Balancing 'Difficult' Champions

12tales·Jul 1, 2014·1 votes·355 views

This is partially inspired by the recent threads on 's somewhat questionable state of balance, but I think it's an interesting topic regardless.

I think most people would agree that margin of error is relevant in champion balance. Champions like or have access to incredibly powerful, long range hard CC primarily balanced by being skill shots - meanwhile, champs with point-and-click hard CC like suffer from limitations such as short range, low duration or obvious tells.

So, what I'm wondering is this - how far can this go? Is it justifiable to have champs like with absurdly high damage limited by delayed timing and mechanical difficulty? Or alternatively, what about champs like who have access to incredibly powerful displacement effects conditional on very precise positioning and good reaction time? Hypothetically speaking, how powerful does a champion have to be before no degree of mechanical difficulty can vindicate them?

8 Comments

Sir ArmaMalumJul 1, 20142 votes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EitZRLt2G3w

12talesJul 2, 20141 votes

Interesting, but that's sort of the opposite of what I'm wondering. I think League's pricing system does a relatively good job of guiding new players through progressively harder champs ( Ashe is 450 IP, Draven is 6300). I have no issues with how that's currently being handled.

My question is, what's the extreme end of acceptable power?

Like, for LeeSin to execute his kick in a way that's beneficial to the team (most of the time, that involves kicking someone into your team) requires landing a skillshot, wardhopping correctly, potentially flashing and using your ultimate, ideally within a very short period of time. Every one of those steps has the potential to fail simply from player side mistakes, to say nothing of CC from your target's teammates or your target flashing/dashing away. And by consequence, it's more powerful than any point and click ability could ever be.

I wonder what the theoretical limit of that trade-off (reliability vs. power) would be. Like, imagine an ability or sequence of abilities that could functionally kill any champion in one or two seconds when executed correctly. How huge a margin of error would such an ability need to have to be considered balanced? Or could it never be considered balanced, even if it failed nearly every time it was attempted? If an instant-kill ability could never be balanced, what's the absolute most powerful ability (or combination of abilities) that could still be called balanced by virtue of its high chance of failure?

Which that video doesn't really address.

MrBuffingtonJul 2, 20141 votes

I'm a bit confused about the scope of your question. Most assassins (and some mages) have the potential to pretty instantly kill most champions in the game, presumably not every one of them is 'unbalanced'. Things like Karthus' ult exist in the game, that require little more than a bit of map awareness (or a team spam pinging you to ult). Game balance is a relative thing, it adjusts according to other characters in the game, as well as the people who play the game. A lot of times a game finds balance in a natural course, without any input from the developers (this is what the meta-game is). I could have a game where everyone gets a Karthus ult that instantly kills every other player in the game. Would the game be balanced? Sure, everyone has the same opportunity to use the spell. Would it create for fun and rewarding gameplay? Probably not.

You bring up Lee Sin as an example. He is an insanely powerful champion, but also requires some amount of mechanical skill. The common complaint about him is that the minimum threshold of mechanical skill required to play him effectively does not match the amount of power available to him (the complaint is that he is too powerful). You can remedy the situation by reducing his power, increasing his mechanical skill, or by creating/adjusting other champions to match his power. Lee Sin's kick could be buffed to do 1000% of a person's maximum health and could still be considered balanced if every other champion had power to match (and would probably make this game a lot less fun). Basically, you can't really think about champion balance without considering what you're balancing them to.

Just my thoughts. Cheers :)

12talesJul 2, 20141 votes

Sorry, let me try to narrow down the scope a bit.

Let's use assassins as an example, since it's pretty easy to understand a very powerful assassin. The super far end of power for an assassin would be 100% Maximum Health True Damage - instant death for whomever is on the receiving end. In the current environment of league, could a champion capable of inflicting that much damage in a single spell rotation ever be considered balanced?

I mean, you could set up the champion so that landing the damage is extremely difficult. Getting that much could be contingent on landing multiple slow moving skillshots consecutively, or be attached to extremely short ranged abilities that require you to put yourself in great danger to use them, or have very obvious tells that make it difficult to catch people unawares. But at the end of the day, you're still dealing 100% Maximum Health True Damage, no matter how hard you had to work for it.

So - could such a champion exist in a balanced state?

And if such a champion would be as incredibly destructive to the game as I suspect it would - what's the most powerful a champion could be while still being 'balanced' in the current league environment? And more broadly, how relevant is having difficult-to-access power when discussing champion balance?

MrBuffingtonJul 2, 20141 votes

There are champions that can 100-0 most of the champions in the game, but if you're talking about, no matter how far behind you are, if you d/c for the first 20 minutes of the game and hit lvl six when everyone else is max level full build, and you still have the ability to one shot anyone, I'd say it'd be pretty hard to balance that champion, but it could be possible.

This may be a loophole in the champion design, but consider a champion the champion I outlined above. They would never need to go past lvl 6, presumably, since once they get all their skills, they can one shot anyone. That means, they neither scale with gold nor experience, getting kills will do nothing for you without the ability to take objectives. What could potentially balance this champion are incredibly long cooldowns, so that it can only be used once per teamfight. OR another way is to make sure this champion dies with whoever they kill. It's rather silly, but so is this champion. Doing this ensures the game is almost perpetually 4v4. Most likely too, this champion would be building tank, since they have true damage and don't need any damage stats. This champion too should probably have incredible risk to their kit, maybe they take increased damage while executing their skill, or their skills take a large portion of their health to execute (for example, if each one of their abilities took 26% of their health and they are unable to be healed and all shields removed when they initiate their combo (to adjust for health regen, etc.). Zilean ult and GA would have to also not work for this champion. The difficulty of landing this combination would have to be immense as well.

I want to say a champion of this nature could be balanced, but the cons of playing them probably would be so immense that I don't know why anyone would play them.

I'd say difficulty is pretty relevant for champion balance. Balance changes to LeBlanc have been to remove her silence, allowing for more counter play to her kit. Ziggs and Nidalee have had the diameter/width of their Q reduced, making their power a little harder to access. Many different ways to balance a champion, but difficulty of access definitely seems like one of them.

Sir ArmaMalumJul 2, 20143 votes

I'll be honest I was in a rush when I dropped that, thought it would be relevant and informative. And I always try to find opportunities to spread the word bout EC.

Apologies on the not 100% relevancy, my bad.

So to directly address this, I'll use Yasuo as an example, as imho he has the highest damage capacity dependent on skill. First off, I think we can both agree that it does deserve a higher damage in general, that much is certain. If we go by the current precedent of counter-play, I would say that the ceiling for skill based damage capacity should in turn be dependent on the number of avenues that the champ can be exploited. Yasuo's mechanics really just have only one or two ways to counter them. The shield needs a small trigger, the E needs a minion wave and the Q should be exploited before the 3rd stack. While that makes playing against him a bit more intuitive, it also makes playing as Yas to address those weaknesses easier as well. So imho, more direct interactions against the champ's specific mechanics will warrant more power. The limit to the ceiling being once a mechanic's power overshadows the weaknesses it can generate. All imho of course

Hyrum GraffJul 2, 20142 votes

Like, imagine an ability or sequence of abilities that could functionally kill any champion in one or two seconds when executed correctly.

Veigar item 3128 ok

NinjaFiferJul 2, 20141 votes

I always do like that youtube series, but I don't think it's applicable for this game. This game is not necessarily about climbing a ladder of challenges to gain skill. You don't climb champions the same way. This game brings a ton of flavor and uniqueness for each champion, in such a way that your main(s) are champions you want to be able to take with you to Challenger. It is a terrible feeling knowing that the champion you know and love just will not compete, because an enemy champion will have more power at your skill level. That's why League tries to eliminate that. There are some champions that certainly require more skill to play as, but there's always something holding them back if the enemy is skilled enough to capitalize. As such, you don't just start with Riven, and work your way up to Lee Sin. If you love Riven, you can still play him against a Lee Sin, and expect to still hold your own (Figuratively. Counters exist, but my point is still the same. Low skill champs can still stand a chance against high skill champs).