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Can we explain manaless/resourceless champions?

IA9hRfpP5q·Dec 19, 2016·12 votes·4,664 views

Of the major mobas (Dota2 and SMITE) , LOL is the only moba with this stupid mechanic where

Special Mentions That Might As Well Be Resourceless Since Their Resource never stops them from doing anything:

People say "Because their weakness is high cooldowns and that their melee" For how long? for the first 4 levels of the game? Resourceless champions are not punished for making mistakes with their abilities, you missed that ability? free pass. Meanwhile casts an ability at lvl 2 and loses like 40% of her mana pool and has a considerable cooldown. You have no resource to manage, late game you can just be like "QQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQ" "HASAGI HASAGI HASAGI HASAGI" , "GRAAH GRAAHH GRAGHHHHH"

What decides if a champion will be resourceless? Why can't they all be reworked into having mana like the rest of them?

Also isn't Riven's unstoppable build have these: ? I'd be so happy if a spell fell upon all resourceless champions that says

"New: All resourceless champions that have no mana and no resource to manage/or use energy are now immune to cooldown reduction. Buying cooldown reduction will do NOTHING."

13 Comments

EtyrnaIDec 19, 20167 votes

[{quoted}](name=Whitney Houston,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=gBobolGw,comment-id=,timestamp=2016-12-19T11:59:42.496+0000) You have no resource to manage, late game you can just be like "QQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQ" "HASAGI HASAGI HASAGI HASAGI" , "GRAAH GRAAHH GRAGHHHHH"

Up voted just for this part alone.

YagoDec 19, 20166 votes

I think Kled, Katarina, Gnar, and Garen are all fine.

Though they lack a resource:

Mana is often most important during the early game. Kled's basically useless without Skarl, so if he had to manage mana, and Skarl, he'd literally spend more time backing than in lane. He already has to back immediately whenever he loses Skarl, or he's a sitting duck for ganks or his lane opponent to just all in him.

Katarina wouldn't be able to do her job if she had to manage mana. She has to fish for opportunities to go in and use her Dagger drops and her Shunpo / Death Lotus, and if she had to manage mana on top of that, the best strategy to use against her would be just to stall out her mana pool until she couldn't do anything, even if she had resets. Katarina, in exchange, would likely end up spamming Morellonomicon or Tear of the Goddess, and her early game would be so awful that she probably wouldn't be played much at all.

Garen's cooldowns are so long that even if he had mana, it wouldn't change a whole lot. And Garen is pretty weak balance wise, anyways, because his abilities just aren't very good outside of lower MMR.

Gnar has his mini-MEGA form changes to deal with, which gives his lane opponent plenty of windows to engage on him. The problem with Gnar, IMO, lies elsewhere. It isn't his lack of mana that's an issue, it's how brutally anti-melee his kit is, much like Darius (who does use mana, of course!).

As for Yasuo / Riven, I don't have much of a justification for their lack of resource.

Yasuo has Flow, but doesn't have to manage it, outside of trying to wait for it to be empty before using his ultimate (which only happens if he actually is scared enough to require two shields in a fight, which with the rest of his kit, never happens).

Riven has her passive, which is supposed to incentivize her to weave her spells rather than mash all of her buttons very quickly, but her abilities are strong enough that she often spams her abilities, anyways. That said, Riven is an extremely difficult champion to master, and I don't think she needs any changes.

RainbowlazarsDec 19, 20161 votes

I think that with riven having a 3 part q and yasuo having a variable q with a tiny cooldown and a similarly spammable e, having to manage mana would be a nightmare. EG: halfway through your suave flow combo you suddenly realize you wont have mana enough for the tornado/your ult, or that last dash on your e.

ScuxxxDec 19, 20162 votes

after katarinas rework, it would seem better to give her mana or energy, because infinite resets of the w, e combo is ridiculous. the only nerf yasuo needs is a higher cooldown on his passive shield

Tukan TonkoMar 23, 20181 votes

To be perfectly honest, this is not really a good argument. We all have experienced a game or a situation where we were playing a certain champion, fighting, and all of a sudden, you are out of mana, right when you are about to use that last spell to finish off your oponent. We experienced this many, many times - pros and casual players alike. Managing your mana is something that requires skill, any resource management requires skill and that is something those champions lack. Yes, they make for it, however, with their kits. There is an issue, though, many people consider them imbalanced for this very reason. As you stated you wouldn't like to be caught off guard having no mana during certain combos. Yes, I agree that it would feel bad. But this is not a proper excuse for them not to have mana. I will give you an example, talking about combos and spells with more parts, let's take Ahri's R. She, can use 3 dashes and only first one costs mana, so oyu never find yourself oom before you can cast all three because, well, it would suck, right? This can be used for Yasuos Q. He can have mana cost for first Q, the othrer two would be free of charge as long as he doesn't miss and it resets. This would add something that enemy could exploit against him, and also something that would add to his skill cieling. As for his E, let's take Irelias Q. It resets and gets mana back when killing and enemy. Also, we have other abilities that give mana back while used on certain enemies (eg. minions, monsters, marked champions). This would be vital for his E as well. He would consume only % of the actual mana cost used against minions, getting some mana back with last hits and ability would only cost full manacost on champions. I am not a game developer and it would need a lot of testing. But I believe they would manage to tweak him just enought to use mana. It may reduce his constant dashing and make Yasuo players think twice before randomly dashing in lane. This would lead to less toxicity surroinding him. (this is one of reasons community considers him toxic as stated in the article they released few weeks ago.) I guess it would work. But hey, we never know, this is only my opinion, as I said, I don't know for sure if it would actually be a good or bad change. However, there is always a way for champion to have a good feeling kit and also to have mana as well.

AhristocatsDec 19, 20164 votes

only downside is not being able to buy mana items but that's bullshit again, why? except vladimir not being able to buy ROA which would be extremely strong on him, i don't see how not being able to buy a mana item on a manaless champ is a downside what do you regreat not buying? manamune?iceborn?triforce? manaless champs like yasuo and morde still buy triforce and not using the 200 mana isn't a downside

now @OP, here is the explination from riot

http://forums.na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=1232043&page=1#post14413206

{quoted}

Primarily, I was told I could get away with Riven being mana-less because she has no innate health recovery mechanism.

{quoted}

Actually, the real reason is that her gameplay requires a lot of positioning, cooldown and stack management and another layer of resource management on top of that (Mana) would've been too much I think

cancer xypherous logic on how renekton and riven were allowed in the game back in 2011

ExHentaiDec 19, 20162 votes

Actually, the real reason is that her gameplay requires a lot of positioning, cooldown and stack management and another layer of resource management on top of that (Mana) would've been too much I think

This reasoning no longer holds in the current state of the game. The current Ryze has to manage all of these things and have a minigame for waveclearing. Playing Ryze must take 300 IQ.

Gregor GysiDec 19, 20161 votes

Yeah, Ryze with all his mana scalings should really be resourceless. Aside from that, imagine how unfair Ryze toplane would be if he had no mana gate.. Might aswell just afk the first 10 minutes as melee. (this is why Gnar has a range scaling)

WonderlandsDec 19, 20162 votes

Honestly? With all the mana items in the game, I don't feel like it matters that much other than early game.

Best princess EUDec 19, 20164 votes

XinZhao MonkeyKing JarvanIV sure sure

Teridax68Dec 19, 20162 votes

I think this is kind of looking at the problem backwards: the problem isn't that some champions are manaless, but that many mana champions either have overly harsh resource constraints, or just shouldn't run on mana at all.

In the end, the only reason for mana to exist is to gate the usage of abilities. More specifically, mana exists to gate the usage of abilities over long durations, with a focus mainly on the laning phase. If a champion has a kit that is particularly strong in a laning situation, but isn't supposed to be a lane bully (or less of one), they get mana added onto their kit so that they don't auto-force their opponents out of lane or stay there forever. It's not really an appropriate resource for champions that are meant to cast a lot of spells all of the time, e.g. Riven or Yasuo, nor is it really necessary on champions who already have plenty of situations where they need to head back to base, e.g. Katarina or Garen, both of whom spend a lot of time exposed to incoming damage, and who force themselves to take a fair amount of damage when going in for kills.

Moving forward, I think what needs to be done shouldn't be to saddle mana onto champions who don't work with the resource at all, but instead to treat mana like any other resource, i.e. remove it from itemization, standardize all mana pools and regen, and make mana costs reduce with levels and rank, and not increase, while balancing every mana champion's resource usage to be fully functional on its own, and assigning different resources to champions who would be better-suited to them. Most supports, for example, Sona included, could probably be completely manaless, since they're made to spam their abilities on demand and turn themselves pseudo-manaless anyway with their normal itemization, and should be balanced accordingly. There are a few more fighters who could probably be manaless, and several more who'd probably be better off with Fury, i.e. a resource that would force them to start out fights weaker than anyone else, and gain power and better ability usage only by committing to combat.

Janna mìdDec 19, 20161 votes

[{quoted}](name=Whitney Houston,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=gBobolGw,comment-id=,timestamp=2016-12-19T11:59:42.496+0000)

Of the major mobas (Dota2 and SMITE) , LOL is the only moba with this stupid mechanic where

Special Mentions That Might As Well Be Resourceless Since Their Resource never stops them from doing anything:

People say "Because their weakness is high cooldowns and that their melee"

What u need to answer to those fuckers is Galio c:

Sire HippingtonDec 19, 20161 votes

Because worriing bout how and when to use your skills is far more fun than worriing about your manapool. It also leads to far more active laneing patterns, as you go for a trade when you see the opportunity rather than looking at your pityfull manapool. As a toplane, i love matchups between manaless champs, it's just far more intense and active.

Now, the issue is that some mechanics just need aditional gatein so makeing every champ manaless won't work. Some stuff(mostly sustain and strong ranged poke) would be to strong in lane if not gated, and (long)ranged waveclear, longranged poke or powerfull sustain can be an issue later on aswell. Lux spamming her E on cd would be awfull, and ryze with infinte mana would be the apopcalypse early on.

Most of the resourcless champs we have in lol are pretty opportunity gated(some less than others though) If riven goes in, she gets into melee range, autopushes the wave, and burns her escape. I always love faceing a riven when i'm premade with my jungler, it's just so easy to bait her into ganks. She usually needs to either burn her defense tool or some damage to actually get into range. And i certainly haven't seen an unstoppable riven... Yasuo's entire kit is based on spaming skills, giving him mana would just result in a tear rush. And just like riven, he needs to get deep to trade, and his W and passive have a quite high cd, same for the 3ed Q early on. He could use some changes, but him beeing manaless is totally fine.

To be honst, i think there are quite some champs that could get their mana removed or atleast get a boost to their lategame manapool. XinZhao for example, it's ok that his laneing has some gateing or he's E to your face every few sec. But later on? What on his kit would be broken if spammed outside of laneing? Overall, i just dislike mana as a mechanic, though it certainly is sometimes a neccesary gateing.

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