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List of designers who know what they are doing(and those who dont)

squirrelah·5/29/2015, 5:00:51 PM·4 votes·727 views

Im keeping this list to more recent champions(thresh will be the oldest champion ill use, and thats still over two years old). Also im focusing primarily on design not wether something is under/overpowered. For example, i think zach is an extremely well designed champion, there were times where zac was pretty overpowered, and times where hes been pretty bad. But at his core his design values are not bad because he has discernible weaknesses and strengths.

Disclaimer- I believe league of legends is supposed to be primarily a strategy game, and not a button mashy/reaction time based game. To some degree it has to have both in order to be enjoyable, and the problem with how riot is designing their champions(which isnt entirely their fault because its not like they could see the future and see that they were going to change what they wanted the game to be like) is that skill cap differential between champions is way too severe, especially in regards to older vs newer champions.

Its sort of where the idea of "outplaying" someone comes from, when in reality if yasuo is good enough theres nothing garen can really do regardless of how skilled they are(in contrast if both players are bad its easier for garen to do better). In my opinion there needs to be some happy medium where strategy is allowed to overcome skill, and the problem is about half of the new champions fall in line with that, and the other half dont.

The two worst designers in regards to this are CertainlyT and gypsylord. Pretty much all of their champions are designed with the philosophy of being able to outplay the other person and having extremely high skill caps/steep learning curves. Which would be fine if every other champion in the game was like that, except THE VAST MAJORITY ARENT. Almost every champion theyve made(thresh, kallista, ekko, gnar, yasuo, jinx) has, if you are good enough absolutely no weakness. All of those champions with exception of thresh have mobility, all of them have hard cc, all of them have high damage(for a support thresh's damage is pretty decent), most of them have random defensive stats on their abilities that allow them to be tankier than that rightfully should be. Also a shoutout to zennon. Azir has all of the problems i mentioned above(soft cc, hard cc, random defensive stats, mobility, high damage), and lucian for the longest time had no discernable weakness within his role until they gutted his range, and still remains overall a pretty jack of all trades adc, he just pales in comparison to jinx in seiges/teamfights which makes him seem weaker than he really is.

Probably the best designer as of late would be subninja in my opinion, and a lot of people that have only designed one champion(such as bard's designer rabid llama, braum's designer riotwreckz, aatrox's designer classick or reksai's deisgner beat punchbeef). The reason why these champions i consider are healthily designed is they have a purpose, and they are all discernably vulnerable in areas of their kits.

Bard- doesnt really have that much hard CC for a support or damage, but brings a ton of unique utility to the game which can make him a good pick in certain situations.

velkoz- the epitome of a long range mage champion who does a lot of aoe damage, similar to brand just different ability mechanics.

braum- Doesnt have a lot of damage, his mobility is extremely limited. Is much better as a peeler than an initiator.

reksai- The only one of these thats really debateable, but her cc is really minimal, and while her tunnel mobility/early game damage should be toned down a little in my opinion she doesnt have a bunch of unecessary shields or stuns or slows. Very much a map pressure oriented champion.

TL;DR Riot i know you have good designers, please use them. Or at the very leash assign some of the ones i listed to review certainlyT/gypsylord/zenon's work before they release them to make sure they dont make inheritly unfun and difficult/impossible to balance champions.

1 Comments

Critmaster Garen5/29/2015, 5:47:05 PM1 votes

i have to disagree only on yasuo.

hes an all around very well designed champion with clear weaknesses. his strength is that hes designed to deal with ranged champions, (especially skillshot dependent mages and ranged ad carries). most melee champions have no trouble beating him.

most of his actual problems origin from unclear hitboxes. for example if windwall blocks an ability from an angle you wouldnt expect it. like if a skillshot with an already unclear hitbox scratches the windwall from the side in an angle where it didnt look like it would hit the wall.

otherwise, yasuos mobility is very restricted. if you know how it works. if you really read the tooltip and take the time to understand how his mobility functions (the fixed range, the restriction of using it on enemy units, the dash cooldown on the same enemy unit), you can easily outposition him even with champions llike darius and garen. its much easier to play around yasuos mobility than lee sins, who can drop a ward anywhere he wants to w to it, or point and click ult to kick you 2 screens away to disengage.

even with his shield he is overall squishy, his ult gives you time to be interrupted similar to kats ult. his q is a skillshot that has to be charged first, meaning he leaves a window for aggression every time he misses it.

while theyre not painfully obvious, every ability in his kit has mechanical restrictions that allow you to play around it. he is in my opinion one of the best designed champions in this game and a perfect schematic for a melee carry in league of legends.

i think yasuo is a champion who looks like he has more outplay potential than he actually does. at least if you dont keep track of the minions he already dashed over, the way he moves can look very confusing.

but thresh for example is on the other end of the spectrum. he is so ridiculously versatile, that he will always be relevant. while most supports are specialized in either, hes both strong in agression and in defensive plays.

i never understood why they dont give threshs lantern the same treatment as zacs blobs, or, bards shrines. if an enemy steps on it, it vanishes. period.

there. easy, and clear counterplay. right now your hitbox only obscures the lantern. why doesnt t vanish completely to prevent these ridiculous escapes of one guy getting caught and pulled out from the middle of the entire enemy team?