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A champion design issue thats plagued league.

Off Meta Evan·12/19/2016, 2:59:13 PM·3 votes·676 views

So League of Legends has over 100 different characters, i get that balancing them all is pretty much impossible. Riot tries their best to make the game fun for everyone and make gameplay healthy and actually satisfying. But one problem that has consistently plagued their design style is that they make champions that, when played right, are universally good against everyone, but not everyone is not univerally good against them. This can be seen in champions like Vayne Azir (when he was good #ripazirmains) Yasuo LeeSin Riven etc etc, NOW before anyone says it, yes their are champions that can counter these ones, but i feel the issue is that while they do have counters, their counters are far less set in stone than other champions. Lets take Yasuo for example, one of his supposed counter match ups is against Garen due to his tank, base damages, and that silence. Yasuo DOES have the potential to outplay Garen through clever use of his E to dash away from minions and disengage before Garens Q can connect, its difficult, sure, but its there. now lets take another match up, Yasuo vs TwistedFate, in this match up TF essentially is completely fucked. Yasuo's W shuts down all of TF's damage and prevents him from being able to escape well due to his CC move being blocked by this as well. poking such a mobile champion with Q's from long range is extremely unlikely to actually work, and if he has warlords he'll recover his hp. This is pretty much any normal mage match for yasuo in a nut shell, it essentially goes the same way for Velkoz, yas can block your cc moves and your damage moves so you can't trade or outrun him, and his mobility is so high that poking him down is a fools errand. When Yas is in a pinch, he has options and ways around it, when he has the upper hand, he just completely shuts down the opponent. And i feel the same kind of thing happens with Vayne Riven LeeSin and when they were good Kalista and Azir, Fiora when she was first reworked.

idk maybe i'm just bias cause i hate most of those champs right now, but it feels like a lot of champions have this issue to me.

TLDR: certain champs have options when laning against counters and have ways around them, but when they counter another champ, they just completely fuck them over and are super unfun to play against.

13 Comments

Ralanr12/19/2016, 3:02:07 PM3 votes

So basically Riot has an issue with balancing champions with outplay potential?

I'd have to agree because it doesn't feel like I get outplayed against a champion with lots of outplay potential when I don't have as much outplay potential. I feel cheated.

But what do I know?

Big Lincoln12/19/2016, 3:10:24 PM2 votes

Vel'Koz beats Yasuo and TF is very close to him in the match-up. This does not seem like 'completely fucked'

http://lolalytics.com/champion/TwistedFate/

http://www.champion.gg/champion/velkoz

Vel'Koz has had a winning win % vs Yasuo ever since he was released. The idea that he's countered by this champion instead of the other way around needs to be snuffed out. But most mage players that inhabit the boards are awful, so it's no surprise they think he beats them.

As for Yasuo vs Garen, Yasuo can only disengage if Garen is behind his wave and not to the side or in front of them. He cannot trade up-front with Garen reliably, especially after Garen's first item which should be Randuin's. Most juggernauts are the same; Illaoi is pretty hopeless against him because she's even more telegraphed than Garen is.'

I should clarify; Yasuo is not nearly as ridiculous as Azir, Kalista, Riven, Vayne, etc, who when played to their best remove a lot of your agency. Yasuo's problem is that he has ridiculous synergy with items like Phantom Dancer and keystones such as Fervor, which give him an absurd amount of extra power that he tends to use better than most. Azir, Kalista and Vayne will almost completely remove most melee champions from the game when played optimally (part of Vi's popularity is probably to counter Vayne). Riven will simply dump her entire combo on you before you can react and then shield your retaliation or dash away entirely. Yasuo is limited to the minion wave and thus can be walled off or zoned very effectively by simply not chasing him around the lane and denying him the potential to juke you.

Radiant Wukong12/19/2016, 3:23:37 PM1 votes

Singed