I’m so happy with this video. I was the wiki editor who created the distinction between “% Of Missing Hp” & “% Missing HP” abilities. Personally, I feel like "% of Missing Hp" executes are fine, but "Percent Health Missing" abilities can be much more frustrating as they are very potent burst tools and are commonly associated with being one-shot.
yea, akali's r2 max damage is one example, but with how her kit plays (especially now with the durability update), she isn't as big of a deal as i think evelynn is. a while ago they buffed eve's r execute damage from 100% to 140%. i think they said that this was mainly to help her killing tanks, since her ult max damage was already so high, any squishy would die to it without doubt. but now with the durability update, things like akali r2 might (key word is MIGHT, idk, i haven't played on the patch yet) barely not kill a squishy target. However, eve's ult already overkilled by so much, the patch basically didn't affect her/
as a tank main I HATE percent missing hp abilities getting hit I with 3k true damage from Garen is so bullshit. the other are meh they are just back loaded damage like on Akali she has to ult and wait 2.5 seconds before she can use it and it's the same damage as a kha q or less even. viegar is the only one because it does like 2k or more and it's point and click.
By the way do you remember veigar when his ult scales from 80% of ENEMY AP? So if the enemy mage is fed, the more likely he will oneshot it. Imagine having that in 2022.
@@foxenstinevon.gaming12 1000 base at 50 min is still less than Nasus q, so that seems balanced for an ult. Especially considering how few games make it to 50 min (even on the 12.10)
I actually get scared when fighting chogath when I'm not sure if he has ulti or not, like if I'm down to 40% it's done, and it really gives me goosebumps
2 points I’d like to make… playing Cho’Gath you can see the execute range, playing against Chogath you have no clue. There’s a lack of clarity. Pyke having a reset on his execute is the one thing that genuinely pisses me off
only zed R and yone E indicate if they will kill you those are not execute but stacked damage execute threshold are only indicated to the owners for certain champs
@@LennZone ok but waht about deaf ppl or ppl who listen to music, or hell, having too many other sounds occur in game at the time? having just sound as an indicator, on a whole another ability than his R at that, is not enough
I have a inner hatred for shields as a chogath main because when I ult someone like yasuo he doesn't die because his shield procs. I dunno its just a pet peeves of mine
Nah not all shields but non-conditional shields like Shieldbow and Yasuo's annoy me bc they don't have to time anything or use any skill, the shield just activates on its own, meanwhile Morde, Ivern, Voli etc. And anyone using Randuin has to time they're shield just right to turn the tide.
I think the best designed Execute is Urgot, it is a rather small but fast skill shot which makes is hard to land on higher range and the % threshhold is small enough that no one feel "unfaily killed" and it is a 2 part ability which gives u as the enemy enough time to react. The worst designed is Pyke. As a champion its "fair" in brackets but the dmg when the Ults executes is very high (late game most of the adcs die in one aa + r . It has a very little indicator (bigger if u use pyke w but thats kinda bs that the indicator for "u gonna die" is another ability) and its prob. the most frustrating . Finishers and Execute feel like the cherry on top of a kit or the ultimate move.... but beginning at lvl 6 pykes R is his kit and personality. Other then Urgot,Darius,Akshan where it is their last action
pyke is the one I despise the most. Most of the time I play against one its always the same bs, his gameplay is all about waiting in a corner of a teamfight like a rat to get an cheesy execute while doing the bare minimum, not to mention he is slippery af so its always a waste of time to chase this rat.
Agree but to add on: urgots ult range is vastly more than his fighting range, meaning if his ult hits you at max range, he has no way to close in time to kill. Pyke ult is also aoe, resets, and gives bonus gold to himself + teammates
Am I the only one shocked by the numbers on Garen’s R. I’ve never looked it up but 350 true damages + 35% of the target’s missing health as true damage on a point and click ability seem insane
Imma say something for Rek'sai, hers is a lot fairer and grouping it with Eve and Garen and Riven is unfair because her's, one, sucks, two, the timing can very easily be Zhonya'd, unlike a point blank Riven ult. And because she's a shape shifter, it's weaker than a lot of other ults because she needs to be balanced around having more abilities. And it requires hitting the target before using it, and the only way to do that without getting in the enemy's face is hitting a small, long range projectile where if the enemy is out of vision the only way you can know where they are is if they move, and even then the movement tracking refreshes very slowly,
Raksai R used to suck when they can flash to dash to doge it and Reksai just plung herself into middle of enemy. They should give Raksai a partial global dash R she used to have maybe she can dash to one of her tunnel at certain range after she execute enemy
@@wabalaka1565 It still sucks if you're ulting into the enemy or into a turret. The risks just outweigh the benefits. If the enemy Zhonya's under a turret or in a group of teammates you gained nothing and just threw away your life and a 80 second CD
@@wabalaka1565 Unless they changed it again, you can still dodge rek'sai's ulti... you just have to travel like 2000+ units within the span of her jumping out, which is not reasonable for basically any champion + timing
@@XeroKimorimon yeah 2000 Unite is about Zed R snap back range and you have to do it at precise timing I personally never saw anyone doge her R since the change
@@aaaaaa-rd4bv yeah, this would allow too consistent ways to do trick aoe stuns with his E + R combo. As the one prowler's claw allowed. I miss those.
Executes and finishers are also really pressuring in lane compared to buffing ultimates, if a garen for example wins a trade hard he always has the possibility to extend the trade into an all in and kill you, while somebody with a buffing ult will lose a lot of damage in the all in if he does that (ofc they still can, but it's not ideal). Basically champions with buffing ults have to fully commit and if they screw something they are fucked, champions with executes can just play normally and always have the treath of extending the trade into an all in, basically in some matchups where you only win long trades you might not be able to do them unless you fully commit
This is the exact main reason why I main champs with executes. I like to punish people who think their mechanics and fancy dashes, equating mobility with skill while taking bad decisions, will save them from being punished. I find it cathartic whenever I play against someone who relies on their bullshit kit as a free get out of jail card.
@@blacklight1104 too bad the champs with the most bullshit kits have an easier time getting out of a fight before being executed than most other champs, unless they're really really bad
The one problem I have w executes is that there is no indication on your end that you are within execute range of someone. Like the person executing gets to know but you don't. For frame of reference, I always use Thanatos from SMITE. When he ults he gets to see all the people he can execute but also while he's ulting anyone within execute range sees the indicator as well. That's literally all I want, is to have the indicator that they see be visible to me so I know whether I'm fine or not
The idea is great but then the issue would become that (almost literally) all activated defensive abilities are instant. Stopwatch, Zhonyas, Barrier, Kayle ult, Kindred ult, Soraka ults and heals, Lulu's ult and shield, etc. Meanwhile, all executes are exactly the opposite, they have relatively long animation times, to the point that you can flash/react to all of them. So if you add an indicator to the target, it would be unbalanced the other way around - it would be too easy to react with Zhonyas or a shield with no cast time and the executer would have a lot less chances to actually use the skill they are balanced around
@@Tiagocf2 lol it's actually one of the easiest ones to react to, reacting to the sound cue instead of the visual cue is the secret (also because our brain processes sound faster than images). For context, his ult cast time is 0.5 seconds, a whole half a second. Garen's is 0.435, Darius is 0.3667, Cho is 0.25. So if you can't react to Pyke's ultimate, you are probably 50 years old 😂 and it's not point and click so not only can Pyke miss it but literally all Champs with flash can dodge it, while the point and click ones can only be stopped by Zhonyas (and some of them don't even go into CD if it doesn't connect, so they can just cast again, like Cho)
In my opinion when they removed the ability to qss + dash to remove a knockup was the worst thing to happen in league. It used to be that suppression was the best cc in the game and thus the kits that had it were balanced around it, along with the counterplay to the mechanic. However, many champions have knockups with varying durations. Even baron nashor has a knockup and a long one at that. The rational was that tenacity would apply to knockups which was stupid by definition (because champions with knockups rely on the knockups and their durations, so lowering the duration was bad for the champion that used them and removing the ability to cleanse it was bad for everyone else). I really wish they revert that change.
I've personally got 2 major problems with executes- 1) It's very important to keep in mind that there are champions that perform better at low hp. Olaf (AS+LS scales off missing hp), Trynd (AD scales off missing hp), Vlad (heal scales off missing hp), Zac (his abilities do % current health damage but his blobs that he gets from them heal % max health, so the lower hp he is, the greater 'net heal' he gets from his blobs). Optimal play of these champions with certain builds requires that in fights you try to hover around a certain health threshold high enough so you don't get burst down but low enough that you're maximizing your kit (I main Vlad and Zac and this number's normally about 30-50% hp). Executes are hard counters to this playstyle. I wouldn't say it's unfair, since just about every playstyle occasionally faces mechanics that require you to play suboptimally in certain scenarios, but it does suck. 2) The true executes (Pyke and Urgot mostly, Draven's doesn't pose much of an issue) are coded to determine whether somebody can be executed before the hit actually connects (I THINK it's calculated as soon as you hit the button, but it's possible there's a specific frame in the animation that it calculates, but it's certainly not when the actual damage is applied). Obviously they ignore shields, as that's the point of them, but they also ignore any changes to hp that would put the champion back above execute range. Lifesteal, heals, level ups, even changes to max hp all don't matter. I can't tell you how many times I've died as Vlad to Urgot or Pyke at FULL HEALTH, and it's absolutely infuriating.
while your second point may be valid for urgots ult it isnt true for pyke if someone is healed or manages to lifesteal out of the threshold then they are fine and they stay alive this has happened to me before when ive played as AND against a pyke
Urgot checks if you're executable when he recasts it. The confusion is there's a delay between when the chains come out and when they connect and suppress you. If you get healed up in that window, then yes, you're still dead. If you get healed before Urgot recasts you're good, unless you get slapped again which is honestly very likely.
@@nothanks6216There's no confusion on it. It's just frustrating playing against it as somebody who mostly plays champions that are stronger the lower their hp is. Vlad's the worst example because his ult will heal him while he's CC'd so you're watching a '25% threshold execute' kill you at 50% health.
Honestly last Caress is pretty good design. It only works because it's on Evelynn who lacks significant gapclosers so she has to sneak up on you first. Additionally it takes her out of the fight so if she doesn't kill her target or wiffs she can't finish them off with something after. Plus it's an ult with no reset so it actually has a cooldown.
Executes are just a condition on a high damage attack. The fact that something is an execute is never why something is a problem, because it would always be better if that damage was unconditional. Remember: Great finisher means bad opener As such, any problematic executions should be looked at case by case.
Yep, i’d day most abilities that have absurd damage, like kaisa w, karthus ult, xerath ult (if he is fed he can literally just oneshot you with ult) again things like jayce q, zoe q, if these abilities were actually executes and they wouldnt nuke you for 80% of your hp if you were full health, than i’d think these abilities would be more balanced)) but ofc people are asking for indications of certain executes like akali or eve, which is absurd, since these abilities do 0 damage if they start the fight with them and usually they do the same amount of damage as a regular ability would
I think you're forgetting the fact that if you drop below 40%, any champ with a strong finisher will explode you regardless of the shields your team may provide you because the maxed out damage of execute abilities is just that high. The enemy team having any champ with an execute means as soon as you drop below 40% HP you're as good as dead, which is a ton of pressure on its own.
@@kosu9516 that's also true if they happen to have a high damage attack of any kind. The difference here is that you need to be below 40% for it to get you at all.
that's why i hate viego. he has an execute which scales off you being low HP, meanwhile he builds BotrK and has the botrk passive in his kit which scales off current HP. This makes no sense, so he gets to deal a shitton of damage while you're full HP but he can then execute you when you get low enough so that the current%hp damage falls off?
Urgot has a fair execute, if you use it as a skillshot at mid-long range the enemy has an opportunity to evade. However, its more effective at point blank after you hit his stun since the stun duration is longer than the R cast time. This is urgot's most effective range so if the enemy is fighting in it (except if he E+Flashes) it's already his advantage
I was happy that you remembered Rek'Sai, but her ultimate does have counterplay/skill expression- if she wants to get you from range, she has to land Q, which can be very hard to do at times.
Pyke's R having a reset is my main issue. Even with the 'your cut' changes, it being able to reset can give the enemy team way to much team gold to the point the match is over before you had time to even try to make a comeback.
My biggest issue with Pyke ult is how forgiving it is. You don't even have to get the kill for it to reset, as long as you ult just after the enemy dies. Also the fact that you basically cannot see him until he is directly on top of you.
I feel like the current executes in the game are pretty fair. Veigar ult does huge damage but without landing an e stun he struggles to hit people with his q and w to get them in his ult kill threshold. Pyke lacks the damage to instantly get yiu within his kill threshold. The most other champs with executes can be easily kited. Urgot has a self slow, garen and darius have no dashes.
@@rentedthug the only way a pyke can 100 to 0 you is if he hits every skillshot after using prowlers claw, and if he does that he'll get destroyed bc he wasted his only dash to try and kill someone
@@SamElZombie Good thing he can't build a mythic that makes him go invisible after every kill, use an ability that grants camouflage and a passive that regenerates a big chunk of recently lost hp. That would be crazy right?
@@m-mori then he can't build prowlers claw and looses 20% of his dmg and a dash that is pretty vital for him, pyke can only be good at teamfights or in 1v1 skirmishes, but not at both (not like every other assasin)
Executes are not a problem, buy they are meant to be consistent. Most games, and even LoL, use a % of Max hp execute threshold to keep it's potency parallel with leveling. Pyke however doesn't abide by this and instead can execute based off of a flat numerical HP value. While this makes him counterbalanced by massive health pools any champ that doesn't have the luxury of building those items will simply watch in horror as Pyke presses 1 button and insta-kills them from 1700 health when their max hp may be around 2100. 25-30%hp is a nominal execute threshold in games, 65-75% is absolutely an outlier and imo a aberrant one. Otherwise it is a fun and ez to balance mechanic
While I agree, 1700 damage is far overtuned. Pyke reaches about 950 with 6 items and sold boots, plus level 18, since his ultimate damage mainly scales with his level
@@rochusstumpfe7033 I've been hit with insane bursts of dmg from pyke in literally 2 seconds. However I may have overestimated the exact value of his R, before 12.10 most ADCs had avg 1900 hp at lvl 18 no items and being able to execute at around 50%hp is giga dumb which is why executes shouldn't ever be more than a locked %hp threshold
@@IDirtyMangoI So, you've been hit by every single thing in his kit while building not a single defensive item and you're mad about, is that it? Have you ever considered, I dunno, dodging, flashing, healing, or even not pushing alone when there's an ASSASSIN not visible on the map? Ngl, sounds like a skill issue
@@shikikankillzone4239 I'm a Kog Maw main I've built damn near everything you could build. Unfortunately Kog doesn't play like Jinx, Vayne, Lucian, or Draven where I get 3 kills and just steam roll the game. He's still the most defenseless and immobile champion in the game. He either kills you or you kill him. Everytime my champion is strong they rebalance the game before OTPs like me elo inflate with 85%< WRs. However unlike legitimately any other PvP execute mechanic, I challenge you to name 3 outside of Thanatos from HiRez' SMITE, it is unheard of for a player to commit a 50%hp execution. It also can scale infinitely. It is possible for Pyke to 1 button execute a lvl 18 full build 8k hp ChoGath. That being said most people will never play a 600min lol match. Regardless I'm well aware of my skill level, I'm just not a fan of folks ignoring core concepts for game design and balance.
It depends really. Some executes - like Urgot - are not that strong - he has a missile that he needs to hit on an enemy with less than 25% health just to activate it, and even then zhonyas, qss or similar effects can negate it. If he lands it, gets you below 25%, and manages to pull you in, he deserves the execute and the aoe fear. Pyke, on the other hand, has a much faster execute that kills based on flat health, even if you are like at 60%, but you're a squishy champ, he might be able to get it, and it offers very little time to react and counter it
Yeah and but it’s balanced by the fact that the rest of his kit is now unusable. Explain to me how 9% of damage taken is supposed to be an effective passive in a 1 on 1 duel and how a low damage hook and lower damage stun is supposed to do anything to make him “broken” or “overpreforming” like riot said there major counterplay to pyke and that’s simply moving if u sidestep the q u win the fight 9 times out of 10 he can’t do damage of autos only he needs either his teammate to be there or to hide until your low enough in a team fight which means he has no pressure his early and neutral game now sucks and they wanna nerf his ult now too
The problem is that pyke have very high damage but is also extremely squishy, so any misses on his ultimate makes him very vulnerable : his ult is high risk, high reward. If he uses his w or e to escape, that means he did not use them to execute the target, meaning his kill was "deserved". As such, if Pyke succesfully manages to land his full combo in the middle of a fight and escape alive with enough hp to recast it, he should be rewarded for it (exactly as the urgot landing his r)
@@ltbgaming6368 yeah, that's kinda pykes problem. His power budget is poorly distributed - his ult is crazy good while the rest of his kit is kinda shit
pyke is really the only one i'm really frustrated with and that's just because its an easy reset and it gives so much gold to the team and himself if it was just a kill and the reset or a single kill and no reset with the gold it would be much better i feel it would also force him into a much more support role since he would be much more difficult to carry but right now he has so much power balance in his ult but when you look at the rest of his kit it also has a ludicrous amount of power for the ult so IDK
Power in his kit: Worst AD scalings in the assassin class Giganerfed kit ever since release Can't build defensive Worst hook in the game which is also the least cost effective Can't push lane if ADC dies in a 1 for 2 Useless past 20 minutes W literally warns enemies of your presence R nerfed, no more gold on execute Dash and Stun on the same skill make it literally a kamikaze button Passive doesn't work anymore if 2 enemies aren't close Camouflage has been bugged ever since 2020 and was only fixed 2 weeks ago No scaling into late game and now has a mediocre early Any sort of measly heal or dash cucks ult Damage is totally backloaded if you don't build Drakk first He's already screwed, Pyke mid was 42% wr, and Pyke supp was 46%, the worst champ to pick against him had a POSITIVE winrate against him. Pardon the language, but what the fuck
@@shikikankillzone4239 Pyke support has a 49,42% winrate in Plat+ a 7.4% pickrate and a 13.2% banrate, champion keeps being playable and arguably strong, stop spreading bs to defend ur unfun champ.
@@shikikankillzone4239 Naah Pyke is broken Worst AD scaling ? passive Yeah he got nerf that is the point... Yeah beacaus of the passive who give him extra AD ... Worst hook if Pyke couldn't dash and stun afterwards A lot of champ suffer from this and can't depush not only pyke Useless after 20 min ? if he manage to get kills he's in advance and maybe with a mate so what is the matter if he can snowball that fast with someone else he's not the only to warn when w is on but he's the only one to be that fast R nerfed , that is the point again His dash + stun is reliable bc of his speed + fast gap closer for moves and ult + pass through walls again with this speed you can easily use passive for this and is designe to work with W Again he still scale that much on early because of gold efficiency and is usefull in late as his finisher can reset + spam if you do it right He has grey healthbar , like sort of tahm , isnt enough ? he has good dash... Ohh.. he has to build a mythic items before pop off ... how sad .. Btw letha on bot is literally overpowered since they don't build armor But let's talk about Malmortius would you , is that normal for an support/assassin , to pop a 1000 magic shield ? wow as an ap carry , burst all ur damage to kill this ( who has no build hp btw ) , what a joke
Just remember no matter how annoying executes are, most characters that have them (outside the ones that do more damage the lower you are) give up a significant amount of power to have them. If they didn’t have the execute, that power would just get put elsewhere where it would probably actually be better spent. Imagine if Pyke scaled better rather than having the execute, he’d be way stronger than he is now. An ability feeling bad to get hit by doesn’t mean it’s inherently bad for the game or overpowered.
@Dichang Feng The main solution to Pyke is remove some aspects to him. Like the Tahm Kench Regen, or the fact he can aim his hook like a Xerath Q. Knock out some of the big things that make him so obnoxious and maybe you'll have a fun champion to fight against. The problem is when Riot patched an actual glitch involving him getting double gold, the sweaty assassin mains all whined, bitched, and griped saying "OH THEY GUTTED HIM HOW COULD THEY DO THIS", so god forbid Pyke ever gets knocked down a few pegs. Could you imagine if he actually required skill to play effectively? Good lord I could only IMAGINE what the Pyke "mains" (Autofilled Akali/Zed Sweats) would do when they realize you can't sit in a bush, run away unpunished for being out of position, and then heal up just to do it again until you can faceroll your keyboard for an execute.
I belive that eve ult is balanced, since even without it she already deals a ton of damage it truly is there just to make sure, even more without have a reset mechanic like so other ( aka pyke and viego) and her only real set up is her W which either gives you the charm after a period of time or a slow if used right after, but without the mr reduction
@@The_White I mean fair, but it's a skill shot and it's longer then urgot's range. The slow is the only way for urgot to hit the enemy if he flees with like 2 HP more than the threshold
As a tank main who's played back when the tank meta was a thing, I can attest that in the spirit of fairness, %hp, %missinghp, and executes being more common now is a welcome sight. The last thing anyone wants is another tank meta, and say what you will about executes but they are a necessary counter measure in league now. Counterplay is what makes league fun, no matter how tanky I am seeing a late game vayne should put the fear of god in my eyes. Similarly, when I'm fed and the enemy team has no counters for my shear bulk, my presence should put that same fear in their eyes.
Execution effects like Akali's R2, Veigar's R, Jinx's R, etc- abilities that scale with missing health, rather than true executes- are, in my opinion, the fairest version of these effects. And depending on the strength of the effect, I don't think they need to be locked to ultimates- for instance, I have no qualms with Seraphine's Q scaling by missing health, as I wouldn't say it's strong enough to be a problem- but for more extreme examples, such as Veigar's ultimate (Which I've seen kill at 60+% health many times), it definitely should be an ultimate. True executions, like Pyke's ultimate, Elder Dragon burn, and Collector proc, I would say are much harder to balance- Elder Dragon burn I'm mostly fine with, since it's a late-game Epic Monster buff, and is meant to be very powerful. Collector bothers me, but that's more so because it gives critical strike chance AND lethality, and less because of its execution effect. But Pyke's ultimate, I would say, is much more of a problem- not just because it can be recast for free every time it scores a kill, but also because the execution threshold scales with his AD. That is what I take issue with most- true executions are so powerful that their strength increasing over the course of the game, at least to me, feels very unhealthy. (I'm also aware that Pyke's ultimate is one of the only true executions in the game that isn't percentage-health based, and thus is disproportionately effective against low-health targets than it is against high-health targets, which I don't think is a good thing. As much as I'm hesitant to say any of these effects should be stronger, I think making executions equally threatening to all champions would make the divide in champion durability feel less severe.)
What I will say in the defense of Pyke is that if he misses the ult or doesn't execute someone, his threath level disappears, yes you may never be able to catch him, but with 1200 health he isn't going to do much without a co-operative team, especially since his stun requires him to dive into the enemy team. Give Pyke's ult to anyone else who can gain HP and it's the worst ability ever, on Pyke himself, it's actually somewhat fair.
Another relevant difference between the two types of finishers: it doesn't matter how much damage you are dealing, % missing health damage will always do the same damage, whereas increasing the damage based on the enemy missing health scales off the damage you are doing. The implication behind it is that the former don't need you to do high damage to begin with to be effective. For example, right after his 2017's rework, Shaco's E started giving % missing health damage. That same rework also reduced Shaco's ratios substantially so building AD was less rewarding and less necessary at the same time. At that time, Shaco's optimal build consisted of Titanic Hydra (which at the time had an active that empowered your next auto), Trinity Force and Deadman's Plate. All itens that increase your basic attack's damage once, but Shaco could use it twice because of this clon. Paired with Thunderlord's, Ignite and the % missing health finisher on his E, Shaco could oneshot with that bruiser setup. While not the only change responsible for the transition, switching Shaco's E from a % missing health type of finisher to a increase the damage based on enemy's missing health was a contributing factor responsible to encourage Shaco to build AD again and end the oneshoting bruiser build. First because it made building AD rewarding again and second because having some base damage was necessary for the finisher to scale off with.
I'd honestly argue Evelynn's execute doubling as an escape is fine, as if she whiffs it her target actually can get away. If you whiff the other executes you can just kill your target normally but evelynn tps away from her target.
Especially u can nullify her dmg quite ez by cancelling her whiplash with a knockup/knockback (ofc not every champ can do that but it actually happens quite frequently in a teamfight) or dodge her lasher of her hate spike. Forcing her to ult out with no kills and be useless for the next 5 seconds
A bit late, but I'm really not in agreement with this. Not every champion needs a get-out-of-jail-free card, especially not one that is already permanently invisible unless in a fight (most likely engaged on their own terms).
@@hovhannes5 I mean she is an assassin, she kinda need a tool to get out since her job is to make the squishes explode to kingdom cum and survice. The only thing that really dumb about eveylynn is how her passive make it so she heal most of her health back after a while.
No execute that's versatile enough to be used on demand, as a Gap closer and escape should also be allowed to reset, that's where I draw the line. Looking at you pyke and viego. Alkali feels kind gross aswell but think hers just shouldn't be an execute at all, her kit is already pretty incredible.
Pyke execute only teleports him when he hit an enemy. So if your low and wanna make some distanz he needs to be so low that you Exe him or your dead. Yes you can the ult to give your stun a bigger range but than he use his ult and has CD so he is kinda usless and is not so easy to pull off.
Executes are healthy for the game as long as they are kept controlled because they stop a tank meta and sustain from becoming too prevalent. However, they are also very very strong, especially possible to be too strong if they _aren't_ controlled because then they'll overtake the meta, be abused into becoming the standard, and then make other ways of killing the target to be inferior, thusly making said meta less fresh and less unique, as well as possibly less fun. I'm saying this as an aggressive squishy mage support main by the way. I want a one shot meta based around pure skill but I also want tanks to be able to do their job because it wouldn't be fair to them otherwise.
@@deekay1306 he has the worst hook in the game and an unreliable stun, and his camouflage has such a large detection range it’s basically useless. Base stats mean nothing if your kit barely functions. If you want hooks go nautilus or thresh, cc go leona, damage go lux or brand or something
Ngl, Pykes ult is offset by being on Pyke, not saying Pyke is a bad champ, though currently he is, but that he prolly has the slowest time to kill compared to the rest of the assassins, he has THE BEST execute in the game.
idk if this is a hot take or not, but I believe super mega death rocket to be the most balanced "big execute" spell because it requires alot of skill on the jinx's part and can't 100-0 unlike some "executes" because it needs a huge amount of covered range to reach its max damage
This is completely unrelated but I love that you used Lucario's Power-up Punch and Close Combat from Unite to make the missing/max health damage comparison. I WISH Close Combat had max health damage but that'd probably be too overpowered lol. Power-up Punch's execute damage is kind of nutty honestly since it already has insane attack scaling on top of doing bonus damage based on missing health. Imagine if tapping Vi's Q without fully charging it did 10% of an enemy's missing HP, capping out at 1k damage. It's insane, especially when securing objectives.
IMO executes are the ultimate feast or famine mechanic and that plays a big part in people's perception of them. If you're ahead, then executes do a ton of damage, but if you're behind, they're turbo useless because you can't get the enemy low enough for them to be useful. This is exacerbated by being point-and-click so you can't even counterplay it. The consequence being, enemy team executes feel very oppressive if your team is behind.
I’d actually go as far and say that the game really needed executes in the past few years. In a game state where certain champs and/or build allow you to one v three and heal you back from 10% in the process, reliable killing blows feel like the one thing to counter such teamfight monstrosities.
6:48 Pyke was not the first execute, he was added to the game in patch 8.11, meanwhile Urgot's remake was back in 7.15. Urgot's ult execute was the first true execute, long before pyke. Odd that you'd get that wrong when you had allready mentioned Urgot as one of the champs with a true execute before before this point.
Evelynn’s ult looks disgusting in isolation until you realise it’s her ONLY escape tool. Unlike say Talon where his is a passive and he’s much better at extended fights. Eve is a melee range champ that loses to every other melee champ in the game in a fair fight.
Ah, i dont even notice executes in this game, i think executes force you to play your champ in a certain way, and they also balance your champ so that you cant start fights with certain abilities or you lose damage. So when you see a veigar ult that shows 1.5k damage on your screen in reality you only had like 400-500 hp when veigar decided to cast it, so its effective damage is much lower than what you might think. And i think some abilities like eve ultimate its balanced that way so that you don’t lose half of your hp bar if you are full hp and eve decides to use it defensively to get away, same thing with akali. So yeah, these abilities are fairly balanced more so than for example a zoe q just oneshoting you regardless of the percent of hp you have or xerath killing you with just ultimate or kaisa w or varus q, if these abilities were balanced as executes, they would actually seem more balanced
If you get killed by a Xerath ult it's on you. One single shot from the ult can't kill you which means that it's basically a fun little minigame where we get to find out how good you are at dodging/how quickly I've learned your dodging pattern. Xerath also makes up for his ult by being the easiest thing on the planet to kill, especially because reaching the one shot ult range A) requires you to be incredibly fed early and B) completely disregard defence and build solely damage, no crown or Zhonya's.
I actually think Eve’s ult is fair, since when you’re within execution range there’s a mark on you to let you be wary, and the fact it’s an ultimate means she loses a lot of her presence once she uses it and fails to execute her target
It's not necessarily about the finisher itself, but the champion that its on. For me, pretty fair is probably ChoGath and Urgot, annoying but acceptable is everything from Darius to Veigar , hard to counterplay but I can get used to would be Pyke and Evelynn, where I draw the line is Viego and especially Akali.
The funny thing about Viego's ult is that, it applies on-hit and spell effects to primary target. If you build Blade of the Ruined King and DS, you deal 24% max health damage, and with his recent nerfs his execute % is more or less the same.
Okay an execute that's well designed is Urgots, because yes it does allow him to win a lot of 1vs1's but it takes time to activate, its difficult to use in a teamfight and its easy to counter but if you manage to land it, its very satisfying giving a small heal and an aoe fear. A badly designed execute is Pyke, a support should not have an execute period. Except he is a support with an execute that resets and lets him dash to the target and give gold to his ally even if they contributed little. Even if you could justify this with the fact that Pike is squishy or that he does have bad support matchups its no excuse for a class thats traditionally there for playmaking to be able to clean house as effectively as the adc they are supporting, if not better than. Even damage oriented supports are balanced by abilities that don't reset on kills allowing them to blow their load and be less effective afterward. Pyke does not have this weakness.
I can never stay mad when I get killed by an Urgot ult. Ever since the range buff you really have to respect his presence both going into and exiting a fight. Cause a lot of Urgot executes from what I’ve seen is from champions barely making it out alive from a fight and dropping their guard to recall under tower, only to get picked off by the drill
I feel the same with Jihn/ xerath. I’ve had a few times where I’m fighting someone and they get away with just a little health but they don’t go far enough away and casting ult does just enough damage to secure the kill
as a somewhat pyke player i must say that , you can still dodge the ult. like yeah sure we have ways to get in but, pyke E is his only way of mobility. imagine is Evelyn ult didn't send her far sway after the damage and you got pyke . like you go in you are a squishy a** bald fella who is about to die. also you can not ignore the fact that you can side step the ult.
i find then extremely unfair for 1 reason only: most of those only require someone to be low HP like Darius "execute" is fair because he needs to stack his passive by himself,and needs AD to make it scale something like garen execute instead is pure BS,he doesn't need to invest in offensive stats,and just because you are low in his general surroundings you are dead,even if he didn't do anything else in the fight there is no outplaying that besides the fact that some champions rely on being low HP and healing back (Olaf,Aatrox,etc.) but they just can't do anything to play around those abilities
I don’t think Darius is fair at all because he will automatically win via his ult. His counterplay in lane is not engaging on him at all…how is that engaging gameplay ? His one weakness in team fights which is kiting him is easily mitigated with so many items that it takes a whole team of CC (unless you are a pre made team) just to keep him from destroying everyone, sometimes because of his tankyness that’s still not enough.
@@thetraveler1125 Darius ult is fair,what makes him absolutely retard to lane with is his W slow and hook which means you are getting fucked whenever you walk up near him,as well as his passive giving free trades with massive bleed damage and a fuckton of AD I'd say his ult is the least problematic part of his kit,as a proof of it it doesn't change how you approach him going from pre 6 to post 6,if he stacks his passive you are screwed regardless
Showing a Mr Game and Watch clip when talking about risk reward is peak irony, especially when talking about Smash attacks having high startup and endlag
Looks like everyone thinks urgot's the most balanced, which i think is nuts, his is the only execute you don't need to time, you can literally use it at the begining of a fight and then dps the target, also the fear on it is busted af. Pyke's seems to be the most hated even though it's easy to dodge if you have any kind of mobility or immunity, so galeforce and zonyas make it useless unless the enemy is on 200 ping, and many say the reset is broken, but you need to live for long enough to use it, something that's kind of hard on a champ that needs to build lethality and get in melee range to do anything, and he can't even stack hp to resist for more than 2 seconds, so basically any form of cc on him is a death sentence.
I was looking for comment like this. I don't get how can someone call Urgot's ultimate fair. Everyone is saying it's a skillshot, but did they even check the numbers? That has to be the easiest skillshot to land in the entire game and as you said Urgot does not even have to time it, as if this champion was not braindead enough. Kinda agree about Pyke as well. He has to be the only actually squishy assassin and requires to be in a very close range to use ultimate, which can be hard despite his mobility. The only problem I had with that ability was the humongous gold income, but even that got nerfed recently. I find pseudo-executes like Akali's or Veigar's ultimates much worse design-wise.
There is also kench which has a quazi execute that needs 3 stacks and then the actual kill doesn't happen immediately when you consume the opponent at 15% health or below.
The Collector is an interesting case; it requires your opponent to be at or below 5% of their HP for it to activate. People run this item all of the time, although it's hard to gauge where an opponent's current health is at. So it's pretty much a way to secure a few kills when it counts.
Collector is just a pretty awful item, even if we dont consider the lackluster statline. Most champs that build this item dont really get high benefit from the passive, they either have extremely high single instances of damage, like Draven, Jhin, Graves, so the likelyhood a target is left with 1-4% hp is so rare, or they have mixed damage types giving them less value from the lethality, like Twitch and KaiSa, despite the passive actually makes sense on those 2. The execute and lethality only really makes sense on Miss Fortune and Samira, where you want to secure kills for yourself and you have many instances of damage through your ult. Samira is much more reliant on lifesteal items, like building BT second instead of Collector literally makes her 2x as strong in both 1v1s and teamfights. So only Miss Fortune can use this item, especially since she has an extra condition by typically building a lethality mythic, as 12 lethality on its own does just about nothing after patch 12.10
I dont think there is too much executes in the game, but just enough that it is justified to be at least a little mad when they release another champ with one
10:00 achilles from smite has the same type of ability as pyke R: it's an execute that resets. BUT it has like 1s of windup, can be blocked by other people (it´s like a dash), and it's a flat percentage (that doesnt scale) Keep in mid that Achiles is a tank, and despise all of that it isnt near as frustating as pyke's R because it has a lot of counter play, whereas pyke's R is nearly instant, scales, has a huge (and bizarre) hitbox, low cooldown and you have like 1 minute to recast it between resets
I think Pyke R is well designed, and here's why: - You see the treshold of execution (as Pyke) - It does break through Shields, since it is a real execution (unlike Cho's R) - the enemy does get informed when You can execute Them (if You are trying to sneak up onto Them by pressing W) Opposing players will hear different sound effects in vicinity of Pyke (while He is using his W) based on whether They are below or above the execution treshold. I personally think making this interaction between His W and R was a genious idea. I just love it and I think it balanced it out very well. Even(!) different skins of his are coming with different sound effects. They really did put the effort into Pyke in my opinion. Could say some "within execute range" effects are rather scary which helps to play against Him a lot - especially in lower elos, where most of the actual League players are based in (including myself).
I might have a bias (i do) about fiddle w because it just works with his kit in a way that w by itself isnt that scarry unless u have 25 mejai stacks but hitting r or even e with q passive into q w makes it do more damage so it is less of an execute and more of an extender to your damage that you have to hit
Great video Vars, as always. I really like the way you analyze League and it kind of helps me get a little better, although I'm not really competitive and keep playing ARAMs and normals but it's a little more enjoyable to play League knowing what the hell you're doing. Now that you have mentioned this briefly in this video, I would really like to see a video on max health dmg, or rather true damage itself. Personally as a tank, offtank and bruiser player myself, I feel the fact that there's a couple champions that just deal a percentage of your max health as true damage is hideous. It's probably "balanced" because there's not a lot of champions that deal this kind of dmg (if I'm not mistaken, there's only like 3 or 4), but at the time I just don't know what to do against a Vayne or a Fiora that delete my health bar independent of what I have itemized, it feels really unfair but most of the time I recognize the fact that I'm taking that dmg is my fault. I would love to see your take on true damage or max health damage
I wonder what could be done about pyke to make him more fair. They gutted his gold generation, but imo if they added a cast time to his ult instead, that might have fixed it. This was a very good thought provoking video. Thabks again vars :)
I dont think its fair to label many of these executes as unfair with no counterplay. They are attached to champions that do have counterplay. Viego can just beam a heartbreak at you when you are low health. He almost no mobility to get you in the execute range (spectral maw is one of the shortest dashes in the game, cant go over walls, and has very short range and even shorter if you don't telegraph the ability with channel time). You could even say that the viego has no counterplay when against a kogmaw for example who he has no shot of reaching unless he makes a major error. But kogmaw isn't unfair, and neither is Heartbreaker. You can't just look at an ability in isolation and say it's unfair before understanding how you play against the champion and what their counterplay is
Pyke main here. Pyke is incredibly unfair and cringe. The problem with a champ like him is that it's hard to make him NOT unfair and cringe because his entire playstyle is based around the one thing everybody hates. To deal with this problem entirely, you'd probably have to Aatrox him. But Pyke is also the most fun character to play for a LOT of people, me included. Maybe he shouldn't exist to begin with but I love my boy and they keep changing him and it makes me sad.
The main solution to it is cut some of the things that make him so obnoxious. He doesn't need the gray health, and he really doesn't need a cooldown reset on his already overloaded Ultimate. Extra gold, and a dash, with a normally short cooldown are very powerful, especially on a champion who's already so hard to punish like Pyke, where if he whiffs his (extremely easy to aim) hook, he can just dash -> invis away and heal up to avoid being punished. And if the gray health stays? Then do something really weird like removing his base regen so he'd have to heal with pots or just the health, so he'd be forced to play smart. Make changes around the fact he's obnoxious and not fun to fight against, by opening new routes to punish him if he makes a mistake and takes a bad engage, or is caught out of position. That's the only big downside. In-lane he's obnoxious and impossibly difficult to punish, and in teamfights he can just clean up if his team makes a mistake and is punished, because of an absurdly powerful execute.
Staying close to your low health ally is the best way to punish pyke, he does virtually no damage with his ult if you're above the treshhold, if your ally dodges, flashes, zhonya most of the time if someone is near, pyke will teleport cause it hit the other player and then you cc or attack him twice and he dies
We talking here about executes, but Pyke's hook is the only hook ability you aim during cast, which in most cases makes it harder to dodge. So on top of a very good - but also overloaded - kit, as adc it feels like he has easier time hooking me than other catchers. What do you say, Pyke players? Does the hook feel easier than Thresh's or Naut's?
imo fiddlesticks's w is a pretty good execute, since it has to channel for a few seconds and only activates the execute on the end, and you can avoid the execute by either cancelling his channel or by just moving out of the w range
As always a great video from Vars. There are plenty of good points gathered here my only nitpick is not talking about blocking the projectile (braum shield, windwalls, spell shields) executes/ults like viegar ult or riven ult. But apart from that I do agree that Ultimates that function as executes but also provide way too many perks is quite unnecessary. The viego,eve and pyke repositioning is a bit annoying. I want to omit reksai and akali because a lot of extra work has to be done before those see total value. That and reksais ult is a weird topic development wise. But the bigger take away in addition to what the ults provide is definitely who they are on. The best designed executes would be something like you said up the ball park of darius. Essentially ults with the primary function of doing damage first and a little something extra given the character, ie. reset, fear, extra hp or stat. Things like invulnerability, and dashing on characters who could easily do 3x your health bar over seems rather redundant and unnecessary at times. Like you said those with point and click executes need to go through the fair hoops to justify it being healthy. Skill shots are usually fine in addition to being blockable and therefore point and click bursts should only be healthy given enough limiters on attempting to get the intended value out of the ability.
Pyke has easily the worst design execute imo. It's only fun for the person playing it, even playing with him so many Pykes don't contribute and just wait for the ult to take your fight away. Yes, those are the bad Pykes. Which is sadly most of them.
It's mainly because pyke can do much in team fights except r or engage. In the heat of the battle, Pyke will die pretty quick, so he has to stay back and wait for his team to get them low. Now if riot rebalanced him and shifted his power away from r. I would love that
I don't find it annoying when the enemy team has an execute, I'm annoyed when I deal ~85% of someone's health and a teammate uses an execute to steal the kill. (Exceptions are made for Pyke and Cho'gath because their goal isn't to steal the gold but instead to either give you more gold or to get tankier)
The biggest annoyance I have is resets on Executes (looking at Pyke). Like you said in the video, it is so easy for a Pyke to just make his way to a low health target and exe them before they can even react. So Pyke slips in, nukes target 1, then target 2, target 3, etc.. It feels terrible coming out of a fight that you just barely win only to have a bottom feeder come out of nowhere and remove the last quarter of your healthbar, then go to a nearby lane and do it again to someone else. Couple that with how long the timer is on his reset, where he can actually go from top to bottom of the map and still have his execute...
Something that I recently thought about was swapping Veigar's W and R, with some adjustments. In terms of his identity I feel like the monster late game Ws are a higher threat that the execute burst. Leaving the stacks scaling on its CD, dark matter could act as a shorter range kog ult while what currently is the point and click execute could be changed to a weaker basic ability with some missing health scaling but in line with having counterplay.
Personally I don't mind an execute like pykes or urgots because it's still a skill shot whereas garen veigars executes are targeted abilities and there's no counter play to it unless you have stopwatch
uhm akshually veigar's ult is a finisher as it only scales with missing health while urgot ult and pyke ult do 9999 true damage, making them true executes 🤓
1.) Executes should be always visible 2.) No they aren't unfair, I think it'd actually be much more fair for more champions to have missing health damage. Basically the only couple truly backloaded damage champions right now are Kalista and Evelynn.
@@Onefishygal Voli actually isn't back loaded he does similar DPS throughout a fight, but yeah Darius and Aatrox absolutely are. Aatrox less so than Darius though.
My biggest issue is the large amount of executes/finishers on juggernauts and tanks. Garen R, Darius R, Urgot R etc.... these champs are already designed to be skilled at long fights with there sustain and tankiness, giving them an finisher means that if you are going even with them in a trade, u actually have lost. another form of counter play that you didnt really mention is that when an assassin comes and 0-> death someone then they need to escape or get blown up. an urgot/darius can 0->death u then continue fighting the rest of the team
Rek'Sai's R need you to either be in their face and attack them to mark them so you can use your ult, or you need to land a fast but narrow skill shot that doesn't pierce minions. Either you need to be in their face, or have skill in positioning to hit the skill shot.
What annoys me is that evelynns ult is that it doesnt show you whether it will execute your target. The mark only shows whether they are low enough to activate the bonus damage. Sure, if you're fed it is usually a kill if they're that low, but I feel like if cho can have the execute range shown clearly so should eve
I’m so happy with this video. I was the wiki editor who created the distinction between “% Of Missing Hp” & “% Missing HP” abilities. Personally, I feel like "% of Missing Hp" executes are fine, but "Percent Health Missing" abilities can be much more frustrating as they are very potent burst tools and are commonly associated with being one-shot.
Revert Aatrox
@@leekleek1 true
yea, akali's r2 max damage is one example, but with how her kit plays (especially now with the durability update), she isn't as big of a deal as i think evelynn is.
a while ago they buffed eve's r execute damage from 100% to 140%. i think they said that this was mainly to help her killing tanks, since her ult max damage was already so high, any squishy would die to it without doubt. but now with the durability update, things like akali r2 might (key word is MIGHT, idk, i haven't played on the patch yet) barely not kill a squishy target. However, eve's ult already overkilled by so much, the patch basically didn't affect her/
My respect for you 💙
as a tank main I HATE percent missing hp abilities getting hit I
with 3k true damage from Garen is so bullshit. the other are meh they are just back loaded damage like on Akali she has to ult and wait 2.5 seconds before she can use it and it's the same damage as a kha q or less even. viegar is the only one because it does like 2k or more and it's point and click.
By the way do you remember veigar when his ult scales from 80% of ENEMY AP? So if the enemy mage is fed, the more likely he will oneshot it. Imagine having that in 2022.
I remember those days...I imagine if it were still a thing today, you would see a lot of axiom Veigar
Sounds like the most aggressive way to counter Mages/AP champion. Take note patch 7.21 Galio, you shouldn't one-shot everyone.
Doesn’t matter when his ult does 1000 base at 50 min, and 6000 at max lol
@@foxenstinevon.gaming12 1000 base at 50 min is still less than Nasus q, so that seems balanced for an ult. Especially considering how few games make it to 50 min (even on the 12.10)
that ult with the instant cage, fun times
Is it unfair? Maybe. Is it unfair if Draven has one? Ofcourse not. This is Draven's league.
My execute is much more superior than yours Draven... This is not League of Draven...
I can execute the entire enemy team. This is not your league kid
@@rehmanrohanyone2147 that's not an execute. That's called being an Ionian.
@@dravendraven1471 explain plssssss
@@dravendraven1471 I don't know what you mean but it's good to see vars piss his pants hearing my name
My only problem for executes as a cho'gath is I swear I can never walk up and eat 'em before they run.
YES! Even more with today's metta that all freaking champs have dashes or somthing alike
Everfrost baby
@@zelo3747 phase rush baby
I actually get scared when fighting chogath when I'm not sure if he has ulti or not, like if I'm down to 40% it's done, and it really gives me goosebumps
Snowball baby
2 points I’d like to make… playing Cho’Gath you can see the execute range, playing against Chogath you have no clue. There’s a lack of clarity. Pyke having a reset on his execute is the one thing that genuinely pisses me off
Playing against Cho'Gath now shows the execute range
Don’t forget Pyke’s ult also has huge aoe and good damage even if it doesn’t execute
Pyke’s execute hitbox is insane too, very forgiving
@@ShadowNavi82 good dmg is lower than aa damage?
@@ShadowNavi82 It doesn't have good dmg and after the early game pyke becomes useless if he misses it.
5:38 "super mega death rocket, exclamationpoint"
He said calmly
Just make the execute range visible like how it is on Elder dragon if the champ has hit you recently. Problem Solved IMO.
Ok then you can have about 7 bars if the whole enemy team attacks you what now?
@@kompletnyidiota4196 Pay attention to the one furthest to the right and I think the Max would be 6 unless a champ has 2 executes I dont know about.
only zed R and yone E indicate if they will kill you
those are not execute but stacked damage
execute threshold are only indicated to the owners for certain champs
@@raphaelnej8387when pyke can execute u and he uses his w u can hear the "fear music" which is coming from the w, so u can know when u r executable
@@LennZone ok but waht about deaf ppl or ppl who listen to music, or hell, having too many other sounds occur in game at the time? having just sound as an indicator, on a whole another ability than his R at that, is not enough
I have a inner hatred for shields as a chogath main because when I ult someone like yasuo he doesn't die because his shield procs. I dunno its just a pet peeves of mine
Shieldbow adcs are the most annoying ones for Cho x_x feel ya pal
Darius mains share your hate
as a pyke main i just laugh when i see someone get shielded
oh my god I remember the pain of that from the times I used to play a lot of Cho, I feel you mate
Nah not all shields but non-conditional shields like Shieldbow and Yasuo's annoy me bc they don't have to time anything or use any skill, the shield just activates on its own, meanwhile Morde, Ivern, Voli etc. And anyone using Randuin has to time they're shield just right to turn the tide.
I think the best designed Execute is Urgot, it is a rather small but fast skill shot which makes is hard to land on higher range and the % threshhold is small enough that no one feel "unfaily killed" and it is a 2 part ability which gives u as the enemy enough time to react. The worst designed is Pyke. As a champion its "fair" in brackets but the dmg when the Ults executes is very high (late game most of the adcs die in one aa + r . It has a very little indicator (bigger if u use pyke w but thats kinda bs that the indicator for "u gonna die" is another ability) and its prob. the most frustrating . Finishers and Execute feel like the cherry on top of a kit or the ultimate move.... but beginning at lvl 6 pykes R is his kit and personality. Other then Urgot,Darius,Akshan where it is their last action
pyke is the one I despise the most.
Most of the time I play against one its always the same bs, his gameplay is all about waiting in a corner of a teamfight like a rat to get an cheesy execute while doing the bare minimum, not to mention he is slippery af so its always a waste of time to chase this rat.
I only hate pike cuz urgot is kinda fair and you have a chance and draven skale to his stacks so it isnt that insane
Agree but to add on: urgots ult range is vastly more than his fighting range, meaning if his ult hits you at max range, he has no way to close in time to kill. Pyke ult is also aoe, resets, and gives bonus gold to himself + teammates
@@intoHeck1964 its only extra gold to an ally, he got gutted
Pyke got the Worst execute rn Wdym
It depends on the ability. Executes themselves aren’t a problem but what is is the amount of them riot keeps shoving into the game unnecessarily.
Don't get close to die and you won't get executed.
Also git gud
Fighting a team of full execs is incredebly annoying especially if anyone from your team gets caught off guard.
@@elitenoob2141 Not only execs, but execs and resets - 1 kill = gg
Am I the only one shocked by the numbers on Garen’s R. I’ve never looked it up but 350 true damages + 35% of the target’s missing health as true damage on a point and click ability seem insane
I hate that you cant buy anything preventing this dmg (armour and HP doesnt matter)
Garen's base damage is really bad though, he usually cannot kill you fast enough in one rotation unless he builds pure damage.
Used to be magic only, then it got changed to be conditionally true damage (when Garen still had the Villain mechanic). Now it’s True Damage.
its 450
When he still has the Villian system, it scales with 44% LOL.
Imma say something for Rek'sai, hers is a lot fairer and grouping it with Eve and Garen and Riven is unfair because her's, one, sucks, two, the timing can very easily be Zhonya'd, unlike a point blank Riven ult. And because she's a shape shifter, it's weaker than a lot of other ults because she needs to be balanced around having more abilities. And it requires hitting the target before using it, and the only way to do that without getting in the enemy's face is hitting a small, long range projectile where if the enemy is out of vision the only way you can know where they are is if they move, and even then the movement tracking refreshes very slowly,
Raksai R used to suck when they can flash to dash to doge it and Reksai just plung herself into middle of enemy. They should give Raksai a partial global dash R she used to have maybe she can dash to one of her tunnel at certain range after she execute enemy
@@wabalaka1565 It still sucks if you're ulting into the enemy or into a turret. The risks just outweigh the benefits. If the enemy Zhonya's under a turret or in a group of teammates you gained nothing and just threw away your life and a 80 second CD
@@wabalaka1565 she actually got reworked. Her old r was to instantly tp to a tunnel but it was op in pro so she got this shit instead
@@wabalaka1565 Unless they changed it again, you can still dodge rek'sai's ulti... you just have to travel like 2000+ units within the span of her jumping out, which is not reasonable for basically any champion + timing
@@XeroKimorimon yeah 2000 Unite is about Zed R snap back range and you have to do it at precise timing I personally never saw anyone doge her R since the change
The fact that if Pyke misses his ult he isn't teleported to its location is wild. If he misses ult he better be put in the heat of battle.
It's not wild because then pyke could just use his ult as a dash. That is a buff
@@aaaaaa-rd4bv
@@aaaaaa-rd4bv yeah, this would allow too consistent ways to do trick aoe stuns with his E + R combo. As the one prowler's claw allowed.
I miss those.
Executes and finishers are also really pressuring in lane compared to buffing ultimates, if a garen for example wins a trade hard he always has the possibility to extend the trade into an all in and kill you, while somebody with a buffing ult will lose a lot of damage in the all in if he does that (ofc they still can, but it's not ideal).
Basically champions with buffing ults have to fully commit and if they screw something they are fucked, champions with executes can just play normally and always have the treath of extending the trade into an all in, basically in some matchups where you only win long trades you might not be able to do them unless you fully commit
This is a really interesting analysis. Well said 🤔🤔🤔
This is the exact main reason why I main champs with executes. I like to punish people who think their mechanics and fancy dashes, equating mobility with skill while taking bad decisions, will save them from being punished. I find it cathartic whenever I play against someone who relies on their bullshit kit as a free get out of jail card.
@@blacklight1104 too bad the champs with the most bullshit kits have an easier time getting out of a fight before being executed than most other champs, unless they're really really bad
The one problem I have w executes is that there is no indication on your end that you are within execute range of someone. Like the person executing gets to know but you don't.
For frame of reference, I always use Thanatos from SMITE. When he ults he gets to see all the people he can execute but also while he's ulting anyone within execute range sees the indicator as well. That's literally all I want, is to have the indicator that they see be visible to me so I know whether I'm fine or not
Same goes for Achilles
Exactly like the counter play for executes is stopwatch items let me know if I am in the hp range so I can use the item to counter it
The idea is great but then the issue would become that (almost literally) all activated defensive abilities are instant. Stopwatch, Zhonyas, Barrier, Kayle ult, Kindred ult, Soraka ults and heals, Lulu's ult and shield, etc. Meanwhile, all executes are exactly the opposite, they have relatively long animation times, to the point that you can flash/react to all of them. So if you add an indicator to the target, it would be unbalanced the other way around - it would be too easy to react with Zhonyas or a shield with no cast time and the executer would have a lot less chances to actually use the skill they are balanced around
@@voidgods "executes have long cast times"
*pyke joined the chat*
@@Tiagocf2 lol it's actually one of the easiest ones to react to, reacting to the sound cue instead of the visual cue is the secret (also because our brain processes sound faster than images). For context, his ult cast time is 0.5 seconds, a whole half a second. Garen's is 0.435, Darius is 0.3667, Cho is 0.25. So if you can't react to Pyke's ultimate, you are probably 50 years old 😂 and it's not point and click so not only can Pyke miss it but literally all Champs with flash can dodge it, while the point and click ones can only be stopped by Zhonyas (and some of them don't even go into CD if it doesn't connect, so they can just cast again, like Cho)
In my opinion when they removed the ability to qss + dash to remove a knockup was the worst thing to happen in league. It used to be that suppression was the best cc in the game and thus the kits that had it were balanced around it, along with the counterplay to the mechanic. However, many champions have knockups with varying durations. Even baron nashor has a knockup and a long one at that. The rational was that tenacity would apply to knockups which was stupid by definition (because champions with knockups rely on the knockups and their durations, so lowering the duration was bad for the champion that used them and removing the ability to cleanse it was bad for everyone else). I really wish they revert that change.
I've personally got 2 major problems with executes- 1) It's very important to keep in mind that there are champions that perform better at low hp. Olaf (AS+LS scales off missing hp), Trynd (AD scales off missing hp), Vlad (heal scales off missing hp), Zac (his abilities do % current health damage but his blobs that he gets from them heal % max health, so the lower hp he is, the greater 'net heal' he gets from his blobs). Optimal play of these champions with certain builds requires that in fights you try to hover around a certain health threshold high enough so you don't get burst down but low enough that you're maximizing your kit (I main Vlad and Zac and this number's normally about 30-50% hp). Executes are hard counters to this playstyle. I wouldn't say it's unfair, since just about every playstyle occasionally faces mechanics that require you to play suboptimally in certain scenarios, but it does suck. 2) The true executes (Pyke and Urgot mostly, Draven's doesn't pose much of an issue) are coded to determine whether somebody can be executed before the hit actually connects (I THINK it's calculated as soon as you hit the button, but it's possible there's a specific frame in the animation that it calculates, but it's certainly not when the actual damage is applied). Obviously they ignore shields, as that's the point of them, but they also ignore any changes to hp that would put the champion back above execute range. Lifesteal, heals, level ups, even changes to max hp all don't matter. I can't tell you how many times I've died as Vlad to Urgot or Pyke at FULL HEALTH, and it's absolutely infuriating.
while your second point may be valid for urgots ult it isnt true for pyke
if someone is healed or manages to lifesteal out of the threshold then they are fine and they stay alive
this has happened to me before when ive played as AND against a pyke
Urgot checks if you're executable when he recasts it. The confusion is there's a delay between when the chains come out and when they connect and suppress you. If you get healed up in that window, then yes, you're still dead. If you get healed before Urgot recasts you're good, unless you get slapped again which is honestly very likely.
@@nothanks6216There's no confusion on it. It's just frustrating playing against it as somebody who mostly plays champions that are stronger the lower their hp is. Vlad's the worst example because his ult will heal him while he's CC'd so you're watching a '25% threshold execute' kill you at 50% health.
@@adamperdue3178 Maybe blood pool the skillshot then? Not like you're getting Demacia'd
Honestly last Caress is pretty good design. It only works because it's on Evelynn who lacks significant gapclosers so she has to sneak up on you first. Additionally it takes her out of the fight so if she doesn't kill her target or wiffs she can't finish them off with something after. Plus it's an ult with no reset so it actually has a cooldown.
"sneaking up on someone" is pretty easy with her BS perma invis though
Executes are just a condition on a high damage attack.
The fact that something is an execute is never why something is a problem, because it would always be better if that damage was unconditional.
Remember: Great finisher means bad opener
As such, any problematic executions should be looked at case by case.
Finally someone with based factual take.
Yep, i’d day most abilities that have absurd damage, like kaisa w, karthus ult, xerath ult (if he is fed he can literally just oneshot you with ult) again things like jayce q, zoe q, if these abilities were actually executes and they wouldnt nuke you for 80% of your hp if you were full health, than i’d think these abilities would be more balanced)) but ofc people are asking for indications of certain executes like akali or eve, which is absurd, since these abilities do 0 damage if they start the fight with them and usually they do the same amount of damage as a regular ability would
I think you're forgetting the fact that if you drop below 40%, any champ with a strong finisher will explode you regardless of the shields your team may provide you because the maxed out damage of execute abilities is just that high. The enemy team having any champ with an execute means as soon as you drop below 40% HP you're as good as dead, which is a ton of pressure on its own.
@@kosu9516 that's also true if they happen to have a high damage attack of any kind. The difference here is that you need to be below 40% for it to get you at all.
that's why i hate viego. he has an execute which scales off you being low HP, meanwhile he builds BotrK and has the botrk passive in his kit which scales off current HP. This makes no sense, so he gets to deal a shitton of damage while you're full HP but he can then execute you when you get low enough so that the current%hp damage falls off?
Urgot has a fair execute, if you use it as a skillshot at mid-long range the enemy has an opportunity to evade.
However, its more effective at point blank after you hit his stun since the stun duration is longer than the R cast time.
This is urgot's most effective range so if the enemy is fighting in it (except if he E+Flashes) it's already his advantage
You can also cleanse urgot R pull part
@@stekku15 isn't it a suppression though?
@@jaywu4804 I mean gangplank oranges can cleanse an urgot ult
@@jefff7916 wait it can? What the fuck is GP brooo RIOT GAMES!!!!!
@@ItsVegaSama yes, it also works with qss, but you need to qss the pull of it
I was happy that you remembered Rek'Sai, but her ultimate does have counterplay/skill expression- if she wants to get you from range, she has to land Q, which can be very hard to do at times.
Pyke's R having a reset is my main issue. Even with the 'your cut' changes, it being able to reset can give the enemy team way to much team gold to the point the match is over before you had time to even try to make a comeback.
My biggest issue with Pyke ult is how forgiving it is. You don't even have to get the kill for it to reset, as long as you ult just after the enemy dies. Also the fact that you basically cannot see him until he is directly on top of you.
I feel like the current executes in the game are pretty fair. Veigar ult does huge damage but without landing an e stun he struggles to hit people with his q and w to get them in his ult kill threshold. Pyke lacks the damage to instantly get yiu within his kill threshold. The most other champs with executes can be easily kited. Urgot has a self slow, garen and darius have no dashes.
"Pyke lacks the damage to instantly get you"
@@rentedthug the only way a pyke can 100 to 0 you is if he hits every skillshot after using prowlers claw, and if he does that he'll get destroyed bc he wasted his only dash to try and kill someone
@@SamElZombie Good thing he can't build a mythic that makes him go invisible after every kill, use an ability that grants camouflage and a passive that regenerates a big chunk of recently lost hp. That would be crazy right?
@@SamElZombie his q and e aren’t his main damage though. It’s the HOB autos with max lethality mid game.
@@m-mori then he can't build prowlers claw and looses 20% of his dmg and a dash that is pretty vital for him, pyke can only be good at teamfights or in 1v1 skirmishes, but not at both (not like every other assasin)
Urgot had a true execute before Pyke. Urgot > reworked to his current ult in v7.15 in 2017.
Pyke > released 2018
Urgot ult is 100% a true finisher.
Executes are not a problem, buy they are meant to be consistent. Most games, and even LoL, use a % of Max hp execute threshold to keep it's potency parallel with leveling. Pyke however doesn't abide by this and instead can execute based off of a flat numerical HP value. While this makes him counterbalanced by massive health pools any champ that doesn't have the luxury of building those items will simply watch in horror as Pyke presses 1 button and insta-kills them from 1700 health when their max hp may be around 2100. 25-30%hp is a nominal execute threshold in games, 65-75% is absolutely an outlier and imo a aberrant one. Otherwise it is a fun and ez to balance mechanic
While I agree, 1700 damage is far overtuned. Pyke reaches about 950 with 6 items and sold boots, plus level 18, since his ultimate damage mainly scales with his level
@@rochusstumpfe7033 I've been hit with insane bursts of dmg from pyke in literally 2 seconds. However I may have overestimated the exact value of his R, before 12.10 most ADCs had avg 1900 hp at lvl 18 no items and being able to execute at around 50%hp is giga dumb which is why executes shouldn't ever be more than a locked %hp threshold
@@IDirtyMangoI So, you've been hit by every single thing in his kit while building not a single defensive item and you're mad about, is that it?
Have you ever considered, I dunno, dodging, flashing, healing, or even not pushing alone when there's an ASSASSIN not visible on the map? Ngl, sounds like a skill issue
@@shikikankillzone4239 I'm a Kog Maw main I've built damn near everything you could build. Unfortunately Kog doesn't play like Jinx, Vayne, Lucian, or Draven where I get 3 kills and just steam roll the game. He's still the most defenseless and immobile champion in the game. He either kills you or you kill him. Everytime my champion is strong they rebalance the game before OTPs like me elo inflate with 85%< WRs.
However unlike legitimately any other PvP execute mechanic, I challenge you to name 3 outside of Thanatos from HiRez' SMITE, it is unheard of for a player to commit a 50%hp execution. It also can scale infinitely. It is possible for Pyke to 1 button execute a lvl 18 full build 8k hp ChoGath. That being said most people will never play a 600min lol match. Regardless I'm well aware of my skill level, I'm just not a fan of folks ignoring core concepts for game design and balance.
@@IDirtyMangoI Pyke ult doesnt scale infinite tho. They removed that
It depends really. Some executes - like Urgot - are not that strong - he has a missile that he needs to hit on an enemy with less than 25% health just to activate it, and even then zhonyas, qss or similar effects can negate it. If he lands it, gets you below 25%, and manages to pull you in, he deserves the execute and the aoe fear. Pyke, on the other hand, has a much faster execute that kills based on flat health, even if you are like at 60%, but you're a squishy champ, he might be able to get it, and it offers very little time to react and counter it
Yeah and but it’s balanced by the fact that the rest of his kit is now unusable. Explain to me how 9% of damage taken is supposed to be an effective passive in a 1 on 1 duel and how a low damage hook and lower damage stun is supposed to do anything to make him “broken” or “overpreforming” like riot said there major counterplay to pyke and that’s simply moving if u sidestep the q u win the fight 9 times out of 10 he can’t do damage of autos only he needs either his teammate to be there or to hide until your low enough in a team fight which means he has no pressure his early and neutral game now sucks and they wanna nerf his ult now too
The problem is that pyke have very high damage but is also extremely squishy, so any misses on his ultimate makes him very vulnerable : his ult is high risk, high reward.
If he uses his w or e to escape, that means he did not use them to execute the target, meaning his kill was "deserved". As such, if Pyke succesfully manages to land his full combo in the middle of a fight and escape alive with enough hp to recast it, he should be rewarded for it (exactly as the urgot landing his r)
@@ltbgaming6368 yeah, that's kinda pykes problem. His power budget is poorly distributed - his ult is crazy good while the rest of his kit is kinda shit
pyke is really the only one i'm really frustrated with and that's just because its an easy reset and it gives so much gold to the team and himself if it was just a kill and the reset or a single kill and no reset with the gold it would be much better i feel it would also force him into a much more support role since he would be much more difficult to carry but right now he has so much power balance in his ult but when you look at the rest of his kit it also has a ludicrous amount of power for the ult so IDK
Not anymore the gold got a massive nerf
Power in his kit:
Worst AD scalings in the assassin class
Giganerfed kit ever since release
Can't build defensive
Worst hook in the game which is also the least cost effective
Can't push lane if ADC dies in a 1 for 2
Useless past 20 minutes
W literally warns enemies of your presence
R nerfed, no more gold on execute
Dash and Stun on the same skill make it literally a kamikaze button
Passive doesn't work anymore if 2 enemies aren't close
Camouflage has been bugged ever since 2020 and was only fixed 2 weeks ago
No scaling into late game and now has a mediocre early
Any sort of measly heal or dash cucks ult
Damage is totally backloaded if you don't build Drakk first
He's already screwed, Pyke mid was 42% wr, and Pyke supp was 46%, the worst champ to pick against him had a POSITIVE winrate against him.
Pardon the language, but what the fuck
@@shikikankillzone4239 Pyke support has a 49,42% winrate in Plat+ a 7.4% pickrate and a 13.2% banrate, champion keeps being playable and arguably strong, stop spreading bs to defend ur unfun champ.
@@shikikankillzone4239 Naah Pyke is broken
Worst AD scaling ? passive
Yeah he got nerf that is the point...
Yeah beacaus of the passive who give him extra AD ...
Worst hook if Pyke couldn't dash and stun afterwards
A lot of champ suffer from this and can't depush not only pyke
Useless after 20 min ? if he manage to get kills he's in advance and maybe with a mate so what is the matter if he can snowball that fast with someone else
he's not the only to warn when w is on but he's the only one to be that fast
R nerfed , that is the point again
His dash + stun is reliable bc of his speed + fast gap closer for moves and ult + pass through walls
again with this speed you can easily use passive for this and is designe to work with W
Again he still scale that much on early because of gold efficiency and is usefull in late as his finisher can reset + spam if you do it right
He has grey healthbar , like sort of tahm , isnt enough ? he has good dash...
Ohh.. he has to build a mythic items before pop off ... how sad .. Btw letha on bot is literally overpowered since they don't build armor
But let's talk about Malmortius would you , is that normal for an support/assassin , to pop a 1000 magic shield ? wow as an ap carry , burst all ur damage to kill this ( who has no build hp btw ) , what a joke
Pyke should be deleted
Just remember no matter how annoying executes are, most characters that have them (outside the ones that do more damage the lower you are) give up a significant amount of power to have them. If they didn’t have the execute, that power would just get put elsewhere where it would probably actually be better spent. Imagine if Pyke scaled better rather than having the execute, he’d be way stronger than he is now. An ability feeling bad to get hit by doesn’t mean it’s inherently bad for the game or overpowered.
@Dichang Feng The main solution to Pyke is remove some aspects to him. Like the Tahm Kench Regen, or the fact he can aim his hook like a Xerath Q. Knock out some of the big things that make him so obnoxious and maybe you'll have a fun champion to fight against. The problem is when Riot patched an actual glitch involving him getting double gold, the sweaty assassin mains all whined, bitched, and griped saying "OH THEY GUTTED HIM HOW COULD THEY DO THIS", so god forbid Pyke ever gets knocked down a few pegs. Could you imagine if he actually required skill to play effectively? Good lord I could only IMAGINE what the Pyke "mains" (Autofilled Akali/Zed Sweats) would do when they realize you can't sit in a bush, run away unpunished for being out of position, and then heal up just to do it again until you can faceroll your keyboard for an execute.
I belive that eve ult is balanced, since even without it she already deals a ton of damage it truly is there just to make sure, even more without have a reset mechanic like so other ( aka pyke and viego) and her only real set up is her W which either gives you the charm after a period of time or a slow if used right after, but without the mr reduction
Before having seen the video i will say
Urgot execute is one of the few that feels fair (for me atleast) when fighting
It would be 100% fine if it wasn't for that 3 second 90% slow the drill applies
@@The_White I mean fair, but it's a skill shot and it's longer then urgot's range. The slow is the only way for urgot to hit the enemy if he flees with like 2 HP more than the threshold
@@gabrieldossantos1116 Don't worry, I'd say the same thing about Fizz ult. I hate every strong slow in the game.
As a tank main who's played back when the tank meta was a thing, I can attest that in the spirit of fairness, %hp, %missinghp, and executes being more common now is a welcome sight. The last thing anyone wants is another tank meta, and say what you will about executes but they are a necessary counter measure in league now. Counterplay is what makes league fun, no matter how tanky I am seeing a late game vayne should put the fear of god in my eyes. Similarly, when I'm fed and the enemy team has no counters for my shear bulk, my presence should put that same fear in their eyes.
Execution effects like Akali's R2, Veigar's R, Jinx's R, etc- abilities that scale with missing health, rather than true executes- are, in my opinion, the fairest version of these effects. And depending on the strength of the effect, I don't think they need to be locked to ultimates- for instance, I have no qualms with Seraphine's Q scaling by missing health, as I wouldn't say it's strong enough to be a problem- but for more extreme examples, such as Veigar's ultimate (Which I've seen kill at 60+% health many times), it definitely should be an ultimate.
True executions, like Pyke's ultimate, Elder Dragon burn, and Collector proc, I would say are much harder to balance- Elder Dragon burn I'm mostly fine with, since it's a late-game Epic Monster buff, and is meant to be very powerful. Collector bothers me, but that's more so because it gives critical strike chance AND lethality, and less because of its execution effect. But Pyke's ultimate, I would say, is much more of a problem- not just because it can be recast for free every time it scores a kill, but also because the execution threshold scales with his AD. That is what I take issue with most- true executions are so powerful that their strength increasing over the course of the game, at least to me, feels very unhealthy.
(I'm also aware that Pyke's ultimate is one of the only true executions in the game that isn't percentage-health based, and thus is disproportionately effective against low-health targets than it is against high-health targets, which I don't think is a good thing. As much as I'm hesitant to say any of these effects should be stronger, I think making executions equally threatening to all champions would make the divide in champion durability feel less severe.)
Collector is kinda shit ngl, if a tank has 3k hp and collector gets the kill, it does 150 dmg, or 2 autos
Teemo's mushroom laying in your Jungle w8ing FOUR you to step on it after a long team fight:
What I will say in the defense of Pyke is that if he misses the ult or doesn't execute someone, his threath level disappears, yes you may never be able to catch him, but with 1200 health he isn't going to do much without a co-operative team, especially since his stun requires him to dive into the enemy team. Give Pyke's ult to anyone else who can gain HP and it's the worst ability ever, on Pyke himself, it's actually somewhat fair.
Another relevant difference between the two types of finishers: it doesn't matter how much damage you are dealing, % missing health damage will always do the same damage, whereas increasing the damage based on the enemy missing health scales off the damage you are doing. The implication behind it is that the former don't need you to do high damage to begin with to be effective.
For example, right after his 2017's rework, Shaco's E started giving % missing health damage. That same rework also reduced Shaco's ratios substantially so building AD was less rewarding and less necessary at the same time. At that time, Shaco's optimal build consisted of Titanic Hydra (which at the time had an active that empowered your next auto), Trinity Force and Deadman's Plate. All itens that increase your basic attack's damage once, but Shaco could use it twice because of this clon. Paired with Thunderlord's, Ignite and the % missing health finisher on his E, Shaco could oneshot with that bruiser setup.
While not the only change responsible for the transition, switching Shaco's E from a % missing health type of finisher to a increase the damage based on enemy's missing health was a contributing factor responsible to encourage Shaco to build AD again and end the oneshoting bruiser build. First because it made building AD rewarding again and second because having some base damage was necessary for the finisher to scale off with.
I'd honestly argue Evelynn's execute doubling as an escape is fine, as if she whiffs it her target actually can get away. If you whiff the other executes you can just kill your target normally but evelynn tps away from her target.
Especially u can nullify her dmg quite ez by cancelling her whiplash with a knockup/knockback (ofc not every champ can do that but it actually happens quite frequently in a teamfight) or dodge her lasher of her hate spike. Forcing her to ult out with no kills and be useless for the next 5 seconds
I actually disagree with eyelynn point, since that is her only escape tool to used.
A bit late, but I'm really not in agreement with this. Not every champion needs a get-out-of-jail-free card, especially not one that is already permanently invisible unless in a fight (most likely engaged on their own terms).
@@hovhannes5 I mean she is an assassin, she kinda need a tool to get out since her job is to make the squishes explode to kingdom cum and survice. The only thing that really dumb about eveylynn is how her passive make it so she heal most of her health back after a while.
No execute that's versatile enough to be used on demand, as a Gap closer and escape should also be allowed to reset, that's where I draw the line.
Looking at you pyke and viego.
Alkali feels kind gross aswell but think hers just shouldn't be an execute at all, her kit is already pretty incredible.
Pyke execute only teleports him when he hit an enemy. So if your low and wanna make some distanz he needs to be so low that you Exe him or your dead. Yes you can the ult to give your stun a bigger range but than he use his ult and has CD so he is kinda usless and is not so easy to pull off.
Pyke’s ultimate is almost never used to escape and is rarely used to gap close
Executes are healthy for the game as long as they are kept controlled because they stop a tank meta and sustain from becoming too prevalent. However, they are also very very strong, especially possible to be too strong if they _aren't_ controlled because then they'll overtake the meta, be abused into becoming the standard, and then make other ways of killing the target to be inferior, thusly making said meta less fresh and less unique, as well as possibly less fun.
I'm saying this as an aggressive squishy mage support main by the way. I want a one shot meta based around pure skill but I also want tanks to be able to do their job because it wouldn't be fair to them otherwise.
One of my best friends mains Pyke and he agrees that the only redeeming quality about him is his ult
his high base stats make him a formidable supprot even without the ult
@@deekay1306 he has the worst hook in the game and an unreliable stun, and his camouflage has such a large detection range it’s basically useless. Base stats mean nothing if your kit barely functions. If you want hooks go nautilus or thresh, cc go leona, damage go lux or brand or something
Ngl, Pykes ult is offset by being on Pyke, not saying Pyke is a bad champ, though currently he is, but that he prolly has the slowest time to kill compared to the rest of the assassins, he has THE BEST execute in the game.
idk if this is a hot take or not, but I believe super mega death rocket to be the most balanced "big execute" spell because it requires alot of skill on the jinx's part and can't 100-0 unlike some "executes" because it needs a huge amount of covered range to reach its max damage
This is completely unrelated but I love that you used Lucario's Power-up Punch and Close Combat from Unite to make the missing/max health damage comparison. I WISH Close Combat had max health damage but that'd probably be too overpowered lol. Power-up Punch's execute damage is kind of nutty honestly since it already has insane attack scaling on top of doing bonus damage based on missing health. Imagine if tapping Vi's Q without fully charging it did 10% of an enemy's missing HP, capping out at 1k damage. It's insane, especially when securing objectives.
IMO executes are the ultimate feast or famine mechanic and that plays a big part in people's perception of them. If you're ahead, then executes do a ton of damage, but if you're behind, they're turbo useless because you can't get the enemy low enough for them to be useful. This is exacerbated by being point-and-click so you can't even counterplay it. The consequence being, enemy team executes feel very oppressive if your team is behind.
I’d actually go as far and say that the game really needed executes in the past few years.
In a game state where certain champs and/or build allow you to one v three and heal you back from 10% in the process, reliable killing blows feel like the one thing to counter such teamfight monstrosities.
6:48 Pyke was not the first execute, he was added to the game in patch 8.11, meanwhile Urgot's remake was back in 7.15. Urgot's ult execute was the first true execute, long before pyke.
Odd that you'd get that wrong when you had allready mentioned Urgot as one of the champs with a true execute before before this point.
Evelynn’s ult looks disgusting in isolation until you realise it’s her ONLY escape tool. Unlike say Talon where his is a passive and he’s much better at extended fights. Eve is a melee range champ that loses to every other melee champ in the game in a fair fight.
Ah, i dont even notice executes in this game, i think executes force you to play your champ in a certain way, and they also balance your champ so that you cant start fights with certain abilities or you lose damage. So when you see a veigar ult that shows 1.5k damage on your screen in reality you only had like 400-500 hp when veigar decided to cast it, so its effective damage is much lower than what you might think. And i think some abilities like eve ultimate its balanced that way so that you don’t lose half of your hp bar if you are full hp and eve decides to use it defensively to get away, same thing with akali. So yeah, these abilities are fairly balanced more so than for example a zoe q just oneshoting you regardless of the percent of hp you have or xerath killing you with just ultimate or kaisa w or varus q, if these abilities were balanced as executes, they would actually seem more balanced
If you get killed by a Xerath ult it's on you. One single shot from the ult can't kill you which means that it's basically a fun little minigame where we get to find out how good you are at dodging/how quickly I've learned your dodging pattern.
Xerath also makes up for his ult by being the easiest thing on the planet to kill, especially because reaching the one shot ult range A) requires you to be incredibly fed early and B) completely disregard defence and build solely damage, no crown or Zhonya's.
I actually think Eve’s ult is fair, since when you’re within execution range there’s a mark on you to let you be wary, and the fact it’s an ultimate means she loses a lot of her presence once she uses it and fails to execute her target
I have a crude against Cho'Gath from when I first started playing. Just knock up, silence, into R. Tilts me to no end.
It's not necessarily about the finisher itself, but the champion that its on. For me, pretty fair is probably ChoGath and Urgot, annoying but acceptable is everything from Darius to Veigar , hard to counterplay but I can get used to would be Pyke and Evelynn, where I draw the line is Viego and especially Akali.
The funny thing about Viego's ult is that, it applies on-hit and spell effects to primary target. If you build Blade of the Ruined King and DS, you deal 24% max health damage, and with his recent nerfs his execute % is more or less the same.
I think Akshans ulti design provides better counter play. It can be blocked by other champs, towers, and minions. Literally almost anything.
Very few things can match the dopamine shot that is starting a ult chain with pyke though
I'm sorry but the clip of Urgot at 7:12 was insane
Okay an execute that's well designed is Urgots, because yes it does allow him to win a lot of 1vs1's but it takes time to activate, its difficult to use in a teamfight and its easy to counter but if you manage to land it, its very satisfying giving a small heal and an aoe fear.
A badly designed execute is Pyke, a support should not have an execute period. Except he is a support with an execute that resets and lets him dash to the target and give gold to his ally even if they contributed little. Even if you could justify this with the fact that Pike is squishy or that he does have bad support matchups its no excuse for a class thats traditionally there for playmaking to be able to clean house as effectively as the adc they are supporting, if not better than. Even damage oriented supports are balanced by abilities that don't reset on kills allowing them to blow their load and be less effective afterward. Pyke does not have this weakness.
I don't know why i feel that pyke's ultimate is so unfair but veigar's is perfectly balanced
Veigar doesn’t get to fully reset his ult’s CD to blow up the rest of your team.
I can never stay mad when I get killed by an Urgot ult. Ever since the range buff you really have to respect his presence both going into and exiting a fight. Cause a lot of Urgot executes from what I’ve seen is from champions barely making it out alive from a fight and dropping their guard to recall under tower, only to get picked off by the drill
I feel the same with Jihn/ xerath. I’ve had a few times where I’m fighting someone and they get away with just a little health but they don’t go far enough away and casting ult does just enough damage to secure the kill
Totally agreed. You're just like "well, that was a fine snipe".
as a somewhat pyke player i must say that , you can still dodge the ult. like yeah sure we have ways to get in but, pyke E is his only way of mobility. imagine is Evelyn ult didn't send her far sway after the damage and you got pyke . like you go in you are a squishy a** bald fella who is about to die. also you can not ignore the fact that you can side step the ult.
i find then extremely unfair for 1 reason only: most of those only require someone to be low HP
like Darius "execute" is fair because he needs to stack his passive by himself,and needs AD to make it scale
something like garen execute instead is pure BS,he doesn't need to invest in offensive stats,and just because you are low in his general surroundings you are dead,even if he didn't do anything else in the fight there is no outplaying
that besides the fact that some champions rely on being low HP and healing back (Olaf,Aatrox,etc.) but they just can't do anything to play around those abilities
I don’t think Darius is fair at all because he will automatically win via his ult.
His counterplay in lane is not engaging on him at all…how is that engaging gameplay ? His one weakness in team fights which is kiting him is easily mitigated with so many items that it takes a whole team of CC (unless you are a pre made team) just to keep him from destroying everyone, sometimes because of his tankyness that’s still not enough.
@@thetraveler1125 Darius ult is fair,what makes him absolutely retard to lane with is his W slow and hook which means you are getting fucked whenever you walk up near him,as well as his passive giving free trades with massive bleed damage and a fuckton of AD
I'd say his ult is the least problematic part of his kit,as a proof of it it doesn't change how you approach him going from pre 6 to post 6,if he stacks his passive you are screwed regardless
Showing a Mr Game and Watch clip when talking about risk reward is peak irony, especially when talking about Smash attacks having high startup and endlag
Looks like everyone thinks urgot's the most balanced, which i think is nuts, his is the only execute you don't need to time, you can literally use it at the begining of a fight and then dps the target, also the fear on it is busted af. Pyke's seems to be the most hated even though it's easy to dodge if you have any kind of mobility or immunity, so galeforce and zonyas make it useless unless the enemy is on 200 ping, and many say the reset is broken, but you need to live for long enough to use it, something that's kind of hard on a champ that needs to build lethality and get in melee range to do anything, and he can't even stack hp to resist for more than 2 seconds, so basically any form of cc on him is a death sentence.
I was looking for comment like this. I don't get how can someone call Urgot's ultimate fair. Everyone is saying it's a skillshot, but did they even check the numbers? That has to be the easiest skillshot to land in the entire game and as you said Urgot does not even have to time it, as if this champion was not braindead enough. Kinda agree about Pyke as well. He has to be the only actually squishy assassin and requires to be in a very close range to use ultimate, which can be hard despite his mobility. The only problem I had with that ability was the humongous gold income, but even that got nerfed recently. I find pseudo-executes like Akali's or Veigar's ultimates much worse design-wise.
There is also kench which has a quazi execute that needs 3 stacks and then the actual kill doesn't happen immediately when you consume the opponent at 15% health or below.
For such an overloaded champion, I find Akshan’s ult extremely underwhelming. I have never pulled off a successful ult.
The Collector is an interesting case; it requires your opponent to be at or below 5% of their HP for it to activate. People run this item all of the time, although it's hard to gauge where an opponent's current health is at. So it's pretty much a way to secure a few kills when it counts.
Collector is just a pretty awful item, even if we dont consider the lackluster statline. Most champs that build this item dont really get high benefit from the passive, they either have extremely high single instances of damage, like Draven, Jhin, Graves, so the likelyhood a target is left with 1-4% hp is so rare, or they have mixed damage types giving them less value from the lethality, like Twitch and KaiSa, despite the passive actually makes sense on those 2.
The execute and lethality only really makes sense on Miss Fortune and Samira, where you want to secure kills for yourself and you have many instances of damage through your ult. Samira is much more reliant on lifesteal items, like building BT second instead of Collector literally makes her 2x as strong in both 1v1s and teamfights.
So only Miss Fortune can use this item, especially since she has an extra condition by typically building a lethality mythic, as 12 lethality on its own does just about nothing after patch 12.10
@@Dingdong2730 You forget sion letha ( domink + collector and ofc letha items)
@@theobst5249 Yeah but thats not really an optimal build in any way lol, especially this patch.
I dont think there is too much executes in the game, but just enough that it is justified to be at least a little mad when they release another champ with one
10:00 achilles from smite has the same type of ability as pyke R: it's an execute that resets.
BUT it has like 1s of windup, can be blocked by other people (it´s like a dash), and it's a flat percentage (that doesnt scale)
Keep in mid that Achiles is a tank, and despise all of that it isnt near as frustating as pyke's R because it has a lot of counter play, whereas pyke's R is nearly instant, scales, has a huge (and bizarre) hitbox, low cooldown and you have like 1 minute to recast it between resets
the hitbox isnt as large as it seems, the "arms" of the X and the center of the X are the only spots you take damage on
While things like fiora parry and windwalls exist in this game, anything goes
I think Pyke R is well designed,
and here's why:
- You see the treshold of execution (as Pyke)
- It does break through Shields, since it is a real execution (unlike Cho's R)
- the enemy does get informed when You can execute Them (if You are trying to sneak up onto Them by pressing W)
Opposing players will hear different sound effects in vicinity of Pyke (while He is using his W) based on whether They are below or above the execution treshold.
I personally think making this interaction between His W and R was a genious idea. I just love it and I think it balanced it out very well.
Even(!) different skins of his are coming with different sound effects. They really did put the effort into Pyke in my opinion.
Could say some "within execute range" effects are rather scary which helps to play against Him a lot - especially in lower elos, where most of the actual League players are based in (including myself).
I might have a bias (i do) about fiddle w because it just works with his kit in a way that w by itself isnt that scarry unless u have 25 mejai stacks but hitting r or even e with q passive into q w makes it do more damage so it is less of an execute and more of an extender to your damage that you have to hit
Great video Vars, as always. I really like the way you analyze League and it kind of helps me get a little better, although I'm not really competitive and keep playing ARAMs and normals but it's a little more enjoyable to play League knowing what the hell you're doing.
Now that you have mentioned this briefly in this video, I would really like to see a video on max health dmg, or rather true damage itself. Personally as a tank, offtank and bruiser player myself, I feel the fact that there's a couple champions that just deal a percentage of your max health as true damage is hideous. It's probably "balanced" because there's not a lot of champions that deal this kind of dmg (if I'm not mistaken, there's only like 3 or 4), but at the time I just don't know what to do against a Vayne or a Fiora that delete my health bar independent of what I have itemized, it feels really unfair but most of the time I recognize the fact that I'm taking that dmg is my fault. I would love to see your take on true damage or max health damage
I personally love the Lucario's move refference from Pokemon Unite on the max health vs missing health comparison ( Power-up Punch and Close Combat )
I wonder what could be done about pyke to make him more fair. They gutted his gold generation, but imo if they added a cast time to his ult instead, that might have fixed it. This was a very good thought provoking video. Thabks again vars :)
there is a cast time and a VERY large indicator also its easier to miss than everyone makes out
There already is a cast time.
I dont think its fair to label many of these executes as unfair with no counterplay. They are attached to champions that do have counterplay. Viego can just beam a heartbreak at you when you are low health. He almost no mobility to get you in the execute range (spectral maw is one of the shortest dashes in the game, cant go over walls, and has very short range and even shorter if you don't telegraph the ability with channel time). You could even say that the viego has no counterplay when against a kogmaw for example who he has no shot of reaching unless he makes a major error. But kogmaw isn't unfair, and neither is Heartbreaker. You can't just look at an ability in isolation and say it's unfair before understanding how you play against the champion and what their counterplay is
Super mega death rocket exclamation point XD
Casters need to say this whenever Jinx scores kills with R!
Vars your videos are so high quality and there refreshing to watch
Pyke main here. Pyke is incredibly unfair and cringe. The problem with a champ like him is that it's hard to make him NOT unfair and cringe because his entire playstyle is based around the one thing everybody hates. To deal with this problem entirely, you'd probably have to Aatrox him. But Pyke is also the most fun character to play for a LOT of people, me included. Maybe he shouldn't exist to begin with but I love my boy and they keep changing him and it makes me sad.
The main solution to it is cut some of the things that make him so obnoxious. He doesn't need the gray health, and he really doesn't need a cooldown reset on his already overloaded Ultimate. Extra gold, and a dash, with a normally short cooldown are very powerful, especially on a champion who's already so hard to punish like Pyke, where if he whiffs his (extremely easy to aim) hook, he can just dash -> invis away and heal up to avoid being punished. And if the gray health stays? Then do something really weird like removing his base regen so he'd have to heal with pots or just the health, so he'd be forced to play smart. Make changes around the fact he's obnoxious and not fun to fight against, by opening new routes to punish him if he makes a mistake and takes a bad engage, or is caught out of position. That's the only big downside. In-lane he's obnoxious and impossibly difficult to punish, and in teamfights he can just clean up if his team makes a mistake and is punished, because of an absurdly powerful execute.
Staying close to your low health ally is the best way to punish pyke, he does virtually no damage with his ult if you're above the treshhold, if your ally dodges, flashes, zhonya most of the time if someone is near, pyke will teleport cause it hit the other player and then you cc or attack him twice and he dies
Just what’s the background music during this video I like it so much 😢
We talking here about executes, but Pyke's hook is the only hook ability you aim during cast, which in most cases makes it harder to dodge. So on top of a very good - but also overloaded - kit, as adc it feels like he has easier time hooking me than other catchers. What do you say, Pyke players? Does the hook feel easier than Thresh's or Naut's?
imo fiddlesticks's w is a pretty good execute, since it has to channel for a few seconds and only activates the execute on the end, and you can avoid the execute by either cancelling his channel or by just moving out of the w range
Vars mentioning his subcount in a time period every now and then reminds me I literally discovered him on his second video. damn time flies
9:12 pov ''i'm gangplank the god among your people''
As always a great video from Vars. There are plenty of good points gathered here my only nitpick is not talking about blocking the projectile (braum shield, windwalls, spell shields) executes/ults like viegar ult or riven ult. But apart from that I do agree that Ultimates that function as executes but also provide way too many perks is quite unnecessary. The viego,eve and pyke repositioning is a bit annoying. I want to omit reksai and akali because a lot of extra work has to be done before those see total value. That and reksais ult is a weird topic development wise. But the bigger take away in addition to what the ults provide is definitely who they are on. The best designed executes would be something like you said up the ball park of darius. Essentially ults with the primary function of doing damage first and a little something extra given the character, ie. reset, fear, extra hp or stat. Things like invulnerability, and dashing on characters who could easily do 3x your health bar over seems rather redundant and unnecessary at times. Like you said those with point and click executes need to go through the fair hoops to justify it being healthy. Skill shots are usually fine in addition to being blockable and therefore point and click bursts should only be healthy given enough limiters on attempting to get the intended value out of the ability.
Pyke has easily the worst design execute imo. It's only fun for the person playing it, even playing with him so many Pykes don't contribute and just wait for the ult to take your fight away. Yes, those are the bad Pykes. Which is sadly most of them.
It's mainly because pyke can do much in team fights except r or engage. In the heat of the battle, Pyke will die pretty quick, so he has to stay back and wait for his team to get them low. Now if riot rebalanced him and shifted his power away from r. I would love that
I don't find it annoying when the enemy team has an execute, I'm annoyed when I deal ~85% of someone's health and a teammate uses an execute to steal the kill. (Exceptions are made for Pyke and Cho'gath because their goal isn't to steal the gold but instead to either give you more gold or to get tankier)
At least with someone like Darius, his ult will reset (probably ensuring you win the teamfight).
@@namishusband818 that's true
Yo that urgot game play at 7:15was freaking bomb
The biggest annoyance I have is resets on Executes (looking at Pyke). Like you said in the video, it is so easy for a Pyke to just make his way to a low health target and exe them before they can even react. So Pyke slips in, nukes target 1, then target 2, target 3, etc.. It feels terrible coming out of a fight that you just barely win only to have a bottom feeder come out of nowhere and remove the last quarter of your healthbar, then go to a nearby lane and do it again to someone else. Couple that with how long the timer is on his reset, where he can actually go from top to bottom of the map and still have his execute...
I loved the taxi apex clip lol, didn't expect to see him in a league video
Warwicks ult is not a suppression, it's a gap-closer
Something that I recently thought about was swapping Veigar's W and R, with some adjustments. In terms of his identity I feel like the monster late game Ws are a higher threat that the execute burst. Leaving the stacks scaling on its CD, dark matter could act as a shorter range kog ult while what currently is the point and click execute could be changed to a weaker basic ability with some missing health scaling but in line with having counterplay.
Personally I don't mind an execute like pykes or urgots because it's still a skill shot whereas garen veigars executes are targeted abilities and there's no counter play to it unless you have stopwatch
uhm akshually veigar's ult is a finisher as it only scales with missing health while urgot ult and pyke ult do 9999 true damage, making them true executes 🤓
1.) Executes should be always visible
2.) No they aren't unfair, I think it'd actually be much more fair for more champions to have missing health damage. Basically the only couple truly backloaded damage champions right now are Kalista and Evelynn.
ayo you think evelynn is back loaded and darius isnt are you ok
also volibear and aatrox
@@Onefishygal Voli actually isn't back loaded he does similar DPS throughout a fight, but yeah Darius and Aatrox absolutely are. Aatrox less so than Darius though.
Can anyone tell me what's the name of the outro? It's so good!
My biggest issue is the large amount of executes/finishers on juggernauts and tanks. Garen R, Darius R, Urgot R etc.... these champs are already designed to be skilled at long fights with there sustain and tankiness, giving them an finisher means that if you are going even with them in a trade, u actually have lost. another form of counter play that you didnt really mention is that when an assassin comes and 0-> death someone then they need to escape or get blown up. an urgot/darius can 0->death u then continue fighting the rest of the team
Haven't played the game since season 4 but I watch every single video of yours :)
Rek'Sai's R need you to either be in their face and attack them to mark them so you can use your ult, or you need to land a fast but narrow skill shot that doesn't pierce minions. Either you need to be in their face, or have skill in positioning to hit the skill shot.
What annoys me is that evelynns ult is that it doesnt show you whether it will execute your target. The mark only shows whether they are low enough to activate the bonus damage. Sure, if you're fed it is usually a kill if they're that low, but I feel like if cho can have the execute range shown clearly so should eve