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Most or all non-mana champs have been imbalanced at some point.

ParaBellam·1/5/2016, 2:47:51 AM·1 votes·665 views

What does it mean?

When you look at League over the years, pretty much every champion that doesn't use mana has been imbalanced in some point. The problem is that this one change pretty much gives the champion massive power.

Sometimes this is ignored for a good amount of time, and it makes the champion very strong. For instance, , and now (kidding, has been strong for such a long time), last season.

Other times, the champion gets nerfed into the ground because not using mana gives them too much of an advantage. See .

Now, I'm not saying that the champs nerfed are useless. I'm just saying that a lot of problems stem from them not having mana.

When you see champs like and , they have extremely strong skills. But they are HEAVILY gated by mana and cooldowns. They were rebalanced TO have high mana costs (Blitz hook is 100 mana at level 1) and high cooldowns (it's maybe 17 seconds long at level 1).

Or, to use an example more similarly, something like . His Q costs 90 mana at level 1, making it a bit of a tricky challenge to balance mana. Spend too much throwing shivs and placing boxes in the enemy jungle? Your escape might not be guaranteed.

by contrast doesn't use mana, but he has a lot of strength by himself. Not comparing pieces of kits, but he is strong as all hell individually. His cooldowns are pretty short compared to Shaco.

So what am I getting at? I don't really know. I just thought it would be an interesting thing to point out how difficult it is to balance champions without resources. You would think they would have long cooldowns to compensate, but a lot of them really don't. It's a bit of a conundrum, really.

Maybe some champions deserve rebalancing around having a resource in exchange for a bit extra strength. Or maybe, make them not as reliant to sink or swim (If falls back a bit, his power drops like all hell.) The Juggernaut update really brought out the late game in most juggernauts, making their early not as critical. When I use most, I'm ignoring (but he really does need to be looked at!)

6 Comments

Aeolian Melodies1/5/2016, 2:51:34 AM8 votes

Most champions have been unbalanced at some point period.

Abyssphere1/5/2016, 2:50:22 AM2 votes

Almost every champion with mana has also been imbalanced. That is because almost every champion in the game full stop has been either too strong or too weak at one point.

The Sword Saint1/5/2016, 2:56:46 AM1 votes

Innacurate. Outside of lane phase, anything other than cooldowns are meaningless except for champs like anivia and kassadin who can directly drain their mana pools to empty to gain access to large amounts of sustained on demand power, and energy champs who are worse off than mana champs outside of lane.

Yes in lane phase non mana champs have a sustain advantage over mana champions. They are designed to have strong lane sustain as part of their kit, that's part of the point of being manaless. If riot somehow didn't have the technology to make non mana champs, those champs would just have super super small mana costs or very high mana regen, because they are intended to have a lot more access to their abilities during lane phase than normal.

But lane phase is only one small part of the game that many people over focus on the importance of. Outside of a long seige, a mana based champion is going to have just as much access to their spells (actually more than energy champs or rumble) as non mana based champs.

Sm0k3McCl0ud1/5/2016, 5:51:51 AM1 votes

champions that don't use mana should have their outputs severely reduced simply by virtue that they will never be out of resources to cast their abilities where as others will run out of mana. Simple as that.

The situation is so inconsistent... you got champs like yasuo that are by all means casting spells but use no mana... then you have champs like ziggs who is throwing bombs which can't in anyway be considered casting a spell but are mana based... to be honest all the champs should become resourceless and be rebalanced around that idea.

Akenero1/5/2016, 5:54:06 AM1 votes

Kennen? Zac? Aatrox?

Espy Psyche1/5/2016, 6:47:24 AM1 votes

Some of the mentioned champions do need reworked.

Olaf needs a rework that has him using Fury (something along the lines of how Sonya works from HotS). Riven should just get a mana bar and be done with it, so she's forced to build Manamune (which solves all the problems people have with Riven).

There is, however, a downside to being manaless: RANGE.

Zed Kennen Katarina Vladimir have the highest ranged poke capability of all the manaless champions. Compare that to mana-based champions like Ziggs Lux Velkoz ? There's no comparison, The mana-gated champions have ridiculous poke compared to manaless champions. The reason is because, to abuse that poke potential built into their kits, they have to delay building AP to build their mana item ( item 3003 item 3174 item 3027 item 3165 ). They can't just rush item 3089 or item 3285 and still poke for days like Katarina and Vladimir can.