Boards›Gameplay

Adding Clarity To Roles

Keon Kamori·8/8/2014, 11:33:36 PM·6 votes·570 views

This is my first big post on the forums so I hope this isn't received poorly. I have been playing League for a bit over a year now, and have been trying to better understand the game. I'm creating this thread in order to start a discussion on what direction the community would like to see the different roles taken.

Currently there are a lot of chaos in champion balance. Riot has released reworks for champions to focus their strengths and provide good counter play. In my opinion some reworks have done this well and others create new problems, but this is to be expected in an ever evolving game. So i'm proposing a possible fix to increase clarity across the roles.

The first step is defining the strengths and weaknesses of each role

Tank Value resistances, health with crowd control. Tanks are meant to absorb damage and stick to squishy targets.

Fighter Value sustain, sustained damage, and gap closers. Fighters are the middle ground between tanks and assassins their job is to both deal and absorb damage and excel in early-mid game skirmishes.

Assassin Value burst damage, mobility and stealth. An assassin's job is to find opportunities to pick off high priority enemy targets while still being able to get away safely once they've done so.

Mage Value burst damage, crowd control, and Range. A mage uses ranged spells to poke down enemy champions and high damage ultimates to finish them off from a safe distance.

Marksman Value range, high sustained damage, and utility. Marksmen are staples due to their high DPS and usefulness in taking objectives from a safe distance.

Support Value utility and crowd control. A support's job is to supply utility through shields, heals, and small buffs to their team and peel for their carries using crowd control.

The way the meta shifts, some of these roles are seen more than others and some even disappear as a whole. I believe this is mostly due to champions in specific roles having strengths that bleed into the realm of others. Below are some examples of champions that fall into that category:

Kayle Kayle is listed as a fighter and a support. These classes have poor synergy with one another, as a fighter values the ability to deal damage in the front line while a support needs utility and crowd control to peel for their carries. Kayle's problem is she is too versatile, being seen in all three lanes and even jungle in the past. Kayle's problem stems from her kit, being given a slow, a heal, on hit armor and mr shred, and an ultimate that makes any member of her team invulnerable for up to 3 seconds.

Lulu Lulu is listed as a Support and mage. These classes have stronger synergy as both support and mage value crowd control. However in the recent past Lulu was seen top and mid, dominating solo lanes and forcing their lane opponent out without much trouble. Lulu's problem is her damage, as a support, and her utility as a solo laner.

Morgana Morgana has one of the biggest problems out of mage supports. Designed as a solo laner, Morgana was given a kit that is self sufficient. This includes a 3 second snare basic ability with both high base damage and AP ratio, and an ult that procs a 1.5 second stun after 3 seconds. Her kit also includes a spell shield which makes her, or her allies, immune to any disabling affects.

Nidalee Nidalee was recently reworked which gave more power to her cougar form. She is listed as an assassin and a support but also has the functionality of a mage and a fighter. She has found her home in the top lane since her rework. Nidalee benefits from ranged poke, sustain, and utility in her human form and melee burst and mobility in her cougar form. In top lane she builds AD and deals magic damage with her high base values and her cougar form's Q: Takedown. This champion falls under the jack of all trades category.

Jayce Jayce function's as both a fighter and a marksman and the change happens any time he transforms his hammer. This is simply due to him being a champ with a free transformation at level 1. Range changes are extremely difficult to balance in a fair and meaningful way, as discovered by the most recently revealed champion Gnar.

Please comment below with other champions that fall in this category, as well as suggestions on how to better focus champions to their intended roles. Thanks for making it through the long post.

11 Comments

Khodexus8/9/2014, 12:48:50 AM4 votes

Personally, I think Jayce is an example of a dual role done right. It takes his ultimate to affect the range change, and you still have to build him favoring one form or the other. You hardly ever see him outside of top lane, because he really works best as a fighter who can pull out some ranged damage from time to time. This makes him versatile, but not overpowered. He can take on other shorter ranged top-lane champions, but even then he's not oppressive, just has a solid but fair advantage.

I also see Lulu and Nidalee as being the biggest offenders, not because they mix two roles well, but because they do it TOO well. Lulu has awesome support power, but her kit also gives her some insane damage, making her extremely oppressive.

Nidalee's issues can be boiled down to one word: Javelin. She's so confused, because she's got insane long range face-melting, and yet Riot also wants her to get in close with her panther form. If that wasn't enough, she's also got one of the best heals in the game. I think she really needs to have her support attributes toned down, and given a much more focused identity. The way I would do this is by reversing the damage-to-range scaling on her javelin. Have it face melt at point blank range, and then have the damage fall off at long range. This way she can still poke with it, but isn't going to be annihilating half the enemy team while staying well outside retaliatory range herself.

67chrome8/10/2014, 12:28:46 AM2 votes

That's a pretty solid run-down of the rolls, and I agree with some of your examples on offending clarity.

With 100+ champions not all of them are bound to fall into cookie-cutter molds, you kind of expect some oddballs with unique playstyles though. I don't see an issue with Morganna, as most of her strengths are conter-balanced by pretty tangible weaknesses. Her kit is strong, but also really easy to circumvent or evade, especially with the lack of safety her ultimate puts her in.

Nidalee, Jayce, Lulu, Lee Sin, Elise, and other 7 skill champions I have problems with though. There isn't a massive divide between QWE and ultimate power for a decent number of champions, it's not uncommon to find QWE things like Event Horizon, Rocket Grab, Deceive, and Playful/Trickster that are objectively stronger than a lot of ultimates. Which tends to mean 7 skills > 4 skills. Sure, they can't unload them as fast - but having a hardware store filled with tools tends to mean they always have an answer for each challenge and new situation, allowing more counter-play capabilities at striking an opponent with an otherwise "more powerful" set of skills by exploiting their weaknesses, while in turn having very minimal weaknesses that are incredibly difficult to exploit themselves.

That is, unless you compare them to Kayle - who has such an amazing range of capabilities with only 4 skills, that subsequently have such amazing internal synergy, that she's more flexible (with the same build) then those. Kayle is somewhat of a testament that you could make 7 ability champions balanced compared to 4 skill champions - but for most purposes it basically means Kayle is OP. She's gone through many cycles of being amazing, getting nerffed (pretty hard), her fanbase getting butthurt and giving up, a new crop of players finding a new way to break her, being OP again, getting nerffed...

As for Lulu - she also has another problem. The support problem. Supports are supposed to be relevant champions despite having less levels and gold than everyone else when they're played in the support roll. This tends to give them the stigma they're weak and UP to most players, but playing with minimal income and experience leads to unimpressive results with just about any champion. Played as a support, most champions are pretty easy to be unimpressed by. However - being the strongest with the least means a lot of supports aren't borderline weak, they're borderline overpowered to not only be the go-to choice for supporting, but also relevant factors within "loosing" levels of resources. Give them an once to much power and then they're played in another lane. Unlike their competition, it's exceptionally difficult to actually shut them down with gold or experience advantages, and they clearly bring much greater supportive capabilities though. I mean - take a look at support kits. They aren't exactly weak, and many of them have tank-level CC and very potent AA steroids.

Worgslarg8/9/2014, 1:47:17 AM1 votes

For me, the biggest problem is the lack of clarity between marksmen and fighters.

Fighters simply cannot compete with marksmen in terms of damage, or safety while dealing damage.

Nidalee is a another matter. Personally, she has one of the best champion kits, aside from her e standing out of her style. The problem is that she cannot compete with assassins when played AP, and ad( was supposed to be a bruiser) nid is actually the best assassin.

It's simply and only a matter of scalings, all riot needs to do is make all of her cougar abilities scale with ad instead of ap. then make takedowns riduclous ad ratio much lower, and raise it's ap ratio to reinforce the ap spear> assassinate playstyle.( similar to a lux snare into combo, just nid has to go to melee range to finish off her target.