It's sad as you climb you realize a lot of the champions you played become obsolete

Eyesack·Apr 14, 2016·89 votes·6,664 views

I enjoy playing xin but now when I play him i'm just a liability for my team as the other team can pick champions like nidalee, kindred, and gragas that are just way more impactful and stronger than all the other junglers.

and i feel like this isn't just a problem for jungle, this is a problem for all the lanes. So many champions are just outclassed. Seriously outclassed this season. You can tell because of how skewed winrates are right now. SO many champions are just absolutely absurd must-ban but theres only 6 bans.

183 Comments

L Psy KongrooApr 14, 201617 votes

I know this isn't just a jungle problem, but it does seem like this rings true for jungle more than any other role. These junglers for example Aatrox Fiddlesticks Hecarim Maokai Shaco Skarner Nocturne Warwick are unique, fun to play, and have distinct strengths and weaknesses in the jungle. But that's the problem: they're TOO balanced, or in the case of some, too weak and too exploitable in higher level play.

I'm not saying they can't work at all; I bet there are some Fiddle jungle mains in diamond, or Skarner jungle mains in master, etc. But when you're objectively comparing and contrasting champions, jungle is probably the least diverse role in the game. Why play Shaco when you can play Lee Sin? Why play Aatrox when you can play Master Yi? Why play Nocturne when you can play Vi? And so on.

Top lane kinda has this problem too, but at least there if the enemy picks Quinn you can pick Graves or Irelia. But if the enemy jungler picks Lee Sin..........who the hell counters Lee in the jungle?

ValknutApr 14, 20165 votes

Shyv an YI have huge weaknesses, they just build Devo either faster, an/or benefit more then other champs do.

The jg's with no weakness hardly jungle at all and are 10%farm/40%ward bot/50% gank pressure

tahmmApr 14, 201614 votes

[{quoted}](name=L Psy Congroo,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=s4z5Bqqi,comment-id=0001,timestamp=2016-04-14T20:17:21.422+0000)

I know this isn't just a jungle problem, but it does seem like this rings true for jungle more than any other role. These junglers for example are unique, fun to play, and have distinct strengths and weaknesses in the jungle. But that's the problem: they're TOO balanced, or in the case of some, too weak and too exploitable in higher level play.

I'm not saying they can't work at all; I bet there are some Fiddle jungle mains in diamond, or Skarner jungle mains in master, etc. But when you're objectively comparing and contrasting champions, jungle is probably the least diverse role in the game. Why play Shaco when you can play Lee Sin? Why play Aatrox when you can play Master Yi? Why play Nocturne when you can play Vi? And so on.

Top lane kinda has this problem too, but at least there if the enemy picks Quinn you can pick Graves or Irelia. But if the enemy jungler picks Lee Sin..........who the hell counters Lee in the jungle?

In what world is WW "fun to play"?!

L Psy KongrooApr 14, 20168 votes

{quoted}

In what world is WW "fun to play"?!

I dunno, I kind of like being an unstoppable duelist with infinite sustain late game.

I hate my ADCApr 15, 20163 votes

Supports have it way worst. You have to pick something that counter the entire enemy team and that doesn't get countered by your own team. Not just your lane.

Unlike other roles, Supports are gold and XP starved, putting them at risk of dying to any champion that have even the slightest of advantage over them when it comes to ability interactions. Once you left lane, you are already behind every other lane, even if you won your lane while the other enemy lanes lost their... because less XP and absolutely no gold.

First pick? Guess I have to play Janna... AGAIN.

Amélie CauchemarApr 14, 20168 votes

Gragas pre much shits on my entire roster, and he's a staple in diamond. So, I basically can't climb until he's nerfed lol.

Icestar1186Apr 15, 20163 votes

Expand your roster?

Amélie CauchemarApr 15, 20163 votes

{quoted}

Expand your roster?

Sure, lemme just go become diamond quality in an entirely different role with 7 different champions over night. That's totally not going to kill my mmr like it wasn't already just trying to learn ADC since derpamic queue decided I needed to be an ADC main this season.

J E B A ł T E DApr 15, 20164 votes

ever heard of any queue that isn't ranked? Stop being close minded, wake up and realize that there are several practice grounds you can use besides just going into ranked blind.

Amélie CauchemarApr 15, 20165 votes

{quoted}

ever heard of any queue that isn't ranked? Stop being close minded, wake up and realize that there are several practice grounds you can use besides just going into ranked blind.

Oh hey, let me go get diamond quality with champs by playing against a bunch of people who don't give a fuck and are playing off roles so they don't perform like actual ranked players, and to top the cookie off only one, or two of them are ever actually diamond.

Yeah, that's going to help! :).

J E B A ł T E DApr 15, 20161 votes

[deleted]

Amélie CauchemarApr 15, 20165 votes

{quoted}

then go bots retard! You have to learn the champ, and feeling bad for playing a normal game won't help. Don't go into a ranked playing a champ first-time outside of your one-trick range when you have no idea how to play it, then afterwards complaining on the boards about how you don't know how to play it!

Passive aggressive.. so unpleasant.

OH yes, go bots where you're fighting literal bronze 15 quality things that aren't even people to become diamond quality! :)

Also, you act like I'm a one trick.

Kindred Ahri Ashe Gnar Garen Akali Jhin Jinx Khazix KogMaw MasterYi RekSai Tristana Vayne XinZhao Nautilus Rammus Nocturne Diana Amumu Sejuani Talon MonkeyKing

One trick boiz!

It's just unfortunate that Gragas shits on almost all of them, and the others are banned out/picked on the enemy team.

I'm smelling a jelly bronze :O Should I check? Nope, just a silver 3 with a negative win rate =(. Tbh, it's just as bad though.

THE RlVER KlNGApr 15, 20161 votes

Except with the exception of Gnar, Reksai, and Wu, the other Champs you listed arent very hard to play. A person could pick up a ton of those champions for the first time and do just fine.

Not like trying to pick a fight or call you bad I'm just saying.

Amélie CauchemarApr 15, 20161 votes

{quoted}

Except with the exception of Gnar, Reksai, and Wu, the other Champs you listed arent very hard to play. A person could pick up a ton of those champions for the first time and do just fine.

Not like trying to pick a fight or call you bad I'm just saying.

You can say the same with every champion. There isn't a single "difficult" champion in the game.

but to show you the difference of what I'm talking about, and what that other dingle berry is saying.

Let's take Kindred for ex:

Can you perfectly animation cancel with Q + E and time it perfectly with your W to get off 3 attacks at the same time while dodging a diamond/challenger level Lee Sin chasing you with W + double E + Q and using flash to perfectly position him to kick you into his team. To extend this further, do you even know what determines if you can even fight this Lee Sin, or what items you can/cannot + specific conditions? Where would you even need to position yourself for this? Do you use the flash cancel your Q animation to get an extra shot off of it + reset your attack timer?

You don't learn that just "casually"

THE RlVER KlNGApr 16, 20161 votes

Nah, I probably couldn't perfectly animation cancel all of those abilities in quick succession, especially if I'm being chased by Lee Win.

I'm pretty sure I'm smart enough to figure out if I should fight the enemy jungler.

The question is, you say all that Kindred jargon, but I thought there aren't any difficult champions in the gam? And can YOU even do all that stuff?

Amélie CauchemarApr 16, 20161 votes

{quoted}

Nah, I probably couldn't perfectly animation cancel all of those abilities in quick succession, especially if I'm being chased by Lee Win.

I'm pretty sure I'm smart enough to figure out if I should fight the enemy jungler.

The question is, you say all that Kindred jargon, but I thought there aren't any difficult champions in the gam? And can YOU even do all that stuff?

If I couldn't. I wouldn't be diamond.

And there really aren't any difficult champs in the game.

Kindred in a nutshell is using auto q e w auto q auto q auto q auto auto.

How you use all of that will separate you from the rest.

There's a person with a video that describes it better than I can with footage.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ek7GByXkSmU

Watch it all the way through. You'll probably learn something tbh.

THE RlVER KlNGApr 16, 20161 votes

Yeah, I've seen that video. Scarra is a good source. Well, good for you; Kindred is a fun character.

ModIts Yuu and MiApr 15, 20164 votes

{quoted}

then go bots retard! You have to learn the champ, and feeling bad for playing a normal game won't help. Don't go into a ranked playing a champ first-time outside of your one-trick range when you have no idea how to play it, then afterwards complaining on the boards about how you don't know how to play it!

Passive aggressive.. so unpleasant.

You're really, really, really, really, really, really stupid for saying that.

You're calling him a "retard" when he's top 1% of the playerbase for not going against -bots- to learn.

You don't learn how to play at a Diamond level with new Champions from -bots-.

Who the actual fuck thinks you can learn from -bots- at how to better play Champions at a Diamond level.

Oh. Silver 3.

Gameplay and Balance in a nutshell boys. Silver 3, says something really stupid, calls a Diamond player who is calibers above them in level "retarded" because they flat out are incapable of understanding the arguments at hand.

Okay. Since you don't understand, let me actually break it down for you since you have a lack of experience.

Mechanics at a very, very, very basic level can be practiced in bots. By this I mean uh. Bronze and low Silver. That's it.

Outside of that, you learn how to mechanically outplay people when you're going against people at your level.

The issue is you can't do that outside of Ranked when you're top 1%. Because you have to face them in Ranked-- even -if- your Normals MMR is that level (and a lot of high rated players don't have high high rated Normals MMR because they don't give a shit in Normals), they're -still- unlikely to be providing the level of play you need to against to learn. Because they're likely doing the same thing, or, just not giving a fuck.

So if you can't go against people who are (and I seriously hate this word) "tryharding" outside of Ranked, then you want to learn how to play someone at that level because a Champion counters your pool, what do you do?

You can learn more Champions but to get that good it's not done overnight. It's done over a long, long, long period. To deal with a single Champion who could very well be nerfed right the next patch.

Or you can learn to deal with your counter, but it's significantly harder to learn at that level. Plus you're still countered and even though you may learn how to deal with it, a counter is a counter nonetheless and it'll still impact your winrate.

Gragas -is- stupid right now and -is- making it hard to deal with a lot of shit in games. He -is- a problem.

Telling someone they're a retard because they aren't using the AI to learn things is uh. Retarded.

The -only- thing "bot matches" are good for is learning stuff like animation canceling (Riven basically) and new Jungle routes.

You don't even do "bot matches" for those, you make custom games with only yourself. And those are the bare, bare, bare basics that still get you nowhere near Diamond level in the slightest.

But I don't know what else I'd expect from a Silver 3.

AwesomeChadApr 15, 20167 votes

This is arguably one of the worst metas for overall champion diversity. Yes, jungle diversity has grown which is good however the meta for other lanes have shrunk.

ViashinoWizardApr 16, 20161 votes

This is blatantly untrue. Outside maybe toplane, this is one of the most diverse champion metas we've had in a long time.

AwesomeChadApr 16, 20161 votes

No....it is true if you think about the game now revolves more around teamwork and how much importance and power neutral objectives (baron, herald, dragon). At lower elos it might not matter but at higher elos, it makes a big difference if your team can teamfight/deal enough dmg to kill the enemy and secure the objective.

LeetriApr 14, 20166 votes

To be fair, you can be competitive and carry with any champion, it's just more difficult. Ask any great player and they'll tell you the way to climb is to play the champions you're good at, not the FotM or "freelo" champions. I'm sure everyone has had that First Time Riven in Ranked who doesn't even know how to play the champion.

My Waifu VanillaApr 14, 20164 votes

This one. This is exactly what I tell my friends since if you really like your champion and do well on them you will almost ALWAYS best the FotM champs. This is for 2 reasons mainly. A) you know your champion better than they do (this is almost always guaranteed) and B) you know the lane match up WAY better than they do (last season I played Akali vs Darius so many times that it is not even THAT hard of a counterpick anymore whereas the Darius doesn't even know what an Akali is or does).

This is easier to do on "better" champions, but is not impossible on the fairly weak and "bad" ones (you might be able to kind of carry after 100+ games on someone like Aatrox, but I won't put my faith in you carrying me regardless).

NiyumiApr 16, 20161 votes

{quoted}

To be fair, you can be competitive and carry with any champion...

Not really true. If you're playing a more fun, complex champ into Team Brainless, you're going to lose. No amount of skill or anything can make targeted nukes miss you, and nothing will make your skillshots hit for more than a targeted ability. That's just not how an F2P cash grab works. The easy, boring champs just VASTLY outperform the more fun champs, regardless of how much experience you have / how much fun you have / whatever. And you can thank the fact that this game is F2P for that. ^^ Easy sells, and easy makes whales happy, so easy is all that is allowed to be strong.

LeetriApr 17, 20161 votes

What are these easy, boring champions with targeted nukes who vastly outperform everything that you speak of? And no, someone who knows the ins and outs of their champion with hundreds of games played as them is definitely winning over someone who picked Zed because he heard he was OP and has maybe 3 games played with him.

frozentimeApr 14, 20165 votes

[deleted]

MunchCrunchLunchApr 14, 201643 votes

ahri is one of the strongest champions if not the strongest ap mid in the game after that lux nerf

My Waifu VanillaApr 14, 201617 votes

Ahri has almost always been a relevant mid laner. Same with Orianna. Yeah, they might not always be "top tier" but they are far from bad picks and remain to both usually be in the top 10-15 mid laners.

MunchCrunchLunchApr 14, 201612 votes

i think ori winrate is pretty low now. control mages aren't doing well in general. ahri however has one of the highest winrates in the game overall

My Waifu VanillaApr 14, 20166 votes

Orianna's winrate has almost always been pretty low (except for when she was released, that was just blatantly overpowered). She is a rather team based champion, but is always a fairly strong pick and doesn't have that many bad match ups. She isn't Ahri or Lux strong right now, but I would definitely put her in the top 25% of mid laners where she usually is simply because of her reliability in a competent player.

The only time Orianna doesn't really do well is in a multi-tank meta since she is an AoE burst mage (that does have utility) and when they only have 1-2 threats it isn't worth picking her when you might only take out 1 damage threat.....might.

jdizzle367Apr 15, 20162 votes

Win rate isn't a good indicator on really high skill floor champions. Most people are going to play like shit for at least 10 or so games.

5050BSApr 14, 20161 votes

And when the Hextech Rocket Belt goes live she will be a nightmare.

NineTailedMysticApr 15, 20162 votes

As an Ahri player, I don't see the hype around Rocketbelt.

jdizzle367Apr 15, 20167 votes

Yeah I know right. All these people are hyping up rocket belt on these hyper mobile champions and I'm like but these champions are already balanced around their mobility and if i have 4 dashes why do I need an item with shitty stats for another. Its the ones who are immobile that you got to watch out for I think mid Cho'gath is just going to ROFLstomp with the item especially since they've been buffing his broken ass nonstop.

StainlessTweedleApr 15, 20162 votes

Not so sure but I think TF will be so scary with this item.

A Miss FortuneApr 15, 20163 votes

To be fair there's only like 3 viable AP Mids in the first place.

FoxstepApr 15, 20164 votes

[{quoted}](name=A Miss Fortune,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=s4z5Bqqi,comment-id=000300000003,timestamp=2016-04-15T10:23:31.289+0000)

To be fair there's only like 3 viable AP Mids in the first place.

LOL. Azir, Ahri, Zilean, Kayle, Katarina, Vel, Morgana, Anivia, Malzahar, TF, Fizz, Brand, Karma, Lux, Lb. They are all viable and the top four of the highest winrate midlaners are ap midlaners.

Serika ZeroApr 15, 20163 votes

Kat? Hahaha

EvilRabbittApr 14, 20162 votes

Jinx and Vayne are dead too. Just saying.

Troll for TrumpApr 15, 20166 votes

Jinx yes, Vayne not really. Unfavorable but not dead. She's doing better than Graves ADC (but not Graves everywhere else obviously)

My Waifu VanillaApr 15, 20164 votes

Jinx and Vayne depend on the bot lane "meta" too much. When bot lane is mainly late game carries they do perfectly fine (sooooo like all of s5). When bot lane favors early game dominance (Lucian, Ezreal, hell even Kog hits his power spike at 2800) then they just get bullied and are never allowed to scale.

Troll for TrumpApr 15, 20161 votes

Why does kog powerspike before Vayne? He definatly shouldn't powerspike before Jinx.

Jinx is also supposed to be somewhat of a lane bully with her Q rockets, though that has been nerfed.

She's weak as she is squishy, has no mobility to escape the bursty asssassins, and doesn't have enough damage to get through the tanks, and doesn't kite well without her passive up. She gets locked down easily too.

macromiteApr 15, 20166 votes

no no, that's actually fine.

jinx and vayne should both probably be locked as late game only or terribad spots, because they are both cancer if they aren't, for different reasons of course.

jinx breaks towers too fast, she always has, and vayne has the most of the most broken an unbalanced disaster of a damage style in the game, and should be pretty easily punished in general due to it.

My Waifu VanillaApr 15, 20163 votes

Why? Because his core items barely break 5000 gold (5400 for both Rageblade and Hurricane) while Jinx and Vayne need 6350/6400 to be somewhat relevant in terms of damage (IE+PD/Hurricane).

Kog actually is a mid game champion now since he really doesn't scale well in terms of damage (zero scalings of note on abilities outside of R execute) and Crit is terrible since 250% of 55% is lackluster at best. He is a sustained damage dealer that gets the damage necessary to be relevant (Rageblade+Hurricane) and then just gets bulky so he can pelt you for longer (which is why he usually goes for items like Steraks).

Auz the RipperApr 15, 20161 votes

Plus kog deals mostly mix damage so he can't easily itemize for penetration late game

ShinjusukeApr 15, 20162 votes

This is actually easily argued as a benefit: His mixed damage means that he can't really be itemized AGAINST, either. At least, not targeted itemization. Which means his damage is relatively consistent, which is quite a boon.

Similarly, a lot of Corki's strength comes from the same mixed damage output.

Auz the RipperApr 15, 20162 votes

It's a trade off that pushes him farther into "midgame champion" territory.

Midgame, mixed damage is stronger as there isn't good direct itemization to deal with it, but lategame it's a bit weaker as the tanks and bruisers get full build with sufficient resists.

MyScreenIsGreyApr 15, 20161 votes

Are you serious gangplank is no where near dead wtf

HeadHonchkrowApr 15, 20166 votes

He DID die, but he was resurrected by some people loyal to him and turned into a hobo man, remember [slayer-jinx-wink]

Only Play DariusApr 15, 20164 votes

Nasus is still my favorite champion, but I just can't play him anymore, not in ranked at least. At this point I only pick him if Darius is banned. You have to pray your team doesn't feed early and then wait 15 minutes before you can actually start stomping your opponent, can't stop them from TP'ing in front of you to go get their botlane fed, it feels like you get shredded to nothing in teamfights regardless of your tank items, can't splitpush thanks to no wards and death timers, Master Yi, etc. For every reason I can think of to pick Nasus, I can give 5 reasons not to. Can't remember the last time I did well on Nasus, played Garen for the 1st time in months, went 16/1, killed the fed midlaner who usually dooms Nasus, and it all took about 1/3rd the effort.

Even SirHcez hardly plays him anymore, and he loses every game when he does.