A Case For Generalists

Normally I'm on Riot's side when it comes to design philosophies, but this time I'm actually going to make a case against them. My intention is to provide you with a new perspective and maybe even generate some good discussion on the subject.

To be clear, I dont think generalist champions, that is champions who have multiple proficiencies to offer their team, are unhealthy for league of legends. To explain my perspective, I will have to provide an example using another game: Pokemon. For those who are not aware, Pokemon has a vibrant competitive scene based in smogon.com that prides itself in setting up a ruleset and banlist that creates a diverse and competitive metagame. Despite being a turn based game without a map, combat in Pokemon is actually surprisingly similar to league of legends. You assemble a team of characters, each having stats and customizable builds. They have different roles, strengths, weaknesses, counters, etc. It even has a two damage type and resistance split. (Yes Pokemon has true damage, no it is not broken.) Matchups between Pokemon (that is who counters who) stems from factors like typing, speed, what kind of damage they deal or resist, and the utility moves they have access to. You may pick a Pokemon like Latios for his high speed and special damage, understanding that a wall like chansey with incredible special defense and self healing will force him to switch out. A lot of Pokemon team building is based on these principles: "What threats do I need to deal with, and what threats stop my team?" It happens to a lesser extent in league of legends as well, despite the teams being comprised of random people: "Do we have a tank? We have too much AP. Ill pick Darius to counter Nasus."

In the earlier days of competitve Pokemon, you could not see an opponent's team untill they individually revealed every pokemon by sending them out to fight. You may not know wether your opponent had the counters to your Pokemon until they made a surprise double switch that put you in a compromising position. The information battle was its own special layer of depth, but all that changed in generation 5" where teams were previewed before a match much like in league of legends. Suddenly the game had a much more chess like feel due to the increased information, but people were also finding that they couldnt as easily bluff their way out of a bad matchup. You knew who had the counters to who's pokemon, who had the advantage, and exactly which threats had to be eliminated in order to clinch the match. A new concept was introduced: "Losing at team preview." Players could make educated guesses as to their chances of success based on how the teams matched up. It was also the generation that started the big power creep, and brought in a whopping 150 new monsters! Players were starting to find threats that were either more specialized in their role, or were able to decently check/counter mutiple threats at once! In addition, with each subsequent generation of Pokemon, the number of viable and niche monsters continued to grow, making it increasingly difficult to keep up with all these new threats. If the number of characters that can counter your team go up, but you cant increase the number of characters on your team, what is left to do?

Enter Landorus. In his Therian form, Landorus was capable of walling nearly half of physical threats in the metagame if not more. With his incredible attack stat, he could also threaten most non defensive Pokemon even without offensive invesent. He was even capable of supporting the team with utility moves. Very quickly, Landorus was on most Pokemon teams. Why wouldnt you play an offensive utility wall? He consolidated two roles on your team and gave you room for another specialized threat. Landorus was never banned though. Despite his incredible versatility, Landorus was considered to have enough soft checks and to not be oppressive. In fact, the community embraced blanket checks. Very quickly Pokemon were finding new multi role builds, and new more capable threats didnt tear up the metagame as feared. New generalist Pokemon entered the metagame as well with subsequent geneartions. The generalist Pokemon were holding the ever expanding game together.

To summarize, generalist characters prevent a game from being decided at the loading screen. They ease the building of team compositions in an ever expanding game, and make checks and counters less important than how you actually play the game. Lastly they create more room on teams for hyper specialized roles and allow specialized characters to better express their primary strength.

But hey, that doesnt make it right for every game! Agree? Disagree? Comment below. Provide your pespective. Discuss!