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A lot of League's class balance problems stem from how overloaded mages are.

Unironic SJW·7/2/2017, 12:23:29 AM·2 votes·786 views

Mages do too many things too well as a class. Best waveclear by far. Burst that competes with if not exceeds assassins which are supposed to be the burst/one shot class except they can do it from range. Highest range in the game. Access to a great deal of psuedo-defensive itemization (and what was Riot smoking when they gave mages access to item 3102 )that also gives a decent amount of damage. Strong at all points of the game, and some are actual hypercarries Azir Ryze Veigar Cassiopeia who actually encroach on the ADC DPS niche, except with more utility + range + burst added on.

So the knockon effects on other classes are:

Bruisers/fighters/juggernauts don't just have to compete with consistent DPS from the ADC, but psuedo DPS from the mage because unless they itemize heavy MR, they will be whittled down by skillshots and kited by mage utility. Assassins need strong MR options to do their jobs because nearly all mages have hard CC, and most have it outside their ults. Furthermore, because mages can not only oneshot a single target, but can potentaily oneshot an entire team, assassins become more and more redundant. Essentially, why pick a melee assassin if you can have a ranged one? ADCs HAVE to have "bursty sustained damage" because they have such a small window to work with when the mage's abilities are down, especially given their utility, defensive options and itemization. Also this isn't an option usually so they have to hit the frontline, which makes strong frontline killing tools a neccessity, but it's virtually impossible to be strong against tanks but not against squishies. Basically mage damage forces ADCs to have insane mid late game damage because mage damage forces them into frustrating and unsatisfying play patterns (focusing the tank). Tanks have to have attacker agnostic itemization (aka they have to have items that give both HP AND MR) or mages will chunk them out. It's interesting btw, that armor tank items tend to be gold inefficient, while MR tank items have had to be outrageously efficient (certainly old BV/SV were almost 200% gold efficient), despite there being more sources of physical damage than magic damage.

So something needs to go on mages. Either the utility needs to go, they need higher cooldowns, they need to operate at lower ranges, they need worse defensive itemization, they need less mana regeneration, or they need to do less damage (or have their damage gated more effectively, for example, Syndra should not 100% a squishy with just R) or some combination of the above.

19 Comments

Big Lincoln7/2/2017, 12:29:00 AM2 votes

DPS mages are fine in design (DPS shouldn't be restricted to marksmen) but otherwise I agree, mages as a class get too much at once

Paroe7/2/2017, 12:30:24 AM2 votes

Okay so im going to say this...

  1. Mages have less waveclear than AD champions past a certain point
  2. Mages waveclear is more costly than AD champions at all stages of the game
  3. Mages have resistances in their items, and actually pay a lot for it.

Riot has gone in a direction of "marksman are the be all-end-all of everything. They fill every role and position with the highest sustained burst in the game", which means making mages have less AP in general and making them artificially tanky by adding strong resistances to their main items so people are less likely to pick anything but the strongest burst mages. Also.... your examples of mages arent even meta, and all belong to the battlemage group which is supposed to be tanky and spammy.

Perhaps you should learn what overloaded actually means and how many tradeoffs mage kits make that AD kits do not despite their itemization being homogenized and nerfed heavily over the last couple seasons.

J4 Ulted Mexico7/2/2017, 12:32:54 AM1 votes

Calling azir a hypercarry xd

Unironic SJW7/2/2017, 1:24:08 AM1 votes

okay now you're actually making shit up at this point.

Core AD items are 3400 gold. The Zeal items are cheaper than say, Zhonyas (after a buff) but Zhonyas, BV are more gold efficient. ROA is gold efficient 2 minutes after you buy it. GLP is 105% gold efficient, Gunblade is 120% gold efficient WITHOUT the fact that it adds an extra AP scaling spell to your rotation (whereas BORK doesn't do much damage anymore).

Mages are more immobile but their threat range is between 800-1200, they almost all have hard CC, and many of them can burst an enemy squishy with one or two abilities.

Requiemsfire7/2/2017, 1:26:10 AM1 votes

I think it's more the tremendous skill gap and how snowball artificially increases or inflates a champion's actual strengths but that's what keeps the game interesting.

Unironic SJW7/2/2017, 2:42:32 AM1 votes

because having hard CC on basic abilities > having hard CC on ultimates lul. also "slows are the same as suppresses/stuns/roots" is very intellectually dishonest because anyone can tell they are not remotely comparable. Especially from the ranges most mages can toss out hard CC on basic abilities. And if you want to call TF and Kennen a marksman then Varus and Jhin are mages.

Also if you're 1 on 1 against a late game Vayne and you throw your stun out preemptively for her to tumble, that's a misplay.