The Vayne Fiasco (And My Opinion)

Preface If you're here to downvote me for my opinion, you need only read the following line, down-vote and be on your way: I advocate changes to Vayne.

TO BE CLEAR ON MY OPINION, while I believe her design isn't conducive to a healthy gameplay experience, I'm not fully convinced she is overpowered; I think it can be debated either way.

For the rest of us that want to hear out an argument or two, let's press on. The goal of this thread isn't to convince you, and you're entitled to your opinion. I hope to just show a logical and coherent argument to try and articulate the points being raised against her accurately and concisely.

The main point I want to make is that her design is unhealthy. I'm not arguing if she is overpowered or not in this thread.

Exploring the Cause of Contempt Vayne is a very well-hated champion because she is a rare micro chasm of irritating design elements. She is:

• Very safe (Condemn, Tumble, Stealth, always builds Bork which she synergizes with)
• Duels extremely well, making it hard to stomp her, or duel her unless considerably ahead
• Scales incredibly hard, so you are obligated to win lane just to go even.
• Was made back in a time when "Crush them pre-6" was considered legitimate counterplay
• Has a toxic playerbase that tells you that you were outplayed
• Scales off of your defensive stats, making it hard to counter-build her

These all synergize. She scales incredibly hard and it's hard to counterbuild her, so she will inevitably be a monster provided she gets the right items. You then must stop her from getting them. However, everything in her kit works to try and prevent you from stopping her, due to her insane safety and duel potential. Screw up once, and a good Vayne will punish you unfathomably hard. Vayne screws up? As long as she plays it safe, she'll scale it off, unless her mistakes are utterly abysmal and frequent.

Nobody likes a champion that is extremely annoying, very strong and insanely difficult to punish. As soon as she's picked, you have to play HER game. The VAYNE game. Keep her behind then win before she scales back. This is why she is hated, in my humble opinion.

Poor Design is Not Necessarily Poor Balance While I think there is little to dispute in claiming Vayne's design is frustrating to deal with, and as much as I hate buzzwords, she is indeed toxic. She forces you to play her game, warping the lane around her far more than other other late game scaler. But, IS she overpowered? Let's explore her weaknesses, as we have discussed strengths. Sorry if I miss a few, I'm addressing the most common ones that I've seen.

• Vayne's range is 550
• She has no skills to extend her range of effectiveness
• She is difficult to master
• Early game bullies can shut her down/She's weak early
• She can be counterpicked
• You can counterbuild her

The first bullet is inconsequential; many ADCs have short range, hers not being the shortest. Her base AD is nothing to scoff at either, which is strange on a champion whose counterplay is intended to be weak early game. Kog'Maw and Twitch have an atrocious base AD. Hers is one short of Grave's Base AD, an early game dominating ADC.

The second bullet is legitimate; true, she cannot extend her range and this causes a deficit. However, she is a duelist, and she can close the gap to get INTO her effective range extremely easily. Post-6, it's nearly impossible to duel her unless she either mispositions, you out-play or have an advantage already. The final nail in this coffin is that being weak pre-6 is NOT a legitimate point for counterplay. Kassadin pre-nerf taught us this, Vayne pre-nerf taught us this and it's still the case now. Is this a weakness? ABSOLUTELY YES. Where I take issue with this one is that people over-sell how bad this is. Again, she is one of the safest and more mobile ADCs. She has all the tools to work around this weakness, and then some. You'll find this is the problem with Vayne in a nutshell; she works around every weakness while still having tremendous strengths. This is unfathomably annoying.

The third bullet is meaningless; people have gotten extremely good at her, and her skill floor isn't as high as it's made out to be. Most players can use her and be on-par with other picks, making mentioning difficulty a cop-out in my opinion. End point, she's not hard to play, and she's certainly not a complicated champion. She's just hard to master.

This next one irks me. Most of her counters have been nerfed, and every late game ADC has a weakness to early game ADCs, but Vayne has the benefit of being safe to aid in her survival early game. Simply counterpicking is not sufficient counterplay; Riot has said this, and it's common sense why. However, the most critical reason this argument is pretty poor is that, while she is weak early, SHE IS NOT VULNERABLE. She has such a tremendous amount of safety that, unless she misplays, she should really not die or lose that much CS. Given her elasticity from scaling so well, what losses she has can be swiftly recuperated.

This is basically the same point as the above, except someone like may be brought up because he can CC lock and builds ATKSPD drain items frequently. Same point can be raised as above, you may pick after Vayne, her counters may be banned and so fourth. However, it brings me to the next point.

You can counterbuild her to some effectiveness, but this applies to all ADCs; however, because of her Silver Bolts, she can ignore counterbuilding much more than any other ADC not named Kog'Maw. While Kog'Maw may eliminate counterplay here, he is immobile and has very little safety, poor dueling, weak laning and has dodgable skillshots. Vayne, in exchange for reducing counterplay here,...Has poor range, that she has the tools to work around.

Finally, a lot of these points argue that she is balanced.

Conclusion However, I made a strong case that her design itself just isn't healthy. Overpowered or no, we can debate this, but the toxicity of her kit is nearly indisputable. I hope that, if you still disagree, you can at least understand where some of us are coming from. When she's picked, you DEAL with Vayne. You put up with her. This and the fact she is strong has really irritated people lately, myself among them. . My goal isn't to convince people, but to present a reasonable case for discussion's sake. I sincerely hope that such a discussion, and not feuding, ensues.