@Riot Balance: What are the plans for other instant CC abilities?

Stephenizgod··4 votes·1,050 views

So this is not a complaining or whining thread, im purely curious as to what the plans are now that you have created a new balance point: Instant CC. Note: Im not asking for nerfs for these champions, im just asking what are the plans for these abilities now that Instant CC is said to have no counter-play..... Secondary Note: Screw Fiddlesticks Terrify though... that ability is bull To the Community: If you can think of any other forms of Instant CC that you would like me to add to this list i will be happy to, just please give me some evidence and reasons as to why i should put them here (i will look into it myself but it would help me out).

Veigar's stun was given a delay because once you mastered it there was no counterplay to it. This is true for the most part and i am one of the very very few who dont have an issue with this (except for the cast time, that needs to be removed imo). So once i learned of that i started noticing other forms of CC that were instant and offered as much counterplay as Veigar stun. So here is what im looking at, abilities with Instant CC that doesn't have any counter-play. Abilities that require you to be within Melee range, like Alistar, have counter-play in that you just need to not let them get near you. Blitzcrank doesnt have much counter-play in his knock-up and silence, but those are dependent on his grab which does have counterplay. Basically anything with more then 500 range i will be looking at. So now you see what im looking at, lets get started.

  • Annie's Pyromania is also instant and it even comes with damage. Some say "Well you need to build it up" and "She doesnt do Veigar amounts of damage". Well it requires little effort to get the stun, with her long range and damage she can poke and harass easily while she waits for her stun. As for her damage well instantly killing someone is instantly killing someone regardless of how much damage you do, Veigar's damage is higher so high its overkill, Annie's damage is just high. Annie still has 4 useful abilities in addition to her stun with more safety and less skill required in landing it.

  • Fiddlestick's Terrify is a point and click 2.25 second fear. Other then spellshields and not being in range of him there is nothing you can do about it. All the same things that are considered counterplay to Veigar's old stun and Annie apply to Fiddles Terrify as well. Getting close to Fiddles while his Terrify is up is impossible due to his instant fear, in a team fight which currently will only last anywhere from 2-5 seconds, 2.25 seconds is a long time to be useless without having anyway to have outplayed it. I feel Fiddles is closer to Veigar then Annie since she doesnt require her stun to do damage if the enemy is close enough. Fiddles does need his fear so that they will stay in range of his Crowstorm and his Drain. Still, it is instant and a point and click targeted, which means it has less counterplay then Veigar where he could miss his.

  • Lissandra's Frozen Tomb is an instant cast stun with the same counterplay as Veigar, Annie, and Fiddles. It is a targeted instant stun that also deals AoE damage to you and everyone around you. Its range is somewhat low but with her ability to teleport right next to you there is little to no trouble at all landing this ability in fact the fact she can teleport gives even less counterplay. Lissandra's damage combined with the fact she can remove someone from a fight for 1.5 seconds, which, like i mentioned early, is a long time specially when it also deals a good chunk of damage and has a great slow. Once you are low enough Lissandra will kill you, she will Glacial Path to you then boom ulted. The only counterplay is another instant CC that can stop her from teleporting or a silence.

  • Lulu's Whimsy is an instant Polymorph, which is just a silence. This ability is the same as all the other abilities in that the counterplay is limited to Spell Shields/Cleanses and not being in range. The same as Fiddles this ability takes you out of the fight for 2.25 seconds making you unable to attack (unless you are Garen >:D) or cast spells. Combined with its long range and utility outside of combat this ability is really strong. Similar to Fiddles and Veigar though, it does not deal any damage which is one reason why its not overwhelmingly annoying, but that didnt stop Veigar's stun from being changed.
    Edit: So SLAYER6752 has pointed out to me that Whimsy is actually a projectile, but from what i can tell its still too fast for you to even react to it if you can even notice it.

  • Malzahar's Nether Grasp, this one hurts me to put because i main Malzahar and i know there is a ton of counter-play to it, but not everyone knows this so i have come to the conclusion this warrants him appearing on the list :(. Malzahar's ult does have a lot of counterplay, if you cast an interrupting form of CC at the same time he ults you will actually cancel the ability. The problem is when you have no CC, there is no counteplay other then Cleanses and being out of range (technically spellshields but any good Malz will Q first to remove it). 2.5 seconds you are completely removed from the battle and unlike a stun you are taking damage the entire time and Tenacity will not reduce this duration. Combined with his other abilities this thing will melt you so fast you have no clue what happened.

  • Warwick's Infinite Duress is another suppress similar to Malzahar's. Warwicks is a little bit more risky then Malzahar's as it puts him right into the middle of a team, but the reason why i have decided to put this on the list is because of the fatty range he can teleport onto his target from. Just like Malzahar's Nether Grasp, this can be cancelled easily if you have the knowledge and means, but if you cant then there is nothing to do but sit there and watch your life go away. Now Warwick has been nerfed and is no longer the terror he once was, but that doesnt mean his instant suppress should be ignored.

There are other abilities like Cho'Gath's Feral Scream and Sona's Crescendo, but i feel those have a bit more counterplay to them despite being somewhat instant.

Now i do not believe any of these champions are OP and are in need of nerfs. I dont think or want their CC to be changed, but even though i personally like the Veigar changes, not everyone does. If you changed it so Malzahar's suppress had a delay im sure i would be up in arms looking for blood (not really id just stop playing him), but the point is these abilities suffer from the same lack of counterplay Veigar was changed for. So im just asking what are the plans for them? Have you looked at them and decided they were not as oppressive as Veigar's stun? Im sure a lot of people would disagree with that.

Edit: I think the Poll is being misunderstood, im not asking for Annie and Fiddles and Lissandra to have delays or to be nerfed. What im asking is "Should balance be consistent and equal across all champions?" Which is what i should have put instead but did not think of it. Sorry.

26 Comments

Retillin4 votes

Riot is kinda shooting it's self in the foot here. I get the idea that point and click CC can be frustrating to deal with. But right now it is the only counter to the mobility creep Riot is allowing. If Riot is going to get rid of point and click CC then they need to look at ALL of it the same way. I understand that an ult is different from a normal ability. Again it's the double speak Riot tends to put out anymore. They didn't like Veigar's point and click CC because it "lacked counter play", yet they have not touched Annie's...

I am not asking for nerfs on point and click CC (in fact I wish there were more). But they way they handle it makes me trust Riot less and less.

Stephenizgod2 votes

Thank you! The only comment who isnt just bashing on Riot or on other champions!

You said it perfectly:

"They didn't like Veigar's point and click CC because it "lacked counter play", yet they have not touched Annie's..."

This is where i was going with this, why only Veigar? Im not asking for them to be nerfed but there needs to be consistency with Balance or we end up with problems and i cant figure out why the other instant CC was left untouched.

Also i agree that Mobility needs to be balanced similarly, there is just as much counter-play in super mobile champions as instant point and click CC.

Retillin1 votes

Riot is, just my opinion, doing two things wrong.

  1. When creating/balancing they don't value mobility and utility very high. For example, if you gave every champ X amount of a budget to buy skills. It seems that 10 dmg might be worth 100g to the development of the champion, but a dash is worth 50g. Riot has had some champions that I think are almost perfectly balanced on release. (When I say this I don't mean numbers are too high/low, but the champion kit is very balanceable) Examples: Quinn Braum Nami Velkoz And then champions who Riot didn't balance well in the power budget: Azir Kalista Lucian Yasuo The second set of champions were/are either OP or UP. Very little middle ground. (Granted Lucian got changed after release, kinda a champ rework and has been rather balanced after that)

  2. Riot is making the game fully fast twitch response. They seem to believe that hyper action, cool looking is more important to a game than strategy and planning. You don't chase a Singed unless you didn't have game knowledge. If you were AP and walked up to a Veigar without some sort of way to get rid of his stun you were done (item 3111 really all you need if things were close). ect... They spent a LOT of time and money to try and come up with "strategic diversity". In some ways it has worked (the dragon buffs). But the main problem is, too many champs have basically the same kit. So why take Vi over RekSai or JarvanIV if they do basically the same thing? Too many champions have too many tools. So many are masters or strong in so many areas that the only difference is pure number based.

But again, I just think Riot is more worried bout making a TV show more than a game. And it is easier to make a TV show with 30ish characters for the viewer to get to know than one with 70.

Stephenizgod2 votes

They are for sure valuing Mobility too low for its actual worth. The problem with making Mobility standard is that if they release a champion with out it (Velkoz) they seem weak and underpowered, despite their kit and core game-play being actually very solid and balanced (like you said excluding numbers).

And im glad you brought up Lucian actually because i feel like it took them awhile to balance him due to his mobility. I think they were balancing around his Dash when they should have been balancing around his other abilities. They finally did and look Lucian is actually really balanced and fun to both play as and against.

Riot seriously needs to go back to "strategy" instead of who clicks buttons faster. Yeah those kinds of plays are fun to watch, im not going to lie, but only at first. Now that every play pretty much looks exactly the same "Champion X goes in gets a kill, backs off to dodge damage, goes back in to finish off the rest" it gets really boring to see these flashy plays. Its even worse in game when these flashy plays make you totally useless because you are one of the few people who dont like to play those flashy play champions. Yea i could learn Lee Sin, Zed, Vi, etc but i dont want to. I want to see other champions be in the spotlight.

SmokingPuffin3 votes

Lissandra R is not likely to change. It's an ultimate. It's short ranged. Using it on an enemy comes at the cost of not having a Zhonya's effect for yourself. That's a lot of tradeoffs for a targeted stun. I would say this is the baseline for targeted stuns in the future, in fact.

Annie R will almost certainly become an "Annie throws Tibbers" sort of animation at some point. Just waiting on the art and animation resources becoming available, most likely.

Fiddlesticks Q is a really strong button, but it's going to be extremely hard to make his kit work without that button being strong. Difficult design problem here if you hold "no targeted hard CC on non-ultimate skills" as a design value.

Lulu W is maybe not such a big deal, because the champion is still afforded movement. It's more like a better silence than a worse stun. I suspect this will stay for at least the near future.

Malzahar R seems fine, for similar reasons as Lissandra. It leaves Malz quite vulnerable, it's short ranged, it's got pretty decent counterplay.

Warwick R is a good candidate for change, although it could also stay. The main thing here is that so much of Warwick's power budget is tied up in that ult that the rest of his stuff feels pretty meh. A long time ago, Riot posted a paper kit on Warwick that had less ultimate power and in exchange game him an aoe fear and a Quinn-style leap and claw thing. Seemed way more fun to me.

If you changed it so Malzahar's suppress had a delay im sure i would be up in arms looking for blood (not really id just stop playing him), but the point is these abilities suffer from the same lack of counterplay Veigar was changed for.

The main thing that made Veigar E so problematic is the range. Most champions had no reasonable way to interact with him without being in range of a guaranteed stun. The cooldown was also a thing, of course. Honestly, Event Horizon is just way too good as a normal skill, and it weighed the kit down badly as a result. The rest of his skills have to suck if he gets an instant AoE stun on a 14 second cooldown. If the button were his ultimate, and it had a 90 second cooldown, that would potentially be balanceable; even then it's a lot better than say Sejuani R.

I really think that nerfing Veigar E to be not so reliable is a good thing for his kit. It will allow Riot the space to make W and R more interesting buttons than they currently are, and his mana gating won't need to be so intense. Good teams will still find powerful uses for the new nerfed E.

Stephenizgod1 votes

Yea i came up with a lot of the same things you did, but im still curious on Riot's views on them.

The only champion i think needs to be changed now is Annie, her stun isnt just her ultimate and its easier to land and she has 2 abilities capable of stunning multiple people from long range.

I will also say that Lissandra's is not much of a trade off since she has mobility and damage plus other forms of CC, but they are reducing her Q's damage on the PBE so i think they must of thought somewhat the same thing.

I think Whimsy should stay targeted but i believe it needs to be a projectile so you have time to throw up a spell shield, zhonya's, flash to safety, stun a high damage dealer, etc. so you are not just instantly useless.

Malzahar's ultimate is completely fair imo, i actually get a little ticked off when people say its OP, its completely fair if you just knew how much risk is involved when using it. Malz requires a lot of skill to be good, he isnt just E the wave wait for it to bounce to enemy then W R Ignite kill.

SmokingPuffin1 votes

The only champion i think needs to be changed now is Annie, her stun isnt just her ultimate and its easier to land and she has 2 abilities capable of stunning multiple people from long range.

Certainly Annie is a problem if you believe that targeted CC on non-ultimate abilities is a problem. Also, you can clearly see that Annie is super popular right now, and it's almost certainly because of the reliability of her engage with flash Tibbers.

Reworking Annie will be a tough design challenge though; without the reliable stun she's a pretty pointless champion.

I will also say that Lissandra's is not much of a trade off since she has mobility and damage plus other forms of CC, but they are reducing her Q's damage on the PBE so i think they must of thought somewhat the same thing.

This is more of an argument for nerfing other parts of her kit. She's obviously overtuned at present.

I think Whimsy should stay targeted but i believe it needs to be a projectile so you have time to throw up a spell shield, zhonya's, flash to safety, stun a high damage dealer, etc. so you are not just instantly useless.

Sounds reasonable.

Stephenizgod1 votes

Annie is a problem to design for sure, its not so much that she is OP (although she annoys the hell out of me) but that they have already made it a point that instant stun point and click is a problem and she suffers from that problem more then Veigar.

This is more of an argument for nerfing other parts of her kit. She's obviously overtuned at present.

She is just sort of miserable to lane against in top lane due to her freakishly high early game damage.

kureransu1 votes

{quoted}

Yea i came up with a lot of the same things you did, but im still curious on Riot's views on them.

The only champion i think needs to be changed now is Annie, her stun isnt just her ultimate and its easier to land and she has 2 abilities capable of stunning multiple people from long range.

I will also say that Lissandra's is not much of a trade off since she has mobility and damage plus other forms of CC, but they are reducing her Q's damage on the PBE so i think they must of thought somewhat the same thing.

I think Whimsy should stay targeted but i believe it needs to be a projectile so you have time to throw up a spell shield, zhonya's, flash to safety, stun a high damage dealer, etc. so you are not just instantly useless.

Malzahar's ultimate is completely fair imo, i actually get a little ticked off when people say its OP, its completely fair if you just knew how much risk is involved when using it. Malz requires a lot of skill to be good, he isnt just E the wave wait for it to bounce to enemy then W R Ignite kill.

The thing is annie's stun is situational. and it's broadcast that she will stun on next ability. It's not always avaiable she has to constantly cast 4 spells to get it. I would assume riot's thinking is since it's broadcasted in such away, you have plenty of options to avoid it, and try to bait it out.

Stephenizgod1 votes

Thats not true, its the same thing as knowing Veigar's stun i off CD. You know he has it but that doesnt mean you will know when he will use it. The same with Annie she has her stun and you know this, but that doesnt mean you know when she will flash tibbers your whole team then burst one or two of you down. Also casting 4 spells is not much of a problem specially with her Q's lil mini farming game.

kureransu1 votes

{quoted}

Thats not true, its the same thing as knowing Veigar's stun i off CD. You know he has it but that doesnt mean you will know when he will use it. The same with Annie she has her stun and you know this, but that doesnt mean you know when she will flash tibbers your whole team then burst one or two of you down. Also casting 4 spells is not much of a problem specially with her Q's lil mini farming game.

believe me if you could see when veigar's stun was was on and off cd, i guarantee people would play against him much differently. You do know when he'll use it, when you're in range. So you would play where you're never in a position to get hit by it. and soon as it went on cd you'd destroy him. perfect example: if i'm playing quinn top against panth I won't use my E to proc my passive if i see he will block the next auto, I'll make sure i toss out an auto before i e because i can clearly see it's going to be blocked. same when casting a spell on yas. I won't do it if i see his shield is up. I'll just send out an AA to get rid of it.

Stephenizgod1 votes

You can generally guess when it will be up just by knowing its CD and seeing how much CDR he has.

WarlockLaw1 votes

Believe it or not whimsy is actually a projectile and can be blocked by wimdwall/unbreakable. It just has a fast travel time and a kind of short range that you don't normally notice it

Stephenizgod1 votes

hmm well look at that it is a projectile, thank you for pointing that out. Still it travels too fast for you to react to it.

Stephenizgod2 votes

Hello! Lets try to keep this section clear of negativity and toxicity please. Thank You!

Fed by Snu Snu2 votes

Katarina

Let's remove all instant cc while this abomination exists in the game. Nothing can go wrong.

Stephenizgod1 votes

Well Katarina is countered by any form of interrupting CC.

Fed by Snu Snu1 votes

Ye, as long as it's fast enough to reliably be landed before she gets 1 second off her ultimate, because that's enough for her resets to start happening ever since her rework, since it scales ridiculously.

Even targeted cc having a travel time is considered bad for her, let alone actual skillshots.

Edge of Daybreak2 votes

Riot either deletes all point and click cc so that league of mobility becomes the only thing to do and immobile champions cant do anything or allow point and click cc so that the immobile champions with it can be somewhat relevant. Knowing riot games they are just going to see the complaints. Nerf all of the immobile champs with point and click then we will have to deal with weeks of QQ despite that fact that people have been asking riot to nerf these champions due to what happened to one of them. But that's just all speculation.

Stephenizgod1 votes

Im not asking for nerfs just asking a question.

kureransu1 votes

I don't think riot looks at ultimates because they have bigger cool downs. SO i don't think those would change. I called this a long time ago, and people didn't believe me. The only offenders left i believe are taric, ryze and panth.

Stephenizgod1 votes

Taric and Pantheon are not instant unless directly in front of you, so you still have time to do stun before they actually get ya. Ryze's is not much of a problem because of its length.

kureransu1 votes

{quoted}

Taric and Pantheon are not instant unless directly in front of you, so you still have time to do stun before they actually get ya. Ryze's is not much of a problem because of its length.

Ryze's rune prison's range is 600 Taric's dazzle is 625 Panth's aegis of zeonia is 600

this means if you are engaging on them, decided to flee and flash, you will still be stunned by any of these abilittes.

that's not right up on you

Stephenizgod1 votes

What i mean is Taric's flies through the air you have time to do stuff like dash/flash, throw up a spell shield, zhonya's, etc. Same with Pantheon. Ryzes is a root not a stun and it lasts less then a second at early levels.

RazorTS1 votes

Everyone does have an opinion but why would you want to break this game?

Stephenizgod1 votes

I dont understand what you mean.

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