I found an interesting thread on the forums that made me ask the question in the title of this post: how do I define OP? The author of that thread thinks an OP character is one that defies countering, a champion that doesn’t require teamwork in order to perform well. I can’t really agree with that version of OP, if only because so much of League of Legends happens in the laning phase of the game, where champions are essentially on their own.

My own version of OP looks more like something I saw a Rioter say about Irelia. To me, overpowered champions are those that, regardless of the odds, rarely find themselves in bad situations. Irelia is a perfect example of this problem. In lane she has excellent farming skills and a powerful nuke that becomes a stun once she’s in trouble. Once the teamfights start she gains CC reduction for every enemy around her. She farms well enough that she’s never hurting for gear in that situation either. But this version of OP doesn’t cover everything, either.

Let’s look at Akali. Once Akali hits level three she produces burst unlike almost any champion out there. She also has her Shroud to keep her safe from enemy harass in lane, all the while gaining ground toward level six, which is when things get particularly ugly. Because Akali can solo so well, she ends up several levels ahead of bottom lane and often the enemy jungler. With that level gap her burst can almost always guarantee a kill, but the damage doesn’t stop there. Her ult, which is one of the longest-range dashes in the game (of which she also gets three), refreshes when she gets kills and assists, further increasing her mobility and killing power. She’s very different from Irelia but I would still consider her seriously overpowered.

This will always be the problem with OP champions – there is no one way to define them, no one skill that unifies them. There’s also the fact that not all players can effectively utilize OP champions, which makes for a mix of data on Riot’s end. Certainly they have a lot of highly ranked players that can accurately assess these kinds of champions, but when the champions are being used to great effect across the board, what’s the sense in nerfing them?

My main point here is that OP can start to look pretty subjective when you consider all of the variables that determine whether a champion needs a change or not. It’s why we still have champions like Akali and Irelia at their current power level.

I would normally not bother to read a thread on the forums titled, “This game isent [sic] even worth playing anymore.” I obviously disagree. Despite the downfalls and recent design flaws (at least in my opinion), LoL is still a blast of a game, and I have a lot of fun queuing up with you guys and with my real-life friends. The thread in question, though, is now 34 pages long and caught an interesting response from Phreak.

I’ll leave you to read the original post, but the author, MoreCowbell, is basically bemoaning the overwheling presence of an AOE metagame and the limited champion selection that performs well in that metagame. He also decries characters with strong mechanics having no serious weaknesses. He doesn’t back a lot of things up, but he makes some good points (many of which I think I back up on this blog) and makes other interesting points.

I was particularly interested in this:

One of the biggest issues is that in riot’s design philosophy of making all characters equally viable all game, they would need to make all characters have the same power at all times. Characters like MF couldnt exist as they beat most other characters in a lane and late game. The reason that some characters absolutely dominate the lane in dota was because they were trash later.

That’s a spot-on observation and a lot of my problem with recent champion design. I would love to see the metagame shift away from the teamfight focus, but characters need to have different strengths at different stages of the game for that to be a real possibility. When a champion like Miss Fortune can 4-5 shot toons without health quints at almost any stage of the game, that kind of diversity can’t exist.

After 12 pages or so, Phreak dropped by to offer this:

We’re hitting a lot of the conventional “OP” champs this patch.

We will also be massively assessing all our AoE champions to ensure they’re not must-pick champions. As much as you say we’re making new champions which just eclipse old ones, we’re trying really hard to not have these super faceroll AoE ultimates since Sona (also: Sona nerfs this patch. And I’m not talking +10sec cd on the ultimate). While Swain and Lux have AoEs (even ultimates), I think we can all agree they’re much more reasonable than Idol of Durand.

If I read the original post correctly, this is the main complaint yes? That there are ~15 super OP champions that must be played, and everything else is below them?

We will assess them. Stay patient, beloved summoners. We like playing all of our champions as much as you guys do!

I haven’t been so (cautiously) excited about a patch in a long time. I’m hoping when he says “hitting” he means with a battering ram, not the tinkering hammer we see more often than not. I also like that he referenced Swain and Lux, two recently released and very underpowered champions, as having more “reasonable” AoE ults. I couldn’t agree more. I think Swain’s character design is really cool, and Lux could be a very fun toon with that short CD ultimate (and a much-needed damage buff for her base skills), but they just don’t stack up against the massive AoE pwnage in the game.

The simple fact that there are 34 pages of responses speaks to how big an issue the current design direction is to the LoL community. Players are definitely unhappy about the lack of diversity, which shouldn’t be all that shocking considering the underwhelming numbers we see on Twisted Treeline. I’m hopeful this week’s patch will be the start of some changes, but I’m aware it would take a lot of changes for things to be significantly different. We’ll find out on Tuesday.

I’ve written a lot of posts recently about the overpowered toons in League of Legends and I realize several of them may have come across a little whiney. I often have emotions around a given aspect of the game before I’ve really sat down to put the words behind those emotions, so you guys get to read me working through the crap to get at the heart of the matter. Well, thanks for bearing with me.

This post is a culmination of a few different posts regarding relative champion strength and the overwhelming fury I feel toward champions like Sona and Mordekaiser, so I hope it will be a little more focused and my point of view will be easy to understand.

Most of my frustration with League of Legends in the past few weeks has revolved around the relationship between a champion’s strength and the skill required to provide the maximum team benefit that champion provides. For many of the overpowered champions in the game, the problem is that the champions are both strong and incredibly easy to play. It’s something I think Riot misunderstands, as you can see from the difficulty screen above. There is literally no situation in which I would consider Sona difficult to play.

Mordekaiser falls under that same umbrella. There are players who think it’s tough to know when to fight with him, but I could not disagree more. Your team is there, you fight, and you get a ghost and murder the other team. If they aren’t there, don’t fight, unless you have a ghost with you, in which case you should kill the entire opposing team. In all seriousness, though, Kaiser’s ease of use comes from his shield, which allows him to be a serious threat to any opponent in lane just by standing in range. Consider other casters, like Annie for instance. If Annie wants to deal damage to me she has to get relatively close, giving me the opportunity to deal damage in return. Kaiser has to do the same thing, but his shield removes his personal threat, allowing him to harass at will without consequence. It’s a crappy mechanic to play against, but worse yet, it encourages players to be sloppy and lazy.

The easy to play/easy to win champions actually hurt the game as a whole by allowing players to enjoy success without the skill to back it. One of the great things about this game is that the wide variety of champions can encourage players to get better. When I saw my first good Shaco I thought, “damn, I want to be that guy.” I was horrible with Shaco when I started, but now I’ve probably played 500 games or so with him, so I’m really good. It took time. My first game with Sona, I died too much. Every game after that, I dominated with her. It was easy farming, easy laning, and once I had a locket, easy winning. When those types of champions dominate games, players don’t learn how to gank, how to lane, when to run, when to dragon, any of it, nearly as quickly as they do with a difficult champion.

Then there’s the simple fact that strong champions carry weak players to higher ELOs. I have run into at least ten different players who, after seeing their favorite champion banned or chosen (most often it’s Mordekaiser, I’m not kidding), say something like, “Shit man, they took my guy. Anyone wanna trade? I don’t have many champions.” That’s a problem. I expect players to be able to play a variety of champions and fill a variety of roles, just as I hope they expect the same from me. I know I’m a great carry, but I’m also a very good jungler, a very good nuker, and a decent tank/support player. I own every champion in the game. I can play every champion in the game with a modicum of success. The same can’t be said for the jungle Kaiser I played with over lunch who tried to gank MF middle by walking out of the mid-lane river brush with red buff and trying to auto attack her. No. No, that’s not going to work.

I want to see thoughtfully designed champions, champions with very real, very high skill ceilings. Enough of the MFs and the Sonas and the Mordekaisers. This is the same issue I used to complain about with Sivir, but back in the day, Sivir was just about the only toon with a crazy-low skill ceiling and a crazy-high impact. These days it’s like a free-for-all on high-impact mechanics that require as much thought as relieving my bladder. Biological imperatives aren’t interesting, and neither are mindless champions. Make me a toon that I want to learn instead of someone I could play with my elbows and I’ll remain convinced that this is the game for me for the near future.

I had a pretty stellar game this afternoon as Kog’Maw. Granted, that’s not so tough these days, but I was rocking a significantly positive K/D/A ratio (22/7/7) in spite of a team of four negative K/D/As. I was playing with a friend who actually said over Skype, “You are the sole reason we are winning this game.” That’s a pretty great feeling, and it doesn’t happen very often.

More often my “carry” games are more subtle, and tell a small part of what can only be considered a team victory. I have been trying to pick champions that allow me to contribute in a big way, lately, and I think it has helped my rating. The key, to me anyway, is to pick someone that can really dish out the love. I am great at ganking, so playing gank toons allows me to maximize that part of my playstyle. I really like Vlad because he farms minions well for the entire game and his ultimate is a boon to any team. Kog’Maw is great if you have the space to farm (i.e. not laning against good harassment/stuns) and a team to distract people. Ezreal is an amazing comeback toon if your team starts down. I also like to play characters like Xin Zhao and Shaco, who can close the gap without risking too much in the process. As you all know, I’ve also been playing a lot of Master Yi recently, though I rarely feel like I carry with him. He’s often more like an annoying swarm of hornets – it hurts like hell and you can never pin them down enough to stop the pain.

So who do you use when you want to carry? I know a couple of mean Udyr players who really seem to turn games, and it’s always fun to have a pro Zilean or Morgana on your team. Drop your best carries in the comments (with a fun story if you have one)!

PS – Thanks for the pic, Miku! Front page of Google Images for Kog’maw so I linked back to your post.