In Regards to Ghostcrawler's Dev Diary (Kinda Long)

For those of you who haven't watched it: I linked it; check it out.

So, Ghosrcrawler basically outlines how Riot judges successful champions using a pillar system.

This consists of 5 pillars:

1. Satisfying to play
2. Satisfying thematic (Resonant theme)
3. Skill-expression
4. Fair
5. Uniqueness

During the video, Ghosrcrawler namedropped a lot of champions in different regards. I primarily wanted to focus on the aspect of Pillar 4, which is where I think a massive amount of division occurs in the community, and it's relationship to Pillar 3.

To start off, he states that fair champions have clear strengths and weaknesses; he uses Ziggs and Darius as his examples for this. Now, regardless of your opinion on both, both of these guys have blatantly obvious weaknesses and strengths. It doesn't matter how good you are on Ziggs when a Talon dives on you when your W is on CD, you're dead. However, give Ziggs a good frontline and he can seige and stop seiges for days. Darius will whoop ass if he pulls you in, but if he can't, then he can't deal damage efficiently.

Then, Ghostcrawler introduces specific cases of champions who can cause issues with these pillars. Nunu, Aatrox, Morgana were three of those relating to satisfying to play and thematics. He also mentioned Thresh in regards to fairness, and that's where I want to camp out. Now, one thing that he said that I'll quote is the following: "...he is fairly hard to learn, and very hard to master...in terms of fairness for Thresh, if I had to throw stones at him this is probably where I'd do it. He does a lot. He has a lot of strengths and he kind of has an answer for every situation...counterplay is sometimes an issue with him. You don't always know what to do as an enemy...he can kind of do anything. Not to say that he's erratic, his winrate' s erratically out of control or anything like that, but just to be fair...fairness is where I'd ding him a bit."

Now, I think one would be hard-pressed to say that Thresh is an easy champion; arguably he's quite hard to be good with, nevermind great with. But the problem most people have with him is that he's too good at too many things. He has engage, he has disengage, he has peel, he has utility, all the stuff any support wants, and the potential for him only increases as the player's skill increases. And this isn't really a numbers issue, or at least it's not all about the numbers; Thresh can do it all because of what his kit consists of.

From there, the question essentially becomes this, and it's two-fold: what exactly ought to be allowed based on skill-expression (Pillar 3) as it relates to fairness (Pillar 4), and how much of it is based on player understanding and clear strengths and weaknesses?

This tends to be a thing with a lot of high skill cap champions, such as Thresh, Yasuo, Zed, Orianna, Riven, etc. Take Zed for example; Zed deals massive damage, for sure, but a lot of the 'massive' part is conditional. For example, Zed Q hits like a truck, but it deals 60% damage to anything it hits after the first hit, or his W gives him an extra 550(ish) range on his E and Q and an instant teleport, but it's on a 24 second cooldown in lane. His ult gives him a lot of AD for 1 kill, but only if he actually kills the target and they have a lot of AD on their own. As far as I'm concerned, Zed has obvious weaknesses but also very obvious strengths.

Take another example like Draven, a champion who has been a hot topic on the boards for a while now. Does Draven have obvious strengths? Sure he does; he'll most likely outduel most ADCs during the game, and he can snowball really really hard if he triggers his passive. Does he have weaknesses? Sure he does. Draven has no mobility except for a decaying MS buff that also gives attack speed (non-decaying). Compared to other ADCs like Lucian, Corki (more of a mid now), Caitlyn, Tristana, and Ezreal, he's lacking in mobility, which makes him weaker when facing a formidable frontline. Further, in order to maintain his high damage on his autos, which is almost all the damage in his kit, he must either have Q off of cooldown or maintain auto-attacking targets and catching his axes at the same time. Beyond that, a Draven late game (full build) will have no passive because more gold on full build doesn't mean anything, while Caitlyn will always have headshot, Lucian will always have double shot, and MF will always have love tap.

Now, notice this: if you don't know Zed's W cooldown and he hits you with his full combo, dropping you from full to maybe 60%, you'll probably back off because you don't how consistent that damage is, all you know is that he hurts a lot. And with Draven, if you don't know to force him off his axes, then you allow him to maintain his high damage potential. Now, if you knew that you could get free damage on that Zed because you're Xerath and you outrange him, you would do it because your cooldowns on your poke rotation are much lower than his, and your damage is, therefore, more consistent. Further, if you knew that, as Taric, you could force Draven off of an axe catch by winding up your stun as he moves to catch it, you would do it because, even if you don't land the stun because he chooses to dodge it rather than catch the axe, you negate his damage consistency, and that could be the determining factor in that fight. These things are things you learn from playing with against champions, and this is an essential part of Pillar 4. Some counterplay is based on individual skill and choosing to play around a champion's strengths.

Other champions, like Thresh, are difficult to play around, simply because if you do something right, there's another thing you need to do to actually win. Example: if you dodge the Thresh hook, good job, now you need to be careful of the flash-flay. You caught back up to or you flanked the Thresh and his carry after his W got then out, good job, now you just have to get past the box + his locket + his flat + his Q. A lot of his kit is hard to be good with, don't get me wrong, Thresh is not easy by any means. However, when you're good with Thresh, there's never a reason to play someone else because you've got it all in Thresh's kit and itemization. This makes your efforts and successes feel insignificant, since there's always something else to do right. Plus, all this stuff is on a support, so even if you do kill him, you still have to deal with the damage and utility of the rest of the team.

This could also be a complaint of Orianna, who also arguably has it all. She has damage, she has built-in durability in E shield and stats that can be used on teammates, the utility of the W, and the teamfight potential of the R. Now, Orianna is also hard to be good at, since you have to learn ball management and all your power, except for your passive, functions exclusively on where the ball is, but once you've got that down, that's when the issue arises. Orianna is one that when you're good at her, like Thresh, you wouldn't want to, or arguably shouldn't, play another mage since she already does so much. Why take a Xerath over Orianna, assuming you're equally skilled at both? Sure Xerath has longer range, but Orianna has innate peel and CC with W,E,R while Xerath has only his E, and it's stun scales based on distance it travels, so it's less useful when used in point-blank targets. Now, I think Xerath is a more balanced champion because he, like Ziggs, Zed, etc. has obvious strengths and weaknesses, but I can't say the same for Orianna. One could be skill cooldowns, but that doesn't matter too much when you get close to 40% most games because of build, or it could be mana problems, but you build lost chapter in lane so it's pretty damn hard to run out of mana, and you're not just spamming your skills just for fun, so you're maintaining your mana appropriately.

The list could go on and on, from people like Lee Sin to Janna to Nidalee back in Season 6 when she was always picked or banned in LCS. The issue with Skill-expressive champions is that once one becomes skilled enough with a champion, it can be difficult to see counterplay, regardless of one's individual skill versus the other's. That's the problem that some champions suffer from, and it's a hard line to walk because you want satisfaction from both players, but no one feels satisfied in losing to something, even if it's objectively fair; people will still call "bullshit," people will still call stuff "op," because losing sucks. Balance isn't easy, and I really don't think we give enough credit to the people who do it. Sure they make mistakes (cough Sivir Q buff cough), but people like GC really are trying, and there aren't easy answers.

Thanks for reading. Offer your thoughts, my answers and thoughts aren't conclusive. Im also not calling for Thresh or Ori or Lee nerfs, but I can see how difficult these issues of skill-expression and counterplay can be to resolve, not even to mention making sure the champion feels good to play as well. Remember the Gragas R change? The delay added counterplay to something genuinely busted, but the delay also felt kinda bad for a while, and still feels weird. Give GC and balance some credit, their job is hard. Thanks fam.