Champion Complexity is Too Damn High!

Hi boards,

I have noticed quite a number of players, on the boards and otherwise, discussing certain "Outdated" champions. Ones which supposedly need to be updated to suit "modern" league. I feel this is the wrong direction to go. If you would like to hear why I believe this, strap in and keep reading!

[slayer-pantheon-popcorn]

Champs like or , who have shortish range, simple kits, point and click spells and CC have seen some attention recently on these boards suggesting updates to help them keep up. And aye, they might benefit from them. But I have one plea for riot should these changes occur: Keep them simple.

Point and click champions need to exist. Stat check champions are necessary, or there is nothing meaningful to outplay. League is not a fighting game, it is a MOBA, a strategic team game that at its best is capable of supporting an incredible chess-like ecosystem of champion archetypes that are far more than the simple "lul 420 outplayed me edgy" champions.

Imagine, if you will, a world where every spell was a skillshot, such as with . As exceedingly mobile champions sail across the rift, a beleaguered legion of reluctant sharpshooters struggle in vain to hit the as they sail freely through the air. Feebly sipping their coffee as carpal tunnel sets in and frustration mounts, the screen goes gray.

Numbers definitely need to be kept tuned low on simple, point and click, champions, but they NEED to exist. With each older, simpler, legacy champion to be reworked and removed, a little bit of league history dies, and league becomes ever more frustrating to play as high-skill difficult champions predominate. Part of why league feels so volatile at the moment is simply the fact that playing sub-optimally on these champions causes such awful, unavoidable feeding.

Although I understand the frustration of seeing those older champions unable to compete with the new generation of extremely overloaded, book long kits, I want to pause to briefly argue for the beauty of these older, simpler kits...

Older champion designs, with simplistic, limited kits, and defined strengths and weaknesses, are being phased out. E.g Old , ,,,

One thing all of these reworks have in common? All of them (Save Kayle possibly, but I have specific issues with her I will write about later) have been much, much harder to keep properly balanced, and are significantly more frustrating both to learn and to fight against than their prior iterations. The difference between their ability in execution between divisions makes them an incredible nuisance in higher elo (Tired of seeing them in streams), and a much greater liability for the 95% of the player-base that simply isn't that good at the game. If this pattern continues, I will soon have nothing to play as all of my beloved old clunkers will have been replaced with hyper-mobile complicated messes.

Many of these reworks have exceedingly long, complicated, multi-passived and multi-parted kits that have so many moving parts it is little wonder that the balance team often takes several patches to tune these champions.

In the interest of maintaining player interest in new releases, and to pursue an ever shrinking design space for new champions and rework ideas, Riot has made increasingly complex, difficult to balance, and gimmicky champions and reworks. Although this is understandable, steps need to be taken, and soon, to reduce complexity creep to a bearable level.