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There are only 14 champions (in depth analysis)

General Veers·3/19/2015, 4:10:48 PM·1 votes·811 views

Who have no hard cc, dashes, blinks, or roots.

DrMundo Evelynn Gangplank Karthus Kayle KogMaw MissFortune Mordekaiser Nasus Nunu Olaf Rumble Sivir Twitch

For this analysis, I use LoLKing stats on pick and ban rates to approximate the player base's perception of how enjoyable or scary a champion is to play as or against, respectively.

All of these have < 1% ban rate, and the only ones among them who are not in the bottom 35% by pick rate (According to LoLKing) are

Nasus Sivir MissFortune

Why might these be the exceptions?

Nasus Essentially has summoner 3 with 1.5s downtime at max level and CDR, which might as well be hard CC. Also reaches godlike status fairly reliably

Sivir Strong poke and wave clear combined with acceptable slipperiness (spell shield and +MS passive and ult)

MissFortune I'm not so sure on this one, as I personally haven't faced MF in ages. High AoE DPS? I suspect it's also because, as an ADC, MF can rely on her support to supplement her lack of CC and mobility

So that leaves us with our unpopular, "unscary", immobile, relatively CC-less friends below

DrMundo Evelynn Gangplank Karthus Kayle KogMaw Mordekaiser Nunu Olaf Rumble Twitch

Well I'm writing this up because Kayle and GP are two of my favourite champions, and with each passing patch it seems that they're more and more outclassed. I want to talk about Kayle first, and I'll add up other champions if we can get a good discussion going.

Kayle Kayle, the Judicator

Kayle is a ranged-melee-AP-AD-support-carry who brings a unique mix of damage and utility to the game. Her AP burst build got quite popular for a short time last year before she was promptly (and, imo, severely) nerfed - she's been unpopular and unscary ever since.

Kayle is one of 14 champions whose ult does not provide damage or offensive stats. The others are

Bard Elise Janna Kalista Lulu DrMundo Nidalee RekSai Shen Soraka TwistedFate Urgot Zilean

Of these, 6 see significant (>5% play). Let's take a look

Bard A new champion, so high pick rate is understandable. Also, notably, has the lowest win rate in the game at 36.52%.

Janna Janna is the best disengage champ in the game; her ult's AoE displacement and healing allow her to save an entire team, making it LoL's best disengagement skill.

Kalista One of the most overloaded ults I can think of, this ult gives an ally a summoner 1 item 3157, and then a Malphite ult.

Nidalee The most banned champ in the entire game, nidalee's lack of an ult is made up for by having 50% more skills than the rest of the roster (and a whole lotta toxicity...)

RekSai One of the game's most mobile champions gets summoner 12 on a 48s CD at max rank and cdr; understandably, Rek'Sai has the 11th highest ban rate.

Lulu Lulu is the closest champion to Kayle in terms of mechanics, and is, in my opinion, the best designed champion in the game (thematically, ergonomically, playing as/against, impactful decision making, versatility). I would love it if Kayle could be brought to her level of refinement. It's worth noticing that although Lulu's ult fulfills a similar purpose as Kayle's (massive, clutch defensive buff), it also provides AoE knockup, healing, and a slow aura for 7 seconds). Lulu's pick and ban rate are both roughly double Kayle's.

Okay, so clearly champions with non-damaging ults can be enjoyable and scary. However, the successful ones tend to be very powerful (best team saver in the game Janna , incorporate Summoner Spell functionality on a short cooldown RekSai, or feature the game's best CC, knock up + other goodies Kalista Lulu ). Yes, Kayle's ult is powerful, too, but I am hoping to show that non damaging ults tend to be powerful in general to make up for that lack of damage, and that many other non-damaging ults are more powerful than Kayle's.

Wellllllllllllllll this is taking longer than I thought, so I'll wrap it up quickly for now and come back to edit later. What I think needs to happen is for Kayle to get one or more of the following:

Higher base movement speed increased E AP ratio higher base attack speed higher AS/lvl gain longer ult range shorter ult cooldown reworked Q to provide better type of CC, longer range, lower mana cost (wouldn't mind if it became a skillshot and/or got longer CD), no cast delay

My arguments will be:

  • No one is afraid of her CC. She exerts her zone control through the threat of damage, but its combination of downtime, short range, dps-as-opposed-to-burst qualities make even her damage less scary than most other characters. The nerfs to her damage made it so that most people aren't even afraid of her damage, either

  • when kayle gets fed, she's strong, but still has inherent counterplay (E cd, low burst (I think it's important that she have low burst), kitability, short duration, non damaging ult). You deal with her like you do a fed tryndamere (Stop the splitpush, draw out the ult, kill).

  • Gold, mana, cooldown dependant - High Q mana cost prevents overuse, E cd provides opponents with clear opportunities to counter attack, requires her items to do well.

  • innate pushing is a weakness in its own right

  • Defensive ults should be on shorter CD than most offensive ults

7 Comments

The Bearded Bard3/19/2015, 4:25:13 PM2 votes

The only reason Mundo isn't popular is because morellos is so popular.

Karthus is fine.

If Kayle had hard cc she'd be broken as hell. A hypercarry that can be immune to damage for 3 seconds and has cc? No pls.

Kog'maw is supposed to be a backline hypercarry. He's got a huge aoe slow to use to kite if people get close. He's actually quite strong right now.

Morde's in a great spot right now. Can be shut down early on, but becomes a monster once he hits 6, and damn near unkillable late game.

Nasus is fine, if not a bit overpowered.

Nunu has a permanent slow and a permanent MS buff for himself and an ally.

Olaf is straight up immune to disables and has a permaslow. Do you really want him to have hard cc??

Rumble is fine. He has two charges of heavy slows on his E, a speed boost shield on W, and a heavy slow on his R. Great champion.

Sivir has spellshield and huge team MS steroid. Doesn't need anything else.

And finally, Twitch is a stealth hypercarry. You don't give stealth champs hard cc. See what happened to Eve? There's a reason for that.

Not all champions NEED to have the same things. It's okay if these champions don't have gapclosers or hard CC. They're all different for a reason. These champions are still 100% playable.

Jamaree3/19/2015, 4:16:39 PM1 votes

I don't want Kayle to be a thing again, not while her ulti has no mana cost.

Zazusha3/19/2015, 5:14:33 PM1 votes

wheres Vladimir ?

Droogzy3/19/2015, 5:17:30 PM1 votes

You don't need hard CC to be reliable. Kayle with hard CC? Sorry but..no, absolutely not, she has a heal, a movement speed debuff, and becomes invincible for 3 seconds. That's more then enough.

And honestly? Dashes and movement speed buffs go together in most situations, do you really want to argue that Sivir's movement speed buff is not on par with some of the dashes in the game?

Droogzy3/19/2015, 5:40:40 PM1 votes

Her kit itself is fine, I think her early game is a little bit on the too weak side, its difficult for her to make it out of that phase. but personally, that I think has to do with number changing as oppose to giving her hard CC, if she got hard CC, she could potentially become problematic, leading to nerf/buff sprees for god knows how long.