Damage, mobility, CC, range, and a combination of are all related to counterplay.

Malza·6/12/2018, 5:18:21 PM·3 votes·2,089 views

If we push any of these to the extremes a champion quickly has no counterplay whatsoever.

If an ADC had 2000 range auto attacks and 20 base AD, they’d win every single game. If irelia had 10,000 true damage AAs you couldn’t do anything. If irelia had 2,000 MS you couldn’t do anything. If a champion could permastun even if they did no damage whatsoever you couldn’t do anything.

Inherently being extremely lacking in something like mobility, range, damage, or CC gives you opportunities to do something vs a champion unless they’re pushed to an insane level in another area.

Increasing damage, mobility, or range inherently will decrease counterplay vs a champion even if some counterplay still exists and even if it’s not increased to insane levels.

4 Comments

I Support Solar6/12/2018, 5:50:16 PM1 votes

I'm not sure if the theorycraft arguments ever work for riot. They seem more data-driven.

The player base as a whole usually catches on to which champions they really, really dislike playing against and bans them. Riot can then usually figure out to nerf the champions (or group of champions if they are all the same role) that typically get banned or have crazy high win rates.

I just find the posts about how Irelia has a high ban rate and win percentage more convincing. (I'm assuming your above post is about Irelia.)

Colton1476/12/2018, 6:14:37 PM1 votes

Renekton item 3508

Perma-stun.

Teridax686/12/2018, 11:53:31 PM1 votes

I very much agree with the core statement here, even if I take some issue with the manner in which it's presented (the OP gives examples of how min-maxing is bad, but then argues that champions shouldn't be overloaded). I very much agree that any champion should not only have clear strengths in weaknesses, but should also have a certain set of things that they categorically lack. I think we need far more champions lacking in mobility or CC, for instance, and I think the rule to follow should be that a champion shouldn't have something unless it's meant to be a core contribution of theirs.

With that in mind, though, being lacking in something is different from not being able to respond to a certain situation. I think every champion should be lacking in certain things, but I also think every champion should also be able to have at least some choice when faced with an adverse situation, even if it's not some perfect counter-answer. One of the reasons why Kalista is so unhealthy to play against whenever she's strong, for example, is because she counters champions lacking in range and mobility so hard that they effectively don't get to play at all when she's around. On the flipside, one of the biggest problems with juggernauts is that many of them can't do anything if the enemy team is even remotely competent at kiting.

This isn't to say that every juggernaut should be given range, mobility or both (in fact, I think they could probably have even less of either), rather, I feel some of their defensive power should be shifted onto features that are appropriate to them, while still giving them more choice overall, such as mechanics that let them resist CC. In the end, they'd still be lacking in range and mobility, but would be able to afford that precisely because they'd have access to stuff others don't. This, imo, is a philosophy that should be extended to all champions, and that should probably be used to cut deep into a lot of overloaded kits.