What is Riot's text-book on power budget for new champions?

PICKLE RICK REEE··5 votes·2,503 views

Is there an actual standard you guys are held to or hold to yourselves when you make new champions or do you willy-nilly make abilities and throw them onto champions?

Example being, back when Braum was released, he had this really cool new mechanic where he could destroy projectiles already en route. That took a huge portion of the power budget, because that is a potentially extremely powerful and exclusive ability. That's why they put it on a support, or atleast that's what was presumed.

Then a year later, a fighter champion with lots of mobility, damage, lane sustain, and cc comes out that can also destroy projectiles en route called Yasuo. I understand he has less base stats when it comes to hp/armor/mr, less cc, but again, what's the standard on power budget? What says one champion has more available in their kit than another champion has?

Then we have Kaisa vs Vayne vs KogMaw . The comparison is pretty obvious and pretty lopsided in power budget given to these champs. There's 0 circumstance to pick either Vayne KogMaw compared to Kaisa . She has more mobility than Vayne. She has more attack steroids than Vayne. She has more ability damage than vayne. She has more ability damage than kogmaw, both burst and DPS-wise. She has more readily available Stealth than Vayne. She has more onhit-effect damage than Vayne and equal to Kog'maw. She has larger defenses than Vayne and Kogmaw. She has higher base stats than Kog'maw and equal to Vayne's. She has one less conditional long cooldown stun than vayne and 100 less range than kogmaw. There's a huge gap in power budget on Kai'sa compared to these 2 champions (among others).

Camille ... Her ultimate ability is a "you're stuck with me for 6 seconds" button, while still having the power budget to have lane sustain, huge mobility, anti-burst anti-retaliation defenses, true damage, %hp damage, hidden power damage on her ult, hidden power collateral cc on her ult, a decent slow, a displacement, among other spammable damage. The easiest kit I can compare this to is Fiora. Except Fiora's true damage and %hp damage is conditional and has obvious counterplay, her anti-burst and slow is gated by long cooldowns and counterplay time, has no hard CC, mobility gated by landing Q, small aa enhancer, and her ult still plays off of the condition of her other damage already listed. AND she does not have the "unique mechanic" of being stuck with her for 6 seconds. Under what circumstance do they have an equal power budget in their kit? Let alone FIora, any other champion comparable that is supposed to 1v1, such as Jax, Nasus, Renekton, Yi, having an ability like this would be absurd as it is to have on her's.

#TL;DR There's so much inconsistency in how champions are loaded with special effects and abilities, I'd like to know what Riot's text-book is on how MUCH they can put in a champion when they are designing them, what they hope to achieve, and why there is such a huge discrepancy in power between champions that are already created and new ones. Fiora is still modern despite being reworked many years ago, and she was seen as overloaded back then (when league's damage was overall lower and her's was high), yet she's been dwarfed in even more overloadedness by modern champions.

Edit: Regarding Braum and Yauso releases, I am incorrect on release dates, my bad. I remember the discussion of the adding in of the destroying projectiles mechanic before either of them were released. That CertainlyT had a "fresh and bold" idea to put it on a fighter first. Overall point and question still stands, though, thanks for catching that mistake DerMango

5 Comments

Beatrice falls6 votes

Tbh I feel like they take an older champion, look at its weaknesses, and then release a new champion overcoming these weaknesses, same goes for "reworks" aka removing a champion and adding a new one

ZT Xperimentor1 votes

Considering; they literally said they were basing kaisa off of vayne, and reworks tend to gut the champion while shunning its player base, yeah this is a pretty accurate statement.

DerMangoJoghurt5 votes

Then a year later, a fighter champion with lots of mobility, damage, lane sustain, and cc comes out that can also destroy projectiles en route called Yasuo .

I don't know where you got that from, but Yasuo got released before Braum.

PICKLE RICK REEE2 votes

My bad. I remember the discussion of the adding in of that mechanic before either of them were released. That CertainlyT had a "bold" idea to put it on a fighter first. Point still stands, though thanks for catching that mistake.

Sire Hippington1 votes

Generally agree, but the first example sucks. First off, yasuo was released befor braum(yas in 3.14, braum in 4.07) Also, it didn't take that much from braums power budget, he's been broken on release and still amongst the most contested competetive picks for good reason despite many, many nerfs. Braum is hardly an good example for well restraint power so the better point is why pick tryn or yi instead of yasuo? They all are crit based melee carries, yewt yasuo has teamutillity in his windwall and two forms of aoe hard cc without really sacrificeing much for it compred to the two. Sure yi has harder scaleing and tryn works much better on braindead players, but yas just has a stronger kit with much more tools that if used well put him above the other two, which is why he somtimes is seen in pro while the other two are seen very rarly and usually only in combination with cheese.

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