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Thoughts on "The Lame Game" in League (Long Post with TL;DR)

Dingus Evolution·7/23/2014, 2:27:42 AM·5 votes·1,473 views

League and fighting games get compared often, and I really like this comparison since I believe that MOBA's (specifically League) are going to change the way that competitive games are balanced. As the title suggests, this is going to be my raw thoughts on why I think playing safe or sometimes (but incorrectly) labeled as "The Lame Game"** should be adopted as a play style in League**.

If anyone doesn't know what playing safe is, look up a video of Chris G from Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom. Since EVO has come and gone, I did a lot of thinking on what makes fighting games so timeless. One of the first things that fighting games do well is to create characters for certain play styles. For example, Rush Down (Wolverine), Rekka (Iron Fist), and Safe Characters (Morrigan) to name a few. This isn't to say that Morrigan can't be rush down (which is a thing), but certain players have chosen to play her in a Safe way. The tools that Morrigan has in her kit allow her Safe play style to be picked over any other styles.

So what?

I believe that items define a champion's play style rather than the abilities the champions have. (This is kind of a misleading statement since it's really the way items synergize with a champion's abilities.) A few generic examples are "Atmogs" and Force of Nature/Spirit Visage that allowed certain tanks to be strong. Innervating Locket was core on Udyr, Sona, and Soraka and had to be removed. League of Cleavers (one of my favorites :3). And most importantly the Trinity Force Changes right at the end of last season. Once these items were removed or toned down, there became a shift in what could or couldn't be played across all levels of game play. We are seeing the same thing with the ADC changes right now.

So what... does this have to do with The Lame Game?

Viktor, Xerath, Veigar, and Lux are some of my favorite champions. I also wish Brand could be picked more. But the problem is that there doesn't exist items to allow for their kits to be strong. Let's take Veigar. When he gets behind, he tickles tanks and dies. And when he gets an early lead, he two shots someone into and dies. These are extremes. The point is, that most people recognize that rushing DFG into tons of damage is important. The cycle for this route is wait for Ult and DFG to be off cooldown, blow both, wait to team fight until both are up. This kind of play style is frustrating for you and your team since there is a good chunk of time where you are useless and trying too hard to not die, and frustrating for the other team since they can't really respond to this unless they kill you or get defensive items. Personally, I build Lich Bane and Athene's on Veigar to abuse his low cooldown on his Q to proc Lich Bane. To me, it is fun to play Veigar that way since I can still one combo the carry, but have the chance to kite the tanks thanks to the MS on Lich Bane and allow myself the option to save or use my ultimate when I need to.

Low cooldown burst mages are always seen as strong since most of the items that exist synergize well with their kits. In my opinion there are categories that go with different mage styles. Netural has Zhonya's, Athene's, and Void Staff. Offensive has Deathcap, DFG, and Lich Bane. Defensive has Liandry's, Rylai's, and Twin Shadows. And most mages will prefer the Athene's, Deathcap, Void, Zhonya's route. Lich Bane is really good one people who can proc the passive in auto attack range enough (TF Fizz). Liandry's is better on champions with innate slows or passives that reproc the burn (Zyra/Brand). And Twin Shadows is a cool item that I wish saw more play in mid lane, but is really an awkward support item that is not really worth it in comparison to other support items.

Liandry's item 3151 and Rylai's item 3116 are the two items that have the potential to allow Immobile Mages to become viable as picks again. Reducing the health and increasing the AP is a great start to Rylai's. But I think it would be interesting to have it build from Kindle Gem and Blasting Wand and give less HP (300) and AP (50-60), and 10% cooldown. This would allow immobile mages options for health earlier in lane phase (which is the reason why all immobile mages suffer as a whole) and allow them to have a soft counter to their high bursting counter parts. The lower stats and lower combined cost would allow immobile mages to get to the core of their kit faster by sacrificing a lot of stats to try to snowball.

Haunting Guise should have a reduced effect of Liandry's, but keep the same build. Liandry's could build off of Guise and Aether Wisp with an increased purchase price, and have some sort of movement speed steal/buff associated while it's passive is active on a nearby champion. This would give a power spike when Liandry's is completed to make up for the fact that these immobile mages are choosing to take this item over a power spike in Deathcap.

These two items would allow Immobile Mages to play like Singed. Kite around and get the other team to chase you while you cycle through your abilities. These champions won't be taking out the back line right away, but that's fine since this is an entirely new play style. And I'm not saying that this has to be the exact changes that need to be made to these specific items, but there really needs to be more options for mages besides glass cannon.

At the end of day, it is not up to Riot to tell us what we do with their game. It is up to us to use the tools that they provide us to show them where they can make improvements. Do your part as a Summoner to look for new innovations and dream big. Don't give into the complaint traps. It will never keep this game alive. Thank you to those of you who took the time to read this whole article, I know it's long. I hope this leads to a good discussion.

*TL;DR: Items need to change in order to allow immobile mages to play safe. Specifically, Liandry's and Rylai's are the two items that will allow these mages to rise to favor. * Discuss below.

9 Comments

RiotMorello7/23/2014, 7:30:12 PM4 votes

Interesting thoughts. I think there's two elements to this that stand out;

  • In Statikk's recent Q&A, there was quite a bit of talk about the relationship of mobility and what you "charge" for it with your power budget. We've consistently undercosted that mobility. It's hard to have a character who has a bit better range, more AOE, or more damage be used with another character does those things nearly as well and is mobile.
  • Items are a piece of this. Many of our items are still near-original in form. The Game Systems team took a swing at fixing some of this for Marksmen itemization recently, and we need to do this with more items. What's a "mage item" need to look like? What role does mana play?
  • That being said, we do need to both work on some champions who lack mobility and make sure they have a strategic identity, and hit people who have to much and disallow anything else to exist.
Lneacx7/23/2014, 9:38:27 AM3 votes

Not sure if any mage wants to rush an early kindlegem. Kindlegem lacks both mana and AP, so I don't see it helping Rylai's out much.

Rhlax7/23/2014, 6:18:05 AM2 votes

I believe that items define a champion's play style rather than the abilities the champions have.

Absolutely. The problem right now is the lack of meaningful choice. You rush item X or you are useless is not the best design.

Sire Hippington7/23/2014, 9:39:25 PM1 votes

I don't think lowering Rylais health for more ap is a good step. It always was an item for tanky and/or suportive chaps imo, and there for i'd rather go the otherway and reduce ap for more hp on it, but mostly the utillity part must be increased. The duration of the slow is to low for anyone that isn't cassio, as it's bound to the cd's of ur skills. Another option would be incresing the slowamount by 5%(40%singletarget, 20% aoe/dot) so the slow actually is noticible enougth for the low uptime.

I also think Liandry's needs to be changed. The dot is only good for tanks or evt poke, but mostly rather weak, as most mages, especially those who opt for flat pen, deal alot of burst damage, takeing away a huge chunk of life befor the first tick of the dot, makeing the current-health damage pretty weak.

So either Liandry's should give more hp, less ap to fit tanks more, or the dot should be changed to missing-health so it's more usefull on bursty casters(probably would need reduced numbers then to not get op), wich would probably make it a great item for assasins... Giving it ms and a ms-buff might make it to strong on some junglers like elise, while the range of the speed steal/gain would need to be high enough to stay out of gaplcoser range, makeing it also very apealing for longranged mages like ziggs, otherwise the problem vs mobillity-creep would remain.

I don't think imobile-midrange-mages can be fixed by items, as any items to help them could get abused by either longrange poke mages, tanks, or assasins, they simply need more mobillity in their kit(even if it's just more base ms), or more easy to land skills that don't get so easily outplayed by mobillty, even if it has to come on the cost of raw damagepotential(from which they have plenty...).