After reading Nautilus’ skillset, I thought he was OP. At the very least he had too much going on. Berseking was kind enough to point me to Xypherous’ dev diary for the League’s new champion, a post that broke down the design decisions behind the champion’s design. After reading through it I still think he has too much going on, and the method by which Riot might keep him from being OP–a crappy attack animation/speed and movespeed–are an unnecessary frustration. He needs a limitation on the number of things he can do, not a mechanical throttle on his power level.
I’ll be the first to admit that Xypherous and I have different philosophies when it comes to champion design. He does make some interesting champions, but at least in the case of Nautilus, he is willing to overload on mechanics. If you read his dev diary and watch Phreak’s champion spotlight, you’ll notice there isn’t much talk of weakness. Any talk of a potential downfall in his design is met with “so we gave him X.” Notice the following:
One of the strongest downsides to a self-only shield is that it is effectively ignorable by the enemy team. Unless you are threatening enough so that you must be killed on sight, defensive shielded targets are generally ignored as there isn’t a point to attacking him.
Which was preceded by:
However, if he’s left alone, Nautilus can contribute heavy damage to the enemy team.
This is one major design decision that I just don’t understand about this game. Why does a tank need to deal big damage? Even solid damage over the course of a fight? Isn’t the fact that he has four CC skills enough? Isn’t the disruption caused by his presence enough? Xypherous talks about Wrath of the Titan being a “soft-taunt” because it adds damage if players don’t attack Nautilus. Why does a character with four CC skills need a soft-taunt? This doesn’t make any sense.
What about this – what if the tank was designed to control opponents, either by creating openings for his teammates to get kills or preventing the other team from attack. He would have very limited damage, relying instead on CC to keep his enemies alive. His enemies would then have to make an interesting choice – attack the high damage people in the back and risk getting stuck in Nautilus’ CC or burn skills on Nautilus so that the high priority targets are vulnerable. Instead, Nautilus forces players to burn skills on him or suffer huge consequences. That’s not interesting. It takes away the opponent’s ability to make an interesting choice but, more importantly, it takes away Nautilus’ ability and incentive to make interesting, epic plays.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot as I’ve been playing DotA. I have a ton of fun playing support and tank champions in DotA, mostly because I’m not stuck spamming heals on my lanemate. I get to harass a lot. I set up kills a lot. Most of all, I get to make big plays during teamfights. Timing a stun for the perfect moment to save my carry from an enemy stunlock, using Force Staff to move my allies out of harm’s way, landing the perfect Shallow Grave to prevent death – these are all things I’ve pulled off or seen pulled off in ways that make me want to play support and tanks. Because those characters don’t often have big damage, they have a chance to move within a fight and have a serious impact on its outcome. Fights feel extremely dynamic because there is a constant target shift going on – players are trying to burn the big damage dealers while avoiding the crowd control of supports and tanks.
I can think of one character who has both big damage and big utility without any real sacrifice and he’s the most broken character in the game: Invoker. Pretty much every other character suffers from some setback, whether it’s mobility, lack of crowd control, position dependent skills, and so on. The game allows players to shore up those weaknesses through itemization, which obviously comes at a cost. On the whole, it’s the constantly sliding scale of damage, control, durability and mobility that makes a teamfight in DotA interesting. Only one character in DotA has all of those attributes without a truly godlike farm. I certainly can’t say the same for League.
I don’t peg all of this on Xypherous – that would be really unfair. He is working within a metagame and a design philosophy that obviously values Nautilus-style design. Personally, I wish Riot was doing more to change the game, but they’re trucking ahead with the current philosophy. For me, that has meant a serious decline in the amount of enjoyment I get from the game.
Posted in: Champions, league of legends
Tags: control, dota meta, dota teamfight, lol meta, metagame, nautilus, nautilus design, nautilus dev diary, nautilus release, support, tanking, tanks
The thing is,he doesn’t deal damage.Not early game,not mid or late.That was just a marketing strategy.The only damage he can do is with ignite or red,and he’s a mediocre to bad jungler.He’s just like Leona,just as “balanced”,a bit less boring.
If you want to talk about tanks doing unnecessary damage,talk about the new Shen.Solo top he’s just a beast and i think his jungling also improved.
pure tanks like leona suffer thanks to their lack of damage, you cant stick her top or the jungle cause shes too helpless or too slow, mid is just the delusions of a madman, so that leaves bottom lane, well your certainly now gonna farm well so that leaves you with the gold per 10 support, leona is WORTHLESS, people can provide almost 75% of her CC with about 50% more damage and self reliance.
thus our friend nautilus brings his own damage, because if he didnt hed end up just like leona, the poorly balanced no damage CC BOT tank the community begged for.
this damage from not being focused is nothing new, udyr is my favorite jungler, he must of course pick a stonce every 3 seconds, if hes being focused hes forced to switch to turtle, but if you ignore him, he can stay in pheonix more often, doling out more DPS. the player must CHOOSE EVERY 3 SECONDS do i want more damage, more suriviability, a targeted stun/gotta go fast.
while not as successful as udyrs model, the enemy must choose, strip the tank of his damage, or ignore him while he beats on you to take out the carry.
in league of legends, the power curve isnt so pronounced as it is in other MOBA games, carries dont carry so hard, in exchange their not as bad early, mages actualy factor into late game, but they dont completely dominate lane like they do in dota. tanks have less CC than dota counter parts, in exchange they get a bit more damage. this all boils down to fewer extremes and less team reliance. it insures all people contribute. i remember looking up dota heros, i found a support with a 3 second AOE root, and 2 second stun IT BLEW MY MIND, that one person could lock down an opponent for so long. blizzard did the same steps to reduce stun locking in WOW, in many ways lol reminds me of the switch from wrath of the lich king to cataclysm, stuns CCs got reduced, DPS classess got more passive defense, tanks got damage based on %max HP, and health pools skyrocketed from 15K to 150K
Uhh this guy is definitely not OP. His damage is nonexistent and his shield, which is the source of most of this damage, is usually stripped away by a couple of autoattacks or AOE during a team fight. While his shield is up, his autoattacks are so damn slow that you’ll be lucky to land three or four of them during a teamfight. I’m not sure why you would pick this guy over Amumu, Blitz, Volibear or even Sejuani.
The funnest part of his design has to be escaping a bad situation with his hook shot. Not really what you want your tank to be doing anyways but it’s range lets you pull off some crazy ass houdini shit.
OP as hell for a bot kill lane. He’s like Blitz on steroids down there, it’s ridiculous.
OP as hell in jungle too. Has escape, shield, 4 cc’s, that are all effective with decent damage. + extreme survivability.
maokai v2, jungle support/tank with ass tons of CC, and decent burst. pretty much the replacement maokai, his jungle speed is excpetional, W eats minions alive. his slow movement speed and lack of reliable escapes drives me crazy, cause if you get caught your screwed but w/e, he has trouble showing up to fights on time, but once he gets there OH BOY.
so much CC like all of it ever.