There are some champion designs that should simply be removed until they are fixed.

yuuum chan·May 28, 2019·2 votes·1,532 views

In general, riot has been pretty good with their champion design recently. Some have been overloaded, or such, or maybe had insane numbers, but generally speaking, there is nothing in their kit that makes them inherently toxic for the game. With some balance tweaks, they can be made to be fine. And the more toxic kits still remaining in the game have generally been fixed, albeit at a slow rate.

Although there will always be some champions that are annoying as fuck, or op, or w/e, those are not what this post will be discussing. I personally hate . I personally hate . But I would never call them broken designs, they are fine, they have clear strengths and weaknesses, they have interactive gameplay, they have a gameplan. Their design isn't broken. Unfortunately, there are some that are completely broken. The three main ones are as follow:

What do all these guys have in common? They have some element in their kit that is very unfun or simply doesn't work that makes them toxic as shit to play vs. Remember, league is supposed to be a fun game, something you do to have fun with friends or to climb and feel as if your skill is expressed in your rank, and that you have a fair matchup. These three guys completely fuck that concept, and I'll explain how.

You know what's not fun? You know what's really fucking annoying, and makes me want to ragequit before five minutes? A Tryndamere sliding in on you level 1 with his E, and autoing you. Simply that. And you know why? Because he, for some reason, has a 35% free fucking crit chance that completely ruins everything. He is now in your minion wave, taking aggro, and a lot of dmg. He will have to retreat afterward, which gives you an extra auto as he runs away. He NEEDS to crit to make this trade worth. Think about that. This fucking champion literally relies on a 35% chance, a completely luck based system that neither player has any control over, to win his early trades. That alone is fucking awful gameplay, and should NEVER be a part of league. You should NEVER feel like luck is hte reason you lost control over your lane, but that is literally what Tryndamere does. His passive breaks one of the most basic rules of league of legends, and that is unforgivable.

You know what's also not fun? Sitting under your tower for fifteen minutes with a total of like 50 farm, praying to the gods that your bot-lane can carry because you're playing against pantheon, and you're so behind that you will never, ever be able to catch up, unless the game goes to like 40 minutes +. Pantheon is the definition of an uninteractive kit, there is basically nothing to outplay within. He has no mechanics, like skill-shots, he has no timings he has to play around, like Vladimirs Q, he has nothing, he is literally a point and click champion, one of the last in the game. And putting such a design on a lane bully is literally the worst idea anybody has ever had. THe problem with simple, uninteractive kits is that they've always been all or nothing, black or white. Either, you can kill him, and there's not much he can do about it, or he can kill you, and there's not a whole lot you can do about it. That's why they reworked champions like Warwick, becuase his old kit was really fucking boring, and there wasn't anything you could do if he was stronger than you. Putting such a design on a LANE BULLY IS A HORRIBLE IDEA, because it means that the first 15 minutes of each game, the 15 of each game that ALWAYS HAPPENS, is invalidated for you. Like, as bullshit as old Kayle was, the thing is that she wasn't strong until late game, which meant that her point-and-click murder spree didn't happen in like 50% of games, because she lost before she got there. With Pantheon, that's not a problem, becuase you always get to play the early game, ovbiously, which means that the opponent has nothing to do but sit and watch the clock, hoping that some other lane can snowball, or that you get ganked to the point where you can kill him, which is also unforgivable.

Like, there are some people who can't play more htan maybe 1, 2, or 3 games. Imagine coming home from work, ready to blow off some steam with league before going to bed, and what happens is that you go up against a fucking Pantheon that forces you to do nothing for twenty minutes until you finally lose. Like, that can't fucking exist, it's so toxic.

Lastly, Fiora. Fiora's problem is a bit more complex than the other two, but I'll explain it as simply as I can. She can't win games.

If you look at Fiora's kit, what win-con is there? She can't push lanes, she has no wave-clear. SHe can't kill towers very well, she can't siege towers at all, she can't roam at all, she's shitty at team fighting, she really doesn't do anything. Even Teemo, has a clear gameplay plan. Shroom up, harass people down and sit in your island and wear them down. Pantheon, you snowball and use your ultimate to roam. Jax, you use your attack-speed to melt towers, Ezreal, you use your and mobility to play around objectives while remaining safe, Twitch, you survive the early game, and use your aoe burst to win teamfights. Fiora has nothing like that, she does nothing to win the game. So, what did Riot do to fix her? They simply buffed the shit out of her numbers until she got so strong that she basically auto-wins lane, but then loses half the time anyways because her kit can't actually win games, unless you snowball to the literal point that you can 1v5 the game. Fiora's kit is toxic, not because it's luck-based, uninteractive or something like that, it's toxic because she has no win-condition, and she has been compensated for it by being pumped full of numbers until she auto-wins lane, but the fact that her kit is still awful means that she can't win games anyways, which makes her very much like Pantheon actually

So, what should Riot do with these broken designs? Honestly, remove them. Remove them from the game, pending a rework. Now, would that suck for the people who play these champions? Yes, it would, it would suck a lot. However, what sucks more than some people not being able to play a specific champion they like is people not being able to play the fucking game at all because of their shitty fucking champions.

And like, the thing is, riot has sort of done this before, to an extent. Before his rework, Yorick was banned from the free-champ rotation, because his kit was so toxic that they didn't want people to be victimzed to it. FUcking, do that to all these champions, but go all the way with it. These champions should not be in the game, that's a simple fact, they ruin it, so why accept them now? Just admit that you fucked up, remove them, tell their mains to go fuck themselves, and rework them. Prioritize them.

Like, I can't believe they reworked Irelia before Tryndamere or Pantheon. Like what the fuck? Did Irelia suck, did she have some problems, sure, but she didn't literally break the fucking game like Trynda or Panth does.

Tl;Dr; SOme champions are really toxic to play vs, not because of their numbers, but because of how their kit simply works, and fixing them would require a full rework to the extent that a simple balance patch can't fix them. Therefore, Riot should simply remove these champions from the game until they are reworked, and prioritize doing so, so that people don't have to be victims to this cancer anymore.

15 Comments

haaaaaaalpMay 29, 20191 votes

I don’t think most people find those champions all that unfun to deal with. They all have single digit ban rates. If anything, riot should prioritize removing champions like akali and irelia who maintain banrates far out of perportion to their pick and win rates.

yuuum chanMay 29, 20191 votes

I don't think a champions ban rate is a good way to gauge how toxic a champion is. Even though I find playing vs Tryndamere or Fiora a lot more frustrating than vs Irelia, I will always ban Irelia before the two others because she's better at wining games, which is ultimately what I care about in ranked.

haaaaaaalpMay 29, 20191 votes

[{quoted}](name=yuuum chan,realm=EUNE,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=kQeLNeYh,comment-id=00000000,timestamp=2019-05-29T08:49:12.581+0000)

I don't think a champions ban rate is a good way to gauge how toxic a champion is. Even though I find playing vs Tryndamere or Fiora a lot more frustrating than vs Irelia, I will always ban Irelia before the two others because she's better at wining games, which is ultimately what I care about in ranked.

That isn’t what the data shows at all. Irelia has a lower winrate than trynd in 99% of elo brackets and regions. However, despite he fact that tryndamere is objectively better at winning games than irelia in almost every solo queue game, irelia gets banned more than 10 times as often.

Tryndamere’s banrate is appropriate for his pick and his winrate. Irelia’s ban rate far exceeds what any other champion would pull at 47-48% winrate even if you account for high pick and ban artificially deflating her winrate. People are banning her despite knowing they are more likely to win against her than most other popular champions simply due to how toxic her kit is.

yuuum chanMay 29, 20191 votes

No.... No... THat's not how stats works.

Like, you have to take into account how popular a champion is when accounting for how often it should be banned. A champion with a high pick-rate will always have a higher ban-rate, regardless of it's actual strength, strictly because people are reminded of it more. Tryndamere is probably not banned a whole lot, cus nobody fucking plays him. Why would I waste a ban on a champion with barely 2% play rate when I could ban a champion with 5% ban-rate? It's double the value, so to speak, it's more than double the chance that I'm baning somebodies main.

Like, Urgot is arguebly one of the strongest top laners right now, very few can beat him in lane, and he snowballs super-hard, but nobody bans him because he doesn't have a high pick-rate. He's hidden op, so to speak. He doesn't show up on highlights, he isn't mained by a bunch of streamers or pro-players, so people forget about him and ban Irelia cus they saw some stream where TF blade got a penta or W/e.

haaaaaaalpMay 29, 20191 votes

[{quoted}](name=yuuum chan,realm=EUNE,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=kQeLNeYh,comment-id=0000000000000000,timestamp=2019-05-29T13:43:33.647+0000)

No.... No... THat's not how stats works.

Like, you have to take into account how popular a champion is when accounting for how often it should be banned. A champion with a high pick-rate will always have a higher ban-rate, regardless of it's actual strength, strictly because people are reminded of it more. Tryndamere is probably not banned a whole lot, cus nobody fucking plays him. Why would I waste a ban on a champion with barely 2% play rate when I could ban a champion with 5% ban-rate? It's double the value, so to speak, it's more than double the chance that I'm baning somebodies main.

Like, Urgot is arguebly one of the strongest top laners right now, very few can beat him in lane, and he snowballs super-hard, but nobody bans him because he doesn't have a high pick-rate. He's hidden op, so to speak. He doesn't show up on highlights, he isn't mained by a bunch of streamers or pro-players, so people forget about him and ban Irelia cus they saw some stream where TF blade got a penta or W/e.

Irelia's pick rate is 15% with a winrate of 48%. No matter how you spin the numbers, her ban rate is simply too high for her solo queue performance. She has 7 times the banrate of siver who has the same pick rate and 7% higher winrate. Kaisa has more than twice irelia's pick rate, a higher winrate, and a lower banrate. She has similar banrate to jax and hecarim both of who have 3% higher winrate. Her banrate is far higher than her pick and winrates would dictate and that is due to how toxic her design is.

Also, while you are correct that urgot is very strong, you misunderstand why people don't ban him. Champion strength is one aspect of why players ban champions. The other reason is simply because a champion is poorly designed. A strong champion who is well designed won't have an overly inflated banrate like irelia or akali. 5% banrate is completely appropriate for how strong urgot is. A well designed champion who is strong will have a banrate like urgot. A poorly designed champion will have a pick/win/ban rate spread like akali or irelia.

yuuum chanMay 29, 20191 votes

I feel like you're mixing up being op with having a broken design. Irelia and Akali have a low winrate because she's hard to play. If you look at their ban-rates by elo, you see that most of their bans are in high elo, where they are both basically perma-banned because when you can use hteir kit effectively, they're OP as balls. They're the same case as Azir, even when he came out and was completely broken, he still had a subpar winrate. And being op is not the same as having an inherently broken design.

Comparing that to somebody like Kai'sa is not really fair, because Kai'sa is universally more useful, and doesn't require the same amount of skill to pilot, which means that lower players won't do as comparatively bad as low-tier akali or Irelia players.

That's not to say I like Irelia's kit. Akali is prob fine now that they're cut out some stuff, but Irelia is a bit overloaded, sure. But to claim they're on the level of Trynda, Panth or Fiora is simply ridicules.

haaaaaaalpMay 30, 20191 votes

[{quoted}](name=yuuum chan,realm=EUNE,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=kQeLNeYh,comment-id=000000000000000000000000,timestamp=2019-05-29T19:34:41.774+0000)

I feel like you're mixing up being op with having a broken design. Irelia and Akali have a low winrate because she's hard to play. If you look at their ban-rates by elo, you see that most of their bans are in high elo, where they are both basically perma-banned because when you can use hteir kit effectively, they're OP as balls. They're the same case as Azir, even when he came out and was completely broken, he still had a subpar winrate. And being op is not the same as having an inherently broken design.

Comparing that to somebody like Kai'sa is not really fair, because Kai'sa is universally more useful, and doesn't require the same amount of skill to pilot, which means that lower players won't do as comparatively bad as low-tier akali or Irelia players.

That's not to say I like Irelia's kit. Akali is prob fine now that they're cut out some stuff, but Irelia is a bit overloaded, sure. But to claim they're on the level of Trynda, Panth or Fiora is simply ridicules.

I’m not talking about how op a champion is, I’m talking about banrates IN EXCESS of what a champion’s power would pull. While both urgot (and kaisa and size when he was op) and irelia will both pull some bans becacuse of how op they are, irelia still pulls a much higher banrate than any other champion with the same strength. This excess banrate is due to how badly her kit is designed.

You point to several reasons why Kaisa would pull bans and get irelia still has twice the banrate. You point out reasons why urgent would pull bans and yet irelia has four times the banrate.

Champions like irelia and akali have banrates in excess to what their pick and win rates would dictate due to how poorly made they are. They aren’t on the level of panth, trynd, or Fiora, they are much worse design.

ZephyrDrakeMay 29, 20191 votes

"Fun" is a subjective term so using it as your whole premise as to why something should or shouldn't stay is laughable. What you find "fun" others might not and viceversa. Also everyone has something that they will find unfun or frustrating and that something will clash with others opinions every single time. This is not rocket science It's common sense. Every champion in the game has something that someone finds frustrating just like every single champion in the game has something someone finds to be awesome.

yuuum chanMay 29, 20193 votes

Right, so let's just put a champion into the game with a single point and click ability on a 2 minute cool-down that literally instantly kills whatever the person clicks on, including towers and baron. If you think that's bullshit game design, hey well, fun is subjective and all, so really, who are you to critize?

ZephyrDrakeMay 29, 20191 votes

[{quoted}](name=yuuum chan,realm=EUNE,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=kQeLNeYh,comment-id=00010000,timestamp=2019-05-29T20:28:49.539+0000)

Right, so let's just put a champion into the game with a single point and click ability on a 2 minute cool-down that literally instantly kills whatever the person clicks on, including towers and baron. If you think that's bullshit game design, hey well, fun is subjective and all, so really, who are you to critize?

Yes "fun" is subjective. If you want to criticize then don't use it "fun" as your entire premise for anything. Kits are OBJECTIVELY bad or they aren't. Kits are OBJECTIVELY unbalanced or not. Whether you find something fun or not is quite meaningless for the reasons I already said.

That ability you describe? It's objectively badly designed. Game design isn't a subjective thing and isn't based solely around fun. Now are you going to say something else or are you going to keep throwing "fun" like It's an objective term?

yuuum chanMay 29, 20193 votes

Game design is objective, but fun isn't? Oh fuck off, that's so bullshit.

We both know that 'fun' is a part of game design. The reason such an ability is bad game-design is that it's uninteractive, lacks skill-expression and counter-play. I.E, it's unfun and frustrating to play against, because you as the opponent has no real way to do anything about it.

The goal of every game ever is to be FUN, and when a game design is 'objectively' bad as you so idiotically put it, it's because it's unfun.

ZephyrDrakeMay 29, 20191 votes

[{quoted}](name=yuuum chan,realm=EUNE,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=kQeLNeYh,comment-id=0001000000000000,timestamp=2019-05-29T21:40:35.719+0000)

Game design is objective, but fun isn't? Oh fuck off, that's so bullshit.

We both know that 'fun' is a part of game design. The reason such an ability is bad game-design is that it's uninteractive, lacks skill-expression and counter-play. I.E, it's unfun and frustrating to play against, because you as the opponent has no real way to do anything about it.

The goal of every game ever is to be FUN, and when a game design is 'objectively' bad as you so idiotically put it, it's because it's unfun.

FUN IS SUBJECTIVE! You think that casual people have fun playing games like dark souls? Or some incredibly unforgiving game? You think that people who only like hardcore games will have fun playing games that offer them no challenge? Game design is not a "I feel, I hope" type of thing. You make things fair and from that is what leads to the "fun" aspect. You don't go backwards and say "I'll make this fun and then figure out how to properly design something".

[REMOVED BY MODERATION-NO INSULTS ALLOWED]

yuuum chanMay 30, 20191 votes

[deleted]

ZephyrDrakeMay 30, 20191 votes

[{quoted}](name=yuuum chan,realm=EUNE,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=kQeLNeYh,comment-id=000100000000000000000000,timestamp=2019-05-30T00:01:57.184+0000)

You are being painfully semantic my dude. For all intents and purposes, 'game design' and 'fun' are literally interchangeable in this context. You could swap out every 'fun' or 'unfun' to 'good game design' or 'bad game design', and the post would be literally the fucking same. I use terms like 'bad game design' and 'unfun' pretty much as synonyms in this fucking post, even. What you're doing is completely fucking unproductive and brings literally nothing to the conversation. You might as well be insulting my mom for all it does for the discussion at hand.

Don't sit on your high horse and pretend to be some sort of intellectual schooling me when all you're doing is harping on a poor choice of words nobody fucking cares about instead of actually engaging with the arguments. Either you're a troll that wants to annoy me, you're dishonest and don't' want to engage with the argument, or you're quite literally autistic and get unnecessarily hung up on details.

Never try to form a coherent argument ever again in your life.

Ok... for all intent and purposes you are wrong. Simple as that. You can keep believing that "fun" and "game design" are interchangeable things. Just shows how little you k ow about how games are actually made. Go ahead and keep pretending that I'll keep laughing all the way.

yuuum chanMay 30, 20193 votes

And now you're being painfully obtuse.

I admitted that using the term 'fun' was a poor choice of words, fine enough, but ultimately, it's also your fucking fault for getting stuck on the semantics rather than what I'm actually trying to say.

What you're doing is the equivalent of disregarding an entire analysis of Roman history and discussion about why Rome fell, and instead of harping on that somebody said that Julius Ceasar was born the 13'th of June instead of the 13'th of July. IT's completely irrelevant to the actual point and does nothing but distract and annoy people. I really fucking hope u realize this.