Boards›Live Gameplay Balance

Is nobody else sick of stat ball champs?

MrSc0tty·7/15/2014, 7:16:11 PM·5 votes·3,189 views

I'm talking about champions who, for whatever reason, are basically reduced to a single move and everything else is just a button to be mashed to give them a stat advantage.

Master Yi: he's a targeted gapcloser. He just moves faster, hits harder , and attacks faster than anyone else.

Udyr: "stances" are meaningless because he gets the best bonus from every stance carried over into the others, so his kit just turns into a guy who moves fast, applies a little on hit stun and has more HP.

Trundle: more attack speed, more AD, more defensive stats, more MS than you....and a pillar.

Is anything being done to address these guys? It's the exact same problem Ryze has as a Mage, or Caitlyn as an ADC: they perform at peak power level in a fight without any kind of skill expression by the player. When that peak is low, they're pub stompers. When that peak is high, they're the best champs in the game.

24 Comments

RiotPhreak7/16/2014, 8:27:24 AM8 votes

A distinction really worth making here is the difference between a Skill Floor and a Skill Ceiling:

  • A Skill Floor is how good (1-100) you can be with a champion with almost no knowledge of how the champion works. Sona, for example, has a HIGH Skill Floor: You're fairly effective (say, 40) on your first or second game. There's more to master, but you'll be reasonably effective. Meanwhile, Yasuo has a very LOW Skill Floor: First-time Yasuo players are really bad at him.
  • A Skill Ceiling is how good you can be with a champion if you've truly, or nearly, mastered the champion. Zed, for example, has a HIGH Skill Ceiling. You can do all sorts of crazy tricky things by keeping track of his shadows, etc. He also has a pretty LOW Skill Floor because it can be quite easy to screw up his combos for a new Zed player.

I think a champion like Master Yi actually has a pretty high Skill Floor as well as a pretty high Skill Ceiling. Running around hitting QER every fight will give you pretty decent results. However, blocking burst abilities with Meditate, dodging important spells with Alpha Strike, properly managing Wuju Style and Double Strike is reasonably complex. I think his Skill Ceiling is higher than average, personally.

The worst combo is high floor, low ceiling, because mastery doesn't offer any results. Being easy to pick up and play is not really a problem, as long as there's a way to prove yourself as a better player.

MarkofShame7/15/2014, 9:25:57 PM4 votes

I was coming here to read and see if this was actually good information, but the funny thing is none of those guys you listed are purely stats let me explain.

champions who are considered just stat sticks are people with no meaningful decisions and little to no team utility. AKA Shyvana/darius/garen/fiora are good examples, but what you're saying is actually not what people use for the term stat balls.

Yi is a champion that no one ever wants to hear actually takes meaningful decisions because his skill floor is so low that its easy to succeed, but his Q and W have extemely meaningful decisions even if his R and E are just stats.

Udyr: This is a horrible example and leads me to believe again you misunderstand what the team "stat ball means" every cast he has is a meaningful decision on what he currently needs in his moment. tankiness? speed? burst? sustained? YES all of those just enhance your autos and effectively give you stats, but if that is the term you use then every single champion in the game is a "ball of stats" becuase thats exactly how abilities work, they enhance your killing or saving potential. His abilities dont just give him stats they affect how he and the enemy plays which is exactly what a champion does.(im not saying udyr doesnt have balance issues, but im disagreeing that what you are stating is the issue)

Trundle: This guy is the closest to anything you're talking about and to some extent I see that, but his gameplay is actually not just about being a ball of stats but directly to actaully TAKE stats from other people. He is in the game to drain and help weaken that frontline so your carries can tear through them. Pillar is also a very unique and extremely non-staty move.

Ryze and caitlyn are aslo not great examples because Ryze while not being hard to learn, takes strong micromanagement and is one of the harder champions to manage before you have cdr and in lane. And cait is just like any other adc, they "could" win a 5v1 just by right clicking if they're fed enough comparatively to the rest of the enemy and that is how they are designed and built.

I'll conclude by saying what you're talking about are champions with really low skill floors which means one can be awful and still succeed as that champion. While I agree they are never really "fun" to lose to the problem is they will always exsist and they HAVE to exist. Ive been playing this game for 4 years and im guessing you have for a while too, but you cannot forget that every single day there are people who are "new". Maybe they are new to mobas, maybe new to league, maybe just new to the mage/carry/assassin role, but a good game that is successful NEEDS champions who are relatively easy to play so that you can learn. And since riot designs their game to make every champion "viable"(just using this term not talking about competative viability, just what is considered playable) that means that there HAVE to be easy champions that can succeed.

Hyrum Graff7/15/2014, 7:45:48 PM3 votes

I only disagree with your representation of Ryze - while his skill floor is certainly very low, his skill cap is actually pretty high - it's very difficult to make the best use of his passive - this is partially because your best combo in terms of absolute damage is Q-W-Q-E-Q-R-Q-W-Q-E-Q, but your q is slightly longer range than your w, so if you lead with Q you may not be able to get the root off.

Knowing what combo to do, and timing it right, is not as easy as it seems.

Privet7/16/2014, 6:07:57 AM3 votes

Why are "stat ball" champions a bad thing? Not every champion needs to have an intricate ability set that require precision micromanagement of abilities in order to be effective. Asking for something like that is only going to be suicide for the games health. If champions are binary in play, they are often binary to counter.

Jingerbeardman7/16/2014, 5:33:59 PM2 votes

this is bit tunnel visioned as to the game as a whole. There are champions that are about auto attacking, champs centered on burst casting, on tanking and so on. For certain matchups and team compositions the champions you have listed are in fact quite strong and hard to deal with but that is merely another facet of the game. It is not just about picking your one champion and being able to win all the time no matter who you face. It is about strengths and weaknesses, sometimes you are the scissors that cuts their paper to shreds and other times they are the rock that destroys your scissors. This is the main reason why it is good to be able to play multiple different champions for each role.

To go back to your examples though, stat balls as you like to call them have a very distinct weakness. Crowd control in the form of slows stuns fears snares and suppressors are their bane. If the champions you like to play are ones that have little to no crowd control then these stat balls are are going to be the ones that beat you to a pulp, that is why communication with your teammates is important. With proper communication and cooperation you can craft a composition that can deal with whatever champion your opponents might throw at you. Sure you might not win your lane but you can rest assured that when team fighting breaks out there is someone on your team that will be able to take care of each particular threat. Just be sure that it is not all on one person to act as your peel machine, it is the entire teams job to protect each other in their own unique ways.

So while you think these champs are pub stompers, I see them as just another element that makes this game so diverse and fun to play. Even when I lose!

HemiPoweredDrone7/16/2014, 5:50:16 PM1 votes

I know exactly what you mean, and it's one of the larger reasons I don't play DotA2 a whole lot. I'm on the side of the best skill expression coming through a combination of mechanical and knowledge based skill, a champion that simply has one or more stat boost skills has far less of the mechanical skill requirements, even if you need knowledge skill such as timing and positioning it is far easier than something that requires two types of skill.

Lenox0077/15/2014, 7:52:55 PM1 votes

Naw, sorry, bro. I still find it fun and don't have a problem with it. I don't need every champ to be Rumble-esque in terms of mechanics. Even though I do find champs like Rumble fun.

steelblacksky7/16/2014, 3:12:50 PM1 votes

lets put it this way: if you took league from realtime to turn based, would it highlight making good choices for when and in what order to use the abilities of the listed champs more or less than realtime play? latency differences in real use tend to bury quite a lot of the nuance and skill in a mountain of no realistic response time window and oodles of seemed to spam everything because it was happening live and fast, with a side of cannot see it coming so must guess if i must be reactionary to a skillshot that may be incoming or not.

one other thing, stat ball champ. its a fun new buzzword round here, but frankly while you almost got the concept right, in the end you didn't. it isn't about the self buffs just press r type kits, stat ball champ is about champions with kits that are considered problems to balance, and are either top tier from base values or not, as per irelia or jax, usually lining them or their entire role for a larger scale rework vis a vis fighters/bruisers or toplaners in general. speaking of which has it really been that long since the toplane sustain pass .. i feel old. T.T

Bolraguard7/16/2014, 5:13:59 AM1 votes

I came here expecting the OP to be talkign about champs like Volibear... Stack on the HP Stat, and Bite with all your HP!!