Mana is a powercreeped resource that seems to only fill one resource these days, give a noticeably large disadvantage to a champion. If LoL heroes were done in a pros/cons sheet Mana would be the largest Con you could imagine (next to melee auto attack.) It wasn't always this way, in fact mana used to be a normal resource that everyone had to work around. If you didn't have mana you used to have noticeably large health costs or mediocre abilities. These days though non mana champion have abilities that are BETTER than mana champion's abilities in many ways. Mana has become a massive drawback that often is either trivialized or becomes the thing that holds you back from being able to lane effectively. Basically, I'm saying what everyone pretty much knows and is thinking, "Why the hell does mana exist any more if non mana champions get often more powerful abilities?"
What does mana do, why does it exist?
Mana makes it so champions can't go on the offensive 24/7 and completely dominate their lane. I know what you're thinking, "that's funny cause non mana champions do just that!" Yeah. They do. Lee Sin and Riven and Vlad and Kennen will ALWAYS attack you in lane, 24/7, until you are forced out of said lane or they are dead. Champions like Jarvan have ridiculous mana restrictions that maybe allow them a minute or less of fighting before they OOM. This keeps Jarvan from just going all in all the time and allowing his opponent some breathing room. If Jarvan had no mana he would just always be on your ass all the time harassing you until you died or had to go back to base (sound familiar?)
High mana costs are implemented to keep champions who are incredibly dominant in lane in check. That's what they (tried) to do to Graves with his buckshot. Xerath has massive mana costs to ensure he can't just Q spam till the end of time and turn the lane into a platformer. Basically mana exists functionally to restrict champions on what they can do, funnel them in to using their abilities only when they will really get some good effect, and not whenever they can get a tiny bit of damage off maybe. And it works, you don't see Jarvan players EQing every time its off CD, or Orianna players Qing every time you might possibly take a hit from it. They save it and try to ensure they will only use it when it's a sure thing for massive damage. What's more, and take note of this, mana costs on shields mean you can't just use them whenever you feel like it because they take MANA, real actual MANA, a resource.
Why have non mana champions become so powerful, and how do mana champions keep up?
Well, basically, non mana champions have been given more poweful abilities than mana champions for some odd reason. Rumble's flamespitter, Lee Sin's everything, Riven's everything, Kennen's... okay pretty much non mana champion's "everything" these days. Kennen has LUDICROUS levels of harass, more attack damage than many melee's, massive range, a 13 second escape (that because of no mana is spammable till the end of time.) bla bla bla. Lee Sin is given healing, a defense steroid, a shield, a gap closer, an escape move, a massive attack speed slow. I mean all Lee Sin hasn't been given is... someone tell me what Lee Sin hasn't been given. What's worse, have you noticed that ALMOST EVERY ONE OF THESE CHAMPIONS HAS A SHIELD? Do you know what happens when you give a non mana champion a shield? They spam it, they spam it for EVERYTHING. Gonna take an auto att- SHIELD. They're using a- SHIELD. They might- SHIELD CAUSE IT COSTS NOTHING. Shields with no mana costs are the dumbest shit ever made in this game. Shields on non mana champions ensure they'll run mana champions out of mana before they run out of shields (because they're FREEEEEE.)
Effectively lets take a look at the better non-mana champions in the game. Lee Sin: Super healing, super harass, practically ungankable so teammates can't help you deal with him. Between his free shield and free healing he'll run pretty much every mana champion out of mana by just face tanking them. Rumble: Massive damage, massive slow, uber spammable shield. Mana based harass champions pretty much can't kill him before they OOM. Ever done pantheon versus Rumble? It's a whole lot of watching your spear do nothing (though they'd be pantheon versus Riven, Rumble, and Lee Sin). Riven: Free stun, free knockback, free shield, free gap closers, low CD free ultimate. Why doesn't Riven even have mana? Because with mana she couldn't spam every ability on CD? Why does she also have the highest health regen? Because she has a FREE SPAMMABLE shield? Vlad: free healing from range on top of the highest base damage in the game (360 base damage AoE seems fair!) Kennen: Massive range, low CD spammable escape move, massive harass, massive base numbers. Stuns to ensure he can get kills.
The best way to look at these monsters is to ask "what if this champion got their mana removed?" What if Hecarim, tomorrow, had his mana pool entirely removed? Would he be stronger than them now, or weaker? He'd still be weaker! If your ENTIRE restriction of having a resource gets removed and you're still not more powerful than these champions isn't that telling? What if Jarvan got his mana pool removed? He'd still be weaker than Lee! These non mana champions often have STRONGER abilities than the mana champions.
Is mana even fun though?
You know I've thought about this a lot, and mana is really not fun at all. What I mean to say is, being BALANCED on mana really sucks and makes the game less fun. Who has ever played Skarner and thought YEAH THESE CRIPPLING MANA ISSUES MAKES ME REALLY ENJOY PLAYING THIS CHAMPION! Who plays Jarvan and thinks YEAH DUDE RUNNING OUT OF MANA ON THE SIMPLEST OF OFFENSIVE ACTIONS GETS ME- anyway. What's more, things that are balanced on high mana consumption such as Darius's ult tend to go unnoticed. Does anyone ever talk about the fact it takes 500 mana to pentakill with Darius? What about the fact that at level 6 he LITERALLY can't pentakill since he doesn't even have the mana to use it. What about the fact that despite tiny mana costs his mana pool and mana regen is absurdly small?
Balancing a champion on mana is unfun, doesn't get noticed and leads to people wildly misunderstanding why a champion is balanced or even weak, and doesn't even seem like a fun thing to do. If a champion is so imbalanced that they need crippling mana issues to keep them in check then maybe their abilities should be looked at? Now I'm not saying it's impossible to make such a champion fun. Kassadin can spam mana items to get past his mana issues and feel fun with it, but how often do you hear people going "kassadin seems OP but his mana issues really make him mediocre at best" compared to "KASSADIN INFINITE ULT SO OP!" Kassadin is probably the best designed mana chugging champion too. When you get tons of mana on kassadin it feels GOOD cause you can just nail people with massive ult stacks. Building mana on Kassadin feels rewarding because you literally get more out of his abilities. Building mana on Skarner feels more like "MAYBE I WON'T OOM IN 15 SECONDS THIS TIME! YEAH!"
So basically, my point is that balancing champions based on weak mana pools just isn't something that should be happening any more. Giving champions crazy weak mana pools because maybe they'd be too strong when unhindered and outright Skarner-ing them and is not okay. So on that note it does seem more FUN to make champions mana-less, it just doesn't work in a game where OTHER champions are trying to manage mana and you're going "should I flamespitter? Why wouldn't I flamespitter!"
What would you do, hashinshin?
I'd need to get a time machine for this one because these champions are already in the game, and non mana champions are already in a severe disproprotion for competitive playability. There are only 14 champions without mana. That's right, you heard me. Only 14 don't have mana. I know what you're thinking, that's insane! I know right? How can only 14 champions be picked so often as to make it seem like there are so many? Because it's just THAT much of an advantage. To fix these champions I'd have to go back in time and lay down some ground rules for them. Such as no free healing, no free shields. If they broke any of those rules they'd have to have a VERY good reason for it to get past me. Vlad would never have been added to the game, Lee Sin would be required to go back to fix his free crap, and Rumble would just need a rework. Riven would've been just given a mana pool cause that's silly.
It's as though riot takes away from non mana champions that they should be COMPLETELY lane dominant over mana champions. No, seriously, have a look at non mana champions.
- Akali: Spellvamp, free healing.
- Tryndamere: Free healing.
- Lee Sin: Free healing
- Shen: Free healing
- Mundo: Free healing
- Renekton: Free healing
- Vlad: Free healing
- Rumble: Free shield
- Riven: Free shield
- Mordekaiser: Es #1 never die.
- Garen: Free healing.
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Posted 7/31/2012 7:02:00 PM-
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Posted 7/27/2012 8:36:32 AMWell you should have a close look to the list you made , good sir. I will try to help you.
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Posted 7/26/2012 9:21:04 AMlee sin has no stun? i agree with what you said about non mana based champs but to me, it seems like you're only looking at it from the early game point of view. Second, you're not looking at the BENEFITS of mana. Yes there actually is, for example items. Non-mana based champs have a restriction on their item selection (frozen heart/archangel). Not too noticeable for lich bane tho, although it would still be a waste of gold. Now, about the late game part. What makes mana dependent champs better at late game is cd. If you notice, non-mana champs usually have high cooldowns (exception for some, lee sin/riven). Mana champs get to spam all they want when they reach late game. This is why energy dependent champs usually burst by using their skillorder once. They can't do it a second time without waiting. However, of course there is that problem of early game, and you might argue that if they dominate early game , there won't be a late game for mana champs. True enough, but I guess its sorta fair? Like how janna will almost never jungle and le blanc not being able to go top. What I'm trying to say is that different champs have different weaknesses and pros. Us being summoners is to capitalize on their strengths to cover up their weaknesses. This just means that if you're against a non mana champ, you just play passively. Change your playstyle/build etc. Overall, you do have a point that they might just be a little better but I'm sure there're some reasons why tryndamere is rarely played in tournaments.
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Posted 7/21/2012 4:58:27 PMEnergy champs run out of juice much quicker during the late game than mana-based champs. Sure, no mana champ can touch them early game, but late game when EVERYONE can spam their abilities the mana champs win because they can fire off their full combo over and over. Ryze is the ideal representation of this, but it's valid with other mana based mages as well.
Let's do some math. Really long post alert if you open the spoilers.
Lee Sin has 200 energy, assuming you don't have energy runes.
He has 50 energy/5 sec.
His q, w, and e all cost 50 for the first part of the ability, 30 for the second part.
One of my personal favorite combos on lee is Q-Q-E-Auto-E-R.
This costs a total of 160 energy. Now, for 1 second, he has no escape, and then if he has to use that, he's useless for 5 seconds. Or 8 seconds if you want to, say, do another Q-Q combo. Or 16 seconds for the Q-Q-E-Auto-E combo. If we assume he pulled off the first combo in ~3 seconds (reasonable), then W to ward, his rank 1 q won't even be off cooldown in 8 seconds.
So, the wait time between Q-Q-E-E combos is about 10 seconds, if you haven't gotten away in that time, his team probably killed you after he kicked you into them.
Now let's look at Olaf. His axe has an 8 second cooldown, 3.5 seconds if he picks it up within that 3.5 seconds (longer if it's after 3.5 because after that picking up the axe just takes all of the rest of the CD away), 2.5 seconds if he has blue buff. However, Olaf can also beat you over the head repeatedly with 340 true damage every 5 seconds. If Olaf has a frozen heart (to compare to lee's E attack speed slow), then his Q-E-Auto-Q-E-Auto-etc combo goes on 7 times before he even runs out of the bonus mana from Frozen Heart. Doing that Q-E-Auto combo 7 times in a row will take him as little as 27.5 seconds with blue buff, and will deal a grand total of (assuming axe hits only one person, that that perrson has 100 armor, and that olaf has 75 bonus ad, blue buff, and level 18 here):
11 Axe throws for 1842.5 damage
7 Reckless Swings for 2380 damage
7 Autoattacks for 672 damage
For a total of 4894.5 total damage (AFTER armor).
Sure in that time he'll do 952 damage to himself, but that's nothing for a full build olaf with 4k+ health who's going to regen that 952 damage in about 18 seconds.
Olaf's axe also hits multiple targets. Olaf will do at least 3000 damage in the time it takes lee sin to do a full combo twice. and he can just keep doing it too, Olaf won't quite run out of mana after 60 seconds solid of throwing his axe every 2.5 seconds. Mana champs have the upper hand later in the game, except in the case of kennen's ulti. That thing is kinda bullshit.
TL;DR (I suck at TL;DRs, even my TL;DR needs a spoiler):
Lee Sin is OP because the only thing he doesn't have is his eyesight, NOT because he's energy based.
Kennen is OP because of his ultimate, NOT because he's energy based.
Shen is OP because of Stand United, NOT because he's energy based.
Akali is not OP because she's partially countered by true sight and because her ulti uses a 2nd resource. She also is useless against non-squishies.
Mundo is OP because he goes where he pleases, including diving turrets and most of your team, not because he doesn't use mana.
Olaf is also OP, because dat true damage.
TL;DR of the TL;DR:
Being OP is in the kit, not in the resource system.
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Posted 7/16/2012 9:37:18 PMHm. Guessing you've never played Shen?
*walks into fight*
Uses all skills, fails e (or is 1v1ing) and hits 0 or 1 champs. At the same time, your teammates just got slaughtered or there's an incoming gank.
Shen to self: "RUN"
Oh, but you have no energy, so you can't q that one guy who's almost dead before running, MAYBE you can manage to w in time, but you sure as hell won't be able to e away. Mana allows short-term constant usage of skills, which has definite benefits.
The first other thing that pops up at the top of my head, and the only one I'll mention, is Gangplank. Can you imagine being able to spam all his skills right off CD? Constant harass, ridiculous farm with q, OP oranges, constantly buffing himself (or perhaps the rise of support plank?) with extra speed and AD, and not having to worry about having the mana to ult after that. I get a philo stone every game and I'm nowhere near being able to do that.
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Posted 7/16/2012 11:23:48 AMFor those who whine about pantheon vs rumble I want to say what on earth did you smoke this morning ?
pantheon strength is to block autoattacks, and have strong damage early + single target stun. His weaknesses are being squishy and not having escapes/kite abilities.
Rumble can use flamesplitter while stunned and also have strong damage early ; plus, rumble is AP, pantheon's block doesn't lower rumble damage output much.
OF COURSE rumble will faceroll a pantheon. Only by looking the skillsets you can say it. It is not a matter of free shield being op (even if it is true, free shield is op), it is a matter of "WTF U PICK PANTHEON VS RUMBLE" ; don't do that.
Once stunned rumble is already dealing dmg to pantheon, then he can just chase him so easily because panth can't kite anything.
Sry for double post.
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Posted 7/16/2012 10:44:31 AMCouldn't read every post but while I agree about free shields/health (dumb mechanic), I disagree on "if mana champions had infinite mana pool they would still lose".
Let's say there's a mana free GP top, for example vs a lee or tryn renek or anything. He'll just Q all day long and W out of CC each time needed. GP is balanced by mana.
Another example, more viable atm, malphite.
Throw a mana less malphite top. He'll Q all day and if attacked he has a nice passive shield, + free aoe slow and armor boost.
I think mana-less champions don't have that kind of click-for-damage skill to begin with. This is just melee champions but take AD kennen : his Q is easily dodged with creeps, and he has to take risks by auto-attacking to use his W. And try to lane as kennen vs mana-free ryze : have fun.
If mana-less champions were all so op, they would be picked all the time, not just more than average.
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Posted 7/21/2012 4:11:05 PM[img]http://swiftor.com/attachments/f134/11186d1334234088t-mystic-you-need-drop-right-now-mother-god-meme.jpg[/img]
Wait... but mana free ryze wouldn't do as much damage :D
So it's k. Kinda. Except for the absolutely raping everything part.
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Posted 7/11/2012 11:09:44 PMGreat article! I enjoyed reading it very much. I main Zilean Mid and recently started to run clarity/ignite because i just need more mana! Even when my team gives me blue, i still need more mana. I also recently changed my build for more mana still. I get RoA, then AA, then Deathcap etc. RoA is not enough mana and the AA really helps, but doesn't give enough health, so i get both. I have noticed against certain champions i just can't hurt them. I can stand there and bomb them all day and they just don't care. They shield themselves or heal up, or it doesn't do enough damage. Examples: Gragas, Orianna, Master Yi, Mordekaiser, Lulu, Morgana. I don't dare to play top in case i have to lane against Garen, Rumble, Riven.
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Posted 7/10/2012 5:53:50 AMOn your last article "Top lane, it's not just for bruiser..." bruisers were not excactly defined as monsters. Just count how many bruisers you got on that one list of yours.
Energy brings more variation to the games. Games where late game composition beats dominant early game comp are always absolute blast to watch.
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Posted 7/9/2012 3:50:00 PMkennen does one fuckin spell and he is out of energy for the rest of the team fight i wish he had mana. no mana nor energy.. that supid indeed
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Posted 7/6/2012 11:04:19 AMKennen would be even more ridiculously OP in teamfights if he had mana.
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Posted 7/5/2012 5:48:33 PMJarvan's mana isn't a problem, don't level W and he's more than fine. You'll find yourself OOM sometimes but not too often. People say they have mana issues either because they spam their skills too much, or because they don't understand that Mana is balanced around not being an infinite ressource.
Energy > mana in lane, Mana > energy in teamfights.
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Posted 7/5/2012 5:45:58 PMTo be honest most people overrestimate Energy and while it is a better resource than Mana in lane, I'd rather have Mana in teamfights. I find that to be a good tradeoff.
PS : I main Jarvan and his supposed mana issues are non existant.
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Posted 7/5/2012 3:15:42 PMBut you have to remember that late game most champions don't have mana problems, and energy based champions do have problems being out of energy iprovided they spam their skills in a fight - they have to manage their energy while other champs spam abilities on CD.
And there are no free shields, heals - you have CDs on all of them, and energy/health on others. So basically you can change the mana less champs CDs, energy/health cost and energy/health regen to make it balanced throughout the game.