Is LoL headed toward a Black King Bar?
With the rise of tanky DPS came another frustrating aspect of the metagame: chained crowd control. Many of the tanky characters in League of Legends are equipped with one or more CC abilities, be they slows, silences, knockups, snares, or stuns. I’ve played against many teams recently in which my deaths have felt like a one-shot, from 100 percent health to nothing without a chance to fire a single shot. That sort of stunlock mechanic is extremely frustrating in a MOBA, especially if you’ve chosen a champion with limited mobility (there are things from which even Flash can’t save you).
With the rise of tanky toons and the inherent rise of CC, I wonder if we won’t see some sort Black King Bar brought over from DotA. For those that don’t know, Black King Bar (BKB) was an item that granted the bearer magical immunity for a limited amount of time on activation. With BKB you couldn’t be stunned, slowed, feared – none of the CC options – but you also didn’t take any magic damage. Obviously this poses a balance problem for those one-and-done mages (Veigar comes to mind). With that type of item, we’d sort of be back to Flash breaking projectiles, which isn’t very fun.
Another option would be the introduction of some sort of diminishing returns on repeated CC on a target. Even giving Quicksilver Sash the Cleanse treatment – allowing it to reduce CC for for several seconds after use – would give players more options for dealing with the current metagame. Whatever the case, we need something to avoid the incredibly frustrating stunlock deaths.
Posted in: Editorial, league of legends
Tags: bkb, black king bar, c&c, crowd control, magic immunity, stuns, tanky dps
I feel you. It seems like I spend most of my time in team fights either stunned or silenced.
i dont think riot will come out with a similar item for a number of reasons.
1. riot has been talking about CC reduction being present on more items instead of being exclusive to mercury treads. bottom line they want CC reduction to be more readily available on more item choices.
2. there was at a time something similar, summoner cleanse at some point in previous patches provided 3 seconds of 100% immunity. this was decidedly broken and just about every one carried cleanse because of it, on champions like katarina and nunu its was a complete no brainer.
3. there are too many things that cleanse effects ruin, nasus wither, galios idol of Durand even the 25% provided by mercury treads interacts verry negatively with these spell effects. i personally hate gangplank as he can remove scurvey out of suppression which sole purpose is to stop cleanse effects in the first place. as a warwick a gangplank clenaseing my ult is denying 1000 damage deal 2 seconds of stun and 500health restored its just feels like getting robbed of your ultimate.
as a side note if CC reduction becomes more prominent knock ups could see alot more use their duration cannot be reduced or cleansed.
1. Spot on.
2. Also spot on. Cleanse is still a decent option against CC-heavy teams, as is QSS.
3. Personally, imo you should learn to play around these characters. A defining aspect of Gangplank is his fruit – and as it is not a Summoner Spell, it can’t be trumped by Suppression.
You have a good point on knockups.
I would actually love to see knockups become more tank-specific skills. It would be very cool if tanks were the few characters with a CC that could not be affected by CC reduction mechanics.
As for Cleanse, I think “decent” is a perfect word. It’s okay, but it also takes up a very valuable skill slot for a lot of characters that rely on mobility to make them work. When I’ve taken Cleanse recently, I’ve often felt like I’ve given my opponents a leg up – they lose the CC but gain the advantage of extra summoner skills to be burned on my teammates. The full debuff cleanse of Quicksilver is amazing, but without some sort of post-use component, it’s a hard purchase to justify on a lot of characters.
haha called it http://www.leagueoflegends.com/news/patch-preview-100118
CC reduction remworked into “tenacity” and 3 new items were added that also have tenacity as a stat.
oddly enouph all of these items are inexpensive early game items.
in other news mercury treads are better than ever as they reduce CC by even more and reduce more kinds of CC as well.
side note: Wits End is now the pretties girl in town and I want to be with her forever.