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When is Rito actually going to do something about Mobility Creep? (Warning: Long Post)

Stiv1234··59 votes·6,806 views

So, Ekko is here. As we all know, he's an assassin, a mobile guy that jumps around and kills things. Not only does he have tons of damage, but also loads of utility in the form of multiple slows, a stun, an MS-buff, a huge shield, a rewind and of course mobility. Now, Ekko is not the only mobile champion in League, and that's actually not that bad of a thing. Mobility is flashy, fun for the user and creates various outplay potential. It definitely adds something into the game, but at the same time, it causes some problems, especially if it gets thrown into every new champion that comes out. Let's look at the last 15 champions: The only ones that are really immobile are Velkoz and Jinx, maybe also Bard if you dont count his E, though hes fairly mobile in terms of roaming. That's a percentage of roughly 13,3%, less than one out of six. Mobility is way more present in today's League than it was in the early days. That's the thing which is referred to as Mobility Creep. The most extreme example is Kalista, who was hated to hell and back for her endless jumping.

The problem with most of those champions is that they tend to overshadow the immobile ones due to not having any actual tradeoffs. Granted, most of them are melee, but they usually have higher base stats and are naturally bulkier. In addition, Riot is continuing to remove more and more point-and-click abilities from the game, making them skillshots in order to give them counterplay, especially p.-a.-c. CCs. However, this favors mobile champions even more, because it will be harder to lock them down since they can just dodge everything.

What could be done to slow this movement down? My suggestion would be a new type of CC, called Cripple (name subject to change). What it would basically do is disabling any dashes and blinks that a champion has, excluding summoner 4. This could be coupled with various slows of champions who struggle against mobile champions, or could just need some love. Some examples (keep in mind these are only ideas):

Anivia It has been a long time since Anivia has fallen out of favor, considering half of the champions can dash over her wall. Even Froggen has dropped her because of Mobility Creep. However, Cripple would be a neat addition to her Q (and possibly her E), preventing pesky assassins from hopping around and doing #LC$B1GPL4Y$.

Elise Cripple could perhaps be added to her Cocoon, lasting for maybe 1 - 2 second after the stun has expired, since victims often tend to just dash away before you can eat 'em up.

Galio Q maybe?

Karthus could also make great use of this, but honestly i don't know where to add it (seems a bit overwhelming for his E)...

Lulu A bit more peel for her Q could fit her quite nicely.

Lux would love this, but again, i can't seem to find a place for it.

MissFortune Another great candidate for a Cripple: Added to her Make it Rain, it would give the ability some actual use.

Mordekaiser Would look super awesome on his ult (even feel a bit like Doom's Doom from DotA), but maybe too strong.

Nocturne Don't know about his current state, but perhaps for his tether.

Nunu Would maybe make his ult too strong, but if we lowered the slow...

Sejuani Would make sense thematically, though she had quite some spotlight recently.

Singed It's mega glue, not some sort of sticky honey...

Skarner GIMME BACK MAH STICKINESS! T.T

Talon I would really like it for his E, although the salt may still be too strong...

Urgot In addition to the slow from his shield.

Varus Similar to MF, for his E.

Veigar This poor little guy... I wouldn't begrudge him this one...

Velkoz Maybe if he procced his passive or something.

Zyra Her E Plants would love it...

Anyways, you get the idea of it. It's similar to a silence, but not even close to it in terms of toxicity. You can still CC the enemy, and for emergency cases, you still have summoner 4.

I would really appreciate your opinions on this. If you got any ideas on how to improve this, or other solutions for Mobility Creep, just post them below.

Thanks to everyone who read this awfully long post, here's a lovely potato for you:

http://oregonrural.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/Potato.jpeg

Greetings Stiv

116 Comments

Boulderox19 votes

i still think dashes and blinks need drawbacks. HELL LOOK AT Blitzcrank . he finally got what he needed, a nerf to his mobility. If every champ with a dash lost movement AFTER using it, would make lots of champs ACTUALLY have to use them WISELY.

Singing Lark11 votes

+1 So true. Would give mobile assassin mains massive migraines though.

LankPants12 votes

Mobile assassin mains give me massive migraines, seems fair to me.

KazaLyn Shao6 votes

Riot just wants more wow factor and "big plays" at the LCS. That's all there is to it. Nevermind that they didn't even design the game with high mobility in mind. They just thought of that afterwards and suddenly, only mobile champs are viable. Rito logic can not be understood. It doesn't exist to begin with.

lDontLiftIcarry6 votes

upvote for potatoe heart.

AmazingGoat5 votes

I think you honed in on the real issue: adding mobility while removing point and click hard CC risks making immobile champions second class citizens. Giving more and more champions slows only exacerbates the issue, as slows punish immobile champions way more than mobile champions.

Stiv12344 votes

It does not only risk making them subpar, it is just happening. Tell, when did you see a Anivia Brand Galio Karthus Lux MissFortune Varus Velkoz Zyra last time? They are certainly not the most popular champions around.

kJs1 votes

Lux is played consistently in Hexakill. I haven't seen a Vel'Koz for months though.

Stiv12343 votes

Well, Lux is also one of the strongest champions in ARAM, while Zyra is actually quite strong in TT due to her insane power in small team fights. Actually, Lux's Ultimate range is about half TT, so that's not bad either.

In SR, though, mobile champs are just way more present.

Dextix LT2 votes

I see these champs like 1-2 games in 50 or so? They are picked in plat/diamond, but only if the enemy doesnt have a lot of mobility and a lot of tanks or simmilar easier to deal with champs.

They are played, however, all of them are weaker than their counterparts.

Frightning5 votes

I remember back in season 2, when riot was releasing new champs at a feverish pace, noting the massive increase in mobility of new champions, and despite finding playing said new champions very enjoyable. I knew even then that mobility creep was going to cause huge problems for the old, immobile designs that had been there from the beginning. I knew that without those champions receiving significant help that they would eventually become outclassed by their mobile counterparts. Now, in season 5, we live in the world I had foreseen then, where champions without mobility are largely ignored. Riot has had a VERY long history of consistently underestimating the power of mobility in their own game.

They also have a long history of failing to foresee the unintended consequences of balance changes that they make (although their changes are often good at solving the problem they were engineered to fix). This recent movement to get rid of p.-a.-c. CCs is just the latest example: They are trying to remove the profound lack of counterplay inherent in targeted CC by making them skillshots (an entirely logical solution to the problem), but in doing so they are indirectly giving mobility a huge buff (which as I have already pointed out champs with mobility are very privileged in LoL as it is).

The thing that bothers the most in all of this is that it feels like riot fails to learn from their mistakes. It had been apparent for a long time that mobility is incredibly powerful (many of the marksmen that were added in season 3 and season 4 showed that it was very strong on that archetype, the season 2 fighters showed tanky dudes with mobility were also very strong, etc.), yet they turned around and made Kalista recently, and Yasuo, both of whom are very mobile, and as a result very powerful (and unsurprisingly both have been subject to mostly nerfs since their respective releases. They even wrote in their design blog about how they had made the mistake of giving certain champions overloaded kits, and yet they turned around and soon thereafter released Jinx (who has a very overloaded kit and has been subject to LOTS of nerfs and yet remains one of the best marksman in the game).

In pretty much all of these cases, and many, many more, I have been able to foresee these imbalances sometimes before I had even seen the champion being played in game. Jinx in particular I knew was going to be absolutely broken on release and she was (and despite significant nerfs since then remains one of the better marksman in the game). I was not alone in making the prediction, and when I have made balance predictions, I've usually been right. If I can make predictions like that on a consistent basis, why can't the folks at riot, who have a dedicated team of people that work on the game's design and it's balance not foresee these things?

AlexXeno8 votes

To add to this, Riot has admitted they were fools with the mobility creep, or at least one of the designers did. and said they would be trying to fix it in the future.. then they made kilista...and Ekko... so yeah, didn't learn. (tho I like Ekko despite the huge mobility because he's designed to be somewhere between an assassin and a bruiser)

kJs4 votes

I feel like Kalista dash passive is the epitome of mobility.

kJs4 votes

I don't know about disabling all dashes and blinks. How about halving the distance of all dashes, leaps and blinks? It's going to look really odd with Leaps especially...

Stiv12346 votes

First of all, thanks for replying :)

Of course, it may be too strong, and if it turns out that it is, you could always do some weakened version of it. I just think that some champions just really need it, and that slowly but surely something needs to be done.

kJs3 votes

Mobility is really King right now. Even on Tanks mobility highlighted. It doesn't help that many of the new champions have a lot of dashes which means slows don't work as well. Riot should make more champion that have 400% movement speed for 0.75 seconds more often.

Stiv123411 votes

IMO it's sad that Riot doesn't care about the old immobile champions anymore (or hardly). Champions like Zyra or good ol' Karthus are almost unplayable because if they dare to cast their CC once, they immediately get jumped on and eaten up.

Riot's favorite word is counterplay, but they refuse to give us much counterplay against mobility (or even take it away).

HeadHonchkrow2 votes

Which is kinda ironic, because CertainlyT designed Zyra

Stiv12344 votes

He CertainlyThinks less about immobile champions than about the poor mobile ones.

Nilok7 votes

Mobility is really King right now. Even on Tanks mobility highlighted.

That honestly, speaks volumes that this is a problem. Even worse is I don't know how Riot can put the genie back in the bottle. Mobility (dashes/blinks) was in the past something rare, something that a few champions could use let alone abuse, but as time went on, the focus to not only getting in, but also getting out has cropped up more and more allowing for more "big plays". If things continue, I foresee low mobility champions becoming more niche, or being glossed over entirely by their more mobile counterparts unless they can completely shutdown a mobile Champion reliably (targeted high damage/CC), which would be counter to Riot's current stance on counterplay though reaction time.

Champion Skin2 votes

The most immobile class is probably supports as quite a few immobile mages are played as support (as they are compensated for their lack of mobility with good cc and base damages most of the time which works great for supports.. though of course it leaves them vulnerable... but they can take one for the team I guess)

And most tanky supports only have aggressive mobility they can only go in, not out Like Leona (can E in but has no real way of getting out), Alistar.. kind of?... Thresh he can pull himself to an enemy but has no way of getting out other then trying to slowly walk away

kJs3 votes

Bard and Braum, the latest two supports who are quite mobile, unless I missed one, but I doubt it. You could even say Thresh provides high mobility because of his lantern. He can also escape through the jungle by hooking monsters. etc

Soraka rework Passive: Increased movement speed towards allies who are 40% health or below.

Mobility Mobility Mobility Mobility Mobility Mobility Mobility Mobility Mobility Mobility

Champion Skin1 votes

Bard has no in combat mobility other then his E which requires terrain and his enemies can use it as well Braum has some mobility though it is mostly defensive in that he can only jump to allies and it makes sense given how he needs to be able to get in front of allies to use his shield effectively

Thresh PROVIDES mobility however he himself doesn't have much if any mobility (hooking jungle monsters is possible however if the hook is blocked or the jungle monsters aren't there.. it would likely lead to Thresh death because of the long cast time which renders him stationary and helpless)

Though of course Thresh + Kalista is a pain to deal with given that they both give the other more mobility and safety

kJs4 votes

They're still really mobile compared to the old traditional supports like Soraka and Sona.

Bard has no in combat mobility other than* his E which requires terrain and his enemies can use it as well.

His E can be used in combat. What are you on about? Yeah, his enemies can use it but is still gives him a lot of utility/mobility.

Braum has some mobility though it is mostly defensive in tha the can only jump to allies...

He can also jump in front of a friendly melee minion who is in the face of the ADC in lane. This is a pretty basic strategy to force fights. It's still mobility that allows him to get in really quickly and/or get out if the fight lasts that long.

Thresh PROVIDES mobility however he himself doesn't have much if any mobility.

Hooking Jungle monsters is still mobility, again I don't understand. Although he provides mobility with W that he can't use. He is still sporting a lot of utility/mobility which is an example of the overarching point of the OP's post and what he/she calls mobility creep.

MLDzXnRRR4 votes

After playing some DOTA you can see how OP is the ss Flash, where you can get it for some gold and an item slot (but is useful for initiation, not for escape). Why not disable Flash for the champions who have built in dashes and blinks? Or remove it from the game. Ganks in the game are super hard in LOL compared to the ganks in Dota, also Flash is a must have, unless you are playing in low elo or Shaco/Fizz with 40 cdr/ Hecarim.

Stiv123422 votes

Flash is indeed OP, but if you just removed it from the game, it would entirely gut immobile champions while giving mobiles the chance to steamroll over all immobiles.

DotA is a whole other thing. Mobility will never break the game there, as half of the champions have a targeted 3 seconds CC.

ragdollomega1 votes

You need to read more carefully because he did not say to remove flash outright.

AlexXeno18 votes

You need to read more carefully because he did say to remove flash outright

{quoted}

Why not disable Flash for the champions who have built in dashes and blinks? **Or remove it from the game. **

Perpetual Blur4 votes

As a Dota main, I have to disagree with you. 3 second targetted cc is rare; standard stun length is ~ 2 seconds. (still longer than league...) Especially if you restrict yourself to non-ultimate, non-channeling (suppressions have a lot of built-in trade-off for a reason) disables, there are only a handful of 3 second stuns available. There ARE a lot more targetted stuns, but most targetted stuns have very low cast range (especially considering the longer engage range dota generally works with.) You're looking at 400-500 range a lot of the time. And most of those are projectiles which are disjointed by mobility spells.

Which is why stuns aren't actually considered the best mobility counter. That falls to silences, which have extremely generous durations in Dota. Like, 5-7 second silences. It's obnoxious on high-mobility champions. And you can buy a 5 second silence item, or a 3.5 second polymorph item (also disables items, preventing self-purging), though their prices rival ADC items.

Which is in turn countered by silences being purgable, but stuns being entirely uncleansable (barring a handful of hero-specific abilities.)

And so on. There are a lot of differences, but you're right that the essential reason that mobility is less abusable in dota is that there are more tools available to use against it.

Stiv12342 votes

That's why i wrote 3 seconds CC instead of 3 seconds stun. :) I actually meant the kinds of Drow/Death Prophet/Skywrath anyway. But still, CC is way more present in DotA in general, and even more so point-and-click. Though I agree that CC also has counters for it (spell immunity and purge), which in turn have counters again (spell-immunity-piercing spells), which hardly have counters.

DotA and LoL just have an entirely different kind of balancing.

skyfall6194 votes

y a picture of potato ball sack?

Stiv123416 votes

It was meant to be a heart, you loveless person T.T

AikidoLawnNinja4 votes

Honestly I think the highly mobile champs are just more fun to play with than their immobile counterparts. Riot's research probably confirms that most players agree with this sentiment, judging by the mobility of their latest batch of champs.

Instead of nerfing the champs who are highly mobile, they should think about giving damage buffs to the immobile champs. Do you want to play a champ that can pull off the big plays and escape intact? Or do you want to play a champ that's screwed when caught out, but a total menace when left to their own devices?

Singing Lark3 votes

This sounds... a little like a mobile root? If that makes sense, lol. I love the idea. It would seriously give immobile champs a better chance of dealing with mobile champs.

Stiv12342 votes

More like a mobile silence in that sense, since root also disables normal movement ^^ Glad you like the idea.

SexyTaylorSwift3 votes

Came just for the potato. Didn't even read a word of the post.

His Goatliness3 votes

Make slows reduce dash/blink/jump distances. Obviously Nasus would be broken, and they would have to make some sort of reduction for his slow, but regardless. Slows are trash in this meta, and it would make them useful again.

KazaLyn Shao3 votes

Rito: LCS big plays fun to watch!

Nvm that they're terrible to play against when the enemy has an obvious advantage over you and no weakness to match. "I can dash walls and YOU CAN'T!" Oh boy, much fun.

kJs2 votes

Second Post: Now thinking about it more. The best way to counter mobility creep would be to implement an item that would cripple opponents. This way the Support or Tank can take this item if it is most useful.

For further strategic variability, Riot could also create a Summoner Spell that hampers dashes, blinks and leaps. So that not everyone takes summoner 4 and summoner 4 will actually have a counter other than another summoner 4.

BodyByDave2 votes

Roots already remove enemy ability to flash/dash/all of the above, now maybe adding this to a couple characters snares here or there might be an effective change, but I feel like you're going to get pushback from Riot regarding clarity here.

Stiv12342 votes

We have exactly two targeted Roots that actually have some range (Maokai and Ryze). All other snares are low-range or skillshots. How are you gonna hit those on the enemy Kalister?

Mawootad2 votes

Anivia's problem with mobility is more that if you wall someone off and they dash over the wall then Anivia either has to blow flash or just can't follow up at all (and similarly her teammates may be unable of following). If Anivia could just reactivate w to melt the wall (similar to how Jarvan can reactivate his ult) mobility wouldn't be nearly as much of an issue.

Dreadlocks1 votes

This "cripple" sounds to me like SILENCE.

Stiv12343 votes

They are somewhat similar, but a silence completely removes any interaction other than autoattacking and moving.

Quote from OP:

It's similar to a silence, but not even close to it in terms of toxicity. You can still CC the enemy, and for emergency cases, you still have summoner 3 summoner 4 .

Drunk Rummate1 votes

I can see that you put a lot of work into this post, but you didn't give a legitimate reason as to why mobility is a bad thing in League of Legends other than the following:

{quoted}

The problem with most of those champions is that they tend to overshadow the immobile ones due to not having any actual tradeoffs. Granted, most of them are melee, but they usually have higher base stats and are naturally bulkier.

The above is a legitimate concern, but why is mobility inherently bad? Please explain that to me. Why is it not possible to simply rework the immobile champions into something that can deal with mobility (Much like the Ashe rework)? What makes mobility bad isn't mobile champions, it's poorly designed immobile champions. So you're essentially looking at the wrong issue here.

Boulderox2 votes

{quoted}

The large increase in mobility has caused increase in "Fun", as players can stick to targets better and get that kill, and get that high adrenaline feel that people love when they play video games. And everyone wants this so the mobility "Meta" is created because that is the most fun for them as they have better scores from either killing more or dying less. But the fact of the matter is that why do we have to play ONLY champs with dashes and blinks? Aatrox Mordekaiser Rumble Varus Are all very fun for me, because of there lore, abilities, and out of the norms kits. And have** very limited** or no mobility at all.

So where does mobility come in here? Yorick Mordekaiser Olaf Aatrox are examples of low mobility champs, that fit certain comps.

but will you ever see them played a lot or competitively? NO WHY? because there are a handful of champs that do there job to a T, and can stick to targets, or escape over a wall or dash away from danger. And that s what makes the Lc$ B!G Pl4Y$, which i have to attribute mobility creep, and a lot of meta problems (off topic) to.

The fact of the matter is that mobility is becoming the EX of pokemon cards. Where they have to create over complicated champions that do tons of stuff. That destroys all other before it. Then make another over complicated champ that trumps the last over complicated one.

Ekko is the PEAK of mobility creep now.

-AS steroid with 3 AA on hit -dash AND blink WHO THOUGHT THAT THIS WAS HEALTHY -and an ult that resets you 4 seconds back in time.

3 mobility abilities crammed into ONE kit.

and here we are complaining about champs with one dash or blink.... while THIS is allowed to happen????

Also with the current nuking of silence, and click cc. they make mobility un-counterable. wheras before you could hit that hard stun, or silence them so they cannot dash out.

Champion Skin2 votes

Well yeah some champions do get really screwed over by mobility Like Olaf... being immune to CC doesn't help much if your target is able to just dash/blink away (however it can be OP or oppressive if you don't have the mobility to get away as CC doesn't do anything)

And Rumble is also somewhat effected as he does in part rely on the slow from his ult and E and well slows doesn't really do anything against dashes and such (Well in theory anyways... however I don't feel rumble is all that bad... though he is pretty darn hard to use but his ult is really strong if he his able to place it well and or have champions to lock down enemies on top of his ult)

kaykalos3 votes

{quoted}

I can see that you put a lot of work into this post, but you didn't give a legitimate reason as to why mobility is a bad thing in League of Legends other than the following:

The above is a legitimate concern, but why is mobility inherently bad? Please explain that to me. Why is it not possible to simply rework the immobile champions into something that can deal with mobility (Much like the Ashe rework)? What makes mobility bad isn't mobile champions, it's poorly designed immobile champions. So you're essentially looking at the wrong issue here.

Mobility and range are hidden defenses , because u can go from a damage zone A u cant deal with, to a damage zone b u can deal with, mobility makes u nonpunishable when u are overextended that translates to more free farm at the later stages of the game(mid-late) , when u have mobility u can avoid gangs much better with proper vision, mobility gives the greatest outplay potential, when immobile champions has much worse outplay potential
(sry for my english)

KING OF MASKS1 votes

Good thread, but you made a typo early on:

"...Kalista, who was is hated to hell and back for her endless jumping."

Stiv12342 votes

Well, she is still hated, but unfortunately, she's already back from hell again...

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