Reign of Gaming

So lately I've been thinking about who should be allowed to be viable, who should be nerfed, and who should just be left Evelyn'd. It all started when I had a conversation about Rengar and at the end I said "well he has had so much play time in high ELO and so much work put towards balancing him that maybe Riot should just leave him weak because he has so many bad mechanics that it would be really difficult to do anything with him." And isn't that true with a lot of heroes? Their mechanics are just so bad sometimes that you just have to agree that they'd never be balanced in a way that would be fun, or would make them good at both high and low ELO.

So lets start with Rengar. 

I think Rengar, despite how much I like him, really exemplifies what can go wrong with a champion design. Now Rengar is a non-mana champion so keep that in mind. He can free push, free heal, do fantastic base damage, and has a good gank/escape ultimate. So what holds him back? If he's against a mana champion he can free push in to their turret while free healing (on the SAME ability!) and run them dry on mana trying to both fight back and CS at turret. If he's against someone with no sustain he can free sustain. Back when he scaled off health he could just stack health and win the game that way. With his great base damage he's an excellent contender for sunfire abuse.

So what did Riot say? Well, basically, they said "Fuck this we've tried so hard to make him balanced but just fuck it." So much work has been put down on trying to make this champion balanced, and mechanically by his abilities he just has too much going for him to possibly be considered balanced. If he's balanced then he starts making low mana tops like Jarvan worthless due to his infinite push. If he's UP he still has some usefulness to the game as a gimmicky gib-machine with SotD. So really the better choice is to leave him weak. 

Teemo.

I think Teemo should be nerfed. Why Riot ever tried to make him viable is a mystery to me. #1 most annoying champion in MOBA history, lets try to make him viable in tournaments. YEAHNO.

Not every champion should be competitive.

Not every champion needs to be good. For various reasons mind you. They just don't really fit in to the game that well and frankly make the competitive scene look worse for being there. 

Some just aren't fun to fight.

Going of of the above, Teemo, some champions are just straight annoying. And some just aren't fun. Take Galio for example. Galio is an AP mid that when he works and is balanced beats all AP mids. So what do you do against Galio? Farm farm farm. Morgana and Galio have both been nerfed and Riot doesn't really want to bring them back because quite frankly it's not fun for the opposing AP mid to fight a champion who just pushes all day while being basically immune to counter attack (And if you do fight Galio or Morgana they can easily kill you, or at least use their ultimate to CC you for a gank.) 

Some just are bad balance.

Rengar is bad balance. I said it above so I won't repeat but to make Rengar viable will take a LOT of work and quite frankly his kit has "too muchery" all over it. It's much easier to balance someone like Kha'zix who has clear defined weaknesses. What does Kha'zix have that Rengar doesn't have? The ability to get a reset, and some ranged harass. Other than that his concept is pretty much "kha'zix, just tankier with no counterplay, with healing."

Some just have no clear weakness.

Going with Rengar from the above again but also including for example Taric. Taric keeps showing up as the dominant support and has gotten 2-3 revamps because he has no clear weakness other than a lack of ranged counterplay. Now while ranged counterplay HAS become a big thing in supports lately (Thresh for example will bite you from range all day) Taric is still tanky, with burst, and a heal. Compare this to blitz: Tanky with burst. Leona: Tanky with burst. Taric is probably tankier than both of them and has a heal and fantastic group buffs. So Taric is one of these champions where his kit just has no clear weakness, and other melee champions often find themselves with no option on how to fight Taric.

Some are just stupid.

Sorry Cass but you're just really dumb. You're not bad balance, you do have clear weaknesses, you do have counterplay, but damn you're stupid. An AP burst caster with massive burst damage, massive sustained damage, and the counterplay is just to never fight her. She's beatable, it just isn't very fun. She has counterplay, but it's not very fun to do. She has weaknesses, kill her first. It's just like... when you get killed by Cass it's just like man fuck this champion. It's one of those things where Cass falls in to so many unfun categories that she really just becomes stupid. Syndra, you're next BTW. 

Talon, as much as I love him, falls in here too. What's the counterplay to Talon? The same as the counterplay to Annie. Survive their burst, kill them first. Both Annie and Talon are direct nuking no real counterplay champions. 
They just don't give the game anything to progress on. How do you learn to beat Annie? You learn to build tanky. That's it. 

Some would destroy solo queue as we know it if they were competitive.

Remember when Tryndamere at high ELO was a thing? Remember what happened to low ELO? Yeah. Sometimes high ELO is just so good at counterplaying a champion that it needs to be made SO GOOD to be good at high ELO that low ELO is just flailing it's arms around going IT'S DESTROYING ME AND I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO. Sometimes this is somewhat fine, but if it gets too excessive then they need to be taken care of. You can't have Evelyn running around destroying every low ELO game, it makes getting in to LoL simply too painful. LoL is meant to be a fun game, not a trip to the Gym. We're here to have fun, not to practice and work out.

So I hope this helps people who always wonder why X champion isn't better.

Because I see that a lot. "Why isn't Master Yi good!" Because when Master Yi WAS good him and Tryndamere pretty much ran around destroying every game. Sometimes champions simply just aren't going to be good because if they were good it would not be good for the game as a whole. The game as a whole is the thing we're all here to play and must be preserved. This isn't Teemo Warriors Online, and that game would probably be in some circle of hell if it did exist. 

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