I was browsing around Riot’s forums this morning and stumbled upon an interesting comment that got a few upvotes. The thread was a discussion of Kayle’s current status and whether or not she should receive another remake. Here’s the comment that caught my eye:

“Evelynn too, while you’re at it. I dislike how I spent IP on the champ and RP on her skin only for you to literally make her unplayable to the point where I will be reported for playing her.”

This is not a new concept – far from it, I know. It is, however, an issue that has never really affected me. I’ve been writing about the game for almost as long as it has been a game. I’ve had every champion for probably a year, and I play enough that I have the IP to buy new champions every time they release. At least, I did until now. Now that my time is spread between a wider variety of games, I don’t have that luxury. Champions I buy will be the result of a long, slow IP grind, and you can bet I won’t be spending RP on them. At this point, too many champions have stagnated, in desperate need of a remake. When I had a seemingly endless fountain of IP this was no big deal – I always had another champion I could be playing.

But what about people who spend cash to unlock champions as they go. When those champions get nerfed beyond viability, it’s essentially a hit to their pocketbook. Again, this isn’t anything new. Players of all kinds of games have seen potential “investments” deteriorate as the result of nerfing. Any MMO player knows the pain of putting a couple hundred hours into the class, spec and gear that goes behind a character just to have it wiped out by developers. A game like LoL seems unique though, because while I may still be able to participate in large portions of an MMO with an underperforming character, most of the lower-tier champions in League can’t hope to compete with any reliable success. The options those players have to enjoy the game diminish far more quickly than those of an MMO player in most cases. Sure, there are always the free champions, but players don’t pay for access to free champions. The champions that have been purchased should have some viability.

So what do you think? Should Riot be spending more time and resources on remaking underplayed/unplayable champions or does the current method suit you just fine?

When I first saw Caitlyn’s champion spotlight, I was surprised by her defensive skill set. Her trap, her net, even her ultimate to some degree, are skills to be used to get out of trouble or while you’re well out of trouble’s range. Despite her great range, she didn’t have anything that made me think, ‘oh, that’s how you get kills with her.’ I’ve played a decent number of games with her now and not much has changed.

On the surface, Caitlyn’s design concept is pretty cool. She has big range, an auto attack modifier on her passive, and her skills scale with attack damage, meaning that armor penetration you’re packing is worth something. The deeper and unfortunate truth is that Caitlyn’s usefulness is inversely related to the length of the game. The longer the game lasts, the less effective you become. Here comes the skill breakdown.

Piltover Peacemaker is a great skill in the early game. It hits hard (more than 100 damage at rank one with just a Doran’s Blade), especially if you’re packing armor pen. runes, and it helps you get a big farm going. Once the teamfighting starts, it’s a great tool for hitting multiple targets at once. Unfortunately, the one second cast time means you’ll probably miss here and there, and using it during a chase pretty much guarantees you won’t catch your target. Attack speed items, assuming you have your damage built, also steal its usefulness because it just makes more sense to auto attack after a certain point. That said, this skill is great for snagging a kill through a wall or checking brush, and it still hits a squishy hard in the late game. Of all her skills, this one scales best.

Yordle Snap Trap was sort of doomed from its inception. It’s an interesting concept, but in play, there just isn’t a good balance point. The trap never seems to arm quickly enough, and the stun has only ever helped me get away or kill a reviving Zilean. The fact that they are visible makes them easily avoidable (is she catching blind yordles?) and teamfights are typically mobile enough these days that the trap seems useless. It can be good as a sort of ward, and it will occasionally save you from a gank, but the fact that you’re limited to two of these means, more often than not, you won’t have them where you need them.

90 Cailber Net could have been a really nice skill for Caitlyn. Instead, it’s this weird snare/escape hybrid with conflicting functionality. The skill actually knocks you back when you cast it, so you have to cast behind you if you want to chase with it, wasting the slow effect. If you slow someone with it, you’ve blown yourself away from them which is pretty much only good if someone is chasing you. Unfortunately, the slow isn’t enough to save you from those people in a lot of cases, so you better have a trap ready. It can throw you over walls, like a mini-flash, but you move so slowly, both when you run and as a result of the knockback, that players rarely have trouble catching you. This is a really bizarre skill to me. I’d love to hear Riot’s design process. Were they worried it would be too OP? Look at MF. She’s got an AoE slow without some weird, compromising, ever so situationally useful secondary effect attached.

As her ultimate, Caitlyn has the poorly named and woefully executed Ace in the Hole. It’s a snipe that, though it never misses, can be intercepted by a teammate mid-flight. I say woefully executed because it was a great thought. Dwarven Sniper was a lot of fun to play, but it really sucked if he pulled out ahead of your team. Squishy toons just got bombed from a mile away with no chance to avoid death. The intercept idea was pretty cool, but it’s really frustrating as Caitlyn for a couple reasons. First, her ult doesn’t hit very hard. Even when you have a ton of damage her ultimate feels really underwhelming. Interceptors often just shrug off the hit instead of being significantly damaged as a result. Second, the projectile is slow, making it really easy to intercept. Last is the cast time. As an attack damage champion, you’re losing a lot of potential damage by stopping to channel that ult. It is good for quick skirmishes, mostly to tag a champion for some assist gold, but in a teamfight you’re losing damage by stopping to channel her ult, and I can almost guarantee you won’t hit your target.

On the whole, Caitlyn’s abilities rely too heavily on channels without the added benefit of AoE or heavy single target damage. By mid to late game you’ll be better off auto attacking than using your skills, and your skills don’t compliment an auto attack playstyle. She ultimately fails because of a confused design that is too tied to concept with little attention paid to practical application.

One of the great things about LoL is the endless possibility for expansion. There can always be new heroes, new maps, new game modes, etc. Those things need to fit well into the game to really serve as expanded material, though. If no one’s playing those modes/champions, they have virtually zero effect on the game.

That’s exactly what I’ve been seeing in the new champions. They get played for their launch week and the subsequent free week and then fall completely off the radar. I almost never see Olaf in game any more, and when I do I tend to smash him. Malzahar? Never. Akali? Less than never. Garen? Rarely. Kennen? Nope. Mordekaiser? Occasionally. The only patched champions I see on a regular basis are Shen (who is in nearly every game), Ezreal (same, almost every game), and Pantheon (only because Heartseeker is crazy broken right now).

If you take a look at the champion list at LoL Base, you’ll see that the only one of the champions I never see that has a positive win/loss ratio is Mordekaiser. The rest are negative, in some cases drastically so, which says to me a couple things. First, and most obviously, those characters suffer from some kind of serious design flaw. Though I think several of the champions I mentioned are solid (Kennen and Garen for the most part), the others have trouble providing serious support to a team. It could be that players just haven’t figured out how to play these new champions, but most of them are old enough that someone, somewhere should be playing them or singing their praises, and that’s not really the case.

It’s too early to say where Kog’Maw will fall, but if he follows the current trend, we’ll see him for two weeks and not much more.

When I first saw Garen I thought, hey, he’s just like Tryndamere. At a second glance, though, I realized he’s actually more like Mordekaiser than any other toon, to the point that I wonder if the two champions were designed by the same person.

Consider the following: both champions have an attack damage modifier in the Q slot. Both have damage mitigation for the W. Both have a limited AOE attack for the E, and both have a finisher for their ultimates. Now, I realize the comparisons seem a bit arbitrary since most champions skills are based on one of these systems (attack damage modification, AOE, etc.) but in terms of playstyle I think these two will be more similar than most. Both are best built for heavy health regen plus a nice dose of attack damage, and both can soak a lot of damage for a team but offer very little utility.

The only reason I mention any of this is because it explains some of my disinterest in Garen. Mordekaiser was only interesting for a few games for me – I just don’t enjoy his playstyle – and I think Garen will suffer the same fate. I’ll likely play him in a few games, but the stand-and-try-to-deal-damage-with-no-CC isn’t really compelling.