'Unhealthy' is an unhealthy addition to League vocabulary

A Rebo topic that isn't about Kog? Shocking, I know.

But this is something I've been thinking about for a while and I figured that it's high time to bring up a gameplay subject that has nothing to do with balance. We don't get enough of those.

I don't like the term 'unhealthy'. It has a rather nasty undercurrent of inherent negativity in addition to being really vague. In nearly every instance that Riot has used the term 'unhealthy' what they've actually been talking about are kits (or single skills) that are non-interactive. What that non-interactivity looks like varies greatly from one champ to another, but the end result for the person on the receiving end is always the same.

Frustration.

So what does non-interactivity look like? Well, it could be quite literal as in Poppy's old Ult. If she ulted someone without any CC, for the next several seconds your team has no real way to interact with her, save for running away and hoping she remembered her lube this time.

Non-interactivity can also look like kits that encourage the champ to avoid enemies. Teemo and AP Shaco are both classic examples of this. They lay their traps, use the occasional high AP ratio projectile, and generally dance around being assholes. Also of note here are the dedicated split-pushing champs. It's in their best interest to avoid fights whenever possible, so when your only tools are aggressively pushing buttons at things that want to team fight, then suddenly you feel like you're lacking in options.

Non-interactivity can mean that it's hard or difficult to catch a champ. This is usually the result of some combination of either high range and mobility or extreme range. Nid, Ezreal, and LeB all fall into that first category while basically any Artillery Mage falls into the latter. It can, however, apply to kits with ample ability to avoid damage as well. (insert icon of your most hated champ with untargetability here)

Non-interactivity can mean that a champ simply stat-checks so hard that you feel like there's nothing to be done once they get rolling. Having lived through the Gunblade stacking days, I still have reoccurring nightmares of Jax and Akali.

Basically, non-interactivity in all its forms comes down to feeling powerless because your champ lacks the tools to deal with the asshole you're playing against. Now, personally? I don't think that's a bad thing. In fact, it's a good thing. When the game has viable niche hard-counters it helps to keep gameplay fresh. Ideally, popular generalist champs should have hard-counter picks and team comp strategies that shut them down. The problem is when a niche hard-counter is so strong that they become a generalist pick, invalidating whole sections of the roster in the process. When she was good, Kalista fell into that category.

And that's bad.

Really bad.

So what say we remove 'unhealthy' from our vocabulary? 'Non-interactive' is quite a bit more descriptive. And ideally, we should be looking to make these non-interactive niche picks into hard counters meant to shake up a game when the picking pool gets too stagnant.