What is Riot's obsession with champions with no other counterplay than "outdamage you"?

Frontline Fury·Sep 24, 2017·13 votes·2,194 views

I'm talking about champions like , , , , , , and so on. Their ONLY counterplay for melee champions is to "outstat them". There's no positioning involved, rarely any skillshot dodging (or even when they do, they might have so low resource costs they can just re-cast it 3-4 seconds later) and often an entire lane comes down to champion pick rather than player. Why are these champions still being added to the game? Riot already remarked on this being "a mistake" in regards to Irelia, and yet Kled, Tahm Kench and Maokai have all been added since. Why? There's a reason these champions dominate top lane in the mid-high elos - extremely high base power, almost non-existant counterplay. Sort of similar to Kog'maw Lulu bot lane - the only real counterplay is their own mistakes.

48 Comments

jwebb0113Sep 24, 20176 votes

there is counter play to maokai, darius , tahm , octobitch , and irelia

kled well ...

fiora well ...

JbelsSep 24, 20171 votes

{quoted}

there is counter play to maokai, darius , tahm , octobitch , and irelia

kled well ...

fiora well ...

Walk away is not counterplay.

jwebb0113Sep 24, 20174 votes

{quoted}

Walk away is not counterplay.

oh wait i forget ... they all have like 60% win rates and 30% ban rates and 30% pick rates right ?

JbelsSep 24, 20177 votes

{quoted}

oh wait i forget ... they all have like 60% win rates and 30% ban rates and 30% pick rates right ?

Winrate and Pickrate are not indicators of bad design...bad design is. Just because the old Yorick had a low winrate for the longest time didn't mean his kit wasn't badly designed and toxic

jwebb0113Sep 24, 20176 votes

{quoted}

Winrate and Pickrate are not indicators of bad design...bad design is. Just because the old Yorick had a low winrate for the longest time didn't mean his kit wasn't badly designed and toxic

it is an indication of how strong or a weak a champ is

and just cuz most people cant learn how to counter play a champ dont mean they dont offer counter play

JbelsSep 24, 20178 votes

{quoted}

it is an indication of how strong or a weak a champ is

and just cuz most people cant learn how to counter play a champ dont mean they dont offer counter play

Yorick HAD no counterplay, that was the problem. They had to keep him intentionally weak because of it. Almost all of these champions have the counterplay of "Don't stand next to". That's not counterplay, that's bad design.

jwebb0113Sep 24, 20173 votes

{quoted}

Yorick HAD no counterplay, that was the problem. They had to keep him intentionally weak because of it. Almost all of these champions have the counterplay of "Don't stand next to". That's not counterplay, that's bad design.

darius counter play is to kite him

irelia is so weak and bad , loses nearly all lane match ups

maokai is weak to heavy dps and ranage

and so on

so how do they not have counter play?

otcobitch is to dodge her abilities and engage and kill her when she is on cd and oom ...

to think you need to stand face to face someone and just sustain their damage or abilites and win is counter play is stupid thinking

StairCasexdSep 24, 20171 votes

The OP said melee Champsn not ashe, how do you kite daruis as a melee? Lol what. Daruis hooks and presses Q, he gives you the decision to try to run away or fight him. And don't get hooked is not counterplay (not saying he's OP or whatever). Yeah illaoi feels pretty fair the only annoying thing about her is her test of spirit or whatever it's called since you get punished for walking out of it. She's pretty fair so I'd remove her from the list.

jwebb0113Sep 24, 20171 votes

darius is easy to beat.

simply know his passive stacks, stay out of radius of his Q / or dodge it, and same with his hook

bait either one of those out and go ham on him

you dont fight in over extended trades vs darius cuz he wins ... short burst trades and disengage and do this over and over. if darius dont win the lane he is useless in game after laning phase

GayFluffyUnicornSep 24, 20171 votes

Irelia loses all lane matchups? lmao. Wickd currently rocking her with 70% winrate in diamond 1.

jwebb0113Sep 24, 20171 votes

{quoted}

Irelia loses all lane matchups? lmao. Wickd currently rocking her with 70% winrate in diamond 1.

irelia loses to jax, darius, keld, j4, camille

on we are talking about wickd who is one of the best players in the world ... so clearly she is broken...

what about aodo having a 93% win rank in rank with tf/kassidan they must be perma banned ? or no counter play.

Irelia has a win rate 50.07% for Platinum+ players Irelia has a win rate 50.10% for Diamond+ players

https://lolalytics.com/ranked/worldwide/diamond/plus/champion/Irelia/

irelia has a weak early game can be bullied in lane, has to snowball out of control to carry

OVERALL PLACEMENT 21 / 55 is her ranking for top laners according to champion.gg for plat +

http://na.op.gg/champion/irelia/statistics/top has her win rate at 50.13% for 25th of top laners with a 5% pick rate

so multiple sites have her sitting right at 50% win rate for plat +

bro0rtegaSep 24, 20171 votes

Darius has counterplay for champions who want to get in his face. As soon as he Q's, I would jump into melee range. So you gotta time it right. Also, you can counterpick him with Jax. But don't really go into melee range until lvl 6. Save Q for jumping out of sticky situations early on. Jax isn't always a good choice in the top lane, but I love picking him against Darius.

Rand0mH3r0XSep 24, 20172 votes

That's literally all the counter-play for Illoai...

Critmaster GarenSep 24, 20172 votes

{quoted}

Walk away is not counterplay.

actually "walk away" is counterplay. especially against certain abilities like darius passive, illaois ult, fioras ult, maokais saplings, tahms passive.

these abilities grant these champions momentary windows of power and take a large portion of these champions power budgets. once they run out like illaois or fioras ult, you can easily reengage and fight them.

Darius dodge his q. its a large factor for him in trades.

Illaoi dodge her tentacles and her e.

Fiora out position her to deny her hits on your vitals. you can hide them in walls for example. reset vitals to appear on your back side instead of your front towards her.

Maokai does shit for damage when he doesnt land empowered saplings on you. hes really hard to kill but he probably wont threaten you either.

Kled is a bit iffy, since he can stick to you with his e, which makes it hard to get out of his q range. but the ability itself can still be dodged and he has no control over his w when he wants to cs. he has clear windows of weakness when his w is on cooldown.

TahmKench is just anoying, but can be dealt with by not getting hit by his q. his auto attack speed is slow and so is his movement speed, which allows for short trades.

Irelia is the only one id agree with you on the list, and its why shes scheduled for a rework.

i think your issue is that you want to be able to win extended trades against most of these champions, which isnt guaranteed depending on who youre playing. you have to trade smarter with them and abuse cooldown windows in shorter trades and not let them get their passives or other mechanics stacked.

UltîmaSep 24, 20171 votes

Dodge the bear trap. Bait his ultimate so that he gets out of position. Exploit the vulnerability of his dismounted form.

Bait out the parry. Hug the wall to prevent the vital from being hit. Punish her if she doesn't lower the cooldown of her lunge.

Not saying those characters aren't oppressive if they snowball, but ignoring common-sense strategies against them doesn't mean counterplay doesn't exist.

MarshbouySep 24, 20173 votes

Illaoi and Darius can actually be positioned against but it's pretty hard against a skilled illaoi/darius. The others are just melee stat checks.

######fuck tahm kench.

DengedenSep 24, 20172 votes

There's CDs, range and roaming.

xelakerSep 24, 20172 votes

half of these champs are super weak to kite... the other half are goofy, yes, but outdamage you over a long period of time or lack decent hard cc to keep you there.

Cornerstone1Sep 24, 20171 votes

{quoted}

half of these champs are super weak to kite... the other half are goofy, yes, but outdamage you over a long period of time or lack decent hard cc to keep you there.

Darius can keep you there with his hook, Kench with his devour, Irelia with her stun..... They all have a utility to keep you there (even fiora with her slow, and her movement speed).

xelakerSep 24, 20172 votes

darius has to get to you to hook, kench has to be close and hit you 3 times not to mention the cd for both kench and darius is long, and irel falls into the other half category. fi is sticky enough it doesn't matter, but that's some apples and oranges

GayFluffyUnicornSep 24, 20171 votes

Tell me how a melee stays out of darius 550 range pull. XDDDD.

MorganFreemanBotSep 24, 20172 votes

{quoted}

Tell me how a melee stays out of darius 550 range pull. XDDDD.

Numerous melee have methods of farming (though not terribly effectively) from range.

You may not like this, but "play safe and gently lose lane" is a viable option, and in some MU's that's valid counter play.

Furthermore, you can fight Darius if you know his power spikes and know how to do so. Darius has a small zone which he wants to keep you in for an extended period of time. If you're bursty and / or capable of escaping that zone at leisure (lots of top laners are), he's pretty easy to curb-stomp with intelligent play.

Lastly, Darius needs to be noticeably ahead to be useful in a team fight. If you can't beat him early, simply denying him kills, at the cost of being a bit behind in CS, is a very good situation to be in.

xelakerSep 24, 20171 votes

beat me to it 1+

AhrisSep 24, 20172 votes

The samecan be said for adc

THE RlVER KlNGSep 24, 20172 votes

Kled has huge counterplay, I don't know what you are talking about. For such a potentially unbalanced thematic I think he's super well made

Tahm and Illaoi less so, but they have extremely glaring weaknesses in a fight that are and should be easily exploited (the majority of their power is in skillshots, absurdly easy to kite, hard countered in this meta, etc.). I hate Darius but he does have counterplay, it's just hard for most melees. 'the only real counterplay is their own mistakes' I laughed there because that's what I'd use to describe some obnoxious mobile character like Yasuo or Riven or Kalista or Fizz not an immobile fat fuck who has like 60% of a fight out of their control as opposed to a mobiie character.

Irelia is an old, toxic design, I agree, and hopefully she's slated for a nice little GU pass at least before her rework

Maokai is just overtuned. Fiora's kit is so stupidly broken in a 1v1 situation but Riot refuses to ever change her kit because they still think that %true is fair or that a skill cap is a weakness. She doesn't actually have weaknesses outside of poor early teamfighting, and even then her utility offsets that.

also what do you even mean by 'kled, tahm kench, and maokai added since' maokai is an old champ, tahm was release in one of the best metas we've ever had (pre-juggernauts in S5), and kled as I have said is well designed

doubleguacSep 24, 20172 votes

Some of these definitely have counterplay. I don't like laning against Illoai, but she definitely has counterplay. Dodge her E, dodge the tentacles, don't try to fight her under her ult. The whole problem with Illoai is that she has so much counterplay. Her abilities are all so heavily telegraphed that Riot had to make them all insanely strong when they actually land. Which makes her really stressful and unfun to lane against, particularly as melee.

Darius-- baiting the pull and avoiding the edge of his axe.

Fiora has counterplay too. It's just hard to do. But you can try to protect your vitals/predict where she's going based on your vitals. And you can try to be unpredictable with your skills to avoid the riposte. Also, obviously, baiting out the ult and then disengaging.

I agree that Kled, Irelia, and Mao are basically pure stat checks.

jwebb0113Sep 24, 20171 votes

how is maokai pure stat checks ?

ThefrostyvikingSep 24, 20171 votes

Irelia is a stat checker that's getting reworked.

Fiora........i don't like Fiora :(

Kled is about playing around his W.

Illaoi has plenty of stuff that can be dodged.

Darius you beat by kiting or standing ontop of him, both of those strategies are super effective as long as you have even a little damage.

Tahm is actively balanced for support rather than toplane because his 1v1 potential is evil. But as far as i know he's currently weak and not played much in either lane.

Maokai is the same as any toplane tank, you just gotta grind away at him without taking too much damage, how is dependent on your champ.

Frontline FurySep 24, 20171 votes

Fiora is an early game champion that scales excellently into lategame. Kled would be about playing around his W, if it was avoidable in the first place. He has so much mobility and no resource costs, so he sort of suffers from "Riven syndrome". Illaoi has stuff that can be dodged... If you have EXTREME mobility or she makes mistakes. Tahm outdamages almost every single champion in the game despite building full tank, but he struggles against multiple enemies. Maokai cant really be ground down because he has extreme self healing coupled with very high base damage.

ThefrostyvikingSep 24, 20171 votes

Illaoi is dodgeable playing Jax just running around without boots or phage......might have had boots actually.

I was thinking of when trading with kled in lane, not when he goes all in, the usual solution to that is to use whatever your champ has and slowly back of trying to let him take more damage among your minions than you do from him.

I play Jax and Kayle for toplane which kinda makes that matchup a bit easy so forgive me if i am a bit vague x)

And Maokai can be ground down, his healing comes from the passive that gives him a heal on a auto attack like every 25 seconds reduced for each ability used by those around.

Thus he is vulnerable to AA champs just after it was used, ability reliant ones can make do then as well but it's harder.

Fiora is actually beatable early on, i myself have no problem doing it, however it's hella nerve wracking and she outscales you anyway making it look like an exercise in futility.

Tahm doesn't as much out damage people as he just grinds them while taking little damage thanks to his barrier while dealing a lot in return with his eating. Rinse and repeat twice and a squishy laner is down and a tank will have to start worry around then too. But showing the lane against him might work since his clearing is bad.

However a great deal depends on the champ you play as well.

DuskDaUmbreonSep 24, 20171 votes

In order:

Irelia I honestly have no idea how you beat her. She punishes you for beating her in a trade. Bramble vest is your friend for certain, though. Fiora Position well. Keep your vital to a wall (can't hit it then!), and bait her W. Bramble vest is still very much your friend. Escape her ultimate if you can, as well. It has an initial 100s CD. Kled Dodge his Q, and abuse his W's CD. He maxes Q W E nearly all of the time, and he needs his W up to trade well. Don't try to flash away from his ult, instead, try to predict where he targeted it, and either get past that point, or move to somewhere he won't lock onto you. Same for his E, I suppose. Illaoi Play around her passive. Respect it. And dodge her E. If you happen to get hit by it, either go in (Every time you hit her it reduces the duration of her E by .5s, and you can always force her to back off of it) or run (her E echoes damage to you. It can be better to run away from her and just evade the tentacles than to eat the damage from her hitting it. Just make sure you evade the slams if she doesn't) Darius I have no idea. It's a skill matchup as Kled against him, I suppose. But it's far easier to just play a ranged champion. Kite him to stay alive. TahmKench I'm not certain how to beat him, but I do know that %hp damage is useful against him, and you want to be reasonably mobile and durable. Shen works well against him. Kled dominates him. Maokai Again, no idea, but that's because I haven't fought him. Bramble vest may help against his passive. You can also try Adaptive Helm. The big thing you need to do is save your CC for after his dash, and evade his ultimate. If you can't evade his ult, and you can't get someone to tank it for you, try to get hit by it at the beginning, as opposed to the end. His ult functions a lot like Ashe's, where the stun is stronger the further it goes. So if you can't completely evade it, mitigate its damage by being hit by it early on.

All of these champions have one thing in common, though: They all seem to do well against each other. Kled beats a good number of them (skill or counter). Fiora beats Kled for certain (super easy to Riposte Kled's Q, which counts as an immobilizing effect, meaning ezpz stun), and likely Tahm, but loses to Singed, of all people (nothing to parry), as well as Urgot (Fiora's passive requires moving around Urgot to get a lot of damage out. Urgot wants his opponent to move around him, so that he can get his passive off easier. His passive wins. Just don't try to ult her, since she can Riposte it). Irelia is Irelia, and the only thing I know is to treat her like she's Olaf and Yasuo's child: Mobile and all but CC invulnerable. Tahm has a lot of health, but he can't activate his shield when he's CC'd, and you can always wait out the shield's duration.

Look for their counters, and you'll do well. All of their counters are logical ones, but you may have entirely forgotten about them, since they're usually just not popular.

SpecterVonBarenSep 24, 20171 votes

Tahm's counterplay (If it's solo lane Tahm) is shoving the wave. His waveclear is crap in the early game unless he uses his W for minions which is a huge 90 mana cost, so if he has to use that a lot then he'll go oom really fast. Once he's shove in then if you have range or abilities then you can poke him under his turret so long as the minion wave is decently large.

Darkdemon653Sep 24, 20171 votes

[{quoted}](name=Frontline Fury,realm=EUW,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=ygcdvt3M,comment-id=,timestamp=2017-09-24T12:38:47.321+0000)

counterplay

Of all the buzzwords/buzzphrases Riot has created over the years, I think I'm ready to say that this is the worst.

SwiftKitten88Sep 24, 20171 votes

i would just like to add Kayn to that list

Frontline FurySep 24, 20171 votes

Unlike the majority of the champions in this list, Kayn actually has a very fragile early game. I definitely agree Kayn's lategame is extremely over the top, but at the very least he can be shut down early game. Most of these other champions are extremely oppressive from the get-go.

SalsonSep 24, 20171 votes

Irelia is old and stated for a rework.

All the others have some form of counterplay, but it's extremely champion specific. Fiora - play around her vitals. Kled - play around his W Illaoi - tentacles Darius - 5 stacks Tahm - 3 stacks Maokai is a generic tank doing tank stuff.

They force the enemy to play around their kit, and assuming the enemy is the same the matchups become really fun. Way better than generic Jax and Xin standing still and right clicking each other.

Frontline FurySep 24, 20171 votes

Fiora - You cant "play around her vitals" when she can both outrun, outdash and outdamage you even without proccing the vitals.

Kled - Same as Fiora. Even if he misses every single spell in his kit he is still likely to outdamage you due to getting two new spells on dropping to low HP AND getting a 50% HP refill after basic attacking you six times.

Illaoi is likely to outdamage you unless you have extremely high attack speed. And to dodge her tentacles in the first place, you need morbidly high movement speed or some sort of untargetability. Oh look, another stat question.

Darius is 100% reliant on the player himself in lane. Unless his lane opponent has the STATS to outdamage him, he has to make a mistake to lose trades. Luckily he actually falls off late game, because of adcs 1shotting everything.*

Tahm kench - you need a dash to escape him. Low cooldown, low cost. because he can and will freely spam his Q and W whenever they are off cooldown, and not only does his W disable you for nearly three seconds but it also deals so much damage that you automatically lose the trade once he gets it off. Oh, and he heals back half the damage he takes OR regains his full health bar if he falls to low health. Yeah.

Maokai is one of the few tanks in the game that can still do what the tank rework was supposed to prevent. He builds full tank and, through base stats, wins every single trade due to both extreme base damage, ridiculous cooldowns and insane self sustain.

*unless facing one of the other picks from this list, in which case he'll likely get outdamaged no matter what he does.

A champion's only counterplay shouldnt be "outstat" or "outnumber". Warwick

SalsonSep 24, 20171 votes

*unless facing one of the other picks from this list, in which case he'll likely get outdamaged no matter what he does.

Exactly And what about Riven, Yasuo and Cammile at 100%? Renekton hitting people with a bar? Jayce, Kennen and Gnar being untouchable?

Half the toplane roster is broken in one way or another. The other half is outdated garbage. There are sadly a couple of good tanks nerfed because of pro play like Poppy, Galio and Shen.

Tychusfindlay918Sep 24, 20171 votes

WTF? How is there no counterplay to darius other than outstat him? You literally are given TWO options to completely negate his Q damage which is his main source of sustain and damage...

Shitpost.

Also, darius doesn't shine high elo at all, in fact, he doesn't really shine strong ANYWHERE right now. He's an actual fucking troll pick the higher you go up the ladder.

Illaoi has ridiculous counterplay, dodging her E alone basically makes her auto lose every trade afterwards.

Frontline FurySep 24, 20171 votes

Where exactly did i claim Darius shines in high elo?

Tychusfindlay918Sep 24, 20171 votes

[{quoted}](name=Frontline Fury,realm=EUW,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=ygcdvt3M,comment-id=000c0000,timestamp=2017-09-24T17:18:06.299+0000)

Where exactly did i claim Darius shines in high elo?

" Why? There's a reason these champions dominate top lane in the mid-high elos - extremely high base power, almost non-existant counterplay." - your Original Post

Was fun but I don't want to lose any more brain cells so I think this conversation is over.

ModAcademy KaynSep 24, 20171 votes

I can understand this complaint about "obsession" with the newer designs, but it really can't be used against Irelia, whose just old design.

SlythionSep 24, 20171 votes

did you really just say Illaoi and Darius don't have counterplay...really?

Illaoi's problem in particular is literally how easy it is to counterplay her

Magi MayvinSep 24, 20171 votes

In lane they might be annoying to play against but Illaoi and darius can be easily kited.

Shepherd o SoulsSep 24, 20171 votes

Darius spin has counterplay and his E only has counterplay if you have some sort of cleanse or dash, but other than that melees get shit on because he stacks his bleed and dunks you. At the same time juggernauts tend to dump on melees though.

jwebb0113Sep 24, 20171 votes

{quoted}

Darius spin has counterplay and his E only has counterplay if you have some sort of cleanse or dash, but other than that melees get shit on because he stacks his bleed and dunks you. At the same time juggernauts tend to dump on melees though.

actually you can use cc /knock backs for his Q and his E

if he HOOKS you or coming in for it. use the knock back to keep him from landing it or disengage if he does land it

AirKingNeoSep 24, 20171 votes

Illaoi's entire damage can be dodged. What?

TWITCHTV ERONATESep 24, 20171 votes

why do people want counterplay to damage? I don't understand.

when we get counterplay to damage we get shit like assassins are right now. that's the only reason i love kass, because you get to deal with my shit without me dealing with your shit.