Map Specific Balance: A Necessary Evil

Hello everyone!

In this article, I would like to talk about why map specific balance is necessary for game health, but also why Riot has been hesitant to implement it in the past.

To be clear about what I mean by map specific balance in case any of you are out of the loop on what is going on, I am talking about champions on The Crystal Scar and Twisted Treeline (perhaps eventually on the Howling Abyss map too) being nerfed and buffed independently of Summoner's Rift and in some cases of each other.

In the past, champions for every map have been nerfed or buffed based on how they perform on the Summoner's Rift. This caused some champions, such as ones that are really strong in small skirmishes, to become dominant on these maps. Other champions, such as Thresh who rely on different tools and play styles have often dropped in power when transitioned to Dominion because of this.

At first, this may not sound so bad to you; having idividualized balance across all maps/modes. However, there are several reasons why this kind of balancing was never done in the past, and I will talk about those next.

1: Map specific balance makes the various League of Legends game modes feel like different games, instead of all being part of the same game. What I mean by this is that by changing things about champions on the different maps, it makes Kassadin on Summoner's Rift not feel like Kassadin on The Crystal Scar, splitting the game in two, at least for games involving that champion. This is also why many MMO's such as World of Warcraft do not balance PvE and PvP separately; it makes the two ways of playing feel like two games. However, the developers want their games to feel like one solid game where every piece fits together perfectly (in theory at least). This leads me to my next point.

2: Map specific balance forces the players to memorize how abilities work on each map. It can be really confusing, especially if you play a champion solely on one map and then go to another. If you don't deal the damage that you should, or if your abilities have different cooldowns than they did before, then the game can be really confusing for you, and you can end up misplaying because you are expecting a move to behave in a way different from what you are used to. For The Crystal Scar or Twisted Treeline only players, map specific balance will just feel like a normal buff or nerf, but players who enjoy playing across different maps and modes will have to learn a completely new feel to every champion affected by map specific balance, and adjust themselves based on the map. This is doable, but will likely confuse and put off some players, especially those new to League of Legends in general, or trying out the game mode for one of their first times and playing on one of these affected champions. I should note that changes to non-spammable ultimate cooldowns will be the least likely offenders of this, because players are used to casting them once and moving on, whereas with other abilities players are used to using their cooldowns together and after certain amounts of time during fights.

3: The next problem is the amount of extra work that this kind of balance puts on Riot. Now this may not seem like a big deal to some of you, but it has already proven difficult for Riot to give the Twisted Treeline and Crystal Scare the love and support that they deserve. Most of Riot's balance team is already busy on Summoner's Rift, where they have a lot of expectations to strive to meet and maintain patch after patch. It has been made pretty clear already that people separate from Riot's main live balance team for Summoner's Rift will be handling Crystal Scar and Twisted Treeline balance from now on. However, as far as we can tell via the forums, these teams of people are really small. Keeping up with two maps changes, identifying more and more problems, and coming up with high quality changes to make to champions on top of all of their other work, such as itemization changes. This also leads to many more questions.

4. There are several more questions that Riot will have to answer among themselves while doing map specific balance including but not limited to if a champion is buffed on one map, should that buff go through on all maps? Will that differ on a per champion basis? Do we need to expand our live balance teams for these maps in order to keep up with everything going on? If changes like Ultimate cooldowns are not enough for a champion, what kind of other changes can we add in so that players will not be confused? They will also have to worry about how changing champions and items at the same time will all affect one another. Could a simultaneous change to a champion and an item result in a much larger nerf or buff than expected?

These are all reasons why, up until recently, Riot has always stayed away from map specific balance. It is why I call it an evil. Now I would like to go on to my next topic: why map specific balance is a necessity.

Champions in League of Legends have always been balanced around Summoner's Rift 5v5. They are each balanced to have an early game, mid game, and late game. Each one of these champions also has strengths and weaknesses on Summoner's Rift, often depending on whether it is early, mid, or late game. Since the champions are balanced around that map, champion’s strengths and weaknesses are allowed to be visible, exploited, and overcame depending on player skill on that map.

This is where the problem lies. The champion's strengths and weaknesses specifically are designed to be balanced on Summoner's Rift. However, The Crystal Scar and Twisted Treeline are much smaller maps, which involve lots of skirmishes, and generally have shorter games. So what does this mean? Mobility is insanely powerful (e.g. Kassadin on dominion), tanky dps champions are really strong because they are harder to kill, while still being able to kill carries just as well, champions with weak early games but strong mid-late games get out of their weak phase of the game sooner, and champions who have a critical mass point in the late game (Hypercarries) can struggle to deal the damage they need because they won't get the items that they need until it is too late and there is not much time left (on The Crystal Scar, at least).

In other words, some champions’ weaknesses have been removed, or have become less relevant to the game, while other champions weaknesses are more prevalent. The same is true for strengths in that some champions are able to be at their strongest relative point more often than on Summoner's Rift, while others are at that point for less time. For example, Singed's weakness is getting cc'd down and blown up because he has to run around the enemy team or be chased to do anything. On Twisted Treeline, there are two less people to damage, cc, and slow him, turning him into a monster that was one of the first victims of map specific balance.

Let's also take a champion like Thresh, for instance. One of Thresh's main strengths is setting up  kills in the middle of the jungle for his team, and sometimes under towers but that is often dangerous. However, on The Crystal Scar he spends much less time in the jungle, and diving the turret as a support against 4 enemies is even more dangerous that it would be on the Summoner's Rift. Furthermore, Thresh has really high cooldowns on most of his abilities, which is a direct result of necessity on Summoner's Rift because of just how strong his utility is. On dominion though, his utility is much less powerful and game changing, and Thresh has received nothing in return to compensate for this loss in power that he has on The Crystal Scar.

To compare this to another support not hurt by changing maps, take Nunu for example. Nunu's strengths rely around a single target buff, a single target nuke with a slow, a minion/monster nuke that heals him and is, for the most part, not part of his team fighting, and an AoE ability that can obliterate a team if caught in it. Not a single one of these abilities are actually hurt by being on The Crystal Scar or Twisted Treeline. His Q is actually probably stronger on The Crystal Scar if he is playing in the bottom lane, since he will stay in a 1v1 spot to munch down on minions and heal for the whole game instead of only for the first phase or two of the game. Not a single one of Nunu's strengths are hurt by playing on one of the other maps, and he actually get's relatively tankier since there are less enemies to attack him generally now, making him stronger than before (compared to a lane Nunu, at least).

The main point that I am trying to make here is that something has to be done on these maps to balance out champions’ strengths and weaknesses for that individual map. Riot has tried a few techniques before, such as changing up itemization, and introducing and changing the global aura on Crystal Scar. However, champions have proven to be too diverse for changes that are that general to be effective in nerfing OP champions or buffing UP champions while not hurting the balance of others somewhere else. The only real way I see to have such a specific kind of balance that the maps need to balance champions without affecting one another is to have map specific balance.

As said above though, map specific balance comes with its own set of problems, likely some that I have not yet thought of. Riot is well aware of these problems, and I believe that is why they have never implemented map specific balance before. They have tried to come up with ideas to balance this map without making this drastic of a change, but as we all know that has not worked out, leaving map specific balance as the only real solution in sight. Whether or not this necessary evil will end up being better for League of Legends or not, we will have to see. I really hope that it is.

Until next time!

"The Crystal Scar is weeping"

-Rikukun

Addressing Comments about Kirito!

Hello Everyone,

In this post, I will be discussing current and future comments about Kirito that I have received either as a comment on this blog, or on other sites.

Here is a link to the original concepting post in case anyone wants to look. Kirito's Design

So to get started, here is the first couple of comments from a friend on facebook:

"funny concept and love kirito xD. q and w sound a lot like fiora and even the ult sounds a bit like fiora's kit. even the health regen mechanic of his w is very similar to fiora's passive. the cd mechanic for his passive seems really interesting but i imagine there to be major balancing problems with that (since to either nerf or buff his passive to be effective but not op, it would involve changing many of the cds of his other skills). all in all gj on designing your first champion  it's probably not at the stage of development where riot would jump on it yet but it'll eventually get there hopefully xD"

"your skills might also be too compound/complex (by that i mean too many different "effects" in one). the q has 5 major components to it (dash, parry, damage, decreased magic damage, the extra auto). the w is more reasonable although still carrying 3 major components in it (regen, the high/low mechanic, move speed). the e has 3 major components (charge, damage, knockback), and the ult if you ignore the fact that you're effectively altering your attack speed by having him attack with 2 swords, is just a massive atk speed steroid. from the way it sounds, the passive of his ult alone would give almost a 100% increase in attack speed (you're getting 2 attacks off in about the time required for one). it feels uninspired and leaves much more to be desired for an "ultimate move""

To respond to this, I will respond to each section of the comments piece by piece.

 q and w sound a lot like fiora

Well, I do admit that his Q does sound a lot like Fiora. It is largely similar to Fiora's Q mixed with Jax's E, but with only one charge. One main difference though is that you go to target location, not target champion. This adds for more counterplay since it is dodgeable, and gives Kirito a higher skill cap. So it is actually more like Fiora's Q meets Vi's Q meets Jax's E, lol. And to be honest, a charge up like with Vi's Q on Kirito's Q might be a good thing with him to increase the counterplay, but I would like to test him thoroughly both ways to see if that is needed.

As far as the W goes, this doesn't sound anything like Fiora's W to me. Thinking back though, since I don't want Kirito to be a tanky derp, I could make the health regen be a flat amount instead of a % health, although I already have ways to make building lots of health not be good with this ability.

even the ult sounds a bit like fiora's kit.

Perhaps. I designed Kirito to be a fast attacking high movement speed fighter, so he probably will sound similar to Yi or Fiora in that regard. However, I still feel like the passive, combined with the removal of attack animation slowing him down adds uniqueness to his kit. Fee free to disagree though.

even the health regen mechanic of his w is very similar to fiora's passive

I disagree on this one. Fiora's passive heals her when she attacks things, Kirito's W heals him whenever it isn't on cooldown. Come to think of it, that does encourage boring gameplay, which is bad, but I think that there is enough incentive to use the ability thanks to the power of movement speed, and his passive, that it will be okay. If not I could change that part some to make it not encourage lane staleness from the Kirito player.

 the cd mechanic for his passive seems really interesting but i imagine there to be major balancing problems with that (since to either nerf or buff his passive to be effective but not op, it would involve changing many of the cds of his other skills)

Actually I do not think this is true, since you can both nerf and buff the damage of this ability, and you can change this abilities cooldown completely independently of his other abilities cooldowns.

it's probably not at the stage of development where riot would jump on it yet but it'll eventually get there hopefully xD

Agreed. It will take more work, but that is what I wanted feedback for, as I am new at this and need help from others.

For analyzing the first parts of this next quote, I will compare the complexity and compactness of Kirito's moves to that of other fighters. I will compare to wukong, Aatrox, Jax, and Vi.

your skills might also be too compound/complex (by that i mean too many different "effects" in one). the q has 5 major components to it (dash, parry, damage, decreased magic damage, the extra auto).


Wukong Q: AA range increase, AA reset, Bonus Damage, Armor Reduction. 4 components.

Aatrox Q: Jump, Damage, Knockup. 3 components.

Jax Q: Leap, Damage. 2 Components.

Vi Q: Gather range and Damage. Cannot Attack or cast spells. Movement Speed Decreased. Dash Damage. Apply W. Knockback. Stop when champion hit. 7-8 components depending on how you count it.

So, my Q has many more components than Aatrox and Jax, a bit more than Wukong, and much less than Vi. Assuming the rest of the kit is in order, I think this is okay, although we of course have to analyze that too!

 the w is more reasonable although still carrying 3 major components in it (regen, the high/low mechanic, move speed). 

Wukong W: Stealth. Summon Decoy. Damage. 3 components not including mind games.

Aatrox W: Damage with health cost. Healing, Choices on which. about 3 components.

Jax W: AA reset. Damage. 2 components.

Vi W: Damage on 3rd blow. Armor Reduction. Attack speed boost. 3 components.

Kirito's W seems just fine to me.

the e has 3 major components (charge, damage, knockback)

Wukong E: Dash. Damage. Attack speed. 3 components.

Aatrox E: Damage. Slow. 2 components.

Jax E: Dodge. Reduced AoE damage. Can let run out or reactivate. Stun. Damage. Increased damage with dodges. 6 components.

Vi: Gain charges. Auto Attack reset. Damage. 3 components.

Kirito's E seems to be fine. I will also analyze Kirito's Passive and Ult in comparison, even though it is not mentioned in the comment.

Wukong R: Damage. Knockup. Movement Speed. Can't attack or use spells. 4 components.

Aatrox R: Damage. Attack speed. Range. 3 components.

Jax R: Damage on 3rd attack.. Bonus mr and armor. More mr and armor based on damage and ap. 3 components.

Vi R: Damage to target. Dash to Target. Knockup Target. CC Immune. Knock asside addtional enemies. Damage additional enemies. 6 components

Kirito R: Second Sword. Attack Speed of 2nd Sword. attack speed boost. attack speed over time boost. does not slow down to attack. 5 components.

Less that Vi, more than the others. Not a bad number of components imo.

Wukong Passive: MR/Armor buff. Depends on # enemies. 2 components.

Aatrox Passive: Store's Health. Depletes over time. GA revive. Healing. 4 components.

Jax Passive: increase attack speed with your basic attacks. 1 Component.

Vi passive: Gains a shield. Based on max health. 2 components.

Kirito Passive: Needs to have all abilities on cooldown. extra auto attack damage. 2 components.

Kirito's passive seems to be right in line with other abilties.

Wukong total number components: 16

Aatrox total number components: 13

Jax total number components: 14

Vi total number components: 21-22

Kirito total number components: 18

So, as you can see, Kirito falls in second for number of compents in moves among the fighers I compared him to. So, he might be a little too complex for some players, but then again that could just make him have a high skill ceiling, which is something that I like. Anyways, on to the next part of the comment!

and the ult if you ignore the fact that you're effectively altering your attack speed by having him attack with 2 swords, is just a massive atk speed steroid. from the way it sounds, the passive of his ult alone would give almost a 100% increase in attack speed (you're getting 2 attacks off in about the time required for one).

Yes, the ult passively does give you 100% increased attack speed (maybe this should be decreased at lower ranks?). This was intentional to get a attack with one sword, then another feel, but still feel faster since you should feel faster attacking with two swords than with one. I also tried to balance this by making the offhand auto attacks deal less damage, which still fits thematically. Maybe I didn't handle this in the best way possible, but I think there is potential in the basic gaining attack speed thanks to having two blades idea. Probably needs a few tweaks in execution.

 it feels uninspired and leaves much more to be desired for an "ultimate move"

The following video was my inspiration, specially at around 1 minute.

As you can see, the idea is for you to fight and constantly struggle to get faster and stronger as you progress in an epic battle. But perhaps something is missing to make the ultimate move fell really good as an ultimate, at least the active part (the passive part feels really good i'm sure). To make it feel better, I would first make sure that your swords gain really cool visual effects once you activate the ability. I think seeing your blades swinging around all cool like would help with the not feeling good part, and I also think that we would need to experience the not being slowed down by auto attacks part to know how good that feels, since there is nothing else like that in the game. One last thing I might add is kind of a finishing blow at the end of the abilityl Perhaps something like once this abilitiy goes on cooldown. Kirito's next auto attack deals x bonus damage or X bonus % missing health damage or something like that. Some suggestions on what I could add would be great!

Well, that is all for the comments I have so far. I will edit this post to address more as they come up.


edit 7/8/2013: I have been thinking some more, and there are some issues that I thought of myself with the cohesiveness of Kirito's kit, and the goal to make him into a fighter, not a melee carry. I would like to discuss those now.

Issue number 1: This comes from his W. The way it is currently set up, it encourages the Kirito player to not go all in, but to instead just poke fight because you will regen more health this way and possibly eventually win while at really high health. This is not only poor gameplay, but it also goes against what I want Kirito to be. To fix this, this skills passive needs to just be reworked. I am currently thinking of the best way to do this, but it will probably be something along the lines of Kirito gaining lifesteal (either every hit on every 3rd) against minions, monsters, and champions (more against champions) or just against champions. Will update later with my decision after some more thinking. I may come to the conclusion that playtesting would need to be done to test thouroughly. One note though is that this lifesteal will never be as high as Aatrox's when below half hp, though it may be somewhere around his when above half.

Issue number 2: Because of the huge attack speed steroids, it would make sense to build Kirito like an AD carry. So, I want to change a few things about his kit. First of all, his offhand attacks gained at ultimate rank up cannot crit. This will encourage attack damage over crit and attack speed builds, while still making crit a non wasted stat since his main attacks will still be fast and will still hurt.

Next, I might decide to make Kirito's E scale with cooldown reduction, to encourage items such as the brutilizer and Ionia boots. This also encourages tanky items built from kindlegem, so again this would need to be tested to make sure it doesn't send kirito building tanky either.

Lastly there is one thing I might have forgotten to mention before. That is that I want Kirito to have high AD scaling with low base damages (opposite of a tank). That way you will be more encouraged to build AD. With these 2-3 things in mind, I think that it will become obvious that Kirito should be built as a fighter, not a tank or a carry.


Until Next Time!
"Every kill brings victory closer!"
-Rikukun

Proxy Singed and Toxic Gameplay

Hello Everyone!

In this post, I would like to talk about a relatively new way of playing singed that has popped up. This way is known as proxy, or suicide singed.

For those of you who may not know, let me explain to you the basics of how this works. First of all, you always take teleport for a summoner spell. Next, you take either ghost or flash as your other. Now for gameplay, you spend the entire game ignoring enemies and turrets and just farming behind your enemies turrets.

Now at first this may sound like a bad idea because it makes you an easy kill a lot, but keep in mind, you are singed, and you have teleport. This means two things. 1: when you get a minions wave with any amount of ap gear at all, that wave will die if you try to kill it, stopping your enemies from pushing, and 2: you can get back to lane fast.

So, you may die a lot, but you are constantly getting a lot of farm, and pushing turrets. You also decrease your own worth each time you die, eventually making yourself be worth less than a minion so long as you don't get kills and assists, which you are not trying to get. So then your opponent has a choice, let you run rampant on their minions and eventually turrets, or go try to kill you again for almost no gold. Neither of these is a good choice, and since you are still getting farm, you will be hard for them to kill alone. If you drag the jungler or mid along to kill you too, that just means your team can do more elsewhere. This is a win win for you, and there is hardly any counterplay.

So now on to why this is toxic.

First of all, this is one of the most unfun things to play against I have ever heard of, second on to release stealth champions in my opinion. It just puts you in a place where you feel like there is no right decision, because no matter what you do, singed accomplishes something he wants to, even if you do everything right!

Secondly, there is no counterplay. You can chase singed around and kill him, but he is still getting farm, and is a very hard champion to kill 1v1. Bringing teammates along just allows singed's team to have more freedom at other places on the map. Your only real hope at this point is for your team to do so well, that it doesn't matter what happens top lane, you are going to win anyways; and let's face it, how often does that happen?

Lastly, a strategy that involves you dying over and over, while still gaining gold and giving none to your opponents is just plain stupid. League of Legends is meant to be a risk reward game, and playing singed in this way makes the opponent takes risks for pretty much no reward, while you and your team are easily rewarded. The opponent has to risk missing farm and taking turret damage, for the reward of a decreasing gold pool from this singed. Worst case scenario you actually die to this singed and then he just get's even more free reign over your turrets and minions unless someone else can come in and stop him.

So basically, because this type of gameplay has no real counterplay, and makes it to where your opponent cannot earn any rewards, it is a strategy that is extremely toxic to the game, and hopefully Riot will soon make this unviable, because it is detremental to the game, and needs to be stopped before it ruins more and more games, and frustrates more and more players.

Hope you all enjoyed this one!

Until next time!
"How about a drink?"
-Rikukun

Time To Design My Own Champion! Kirito, the Blades of Justice!

Hello everyone!

In this post, I would like to propose a full design for my own champion. This will include the champions theme, intended role, kit, and explanations of why the kit is thematically sound and balancable. I will not include numeric values, as those would need to be balanced through actually making and playing the character with a lot of testers.

There is one archetype that I really really love in games, that I feel League of Legends is missing. This is the dual wielding swordsman. The closest thing we have to this right now is Olaf, but he is not quite what I am looking for. What I want is someone much more offensively natured than olaf, who is often played as a tank.

To help with coming up with the design for this kit, I have looked to different sources for inspiration. One inspiration in particular is Kirito from Sword Art Online, an anime that I really love.
*spoliers*
Kirito ends up being able to dual wield in the show, and fights as kind of a berserker force of offensive power that swings faster and faster and harder until he destroys his enemies. This is the kind of character I want to go for (again, more offensive than Olaf, and trust me his kit will be entirely different).
*end of spoilers*

So, my champions theme will be a dual wielding swords. He will be a male. His personality will be a young cocky but heroic warrior. While his cockyness can sometimes get him into trouble, his strength and heroic traits usually pull him out of the situation before too many people die, heh. This character also needs a name, and since I am not the most creative person when it comes to names, I am going to be lame and just call him Kirito for now.

The intended role of Kirito is Fighter. Not melee carry, not tanky dps. A fighter. Think kind of how you would always want to play wukong, even though it is usually sadly better to build pretty tanky. That is the kind of role I want to fill. Not a glass cannon melee carry like master yi by any means, but someone who is squishier than a garren or darius or irelia.

Alright, so now let us move on to Kirito's kit!

I will start with his ultimate, as it is kind of his defining feature!

Ultimate: Blades of Fury: 
Passive: Kirito pulls out his second sword. Kirito now has two auto attacks that he can use. Each sword has the same attack speed, and the second sword will always swing halfway through the attack speed cooldown time later after the first auto attack (at the earliest).

Active: Kirito starts to go Berserk. He instantly gains y attack speed, and gains z additional attack speed over time. Additionally, his auto attacks do not cause him to slow down for the animation to go off.

So as you might can tell, this is VERY ripped from Kirito from the anime. He later in the game gains a second sword, and can gain the ability to swing faster and faster over time. I also added in the bit about auto attack animations not slowing him down to allow him to not suffer as bad as some other melee fighters do as far as actually landing his auto attacks.

Also to explain more on the passive. Let's say you are auto attacking a target 5 times. Let's say you have 1.0 attack speed, meaning you land an attack with each sword every 1 second. What will happen is at 0 seconds after attacking, the first sword will hit. At .5 seconds the second will hit. At 1 second the first will hit again. At 1.5 seconds the second will hit again, and etc. Keep in mind that the second attack is weaker!

Now on to his other abilities!

Passive: Burst of Power: 
When all of Kirito's abilities are on cooldown (he must have spent points in at least 3) he gains a damage buff to his next auto attack, dealing x% missing health damage to the attacks target. Gaining this buff has a Y second cooldown.

Pretty straightforward. Not usable until level three, and has a cooldown to not be abusable. Cooldown may decrease with level, and damage will probably increase with level slightly. To be clear on how to use it, at level 3-5, if your Q, W and E are all on cooldown, it becomes active and the cooldown activates once the attack is used. After you hit level 6 and rank up your ultimate, it must also be on cooldown for your to gain this bonus.


Q: Diving Strike: 
Active: Kirito launches forward to target location. While he is traveling, he parries all incoming auto attacks. Upon reaching his target location, he strikes the area with his sword, dealing it's auto attack damage as physical damage + x bonus AD. If Kirito has leveled up his ultimate, he will deal one extra off hand auto attacks worth of damage when landing this ability, and he also takes 25% less magic damage while he is charging.

Again, pretty straight foward. This is Kirito's gap closer, which allows him to jump onto and stick to enemy targets, while his ultimate is designed to help him stay on targets.

W: Will of a Warrior:
Passive: Kirito passively gains additional health regen. The higher his health is, the higher this bonus. The lower his health is, the lower this bonus is, down to 0 at 10% health. This bonus starts to decrease when Kirito's health is above X (probably around 2500-3000).

Active: Kirito gains additional movement speed for a duration. While this ability is on cooldown, Kirito loses the passive effect.

Now while the active is pretty straightforward for combatting the all mighty weakness of being kited that fighters have, the passive may seem confusing to you and possible OP at first. After all, how OP is it when this guy can sit here and regen through my poke?! Well, that is kind of the point. One of the weaknesses of fighters is that they are sqishy in nature, and being poked down just kind of hurts them more than it would their tanky dps counterparts. The decrease in value is to make sure that this passive is not abused if you decide to build Kirito tanky, as he is not meant to be a tanky dps, he is a fighter.

Also note that if you do manage to poke kirito down enough, he will lose a lot of this health regen, making him vulnerable. This is where the counterplay lies, though I may need to tweak how steep the dropoff is and where it cuts off completely in order to balance the ability.

This passive is further balanced by the fact that Kirito has a really weak early game, so even with this regen, a strong early game opponent like udyr, renekton, or riven should destroy him assuming equal skill. On the other hand, Kirito will do really well against weaker early game champions.

E: Strengthend Blow: 
Passive: Kirito stores up charges over time. This time is unaffected by cooldown reduction. You can store up to two charges at a time. A new charge will not start charging unless you have 0 or 1 stored charges. If you have a charge, you may cast this ability.

Active: Kirito's next auto attack will deal x (+y% bonus AD) bonus damage and knock back the enemy champion a short distance. Kirito will follow through with this knockback, moving the same distance himself.


Fairly straightforward. Allows Kirito to have some additional damage, scaling, and CC to help round out his kit. The ammo system exists to allow kirito to save up damage over time. Charges will probably store a little slower than Vi's E's charges, and there will be a longer cooldown between uses than with her E's.

Thematically Sound:

Alright, so thematically everything but maybe w automatically should make sense for a dual wielding swordsman fighter. The W passive is probably stretching it a bit, but being able to dash or run faster for a bit makes sense. At the very least though, the w passive does make sense in relation to basing it off of Kirito, since in one episode he has rediculous health regen gear on.

Balanceability:

Now to show why the kit is balanceable. To show this, I first will explain the current problems with the fighter class in League of Legends, how this kit avoids those problems, and where counterplay exists.

Fighter Class weaknesses:

1: Being kited. One of the biggest problems for all fighters is being kited. Kirito is able to stop this via his w movement speed steroid, and his ult active making him not lose movement speed for auto attack animations.

2: Reliance on auto attacks. Relying on auto attacks as a melee champion has proved to be a difficult hurdle for many champions to deal with. Mainly for reason such as being kited, and not being able to burst a champion down like an assassin. While Kirito will not likely burst a champion down like an assassin, he will still deal high damage over time, and has the mobility to deal it more reliably than someone like udyr, or even wukong.

3: Squishiness: Many fighters are squishy. While not as squishy as someone like Fiora, Kirito is still squishy. However, to get around this players must adopt a new playstyle. You cannot just dive in with him like you do on a bruiser. To play him optimally, you must wait for a good oppotunity to single out a target, and dive in and go. You are not by any means a frontline tank. You are more of a mid line champion, sort of a second wall of damage in between your teams tank and adc, and you must play safely, while dealing damage. This will likely cause Kirito to have a high skill cap, which is something I am fine with, as high skill cap champions can be the most fun.

Counterplay: 
There are a few counterplay options for Kirito. First of all, his Q being a skill shot makes it dodgeable. You should also likely not attack him while he is charging, though you are a free to cc him.

Secondly, if you burst down large portions of k=Kirito's health (with a champ like Udyr) then you will be countering his w passive, which is a large part of his early game.

Lastly, to be successful in team fights, Kirito will probably have to have his ultimate on. If you can cc him during this ultimate, then he will be useless later on. You do not even have to finish bursting him, just cc him and deal with him later. Or you could burst him if you want, though if he puts himself in a burstable position, he is playing wrong.

Until Next Time!
"The main reason I got stronger was so I’d be able to survive."
-Rikukun

Edit: Forgot to mention one really important detail! Kirito will use mana as a resource, though I believe I will keep his mana costs relatively low, something probably similar to wukong.

Underused Items: Atma's Impaler

Hello everyone!

In this edition of underused items, I will be discussing Atma's Impaler. So first of all, let us look at it's stats:


Stats
+45 armor
+15% critical strike chance
Passive Unique: You gain attack damage equal to 1.5% of your maximum health.
Item cost 2300g (780g)

45 armor = 900g
15% critical strike chance = 750g
Total Gold Value = 1650g
Passive Gold Value: 15 attack damage (for every 1000 Health) = 600g
Atma's Impaler is gold efficient if the champion has at least 1083 health.

Looking at gold efficiency, one might wonder why this item is not picked up more. After all, it becomes gold efficient after just 1083 health, which you will probably have by the time you pick up this item. Combine this with the fact that you can earn additional gold while building this item with Avarice blade, and you have a very cost efficient item!

So why is it that this item is not usually bought? Well, there are two reasons for this. One is that although it is cost efficient, most champions that build AD and Crit do not build armor, and most champs that build armor do not want Crit (they may want AD). There are a few exceptions to this rule such as Gangplank, but in general you aren't going to be seeing a Malphite or Riven with crit, or an AD carry with armor (outside of maybe a Guardian's Angel).

So, the simple solution is to make it so that this item gives stats that are more commonly used by champions. Since this items intent is to be a tanky dps item, I will go for removing the Critical Strike Rating for something else. However, since we are doing this, we may need to lower the health to damage ratio somewhat so that the item is not too efficient. Now the question is what stat should be added to Atma's? Well, the item already gives AD and Armor, so you probably don't want to give either of those. On the other hand, health may not be the best choice either as it might stack with the passive too well. This right here is probably the reason that Riot has not already changed Atma's; it is really difficult to come up with a good statistic that will work on a lot of champions! An alternative could be to just not replace the Avarice Blade with anything, and lower the health to damage ratio, but this would probably leave the item in a weak final item state, similar to how the old Hexdrinker was.

So, there are four different stats that I could see this item getting at this point that wouldn't be an OP stat for this item to have. These stats are Magic Resist (negatron cloak might be OP with this), Life Steal (from vamp scepter), Cooldown Reduction (either from fiendish codex or Glacial Shroud), or Tenacity, which might come along with a null magic mantle.


Let's start with magic resist. Both armor and magic resist are stats that a tanky dps wants at least a little of, although having too much of both in one item might be too strong. On the other hand, having too little of one on the stats might force a character to have to buy an extra item than they would want to, in which case the item will only be bought if it is stronger than it probably should be (as it was in season 2 when the ration was at 2% health to damage). Since our target champions to buy this item are tanky dps, I feel that the best solution for this would be to make it build out of a null magic mantle, along with the chain vest it already builds out of, and lower the health to damage ratio a little.

Now what if we wanted to add in lifesteal instead? This is much simpler. Make Atma's build out of a chain vest and a vamp scepter. Keep the AD at 10 so we minimize how much AD the item gives, and keep the lifeteal at 10-15%. This will open the item up to tanky dps who also like to auto attack some such as Riven, Nasus, and Jayce.

What about cooldown reduction? Well, this is my least favorite stat to make it build from because it there isn't really a good base cooldown reduction item for this to build out of. I suppose we could just add in more armor to the recipe, and throw cdr on there, but that just seems like a sloppy way to do it to me. Making the item build out of a Glacial Shroud is an "OK" option, but it limits the item to mana using champions, which is something I would like to avoid. Overall, I probably would not try to make this a cdr item, although it would be a useful item if it did have cdr as a stat.

Lastly, we could have this item provide tenacity. If this was to be the case, I would likely make the item build from a null magic mantle, and a chain vest. It would also likely give 1% or less health to ad ratio to make it not be too strong (can always be adjusted after testing). This would turn the item into a nice tank or tanky dps item, and give those champions another alternative for getting tenacity against CC heavy teams.

Out of these options, I feel that adding in magic resist or lifesteal would be the best way to go.


Now I will take about the second problem that I mentioned before, which might be partially solved by my above options. This problem is that in the season 3 meta, most tanky dps champions only get one armor heavy item, and then try to focus on building health. This item is usually a sunfire cape or a randuins omen, or a combination of locket of the iron solari and aegis of the legion/runic bulwark. In its current state, Atma's Impaler really has no place in a champions build, because their armor item slot is already being filled by one or more other items.


This problem can be solved by taking away the critical strike rating, and adding in a more attractive stat instead, thus turning Atma's into a more attractive item to Tanky DPS Champions. However, considering how strong health and tank stats in general are at the moment, this is hard to do without make the item go overboard. The right balance of lifesteal or magic resist could probably accomplish this though. I personally like the magic resist option better, as it makes the item better for more champions than lifesteal would, and it encourages the use of another null magic mantle item, such as hexdrinker, which does not see as much play as I wish it did thanks to the same reasons regarding the season 3 meta.

What does everyone else think about all of this? Feel free to leave a comment below, and discuss any point you want!

Until Next Time!
"Prepare to be boarded!"
-Rikukun

More Problems with AP Evelynn

So since my last post on Evelynn, I have thought about her some more, watched her being played in the LCS, and played her myself some. From all of this, I have discovered what I believe to be a flaw in her design. It was something that I thought about when her remake was first released, but I didn't think in depth about it too much back then.


This problem is that she has become a hybrid sustained damage/assassin character. Before her initial nerfs way back at the end of season 2, Evelynn has insane burst damage with her DFG + Ult + E + 1 Q combo, enough to easily kill any squishy. She did her job as an assassin very well here. However, part of what made her too strong was that she then was able to spam her Q as much as she wanted, dealing high amounts of sustained damage to multiple targets.

In her current form, Evelynns sustained damage is still there (although you have to worry about your mana now more) but her burst has been nerfed rediculously (largely because of DFG). However, her burst has been reduced so much that she no longer functions like a traditional assassin. Now, she runs up to her target, ults, E's, and spams Q until they are dead. Does this sound similar to what a Vladimir might do to anyone?

Part of what made Eve an assassin is still there; she still has her stealth, which is great in the laning phase, and she still has her Ult, which can do decent damage to high health targets. However the rest of her kit is focused around giving her sustained damage. Her Q in and of itself is sustained damage, and her W allows her to stay on target to deal this damage. Her E would allow for AD Eve to deal better sustained damage, which if I remember correctly was the build path the designer had in mind for Eve when he remade her (which may be part of the problem).

So, what can be done to fix Evelynn? Well, her kit should be changed to be made into a better AP Assassin's kit, instead of a hybrid assassin/sustained damage mage. However, in doing this we also need to keep her playstyle the same for her players. This makes things a little harder, but I believe that it can still work.

For Eve to work as an assassin, she must regain the ability to 100-0 a squishy target in only a few seconds if left alone to. Right now she might can do that with DFG, but it is so expensive that she probably won't be buying that until late game, when pulling it off is much harder. The place in my mind to hit is her Q, because it is the problem spell right now. I also feel that the change in my previous post on Evelynn should still go through.

So what do we change about her Q? She needs to keep a spamable short range spell because that is what her players expect, and we cannot just go changing that on them. However, there is a change we can make to have it function as a more assassiny type of spell.

First of all, the base damage on the spell needs to be nerfed. Secondly, it needs to gain a new effect. There are a few ways to do this effect, but I like the following one the best as it allows for more combo oriented play. Make it so that when Evelynn casts her E on a target, the next Q on that target deals a percentage of that targets maximum health in bonus magic damage. The total damage the first Q will deal to this target will be much higher than the current damage of a Q. So as I mentioned above, to compensate we have to reduce the base damage, effectively reducing her sustained damage to more controllable levels, while allowing her to better assassinate a squishy target, and dealing less damage to other squishy targets for at least her E cooldown time. Her Q cooldown is unchanged, so she can still spam the spell to help finish off a target if they are left alive, or to help a little bit in a team fight (maybe doing as much as an AD assassin's auto attacks or something like that). Another change that might be needed for the sake of Evelynn's laning phase is that her Q might need to deal more damage to monsters and minions so that her lane and jungle is not hurt by this change.

If these changes to her ult and her Q were brought into the game, I believe Evelynn would have a much better feel as an assassin, and would be more fun to play as in general. What do you think? Leave a comment below saying!

Until Next Time!
"The night is my veil!"
-Rikukun

Remaking Champions: Why it Promotes Game Health

Hello Everyone,
Sorry for the long break in between posts. These last few weeks of school have taken up pretty much all of my free time; it was hard enough just to play a game of League here and there, let alone think in depth enough to come up with a well written post! Anyways, in this post I would like to discuss why champion kit reworks promote game health.

In my experience in reading the forums, there are two kinds of reactions to every champion rework that Riot does. There are the people who love the new kit and the people who hate it. The ones who love it are people who usually didn't play much of the champion beforehand, and the ones who hate it did play a lot of that champion beforehand.


There is a lot more attention on the haters on the forums. Why? Because people who are unhappy are much more vocal on there (and in general) than those who are. If one was to make a judgment based purely on reading the forums, he/she would probably believe that Riot made a huge mistake reworking that champion, and that they should be reverted back to the way we were, and they hate on and argue with Morello and other Rioters.




However, this judgment is wrong. Why? Well there are two main reasons. First of all a few players not liking a rework is a worthwhile cost to many times more players having a new champion that they will enjoy and want to play. The other reason is that some champions, because of their kits being toxic, can just never really be good, or they will be harmful to the game. Examples of this are champions like Teemo, Shaco, and Evelynn (pre-rework) who have been repeatably nerfed in order to keep them from ruining player experiences.

When a champion is reworked, problems of usability, toxicity, and popularity (which may also require a visual update, e.g. Trundle) all can and should (if present) be fixed. In my opinion, Riot has done a fairly good job of doing all of this. Take Evelynn for example. Her kit used to be so toxic to the game that she had to be reworked into her current form in order to be good. Some may argue that she is not a great champion, and as I talked about in a previous post I believe she could use a small tweak, but she is definitely in a pretty good spot, and seeing as how she has recently been used in the LCS more than once, there are a few pros who clearly agree.

Trundle and Sejuani now both feel and look like much better and stronger champions. Xin Zhao is in a pretty good spot in as far as I can tell; as is Twitch. All of these champions were ones that were considered really weak before their reworks, but they are all now really strong. Xin and Twitch have been common LCS picks, and I wouldn't be surprised to see Sejuani and Trundle there as well soon.


The only place I feel that Riot might have failed is in their reworks of Karma and Tryndamere. Karma I would like to give some more time on though to see if people can figure out how to play her better, or if a few number tweaks might help. Tryndamere on the other hand is just too Binary in general. Even though AD tryn was used very sucessfully in the LCS recently, I still feel as though he is in need of some help. Morello has stated on the forums that he wants to make Yi, Tryn, and Fiora more assassiny than they are now (*cough* I said this over a month ago with Fiora *cough*). So, I believe that sometime in the future, we will see a better rework for Tryn that will work much better.

Anyways, I feel as though I have been a little all over the place today, and I apologize for the poorly written post. To summarize though, Champion kit reworks are good because they reduce game toxicity, increase champion usability, and promote popularity so we can see a wider variety of champions being used in our games. I am looking forward to seeing more upcoming reworks on champions like Heimerdinger, Sion, Shaco (if he get's one), and the melee carries in the future.

Until Next Time!
"With Balanced Steps"
-Rikukun