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Lee Sin Out of Place?

prepare2bSPANKED·5/3/2015, 3:20:22 AM·3 votes·1,019 views

I get a feeling that Lee Sin is becoming one of the most out of place champions in the game. For several reasons he is both a very toxic champ to play with and against and his power to be played as a serious champ in the current metagame is little to none.

In terms of win rates he is absolutely terrible. According to http://champion.gg/champion/LeeSin/Jungle platinum elo and higher Lee Sin players with 125+ ranked games played on him (so basically the best of the best) only manage to average a 47.72% win rate. Arguably the best Lee Sin player in NA, Blem, only has a 49% win ratio with Lee (https://na.op.gg/summoner/userName=blem ). Almost all of the League of Legends community acknowledges that a reliable way to win many games is to master one specific champion, but in Lee Sin's case complete mastery of him is still not enough to pull an even win ratio let alone climb. Even some of the "lowest tier" champions in the game (Elise, Syndra) still average >50% win ratios on champion.gg for players who fall into the 125+ games played category, but Lee Sin's over all power curve is so week that he fails to be viable even in the best of hands.

Another reason Lee Sin is "out of place" is because his early damage is so non-proportionate to almost all other champs, making him one of the most consistently complained about champions in board history. While Lee Sin is nowhere close to game breakingly strong he still is a very obnoxious champion to play against as he constantly bullies though the early game. The end result of playing Lee Sin is one team enjoys raging at each other as they throw 4v5 from a gigantic lead as Lee reaches his "useless point" as the other team enjoys pulling their hair out from obnoxious level 3 100 to 0's (while they evidently end up winning the game). I fail to see the fun involved with Lee Sin for either team involved.

I think what would be best for the champ would be reworks to his Q to make the moves damage scale better per level later into the game (similarly to the 4.4 proposed changes) and changes to his E to make its cc stronger at the early levels with lower early damage. That being said I'm not a member of a balance team but I think Lee would be best if he could be changed to maintain some of his early pressure while scaling slightly better. Thoughts?

TLDR Lee Sin is so bad hes not fun and makes everyone rage anyway rito pls.

13 Comments

Nucleophilic atk5/3/2015, 3:35:30 AM4 votes

Ya know...I might feel bad if he didn't dominate the jungle for the past 3 seasons.

kcStranger5/3/2015, 3:26:33 AM1 votes

For more or less the reasons you gave, I think Lee Sin is headed for a rework...eventually. Problem is, a lot of champions need some amount of rework, and reworks are almost as difficult as designing a new champion. Lee Sin is probably fairly far down on the list since he's (in an uncomfortable way) OK as he now is...essentially unparalleled early-game presence and versatility with a crap late-game/teamfight presence to balance it out. And LCS teams still pick him because he can be good if you snowball his early game. He'd be unhealthy if he were much better, and unplayable if he were much worse. The Lee Sindrome.

SEKAI5/3/2015, 3:34:05 AM1 votes

He is "out of place" why?

Think about such an occasion as having a Dark Souls character inside like say Warcraft 3, as one of the heroes you can acquire. You would have massive control over what he can do, his versatility brings unmeasurable assets to the team and he is almost never useless, save for the time he is just too numerically inferior in terms of stats.

Indeed you would need time to get used to his style and whatever, but once you get used to it there is just no one who can replace his significance. Hence assuming this hero is viable atm, everyone in the pro scene would use him because he is just way too useful.

That's the situation Lee is currently in, he is that Dark Souls character I just mentioned.

He doesn't belong to LoL, or his design philosophy if we're going to be technical. His design principles conflicts with LoL's design policy, and as such he was also receiving special treatment for years instead of getting an actual fix.

In short, rework this guy first, then deal with those that spawned from his image one by one later.

Darth Pixy Misa5/3/2015, 3:39:07 AM1 votes

It is kinda nice to not see Lee and Vi every other game. Cinder hulk will get a nerf and Lee will be usefull but hopefully not #1 Jungler. Lee still has 180% ad on his Q and 200% ad on his R. Leblanc only has 200% ap on her Q and R.