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Feast or Famine - Why It Is Problematic

Great Ozymandius··2 votes·809 views

Wow, I can't spell. Anyway...

The big problem with feast-or-famine assassins is that they take agency away from the other lanes.

For example, I have never mained midlane. When Leblanc or the other asasasins were serious midlane feast-or-famine champions I banned them every time because they took agency away from me.

If LB was on my team and she got behind, the game was a 5v4 and we would lose even if I did quite well in top lane. If she got ahead, we won.

If she was on the enemy team and she got behind, we won. If she was on the enemy team and got ahead, there was very little I could do to stop her team from winning.

Basically, this meant I had very little control over how the game turned out as a top-laner. It wasn't that Leblanc was overpowered per se. It was that she took all of the agency out of all of the other lanes, and basically made the entire game a 1v1.

If I want to climb elo, if I think I am a better top laner than is typical for my elo, then I want the outcome of the game to depend upon me -- at least somewhat. I don't want the outcome of the game to be determined by a midlane coin flip.

Feast-or-famine champs take agency out of the other lanes. I can understand why people who play feast-or-famine champs would like that -- it means they get all the agency. If they are good, then they can climb elo fast. The game is in their hands. But now you understand why nobody wants to play on the same team as or against a feast-or-famine champ. Unless, of course, you are the one laning against the feast-or-famine champ. Because in this case, winning lane turns the game into a 5v4 in your team's favor, so you do have agency if you are the one laning against a feast-or-famine champ.

8 Comments

Zero Skill Tank2 votes

Assassin players already downvoting even when you are obviously right, God those people are pathetic...

La Barbotte1 votes

wrong, the game isnt meant to be controlled by you, its meant to be played as five, so its the opposing mid laners and junglers job to keep the feast or famine champ in check, while on your team, its your feast or famine champ and junglers job to set him ahead, and when that cant be done, it falls to your side lanes to enable him for roams to get fed of your own oponent, when feast or famine doesnt exist thats where you cant control, because the games get advantages/dissadvantages based on picks before skills

Great Ozymandius1 votes

wrong, the game isnt meant to be controlled by you, its meant to be played as five,

And so you take that to mean the outcome of the game should be determined by which midlane assassin starts snowballing off of kills on the other assassin? So you take that to mean that the jungler's influence on the game is entirely dependent on whether his midlaner or the other midlaner snowballed out-of-control off of ganks?

Are top laners supposed to tp midlane when one assassin or the other goes all-in? Because even if you had perfect map awareness, the snowbally assassins of the past could 100-0 their midlane opponents in the time it takes to channel teleport. And midlane is short, and these assassins had enough mobility to also escape after finishing the kill.

I agree it is a team game. Which is why every player should have agency. But the agency of one player comes at the expense of the agency of all of the other players. The midlane feast-or-famine assassins of years past had way too much of the agency and turned the game into a 1v1, or maybe a 2v2 with jungler ganks.

I don't understand how you think perma-ban Kassadin made LOL a team game. My only explanation is that you are an assassin player and you liked having all of the agency.

La Barbotte1 votes

no, im saying games are supposed to be handled as a team, lets take the same principle top lane, nasus, if hes left alone, hes gonna take over the game, nothing youll be able to do, so how do we handle a nasus, we either pick a champ that can abuse him for a good amount of time and then end the game while he has nothing, but that wont work if he picked after, so we rely on the jungler and even the mid laner to make sure nasus dont get out of hand, its feast or famine, because without stakc yes hes taking, but he doesnt do anything else than tank

now about the current problem, lets take the biggest one, tank ekko, he's an assassin abusing his utility/base dmg to be tanky while dealing a good amount of damage from a low cost build, thats healthy ? you cant do anything about that, thats where the pick is greater than the skill, cause no matter what you do, hes always relevant.

lets take perma ban kassadin, he wasnt feast or famine, he is now, now hes fair, give him a lead, hes getting out of hand fast, shut him down, hes gonna really struggle being relevant, back then his cost wasnt that great and he had a silence making any retribution impossible to his trades, remove utility from assassins and make then all snowballers is the only way to make them fair

Guyy Fieri1 votes

But you actually can have an impact on that matchup. If to are winning lane hard, use that advantage to maybe find a chance to roam mid and set up a kill for your mid laner to get them rolling. There is always to impact the game from top lane. So many top Laners I play against will just stay on top for days and split push. Which is a valid strategy but if you get a lead in top lane and aren't doing anything to help get a lead across the map, then there's more you can do.

Great Ozymandius1 votes

The problem in years past when assassins were much more feast-or-famine is that 1) they would start snowballing before top-lane should have been roaming and could snowball super-hard off of minor outplays or misplays by either mid laner. Once the snowball started, they could crush their lane opponent, the jungler, and pretty much everyone else. Which leads to the second point: 2) The only way you could deal with that as a top laner is if you also picked a feast-or-famine champ, like riven top or Renekton (when he was super strong and snowbally champ), and snowballed top lane. If instead you were playing, say, maoki top, you couldn't get enough stats from responsibly farming or even getting one or two kills to deal with the enemy kassadin or leblanc who got tons of kills by snowballing her lane. They only way to reliably deal with a snowball was to be a snowball.

Which gets back to the problem: feast-or-famine champs take way too much agency in the game. When champions are too feast-or-famine, the only way to have a big impact on the game, to have agency, is to be a feast-or-famine champ. And if you don't have agency you might as well be watching the game instead of playing it. Not fun. Maybe every champion in league should be feast-or-famine, but I don't think that is the way to go.

Mecha MaIphite1 votes

Would you rather have feast or feast assassins? Ekko

Oh wait, he's not an assassin, he's just a monstrosity.

Great Ozymandius1 votes

Just to be clear, I hate that monstrosity.

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