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What China knows about the game that NA doesn't

Rock MD·6/23/2019, 6:22:40 PM·6 votes·1,541 views

I was looking at a ~3 month old research piece done by Riot. It was a survey over most favorite champions, and what champions were most unfair. This survey covered multiple regions.

For NA, the least fair champions were Zoe, Yasuo, Tryndamere, LB, Akali, Rengar, Fizz, Yi, Mundo.

If you ask anyone here, I'm sure this doesn't surprise them. All of these champions feel fundamentally frustrating to play against. Barring Mundo, they're super aggressive and it feels like there's a point in the game where you absolutely can't win against them.

Again, barring Mundo, they all share the common theme that they have high mobility and high damage. This is consistent with what people complain about on boards.

But what are the least fair champions in China? Ivern, Urgot, Mordekaiser (pre-rework, again it's a 3 month old piece), Heimerdinger, Draven, Nunu, Udyr, Shaco, and Singed. The four I want to look at particularly are Ivern, Heimerdinger, Nunu, and Mordekaiser. Look at their playstyles. Heimerdinger drops turrets, autoshoves, and you have no method of interacting with him. Nunu takes your camps and doesn't die. Ivern avoids interaction in the jungle and just blocks your ganks. Mordekaiser shoves and you just hope your jungler ganks.

China's stance on NA's unfair champions is at least you can scrap with them. Even if they're obnoxious you can interact with these characters. And that's the one thing that I strongly feel NA is missing. We have this huge emphasis on strategy and playing smart but sometimes we totally ignore that damage and damage picks are integral pieces in this game. NA thinks that we should have low damage to make the game, "more strategic." but the best ADC in the game right now is Sivir and I don't feel strategic when I see her picked. I feel like the person just wants easy wins since the champ is autopilot-tier. I've only seen her complained about once on this board and it was just brushed off, despite her massive pick and winrates.

Same thing with Yuumi. You think that being snowballed on and unable to venture out safely is unfun. Try being blocked off every time you engage, locked down, and killed while your team slowly suffocates under a comp that will outscale you. You're just waiting 10 minutes for your impending loss.

That's what NA is missing. Just because a champion isn't high damage & mobility, doesn't mean it's a strategic pick. Control styles have consistently led to some of the most frustrating comps and playstyles in existence. Maybe tanks need new toys, maybe they don't feel satisfying right now, and we can address that, but I do not want a tank meta and I don't think you should either.

13 Comments

The Ecdysiast6/23/2019, 6:58:18 PM6 votes

Anyone who actually knows anything about the game will say unfair champions are the ones who-- when they're strong-- you can't interact with.

Mundo is not currently unfair because he's currently weak. But that isn't always the case. Same for champions like Volibear, Udyr, Jax, etc. The ones with very simple kits have no counterplay when their damage and defenses are high enough.

bronze smurf696/23/2019, 6:39:53 PM2 votes

Thing about champion fairness, 1 can say Yasuo is unfair, but another can say Yasuo is fair.

Which begs the question: Who's right and wrong?

The Chinese servers can view these champions as unfair but maybe they're not, while NA can view these champs as unfair but maybe they're not.

Hell, I view ct's champions as unfair garbage, but the Chinese servers probably faps to these champions like a god or some shit.

haaaaaaalp6/23/2019, 11:23:29 PM2 votes

The differences seem more like the question being asked didn't translated well between each language. The NA players were answering what champions they felt was not fun to play against and the chinese players were answering what champions were not interactive to play against. The specific words were probably close approximations on a superficial level but didn't properly convey the same meanings.

I would be more interested to see how these answers translated into what people banned in china (since it is the only server that most stat tracking websites don't readily have information for).

Pika Fox6/24/2019, 1:07:40 AM1 votes

I think the better statement is that the general LoL playerbase doesnt know jack about how game design works, or what is actually fair or unfair, toxic or healthy.