Boards›[ARCHIVED] Gameplay+

CT designs are some of the best designs in this game

chipndip1·8/31/2018, 8:41:57 PM·55 votes·49,497 views

Dead serious. How so? Lemme break this down and explain.

Regardless of how you feel about them, they offer involving game play for both parties:

Akali

She excels in targeting back line targets. She excels in taking advantage of carries, who largely use targeted damage. Playing into her strengths leads people into a bad time, and it feels bad when you play into bad match-ups. However, she's not that great in team fights without a lead, and she's not that great in late game scenarios (like most energy champs are). Her shroud enables her to calmly maneuver during dives, true, but she can't up and blink out of danger without sacrificing almost all of her kill potential, unlike some other assassins like K6 or LeBlanc. Her strongest tools are also on her longest cds. If you play around her shroud and E, play the neutral well, and don't play into obviously bad match-ups, Akali's basically an auto-loss for her own team.

Zoe

Her tuning aside, Zoe's design as a whole is significantly better than people give it credit for. Her spells are generally "meh" ranged at best unless you utilize the different aspects in her kit. She doesn't have any escapes or lane sustain, either. Her best self-peel option is a skill shot hard cc that can be blocked by minions and delays in activation. There's also a ton of in-game ways to mitigate Zoe's overall effectiveness summoner 1 item 3102 item 3140 item 3814 item 3222. She IS strong in the jungle, and she does have strong flanks. If she gets fed, she does what a burst mage is gonna do and pops people. Picking her into something that can't aggressively run her down is perfect, but divers, vanguards, assassins, and attentive supports that actually buy Crucible all make Zoe's infinite life way harder. Riot would be smart to deal with her overall tuning, but her core game play is actually fine if you're using your head while you play. Don't play into the jungle where she has a plethora of walls. Play in lanes, pack some spellshields and cleanses, and run her over.

Yasuo

The undying poster boy of League salt. There's a good reason why his strongest lane is bot lane, even if no one plays it. Despite his potential to carry, Yasuo's early game, between shoving waves hard with E and Q and having no strong escape tools to avoid ganks or undo a bad engage, is heavily exploitable. Sure, he double his crit chance, but that passive means unlike Riven, Fiora, and other skirmishers, Yasuo needs to build crit, which makes him insanely glass while being melee ranged. Sure, he has a shield, but any champ damage knocks it off. Sure, he can ult off of any knock-up, but he can't move when he ults, so you can just hard-cc him. Much of all of Yasuo's benefits come with some deterrent or another that keeps him weighed down, and the nature of his risky game play causes him to fall short of success time and time again unless you're pulling the champ off properly. The enemy needs to keep harassing him and whittling him down, and he needs to dodge enemy fire and land combos. The whole gig is harder than it looks, and having a support to work off of makes Yasuo's life way easier since there's someone there to bail him out so he won't feed.

Kalista

Every designer has designed at least one bad champ and this is me being fair and honest in this thread.

Aight, so what's the point of all this? The point is that if you take the time to think on it critically, most of CT's designs have clear strengths and weaknesses. Most of CT's designs are high skill cap designs, as well. They're easier to mess up on, but they also offer strong options when utilized properly. It also brings us to the main point to make here, which is that this is the ultimate goal of champion design. Champions that are rewarding when played, crap when played bad, feel impactful when they do things, and are involving experiences for both them and the opponent. Most of CT's designs have these values baked into each one, if we're going to be honest with ourselves.

So why do people hate them so much? If you ask me, it's because OTHER designs don't have these traits. Lemme explain:

Marksmen: Their game play feels bad until it doesn't, or doesn't until it does. Because they're mostly balanced around the timer, rather than their own abilities, they feel limp-dick until they land items, and then they terrorize the entire rift. Shutting them down becomes increasingly difficult and there's very little to play around in this regard, but if they aren't like this, then they're in a state where being able to do anything of impact or merit is a greater challenge than 3D printing intelligent life.

Early-game divers like Diana/Wukong/Vi: You get that impactful feeling when you blast the life out of someone, but it's not very involving game play when Diana or Wu just slams into someone. If that one gimmick doesn't work (ass-blasting), you're left with no cds and you kinda flounder and die. Feels bad as hell, and their players feel slighted when they get nerfed because they see other more complex champions do all these flips and tricks and shit while their own champ gets nerfed for dashing and hitting someone, but front-loaded 1-shots from a mile away (or even stealth) isn't very engaging game play for anyone but you.

Older tanks: Tanks like Malph, Amumu, Rammus, and even tanky picks like Mundo and Trundle are or can be good champs objectively, but regardless of if they are or aren't, their game play is bland. They're rewarding for...like...one button in their entire kits, or they just stat check the shit out of people, but translating that objective success into success the player perceives is hard to do. Maybe Trundle beating your shit down is kinda cool at times, but for the most part, older tank designs have issues with people appreciating what they're even doing. It doesn't feel like they're doing that much, and when someone like Akali or Yasuo's dancing around you, it garners spite.

Highly reliable champs (Annie/Sona/Garen/Kayle): When it's hard to create lower lows for a champ, your highs have to be controlled in rather unbecoming ways as well. Usually you get the marksman treatment, where your scalings are your gates to enjoyment, and they open or close depending on what Riot decides for you. Yeah, what those champs over there are doing looks cooler and more fun, but you're objectively more reliable than them, so Riot has to cut down on what you get to do because what you do is stronger due to reliability, which isn't fun, but it works so they can rework someone else.

The main point is perception versus reality. CT's champs feel impactful and powerful to a point where people grossly overestimate their strength, while people undervalue others on the roster, including their own champions. This is how someone like Sona, Janna, Nami, or Jax can quietly acquire a 54% win rate and no one bats an eye, but a CT champ on a 50% win rate causes hell to break loose. They feel way stronger and influential than they actually are in solo queue...which is good. A champion SHOULD make you feel like you're strong and influential. You SHOULD feel empowered to play a champion. The issues occur when everyone else around you feels like you're too good in comparison to them because their own game play experience doesn't get close to yours. Not objectively, but based on perception.

So what's the remedy?

Well, there's a few aspects for CT designs that I think needs to be integrated into more champ designs.

  1. Each skill in a champ's kit needs to be important. CT designs are usually kits that rely on most of, or all of, their basic spells in neutral game play to make the kit work right. Many older designs have these sort of "dead weight" abilities that are OBVIOUSLY there to make build orders simpler. Teemo, for example, has only one active basic ability. Vi doesn't have an active on her W as well. Sona's E is so forgettable that most people put a point in it at levels 4 through 8 rather than level 3. On the other hand, I don' think a Thresh or a Yasuo would work even remotely well if you just up and didn't care about one of their buttons.

  2. There needs to be some part of the champion's kit that players are actively working towards/against. Most CT designs have SOMETHING that's on a pretty short cd that players are encouraged to play around. Akali's Q, Yasuo's E and Q, Darius's passive, Warwick's Q, Zoe's everything...there needs to be something to keep the players engaged relatively constantly.

  3. Avoid front-loading. Most CT's designs actively avoid front-loading damage. What this does is that it allows you to create more opportunities for players to outplay each other. Sure, Yasuo's zipping through minions, but at least he's not Dian-ass blasting you, so you have the time to assess your situation and attempt to react. This is the reasoning behind Darius needing to stack his passive before slamming you with his ult. This is the reason for Zoe needing to land her E before blasting you with a paddle star (sure, if it hits from a long distance, it hurts like hell, but note she has to send the move backwards, then send it flying forwards. You have plenty of time to dodge it, and if she does the prep from out of vision, it doesn't mean it's some massive .2 second burst option). This is the reason for Akali's damage being baked into her passive and the delayed second shot of her ult. When you aren't super front-loaded, you create a space where you're allowed more room for bells and whistles because you're less reliable. Those extra bits seem cool and strong, but what's stronger between Akali dancing in her shroud or Rengar just murdering you in a singular jump and walking off?

In shorter terms, designing more well-rounded basic abilities with a clear game play goal in mind that isn't extremely bursty upon contact, that's what will give champion designs more room for cooler and more fun tools to utilize in the game so people don't feel like they're missing out or playing something that's less capable than a CT champ, which drains the fun out of those match-ups despite the reality of the situation.

If anyone wants to discuss, feel free to do so below.

205 Comments

haaaaaaalp9/1/2018, 12:33:09 AM108 votes

His champions are well designed for rpgs or fighting games but not for Mobas.

Mobas are fun because they are a mix of both micro and macro play. Look at non CT league champions or even champions in dota, they often have many pronounced weaknesses throughout the course of a game which they have to overcome with good macro play or understanding of power spikes. CertainlyT tries to bypass these weaknesses by always giving his champions the tools to function in every situation.

As a result, he trivializes the macro aspect of the game and makes it feel a bit too much like aram which just focuses on smashing your head against the other team. If we were to give everyone tools like his champions, league would devolve into something like battlerite. Instead, riot should focus more on trimming away excess power and moving league back closer to dota like it was in previous seasons. The game was awesome when almost all of the champions were "bland" as you claim because that isn't where the beauty of Mobas comes from.

CertainlyT would be a great designer if many other genres. He just doesn't understand the power budget of a moba champion and tries too hard to cover up weaknesses.

Sire Hippington9/1/2018, 7:18:13 PM18 votes

I have to disagree.

His designs would be great if this was a PvE game, or a fighting game, but for lol they are not fitting(or weren't if they keep their path to becomeing a fully different game that fully cut off it's roots...)

His designs have a heavy skill celing, but once you get there, thhy just have so much to work with that they usually have all the agency in their own hands and their opponents are left with nothing but hopeing for a screw up. Even if balance, they usually are very frustraiting to play against, especially 1v1, as they feel like they can answer on everything while have tools to cover up their won screw-ups.

Yasuo for example can dominate many melee matchups by consistently harrasing with the ranged Q while useing the E to stay out of range - if he can't just all-in lvl 1/2 due to absurd high dps between AAs and Q. At the same time, his windewall and E give him all the tools needed to play around ranged opponents, while his Q+R give him high kill preasre vs any squishy with little retaliation due cc-chain and the passive-shield refresh, while the low cd on Q and high AAdps and his ult %pen mean he can shred tanky targets aswell. They only thing that really shuts him down is reliable burst/cc that he can't windwall or that has less CD than windwall. He also has very little downtimes to play around, windwall in the early but most combos that get denied by it have a not **much **lower cd, same for the passive shield, and his ult though compared to other ults it's also up often. And he's not even weak in teamfights for beeing so strong in nearly any 1v1, if he has a reliable aoe-displace, he can add alot to wombos and his cleanup potential is huge. And you also can't say play it save early and outscale, cause he scales pretty massive with a nasty two item spike.

Akali goes a bit in the same direction, either you make her you're bitch or you're her plaything, very few matchups are in between, though her design has more potential with proper tuneing(more sustain, less upfront damage)

And Zoe is just from start to finish disgusting. Her Q+R is basically the thing nida got reworked for, her E through walls is disgusting and has the bubble funktions as unecessary savety net, her W is a pure disaster and never should have been alowed into the game, her CDs overall are so low that you have no real downtimes, and as long as she has something on her W or a summoner, she's very save vs dives with the massive movement boost her W gives, and you can't really use summoners or item actives vs her, which makes engageing on a champ that usually is 1-2 screens away rather difficult. Maybe if the W gets fully replaced by something else and her Q+E get visible through the fog of war(and with some solid audio cue or less missle speed) she might be fine, but with the disgusting abomination that is her W and the low counteroly her Q+E offers through terrain, she's staying an issue.

His designs are just horrible to play against and mostly boil down to abuseing mistakes of the CT-champ, which means it all comes down to how the CT-champ plays, with some hardcounter exeptions that usually leave the CT-champ with little to no option. It's just a binary experience quite often because they have extreme highs and extreme lows and overly focused on mechanics over proper tactical windows or strategic counter options other than hardcounters duering champ select.

Now the only thing one has to say for CT is that he's by far not the onlyone, most of the new designs go similar directions basically since S5, and i dislike them all for that, though he really deleivered nearlly all his designs in that form and frequently managed to rach a new 'highscore' for that kind of design, with zoe so far beeing by far the worst design that every haunted the rift.

Each skill in a champ's kit needs to be important. CT designs are usually kits that rely on most of, or all of, their basic spells in neutral game play to make the kit work right.

Nope, Yasuo often had top as his best lane, where most of his matchups completely ignore his windwall so his kit definitly is totally funktional without one of his arguably most powerfull tools already.

Zoe does 80% of her gameplay without her W, it's just the little topping that pushes her from very annoying to WTF IS THAT BULLSHIT, saveing her ass ever so often while bringing that extra damage+mobillity that makes the difference between forceing a recall and getting a straight kill.

Kallistas E basically is only a gimick that you could remove from her kit and hardly anyone would notice...

there needs to be something to keep the players engaged relatively constantly.

Just No, this is(or was -,-) not an action game, you and you're opponents playing around menaingfull downtimes is an imprtant tacticall skilltest. It is fine to have some low key low cd thing to cyclle through, but without downtimes, you either always can take on you're opponent, or always loose if the players mechanics are good enough, you should not have acces to the majority of you're power at all times. Again, lol is no a fighting or action game, people do not need a button to press every single second.

  1. Avoid front-loading [...] hat isn't extremely bursty upon contact,

In theory and on some champs like kallista also in practice, but most of his designs have tools to either still acces frontloaded power or high enough power to still burst squishy targets while also haveing all the needed stickiness vs tanky targets to acces their backloaded power reliably.

Yasuo once he has some gear has so much damage that he kills most squishys on first contact, usually with e+Q-knockup+AA+R+AA+Q, hard ccing the victim on contact and finishing it off right when the CC-chain ends. If fed, he often doesn't need to prep the knock up and kills with E+Q+AA+Q within 1.3sec past forst contact.

Akali has so much mobillty, you hardly can ever get out of her reach between first contact and the finishing ult, and her E+W make it near impossible for most champs to retaliate duering that time either. Ther might be some time between first contact and kill, but most of the time the victim is doomed from first contact already.

Darius on releas(which is the version CT designed), would often reach a point where he hooks in a squishy, delivers AA+W+Q and then finishes with the ult, he might have had the passive damage and some of the ult damage backloaded, but his frontloaded damage usually was high enough to kill squishys should he be able to reel them in.

Zoe migh have the 'throw Q backwards first' gimick, but she also has the range to do so out of vision meaning it does jack shit on the reicving end, same for her E delay on the hard CC, by the time you get hit by her E, you either cleanse or pray some tank manages to anitceipate than angle of her Q and bodyblock, since the delay also gives zoe all the time in the world to prep her Q from a good angle, and we've seen enough instakill montages to see tha once you fall asleep, you're healthbar will usually disapear in a split second the moment zoe appears, which is all but backloaded.

Zyra might have her plant dps rather than upfront burst numbers, but her CC keeps you in the plant dps till you die, she was one of the strongest combo bursters till her rework(like with darius, CT is responsible for the pre reworke design) and still shouldn't be underestimated. If she goes for the full combo vs a squishy, you're basically dead the moment her E connects unless you have cleanse, as the root last long enough to chain directly into the ult knockup for a total of ~3sec lockdown within her angry garden.

Time to kill might be somewhat higher, but most of the time, you're still basically dead after first contact vs his designs

RiotAD Yuumi9/4/2018, 3:42:52 AM17 votes

When you mention "other designs don't have these traits" it reminded me of a conversation I used to have with Xypherous

Xypherous used to lament that Riven would have been a MUCH better design if League was a game where EVERYONE WAS RIVEN. The point he was making is that Riven matchups vs. characters with similar tools to her tend to be be dynamic and exciting. On the flip side, Riven matchups into characters like Nasus are much more likely to feel awful for one side to play. Nasus either outstats Riven and wins with Q (despite all her gameplays) or he does not outstat her and loses (while feeling helpless as she dashes circles around him).

We could say here "oh well why not just give Nasus more tools," but we have to remember that there are a lot of players out there who DON'T WANT THAT MANY TOOLS. I believe one of League's strengths is the sheer amount of variety we've managed to express in our champion roster. Some players want a high mechanic high octance experience (like Riven or Yasuo) whereas others would prefer to chill and manage one or two important spell casts (Like Nasus or Annie). It's important that we find ways to make champs with varying levels of mechanical complexity and "outplay" potential able to fit into the same game.

(As a side note, I agree that a number CertainlyT champs are awesome, IMO Yasuo and Thresh are two of the best champions ever made. It's interesting when examining regional differences for "the Yasuo problem." NA players find Yasuo incredibly frustrating, but Chinese players think he's fine, despite his playrate being WAY higher over there.)

Koechophe9/1/2018, 5:17:28 AM17 votes

I really appreciate your bravery in posting an unpopular topic, but I have to disagree with aspects of your analysis.

  1. You state that each champion has clear strengths and weaknesses. Clear strengths and weaknesses are fine. Polarizing strengths and weaknesses are when we get into trouble. Let's imagine, for instance, a champion who could passively ignore all ranged auto attacks, but took double damage from melee auto attacks. You can see the problem, right? They would walk into lane VS a quinn and utterly anhilate her with little counterplay. Likewise, they would walk into lane VS jax and get creamed. This is an example of when the strengths and weaknesses go too far, to the point where they are toxic because you're either stomping or getting stomped. CT kits are in danger of this. Take Yasuo (the poster boy). His wind wall is frankly a polarizing strength. Utterly useless against melees, but able to potentially negate almost all of the power of a ranged kit. It blocks several ultimates and fight-defining skills with relative ease from the yasuo player and makes it a game of "yasuo hard-counters XXX" or "Yasuo gets wiped by XXX". His E is in danger of being the same; it makes him capable of dodging just about any skill shot, but has little to no power vs people with targetted gap closers, so champs like Wukong and Jax will wreck Yasuo, while champs like brand or Syndra will really struggle.

  2. It is unfair to say that Zoe doesn't have escapes or self-peel. A free movespeed boost tacked onto every summoner spell, plus the potential to always have a summoner spell available from the large minions is reasonable self-peel, and far more than the likes of brand or velkoz. In my honest opinion, Zoe is fine except for her W. There are a number of issues with it: -Far too reliant on RNG (what the minion drops) -far too much power is shoved into a 1 point skill (potential for free ignites/heals/flashes, garunteed free speed boosts and damage on every single summoner spell -Invalidates the other aspects of her kit (needing to land her skill shots to work). You can find several videos of Zoe killing people full/0 with just her passive and her W, because in the right circumstances it just gives too much power.

  3. Much of the complaint against CT champs is the hyper-mobility, which I honestly can see. If you think about it: -Akali has 2 dashes in her ult, and a dash on her W + mini dash even if it misses -Yasuo has a no cd dash on his E -Kalista (yeah, let's just not even talk about her) -Zoe becomes hyper mobile in teamfights with summoner spells and the passive movespeed, plus the portal jumping all around -Thresh offers a gap closer as a support (not a common thing back then, only Alistar had one) and a free team-mate dash, which is unheard of and the source of almost all frustration on Thresh's kit

People complain about his kits because they offer more functionality. I don't think the solution is to make every kit overloaded in that way; it would make the game too complicated with too many confounding variables.

I do agree that:

  1. CT gets too much flak
  2. He does have some successes (WW rework and Akali rework were great imho)
  3. he introduces new ideas (sometimes successful, sometimes not so much).
Popperofski9/1/2018, 11:41:41 AM16 votes

Everything CT's made has peaked ban rate at some point.

Doubt that's a good thing

Dracocrash9/1/2018, 4:49:28 PM16 votes

Already found a problem with your first line

"Regardless of how you feel about them, they offer involving game play for both parties:"

People hate CT champs because they are being forced to play a game they don't want to play. the end.

DoktorKaiser9/1/2018, 9:33:11 AM10 votes

[deleted]

Fízz v29/1/2018, 12:40:59 AM10 votes

Idk about Akali because her damage is just busted rn and she.. kinda needs a nerf, agree on Zoe. Tho Zoe is a bit binary with "have cleanse/QSS or get oneshot as squishy", but she can play around it by poking and by having reliable damage from passive and W (tho both got nerfed hard recently which made her very weak).

But I dont agree on Yasuo, like you said its hard to play safe with him, but if you do.. I think his kit would be very balanced if he was the glass cannon champ you described him as, but sadly one of his core items is item 3053 with item 3046 reducing your damage and Resolve giving him defense. People sometimes even go item 3046 item 3053 before finishing item 3031

KFCeytron9/1/2018, 2:13:45 AM9 votes

Zoe needing to use her kit to have too much influence doesn't mean she's okay, because she probably will use her kit, and then she'll be broken. Listing things she can't do doesn't mean that the things she can do are healthy. Edge of Night is a terrible item that almost nobody buys, as its stats are low and the active isn't useful for anything but ganks and Requiem. Do you think it's good for part of the counterplay to a mid mage to be "stay out of the jungle; she owns it"?

Zoe's W is "important" in that it's way too strong, but it doesn't have anything to do with the rest of her kit except for the fact that it's a spell and therefore turns on her passive. There's no way for that ability to actually be an integral part of her kit, because it's not really her ability. It's item actives and summoner spells.

Skillshots that increase in effectiveness over their travel time/distance are allowed to do that because, in theory, opponents have more time to dodge them. Getting hit by something from fog is a massive design problem for this mechanic, in the same way that Ez is a problem for any on-hit item or mechanic.

I don't know enough about Akali to have an opinion, Yasuo is fine, and Riot obviously knows that Kalista was a mistake (along with Ryze et al.).

SettDownShutUp9/2/2018, 5:27:07 AM3 votes

[deleted]