Boards›Gameplay

Separating League Players: Timmy, Johnny, Spike

ModCaptainMårvelous··6 votes·1,762 views

I think this would be a fun exercise in going over the playerbase but for those who have never seen it, I recommend looking here for an explanation. This is pretty old but to this day I feel it holds up.

For those unaware, Timmy/Johnny/Spike are player archetypes that Magic designers coined long ago to exemplify the many types of people who play those games. I'm gonna try to split them down and have some fun with determining how the playerbase fits among them. I was pretty inspired by LS's video where he talked about this. Right here if you want to watch him roast for a bit.

#The Timmy

According to the chart, the Timmy is the player who wants to win hard, win big and make an explosion when he does it. Timmy is the type of player who wants to grind his enemy into the dust. In League, Timmy players are the guys who will go 27/2 or 0/16 with little in-between. They're the players who want to win so convincingly they can shit-talk opponents.

###Examples of Timmy Champs:

Blitzcrank - God hooks that will single handedly win games. Darius - Big resets and chopping teams down like trees. Zed - Flashes level 7 mastery at you (Along with any other fat win-more champ) Nunu - Pound the jungler so far into the dirt that they'll never succeed, plus big ult bombs. Vayne - Dueling badass who can and will carry the entire game by cutting down everyone.

#The Johnny

The Johnny is the player who prioritizes new strats and awkward plans. Unlike the magic idea, however, in League the Johnny is someone who wants to be ahead of the curve and someone who redefines the meta. Because of this, Johnny plays unconventional stuff in unconventional roles in the hopes that he's stumbled across the next, new hotness.

###Examples of Johnny Champs:

Unlike Timmy, I'm going to be using past successes to show examples where Johnny play redefines how a champion is played and wins in a weird/non-standard way.

Ziggs - The most recent example. Ziggs bot changed the game for quite some time with hard-pushing strats. Ezreal - This fucker always breaks things. He's a Johnny champ by virtue of always finding something new. Lucian - Top, Mid, Bot, whatever. Lucian will always break things in a new way. Singed - Proxy Singed redefined farming top lane and is still a ~~pain in the ass~ viable change to top lane to this day. Mordekaiser - Riot'a attempt to make a "Johnny" champ. It failed. RIP.

#The Spike

League-wise the Spike is probably the most obvious: He's the guy who copies/sticks to the meta to give himself the best chance of winning. However, unlike Magic, Spike in League is often the guy who is analyzing pro matches and following win-rates to see who or what is trending. He climbs through knowledge of the game and finding out which patch broke which. Because of this, Spike is similar to Johnny. However, unlike Johnny, Spike doesn't want to "destroy" the meta. He's more so on the curve than Johnny is ahead of it.

###Examples of Spike Champs:

Again, gonna use examples based on recent events that happened:

Galio - Rushing to pick before he got banned/hotfixed. Ornn - Super major pick in D+ now, from what I hear. Urgot - Once the Urgot buffs hit, everyone went to town. Any Ardent Support - Ardent

Feel free to discuss and/or try to figure out which archetypes you fall under!

22 Comments

WakkaSeta3 votes

None. I'm the Teemo player.

ModCaptainMårvelous1 votes

Timmy.

You wanna win BIG with the most dastardly, bastardly champion in the game. You don't wanna just win, you wanna make your lane opponent miserable.

WakkaSeta1 votes

Winning and making the opponent's life hell are just frosting. I play Teemo for the same reason I play Pip and Rocket Raccoon: I enjoy his kit and playstyle, statistics and other people's opinions be damned.

Ralanr2 votes

What if all I want to do is play my own champion regardless of the meta?

I don’t think Sion qualifies me to be a Timmy.

FatedSaviour1 votes

ik that feel, check my mastery points (remember, support)

ModCaptainMårvelous1 votes

Johnny.

While you're not "breaking everything", you want to win your way with your champion. Though this is loose and could fit with other subsets.

Kai Guy1 votes

Well, if your champs not meta at the time and your stubbornly playing them and win consistently with them you just might be breaking the meta.

Kai Guy1 votes

Johnny. Some examples. 1)Back before item 3004 had an upgrade i spent weeks screwing around with blue build on draven as his old passive gave him stupid strong early game damage. Frozen heart was brutally strong at the time as well. Ended up being trash despite the synergy with item 3078 as you could just go hard into crits and AD with the same gold and decimate at all points of the game, ultimately was better to just depend on teammates for peel and using good positioning then dipping into off tank items.

  1. Some 3-4 odd years of Mejais/AP Nami, and Botrk/ZZrot Bard in ranked. I don't do this exactly to break metas but rather as its a playstyle that fits well with me.

  2. When I get groups of hommies together we pull crap like 5 man level 1 inhibitor rushes, All traps, all melee. 3 man bot lane, Rangar ADC, Fiora ADC, all "supports" all adcs, etc.

Edit. Love to see folks using MTG terms. Not as active about playing it as I used to but I find myself playing EDH a few times a month and hit 1-2 prereleases and/or drafts a year. Marvelous post mate.

chipndip11 votes

I'm none of these.

Pierce The Veal1 votes

I just want to have fun, and I can't stand playong the same champion game after game, hence I will occasionally pick meta AND non meta champions, with no actual order.

I'm a whimsical player or so to speak. Which category do I fall under?

ModCaptainMårvelous1 votes

Probably Johnny.

You will do whatever you want and really just enjoy playing the game for the sake of the game. You also probably can play 10 games, lose 9 but feel pretty good about #10.

Linna Excel1 votes

Timmy - plays hypercarries, veigar, nasus, riven, or yasuo Johnny - plays off-meta stuff or tries weird builds on meta champs Spike - plays meta champs exclusively

Athenes Lulu1 votes

What if I want to make people miserable but is always trying to find unconventional ways to win?

For example, I play Lulu support but always builds Athene's Unholy Grail, which is something that no one builds but it works anyways. And will do anything just so I'm not following the meta, like always finding excuses to not rush Ardent Censer.

Quepha1 votes

look up the old riot post about lunch tables.

Buttèred Biscuit1 votes

I'm a jack of all trades kind of player, my champ pool is large, can easily adapt to any role. Though my best role/lane is Tank Top Lane or Tank Support. I mostly play league for the hell of it, just to have fun so most champ picks range from meta, to very nonmeta.

Teridax681 votes

I don't think the separation really works entirely well in League's context, mainly because everyone wants to win and is pushed to do so, which makes us all Spikes. To some extent I also question this separation even in the context of MTG, as it relies on the implicit assumption that a deck cannot be creative and successful at the same time. Hearthstone I feel sets a better class of archetypes with aggro, combo, control, tempo, and value playstyles, which intersects somewhat with the Timmy/Johnny denominations, but mostly transcends them (you can have creative aggro decks, for example, and comboes are typically designed to be very impactful, with all of these being made to be equally successful). I think the OP also misses the fact that MTG is a physical CCG, meaning that cards cannot be modified once they're printed, and therefore the game developers need to adjust the format and their classification around it. As such, the difference between Spikes and non-Spikes is significant only in a game where creative and/or fun decks cannot be retroactively made more competitively viable.

League, by contrast, aims to make all of its champions viable, or at least give every champion a chance to be viable. This makes the definition of any Spike-type champion particularly fragile, as it changes from patch to patch, as evidenced in the OP itself. There is a little bit more leeway for Timmy- and Johnny-type champions depending on how unconventional they are, though ultimately "true" Johnny-style experimentation is currently heavily discouraged in League. The OP brings up Ezreal as an example of a Johnny-type champion due to his ability to break things, but in the end much of what was experimented upon with him with him got balanced away. He's still more flexible than the average champion with his AD and AP builds, but Riot doesn't really want to encourage much more build diversity on him, or really any other champion, beyond that. For quite some time, Riot has been actively discouraging Johnny-style experimentation, mainly because it's become increasingly difficult for them to balance around multiple different potential playstyles and builds.

Ultimately, if there is a dichotomy to be had based on that MTG post, I think it's the difference between players and champions who want to shock their opponents, namely with big, flashy plays (i.e. Timmy), and players who want to outsmart their opponents, generally by doing something they don't expect (i.e. Johnny). Even then, many plays will usually be a mix of both (Nunu ulting from brush, for example), so I don't think there's all that much of a separation here either. Dichotomies don't generally do the best job of explaining the underlying dynamics behind a system, because it pits different notions against each other when they're really not mutually exclusive in practice: every player wants to do something satisfying, every player wants at least some variety, and every player wants to succeed, so even if these drives may be differently strong for different people, I don't think it would ever make sense to omit one of these for the sake of the other, particularly since it wouldn't be necessary either.

ModCaptainMårvelous1 votes

{quoted}

I don't think the separation really works entirely well in League's context, mainly because everyone wants to win and is pushed to do so, which makes us all Spikes. To some extent I also question this separation even in the context of MTG, as it relies on the implicit assumption that a deck cannot be creative and successful at the same time. Hearthstone I feel sets a better class of archetypes with aggro, combo, control, tempo, and value playstyles, which intersects somewhat with the Timmy/Johnny denominations, but mostly transcends them (you can have creative aggro decks, for example, and comboes are typically designed to be very impactful, with all of these being made to be equally successful). I think the OP also misses the fact that MTG is a physical CCG, meaning that cards cannot be modified once they're printed, and therefore the game developers need to adjust the format and their classification around it. As such, the difference between Spikes and non-Spikes is significant only in a game where creative and/or fun decks cannot be retroactively made more competitively viable.

This point I disagree with. Everyone wants to win in the MtG comparison. The question is HOW they win. Do they win big, hard, giant stomps (Timmy)? Do they win with a weird but viable style (Johnny)? Do they win by playing what's meta and obviously the "best" (Spike)? Those parallels exist in league too. Also, you're vastly underestimating the power of WotC. Cards are repinted, nerfed, banned, etc throughout tournaments. Not to mention you can see new expansions as patches ala League, albit they're slow to come out. If anything, this strengthens the argument because League can on-the-fly better accommodate

League, by contrast, aims to make all of its champions viable, or at least give every champion a chance to be viable. This makes the definition of any Spike-type champion particularly fragile, as it changes from patch to patch, as evidenced in the OP itself. There is a little bit more leeway for Timmy- and Johnny-type champions depending on how unconventional they are, though ultimately "true" Johnny-style experimentation is currently heavily discouraged in League. The OP brings up Ezreal as an example of a Johnny-type champion due to his ability to break things, but in the end much of what was experimented upon with him with him got balanced away. He's still more flexible than the average champion with his AD and AP builds, but Riot doesn't really want to encourage much more build diversity on him, or really any other champion, beyond that. For quite some time, Riot has been actively discouraging Johnny-style experimentation, mainly because it's become increasingly difficult for them to balance around multiple different potential playstyles and builds.

Champions have different levels of viable and that's kind of a common fact. Garen is probably never going to be a hardcore pick in D+ or seen at worlds. It doesn't "invalidate" spikes who follow meta, it just means they have very little character loyalty and often play what is best. Sometimes, what is best (See: Graves) can exist for entire seasons without being touched. Johnny players aren't exclusive to dropping/picking up new champs either. If the thing Ezreal is abusing is patched out, that doesn't mean the Johnny player will keep using him. After all, if the "gamebreaking/awkward" thing suddenly becomes meta, it loses value to Johnny.

The core point you seem to be missing is that if something goes away, it doesn't stop or hinder the Johnny/Spike players. It just means they have to adapt faster than in MtG or another game type.

Ultimately, if there is a dichotomy to be had based on that MTG post, I think it's the difference between players and champions who want to shock their opponents, namely with big, flashy plays (i.e. Timmy), and players who want to outsmart their opponents, generally by doing something they don't expect (i.e. Johnny). Even then, many plays will usually be a mix of both (Nunu ulting from brush, for example), so I don't think there's all that much of a separation here either. Dichotomies don't generally do the best job of explaining the underlying dynamics behind a system, because it pits different notions against each other when they're really not mutually exclusive in practice: every player wants to do something satisfying, every player wants at least some variety, and every player wants to succeed, so even if these drives may be differently strong for different people, I don't think it would ever make sense to omit one of these for the sake of the other, particularly since it wouldn't be necessary either.

This is a fair assessment too!

Teridax681 votes

{quoted}

This point I disagree with. Everyone wants to win in the MtG comparison. The question is HOW they win.

That's not entirely accurate, though, because the Spike archetype is based on wanting to win consistently, hence why they go for what's meta. Again, everyone wants to win consistently, and this applies even to players who go for Johnny-style "break the meta" builds, who in League will still largely play to convention for a win. League also has this implicit culture where failure is often construed as deliberate, to the point where if a player feeds with an unconventional pick or build, they are assumed to be inting, so it's not really the best environment for Johnnies. Riot has also taken great pains to give champions clearly impactful and impressive effects, and are running through older champions in the roster to implement just that, so every champion is intended to be a Timmy champion by some measure as well.

A major difference here as well, I feel, is with intention: from the phrasing of that post, WotC clearly intends for some cards to be stronger than others, and therefore for some decks to be more successful than the rest. Similarly, they also intend for some of their cards to be far more complex than others, and only be perceived as useful by those who are good at memorizing all of the game's different effects and identifying synergies. By contrast, Riot intends for all of their champions to a) be around equally successful, b) each have their own "wow" moments that can have a major impact on the game, and c) stand out from each other with unique playstyles that require commitment and exploration to fully unlock their potential. This may not be entirely the case in practice, but that is the goal. Any individual champion possesses many more mechanics than any single card, and can therefore be made to satisfy the Timmies, the Johnnies and the Spikes all at once.

{quoted}

Also, you're vastly underestimating the power of WotC. Cards are repinted, nerfed, banned, etc throughout tournaments. Not to mention you can see new expansions as patches ala League, albit they're slow to come out. If anything, this strengthens the argument because League can on-the-fly better accommodate

But that's my point, though: League can accommodate on the fly, which means that if a particular champion or build is less successful than they want it to be, they can buff it to be Spike-worthy, and if it's too far above the curve, they can tone it down. By contrast, if WotC wants to directly balance a specific card, they have to reprint it, which isn't going to automatically reach players with the old version in the same way as an online patch. This is one of the main reasons why they have banned cards and rotating card pools, and why they have to make a distinction between decks that win consistently, and decks that don't. By contrast, in League, if a feature is lacking Timmy, Johnny or Spike qualities, Riot can just patch it in, as they do every cycle and major update.

{quoted}

Champions have different levels of viable and that's kind of a common fact. Garen is probably never going to be a hardcore pick in D+ or seen at worlds. It doesn't "invalidate" spikes who follow meta, it just means they have very little character loyalty and often play what is best.

Except Riot tried very hard to make Garen competitive, and are still looking for ways to improve him in this respect. That's why he got saddled with armor reduction, so he is intended to be Spike-worthy, even if he isn't in practice. Similarly, his Juggernaut Update rework aimed to make him both more impactful and more niche via his Villain mechanic (which in this context would benefit both Timmies and Johnnies), so even if that didn't achieve its goal, it is nonetheless something Riot still aspires to do with him. The same can be said for literally any other champion in the game, and any of them can easily be presented as a Timmy, Johnny or Spike champion with the right framing. In fact, even with the cards cited in the blog post, I feel it's easy to reframe them as appealing to another group (Battle of Wits' promise of an instant win is certainly attractive to Timmies, for example). In many ways, this whole separation is a lot like a horoscope, in that it gives the impression of distinct, easily-recognizable groups, but upon closer inspection they all blend into each other, as they are based on traits that they all share.

{quoted}

The core point you seem to be missing is that if something goes away, it doesn't stop or hinder the Johnny/Spike players. It just means they have to adapt faster than in MtG or another game type.

But then that completely defeats of the points of attributing Timmy/Johnny/Spike qualities to champions, as they are all in a constant state of flux. It would be more accurate to just keep those attributes to players, and even then, attitudes will change depending on where they go: pro and non-pro players alike both have a tendency to dick around in casual Normals, but go into super-serious mode for Ranked, and most of the game's innovation and trends begin at the competitive level, before trickling down cerulean-style to the more populated elos.

ModAcademy Kayn1 votes

I made a EDH deck based on Clues, Energy, and Artifacts. What am I?

Hong Kong Revolt1 votes

I never liked the "Timmy, Johnny, Spike" archetypes because it basically says that big monsters and combo decks aren't allowed to be competitive, which most card games have proven to be false. It also ignores the anti-spike, who purposely gimps themselves so they can blame all their losses on "no-skill meta followers" and "netdecking."

However, I like your versions for League, because it doesn't dump on the competitiveness of the non-spikes.

ImpmonCute1 votes

There are also people who play league mainly for the social aspect and enjoy trash talk time to time. they are probably former MMORPG players.

More from Gameplay

3 Refunds per season, upvote if you want 3 refunds per season.
Gameplay764 comments
7,167
votes
3 Refunds per season, upvote if you want 3 refunds per season.
Gameplay156 comments
3,510
votes
UPVOTE FOR URF
Gameplay606 comments
2,440
votes
Yes plz.
Gameplay456 comments
1,721
votes
3 Refunds per season, up vote if you want 3 refunds per season.
Gameplay114 comments
1,716
votes
When is ANYONE at riot going to address the awful new player experience?
Gameplay634 comments
1,383
votes

More by CaptainMårvelous

"Wow dude you're playing like shit"
Gameplay167 comments
298
votes
Can the Cass situation from today be the beginning of a trend?
Gameplay95 comments
257
votes
How to Reward Vets (Without just dumping 30+ boxes on them)
General Discussion341 comments
254
votes
Please make Taric's V-neck scale with armor.
Story, Art, & Sound48 comments
242
votes
Riot, you're working yourselves deeper into a corner with skins.
Story, Art, & Sound135 comments
241
votes
Gotta say: Not a fan of Kayle's new look.
Story, Art, & Sound267 comments
237
votes