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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Posted 2/11/2013 4:50:28 AMA frightening borring look at how LoL should play. Make all kits the same?
Yes, some champions are annoying to play against, but that doesn't mean they can't be balanced. It's a major strength of the game that you can come up with new strategies by using some of the more unusual champions.
How awesome was it when Dan Dinh picked Heimerdinger in tournement? If you had it your way we wouldn't see plays like this. Someone like Teemo doesn't have to viable in every pro game to be balanced. He has to be viable under certain conditions to be balanced.
This article just seems like a lot of whine, because people wont conform to your expectations so you can own them with your properly great skill. Just try and think out of the box and stop playing xin, kata or ez, try something new, you might like it.
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Posted 2/11/2013 4:36:08 AMWell, Hash, seeing 'harsh' comments like some below I need to say first that I knew you from your guides to Skarner and Renekton and appreciated them so much (and ROTFLOL to your writing style), and I came here to Reign of Gaming 'because' I've got to know that you were writing there. You and Gustaf became my two favourite authors here, and now I've just created my account here in Reign of Gaming to congratulate you for work and say to not mind about that kind of destructive bitching. Your complainments, opinionated or not, has already turned into a kind of meme by the community of LoL and I'm happy to have a patrimony like this in the culture of my e-sport. Thank you :D
About the post, despite hating Rengar, Talon, J4, and loving Cassiopeia, Syndra, Teemo, Galio, Taric, you touched in a point that's immensely relevant: something went wrong in the game designing with the former champion chain-countering the previous (Jayce? Irelia, the Renekton 2.0?) that led to the crisis of Rengar. But I must expose one point: as a pro-player, I know that's annoying to face Teemo, Galio or Kassadin ind mid (despite I myself prefer these 3 out of an Akali :P ), but for us, non-pro expectators of the competitive scene, is delightful to wonder "how this lane duel will develop?" and laugh at that Teemo driving everyone insane, even losing.
You are talking about the competitive scene! Your "JOB"! Not always someone's job is exciting, but one of the main things that made LoL transcend a "game" to become an 'e-sport' was its expectators. You, the pros, don't play only for the prize, but for the million people watching you. And I find myself really sad when I don't see my loved ones as Heimerdinger or Xerath played by no team. I'm hyper happy that my main champ, Miss Fortune, is trending right now, but after seeing the picks and bans' chart of tournaments, it's sad to see my Urgot in the oblivion...
That's why I comprehend your perspective that some champs are a pain to play against but don't agree that not every champion should be competitive. As a classical music performer, in my job I know that is much more exciting to hear than to play some composers as Mahler, Shostakovich, Khachaturian or Penderecki, but as an amateur in 'your' job, I prefer a thousand times to have a LeBlanc rolling over my team in my low skill-level play to not seeing her played by my favourite teams in competitions. =)
That's why I believe that, extremely problematic as it is right now, niche or not, EVERY SINGLE CHAMPION should be made viable in the competitive playing.
My ten cents ^^'
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Posted 2/11/2013 4:27:37 AMThis article doesn't make sense. It would be possible to slightly buff melee carries every now and then until they reach 50% ranked win/loss, the main reason why this is not happening is because Riot is lazy.
What Riot should do is to put obviously overpowered champions like Taric, Singed, MF, Amumu and Twisted Fate through Evelynn treatment and buff or rework obviously underpowered champions like Karma, Alistar, Poppy, Veigar etc.
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Posted 2/11/2013 4:20:24 AMI never understood what's so bad about making teemo viable. You can hate him all you want, but its not like the champion is shit. I know he is anoying, but he has his place in the league, he fills the "scout" niche. And it's not like you see him in all games at mid or high elo.
I agree that he should be nerfed (especially now since liandry's torment is getting a "buff"), but why is everyone hoping he never becomes tornament viable? I for one hope all the 110 or so champions become tornament viable. I hated the season 1 finals where we always had the same champions and bans in every match.
Making the champion into unplayable shit is not the answer to balance the game, in my opinion.
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Posted 2/11/2013 4:14:16 AMI loved this article.
All these haters seem to forget that your main goal in this article is not to QQ about things like the haters suggest, but to outline WHY it is that certain champions should not be competitive.
Bravo sir, keep doing what you do.
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Posted 2/11/2013 4:14:11 AMI thought I would post the champs that have kits that are too powerful to be balanced.
Trynd, Yi, Vayne, Rengar, Poppy, Ori, Galio, Morg, Ryze, Malph, Shen, Irelia, Amumu
If you notice, these champs often excel in a few very specific areas
Unstopable killing machines: Trynd Yi Vayne Poppy
CC bots with free farm: Galio Malph Amumu Morg Ori
Unstoppable dps tanks: Irelia Ryze
Sustained split pushing tanks: Rengar Shen
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Posted 2/11/2013 3:39:23 AMAwesome article Hash. One champion who you did not mention who got nerfed into the ground because of his kit is Shaco, and I'm really surprised you didn't mention him.
Shaco is the bane of low elo, and used to be the bane of high elo too. His counterplay? Play passive, farm to late game, wait till your jungler outscales him. That imo is just super unfun and boring, similar to Morgana and Galio, BUT FOR EVERY SINGLE LANE. Not to mention the fact that his kit is almost designed to annoy and frustrate enemies, since you catch him, but o wait decieve, and then you walk into a Jitb nest and accidently kill his clone.
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Posted 2/11/2013 4:33:10 AMThe counterplay is countergank him and kill him. It is ward properly your lanes to see him coming. With good communication from your jungler, you can keep trace of him. It's not hard to deduce what camp he's doing. The best thing to do against a Shaco is turn around when he comes out of invis and kill him. And also, you can pick champs with escape moves, dramatically diminishing the success of his ganks. Also, you can start early teammfights and rape his face with a good peeling or aoe comp. So no, you don't have to play passive all the time. Shaco can only come from so many places.
I read that stupid "counterplay" argument everywhere ever since Riot used it.
People hate Shaco cause they hate being outplayed and Shaco is all about out witting your opponent. You have tremendous tools at your disposals but come on... Shaco always runs with a buff on him, unless he invis before cloning you can ping the correct one or you can check his inventory. He has tons of counterplay. And contrary to someone like Leblanc, Khazix, etc... he doesn't have the burst to instakill you so you have some time to react. The times where you would run a full on crit damage page with Shaco are over. And contrary to someone like Amumu or Malphite, if your ganks fail, you will spiral downward.
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Posted 2/11/2013 3:27:10 AMHonestly a pretty good article coming from you, but I disagree with your assessments of Taric and Cassiopeia. Cassiopeia isn't even popular right now, she's hardly seen in solo queue and competitive play.
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Posted 2/11/2013 3:35:43 AMHe isn't talking about how powerful a champ is currently. He is talking about how powerful a kit is. If you remember Cass pre nerfs she was a terror. Her kit is designed in such a way that when she is balanced, if you get too close it is almost a guaranteed kill for her. Her counterplay was literally stay away from her or burst her down first. This is why they had to nerf her and make her underpowered.
For the entire game to be balanced, some champs have to be underpowered because their kits work too well.
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Posted 2/11/2013 10:55:59 AMThe very concept of a hypercarry with one of the strongest laning phases, very solid range and even some mobility and CC is broken as fuck.
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Posted 2/11/2013 3:07:58 AMSuffering gives Teemo his power.
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Posted 2/11/2013 2:38:11 AMThis is far and away your best article Hashishun
-Summoner Name: acerunner http://www.lolking.net/summoner/na/19941938#profile
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Posted 2/11/2013 2:35:32 AMJust in-case you are reading through the comments hashinshin, some people actually do like your posts, so... keep posting and stay classy.
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Posted 2/11/2013 1:55:38 AMIt's a bad sign when I can tell who the author of an article is, simply by reading a few lines of poor writing and loose arguments.
Seriously reignofgaming.net, drop this guy. Enough is enough.