Since Ezreal’s release, Phreak has been taking time out of his busy pwnage schedule to bring the community some Champion Spotlights, short videos aimed at increasing the understanding and visibility of certain, difficult champions. I really enjoyed the first – Ezreal was such a different playstyle that it seemed appropriate to highlight his strengths, particularly when played against good players. We’ve since had spotlights for Shen, Pantheon, Kennen, and now Anivia and I have to say, I’ve been less and less impressed with each subsequent spotlight.
To be fair, I think the Champion Spotlight accomplishes part of the goal – it does good job of detailing the basic mechanics for a hero and offers at least one perspective players can use to build the hero if they’re just learning. The problem, though, is that Phreak’s last several spotlights have been played against far less skilled players, which makes the champions seem godlike if you can just follow a few simple steps. Granted, he never says those words or even alludes to them, but he does talk about the relative “strength” of a champion when he’s sitting on an unstoppable streak or better.
As an example, this most recent Anivia spotlight included a kill montage in which Phreak takes down a Yi with little trouble (anyone surprised?). That Yi player has 179 wins, 159 of which are with Master Yi. That wouldn’t be a hard kill for 80% of the toons in the game. In another scene, Phreak gets an easy kill on a Shaco, who tries to jump him as he recalls. In Phreak’s words, Shaco couldn’t withstand Anivia’s “basic spell combo.” Look at the stats, though. At that point Phreak is legendary and four levels above his opponent. The “basic spell combo” far outranks anything Shaco has, not to mention the well-beyond-basic damage output of a legendary mage with 12 stacks on a Soulstealer.
Don’t get me wrong – I don’t have a problem with Phreak or his narration. My beef is that these spotlights are supposed to highlight a champion’s abilities for an average game, to display their place in a team. Any champion would looks appealing when they’re legendary and grossly outlevel the opponent.
The even bigger problem, for me anyway, is that I immediately write off any player who plays a toon Phreak has recently spotlighted, particularly if they use Phreak’s build. Is it fair? No, of course not. Is it possible these people are experienced with that given champion? Of course it is. Unfortunately, I keep getting burned and burned badly. I just got out of a game with a Flash/Ignite Anivia who was 2-5-0 and diving into packs of three enemies at a time. He claimed he played Anivia long before the spotlight. Right.
Now that I’m back to winning, I’ve been able to spend more of my time thinking about game mechanics and less time wondering if it’s possible to set my horrible teammates on fire from great distance using only my mind. In all seriousness, though, when I’m in a losing streak I tend to lose focus on simple things, like paying attention to whether or not my opponent Fiddlesticks’ ultimate is up. I also tend to get super kill-greedy, which is why I’m making this post.
