When someone says a champ is healthy or unhealthy they rarely tell what healthy or unhealthy means. I don't know about you guys but I have trouble discussing when the basis of discussion is so vague, clearly lots of you have a good idea of what it is. Can those of you in the know tell me what healthy and unhealthy gameplay is?
Healthy generally means the champions has distinct strengths and weaknesses, and windows of opportunity for the opponent to try to get an advantage over them. They're generally also not overbearing or overly abusive against opponents unless they have a distinct lead. A healthy champion also has a kit that isn't suffering from the ravages of time either. An example of a healthy champion in the current game would be someone like Warwick or Lux.
An unhealthy champion is the flip side. They can either be incredibly oppressive in lane with little to no item investment, or they can be absolute invalids. If they're strong, it's usually because they have too much utility or too many free stats granted by abilities and passives that grant them strong advantages over opponents who have no way to react. They also tend to close any windows of opportunity to punish them with "skill," or excess elements loaded into their kit (the overloaded argument). Examples of unhealthy champions at current are Aphelios and Ekko. Yuumi was considered unhealthy, but recent nerfs have slashed her strengths, though she's still frustrating for opponents to play against since she's mostly untargetable. As for champions who are invalids, examples are like Corki and Skarner, who's kits have been ravaged by time in a game that has evolved to the point where they can no longer realistically compete against other champions outside of specifically niche conditions.
Depends on poster. A lot of folks healthy is "shit my champion beats" And unhealthy is "anything good vs my picks WTF RITO NERF."
Others its a numbers side. Healthy is being statisticaly in line with a majority of their class/role.
Some its just their gut feelings, is it fun to deal with or un fun for example.
Healthy champions are champions like 
.
Clear strengths: decent utility and a strong teamfight ultimate, decent laning, never really useless.
Clear weaknesses: Lack of mobility, Squishy, not able to blow people up on equal ground, shockwave requires a teammate's help or an enemy mistake for maximum effect, Everything's a real skillshot. (For reference a fake skillshot is akali Q, yasuo q etc: Fired at point blank and the opponent can't make them miss.)
Has all the tools she needs to succeed if she's enough better than her opponent. It's somewhat difficult to quantify since there are so many champions that break that mold these days, but we'll say it like this: Orianna has the option to beat your average midrange mage, but also has the option to lose to them, and either way neither party is completely shut out of the game. She's expected to take a loss to longer range opponents without some sort of help, but if you're good enough and can outplay you have the option to win those matchups too. (I would reference Melee here too, but there are 0 healthy melee midlaners at the moment, so it's a waste of time. I guess if jax went mid she might be able to get one over on him.)
Unhealthy champions are champions like 
. Low hanging fruit I know, but she makes the point so well.
Unclear strengths: Assassin bruiser mage tank, she can basically do whatever she wants.
Unclear/nonexistent weaknesses: Not squishy, no lack of damage, no lack of personal utility, no window of weakness to be exploited.
Has all the tools she needs to succeed and then a whole other toolkit on top of it if she happens to bungle the first one so hard it can't be salvaged. She has 3 gap closers, none of which are lacking in usable range, enough damage in 3 damaging abilities to make room for one of the strongest utility spells in the game, all of which give her dps from her passive and one of which is largely spammable on its own (energy gated lul). I'm not going to go further into what's specifically wrong with Akali or we'd be here all day. She 's intended to be an example not a case study. Sufficed to say, she's a prime example of the overload problem at least for one.
Now let's talk about unhealthy ideas in champion design as opposed to specific champions now we've got at least a benchmark.
We have the overload problem as mentioned previously: Champions who just have too much going for them be it an extreme excess of damage, mobility, tankiness, utility etc. We see it as frustrating to play against and the 'argument' of either don't engage with them or you're not good enough to outplay misses a good bit of the point. Overloaded champions aren't too hard to play around, they're too easy to play or they shut out too many other options. Windwall is too forgiving, shroud is a non-interactive 'oh shit' button etc. If the champions in this category are played even semi competently it's not necessarily possible to be enough better than them to get around their advantage.
We also have the Inevitability problem: Not necessarily just for stacking champions like Nasus, Veigar etc. who scale into infinity if left unchecked, we can also apply this to basically the entire assassin class. Assassins scale Really fast into their effective power, much faster than mages, carries or tanks. Akali needs 6 and she can kill you with components, Zed needs 6 and he can kill you with components and so on down the line. No poke necessary, just all in with effectively or literally unmissable abilities. It's a race against the clock to build an insurmountable lead before they get to their power spike, and if you fail they just win from that point on. This problem also exists in bruisers, who can just run in and statcheck people to death, Vayne who does effectively the same thing, and oddly enough Pantheon who works basically the opposite. His scaling still sucks so he's racing against himself before he falls off the cliff against anything at all. Also unhealthy, but only really for him as opposed to for the rest of the game/players.
And lastly, at least for the energy I have right now, the Imposition problem: Champions who impose their will on the game one way or another whether the friendly or enemy team like it or not. Nasus stacks, it's what he does, and the game is basically decided on whether he succeeds or not. He gets it done? Great, pretty much instant stomp. He fails? Well now you're effectively 4v5, or literally 4v5 while he tries to stack up anyway despite being 0/12. Maybe your wincon was supposed to be the fed azir in mid? Too bad, you're playing around the Nasus. Let's say you've got a perfectly reasonable comp: 
. Seems perfectly reasonable, multiple wincons in Darius or Cait going off in the late game and playing around them. Even Ahri can make picks and whatnot. You have good engage, good peel, it's all perfectly straightforward and sound. Now drop a fucking 
in for J4 or Darius and your comp instantly turns from standard issue to 'muh splitpush'. The champion can't do anything else, so either you're in a 4v5 loss or the tryndamere solo splits the win. Game warped around one players pick over the comp? Success. 4 other player's actions effectively invalidated on the allied team to make way for the splitpusher? Check. up to 5 players invalidated on the enemy team because the game is decided by whether or not their one guy can get it done vs the tryndamere? check. Game ruined for otherwise well meaning folk? Check.
Obviously there's a lot of generalization here and a non 0 amount of salt, but hopefully the concept gets across okay.
I usually chalk healthy when I'm complaining about it up to: For champions:
- Fun to play as "Are they strong enough to succeed?" At its most base level, you need power to win at League. Is a character strong enough to do what it's supposed to? Can an assassin kill an out-of-place squishy? Can a tank disrupt and survive a teamfight? Can a support save its carry? A healthy character isn't one so weak that only people who one-trick them can have any success with them. "Are their builds flexible?" I dislike an enforced meta. I'll begin with this disclaimer. I dislike being forced to build adcs only as adcs, tanks only as tanks, and bruisers in general (get to that in a bit). I like being able to build ad, ap, or even a mix of both. I like taking supports as heavy damage solo lane mages and vice versa. I love love LOVE AP MF. Champions like zed or jinx who can really only build and succeed one way aren't appealing to me. "Are they fresh?" MOBAs thrive in variety. It's healthy to have unique champions that do things differently or through different means. ADCs mostly just move and attack, but they vary wildly in how they do it. Ashe locks down enemies with sustained cc, MF clears the battlefield through heavy aoe damage, and Lucian dashes around the battlefield.
-Fun to play with "Do they give you space to shine?" Being carried is no fun. If a champion when ahead can single-handedly crush the enemy team, it's not healthy. You see this in a lot of CertainlyT champions and that's a problem. "Do they contribute to your team?" Can a champion participate in a variety of team comps and strategies? Or are they a one trick pony? Do we have to play around a Yasuo or is he good for being more than a carry? "Can you understand them?" Is a champion confusing to play with? Where the hell are you during Kalista's ult and what's your range? Even if you don't play a champion, you should be able to understand what they want to do and how they might do it. The effects of a champion's abilities should be intuitive, not sending people in a wild direction or making them invulnerable.
-Fun to play against "Are they too strong?" Is the champion too overloaded with effects and abilities with unjustifiably good stats? Do you feel like you could win against them, even when you're behind? Most everyone is guilty of this right now. Being erased in 1-2 seconds is not fun. It isn't balanced just because anyone can do it. This also goes in defense where some champions are simply unkillable, either due to tankiness or self healing. "Can you play against them?" Not fighting a champion is not counterplay. Avoiding them, running from them, and 1v5ing them are not counterplay. Your lane shouldn't be decided at the champion select screen. A healthy game is one in which any champion can win or lose lane against any other champion. You can still have counters which make it harder to win, but it should not make it impossible. "Are their mechanics fair?" Is the hard cc too long or too accessible? Wind wall? Do you feel helpless against the things they do? Does the mechanic make you unable to deal any damage to them like Akali's offensive shroud or Tryndamere's ultimate? Does the mechanic make counterplay impossible, like Master Yi's Q or Olaf's ultimate? Do they move, dash, and teleport too much for you to fight back? Does it lock you down and trap you with minimal effort like Morgana Q or Veigar E? Most of these problems can be balanced, say by decreasing durations and increasing cooldowns but that isn't the direction League is headed in, so it sits as something very unhealthy.
I'll continue on other stuff further but I gtg
It is a mythical concept that is said to have once existed in this game
"Healthy", although a vague term is very descriptive concerning the qualities of a game feature when playing with and or against that same said feature or the very things that revolve them. Sometimes being unhealthy can resemble a champion who can fit into playing and building into any role without any sacrifice, doing too much sustain/damage/cc, or even the fact that the champion just isn't good in the game at all. For example, Corki's pick rate and play rate aren't healthy. Or as another example, for Nasus to over sustain, 1v5 (doing a lot of damage) and play as a tank is also just as unhealthy. I hope this helped.
Allot of people misuse the word. The easist way to look at it is if x champion has a kit that is really crazy they are either way to strong or forced to be nerfed into near uselessness. That's why there are some champions intentionally that are weak because their kit is unhealthy and if they were anywhere near viable they would just dominate. Take tahm kench for example he was hit with so many nerfs the past year because he was unhealthy with pro play. In regular games tahm had a low winrate despite that he got giga nerfed. Even after insane nerfs pro players will still take him because his devour in cordinated play is unhealthy
I know I'll get massively down voted for this, but there is not much correlation between "healthy" and "balanced".
"Healthy", just like "fun", is relative. What I see as healthy kits may get me flayed by the boards, and the other way around, what some people see as healthy makes me look at them wondering when they will discover fire.
I tend to look at a kit without taking any numbers in consideration. I look if it can be punished, by what and why, I look at strengths and such.
The reason why I don't take numbers in consideration is because Riot still didn't decided to stop balancing for Jhonny from Plastic 12. Look at the last Sylas change, "he's too hard to play so we make him easier". Until the mentality of "Everyone has to be able to carry with everything without putting too much time into it" goes away, numbers should never be taken as the major reason for something being healthy or not.
it beat me in lane and it made me angry >:( RITO NERF NOW OR I WILL CRY
Healthy gameplay: fair for both players, given both champions are on equal footing, or simply playing to their advantage without being too overbearing
unhealthy gameplay: low or difficult counter-play, (champion is almost impossible to beat, without either extraneous circumstances or solely through player error)
best way to try and explain it. please note also, fun IS NOT a factor in these kinds of things, simply because no one has "fun" when losing repeatedly to the same champion, therefore its usually biased to say something is unhealthy rather then considering other factors. its a case by case thing but usually before judging whether something is healthy or not consider:
Argument can be made that Ivern is the healthiest champ
Ivern = tree, leaves, etc. = oo nutritious = healthy
Side of green beans with a main of fresh roasted chicken and a handful of nuts,
