Analysis of Niche in LoL, and a possible change to help champ diversity.

Champions in league are designed with different gameplay aspects in mind. for example was designed to be a tank killer, her % max hp w and her self peel being evident of that. was designed with splitting and dueling in mind, considering his attack speed buff passive, and his single target abilities. was designed to be a counter to magic damage, considering his mr converting into ap passive. This is stuff we already know when it comes to niches. Another thing that we already know is how some champions are able to cover multiple niches, despite what the devs had in mind while these champions were in development. THIS IS THE CAUSE FOR MOST OF THE BALANCING ISSUES IN THE GAME.

I'ma talk about for a little bit because she directly correlates with this point.

What I mean by champions covering different niches. Well, I think its pretty obvious that isn't just good against tanks right now, in fact, id argue that she is functioning as a burst adc because of how her kit is synergizing with crit at the moment. She is able to kill many squishies without even procing her true damage w. This is what I mean by champions fulfilling multiple niches, some of which are a direct contradiction to what the devs had in mind upon first conception.

_Ok, well just needs some numbers changed and then she will be perfectly balanced. _

Well, with how the game is set up, its not necessarily that simple, even if her W were to be buffed in compensation for her q being nerfed or something, she would lose a lot of power against tanks in the process. Sure, she may be balanced and feel in a good spot against squishier targets, but against tanks, she loses a lot of her niche. Her W as it is does 12% of a champions max hp in true damage every 3 hits. Well, fair enough, there is no counterplay to max hp true damage, WHICH IS OK, it corresponds to her niche perfectly. She is supposed to be doing damage to tanks. the Max hp proc against a squishy would be doing less damage than to a tank. But the problem here is if her physical damage were to be nerfed, it would reduce her effectiveness against both tanks and squishes. I'm not saying she should be killing tanks in under 4 autos or anything, I'm just trying to prove the point that trying to fix her effectiveness against squishes will damage her effectiveness against tanks.

Perfect balance with a champion like this would require making character specific arrangements, much like how kalista specifically only has 90% of her ad. This creates a huge mess in the game, and effectively creates a balance nightmare.

So is benefiting too much from crit, lets just get rid of her q crit then. (or, you could also say that 's passive headshot amp is as well, if the example isn't convincing enough.)

Well sure, that might work, but it will set a precedent that abilities like that will never be implemented into league ever again. Sure this might solve the problem at hand, but it will filter out a lot of designs for future champions/reworks in the processes. Filtering out unique ideas like this hurts the concept of niche in the game.

Well, they both build IE for the crit enhancement, why don't we nerf that?

And this is the big problem with niche in the game, standardized items (What I mean by this is that all champions buy from the same pool of items). If one item gets nerfed, all the champions in the game are affected by that one nerf. Lets for instance take the bounus crit damage off of , all adc's who build it are nerfed, but the ones who build other items like , or become top tier, while crit adc's become the unviable. Not only that, but some champions that aren't very strong who build IE (like ) become downright unplayable under any circumstance. I'm not saying this would definitely happen, I'm just trying to show an example of how changing a single item can hurt the whole roster of champions. The recent nerf is a good example of this. It ended up hurting champs like , but helping champs like , who were the primary abusers of the item before it was nerfed.

The thing is that most of a champions power comes from the items they buy, meaning that since all the items are standardized, the champions who best synergize with the item will be top tier champs for that item. There is a big difference between a with ie and a with IE, right? Well since IE is a meta item to build, it means that will end up being a better pick? right? And the big kicker is that there is nothing that can be done other than buffs to the champion directly that may or may not work depending on the state of the items in the game.

STANDARDIZED ITEMS ARE HURTING CHAMP DIVERSITY AND NICHE IN LEAGUE OF LEGENDS.

_Well, how do we fix this in a timely manner? _

Well, that's a lot of time that would have to be spent. You would probably have to build the game from the ground up.

If this were to be the case however, I think that a good way to do this is to make all the items in the game character specific. Now what I mean by this is to limit each champion to a set amount of items that benefit their abilities, as well as a few other stats like HP, Mana, and damage. Sure this would end up getting rid of fun things like ap ( or maybe it wouldn't in the end, perhaps optimized items for each champion would make even more viable ways to play a champion), but it would make balancing champions so much more easier and simple. This is also a similar strategy to what Heros of the Storm does, not that it is the most balanced game in the world, but if a change needs to be made to a champion, its a lot easier to target that champions kit specifically.

Here is an example of what I mean. (not drawn to balance)

Lets use for this one. Lets say this is a character specific item for the sake of putting a picture here

3000g + 300 hp + 60 ap unique passive: increases W root time by .25 of a second

3000g +400 mana + 70 ap + 10cd% unique passive: Q range after shatter extended by 25%

So as you can see, these character specific items benefit the champion's kit itself, creating a very unique set of playstyles depending on what you want to play into. You can go for a Q, W, E, or R optimized build. This style of playing off the champions kit, not the items in the game will created a more niche style of game.

Lets say that the .25 of a second root increase is completely busted and gives her a 101% winrate. Well, you can directly change the item itself, and in doing so, will only nerf . (Yes I know that it will end up buffing champs that are countered by Liss, but that is a result of a strong niche system, which is what im trying to show)

But wait, isn't this ruining niche by enabling a champion to use a certain concept of their kit that may change their playstyle?

In a way, I guess it is, I'm just going off the top of my head rn with this idea. What I think might save this idea is the fact that the frost mage will still be the frost mage, even if you go a full q upgrade build, you still have that slow on it. And on top of that, you will still have the other abilities in your kit, its just that you would have to play around your q a bit more than your other abilities.

In retrospect, I don't think I thought this through all the way, but I've been up for a couple days now, and I just spent a solid hour typing this up (40 min typing and 20 min brainstorming in the shower) and I'll be dammed if I delete it all. I did this so the idea can be expressed,

Have a nice day/night or whenever it is!!!