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"No matter how many times you read up about a hero..."

2pudge1cup·11/8/2014, 4:09:05 AM·2 votes·596 views

"...you still need to play it in order to understand how to do well against it. You learn its weaknesses by playing as it, and it improves your ability as a player overall."

A quote that I'm paraphrasing from a professional DotA player I just heard on stream.

I don't want a xyz is better type of thread. But this caught my attention at least in terms of how LoL makes it very difficult to own every champ. Therefore, a player's skill will be worse against the champ (especially new ones or reworked ones) because they won't understand limitations against it.

LoL is now at 120 champs (or is it more? I don't even know). Are we at a point where the lack of availability of champs is hurting the overall playerbase, especially newer players? I mean I can be against say a lucian in a bunch of games. I can see him in a bunch of pro games. But the only way I'll truly understand nuances of his kit is if I use him myself, and he alone eats up 50 play hours or more to get. And reading up on the new champ that will be coming out soon is giving me a bit of a popsicle headache.

4 Comments

JustMyBassCannon11/8/2014, 7:14:44 AM2 votes

I wouldn't call that entirely accurate. Yes, it's very helpful to play the character in order to understand how their kit functions, but to say that you can't learn how a kit works without playing it is like saying you don't read your cards in [insert your favorite TCG name].

I have literally never played Darius or Garen, and yet I have personally never had a moment's doubt as to how their kit works. I know the obvious parts and the nuances, like Darius' E passive % ArPen, or Garen's Q slow removal.

I'm fairly certain there are a handful of other champions I have yet to play.

Then again, I'm not everyone. There are people who are, exactly as you described, not really able to learn how a champion functions without having actually played as them. In fact, the majority of my responses to a "champ X is OP" thread is to tell them to play champ X.

The problem is not so much that it's hard to play as every champion; at least a third of them are 450 or 1350 IP, which doesn't take very long to gain, and the more expensive ones end up on free week rotations more frequently. I think the problem is more that the community is better at keeping up with mechanics and nuances than Riot is at keeping their site updated.

The information needs to be more obvious than a wiki page that the fans keep up to date.

PeetreeBumm11/8/2014, 6:15:00 AM1 votes

Well there's 10 free champs per week, after several months you will have had a chance to play them all

DrNova11/8/2014, 7:49:11 AM1 votes

In all honesty you only have to learn the common flavors of the season/month/whatever. There is a huge pool, but the majority of people play only a certain segment of them.

And besides that, the quote you listed isnt really accurate in my opinion. There are a ton of champs I have never played as (I own about half of them, and use MAYBE a quarter of those) But I've read about their abilities in the store, read about some of the harder ones online. And I feel pretty comfortable knowing what most all of them do outside of those rare champs that never get picked but are actually still pretty good.

Just takes a tiny bit of research and playing against them once or twice. And yeah using the free week champs just to know their kit isnt a bad idea either

NoMonku11/8/2014, 8:40:53 AM1 votes

It depends on what kind of person you are. Some people learn differently from others. Some pick things up faster. Some can learn by doing and some by actually practicing. Eventually you'll learn them, it just takes time. I say don't bother reading too much about them until you yourself actually have the chance to play them. People overhype or bellyache about stuff that, while it looks incredibly broken when you see just #'s, when it actually comes to playing them it doesn't add up, at least not immediately. Gnar is a good example imo, as there was a lot of complaint surrounding him when he came out because he seemed incredibly broken. His #'s and what it said he could do made people cry and ask "rito plz" and stuff like this. As it turned out, he wasn't broken, at least not at the time because people had to learn to play him. He is now being toned down because yes his #'s were strong, but it needed to be this way so people could learn him first and then RIOT could fine tune him.

In regards to the question about lack of champions, it is more the players choice to not play non-OP champs. In most cases, they are basically just inferior versions of other top tier champions that are available, but if you are able to gain complete mastery over them, then they become a weapon only YOU can use. SK fredy122 is a good example as he plays Aatrox extremely well. He got it banned against him in worlds each game because the teams he was playing against didn't want to deal with him on it.