Reign of Gaming

Solid article. Funny how the player base considers carries as pure auto-attack based champions while the term 'AP carry' exists.

However, I would argue that:

Additionally having some ranged poke works wonders for the viability of melee carries.

isn't merely good, it's broken when said poke can clear waves. Kha'Zix and Zed are too safe; while you could argue ranged ADC are just as safe, these don't have the sheer roaming and dueling power of assassins.

You can't really prevent Kha'Zix and Zed from farming, you can't gank them either. You merely watch them farm and roam a bit until they ruin your day.

Hard scaling AP carries have wave clear (Karthus) or mobility (Kassadin), but tend to lack both.

This. Why do people think having extra choices makes the game harder? If they don't come with drawbacks, they only make a champion easier to play.

As an example, the only reason Lee Sin can be considered hard to play is how hard he falls off late game. His skillset by itself is as faceroll as you can get - manaless, infinite sustain, on-demand shield, a retarded amount of escapes. But you have to abuse it early as hard as possible in order to win. A late game scaling Lee Sin would the most retard proof champion in the entire game by a large margin, regardless of how 'hard' his mechanics are supposed to be.

Jarvan is not hard to play, no matter how biased Hashishin is on this subject. Jarvan just shits CC, walking into a lane once he's level 6 will likely result into a flash. There's a reason Stonewall called Jarvan 'the best jungler to begin with'. His kit is versatile, easy to use, and can easily net kills to his team. Top lane Jarvan may be hard, but jungle Jarvan isn't; he wouldn't be the most popular jungler right now if he was.

Nasus needs a nerf on his W, and then he'll be fine. He can't really kill champions by himself early the way Udyr or Xin do, he has to perfectly time his E with his laner's burst, is mana hungry, has to balance farm and ganks in order to do the slightest amount of damage by late game, and will die if he gets caught because he can't escape for shit. The main issue with Nasus right now is how hard he fucks carries even while being 0/10 due to his pants-on-head retarded AS debuff.

Stop wanking over the fabled skillcap, champion specific mechanics are merely 5% of what makes a jungler good. If anything, I'd say someone like Zac is a worse offender than Nasus, since his ability to gank from anywhere and his absurd sustain mean he doesn't have to manage wards and ressources as much as other junglers. Players merely have to stop being dumb while building him - why the fuck would you ever max W first?

Garen is a pubstomper and a hard counter to melee champions, but his popularity falls off in the higher Elo and I have yet to see him in competitive play. Lee Sin (or Olaf, for that matter) never had a good win rate in the first place, even before their nerfs.

Quote from Edge363 »

Not that hard, the hardest champions are the ones with no escapes or defensive steroids.

Very good point. Proper positioning as well as ressource and power curve management matter far more as far as the actual skillcap of a champion is concerned than the amount of skills or skillshots.

And Garen does far less than Lee Sin or Anivia if you're half decent at the game. You don't have to be a god to play these champions meaningfully. A bad Garen may be better than, say, a bad Anivia, but a decent Anivia is easily as strong as a decent Garen, and a good Anivia just laughs at Garen not matter how good he is.

Playing Anivia or Lee Sin is mostly a matter of getting used to them. Sure, it's easier to play Garen than Lee Sin the first time, but after playing both for 50 games, they feel equally difficult to me.

The thing with Garen is, you can hard counter him. And by hard, I mean you can pretty much make his kit meaningless. How is Garen supposed to ever catch a good Elise or Jayce? What will he do in a teamfight if the carry is Vayne, the support Alistar, and he gets knocked out of the fight the second he tries to spin? There's a reason Garen see no competitive play.

Also, do not overrate the skill level needed to play a champion. Most of LoL's skill is game sense and decision making. A complex kit may give the illusion of difficulty while being chokeful of safeguards and free 'get out of jail' cards. I'm looking at you, Ezreal, Ahri, Lux, and Lee Sin.

Volibear has no business being in tier 4 either, GG showed that a few days ago. Xin and Jarvan are definitely tier 1, Nocturne  and Maokai are remnants from S2 that belong lower. The list really feels like a barely updated Season 2 list.

As far as the champion balance team goes... Remember when Kayle was the worst champion in the game and had to be reworked?

Still, putting Sejuani in tier 4 with jokes like Yi or Tryndamere makes absolutely no sense. She has her flaws but still brings decent damage while building tanky and a solid ultimate to her team.

She isn't really good, but could be with QoL buffs, and probably belongs in tier 3. Hecarim has similar issues to her and is in tier 2 nonetheless.

Try Pantheon. If your botlane has the slightest amount of CC, you get an almost assured double kill every 2 minutes there.

There are no diminishing returns on resistances, people are looking at it the wrong way. If you have 2k HP and 0 armour, an extra 100 armour will bring you to 4k EHP. If you aready have 100 armour, it will bring you instead to 6k EHP. In each case, you gained the same amount of EHP.

What is true, however, is that stats interact multiplicatively. If you already have 200 armour, an extra 1k HP will actually brings you over 3k EHP. When it comes to defence, the most balanced builds are often the strongest.

A good build should also focus on good items. People tend to react very slowly to item changes - I doubt the lower Elos have realized yet how good items such as Stinger, Warmog, or Locket are.