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New way to balance energy based champs

Ben119·2/18/2015, 8:46:05 PM·2 votes·768 views

I've been playing lots of the energy based champs that are considered strong if not OP. I got to thinking about how they could be balanced because currently everyone says "pay for their mobility" usually meaning they shouldn't get damage AND mobility. This is a pretty boring way of balancing a champ in my opinion and so I thought of making some champs pay for their mobility by ITEMIZING for it.

Right now most energy based and resourceless champions all have very short cooldowns especially on their damaging abilities. I think that changing the way cooldown reduction works on champs with energy especially could help balance them significantly. For example Zed has low cooldowns and as such can rush damage items like BOTRK and still be effective. Increasing cooldowns and damaged (on some champs and abilities as compensation) will make every ability count more.

This is where the bigger change comes in. Increasing the cooldowns on some problem champions and abilities significantly (with compensations buffs as necessary) AND increase the CDR cap to 60% or so (numbers are arbitrary) for champs that use energy or are resource-less. This means if Lee Sin wants to dash around the battlefield he can, but he has to itemize for it and as a result become less damaging or less tanky. Zed can still poke you out of lane if you eat every Q but they are longer and farther in between but if he itemizes CDR his poke becomes MORE effective but his all in and burst becomes worse.

Cooldown increases will be relative so that more balanced champions (Kennen and Shen) won't become unviable

TLDR: Increase the cap of CDR on energy champs and then increase cooldowns to make them itemize CDR if they want to have so much mobility, and let them keep their burst if they don't.

EDIT: It seems like this concept is a little hard to understand exactly what I mean so let me give a specific example. Lee Sin is probably one of the most complained about junglers on the boards right now, and most commonly the reasoning is "too much damage and mobility on one kit, rito please nerf." What I am saying would be to increase lee's cooldowns on his mobility skills, Q and W, that way lee is less mobile. HOWEVER as an energy champion he would get a compensation buff on increasing the cap of CDR to lets just say 60%. This change would allow lee still be extremely mobile BUT ONLY IF HE ITEMIZES FOR IT. This means forgetting about Merc Treads or Mobility Boots for Lucidity boots and forcing him CHOOSE what he wants to build for, damage, mobility, or tankiness.

A similar change could be applied to Zed that would have the same effect.

5 Comments

Borkahn2/18/2015, 9:15:24 PM1 votes

I disagree. These resourceless champs all have different aspects to them but it is easy to counter them. Granted I'm only in Bronze 2 but it is amazing how many Zed's rage because I opt to buy a Mercurial Scimitar to remove his death mark. Not only that, people like Zed are assassins. They are meant to be high bursty champs going in. If you are playing a squishy character versus him, it makes sense that he will pretty much obliterate you. Besides, I play Shen more than any of them and I think that, unless I missed my guess, his taunt is like 20 seconds? (Been awhile since I literally looked at what it was.)

Drunk Rummate2/18/2015, 9:34:38 PM1 votes

the easiest fix to energy champs with problems is to design them around 0% CDR with energy costs and regen. that way you dont have champions like Zed building 30% CDR and getting away with it because his costs are so low relative to his regeneration. that heavily impedes their sustained damage and emphasizes burst instead, which is how energy is supposed to be designed.