Can we maybe take another look at Lee?

Earl Eulrich·Jun 28, 2014·3 votes·493 views

So...I have been seeing quite some LoL-esports from all around the globe, and it´s really hard to overlook that Lee has pretty much a 100% pick&ban-rate throughout all major regions (Eu, NA ,China, Korea) since quite a while. That clearly indicates there´s sth. wrong with a Champions powerlvl.

And it really keeps the jungle very stagnant, as you can only take a jungler yourself that can (almost) go head to head with Lee early on. A buff to spirit of the ancients won´t make tanks viable in the jungle as long as the well scaling early-game duelists (mostly Lee and Elise) don´t get adjusted I´m afraid.

9 Comments

12talesJun 28, 20143 votes

The nice thing about Lee is that there aren't really set ups he can't function in. You can pick him up blind (heh) in the first one or two rotations and be confident you won't have ungankable lanes or have to deal with getting counterjungled all day. Same story with Elise. We still see champs like Jarvan or Nunu showing up in competitive - it's just that you only pick those champs for a reason. You pick Lee because it's never gonna come back to bite you.

With that in mind, I'd rather see other junglers buffed to the point where they can gank and scrap effectively in the early game. If you just nerf Lee into the ground, you end up with Elise as the undisputed best jungler, which is arguably worse than the current duumvirate.

Earl EulrichJun 29, 20141 votes

the problem is though...you can´t just buff someone to bring him up to par with lee and elise, it´s just the combionation of insane single-target dmg + good utility + a very easy to hit gapcloser. It´s all about the kit.

So if you don´t want to rework all other 100champions...there´s no way around readjusting lee and elise.

12talesJun 29, 20142 votes

Like, if Xin Zhao was more relevant when behind, he'd be a great pick. If Jarvan was a bit better at 2v2s, he's be a great pick. If Vi was stronger pre 6, she'd be a great pick.

There are tons of champions that have the kits to be great junglers, that happen to not have the numbers to back it up. Champs like Irelia, Renekton, Wukong, or Diana could all function as meta junglers if they were more powerful or had their numbers tweaked - it's not like gapclosers, single target damage and utility are exclusive to Lee and Elise. We saw a bit of this when Feral Flare was at its height, where Xin Zhao was getting picked competitively because he was no longer irrelevant all game if he couldn't gank.

MackleDogeJun 29, 20142 votes

But you do acknowledge that buffing up other jungling options could lead to their abuse in lane right? It isn't as simple as just saying buff up other junglers, repeatedly buffing over and over leads to power creep. I don't see why we can't have a slight increase in power for junglers that are hurting right now and slight tweak to the power of Lee Sin and Elise, who are both pretty obviously dominant and have limited drawbacks as picks. The idea here is balance. It isn't "nuking".

12talesJun 29, 20142 votes

Oh, yeah, I don't pretend to know exactly what would need to be done to Renekton to make him a great jungler and terrible top laner. I just think that a champ with 900 units of gapclosing, a single target stun and an ult that makes him great at towerdiving could probably compete with Lee Sin if his numbers were right.

Anyways, if Lee Sin maybe gets a hit to his slow or something and XZ gets a second taken of his Q cooldown or whatever, that's fine. I'd just rather it be approached in the context of the entire jungle, rather than in the context of single champions that are problematic. If you take away Lee's ward hop without touching Elise, you end up with an even shittier state of balance than you had before.

MackleDogeJun 29, 20142 votes

Alright, then you and I are on the same page with this, just wanted to double check to see where you were coming from, carry on friend!

MackleDogeJun 28, 20142 votes

I still think its silly that Riot backed out of making more aggressive balance changes to Lee Sin just because people were crying about it. Lee Sin is just too easy to play right now in my opinion, he has a pretty high skill cap but his skill floor is ridiculously low to the point where it doesn't really matter if you are good with him or not. I hope they try to make some actual changes to him at some point.

Earl EulrichJun 28, 20141 votes

maybe sthey should even consider getting rid of his wardsteps...it hadn´t been in the mind of the original design anyway - and Lee is still a very strong pick in Dominion and 3v3, despite no ward-mobility being available there.

dog from airbudJun 29, 20141 votes

The problem is just that he has absolutely no weaknesses, his kit has too much utility in it and he can do almost anything. Riot needs to figure out how to give him more counterplay.