And then Riot Spake

MrSc0tty·Feb 13, 2015·125 votes·4,091 views

"And thou shalt not burst. All thine champions with burst shall be made as unto damp noodles, and all items which do grant burst shalt be removed posthaste"

"Excepting whether thou shalt land thee yon skillshot, then thou shalt burst thine enemy without having built any damage for thou hast displayed thine skill.

And Riot saw that this was good"

"Regard not the champs who do rely on positioning to display skill-for the in impressive nature of that display has made them cursed in the eyes of Riot, nd thou shalt not play these champs lest they be made as into the foam dart of a toy pistol.

Remember this, and may mobility always grant you its favor"

78 Comments

The Red WardenFeb 14, 201532 votes

"Point and click burst is toxic" ~RIOT

Zed is an example of a healthy champion ~RIOT

What system doem Zed's ult use, I wonder?

MrSc0ttyFeb 14, 201547 votes

[{quoted}](name=The Red Warden,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=rcR4Ziws,comment-id=0008,timestamp=2015-02-14T02:59:15.542+0000)

"Point and click burst is toxic" ~RIOT

is an example of a healthy champion ~RIOT

What system doem Zed's ult use, I wonder?

Obviously his ult is mobility the burst is his damage skills which are skillshots. Duh.

What do you mean he's using mobility to cast them from on top of you ? Use your own mobility to jump back silly goose!

Don't have mobility? Don't be ridiculous if there were champs without mobility we'd surely know.

Knight SoIaire Feb 14, 20152 votes

he uses mobility to make sure he hits everything and autos you while he is at it

KaisadiIIaFeb 14, 201510 votes

The most frustrating part of Zed is when you are playing something like Zyra and he uses W + point-and-click R to come from 1,000 range, then fails Q, fails E but lands you a basic attack and you are dead. And no matter if he's Bronze VI and you just snared him under your turret, he will spam RRRRRRRR to insta-teleport back 1,000 units away once the CC ends.

manbearswineFeb 14, 20156 votes

{quoted}

when you are playing something like Zyra

I think I've found your problem.

Frankly,It's not like lebroken is much better,hell even xerath is completely retarded to lane against(cause he was balanced around being against zed),I mean don't get me wrong,zyra-zed is pretty horrible,still better than zyra-yasuo/kass/leblanc.

just fight stupid with stupid,that's all the strategic depth this game has at this point.

ShinjusukeFeb 14, 20156 votes

Don't worry random poster, at least one person here won't downvote you for speaking the unfortunate truth :(

Yeah, the situation sucks, but ya'll have to acknowledge the situation sucks and realize willingly choosing to be on the really-shitty end of the situation and then whining about it isn't going to help you unless Riot magically gets some sense about balance.

-"Ow, shit I'm walking on legos while barefoot" -"Well, if you wear shoes that won't hurt so bad" -"NO FUCK YOU AND FUCK SHOES LEGOS SHOULDN'T HURT BAREFOOT PEOPLE"

^ basically what's happening. I know it's a really shitty balance situation, but don't downvote a guy for telling you "sorry everyone, Riot just hates your champion and if you wanna win you're going to have to play a different one for awhile". It's not his fault they play some of the worst favorites I've ever seen in the history of online games :(

Kuroi86Feb 14, 20151 votes

It's hard to classify Zed's ult. Unless he's insanely fed or deals a lot of damage to you, his ult isn't going to really hurt.

100% AD + 20 / 35 / 50% of damage dealt

It can burst you, but only situationaly... Not sure how else to put it.

Knight SoIaire Feb 14, 20151 votes

nah zeds ult is good at lvl1 when zed needs to rely on the explosion for finishing you off despite clinging to you for entire 3 seconds, it is the pinnacle of healthy assasination but then zeds ult breaks lose since his damage on basic skills rises much faster than enemy hp pool leaving his ult as a late game gapcloser/ escape while his targets die before the mark is even close to exploding from the rest of his kit, which is the pinnacle of unhealthy assasination

Kuroi86Feb 15, 20151 votes

Are we talking fed Zed vs unfed target with no peel or equal footing? A fed assassin is always going to look op until you consider the fact that they are ahead.

As far as transferring power on his basic abilities. What about changing the W bonus AD to only scaling on bonus AD itself. Lower the base damage on his later level abilities, but raise the scaling, forcing Zed to focus more on stacking AD instead of just getting item 3153 item 3142

Knight SoIaire Feb 15, 20151 votes

Are we talking fed Zed vs unfed target with no peel or equal footing?

any zed who got lvl16 vs a squish

Kuroi86Feb 17, 20151 votes

I'd have to test that. Especially with the new high AD builds. It's possible, but you're talking about hitting everything, triple Q, shadow slash, passive proc and any actives. I will look into that.

InsaneSamuraiFeb 15, 20151 votes

When does he ever do it without attacking you afterwards? When he made a bad play. What happens when other champs use an initiation skill and made a bad call? They die. What happens to Zed? He hits R again and misses out on damage.

Fair?

Kuroi86Feb 15, 20151 votes

If the enemy is lacking in the CC or damage to finish Zed, sure he can shadow out. A lot like most champs that can flash out of a bad situation, or jump, dash or blink. If Zed is CC locked though, hitting that R key does nothing until that CC ends.
I've tried Zed, and died a number of times from bad plays, Zed is a glass cannon and when you make a bad play, he feels like it.

InvalidGuestFeb 14, 201525 votes

The patch rundown is gonna be all like:

"Well, you see, Veigar could duel Zed lategame.

That shouldn't happen.

But he has a 2-hit Q now so it's all good."

Yeah riot I don't see how a Q that can only hit a person once is going to prevent Zed from vaporizing me or help compensate for the DFG damage.

NarasimhaFeb 14, 201525 votes

"Well, you see, Veigar could duel Zed lategame.

In what fantasy universe did this very happen? Please tell me so that I may find it.

Rew711Feb 14, 20155 votes

I did it 3 times, actually. But, it was more of a team effort than me carrying.

NarasimhaFeb 14, 201516 votes

I can believe the 'team part'

Because the second Zed builds Mercurial or even Banshee, that Veigar hasn't a snowflake's chance in hell.

rampaging poetFeb 14, 20153 votes

Meanwhile Veigar builds Zhonya's and drops his W directly on himself as soon as Zed ults.

windwolf777Feb 14, 20153 votes

Aaand Veigar is dead before the cage forms now with the nerfs item 3070 Veigar

JunkοFeb 14, 20153 votes

W is the meteor, not stun

KaisadiIIaFeb 14, 20156 votes

And Zed just spam R to insta-teleport back and pretend that nothing happened.

chumblerFeb 14, 20157 votes

{quoted}

And Zed just spam R to insta-teleport back and pretend that nothing happened.

It's a joke that people claim Zed takes more skill than Veigar, when Veigar has poor range, awful base stats, no defense, no mobility, no sustain, irrelevant autoattacks, awful last hitting unless he blows a Q cooldown, has to deal with an actual resource, and has to land more skill shots than Zed does to hit his full combo.

Kuroi86Feb 14, 20153 votes

Similar skill floor, though Zed had a higher skill cap, with the changes though, that could be a different matter.

AnruiFeb 15, 20151 votes

What are you talking about? Zed is one of the easiest champions in League to play. Because of his mobility, like Lee Win is is also super easy you can get caught out and still just jump away easy peasy. Mobility and skillshots =/= more skill. Mobility and skillshots are easy to pull off. Positioning an immobile champ with terrible base stats and defenses without being instantly exploded by this league of mobility creep is a feat of skill.

People forget how really important positioning is and how much skill it takes to do it properly. One misstep in a teamfight and either you are dead or your team is dead because you didn't get in and do anything. Zed ignores positioning. He presses R/W and he just skips away.

Kuroi86Feb 15, 20151 votes

What are you talking about? Zed is one of the easiest champions in League to play.

Easy to pick up, hard to master, low skill floor, high skill cap. Managing to get your full combo off on someone at melee range while avoiding taking too much damage or getting CC locked is harder than it looks.

You do have a point though in that positioning is key for immobile champs. My point before was that Veigar was previously a pure point and click champ. Even his skill shot stun was instant so it often was considered a skill shot in spirit only. But with the changes, it raises his skill cap in that you have to time and aim your shots now, not just where you're going to drop Dark Matter. With those changes, I'm hoping it opens the door for some buffs to Veigars stats, give him a slightly safer mid game hopefully.

AnruiFeb 15, 20151 votes

I agree. I don't really mind the change to his Q, but I still feel like putting on a delay on his stun is a bit heavy handed. You can call it low counterplay and frustrating but I don't see the problem in a very immobile champion who is also extremely squishy having an instant AOE stun with a relatively low cast range.

I don't have an issue with point and click spells at all really nor do I have an issue with skillshots. Both can be completely healthy for the game, but a low mobility champion desperately needs tools to compete with others who are very mobile. However, I agree that the changes do raise Veigar's skill cap potentially. We will have to see what the changes entail.

Kuroi86Feb 17, 20151 votes

I've seen a lot of people say they expect the delay to drop to .5 seconds and honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if we didn't see that happen, that or possibly an increase in the size of the hit box on the stun. Outside of that, I'm honestly expecting his AP scalings to go back up a little. Maybe increase the range on his dark matter and ult.

InvalidGuestFeb 14, 20153 votes

With DFG still in the game if you had caught zed in your stun you could kill him, although without DFG I'm not sure

LeeDarkFeb 14, 20152 votes

He's right, actually. Zed's ult results in very predictable positioning, allowing Veigar to set up the stun and Dark Matter before Zed even reappears on the screen. The full combo kills him before Zed even comes out of the stun. The flip side is that, as InvalidGuest said, Veigar could duel Zed LATE. He requires a fair bit of jungle support early and into the midgame, however.

A Superb VillainFeb 14, 201517 votes

Zed Ahri Akali Riven Talon LeeSin Leblanc Katarina Kassadin Yasuo Lissandra Ezreal "Amen."

Rew711Feb 14, 20157 votes

Hold it!

They took away almost all damage from Kassadin, we should be safe if we play as any of the others against him.

junglerboy16Feb 14, 20157 votes

Seriously? Have you SEEN Kassadin recently? His damage is just as high/higher than before because his W has an actual damaging component. His scalings are great and a stacked rift walk still hurts. He may have less than say leblanc, but he definitely has damage.

SookoFeb 14, 201514 votes

DFG Removal: the beginning of the slow but steady genocide of old school mages item 3070

GigahappytownFeb 15, 20151 votes

{quoted}

DFG Removal: the beginning of the slow but steady genocide of old school mages

dfg was fucking cancer kill urself in-game and irl It was the reason syndra was broken It made a lot of things that shoulden't be broken broken

SookoFeb 16, 20151 votes

{quoted}

dfg was fucking cancer kill urself in-game and irl It was the reason syndra was broken It made a lot of things that shoulden't be broken broken

I should want to kill myself for disagreeing with you?

Chaotic ReksFeb 14, 20156 votes

MEANWHILE

Ariel the CruelFeb 14, 20152 votes

SUDDENLY Karthus

SammystormFeb 14, 20156 votes

DFG was still a stupid item and it is good it is removed. Veigar does need love now though.

YormaughmFeb 14, 20156 votes

{quoted}

"And thou shalt not burst. All thine champions with burst shall be made as unto damp noodles, and all items which do grant burst shalt be removed posthaste"

"Excepting whether thou shalt land thee yon skillshot, then thou shalt burst thine enemy without having built any damage for thou hast displayed thine skill.

And Riot saw that this was good"

"Regard not the champs who do rely on positioning to display skill-for the in impressive nature of that display has made them cursed in the eyes of Riot, nd thou shalt not play these champs lest they be made as into the foam dart of a toy pistol.

Remember this, and may mobility always grant you its favor"

I've basically been saying this in every post I've made in the past 2 weeks. Just not as...eloquently?

Here's the thing though. It's exactly right, they've decided to remove burst damage from the game. First they made the jungle so hard that junglers can't carry anymore because they can no longer snowball and gank early (except the 3 that they somehow forgot about.) Now they're doing the same thing to mid-lane. They've removed DFG, and are reworking all "point-and-click" mages to have skillshots because "no counterplay" (which I vehemently disagree with but I digress.)

Here's the thing though, and bear with me cause this is gonna get crazy. They're doing it for a larger reason, and that is that they've discovered a problem with the game at large that these changes are aimed at combating: player mentality.

By removing burst damage they're removing most role's ability to "carry" in the traditional sense where they simply delete you if they hit you without suffering any strategic tradeoffs. They're trying to do away with the mindset that most players have that snowballing to the point where they can one-shot and delete the enemy team is literally how you're supposed to play. They're trying to subtly change the mindset of the players by forcing changes to the game that affect what type of gameplay actually works, and it's a different type that what has been working in the past.

They've also not explicitly stated this because they want players who figure this out and adapt to feel appropriately rewarded for decoding the hidden message. That message is "teamwork is OP, individual champions are not." Obviously they haven't perfected this message yet, but even Nemesis Draft is an attempt to send this message. Who read that thread the other day about "I suddenly realized all these "bad" champions aren't terrible and can actually be fun." I knew that thread was coming the moment I saw what Nemesis Draft was.

The reason "player toxicity" is such a recurring problem is because on every team arguably 4 out of the 5 members (everyone except the least played role; support) literally think that they're the hero, and they're the reason the team will win, and that the best way to win is if the other 4 people are all "supports" to only them, and assist getting them fed so they can hypercarry.

Yes, this is a generalization and doesn't always happen, but it happens a lot, especially in solo queue. In fact, in solo queue, sometimes even the support plays this way, not building support items, and ignoring teamwork and communication cause they don't trust their teammates and think they can 1 v 5 the enemy team once their idiot teammates implode on each other. I've watched enough twitch streams to know that this happens, even in gold and plat ELO, and to know that it's always a disaster. Most games of solo queue League of Legends aren't two teams fighting against each other, it's two teams fighting against themselves until one team defeats itself.

The theory is, if everyone understood that no one person is capable of winning by themselves, or that no one role was particularly better than any other role at "carrying," (in this case because without burst it's just too hard to do) it may change the amount of toxicity in the game.

In a team game like this it should never be possible for 1 person to win the game without the help of his or her team. But players are so damn stubborn that they'll fight against teamwork at every opportunity, no matter how much harder it is, and they'll always pick the champions that they feel "carry" the best, even though "carrying" is no longer the meta. They'll do this because most human beings are simply too selfish to share credit with anyone else.

This is a real problem, and it is something Riot should take seriously. I just happen to think that their solution to this: "nerf damage dealers, make poke and mobility, and longer fights the only things that matter, so that there's more emphasis on teamwork instead of individual play" is homogenizing the game by making every champion the same (mobility and skillshot poke,) and it's completely removing from viability the ones that can't do this (who are mostly older champs.)

Riot needs to solve this problem, but their solution is terrible because it's having a negative impact on strategic viability, making every game the same because if every champion can do the same thing, the ones that do it best are the only ones that matter and players won't stop playing for individual glory, no matter how difficult that path is to travel. These changes, though well-intended, are hurting the game more than helping it. Riot needs a different solution, but they appear to be all-in on this one.

MXXIVFeb 15, 20151 votes

This is a great comment, but note please that the Veigar in particular isn't really the case. He needs to be with his team. He can't duel tank. He can't win or escape from two or more players, which is what carrys like Marter Yi do.

In teamfights, he's often more support than carry, poking with his Q until he initiates with stun (if the team doesn't have better initiator). Then he shines for .2 seconds when he insta-kills enemy AP carry.

YormaughmFeb 15, 20151 votes

{quoted}

This is a great comment, but note please that the Veigar in particular isn't really the case. He needs to be with his team. He can't duel tank. He can't win or escape from two or more players, which is what carrys like Marter Yi do.

In teamfights, he's often more support than carry, poking with his Q until he initiates with stun (if the team doesn't have better initiator). Then he shines for .2 seconds when he insta-kills enemy AP carry.

I agree, which is why I play support Veigar. His utility (stun) is more valuable in a team fight than it is to just him. I don't think Veigar's burst was a problem because he was so dependent on his team to win, tanks and certain items shut him down very hard. But Riot and many other players felt he could carry too hard, so he is the latest victim of this style of gameplay changes.

GigglingAngelFeb 14, 20152 votes

Let's ignore his range increases and mana cost/cooldown reductions. Because staying negative is the cool thing to do.

MrSc0ttyFeb 14, 20155 votes

{quoted}

Let's ignore his range increases and mana cost/cooldown reductions. Because staying negative is the cool thing to do.

I'm not talking about anyone in particular here actually. Burst that doesn't rely on skillshots (even when the champ has mobility out the arse to land skillshots from right on top of the enemy) gets universally Nerfed while the skill in positioning required to play champs that aren't skillshot reliant is ignored.

KaisadiIIaFeb 14, 20152 votes

Well if they made his E a 3 second delay stun but costing 0 mana. Would you say that it is good?

I find perfectly fine that people complain about plain nerves even when they come with mana reductions. Trust me, once Zed has bursted you down dodging your E, the 10 mana you saved thanks to RIOT Rework™ won't help you.

GigglingAngelFeb 15, 20151 votes

{quoted}

Well if they made his E a 3 second delay stun but costing 0 mana. Would you say that it is good?

I find perfectly fine that people complain about plain nerves even when they come with mana reductions. Trust me, once Zed has bursted you down dodging your E, the 10 mana you saved thanks to RIOT Rework™ won't help you.

Yet, it's not 3 seconds. And they won't ever make it 3 seconds to make it costless (yes, you can hold me to that). It's less than 1 second.
It will still have a respectable impact in teamfights, at the very least, especially with the range increase.

InsaneSamuraiFeb 15, 20151 votes

People don't like when you take their free kills away. Then they turn around and complain about Zed who(while still quite op) at least had a small amount of counterplay avaliable. You can't even flash out of current Veigar's burst.

GigglingAngelFeb 15, 20151 votes

{quoted}

People don't like when you take their free kills away. Then they turn around and complain about Zed who(while still quite op) at least had a small amount of counterplay avaliable. You can't even flash out of current Veigar's burst.

Too true.

InsaneSamuraiFeb 15, 20151 votes

Seriously, when have you ever had fun getting instagibbed by Veigar because of his automatic stun and unmissable skills that will guaranteed kill you before you can even flash?

Just because Riot has obvious favoritism towards some champs with mechanics that are bad for the game doesn't mean they should stop balancing things all together. One of these days they're going to have to nerf Zed and Lee for real because you can only ignore the obvious for so long before we know you're doing it on purpose.

lokisprodigyFeb 15, 20152 votes

Seriously, when have you ever had fun getting instagibbed by Veigar because of his automatic stun and unmissable skills that will guaranteed kill you before you can even flash?

theres no way i can be the only one who absolutely loved the old school 0 mobility burst mage duels. some of the most fun ive ever had was in s2 as annie vs veigar. every step mattering, having to get into the enemies head and anticipate their flashes or hiding spots was really the first time i started to appreciate the skill involved in league. give me a fight between anivia and karthas, or annie and viegar over the URF-esque 0 planning/strategy clickfest that is fizz v zed or ahri v lb anyday.

InsaneSamuraiFeb 15, 20151 votes

It does sound like alot of fun, but those days are definitely never coming back. Riot loves the mobility and "big plays" too much to stop pushing the game in the complete opposite direction of this.