What is a "Boring" or "Toxic" Playstyle?

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We've all seen champs like these. Champs deemed "one dimensional" and "toxic when strong".

Soraka with her infinite heals. The famous unkillable Vlad. The AFK farmer Nasus who wants nothing more than another stack.

Well my question to you is...

#Why are these champs deemed toxic?

Well it seems to be obvious. Nasus with his "don't touch me and I won't touch you" playstyle of ignoring his laner (Inser Quasus joke here) and farming up enough stacks to oneshot towers.

Soraka and her famous ability to erase her ADC's damage while you're stuck with lowered health pools.

Garen and his hit and run bush tactics.

Pantheon and his spear spam.

The thing they seem to have in common is that they all revolve around pressing one button, or combination of buttons, to perform an action and then nothing else. All of them have tools to avoid conflict or effectively erase your progress, and/or turn it any fight in their favor very quickly should you decide to fight them.

Well I believe that League is supposed to be a game that supports diverse playstyles.

Not everybody wants to play a high-octane Riven or Yasuo every game and try to outplay everybody.

Some people just want to chill and farm their stacks or in my case, heal up my laner.

This game can become very stressful for a lot of people, and these champions are for lack of a better word, a stress reliever. They don't need you to be a mechanical god to enjoy the game, and that's what I like about them. I don't play all these champs, but I have no ill will towards their mains.

#"But why bother playing a champ that can do a bunch of outplay if I can grab one of these brainless champs and do it with a single keypress?" I hear you say. But take this perspective.

Annie can stun you from a range with one button correct? Another champ with a stun but on a combination is Brand.

They both can stun you, but Brand's stun is more conditional SO it's more free. Brand can stun from much farther than Annie, and he has overall less guaranteed burst, but more potential burst. This is what it boils down to. The champs that have it "easy" usually have a gate on their abilities, usually range. Pantheon has a point and click stun, but he has to jump at you in melee range to use it. He's usually built squishy so he's dunzo if he's 1v2ing. His passive shield is there to give him an incentive to bother diving in, but it isn't unbreachable.

#"But X champion has a boring playstyle and should be reworked to be more engaging!"

Not exactly. Remember, you may find this champ boring, and may like champs that need more button presses and tactical thinking. But not everybody is you; the people who want to chill and play need a champion that fits their playstyle as well.

League of Legends wouldn't be so diverse if all the champs were one way or another.

#"X champion is too passive! Sustain and lack of trading interaction is toxic!"

Again, not necessarily. The passive and noninteractive playstyle would be unbearably boring to somebody who loves to fight, but the passive players need their champs too.

It works like this.

Passive + aggressive = Aggressive gets bored and calls Passive champ toxic.

Aggressive + aggressive = fun lane for both parties. (insert rangeed top joke here)

Passive + Passive = chill buddy lanes, rare but a nice sight to see.

The issue here is that we need to give the aggro champs something to do while the passive players do their thing. An issue happens when the aggro champ wants to roam to find action elsewhere, but they can't because their passive laner will push like a madman if they leave, so they are essentially stuck in a laning phase lovingly dubbed "Farm Simulator 2016" with only the passive laner having a good time.

Another thing is that if either side is too strong then balance issues arise.

If aggro is too strong then the passive laners feel like they can't play with the constant towerdives.

If passive is too strong then the aggro feels cheated because the passive champ will suddenly turn into an aggro champ stronger than them, and when the situation isn't in their favor they will turn back into a passive laner and be untouchable. Enter the infamous "stat stick" champs, which all the "toxic" champions are doomed to become if they become too strong.

We need to find a proper balance between these two so that toplane will be great again, but this isn't the point of this thread so I'll leave it here.

#Let's talk about sustain

Specifically in botlane. People usually consider Soraka toxic for the reasons I mentioned above.

If too strong she creates a passive environment where she controls aggro in the lane. If her ADC is aggro, they can run over their opponents with Soraka staying behind to keep them topped off. If she has a farm ADC then she can make sure that they essentially never die, especially if that ADC is slippery like Ezreal.

However, not everybody wants a high octane botlane full of fighting. These people (and people who abuse the fact that her opponents want to go aggro regardless of Raka's presence) play Soraka for various reasons, however her dedicated mains simply love her playstyle, and I wouldn't want to deprive them of their favorite champion just because some people don't like her healing. I agree she should be balanced however, and she definitely isn't strong unless she's in the right hands. However a lot of her strength is played up simply because everybody seems to want to fight, and this is what she punishes the most.

League is a objective focused game, not a kill focused one. Games can be won without a single drop of blood being shed.

However it is invariable that you will face a passive laner if you are an aggro kind of person;

#So I will give you a free PSA on how to deal with "farmlanes"

Step 1. Farm. That's it. If you can't get gold from them then get gold off of minions. You will become fed if you have the highest CS, but it's more of being stealth fed, since most people judge by KDA on whether they should fight you.

Step 2. Zone off the passive laner from farm. If you can shove them to their tower then do so. (Unless you're up against Nasus, in which case keep him shoved up and vulnerable to ganks.) This way you can roam and cause mayhem elsewhere.

Step 3. If facing Raka, get the anti-banana item. You will magically remove Soraka from the laning phase. The enemy ADC out-trading yours shouldn't matter because if you're the support you should help your ADC fight theirs. It will be a 2v2 botlane fight like you want, only difference is that the enemy support is gimped without you needing to use . It builds into so you will continue to make Raka have to work harder than she should the rest of the game.

Step 4. Understand that you don't have to fight all the time. This is an objective based game. Remember that your goal is to make it to their nexus and kill it. Do what you can to make sure towers fall, not to kill somebody X number of times.

Step 5. Know that your bloodlust will be sated once midgame rolls around. Long story short if your laner wants to stay top then let them. Take another objective with your team while the enemy complains about their Nasus always staying top and stacking.

#TL;DR Playstyles are not inherently "toxic". They are just different. Everybody shouldn't have to be a mechanical god to enjoy the game, and balancing should keep them in line to prevent them from being broken if they have the capacity to be so. Let the chill players have their champions and don't bash them just because they don't want to fight you every 3 seconds.