tempest's damage towards later ranks: So basically the same treatment as with Sonic Wave, where the ability would have decent early damage, but would ramp up to better amounts later in the game, which would make Lee less overbearing early on while still allowing him to scale well in the late game.
    • Reduce Cripple's slow to 2 seconds, but buff it and remove the slow's decay: Cripple can be irritating to deal with, especially early on, because its slow lasts for so long (4 seconds) that it feels pretty oppressive, even if the slow doesn't end up being that strong. Having a much stronger slow for a much shorter duration would accomplish its function (momentarily pinning enemies down to their location) better, while also giving its victim a better opportunity to escape afterwards.

TL;DR this is a long laundry list of changes, but the general intent is to:

  • Make Lee Sin less overbearing early on, forcing him to choose between powerful bursts of damage, mobility or crowd control and more spread-out fighting power.
  • Make Lee Sin scale a lot better in the late game by making him better at helping out his team.
  • Give Lee a genuine weakness (terrible sustain) that would also force him to put his abilities to full use.
  • Make Lee less snowbally if he gets a lead.
  • Focus all of Lee's strength onto short bursts of ability-based power, while removing his steroids.

Overall, this might actually be a nerf to him, but I think it would also set a framework in which Lee could be balanced a lot more easily: not only would there be features he'd genuinely not be good at, but the overall lesser amount of things he'd be able to do could be made a lot stronger. If there were to be something he'd genuinely need to be better at, he could much more easily receive an appropriate buff without just becoming better at everything.

thinking man2/19/2015, 12:28:51 PM1 votes

Remove ward jumping then undo all of his nerfs.

WhereTheNamesAt2/19/2015, 11:22:43 PM1 votes

I personally think he is fine and doesn't need any changes and that people should just stop being little pussies. But I'll provide my 2 cents anyway:

-They can make his Q have a slower travel time -They can make his Q missing hp scale. Like it starts off with 4% then/5%/6%/7%/ and reaching 8% at max rank. This would slow his early game clears down and make his early ganks weaker. -They can lower the life-steal/spellvamp on his W to 3/6/9/12/15. If anything they should remove the spellvamp but keep the life steal

This would hurt his early game power (which most people bitch about anyways) and would keep from falling off ridiculously hard late game.

WhereTheNamesAt2/19/2015, 11:24:43 PM1 votes

I personally think he is fine and doesn't need any changes and that people should just stop being little pussies. But I'll provide my 2 cents anyway:

-They can make his Q have a slower travel time -They can make his Q missing hp scale. Like it starts off with 4% then/5%/6%/7%/ and reaching 8% at max rank. This would slow his early game clears down and make his early ganks weaker -They can lower the life-steal/spellvamp on his W to 3/6/9/12/15. If anything they should remove the spellvamp but keep the life steal -They could lower the base damage on his ult to 150/350/550

This would hurt his early game power (which most people bitch about anyways) and would keep from falling off ridiculously hard late game.

Bresn2/19/2015, 11:32:51 PM1 votes

Don't give him so much mobility on a fucking blind champion = Fixed

He needs Rek Sai's blind system.

Spacefight0r2/19/2015, 11:35:30 PM1 votes

Lee Sin is fine. Let's get some more viable junglers instead of guttering one that is only functional in the right hands.

Pryotra2/19/2015, 11:42:59 PM1 votes
  • Idea Three: Give Dragon's Rage an energy cost. Right now it is a free skill that can be used at any point in a fight with no cost to him. There is nothing to prevent him from saving it the duration of the fight or managing when he uses it with his other skills at all. This itself is my favorite option, because it prevents Lee from using his excessive combo and mobility skills freely by forcing him to manage his energy. Do you want to get behind the enemy and kick them to your team, or save your energy to put out more damage during a teamfight? Those are the kinds of decisions that create counterplay and give he enemy a chance to respond to your actions and punish your mistakes.
  • Idea Three: Remove the execute from Resonating Strike. It already has an extremely powerful AD Ratio built into it and can be cast twice, it doesn't need to have an execute built into all that as well. It allows him to shred targets who attempt to defend against him too quickly for an ability with such a low cooldown.

Probably all he needs.

I would be fine with the ratios, IF they reduce the base damage of everything. That way, he has to build AD actively, not just as a second thought.

Leti the Yeti2/19/2015, 11:17:20 AM1 votes

give him rek sai vision