riot needs to release certain champions to prove a point

Quepha··3 votes·746 views

Sometimes riot releases a champion with a weird feature and when they talk about it, they sound like they designed the champion around it to prove a point or perform an experiment of some kind. examples: Aatrox released around the time riot was saying that sustain top laners were bad and he was given a massive heal on-hit, apparently this was to show that sustain CAN work when it is only good to save you from dying instead of all the time so you can top yourself off and shrug off any harass with yasuo and kalista it sounded like you wanted to push mobility to the limit and make champions that have spammable dashes under certain conditions and show that you can still catch a champion with dashes coming out of their ears gnar's dual forms to create a champion with an element that the player CAN'T control really easily that gives them clear windows in top lane where they can harass and be harassed, and when they're capable of getting kills and just sort of staying away from danger

so here's what i think riot should be looking at with champ design to try and get a handle on certain aspects of the game 3 champs: a fighter, adc, and a mage with no mobility (dashes or MS boosts) whatsoever that are still viable in pro play without being overpowered. create ways that these champions can have enough mastery and agency over their own fates so that a pro can pull them out in the LCS in a general situation without an entire team built around protecting them but the champion still feels fine in regular play so the balance team doesn't feel that this is a sign they have to be nerfed into the ground. the last champion released with no added mobility of any kind was vel'koz and every time he hits pro play he gets nerfed within a patch or two (also the balance team apparently doesn't want him to be a support even though his massive bases and low ratios scream "this champion will do fine with a lesser gold income") a bot lane adc with less than 550 auto range that actually feels focused on their auto attacks and not much longer ranged spells. find a way to get an auto attack focused champion to be able to carry fights without being able to stand farther away than some champions can even cast spells and don't cop out by giving their spells much longer range and making them use those all the time instead. these archetypes already exist in older champions but it seems like riot isn't sure what to do with them and needs to design a modern champion to see how to work around these weaknesses. whenever an old champion with these elements becomes viable it feels like the balance team becomes terrified and destroys them the next patch and whenever the rework team tries to approach one of these old champions to make them viable, they just sort of fluctuate between overtuning and undertuning a couple times, then settle on undertuning and give up.

3 Comments

Wheatloaf2 votes

Hasn't Vel'Koz avoided nearly all balance changes since his release? The only things that stand out to me are when they increased the width of his W's explosion, and when they almost changed his Ultimate.

Quepha1 votes

the forum ate like 1/4 of my post... edit: fixed.

Manwad1 votes

Vel was never nerfed. Hell, he was buffed with wider projectile widths.

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