Combating Hypermobility Without Nerfing Champions Into the Ground

I'd like to prelude this post under the assumption that the viability of current champions, new champions, and champion reworks falls partly into the hands of their mobile potential, and define them as such below into three main categories.

Speed Ups - Self explanatory. W W E detonation E E R E etc.

Blinks - Any cast ability that warps the user to a different spot over a distance INSTANTLY, or with no possibility of positional interference on their way to it. Flash is an example. The most troublesome, yet useful, type of mobility on hypermobile champions. W, R second cast W second cast R successful cast R E auto-attack, R Q R R R E E etc.

Dashes - Any cast ability that moves the player around at a significant rate while still encountering collision with hazards (but usually not environmental) along the way, and can be damaged in the process of channeling. The most available type of mobility on hypermobile champions. Q W first cast E Q E R E Q R Q E R etc.

Now that the classification is here, I feel the need to state that not every champion listed is hypermobile, and want to classify those hypermobile champions under the ability to use their mobile potential in rapid succession three times or more, or the power to cover a wide amount of terrain in the single use of their mobile abilities.

Under these standards, the list is filtered down (roughly) to these champions:

...most of which are notoriously troublesome and prone to harsh scrutiny.

Play rates and ban rates are most notable for these champions, as they tend to excel more than most other types of champions when they become too powerful or overbearing - or perhaps they're just not fun to play against in a game... something supposedly built to be fun.

When these picks are dominant, the rosters of their respective lanes begin to dwindle in potency, limiting the top combatants to those who can match, or directly counteract, the hypermobility of the initial pick. Counterpicking is not a form of counterplay. Even if they are poor in the meta, hypermobile champions will remain a solid pick if power favors immobile burst mages or someone like Kog'Maw, because they're meant to be.

So, hypermobile champions will remain to be viable, as they have potentially the most widely valued attribute - Mobility. Second only to Damage, which most (if not all) of these picks also pack high amounts of. With the current lack of options, they will continue to play at the expense of most of the roster.

So, what could be a solution?

Not direct nerfs. These champions are, mostly, assassins after all; or they are a similar subclass. It's their job to quickly kill off targets, and--more often than not--escape from the trouble they've probably gotten themselves into.

TL;DR BELOW

The proposal is as follows: add new ways for many players to fight back against hypermobility. Ways that are fair.

Spitballing, some methods I've thought up are as follows, and have to do with the crowd control "Slow", which is available to many champions, and would make more sense, since Root (an anti-mobility form of crowd control) is effectively a 100% Slow.

1. Giving auto-targeted dashes like Irelia and Yasuo a penalty to being Slowed. Being Slowed reduces the range of which you can cast your targeted dash by a similar or lesser amount. Champions like , and any other tank or off-tank (or "juggernaut" in the case of Nasus) with heavy Slows built into their kits, would see more play top lane without needing to massively bloat their numbers like they did this season with Nasus's passive lifesteal or Mundo's R healing. The re-introduction of tanks in top lane would also encourage them to be played, and potentially help fight the increase in overall damage.

2. Physically slowing down the animations of dashes by a percentage in a scaling of the magnitude of any Slows they are currently under. This is the most awkward to implement, but this is spit-balling after all.

3. Render champions under the effect of unable to use any blinks or dashes whatsoever. This could cement Exhaust's placement back into the Support role, and make it a more viable summoner spell for other lanes as well. Less per game means less early death and less snowballing. This could ideally be used to set up ganks on hypermobile champions caught out of position and give an open window to engage and lock them down before they endure the spell's duration and escape. Having Exhaust in a lane would be a viable way to ward off aggression from assassins as long as you have it, more so than it does now - which is significant, but not enough to be worth equipping.

4. The addition of a strictly defensive item, ideally for tanks exclusively, that has an active single-targeted effect, or a very short range passive self-proximity aura that Grounds targets momentarily, rendering them unable to use any type of blink or dash. Tweaking would be necessary, but this would allow tanks to properly stick to their targets when they grab them, while still allowing them to get away as long as they play their cards right.

Riot will most likely not implement anything similar to this, or even try to add more significant utility into this game. They'll probably just end up adding more damage to an immobile champion when it gets shoved out of their role, but it's nice to think about.

I wanted to post this, because the way the boards deals with hypermobile high-damage champions is--in my opinion--unproductive; it oftentimes just degrades to ranting or rage with little actual suggestion. After all, that tends to be why Rioters rarely find credibility in what we post here.

Well, post what you think below. Thanks for reading.

[slayer-jinx-catface]