The Single Design Choice That Makes Me Step Away From League Every Once In A While
League is a very fun game, don't get me wrong. I've played since 2012 (Zed's release) and have played with varying degrees of intensity and frustration. However, there is one single design choice that I have loathed to this day.
Manaless Champions
I cannot state enough how frustrating and illogical this feels. Managing a character's Mana is one of the most difficult and genuinely interesting parts of this game. This ability costs 80 Mana, but I only have 140 left, is it worth it? Am I gonna get ganked sometime soon? will my lane opponent engage if they see I don't have enough Mana for my defensive ability?
All of these are important questions. It provokes strategic thought on the micro level, and can have an effect on something for 5 seconds or for entire minutes of the game.
But then Yasuo and Riven and Garen have only timing limitations.
A lack of Mana suggests that a character wants to spam abilities. Removing that massive limitation on an ability means that it's meant to be used liberally, without much thought. However, if something is that "whatever" in use, it can actually just mean the opponent can do nothing in response. If I'm playing Malphite against Riven, I can use Seismic Shard to get away before you can hit me... so long as I have Mana. Which Malphite has very little of. So if I have to use my limited resource to stop your lack of resource, I will lose eventually. Guaranteed.
The lack of Mana is, in and of itself, a HUGE passive for a character. So Yasuo has a mid/late game crit passive worth ~2300 gold, an early game passive that can be priceless to get a melee champion through a lane against a poke opponent, AND doesn't have the massive limitation of Mana, it results in Yasuo becoming a champion who has inherent power at all points in the game. He can outpoke a poke laner because he doesn't have to temper his ability usage. He can fully beat a passive laner out of lane because he has a high damage combo of E-Q-Auto then jump out through the minion wave. Yasuo has been given 2 major advantages (Flow Shield and Manaless) to be a supplement of a bad early game, but together mean he has a great early game especially against anyone who can't just dodge auto attacks, a 2 item spike of Shiv/PD + IE that literally doubles his damage, and such severe hard scaling meaning he can build PD, IE, then go full tank and still be one of the biggest damage dealers on a team.
Champions lacking Mana support thoughtless play. It is a design philosophy that should be universal: Does every champion have Mana or does nobody have Mana? I personally think everyone in the game should have Mana, but there are some champions whose lack of Mana is absolutely necessary to their viability. (Zac, Morde) But I have to ask, have you noticed how a Manaless champ is either perma-banned or is a joke ban (Zac post-rework, Morde post-rework, Shen) or is forgettable entirely? (Aatrox)
Mana doesn't guarantee balance, but it sets Champions on an even playing field to be balanced on. The scale needs to be even before weight can be put on either side.
