Why is Lissandra so unpopular?

Frozen Diva·10/20/2017, 11:45:30 AM·40 votes·8,357 views

I don't get it.

She can teleport (with a long distance!)
It's almost impossible to gank or dive her in lane because of that teleport
Her waveclear is good
You can stay longer in lane because of her passive
She is able to knockout a target from teamfights (shoulnd't this be OP especially because of that ADC focus right now?)
It's a guaranteed kill if you gank with Lissandra
She has SO much impact in teamfights with her dmg, CC and free zonyas...
Her design is amazing and creative lol

I experienced that she is a nightmare for Kata, Ekko, Talon, Fizz ... and short ranged champions in general. I see that it is easy to dodge her abilities as a long ranged champion. But this does not justify her current pick rate imo so... what is it? And what do you think about the impact of the new runes on Lissandra?

106 Comments

IxtaliKing10/20/2017, 2:35:55 PM51 votes

As someone who loves Lissandra but cannot play her I'd say its the 'clunkiness', mostly in the form of Inconsistent ranges and being slow (imo). A lot of people suggest she only needs a new passive or damage/range increases for her Q, however I believe she needs more fundamental changes:

Issues

Slow. She has 325 ms because of her teleport (fair enough), but her E is also slow to accommodate her instant CC.
Clunky. As well as slow ms and E, she has inconsistent ranges: 550 AA, 725 Q, 450 W, 1050 E and 550 R.
Counter play. The only real counter play to Lissandra is out-ranging her (which most mages do). Her CC is instant and offers no counter play beyond not being in range, which also sucks up her power budget.
Lacking passive. Her current passive does nothing for her theme and feels like a justification for high mana costs.

Solutions

Increase the speed of her E. Lissandra is offset by her MS, and her E is already a heavily telegraphed skill shot. Adding power here seem fair.
Update the W. Perhaps lowering the initial cast radius, then allowing it to be charged (like Galio's W) to 550 radius. Or perhaps updating it to be an actual 'Ring of Frost'. I think matching her W range to her autos would go a long way to improving her feel, since she wouldn't be encouraged to dive practically face 1st on to a target to be effective.
Spread her damage. I would suggest moving some of Es damage to the updated W, since it would have counter play other than "don't be in range".
Give her a thematic passive. No suggestions, but I have seen a ton of good suggestions floating around the boards.

JacctheInsomniac10/20/2017, 4:04:28 PM11 votes

[deleted]

Thefrostyviking10/20/2017, 4:06:28 PM10 votes

Damage, range, speed and lack of scaling are the main reasons.

Due to having CC and E her damage and range gets cut but that leaves her needing to go class cannon to really kill but that's bad on such a short range champ.

More durability means lasting longer and not dying after a 0,5 sec stun but it's pointless if you opponent survives and just unloads on you right after with enough damage to kill.

nm101010/20/2017, 12:05:44 PM10 votes

Low range 325 movespeed feels like shit to play, that's why I don't play her personally.

Salson10/20/2017, 3:37:23 PM6 votes

You have to balance CC and d.amage. She has a lot of CC, so she doesn't do a lot of damage.

She also: -Has no real passive -Doesn't scale hard -She is safe vs assassins, but ultimately lacks kill potential -Her ult is very strong in ganks, but it eats her power budget, making her weak when your jungler doesn't gank

Dr Dog10/20/2017, 2:06:00 PM6 votes

lissandras problem is shes pretty predictable because of her e's low travel speed and her q is way too short in the range department, if they just upped her e travel speed and q range she would probably be a very contested pick at in competitive play but right now taliah does everything she does but better

Kloqdq10/20/2017, 1:43:26 PM5 votes

She is so close to being a perfect Mage. Meddler did an amazing job on her. She is just tuned a little too aggressively namely because of when she was a stupidly powerful top laner.

Jackom110/20/2017, 2:28:17 PM5 votes

long distance, HEAVILY TELEGRAPHED, teleport. "HEY ENEMIES, I'M GOING THERE, GET READY TO UNLOAD ALL CC AND BURST!"
Unless either the jungler or the mid laner have some stun or root, in which case you spontaneously combust. Lissandra is pretty squishy, at least early game
Good waveclear, yeah
Unless you actually try to poke your opponent, in which case you go oom pretty fast. Also by mid game the passive becomes 90% useless.
Her R is very low ranged, and good luck trying to E into the enemy then R the adc. And even if you do, you probably won't have enough damage to kill him right away. You WILL be deleted though, unless you use zhonya and hope the rest of your team comes to your rescue.
325 base MS severly limits her roaming though
She's a decent intiator. Her burst isn't balls-to-the-wall amazing, unless you go full glass cannon, but then you more all-or-nothing than katarina.
Her design and theme is incredible, I agree. I really, really love her lore and her character overall. But her kit just doesn't hold up, at least not anymore. She's supposed to bring an avalanche to the rift, she wants to cover the world in ice. Her black ice is supposed to corrupt every living thing it touches. Hell, anivia has a skin in which she has been corrputed by lissandra (dark ice). In game though, she's got the power to throw popsicles and become untouchable for up to 5 seconds (R + zhonya)... mah gawd, that's not amazing at all.

I love her as a character, I really do. But I rarely get wet while playing her.

Cosmic Warper10/20/2017, 6:31:49 PM5 votes

She's short range, slow, squishy, and her passive is awful. Sure she has immense CC and engage potential, but her weaknesses are too glaring.

Yaskamasandwich10/20/2017, 1:25:34 PM4 votes

Requires the right person to play. Her range being so short is killing her right now. You could pick her or pick Orianna, Sandra, Azir now because he's buffed, etc. While Lissandra has to stun someone from a close distance, a lot of mage champions can erase someone from a distance. Range is a huge huge factor right now with the hyper carries bursting from a distance, TWITCH! Also I find Lissandra doesn't burst people but damages them down. Right now mages with burst need to burst those hyper carries down instantly or else everyone dies. Reasons Assassins are basically removed when their burst was delayed.

Having said all of that is she bad? I don't think so really just requires the right person to play her in this meta.

yoshi279010/21/2017, 10:29:38 AM4 votes

I love Lissandra, but she's trash atm. And I'll explain why:

Her passive is useless, 1 free spell every 17 seconds? Doesn't do much, also, it can be sped up by slowing a champion, but you need to use mana for that which kinda counters the benefit of the passive.
She has incredible mana issues. Mana costs are too high for the little the abilities do.
She's clunky. Especially her E.
Her range is too low to do well in mid lane, she's to much mage like to do well in toplane.
Her ranges dont make any sense. Q range is 725 while W and ~~E, sorry guys, typo ~~ R are 450&550.
She lacks damage. She can't burst someone. But you might think, if she lacks damage she might be a good support, but nope. Her mana costs are too high for a support, range too low to poke, too squishy to go in with E+W and her CC isn't good enough.

--> She lacks a specific role. RIOT has too either: Buff her mana and damage. or: Buff her CC and defenses. You can't be half tank half mage.

OyddAWqJ5r10/21/2017, 10:39:27 AM4 votes

You can stay longer because of her passive

Yeah that's how it supposed to work but in reality your mana costs are absurd to compensate for your passive ignoring them.

Really a pointless passive that could be removed and replaced with simple mana cost reductions on her skills.

Serika Zero10/21/2017, 11:25:26 AM4 votes

low range - meaning you will be close to your enemy if you want to do damage or wave clear absurd mana costs early - making your passive kind of useless in the early heavy skill shot based - hard to play small stun time on ultimate - 1.5seconds stun is very small

That's why. Hard to play with a quite stupid passive that doesn't provide much for your team.

Bootleg Gay10/20/2017, 1:12:25 PM3 votes

Her range for her Q is too short, it costs too much mana to justify a free spell every once in a while, and her base damages are just too low. She just doesn't provide enough for a team to work with unless they can instantly jump on the person she locks down, which isn't a long stun anyways.

Auroramancer10/21/2017, 4:44:45 AM3 votes

As someone who was super pumped about Lissandra's release and mained her for awhile before the mastery system was implemented, here's my take on why she is unpopular:

She has low base damage but great scaling. Meaning, she's strong when she gets items, and is weak if she doesn't, much more so than other mages.
Her primary modes of damage have short ranges, which puts her in danger if she wants to put out a heavy amount of damage.
Her passive is weak and feels bad to play around.
Riot made her claw indicator visible in terrain, which weakened her roaming power.
Her ultimate prioritizes herself over enemy champions, often leading to accidental self-ults when attempting to close range ult an enemy. (I have hotkeyed self casting spells, but I can't disable self casts when using quick-casting+mouse only, so this is especially annoying for me to have an accidental self-cast when I've trained myself for a hotkey combo for self-casts)
Lissandra's burst is based on combo'ing, and any moments of cast-preventing CC from the enemy team can throw off Liss's burst combo rhythm.
Her ultimate's damage has to spread to its maximum AoE, meaning even if you cast it in the middle of the enemy team, not everyone is guaranteed to take the damage or be slowed by the spell because they have so much time to run away from it.

Miku Append10/20/2017, 11:46:35 PM3 votes

Abysmal movement speed
Range is garbo
Probably does less damage than a Soraka support
Has the lane pressure of a level 1 Vayne

...and I hate this because I love Lissy. Concept wise, she is by far my favourite champion but Riot won't seem to buff her for God knows why. I'd love to see her passive reworked (I mean, its by no means a TERRIBLE passive, but its mediocre at best.) Adjusting her range would be nice as well. I mean, heck, I kinda wish her attacks functioned like an AoE with all that ice stuff she's got going on. Would give her a unique identity at least.

Hovering Hentai10/20/2017, 12:00:28 PM2 votes

She loses to a lot of other midlaners because of her range and top laners out damage or out tank her

Honestly though if you play her right you can pull off some of the most stylish kills in the game

OurLestrade10/20/2017, 12:00:58 PM2 votes

She's theoretically the perfect mage for me, but something about her just feels really clunky and off. Most of the time I feel like combos boil down to Ryze-ing the keyboard and hoping they die.

Hèntaî 10/20/2017, 4:21:14 PM2 votes

I had a game a couple days ago against a kass and he kept asking me doesnt liss suck, I showed him what was good. T'was great

Cowseed10/20/2017, 5:54:55 PM2 votes

If you're champ is good and unpopular consider it a blessing in desguise. No meta whores whoring them out, no circle-jerk, the champ gets a short of hidden power being as how people don't play against them often so you're game against them is often their warmup games against that champion, rarely will they ever be banned so you don't even have to hover the champ and risk falling prey to champ select terrorists. Honestly I don't understand why you'd complain people aren't playing a champ you like. When people started playing poppy it was the worst feeling ever.

Regaly10/20/2017, 8:30:35 PM2 votes

As someone who loves playing female evil champions (Ahri, Cass, LB, Syndra, Morg, Orianna, etc), I really like her kit. She's very unique and hard to master. But like someone mentioned, I feel whenever I am playing her, I am always on the edge of my seat. "Will someone follow me to kill this tristana?" "Should I ult myself or the carry?" "should I save my e for escape or engage?". This is all so reliant how your team is going to respond to your kit. I feel that if you want to be a liss player you need to constantly call the shots. If you call bad ones, you will die. If you call good ones, you might still die, but at least your team survived. This goes back to high risk low reward. It just doesn't seem that fulfilling unleashing your combos to then just dying. What does feel good is surviving after the teamfights. That's rewarding, but very rare. Her power is perfect, she doesn't need any buffs but more quality of life improvements. She's not a burst mage but also not a sustained mage, she's somewhere in between. Although I like that uniqueness, Riot should give her a better passive. Maybe for every person she cc's she gets a small shield (think of a lee sin shield), that's something small but that would help her in teamfights.

PapaGreg2110/21/2017, 12:09:41 AM2 votes

Short range, big mana costs, low damage.

Keitron10/21/2017, 9:13:44 AM2 votes

I honestly forgot this champion existed and i main Aurelion sOL

Daxanater10/21/2017, 11:36:41 PM2 votes

item 3504 + Lulu / Janna | Twitch + item 3140

ROYALR3IGN10/20/2018, 1:38:29 PM1 votes

No NO NO NO NO Stop I dont' want people picking her, shes my pocket pick, the less people know/play her the better I'll be at her. :D

Her aftershock - Zhonya - Self Ult is disgusting in teamfights hahha sleeper op

Smyrage10/21/2018, 10:43:46 AM1 votes

Because she is unique in the regard that she is a mage, but plays bit like an assassin and her kit was meant to punish melee characters, who rely on mobility. While other mages suffer against gap closers and high mobility assassins/melee fighters, Lissandra is unfazed by both of them. True they can still outplay her, but her E offers outplay moves as well. Her damage is eh and her mobility is eh too, but for some reason the latter doesn't prevent her from roaming, because she can just push the opponent back under the tower and she can roam safely. Ranged characters can give her difficult time tho.