I'm not complaining about Garen, Riven, or Katarina because I lost to them recently. In fact, I don't even get a chance to play against them because they are banned at my elo. I'm just curious, in terms of design, why there are resourceless champions. What's the idea behind creating a champion who doesn't have to manage resources?
TehNACHO93 votesBy concept, different resources have different effects on champions.
Mana for example is a resource amazing at doing a shitton of things at once, sometimes in a continuous stream. Burst mages for example are the prime definition of this as they can often throw at least some spell at a solid pace for long periods of time before dropping their entire kit on the enemy's head. It also provides early game gating and late game freedom, as early game you may have to consistently worry about your mana, but by the later stages of the game you quite frankly do not care about it anymore.
Energy is a resource that, if you are careful about, acts essentially resourceless. You can not fire large amounts of your kit consecutively like a mana user can, but you can drop an entire rotation of spells on the enemy's head after pacing your abilities in a way that your fast energy regen kicks in over time. Energy lacks the ability to build out of this restriction however, so if an energy based kit is designed to max out on energy with only 2 rotations of the champ's spells, you're not going to ever get around it no matter how you build.
Cooldowns, finally, have two significant weaknesses depending on how the champion is built. If it's a champion like Garen who is restricted by longass cooldowns, or on the opposite end of the spectrum Katarina with weak ass spells, resourceless champs are often balanced around the fact that they perform subpar to energy and mana in very specific matchups. Katarina for example is straight up weaker than Talon in many raw damage scenarios if you consider that her ult is easily interrupted and Talon can rely on multiple auto attacks with far more power than the former.
The reason why resourceless champions exist is to put a different spin on a kit than energy or mana could allow. Yasuo's design quite frankly is impossible with mana or energy because his Qs are essentially auto attacks and as his main combat skill damn near mandatory towards his damage potential. Wind Wall was designed as a reactive skill and therefore giving mana or energy is nothing more than a damning limit to using the ability in emergency situations. And don't even get started on trying to make his E function off a resource.
TacoTheKitten46 votes[deleted]
TehNACHO13 votesShit.
Gotta cover myself. Uhh, uhhhhhhhh.
Sometimes I eat paste because I think it tastes funny.
AMYS GRAVE3 votesI just read that in santa's voice from that commercial.
Ariel the Cruel2 votes
KILL IT WITH FIRE! 
PanterLily5 votesWhere do champions that use health as a resource fit in?
And is there a particular reason why a designer will allow 
to regain his resource/health faster in battle as he does? Or is it meant as after battle fast refresh? - I hope they didn't just went "U know what! lets try this!", because i really don't understand why do the "drops" need to fall in random places.
Duke Anax7 votesHealth based champs are allowed really strong abbilities, because tehy endanger themselves by using them. High risk, High reward.
They generally need some sort of heal though, otherwise they would just kill themselves. But a free heal would make them obnoxius. So they get a conditional heal with counterplay.
Buttigieg 20201 votes"Conditional heal with counterplay" 
with a point and click heal with no cost an a 2 second cd.
SociopathFriend10 votesVlad doesn't count, Riot admits he needs fixed.
GreenLore1 voteswell he has the ability to "charge" his heal more or less with his E.
His E(and W) cost him life without giving him anything back,so if he wants to utilize these spells without depleting his own health bar,he'll have to watch the charges on his E,before casting his Q.
Steelflame1 votesHis W has built in spellvamp though, so wrong. Combo that with any Spellvamp items, and they can easily go cost neutral.
GreenLore2 votesHis W also costs him 20% of his life. If he uses it at a time where he can easily get this cost back,then he is already pretty low health and it is rather risky to do this.
And spell vamp is a solution for pretty much all champs who use health as a resource bar,its just that not all of them can built and use it so effectively as vlad,since getting life through damaging his enemies is pretty much his way of fighting.
junglerboy162 votesMost champions that use health as a resource function most similarly to mana users, since they are generally gated pretty hard early on and then as the game progresses they are less and less limited by their costs until they are functionally cooldown based.
They are different from mana users because their early game risk isn't based around not having the resource to cast abilities, but also not having health to survive a trade. Health users are generally able to scale harder in terms of combined durability and damage output than most other champs with similar kits (i.e. Vlad deals comparable damage to many other late game mages, but also becomes much more durable than almost any other true mage in the game, or Mundo becomes tankier than most tanks, but is still allowed a really impressive amount of damage for being near impossible to kill).
As for the specific design choices for Zac, I know they wanted to give him health costs in a way that also served as sustain if played properly, and that that design was too strong in lane unless the blobs randomly fell closer to enemies than just Zac.
LaowPing2 votesThis is the smartest thing I've read on these boards. Dude actually explained the logic behind champions where as most people would of complained like crazy.
Any explanation of Riven? She has the damage and the cooldowns.
Duke Anax2 votesRiven was supposed to have a lot less burst. She only has this damage because of animation canceling.
Riot actually didn't expected this when they made her so they had to nerf her to a point were beginners struggle to do anything with her, while experts can stil stomp.
Her kit is really unhealthy right now and needs a rework.
junglerboy166 votesMostly it needs the animation canceling removed.
Once they get rid of that, they can buff her to be less binary for a new player without making her any more broken for a Riven main.
The Sword Saint21 votesBecause you're thinking of resources wrong. They don't exist so that champs 'have something to manage', they are there purely because designers want certain champs to play a certain way.
Did designers intend for you to spam the shit out of powerful spells mid-late game, but not want you to be a lane bully? You get mana.
Did designers want for you to be able to itemize for increased spell spam via cdr/mana/mana regen, but also don't want you to run out of mana in lane? You get energy.
Did designers want you to spam spells literally whenever you find an opportunity where it makes sense to, with the desire to have you be limited in some other way such as damage, cooldowns, or squishyness while being melee? You get 'no resource'.
Did designers want you to be super aggressive and make you weaker when you aren't being aggressive while also never running out of mana? You get rage.
Did designers want you to carefully balance your ability rotations to optimize damage with a significant risk for over spamming, without running out of mana? You get heat.
Did designers want you to be constantly on the move, spamming skills and dashing around, while being vulnerable if you ever stop moving, and without worrying about mana because you need to spam constantly to survive? You get flow.
Etc.
It's not about how 'fair it is' for one champ to have mana and another champ to have energy/fury/rage/heat/no resource. It's about how the designers want the champion to play. Lux has long cds and mana because she has the longest range of almost any champion and would bully everyone in lane otherwise - and she's not intended to be a lane bully. Renekton is intended to be a lane bully, so he uses no mana and in fact gets stronger specifically by pushing lane. Zed has energy because he would be worthless mid against any ranged champions as a melee squishy if he went oom from using shadows and shurikens to farm, but they also want him to only be able to assassinate one person lategame before running out of resources. Katarina has no resource because he entire kit is designed around being useless she can start resetting her skills and going on a reset spree - and running oom when her time finaly comes to shine would be dumb on to of her shitty lane phase as a melee with low damage, high cooldown skills and an interuptable point blank ult.
JustMyBassCannon6 votesI'm going to copy this quote to a notepad. It's going to be useful in the future, I feel.
Lugg4 votesYou are right, the designers had a purpose in mind when they did this. Unfortunately, the have failed pretty miserably on the resourceless side. Anyone who doesn't think being resourceless isn't one of the biggest advantages in the game, doesn't understand the game at all. That alone should eat up a large portion of a champion's power pool, but in the current game, it doesn't at all.
JustMyBassCannon4 votesYou make it sound like being resourceless basically means the champion should be worthless late-game. If that's not the implication intended, you may want to rephrase your thoughts.
Lugg4 votesNot sure how you came up with that since I didn't mention late game at all. Did you post on the wrong thread?
JustMyBassCannon2 votesMaybe I'm drawing implications far deeper than intended, but you're saying that being manaless should take up more of a kit's power than it currently does.
The thing is that resourceless champions appear stronger because of the lack of a gating mechanism. Pretty much anything can seem overwhelming if it literally never stops coming back. Still, all comparable manaless vs. mana-based champions I've seen are, in the most perfect and ideal scenarios, on equal footing, and it takes a hell of a lot more effort for manaless champions to keep up.
If more power was shaved from manaless champions, they would pretty much lose mid-game and late-game relevance if they didn't shut down their laning opponent and get a decent lead against the rest of the enemy team.
Lugg3 votesMaybe I'm drawing implications far deeper than intended, but you're saying that being manaless should take up more of a kit's power than it currently does.
Right now, it really doesn't take up any of their kit's power.
it takes a hell of a lot more effort for mana champions to keep up.
Fixed that for you.
If more power was shaved from manaless champions, they would pretty much lose mid-game and late-game relevance if they didn't shut down their laning opponent and get a decent lead against the rest of the enemy team.
They should lose late game relevance since they have such a significant advantage in the early game.
JustMyBassCannon5 votesRight now, it really doesn't take up any of their kit's power.
•Riven has no harass, poor innate defense and sustain, and is 100% scaling-dependent so she can't afford defense-focused items •Shyvana lacks any innate ganking strength, literally depends on enemies making mistakes for her laning or jungling to have any relevance early-game •Zed takes more than twice as long to deal the same burst as Talon to a single target, with almost none of the AoE
I could keep going with examples, but I would be rambling.
Fixed that for you.
Please don't tell me you're actually delusional enough to think that Yasuo is easier than Yi, that Zed is easier than Talon, [I could go on but I hope you get the picture]...
They should lose late game relevance since they have such a significant advantage in the early game.
They have the "significant" advantage of not being held back for the first 10-15 minutes of the game. It's an advantage, definitely, but it doesn't actually make as severe of a gap in power as you seem to believe.
Lugg3 votesRiven needs no harass, she just all ins you and kills you. I would much rather be harassed than dead. Shyvana jungle scales ridiculously hard, she will pass them by as the game goes on. Zed does take longer to deal the same damage, but he is way safer than Talon. Also, his AoE is pretty decent as well.
No idea why you think I talked about Yas being easier than Yi and Zed being easier than Talon. You must have your posts mixed up.
It makes a HUGE difference! Resourceless champs snowball SO easy. When you get ahead in kills, unless you majorly screw up, the opponent isn't going to pass you up till the 40 minute mark. If you haven't won by then, you deserve to lose.
JustMyBassCannon5 votesRiven needs no harass, she just all ins you and kills you. I would much rather be harassed than dead. Shyvana jungle scales ridiculously hard, she will pass them by as the game goes on. Zed does take longer to deal the same damage, but he is way safer than Talon. Also, his AoE is pretty decent as well.
"Here are some of their weaknesses." "Who fucking cares about those weaknesses? They're not real weaknesses."
Riven also lacks the capacity to deal with harass, because she herself lacks any form of range. Put very simply, range wrecks her shit unless you couldn't hit the broad side of a barn with a grenade blast. Shyvana has a strong late-game, but bruisers in general don't out-scale AP or AD carries, and if she has no effect on the enemy team early-game, she's pretty much guaranteed to get out-scaled. Zed's AoE is shit, especially compared to Talon. While Zed does have safety, that safety comes at the price of not being able to guarantee his burst.
No idea why you think I talked about Yas being easier than Yi and Zed being easier than Talon. You must have your posts mixed up.
You're going to claim that mana champions take more effort to keep up with manaless champions, but you're not going to give me any examples, so I'm going to assume the worst of your intelligence until you prove your point. In other words, tell me exactly what champions were in your mind when you fucked up my quote and called it "fixed."
It makes a HUGE difference! Resourceless champs snowball SO easy. When you get ahead in kills, unless you majorly screw up, the opponent isn't going to pass you up till the 40 minute mark. If you haven't won by then, you deserve to lose.
Mana champions have the same snowball strength without as much fall-off. If the mana-based champion gets a lead, there's almost literally no chance for the manaless champ to catch up. Which is worse, having a chance of falling behind and needing to turtle for late-game, or never catching up in the first place?
Lugg2 votesRiven is a melee champion and has the exact same problem as other melee champs in that regard. However, she has high mobility and CC to punish any mistakes the enemy makes and she has a shield to mitigate some of that incoming damage as well. Once she hits level 3, she can all in you anytime she has more health than you and she will most likely get the kill and then you lose lane since she snowballs so hard. As for the harass, you can avoid a lot of it by hiding in one of the top lane bushes. You know, the old Garen trick. If they facecheck you, you kill them. As for the so called missing parts of her kit, you said she has no harass, weak defense, and no sustain. I hope that is more of what you are looking for. Like I said above, same problem every melee top has. She doesn't have weak defense since she has a shield that scales with AD. So the more she stacks offense, the more defense she gets. A pretty sweet deal if you ask me. Finally sustain. This can be overcome with lifesteal, especially considering how much damage she puts out. I could go on with the other champs, but the wall of text is going to be enough already.
An example of mana vs manaless. Let's say you have a Zed mid against Oriana (a good mage example). Zed can spam his shuriken without worry, since he doesn't have to deal with running out of mana. Add to that the fact that it's range is almost 400 higher than Ori's AA range, so she can't trade with him once out of mana. So she must rely on spells to have a chance. Her cheapest one is 50 mana and her base mana is 334 with a regen of 1.2 every 5 seconds. So it takes her 208 seconds to get back 50 mana for a spell. That's a pretty damn long time. So she has to rely on the base mana which gives her 6 attacks if she only uses the cheapest spell. Do I even need to go on at this point? It's painfully obvious that Zed has a MASSIVE advantage over her. This is the same for mana vs manaless matchup. So good luck having that mana champ snowball over the manaless champ.
As you can see, I know exactly what I'm talking about. So you can either be in denial and not accept the proof I'm providing or man up and admit your wrong and i'm right.
JustMyBassCannon6 votes1 point of HP per 1 point of AD is worth a little less than 2.7 gold worth of HP for every point of AD. She has 300 AD? Congratulations, when her shield is up, she has an extra 810 gold worth of HP with no resistances to actually make that HP useful. And her shield doesn't stay up in extended fights.
"She can overcome her lack of sustain with Lifesteal." So can every melee champion in the game, but covering for a weakness doesn't mean it isn't a weakness.
Okay, let's say you have Ahri mid vs. Orianna. Let's say you have Leblanc mid vs. Orianna. Let's say you have Talon mid vs. Orianna. What happens in all of those situations?
Oh, that's right, they're Assassins. They quite literally exist to kill solo targets, which is why they're taken mid-lane against basic Mages.
As you can see, I don't subscribe to the delusion that you know your shit.
Lugg1 votesa shield that scales very poorly on AD.
It's a 100% ratio. How OP do you want the damn thing to be? She doesn't have to build AP on it like the vast majority of champs do for their shielding abilities. She gets free defense from stacking her offense. How can you not comprehend how awesome that is? And it comes with a dash as well!
1 point of HP per 1 point of AD is worth a little less than 2.7 gold worth of HP for every point of AD. She has 300 AD? Congratulations, when her shield is up, she has an extra 810 gold worth of HP with no resistances to actually make that HP useful. And her shield doesn't stay up in extended fights.
The cost is FREE, she scales it by buying her items that she gets anyway.
"She can overcome her lack of sustain with Lifesteal." So can every melee champion in the game, but covering for a weakness doesn't mean it isn't a weakness.
Because it works for sustain.
- "Let's just say you have Zed mid vs. Orianna."
Okay, let's say you have Ahri mid vs. Orianna. Let's say you have Leblanc mid vs. Orianna. Let's say you have Talon mid vs. Orianna. What happens in all of those situations?
Oh, that's right, they're Assassins. They quite literally exist to kill solo targets, which is why they're taken mid-lane against basic Mages.
Yes, Zed mid has an advantage against Orianna, but that has far less to do with him being manaless, and far more to do with him being specifically designed to ruin her day, as is any assassin. The fact that he's manaless makes it worse, yes. The fact that Orianna got nerfed to shit also makes it worse.
As you can see, I don't subscribe to the delusion that you know your shit.
I picked Zed and Oriana simple because it's a fairly common mid matchup is all. I can do the exact same argument with pretty much any two champions. You must be one of those people who can never admit they are wrong.
JustMyBassCannon5 votesIt's a 100% ratio. How OP do you want the damn thing to be? She doesn't have to build AP on it like the vast majority of champs do for their shielding abilities. She gets free defense from stacking her offense. How can you not comprehend how awesome that is? And it comes with a dash as well!
The cost is FREE, she scales it by buying her items that she gets anyway.
It's a 100% of bonus AD ratio, specifically.
For every point of AD, you get one point of temporary HP built into a shield that lasts less than 2 seconds.
Allow me to point out that there are two AD/MR items, three AD/HP items (which don't really help much with how low innate resistances are), and a grand total of zero AD/Armor items.
Allow me to also mention that, of these items, you will generally only see her build the AD/MR items, because the health ones provide very little AD.
Literally all of her defense is in her AD-scaling shield, which only provides a small chunk of temporary HP.
Because it works for sustain.
You seem to think that mentioning her lack of sustain is a stand-alone point when it's almost always mentioned at the same time as her terrible innate defenses.
Any damage dealt to her sticks. "But she--" Has a shield, yes, and like most champions with shields, you can force them to use it early, then throw more damage when it goes down. Or you can catch them off-guard and throw your damage before they shield.
Yes, like old Mordekaiser, she can build sustain and eventually cover this weakness, but it's still an early-game weakness, something you apparently don't believe Riven has.
I picked Zed and Oriana simple because it's a fairly common mid matchup is all. I can do the exact same argument with pretty much any two champions.
And I pointed out that you could literally pit any assassin against Orianna, because literally every assassin shits on Orianna, especially because she was nerfed ever since the mana changes happened. Manaless or mana-based, doesn't matter, Orianna has a rough game when she has to face assassins.
You have not countered my point: Being manaless is the icing on the cake; being an assassin is why Zed beats Orianna.
You must be one of those people who can never admit they are wrong.
No, I'm one of those people who argues with fools, not to change their minds, but to solidify my own understanding.
From the first reply, I didn't expect anything I said to actually affect your mindset. I've seen your opinions often enough, and nothing anyone says actually changes your mind. I just wanted to see if you had any arguments or proofs that could change mine. So far, I almost got a coherent straw-man argument from you.
JustMyBassCannon3 votesYes, it is bonus AD, but at level 18 Riven only has a base AD of 107. So the vast majority of her total AD at almost any point will be bonus AD. While her shield is the only innate defense ability she has, she can itemize against her opponent just like every other champion in the game has to do. So you have to weigh the benefit of going glass cannon (where you are pretty much guaranteed a kill if your opponent makes a mistake at the risk of dying yourself) or going defensive and focusing on farming and trading (where your shield is of the most use anyway).
I literally only pointed out that it was bonus AD scaling out of OCD.
Maybe you didn't hear me the first time, but Riven scales for shit if you build a defensive item instead of AD. She falls behind very fast if she isn't building almost pure offense, worse than most Marksmen in fact. She can afford one item for defense, usually after she has gained enough of a lead to rely on her current offensive output to stay ahead while she builds something that scales with nothing in her kit.
The only time you can make that choice is when you already have a lead, put simply and in small words.
"No, I'm one of those people who argues with fools, not to change their minds, but to solidify my own understanding."
This right here completely proves my point. You only seek to solidify your own understanding, even if it's wrong. That is what is know as rationalization. You are completely closed-minded in this regard.
An argument is a duel, and I'm as open to suggestion as a seasoned fencer. Get past my guard and you might actually score a point. Once.
To do away with the metaphor, you are the one who has failed to present any points that change my opinions or perspective.
Yes, I realize I opened the door for ad hominem...after I took your arguments, stabbed them to bloody death and incinerated the remains.
"From the first reply, I didn't expect anything I said to actually affect your mindset. I've seen your opinions often enough, and nothing anyone says actually changes your mind. I just wanted to see if you had any arguments or proofs that could change mine. So far, I almost got a coherent straw-man argument from you."
Once again, you already had your mind made up. I have had my opinion changed several times talking with people on the forums when their arguments are solid. While I'm not always the best at getting my intent or point across, I think I have provided some pretty good points and proofs.
You have provided me one weak argument--specifically that Zed shits on Orianna, therefore Manaless > Mana-based--while completely ignoring my counter-point in favor of obsessing over the fact that I believe you to be a fool.
The points you've made amount to saying, "The evidence is obvious" without having actually given any evidence, "Show me a gap in their power" and then immediately disregarding any and all power gaps mentioned, and basically cherry-picking bits of my argument and still not disproving what I've said.
You could have at least been trolling...man, now I miss Splougy.
50000000000000002 votesJust saying, but you didn't reply to Lugg's post. So he probably never got the notification. I say it's for the better, though.
Thank you for the explanation!
Only Play Darius17 votes
no mana + AP user = impossible to itemize CDR. Forces her to get her resets if she wants to spam abilities and reinforces the kill-after-kill playstyle.
can you imagine if 
was remotely cost-efficient on her? Jesus christ.
no real abilities he can spam or abuse in lane, he is mostly autoattacks. I don't agree with it though, considering his ultimate.
health costs.
health costs, but one of the main problems with them is that once they get spellvamp they become completely resourceless.
entire design is a champion where combat "flows" smoothly, no resource to interrupt that playstyle
JedenVojak3 votesTo be fair, Tryndamere is balanced around his ult.
Heckin Support4 votesMore like broken around his ult.
A Miss Fortune2 votesDon't know why you got downvoted, he's one of the most broken champions...
JAGMAG4 votesyou must not have played him much anyone with cc espicailly say a nunu will fuck your day up as trynd
Mongoose7 voteshttps://i.gyazo.com/e46a8bf7ac3d8ab890a81a38a1ab6c5b.png
so a champion can be built based on cooldowns and not be gated by mana
OhthePiplup22 votesThen why do all the resourceless have low cooldowns on most of their abilities?
500000000000000050 votesIgnore this guy. All his comments are basically "you're wrong because I say so" or "you're unranked/bronze/silver so your opinion doesn't matter."
TacoTheKitten3 votes[deleted]
500000000000000014 votes"Banned at my MMR" doesn't have the same ring to it.
TacoTheKitten2 votes[deleted]
500000000000000010 votesI started playing draft pick in preparation for ranked.
IcyPepper13 votesWhat's with the picture that has nothing to do with the original post that's an honest question about game design and not a QQ thread?
Stiv12347 votesI think he wants to say "lol nub unranked go home m8 "
Yfrappefort3 votesWhat's with the picture that has nothing to do with the original post that's an honest question about game design and not a QQ thread?
Don't you know? Unless you are Plat+, you are not allowed to express yourself in any way since you are trash and your opinion means nothing!
Seriously tough, hate people like that that just flash someone's rank to discredit their argument.
IcyPepper4 votesThere's three different kind of appeals: logos, ethos, and pathos. You should use them all complimentary to one another, not assume that one is all you need to assume superiority.
I'm going to be honest here, rank means nothing if you aren't using it to support anything. It should support your argument, not be the basis for it.
