When commenting about a certain champion's brokenness please remember their role.
Please remember what the champion's role is in the game.
I constantly see post claim that either tanks can tank too much, or assassins hurt too much, or ADC's burst too much, or heal too much, junglers and rageblade scale too much, or mages feel bad for not being necessary to win a game since most abilities can't take towers. Seriously guys, and I know i'm guilty of doing/thinking this too, but everything can't be the same. Roles need to have unique high points. Healers are meant to heal a lot. Assassins need to be able to 100-0 squishies in the shortest amount of time. The meta isn't supposed to work around what is convenient for ADC's. Tanks should be damage sponges.
Every role has a strength. Every role has a weakness.
In league of Legends there are many roles. They are:
- Tank -- focus highly on resistance and health items
- Assassin -- focus mainly on high damage items and mobility
- Marksmen -- Similar to assassins, but also tend to get more attack speed items than just raw damage since they are basic attack focused
- Anti-tank (tank shred) -- attack speed items and % health damage items
- Mage -- Good AP damage items but also mix in some health and resistance here and there
- Support (utility) -- support items and focus on providing the majority of the CC for the team, also might be a healer
- AP burst -- High AP and magic pen items along with CDR
- AD burst -- armor pen and raw damage, also uses abilities over basics to deal their damage
- Fighter (bruiser) -- mixture of damage and resistance where ne or 2 solid damage items is enough, and they like longer fights more so than quick skirmishes
CANCER (Troll)-- no specific item build because they just build what they want / think could work and tend to not care about the game's outcome
The ones italicised are unofficial but are commonly used, and while the one crossed out is more of a joke term, it usually has a specific playstyle (champions and items included) so I added it to the list. While Assassin and AD burst are very similar they do have separations. Not all Assassins are AD burst champs and not all AD burst champs are Assassins. So I kept them separated, but technically one could say they're the same thing.
These are the typical roles you see from game to game. They all are unique and all function differently at a fundamental level. Not one is "stronger" than the others, since they all are unique. It would be like comparing a lemon to an apple. Both are fruit, both can be juicy, both grow on trees. But the similarities dont get any more complex than that. Just like champions in league. All champions scale AD, Attack Speed (Jhin being the one exception), Health, Health Regen, Armor, Magic Resist, and when applicable Mana, and Mana Regen, Energy, and Energy Regen. All can eventually reach a max level of 18, each champ can hold 6 items (some have specialty items like Viktor but it still is an item), and all have a trinket slot and 2 summoner spells with 4 abilities and a passive. That is the end of the similarities. From there the role they fill is what separates them further.
Now, champions can fill more than one role. THIS IS OK. There is more champions who can fill 2+ roles than there are who can't fill anything other than their main role. The only issue is that now those 2+ role champions need to be balanced for the additional roles as well as for their main.
Common role combos and a few champions who fill them are:
- Tank / Fighter (bruiser)
- AD burst /Assassin
- AP burst /Assassin
- Tank / Support (utility)
- Mage / Support (utility)
- AP burst / Mage
- AP burst / Support (utility)
- AD burst / Marksman
- Anti-tank (tank shred) / Marksman
- Fighter (bruiser) / Assassin
- Fighter (bruiser) / Mage
- Tank / Mage
When a champion fills more than 1 role, they tend to be made where they can do fine in either, but tend to have a more dominate role. Such as a fighter (bruiser) / Assassin like Riven could fit both roles but benefits more from raw damage than from resistance so the assassin role is the better of the two (in most cases). It is good to also note that these multi role champs tend to be less effective at the role than a one role champ would be. Such as how Veigar is a great AP burst champion. And while he technically can run a support style build and fit the role to an extent, it is really awkward to his kit since he misses out on stacking AP with his Q's passive. When it comes to raw AP damage though, he is the best and if he gets decent stacking, he can get AP levels over 1000.
Now, lets see an example Zed has been popular recently because of the changes to QSS and Zhonya's Hourglass. People are saying he is going to be permabanned from now on until something is changed. While initially this may be true, given time he will sink back into the meta like usual. However you do also have to realize that Zed is meant to be able to kill quickly and easily. QSS was a direct counter for the bulk of his damage, same with Hourglass. Both items were very good too so buying them fit most champions builds nicely. This meant that Zed couldn't be the assassin he is made to be. Which is an issue since he can't function in any other role as a fall back. SO by nerfing the items, you return his power. If his power is the issue then he needs a change, not the items affecting his role. Zed also shares a big weakness that all other assassins have. He is squishy and very susceptible to being focused with hard cc. A deadly combo for him. So dealing damage quickly and escaping is necessary to make this counter is not too easy to utilize while still keeping a window of opportunity for it to successfully work.
What people worry about actually is that window of opportunity. Many believe that with these changes the window will become too small to counter since the ult is not easily shrugged off anymore with QSS and Zhonya's CD has been increased along with its AP stat lowered by 30 points making it less of an offensive item which happily fit a build to more of an "I need this just to survive" item.
SO, when making posts about how broken Zed is, just think about if it is himself, his role, or if some other mechanic that has been altered really is the issue.
Personally I am not too worried, but I have concern still. So I will have to see how OP he may seem to be because of these changes.
Back to the main topic Many times champions seem OP because their role has been altered as a whole, not themselves. This could be the result of item changes, reworks within the role, or just shifts in the META. While changing the champions may seem like the best option, it is not always the case. Remember the Sejuani issue where she was so OP that the gutted her to bring her back to normal levels (along with a few others). But then changed the item that made them OP which caused her to struggle greatly since she was now too weak for anything. Same concept applies.
Sometimes the champion just isn't the issue, and the issue is the role itself being too unbalanced with the champion being a product of that. If you own a factory making cars, and you change something and all the newly produced cars start to malfunction, you dont (shouldn't) go to each car sold and try and work around this malfunction. You should go and fix what caused it in the first place and recall the cars with defects so they can be reverted to work properly again. Same with League of Legends. If a role has major changes, and those changes break many of the champions who were part of that role, you should not try and tweak each and every affected champion in order to force the changes to work. You should revert what was done and maybe try a different approach if you still desire the intended goal. That way you always have a clean starting point.
If any of you have coding experience, then you probably know the saying fix 1 error gain "X" more. In other words, by fixing one issue, you indirectly caused issues with many other pieces as a result. And fixing any of those could potentially unfix the first issue. So in order to prevent this, you change one thing at a time and if it works, you move ahead, but if it doesn't, you undo it and solve it properly before moving on. I believe this is the best way to problem solve when it comes to champion and role changes. If it works, great. But if it doesn't revert and try again.
Riot does a pretty good job at doing this. While sometimes it takes a while, and the issue may just get overthrown by another greater issue, usually it all works out in the end. Remember when Ekko first came out? He was so broken that he was nearly unanimously hated to play against. And Riot addressed this and gradually brought down his levels to an ok amount. And if they ever went too far, they reverted it and tried again. Same is happening to a jungle item that deals on-hits with attack speed stats. Devourer is being removed and replaced by a fresh iteration of the concept (bloodrazor) to try and see if this works out better. But they also seem to be being very careful as to not change too many things all at once in order to keep the general state of balance. And if one champion seems to be benefiting more than any other, then they will fix the champion. But if many champions in the same role are seeing issues than the item will be what is altered since it was where the issue was.
tl;dr Champions may not be as broken as you may think. The issue may lie within the role itself that they fill. So be careful when posting about what is and isn't broken. Sometimes it might not be what you think it is or your solution may not be the best option in the long run if the root of the problem was never taken care of.