I personally feel way more frustrated getting one-shot by funny malphite point and click than I do when aphelios does something to me I can't even comprehend
I think the root explanation for this phenomenon is that affected champions all (with the exception of Caitlyn) have a core "plan" that is an ineffective way to play League, at least in solo queue. Teemo is a great example of this. Teemo applies pressure by placing a lot of annoying traps across the map that deal damage and sometimes kill enemies. But it is very hard to turn these annoying traps into objectives. Many trap kills come at the tail end of fights, and triggering a trap on an enemy while you are in base and there are no objectives on the map is basically nothing but trolling the enemy. Essentially, Teemo's traps have low efficiency converting pressure into objectives. I think the same thing can be said more most of the perpetually buffed champions. Kayle wants to stall until 16, but doing so risks you losing before 20 minutes in a way you have no control over. Veigar wants to scale for stacks as an AP carry, but AP is an inefficient carry stat and he has no significant advantages as a carry over just bringing an ADC who will scale faster. Malphite wants to counter AD and destroy teamfights with his super ult, but his power is so concentrated in his ult that he's windows are spike-y and he depends on his team following him up. If you compare that to Hecarim, you can see the difference. Hecarim wants to move fast, gank, and teamfight with his ultimate. That is basically the definition of what a good jungler does for their team. Hecarim is simple, yes, but everything he does is oriented towards a play-pattern that gains his team concrete advantage. As such, if Hecarim does what he wants to do too well, that immediately translates to inflated win-rate.
I think the easier way to put it most of "always need to buff champions" is that they are like one tricks in solo que. If they step out of their confort zone all game plan will fall apart. In other words they are REALLY GOOD at doing, but ok or terrible in other aspects. The best summary of it can be Nasus vs Renekton. Both are simple champs that have similar ults but one if more for late game and one is early game. But you can see that Renekton just have much more utility in his kit and use of his ablilites. Nasus passive is just livesteal, when Renekton is epowered blility. Most of Nasus ablility just have one use aka Bonk, slow, armor shread. But Renekton can use them in diffrent way. Like reposition himself with his E to get to carry or just run away from gang. And his passive can make him deside "do i want to heal more, shread armor on few targets or just stun somone for longer". Not ot menion Renekton armor shread apply by just hitting people with second dash, when Nasus have BRIGHT CIRCLE that anyone can step away from. On paper Nasus should have stronger abilities, but Renektons are just much more versatile. Same goes to formention Hecarim. By just having his E he can pull or push one person. His W give him time for his team to join him in to fight. Q is constant dmg and this never is bad. And his R is as impactfull as Malphite one with out downside of having his abilities relay on his Ult
Really insightful take. I was close to this with teemo specifically, but I really appreciate this explanation and idea. It may not actually be correct but damn if it doesn't sound right.
teemo's shrooms are basically free 3 or more wards on top of trinket and pink. it's incredibly useful. you can also trick enemies to waste control wards and trinket cooldowns by dropping shrooms on obviously warded areas and letting the enemies clear them. don't underestimate shrooms on right hands.
You see the same thing in card games. A bad archetype will get support wave after support wave over and over and still never be meta. Then one random op card will come out and break the entire deck making it top tier.
The biggest trend I’m seeing is whether or not the champion is “blind pickable”. Every single one of these champs excels at shutting down a certain archetype, but because of this they have a massive weakness to others. I.e. cait destroys bot laners with low range but if she’s ever outranged she has a terrible time, malphite is anti ad but any ap shuts him out, veigar makes short range mages cry but range and assassins both murder him early. Since these champs are so polarized, it takes a lot to really raise their WR in soloq since about half the time it’s a free counter pick for your opponent.
I agree with this. These champions were made in old time of League design where each character represents an archetype and has clear strength/weakness. However recent champion design renders these niche archetype less popular. Because champions nowadays are all-rounders. They're good at everything and the only thing to counter them is to play better than them or wait them to make mistakes.
@@cinnibarbrenneka most apcs outrange her, like ziggs or seraphine. She also tends to struggle into mage supports as well. Plus outside of laning phase there’s a lot of poke centric team comps that just invalidate her, think something like lethality Varus or ezreal or syndra. They can all play way back and cait can’t walk up enough to be effective in standoffs where she’s usually really good.
@@cinnibarbrenneka I like playing mages in botlane, that actually do tend to outrange Cait. I think Nyquil is right about this, especially Cait seems an easy matchup with something like Syndra or Swain.
I feel like the biggest reason that a lot of these champions keep a low winrate is mostly because their playstyle just doesn't line up with what makes a high winrate character. Nasus, Veigar and Kyle are all notorious late-game characters in a game that is getting faster and faster with every new champion release. Malphite has always been an effective anti-AD counterpick champion, which is what's kept him relevant, but no number of changes are going to push him out of that niche without a full rework. In a teamfight, Teemo is an anti-carry that can only really shut down one auto-attack dependent champion at a time. The reason these characters never get played is because their fundamental playstyle just isn't relevant in the current state of the game. The reason Hecarim is always teetering on the knife's edge of pick-ban is because his playstyle is evergreen: He's a high tempo jungler with decent ganks, and those will never be fully irrelevant.
@@tatzecom Well, yes, but his scaling is turning him into something that isn’t really a wincon. Objectives are too powerfull for splitpushing to ever be a wincon lategame. Riot has overbuffed champs like Nasus, Yorick and Illaoi, but it doesn’t alter the fact that their wincon isn’t as optimal as deathballing around your ADC, taking objectives and sieging mid.
Veigar feels so weird compared to when i started 11 years ago. Back then he could get AP just by last hitting with his Q. And as far as I remember, Cannon Minions, large Monsters etc also only gave 1 AP. Hitting his SPells on Champion gave 0 AP. The only really OP thing was that his Cage was instant.
but funny fact, the cage got larger at the same time it got cast time, on paper you may think is a buff but a larger cage means you can actually move inside the cage and some what dodge some skill shots
Also don't forget his Q was point and click and could only hit one target at a time so he couldn't kill 2 minions for 2 stacks with 1 Q like he does now.
I feel like people miss how different old Veigar was, he was much stronger early game being able to poke you constantly with Q and his mana regen passive and higher base numbers on Q, his cage was instant so it was a GUARANTEED stun vs a good Veigar, his ult was a lot better because of higher scaling and not needing enemy to be low so it was always a late game 65% + hp kill vs squishies and one shot mages with no mr. People kinda overrate the AP passive, the biggest buff to it was when started giving it Takedown AP then it actually became more meaningful (AP for hitting isn't very good, it's there just for "interactivity" but in reality it matters.. little, usually I probably get around 20-25 AP by 20 minutes, it gets higher and more meaningful the longer the game goes on but usually it's not very high) Veigar was way different than he is now, shifted from pretty much being well rounded at all stages of the game to being weak early, having a great mid game and decent late game. But yeah instant cage was toxic for support tank Veigar.
I believe the problem lies with some champions just having overproportionate counterplay against them, like being able to get kitet by most champions, or having very rigid playpatterns that make playing around them easier. This leads to buffs being less effective on them because they only get the full effect of the buff if the enemy lets them, effectively meaning they just either win harder if they were already winning or mostly nothing changes.
I'd say it's basically because their toolsets either don't allow them to carry on their own or in the case of someone like Kayle, can't carry until long after the game has been decided. Teemo shrooms are fun and I would argue Teemo pairs insanely well with hyper-scaling lategame champs. His mushrooms give a lot of anti-siege, allowing to stall for a long time. But they're not as potent when going for a siege. League thrives more on forward momentum, rewarding those who engage more clearly than those who mitigate or nullify an engage. A lot of these champs are also mainly single-target focused. The exception being Malphite, whose teamfight potential is completely reliant on follow-up. This limits carry potential greatly because most 1v5 champs have really good teamfighting. Pretty much none of these champs have a good teamfight, and prefer to catch out and wreck single targets.
I think that what differenciate champions like malphite or veigar to someone like hecarim is also the change in items. Let me explain. Malphite is constantly getting buffed, but his build path is (almost) always the same as a tank (sometimes ap, but we don't talk about ap malph) The thing is that tank items are one dimentional, they can't have a billion effects and interactions. Same goes for veigar. He is a burst mage and burst mages don't really have "strange" items or "overloaded" items. Now let's look at hecarim. He has the chemtank, which doesn't do a lot in itself but grants him movement speed, which is one of his big things. Then he has the infamous ravenous hydra, which, when it was strong, basically rendered him invincible because of AoE healing and damage on his really low CD Q spell. Or predator, that gives him, again, huge movespeed. What i mean is that item changes have more effect on him because he has "quirky scaling" (MS) or because he has access to "quirky items" (ravenous, chemtank) What do you all think?
Its a bit weird to call Veigar and Malphite in "always needing buffs" when they're both being played a bunch in pro and many saying the main reason they weren't before is because pros are allergic to change. (Not saying the operating premise of this video is incorrect, rather that I think the driving force isnt that they need these buffs but rather that I think other things drive their lower play rates like resistance to change or being less fun to play)
Veigar in proplay is like the braindead version of playing Taliyah in proplay. They're both meant to counter high mobility comps. If Veigar didn't have Event Horizon he probably wouldn't see play Malphite gets played because pros never got the memo that tanks aren't really a thing anymore
@@Thund3rDrag0n12 tanks are very much a thing and especially in pro play. 1. Mostly even lanes are extremely common in proplay 2. They play around their adc, making a frontline incredibly powerful 3. Coordinated plays off cc 4. Bruisers that are op in solo q because of how strong they can snowball and duel are not as good in pro due to the far less extreme snowballing
@@Thund3rDrag0n12 Malphites reason for being played in pro is partly matchup based, because stuff like 3AD lanes got popular again. In the LCK for instance people were playing Ashe, Varus, Caitlyn, and Kalista support, to say nothing of Tristana being a fringe midlane pick, and Jayce and Renekton being popular in toplane and midlane again because they fking alway are. Even still people have been saying Malphite should be played more as a counterpick in pro for years now and pros are just starting to get the memo.
These characters all have a very clearly defined goal in mind with their kits, while also have very glaring weaknesses that can be exploited. They live and die based on if their required goal can be met, otherwise they flounder about in the depths of their niche playstyle. Juxtapose that with Champs that are allowed multiple avenues to succeed, and it's no wonder why power creep edges out certain Champs
Isn't Morde also considered one of these champs? Like he got 8 straight buffs in 1 year yet anything above D4 he was still at a 49% WR while on High plat and lower he was dominating.
I think the increasing mobility in the game is a big factor to why these picks aren't broken despite being buffed again and again. Teemo have a speedboost to kite, but if you can dash on him he's easy to one shoot. Veigar Z and even Q are realy hard to hit on someone with mobility, and almost impossible if this person can go through your cage. If you dodge malphite R with a dash, well you can consider him a superminion with a slow now.
Only possible reason I see is that their playstyle doesn't do well in the current day league they don't impact the map. Teemo's whole kit relies on hit and run tactics which can easily be countered by red trinket and he needs proper set up to place them as you said, once his shrooms are taken care of his damage becomes purely single target. Viegar, Nasus, Kayle, Kassadin all need to scale so they farm and farm and hope the game does not snowball out of control, which in the current state of league is more likely to happen in most elos. Malphite is just an almost no-CC tank. He excels against heavy AD teams but gets easily counter picked top. It really doesn't help that his ultimate is the only meaningful contribution to a team fight. He just needs to hit a good ult and pray his team can win off that. Some champions escape this curse like Udyr and Hecarim. For Udyr, after his rework, his Q was straight up useless unless the target was isolated. You were better off going AP Bruiser. He was essentially a weaker Mordekasier. After a few buffs and the discovery of Prowlers Claw build he began to oneshot everyone with that new empowered Q. With Hecarim he was a disruptive diver that relied on his Ult and E to get into the backline and cause enough of a disturbance that his team can use that chaos to win. The after his no mythic, all AD build was found out he became an assassin rather than a bulky backline diver. This significantly changed their playstyle and made them have more impact in the game overall. I think if riot made theme have more immediate impact in the game they would see less buffs.
This kind of effect happened with old aatrox I played him and liked him even when people said dont play him becuase if you do, you are trolling Then right before his rework after all little buffs here and there plus runes reforged Aatrox became the best champion in game just a little while We who played old aatrox we knew rework is coming and there is nothing to stop it but you can play that same style thanks to olaf and trynda
As a Teemo main I can speak on behalf of the mini monster. All the buffs he's received over the years has definitely kept him afloat for the most part but Teemo's biggest problem the past couple years is the recent influx of very high mobility champions. Like for instance, Yone. Ordinarily, Teemo is super strong against most Melee champs, however Yone can quite literally dash the entire length of a lane just to get to Teemo and Teemo has literally no way of avoiding it effectively. Sure he has his W but his W is quite literally the absolute worst ability in the game currently. He just gets a slight passive speed boost that he loses if hit by ANYTHING. One random stray ability and he's slower than everyone. Unless he activates his W which refreshes his passive movespeed and gives him even more movespeed for only a few seconds and it's not really all that much. Sure it can be good against very immobile champs that struggle to escape him or catch him. But there's so many champs that can simply out run him with dashes with short cooldowns. I feel like if they do ANYTHING to Teemo they HAVE to fix his W to give him some sort of improvement on his mobility, even if it is just removing the self slow on getting hit, or giving him a short tumble on activation then giving him the movespeed or whatever. He IS getting an ASU along with Lee Sin soon so hopefully they add some flare to this HORRENDOUSLY outdated ability.
I don't know if it is the worst ability in the game, JV4's w is ready bad as well. But yeah I guess they should make it a fix mouvement speed boost for 3s or keep it as it is but ad a small dash at the beginning.
@@caol8075 Malphite has been around or over 52% winrate, at a gigantic Play and ban rate for 4 patches now. The video is just copium, or trying to ignore reality for the sake of sticking with the premise.
@@Christs_Apologet you dont seem to understand the purpose of the video. its to show that malphite really easly gets powercreeped. Now he is overbuffed but if only he was left untouched for enough time his wr would have fallen by itself
@@Christs_Apologet A Vars video that bend facts to fit narrative??? That would never happen. Seriously though, if you watched his “Why no one plays x Smash characters” series, you’ll know he constantly put characters that win top spots in major tourneys in there for the sake of making a video. Those chars are still being played and getting result, they are just not oppressively strong.
Anything if, "Simple Champions & Quality of life gameplay buffs", it's neat some champions can fit under this category with some throughout the seasons receiving utility buffs (seconds reduced or range changes are huge).
One more detail to add to the problems of this champs is that we also need to considered outside factors, in this case, who are the counters to these few which happen to always struggle and if nerfing the counters also nerf them then they just never get to shine. Also on the same vein, league has a nice and expansive champion pool, so that only makes it more plausible for each champion to be outclassed by another one entirely. I do think however most of the champs suffering from this is that they need some slight gameplay update to be more up to standards and give the balance team more levers to regulate power which should (at least on paper) create scenarios where is less likely some characters are just either broken or outright unplayable
I feel a large part of this is target accessibility and movement. Hecarim has huge access to any target he chooses. None of the other champs has dashes or fail proof access to their priority targets except Malphite. The main difference is that Malphite's ult is a one-way trip: you use to engage or disengage. All of the other champs can be pretty easily avoided.
Wow! Great time to release this video when 2 of the 3 featured on the thumbnail are currently some of the strongest if not the strongest in the current meta! Excellent take as always vars! (video is fine but this is horrible timing)
+ also forgetting that veigar comes in and out of bot lane meta, teemo being tier one in recent years at times. and malphite literally never being an overall bad pick due to saftey or as a counterpick :]
Ever since they made Veigar's cage not instant, the rest of his kit almost doesn't matter, because he's always been squishy, so he just gets burst without counterplay. Changing his R not to scale with enemy AP was a direct nerf to support Veigar, which they made viable by making him scale based on harass since once the enemy commits to an ap mage carry they can't just not build AP. Also it seems that recently they took damage off of his Teemo similarly got hit with a huge nerf after he was brought out in the LCS and basically made it so the other team couldn't play (C9-TSM season 4 week 1). The AP ratio on r was heavily nerfed to undermine full AP mid teemo, and the duration of the traps was halved. Really, for these two anyway, it's a story of two champions who were so heavily undermined, that they've never recovered. I'm not so familiar with Malphite's history, except I think his R used to do more damage. The main problem with him is that so much of his value is based on your team (vision and ult follow up especially) that he's kind of useless in a solo setting.
I think with some champs like illaoi or Kayle their winrates stay low because they have problems in their kit like Kayle taking too long and illaoi relying on tentacles or malphite only being good for his ult. Others like nasus and veigar are just too old to keep up with 200 years champs no matter how high their numbers get
No one said they don't make mistakes. You can know what you're doing but still be subject to unforseen consequences, especially in a game with so many moving parts
One of the popular and abusable things I've noticed champs love to have is low cooldowns, movement speed and harassment. 3 of the things Hecraim has. The lower cooldowns the more pressure and mistakes you can make without being as punished, things like Olaf, Fiora, Lee and Sylas lowering cooldowns to like 6 seconds, even Pyke just through levelling. Thresh's and Olaf's refund, even Fiora refunding her Q so she can harass or keep up with a person using ghost, I feel a large majority of things like this tend to gear players towards champs with cooldowns like that because they simply feel better.
That Teemo rework they scraped a few years back that made it's way into Wild Rift would probably solve some of his power creep problem by giving him more versatility on his kit which is the thing he lacks the most. Poison on passive with Level and Ap scaling. Adding a pseudo crit on his Q on poisoned targets (Allie's poison like Twitch's and Cassiopeia's also trigger it) Adding a little dash on W active (with a range similar to Vayne's tumble) before the speed up. E giving temporary camouflage with a shorter range than Twitch's with a countdown that stops when the champion stops moving or when moving inside of a bush at the cost of some speed. R basically the same with up to 5 stacks (which is the only thing that made into League's main server)
The difference between these champions is how they interact with the game (rules / resources / etc.) more so than their kit. The Hecarim Malphie comparison is a great example. The more armor Malph gets the less health he has reducing his ability to tank (item interactions), beyond that his tankiness is not frequently useful because he isn't a splitpushing champ, so he can only use his tankiness in a teamfight. This leads to a champion that is very team reliant for his effect on the game. His utility (r / e / q) + his tankiness both enable his teammates in a linear fashion. Half cooldown on ult = ca. twice the engage opportunities, but just because malph can engage doesn't mean the team should. Hecarim on the other hand works this way: wq equals infinite farming, higher damage = higher farming speed, higher farming speed = more levels / gold, more gold / levels = easier ganks and faster farming, easier ganks and faster farming = more kill / gold = higher damage, etc. So he has a self-reinforcing gameplay. Compared to malphite he is limited by his teammates, unless they turn tank items into damage items again Malph will not suddenly run out of control with his current kit. That's also the difference between these two general groups of champions. Does the kit reinforce its own ability to achieve its goal, or is it dependent on an outside source that isn't easily influenced by their kit?
I think this is more about the existence of counterplay. All these champions have abilities which, if you are focused and expecting them, can be dodged or nullified. When the champion gets strong, the enemy players still have agency in shutting them down by counterplay. Hecarim, on the other hand, has a huge amount of move speed and there really isn't any counterplay to move speed.
I think it has to do with the game as a hole. Teemo is not the menace he used to be because of the creeping mobility issue in League. All of those champs are counters via mobility. Veigar can't stack his passive on you if he can't hit you. Teemo can't use his slow on his shrooms when the enemy Sejuani does not care and ults you anyway. If Malphite does not hit his ulti on those hyper mobile enemy targets he does not provide a lot if anything to a team fight. They all suffer from the game getting more mobile by the minute. The only time Udyr was really broken was when his mobility issue got fixed via item(s). These champions are too static and do not have the peel or movement ability to keep up with their competition (unless played to perfection by onetricks/pros)
I would say these champions are flawed since the beginning, their counters are not a minority but a majority of champions. And if their design is flawed, can not compete with the majority: then their winrare is low and buffs to their numbers does not change a thing for them
on a side note for veigar i feel like aurelion eclipsed him as a better AP farmer/scaler. Aurelion is mobile, has consistend dmg, easier to land skills, a broken super ult and lastly builds pretty tanky.
You can also look at how much the champion can accomplish. How much Tempo they can have on the game Heca can clear his entire jgl, go full ad one shot everyone gank all in the first 5 mins. Compare that to malphite taking 5 less damage in top lane The small numbers ist compound to bigger advantages.
I think all the points you made way back when in your why no one plays teemo video explains why he never seems to get better after getting buffed. I think its just that the play style his abilities are geared towards just doesnt fit into the modern league of legends in the slightest so people are forced to play him in ways that he wasnt exactly designed for such as tankmo, ad teemo, and many more. These buffs they add only help the ap hit and run style that just doesnt work well. He is also split between being a subpar ap “marksman” with the poison damage on his auto attacks while using blinding dart to win against other auto attackers, and a roaming trap laying guerrilla-warfare type assassin that can be easily countered by a free item anyone can buy. These two playstyles that his abilites seem to promote just dont work together really at all so that just leaves him subpar at both. Sorry if I my explanations didnt make much sense but I have many thoughts about the current state of teemo because I main him. TLDR: Teemo has many problems that no buff could really address.
The problem with Teemo is Riot gutted him years ago. Teemo is the only champion in League that has had multiple systems on how the game works at a base level rewritten just to combat him. Move speed cap system? Put in place specifically because his W was too strong and instead of nerfing it they nerfed all move speed to make sure no other champion would get to the point he was. How invis works and reveal items? Because Teemo shutdown a couple pro games at the big stage, jungle shrooms left people getting to the fight at less than full health so the team waved off the fight and just let objectives fall. It wasn't fun to watch fights not happen, so Riot reworked the entire system. Shrooms also used to be infinite. No timer on them. There is now a global cap on objects a player can put on the map, noone hits it because timers are written to keep it from happening, but the global cap is still there. Because of Teemo. On a base systems level the way Teemo is supposed to be played have been nerfed to the point he cannot be played that way anymore. Take out the move speed caps, Teemo's W would become strong again. Take out the current invis system, Teemo would be a true menace again. Take out the global cap and the timer on his shrooms, Teemo would be scary. The way Riot handles nerfing Teemo isn't like any other champion in the game. When Teemo needs a nerf they don't nerf him. They write a system level change that nerfs him. Riot doesn't take things away or move some numbers around. The entire damned game is changed to make the things Teemo is supposed to do impossible to do. They absolutely GUT him.
@@halycon404 Oh wow really? Im gonna look into this more cuz I had no clue these changes happened. I only started playing about a year ago so I havent been around long enough to have seen any of these changes. I guess that would also explain why it seems teemo never really got nerfed because these changes were system changes so they would appear in the individual champion’s patchnotes history.
@@OwlFella Yeah. Teemo is a playstyle archetype that does not play well with League. He's a strategy character who controls the map and game tempo. He's not supposed to be moment to moment gameplay. His shrooms are supposed to affect avenues of attack the other team can use and chip away at their health and timing on getting to objectives. He's supposed to slow the other team's speed down and sometimes close available options. You know really late game when Teemo is at 1000AP, an ADC hits a shroom, and instead of continuing they go back to base to heal because starting a fight at under half health is stupid? That is what Teemo is supposed to be doing the whole damned game. Before Riot made it impossible. It's what he is meant to do. Kills are secondary to just how much tempo he's supposed to suck out of an enemy team. But in league that isn't fun to play against.
I think it more has to do with the players than Riot. Yes Riot is the one tweaking buffs and nerfs for every champion, but it’s the players that show what can be broken or not (obviously). Any champ in League can be strong if you know what you are doing (go figure) but there are just some champs with kit that can break easier than others. No matter what players want the most optimal strategy to win along with doing something that is fun. It varies by player but at the end of the day why play as Teemo or Malphite to make them to most powerful when someone like Hecarim can be just as powerful in the fraction of the cost to get to that point. Heca is violatile in power spike because yes Riot developed and buffs him in certain ways but the community shows the potential which in turn makes Riot react with nerfs and small reworks which again in turn makes the community try again and sometimes fail to reach that point in power and so Heca’s win/pick rate drops. Sorry if this was very long and confusing
As an Aphelios main I can say it doesn't matter how much more damage he can deal if there's so many champions he can barely hit without dying. The circumstances where he can kill them usually would've let him win without the buffs
The Real thing that killed teemo is the apparition of the trinket. Before the opponent had to buy many pink or an élixir, wich was mostly a waste of gold to him and making the lane slower. I think that teemo should have like corki sometime a special mushroom that stay completely invisible no matter what ( but maybe with a bit less of Time to it Or his z should be changed while keeping the movespeed as a passive. I'd love to think that teemo should be able to Switch his mushroom too, one that deal damage like now, but why no other ? Like one that create a smoke screen ? Freeze the field, purge some effect etc etc
I think these champions all struggle to carry games when their team is doing poorly. Sure you can carry as kassadin or kayle, but you have to get there. Veigar has one powerful spell, Event horizon, and notice, that Riot doesnt buff this spell ever. All these champs can sometimes carry, but its rare enough, that it doesnt affect their wr
Great video! I was super curious about the way Riot does to champs who don’t necessarily need a VGU but just need the numbers tweaked. I am curious tho aside from the numbers, I want to learn more about champions that can encompass multiple roles. Lee sin despite originating as a jungle had stints in other roles like top and mid so I would like to know how Champions can be flexed in roles outside of their original role
With the recent surge of Malphite and Veiger in pro plays, it baffles that it took THIS LONG for pros to realize how broken those two are in pro play. For Veigar, his scaling and stacking are extremely well suited for pro play, as the game duration is usually much longer, plus the coordinating nature of the plays compared to soloq allows Veigar to scale much more easily. Also, a major counter class to Veigar, assassin, hardly being picked also makes his laning phase much more breathable. In teamfight, his E is amongst the most broken skills in the entire game since most fights are centered around objectives, Drags and Barron, where his E virtually takes up half the river. Id argue his E alone already justifies his position in pro play. As for Malphite, that rock pile has been broken for wayyyy too long and no one bats an eye. While In soloq, his ultimate-focused nature of a champ may be a detrimental drawback, pros can easily match his ultimate CD to guarantee one ult per teamfight. That and his ridiculously potent strength against adc, his insane laning ability (being able to win or equal against the majority of top lane match up), i just don't see why he arent picked more compared to other tanks. Except for the fact that pros are just too insecure to try anything new unless someone else has the ball to do first.
For teemo there is a good reason. His mushrooms around s4-5 iirc were butchered. About halved. He used to be able to one shot adcs with ONE SHROOM, And IMHO they over nerfed him
I mean you can only red Trinket a certain amount of space on the map so literaly one shotting invisible traps sound a bit too toxic 😅 I used to freaking despise teemo but after learning the matchup 9/10 teemos get unfairly destroyed and I genuinly would think it to be ok if teemo got a buff. Than there is that 1 psychopath who will camp/go invis arround Redside Krugs for 2 minutes just to kill the 0/16 PRE-Rework Asol just to make their day worse and then I am not all to sure I want teemo players to be happy. Creating fun by ruining other peoples fun just seems a bit onesided you know..
Can you make a video for blitzy boi he’s one of the oldest champions and he’s one of those champions who has barely been touched since his release with having each ability cost a 1/3 of his mana bar, a self debuff on his W all of this while still having one of the highest ban rates among any supports.
A thing that should always be considered is that when a champ is buffed or nerfed (does not matter how much) ppl will notice, f.e "XY is getting a buff" , then XY is getting played more because ppl assume "XY is now stronger" the same thing works with nerfs, it may be a small nerf but ppl notice and do not want to play a nerfed champion. Ofc this phenomenon happens more in lower elo because at some point ppl actualy read the patch notes, but thats still a good % of ppl
its mainly because these are champions that "dont feel good to play" malphs abilities are disjointed from one another, lissandra is a mage that IS the set-up, rather than one that benefits from set-up, and kayle is kayle
Veigar must not be all that weak anymore, they've nerfed him 2 patches in a row now (13.6 and 13.7) to try and get him out of bot lane lol. The latest is more of an adjustment, as he gets slightly higher AP scaling on Q and W at max rank, which is intended to put him back into mid lane where he gets way more xp than in bot.
They are not overloaded the way many other champs are, so they have very distinct weaknesses From that perspective, I almost see where Riot is going with 200 year champs, with the homogeneity of utility presenting a possibly less polarizing game dynamic. I kinda wish that instead of that, Riot would put lower emphasis on early power and snowballing from lane phase so that champs could fight it out as part of a team, rather than spending the most important minutes of the game all alone. It would bring more variety into games since you're experiencing far more fights between a lot of unique champions rather than played-out lane matchups. You're actually getting to experience the billions of possible matchups for real rather than laning phase already telling you who wins. It's about comp and not lane counters far more in this case, and Riot has a lot more flexibility to let certain champs suck against x and utterly crush y Very simple ideas: give a decent move speed buff going to lane after respawning (maybe recalling too), lower early cs and kill gold, nerf any scaling champ that gets to abuse this, prune stuff from overloaded kits. This is probably never going to happen, but I can dream. Summary (sorta): I think overloaded champs are primarily a response to the issue that early game and snowballing is too powerful, so champs need to be able to perform generally well against most other champs.
Veigar is never a problem because you can delete him before he uses his skills. Nasus on the other hand is problem. He has innate tankiness. He has all the time to use his skills. This combines with his passive makes him true OP if properly farmed.
Maybe a cool video would be "the most balanced champions of League", that is, champs that receive almost no nerfs and buffs despite meta changes and makes them inherently strong. That is champs like Zilean or Morgana. Congrats on the video as always 😊
they might know more about what they are doing as the average guy maybe thinks but they make stupid decissions sometimes. this is extremly evident when they list something as adjustments or buff/nerfs and it turns out the other way around. they also over or undershoot the mark sometimes.
in my honest opinion, the power creep old champs is because new releases have overloaded kits and older champs can not compete unless you buff them until raw numbers matters more than overloaded kits. For example, dashes are now very common on new champ releases, meanwhile older versions of lol had very few champs able to spam dashes and dodge stuff... sooo mages had a harder time hitting things because everyone is dashing now, so you need more numbers to compensate.
All these champs are niche counterpicks, mainly toplaners. You can't blind pick them. They are only good at their niche thing and no amount of buffs will make malphite win against morde. So they can get stronger if what they counter gets popular or if their items get better, but they still can't do anything against other picks. Teemo can have 70 wr against tryndamere, but that won't change the fact that his kit doesn't do anything against mages.
In my personal opinion if they knew what they were doing there would be strong champions but not beyond op champs like annie after rework aurelion and many other examples so I dont think they know :)
Veigars rework wasn't a massive buff. His infinite AP he still got through kill monsters/minions with Q and champion takedowns. His cage was also instant and his ultimate didn't just scale on your opponent AP but also on your own and didn't have any enemy hp restriction. In late game his ultimate used to not only 1 click kill the enemy mages but also adcs. Altho if you went 0/20 it would only 1 click kill mages.
U forgot veigar lost his insta stun circle It now has a short delay before stunning Thats a mega nerf to his old self as he could have flash stun an entire team , but now cant
The champion that I think needs a much quality of life buff is Diana.she gets out skirmish and ekko or sylas plus akali are better duelist that are ap the only play you can get out of her is eat towers and anything at that time of game time that contest can duel her,she just needs heal already riot
Now all we gotta do is wait 10 years, and Teemo is FINALLY be instant pick ban, and be the BEST champion in the entire game. It is all apart of the plan...
My only thought is simpler kits. Compared to the 200 year abominations we have today who have so much more in they're kit and are able to do damage with more, looking at you, Yone; these guys don't have a whole lot and due to how simplistic they're kits are because of the time period they were created. Veigar is all skillshots, most of teemos damage is from autos and his poison which doesn't tick a whole lot or at least not immediately since he's a AP ranged auto attacker, and Malphite... Well honestly I hate him cause he gets one armor item and I'm unable to fight him, but unless he's ap he doesn't have much else besides just being a Giant meatshield.
I thought about it too but there are champs with a simple kit but they are still pretty strong like Gwen her kit is pretty basic and easy to outplay but in higher elos she is still in a good spot or Rumble with no mobility and short range his kit is quite simple but he can still 1v9 games if he is ahead I think the problem about champs like Malph is that they are Win or Lose champs in a game with only AD DMG and no max health shred Malph just 1v9 without a problem but if the enemies have a champ like brand or zyra he just melts away and is kinda useless and it's the same pattern for Teemo if the enemies build no oracle Teemo shrooms will poke them and force them to Backport but if just one enemy build it the whole champ is kinda useless.
The common point between all this champs is how opressive they can be with counterpick and how useless they are without. Malphite into a mage is useless, but into any ad champ he is just op. Same for teemo with his q. They arent stat checkers (or at least they dont need to be, malphite is still a stat checker) but insead are a "kit checker". Its bad design at its core.
Honestly i think you already mentioned the issue in the video anyway - despite getting a ton of buffs they're meaningless if they dont affect the things that make the champs weak in the first place.
I disagree on several points. First it is not the (only) the one dimensional stat check kit that ruins those champions it is *drum roll* their mutual counter: MOBILITY. As long as assassins stat check them they can have as much range damage or anything they will get outmanuevered and then oneshot without even a time to react. It is that simple fact that make them bad. And calling Kayle not a stat checker is a criminal offense. She is THE stat checker.
Riot: "Master Yi and Diana should not be able to build tank items while still dealing as much damage as they currently do." Vars: "they know exactly what they're doing" Riot: "... So we are changing their stat ratios and leaving everything else untouched"
I personally feel way more frustrated getting one-shot by funny malphite point and click than I do when aphelios does something to me I can't even comprehend
LMAO
That's Riots braindead logic, giving tank designed champs too fucking high AP scalings
Ah yes, man made horrors beyond my comprehension
W take, rather get outskilled than statchecked
So easy to counter Malphite, build banshee if AP or Maw if AD and u'll stop getting 1 shot.
I think the root explanation for this phenomenon is that affected champions all (with the exception of Caitlyn) have a core "plan" that is an ineffective way to play League, at least in solo queue.
Teemo is a great example of this. Teemo applies pressure by placing a lot of annoying traps across the map that deal damage and sometimes kill enemies. But it is very hard to turn these annoying traps into objectives. Many trap kills come at the tail end of fights, and triggering a trap on an enemy while you are in base and there are no objectives on the map is basically nothing but trolling the enemy. Essentially, Teemo's traps have low efficiency converting pressure into objectives.
I think the same thing can be said more most of the perpetually buffed champions. Kayle wants to stall until 16, but doing so risks you losing before 20 minutes in a way you have no control over. Veigar wants to scale for stacks as an AP carry, but AP is an inefficient carry stat and he has no significant advantages as a carry over just bringing an ADC who will scale faster. Malphite wants to counter AD and destroy teamfights with his super ult, but his power is so concentrated in his ult that he's windows are spike-y and he depends on his team following him up.
If you compare that to Hecarim, you can see the difference. Hecarim wants to move fast, gank, and teamfight with his ultimate. That is basically the definition of what a good jungler does for their team. Hecarim is simple, yes, but everything he does is oriented towards a play-pattern that gains his team concrete advantage. As such, if Hecarim does what he wants to do too well, that immediately translates to inflated win-rate.
I don't have time for an indepht answer so imma keep it short.
W take
I think the easier way to put it most of "always need to buff champions" is that they are like one tricks in solo que. If they step out of their confort zone all game plan will fall apart.
In other words they are REALLY GOOD at doing, but ok or terrible in other aspects.
The best summary of it can be Nasus vs Renekton. Both are simple champs that have similar ults but one if more for late game and one is early game.
But you can see that Renekton just have much more utility in his kit and use of his ablilites. Nasus passive is just livesteal, when Renekton is epowered blility. Most of Nasus ablility just have one use aka Bonk, slow, armor shread. But Renekton can use them in diffrent way. Like reposition himself with his E to get to carry or just run away from gang. And his passive can make him deside "do i want to heal more, shread armor on few targets or just stun somone for longer". Not ot menion Renekton armor shread apply by just hitting people with second dash, when Nasus have BRIGHT CIRCLE that anyone can step away from.
On paper Nasus should have stronger abilities, but Renektons are just much more versatile.
Same goes to formention Hecarim. By just having his E he can pull or push one person. His W give him time for his team to join him in to fight. Q is constant dmg and this never is bad. And his R is as impactfull as Malphite one with out downside of having his abilities relay on his Ult
Really insightful take. I was close to this with teemo specifically, but I really appreciate this explanation and idea. It may not actually be correct but damn if it doesn't sound right.
It makes sense. Champs with lower agency end up not getting much out of buff/nerfs since they can’t do anything useful with those buffs/nerfs.
teemo's shrooms are basically free 3 or more wards on top of trinket and pink. it's incredibly useful. you can also trick enemies to waste control wards and trinket cooldowns by dropping shrooms on obviously warded areas and letting the enemies clear them. don't underestimate shrooms on right hands.
You see the same thing in card games. A bad archetype will get support wave after support wave over and over and still never be meta. Then one random op card will come out and break the entire deck making it top tier.
The amount of surprise I got when lurk became meta is staggering.
The biggest trend I’m seeing is whether or not the champion is “blind pickable”. Every single one of these champs excels at shutting down a certain archetype, but because of this they have a massive weakness to others. I.e. cait destroys bot laners with low range but if she’s ever outranged she has a terrible time, malphite is anti ad but any ap shuts him out, veigar makes short range mages cry but range and assassins both murder him early.
Since these champs are so polarized, it takes a lot to really raise their WR in soloq since about half the time it’s a free counter pick for your opponent.
I agree with this. These champions were made in old time of League design where each character represents an archetype and has clear strength/weakness. However recent champion design renders these niche archetype less popular. Because champions nowadays are all-rounders. They're good at everything and the only thing to counter them is to play better than them or wait them to make mistakes.
ah yes, all those lanes that outrange caitlyn such as... twitch R ?
There isnt a single champion that outranges cait... so safe to say you will have the range advantage. She doesnt fit the idea.
@@cinnibarbrenneka most apcs outrange her, like ziggs or seraphine. She also tends to struggle into mage supports as well. Plus outside of laning phase there’s a lot of poke centric team comps that just invalidate her, think something like lethality Varus or ezreal or syndra. They can all play way back and cait can’t walk up enough to be effective in standoffs where she’s usually really good.
@@cinnibarbrenneka I like playing mages in botlane, that actually do tend to outrange Cait. I think Nyquil is right about this, especially Cait seems an easy matchup with something like Syndra or Swain.
I feel like the biggest reason that a lot of these champions keep a low winrate is mostly because their playstyle just doesn't line up with what makes a high winrate character. Nasus, Veigar and Kyle are all notorious late-game characters in a game that is getting faster and faster with every new champion release. Malphite has always been an effective anti-AD counterpick champion, which is what's kept him relevant, but no number of changes are going to push him out of that niche without a full rework. In a teamfight, Teemo is an anti-carry that can only really shut down one auto-attack dependent champion at a time. The reason these characters never get played is because their fundamental playstyle just isn't relevant in the current state of the game.
The reason Hecarim is always teetering on the knife's edge of pick-ban is because his playstyle is evergreen: He's a high tempo jungler with decent ganks, and those will never be fully irrelevant.
Nasus is actually a midgame champ since late he gets put down like the dog he is by virtually any ADC.
@@tatzecom Well, yes, but his scaling is turning him into something that isn’t really a wincon. Objectives are too powerfull for splitpushing to ever be a wincon lategame.
Riot has overbuffed champs like Nasus, Yorick and Illaoi, but it doesn’t alter the fact that their wincon isn’t as optimal as deathballing around your ADC, taking objectives and sieging mid.
Veigar feels so weird compared to when i started 11 years ago.
Back then he could get AP just by last hitting with his Q. And as far as I remember, Cannon Minions, large Monsters etc also only gave 1 AP.
Hitting his SPells on Champion gave 0 AP. The only really OP thing was that his Cage was instant.
but funny fact, the cage got larger at the same time it got cast time, on paper you may think is a buff but a larger cage means you can actually move inside the cage and some what dodge some skill shots
His ultimate used to 1 click kill any mage and adcs
Also don't forget his Q was point and click and could only hit one target at a time so he couldn't kill 2 minions for 2 stacks with 1 Q like he does now.
I feel like people miss how different old Veigar was, he was much stronger early game being able to poke you constantly with Q and his mana regen passive and higher base numbers on Q, his cage was instant so it was a GUARANTEED stun vs a good Veigar, his ult was a lot better because of higher scaling and not needing enemy to be low so it was always a late game 65% + hp kill vs squishies and one shot mages with no mr. People kinda overrate the AP passive, the biggest buff to it was when started giving it Takedown AP then it actually became more meaningful (AP for hitting isn't very good, it's there just for "interactivity" but in reality it matters.. little, usually I probably get around 20-25 AP by 20 minutes, it gets higher and more meaningful the longer the game goes on but usually it's not very high)
Veigar was way different than he is now, shifted from pretty much being well rounded at all stages of the game to being weak early, having a great mid game and decent late game. But yeah instant cage was toxic for support tank Veigar.
smoll comment about the video editing: 10:00 these little slides with champions next to their abilities is really cool, I like it a lot, keep it up
I believe the problem lies with some champions just having overproportionate counterplay against them, like being able to get kitet by most champions, or having very rigid playpatterns that make playing around them easier. This leads to buffs being less effective on them because they only get the full effect of the buff if the enemy lets them, effectively meaning they just either win harder if they were already winning or mostly nothing changes.
I'd say it's basically because their toolsets either don't allow them to carry on their own or in the case of someone like Kayle, can't carry until long after the game has been decided.
Teemo shrooms are fun and I would argue Teemo pairs insanely well with hyper-scaling lategame champs. His mushrooms give a lot of anti-siege, allowing to stall for a long time. But they're not as potent when going for a siege. League thrives more on forward momentum, rewarding those who engage more clearly than those who mitigate or nullify an engage.
A lot of these champs are also mainly single-target focused. The exception being Malphite, whose teamfight potential is completely reliant on follow-up. This limits carry potential greatly because most 1v5 champs have really good teamfighting. Pretty much none of these champs have a good teamfight, and prefer to catch out and wreck single targets.
Wait. What happened in 2016 that gave Teemo an almost 70% winrate?
A series of weird coincidences, kinda like ryzes 70%wr
I dont remember this year being 2016
last time i checked 2016 was... idk 7 *YEARS AGO??*
@BasedLord I remember a patch were Teemo could proc thunderlords with just one auto.
Sorry about that, i went kinda crazy on Teemo in ranked.
@@keithcrews4509 silly times
I think that what differenciate champions like malphite or veigar to someone like hecarim is also the change in items. Let me explain.
Malphite is constantly getting buffed, but his build path is (almost) always the same as a tank (sometimes ap, but we don't talk about ap malph)
The thing is that tank items are one dimentional, they can't have a billion effects and interactions.
Same goes for veigar. He is a burst mage and burst mages don't really have "strange" items or "overloaded" items.
Now let's look at hecarim.
He has the chemtank, which doesn't do a lot in itself but grants him movement speed, which is one of his big things.
Then he has the infamous ravenous hydra, which, when it was strong, basically rendered him invincible because of AoE healing and damage on his really low CD Q spell.
Or predator, that gives him, again, huge movespeed.
What i mean is that item changes have more effect on him because he has "quirky scaling" (MS) or because he has access to "quirky items" (ravenous, chemtank)
What do you all think?
Love the Va11 Hall-A ost as BGM ❤❤
We can tell how hard you work and how much time you put into these videos since you used old hecarim splash instead of thresh's lantern splash ♥
Its a bit weird to call Veigar and Malphite in "always needing buffs" when they're both being played a bunch in pro and many saying the main reason they weren't before is because pros are allergic to change.
(Not saying the operating premise of this video is incorrect, rather that I think the driving force isnt that they need these buffs but rather that I think other things drive their lower play rates like resistance to change or being less fun to play)
Because Veigar is a easy Champion to counter due to Cloud Dragon’s insane movement speed buff, wrong third skill then your done.
Veigar in proplay is like the braindead version of playing Taliyah in proplay. They're both meant to counter high mobility comps. If Veigar didn't have Event Horizon he probably wouldn't see play
Malphite gets played because pros never got the memo that tanks aren't really a thing anymore
@@Thund3rDrag0n12 tanks are very much a thing and especially in pro play.
1. Mostly even lanes are extremely common in proplay
2. They play around their adc, making a frontline incredibly powerful
3. Coordinated plays off cc
4. Bruisers that are op in solo q because of how strong they can snowball and duel are not as good in pro due to the far less extreme snowballing
@@Thund3rDrag0n12 Malphites reason for being played in pro is partly matchup based, because stuff like 3AD lanes got popular again. In the LCK for instance people were playing Ashe, Varus, Caitlyn, and Kalista support, to say nothing of Tristana being a fringe midlane pick, and Jayce and Renekton being popular in toplane and midlane again because they fking alway are. Even still people have been saying Malphite should be played more as a counterpick in pro for years now and pros are just starting to get the memo.
@@TheCapibara69 out of all the comments I have read in a league video, this one gave me the most brain damage lol
Ah my favourite smash youtuber
the VA-11 HALL-A ost in the bg
Ah my favourite genshin youtuber.
Neglecting to mention that Veigar's cage got nerfed from activating instantly to being given a delay seems like a massive omission
Man, hearing that "Welcome to Va-11 Hall-A" theme take me back to that place again
These characters all have a very clearly defined goal in mind with their kits, while also have very glaring weaknesses that can be exploited. They live and die based on if their required goal can be met, otherwise they flounder about in the depths of their niche playstyle. Juxtapose that with Champs that are allowed multiple avenues to succeed, and it's no wonder why power creep edges out certain Champs
Isn't Morde also considered one of these champs? Like he got 8 straight buffs in 1 year yet anything above D4 he was still at a 49% WR while on High plat and lower he was dominating.
Mordekaiser is supposed to satisfy lower elo. Sometimes riot releases high elo champs and sometimes low elo
I think the increasing mobility in the game is a big factor to why these picks aren't broken despite being buffed again and again. Teemo have a speedboost to kite, but if you can dash on him he's easy to one shoot. Veigar Z and even Q are realy hard to hit on someone with mobility, and almost impossible if this person can go through your cage. If you dodge malphite R with a dash, well you can consider him a superminion with a slow now.
veigar Z?
@@Zyfil civilized people use azerty keyboard layouts
@@akiraraiku lol
Only possible reason I see is that their playstyle doesn't do well in the current day league they don't impact the map. Teemo's whole kit relies on hit and run tactics which can easily be countered by red trinket and he needs proper set up to place them as you said, once his shrooms are taken care of his damage becomes purely single target. Viegar, Nasus, Kayle, Kassadin all need to scale so they farm and farm and hope the game does not snowball out of control, which in the current state of league is more likely to happen in most elos. Malphite is just an almost no-CC tank. He excels against heavy AD teams but gets easily counter picked top. It really doesn't help that his ultimate is the only meaningful contribution to a team fight. He just needs to hit a good ult and pray his team can win off that.
Some champions escape this curse like Udyr and Hecarim. For Udyr, after his rework, his Q was straight up useless unless the target was isolated. You were better off going AP Bruiser. He was essentially a weaker Mordekasier. After a few buffs and the discovery of Prowlers Claw build he began to oneshot everyone with that new empowered Q. With Hecarim he was a disruptive diver that relied on his Ult and E to get into the backline and cause enough of a disturbance that his team can use that chaos to win. The after his no mythic, all AD build was found out he became an assassin rather than a bulky backline diver. This significantly changed their playstyle and made them have more impact in the game overall. I think if riot made theme have more immediate impact in the game they would see less buffs.
This kind of effect happened with old aatrox
I played him and liked him even when people said dont play him becuase if you do, you are trolling
Then right before his rework after all little buffs here and there plus runes reforged
Aatrox became the best champion in game just a little while
We who played old aatrox we knew rework is coming and there is nothing to stop it but you can play that same style thanks to olaf and trynda
As a Teemo main I can speak on behalf of the mini monster. All the buffs he's received over the years has definitely kept him afloat for the most part but Teemo's biggest problem the past couple years is the recent influx of very high mobility champions. Like for instance, Yone. Ordinarily, Teemo is super strong against most Melee champs, however Yone can quite literally dash the entire length of a lane just to get to Teemo and Teemo has literally no way of avoiding it effectively. Sure he has his W but his W is quite literally the absolute worst ability in the game currently. He just gets a slight passive speed boost that he loses if hit by ANYTHING. One random stray ability and he's slower than everyone. Unless he activates his W which refreshes his passive movespeed and gives him even more movespeed for only a few seconds and it's not really all that much. Sure it can be good against very immobile champs that struggle to escape him or catch him. But there's so many champs that can simply out run him with dashes with short cooldowns. I feel like if they do ANYTHING to Teemo they HAVE to fix his W to give him some sort of improvement on his mobility, even if it is just removing the self slow on getting hit, or giving him a short tumble on activation then giving him the movespeed or whatever. He IS getting an ASU along with Lee Sin soon so hopefully they add some flare to this HORRENDOUSLY outdated ability.
I don't know if it is the worst ability in the game, JV4's w is ready bad as well. But yeah I guess they should make it a fix mouvement speed boost for 3s or keep it as it is but ad a small dash at the beginning.
@@labranehit7687 Yeah it shouldn't be anything TOO crazy otherwise Teemo has the potential to actually broken
You cant possibly call Malphite weak.
I think he recorded this before malphite became top tier recently
@@caol8075 Malphite has been around or over 52% winrate, at a gigantic Play and ban rate for 4 patches now.
The video is just copium, or trying to ignore reality for the sake of sticking with the premise.
@@Christs_Apologet you dont seem to understand the purpose of the video. its to show that malphite really easly gets powercreeped. Now he is overbuffed but if only he was left untouched for enough time his wr would have fallen by itself
This is the first time i remember people ever whining about malphite.
@@Christs_Apologet A Vars video that bend facts to fit narrative??? That would never happen.
Seriously though, if you watched his “Why no one plays x Smash characters” series, you’ll know he constantly put characters that win top spots in major tourneys in there for the sake of making a video. Those chars are still being played and getting result, they are just not oppressively strong.
Yoooo, welcome to Vallhalla. Happy to hear such a gem in your video.
Anything if, "Simple Champions & Quality of life gameplay buffs", it's neat some champions can fit under this category with some throughout the seasons receiving utility buffs (seconds reduced or range changes are huge).
One more detail to add to the problems of this champs is that we also need to considered outside factors, in this case, who are the counters to these few which happen to always struggle and if nerfing the counters also nerf them then they just never get to shine. Also on the same vein, league has a nice and expansive champion pool, so that only makes it more plausible for each champion to be outclassed by another one entirely. I do think however most of the champs suffering from this is that they need some slight gameplay update to be more up to standards and give the balance team more levers to regulate power which should (at least on paper) create scenarios where is less likely some characters are just either broken or outright unplayable
I feel a large part of this is target accessibility and movement. Hecarim has huge access to any target he chooses. None of the other champs has dashes or fail proof access to their priority targets except Malphite. The main difference is that Malphite's ult is a one-way trip: you use to engage or disengage. All of the other champs can be pretty easily avoided.
Wow! Great time to release this video when 2 of the 3 featured on the thumbnail are currently some of the strongest if not the strongest in the current meta! Excellent take as always vars! (video is fine but this is horrible timing)
+ also forgetting that veigar comes in and out of bot lane meta, teemo being tier one in recent years at times. and malphite literally never being an overall bad pick due to saftey or as a counterpick :]
Ever since they made Veigar's cage not instant, the rest of his kit almost doesn't matter, because he's always been squishy, so he just gets burst without counterplay. Changing his R not to scale with enemy AP was a direct nerf to support Veigar, which they made viable by making him scale based on harass since once the enemy commits to an ap mage carry they can't just not build AP. Also it seems that recently they took damage off of his
Teemo similarly got hit with a huge nerf after he was brought out in the LCS and basically made it so the other team couldn't play (C9-TSM season 4 week 1). The AP ratio on r was heavily nerfed to undermine full AP mid teemo, and the duration of the traps was halved.
Really, for these two anyway, it's a story of two champions who were so heavily undermined, that they've never recovered. I'm not so familiar with Malphite's history, except I think his R used to do more damage. The main problem with him is that so much of his value is based on your team (vision and ult follow up especially) that he's kind of useless in a solo setting.
I think with some champs like illaoi or Kayle their winrates stay low because they have problems in their kit like Kayle taking too long and illaoi relying on tentacles or malphite only being good for his ult. Others like nasus and veigar are just too old to keep up with 200 years champs no matter how high their numbers get
Saying the balance team knows exactly what they are doing is a but off after those Annie "nerfs" a while back that gave her a 56% win rate
No one said they don't make mistakes. You can know what you're doing but still be subject to unforseen consequences, especially in a game with so many moving parts
One of the popular and abusable things I've noticed champs love to have is low cooldowns, movement speed and harassment. 3 of the things Hecraim has.
The lower cooldowns the more pressure and mistakes you can make without being as punished, things like Olaf, Fiora, Lee and Sylas lowering cooldowns to like 6 seconds, even Pyke just through levelling.
Thresh's and Olaf's refund, even Fiora refunding her Q so she can harass or keep up with a person using ghost, I feel a large majority of things like this tend to gear players towards champs with cooldowns like that because they simply feel better.
That Teemo rework they scraped a few years back that made it's way into Wild Rift would probably solve some of his power creep problem by giving him more versatility on his kit which is the thing he lacks the most.
Poison on passive with Level and Ap scaling.
Adding a pseudo crit on his Q on poisoned targets (Allie's poison like Twitch's and Cassiopeia's also trigger it)
Adding a little dash on W active (with a range similar to Vayne's tumble) before the speed up.
E giving temporary camouflage with a shorter range than Twitch's with a countdown that stops when the champion stops moving or when moving inside of a bush at the cost of some speed.
R basically the same with up to 5 stacks (which is the only thing that made into League's main server)
The difference between these champions is how they interact with the game (rules / resources / etc.) more so than their kit. The Hecarim Malphie comparison is a great example.
The more armor Malph gets the less health he has reducing his ability to tank (item interactions), beyond that his tankiness is not frequently useful because he isn't a splitpushing champ, so he can only use his tankiness in a teamfight. This leads to a champion that is very team reliant for his effect on the game. His utility (r / e / q) + his tankiness both enable his teammates in a linear fashion. Half cooldown on ult = ca. twice the engage opportunities, but just because malph can engage doesn't mean the team should.
Hecarim on the other hand works this way: wq equals infinite farming, higher damage = higher farming speed, higher farming speed = more levels / gold, more gold / levels = easier ganks and faster farming, easier ganks and faster farming = more kill / gold = higher damage, etc.
So he has a self-reinforcing gameplay. Compared to malphite he is limited by his teammates, unless they turn tank items into damage items again Malph will not suddenly run out of control with his current kit.
That's also the difference between these two general groups of champions. Does the kit reinforce its own ability to achieve its goal, or is it dependent on an outside source that isn't easily influenced by their kit?
I think this is more about the existence of counterplay. All these champions have abilities which, if you are focused and expecting them, can be dodged or nullified. When the champion gets strong, the enemy players still have agency in shutting them down by counterplay.
Hecarim, on the other hand, has a huge amount of move speed and there really isn't any counterplay to move speed.
I think it has to do with the game as a hole. Teemo is not the menace he used to be because of the creeping mobility issue in League. All of those champs are counters via mobility. Veigar can't stack his passive on you if he can't hit you. Teemo can't use his slow on his shrooms when the enemy Sejuani does not care and ults you anyway. If Malphite does not hit his ulti on those hyper mobile enemy targets he does not provide a lot if anything to a team fight. They all suffer from the game getting more mobile by the minute. The only time Udyr was really broken was when his mobility issue got fixed via item(s). These champions are too static and do not have the peel or movement ability to keep up with their competition (unless played to perfection by onetricks/pros)
I would say these champions are flawed since the beginning, their counters are not a minority but a majority of champions. And if their design is flawed, can not compete with the majority: then their winrare is low and buffs to their numbers does not change a thing for them
on a side note for veigar i feel like aurelion eclipsed him as a better AP farmer/scaler. Aurelion is mobile, has consistend dmg, easier to land skills, a broken super ult and lastly builds pretty tanky.
no cage, scales slower, less burst, longer cooldowns
Hey Vars, is the soundtrack used in this video from VA-11HALL-A? It is such a masterpiece of a game😊
You can also look at how much the champion can accomplish.
How much Tempo they can have on the game
Heca can clear his entire jgl, go full ad one shot everyone gank all in the first 5 mins.
Compare that to malphite taking 5 less damage in top lane
The small numbers ist compound to bigger advantages.
I think all the points you made way back when in your why no one plays teemo video explains why he never seems to get better after getting buffed. I think its just that the play style his abilities are geared towards just doesnt fit into the modern league of legends in the slightest so people are forced to play him in ways that he wasnt exactly designed for such as tankmo, ad teemo, and many more. These buffs they add only help the ap hit and run style that just doesnt work well.
He is also split between being a subpar ap “marksman” with the poison damage on his auto attacks while using blinding dart to win against other auto attackers, and a roaming trap laying guerrilla-warfare type assassin that can be easily countered by a free item anyone can buy. These two playstyles that his abilites seem to promote just dont work together really at all so that just leaves him subpar at both. Sorry if I my explanations didnt make much sense but I have many thoughts about the current state of teemo because I main him.
TLDR: Teemo has many problems that no buff could really address.
The problem with Teemo is Riot gutted him years ago. Teemo is the only champion in League that has had multiple systems on how the game works at a base level rewritten just to combat him. Move speed cap system? Put in place specifically because his W was too strong and instead of nerfing it they nerfed all move speed to make sure no other champion would get to the point he was. How invis works and reveal items? Because Teemo shutdown a couple pro games at the big stage, jungle shrooms left people getting to the fight at less than full health so the team waved off the fight and just let objectives fall. It wasn't fun to watch fights not happen, so Riot reworked the entire system. Shrooms also used to be infinite. No timer on them. There is now a global cap on objects a player can put on the map, noone hits it because timers are written to keep it from happening, but the global cap is still there. Because of Teemo. On a base systems level the way Teemo is supposed to be played have been nerfed to the point he cannot be played that way anymore. Take out the move speed caps, Teemo's W would become strong again. Take out the current invis system, Teemo would be a true menace again. Take out the global cap and the timer on his shrooms, Teemo would be scary. The way Riot handles nerfing Teemo isn't like any other champion in the game. When Teemo needs a nerf they don't nerf him. They write a system level change that nerfs him. Riot doesn't take things away or move some numbers around. The entire damned game is changed to make the things Teemo is supposed to do impossible to do. They absolutely GUT him.
@@halycon404 Oh wow really? Im gonna look into this more cuz I had no clue these changes happened. I only started playing about a year ago so I havent been around long enough to have seen any of these changes. I guess that would also explain why it seems teemo never really got nerfed because these changes were system changes so they would appear in the individual champion’s patchnotes history.
@@OwlFella Yeah. Teemo is a playstyle archetype that does not play well with League. He's a strategy character who controls the map and game tempo. He's not supposed to be moment to moment gameplay. His shrooms are supposed to affect avenues of attack the other team can use and chip away at their health and timing on getting to objectives. He's supposed to slow the other team's speed down and sometimes close available options. You know really late game when Teemo is at 1000AP, an ADC hits a shroom, and instead of continuing they go back to base to heal because starting a fight at under half health is stupid? That is what Teemo is supposed to be doing the whole damned game. Before Riot made it impossible. It's what he is meant to do. Kills are secondary to just how much tempo he's supposed to suck out of an enemy team. But in league that isn't fun to play against.
The Va-11 Hall-A bgm, very awesome choice
I think it more has to do with the players than Riot. Yes Riot is the one tweaking buffs and nerfs for every champion, but it’s the players that show what can be broken or not (obviously). Any champ in League can be strong if you know what you are doing (go figure) but there are just some champs with kit that can break easier than others.
No matter what players want the most optimal strategy to win along with doing something that is fun. It varies by player but at the end of the day why play as Teemo or Malphite to make them to most powerful when someone like Hecarim can be just as powerful in the fraction of the cost to get to that point.
Heca is violatile in power spike because yes Riot developed and buffs him in certain ways but the community shows the potential which in turn makes Riot react with nerfs and small reworks which again in turn makes the community try again and sometimes fail to reach that point in power and so Heca’s win/pick rate drops.
Sorry if this was very long and confusing
As an Aphelios main I can say it doesn't matter how much more damage he can deal if there's so many champions he can barely hit without dying. The circumstances where he can kill them usually would've let him win without the buffs
The Real thing that killed teemo is the apparition of the trinket. Before the opponent had to buy many pink or an élixir, wich was mostly a waste of gold to him and making the lane slower.
I think that teemo should have like corki sometime a special mushroom that stay completely invisible no matter what ( but maybe with a bit less of Time to it
Or his z should be changed while keeping the movespeed as a passive.
I'd love to think that teemo should be able to Switch his mushroom too, one that deal damage like now, but why no other ? Like one that create a smoke screen ? Freeze the field, purge some effect etc etc
I think these champions all struggle to carry games when their team is doing poorly. Sure you can carry as kassadin or kayle, but you have to get there. Veigar has one powerful spell, Event horizon, and notice, that Riot doesnt buff this spell ever. All these champs can sometimes carry, but its rare enough, that it doesnt affect their wr
Great video! I was super curious about the way Riot does to champs who don’t necessarily need a VGU but just need the numbers tweaked. I am curious tho aside from the numbers, I want to learn more about champions that can encompass multiple roles. Lee sin despite originating as a jungle had stints in other roles like top and mid so I would like to know how Champions can be flexed in roles outside of their original role
I think Veigar e has been op for so long its kinda crazy
With the recent surge of Malphite and Veiger in pro plays, it baffles that it took THIS LONG for pros to realize how broken those two are in pro play.
For Veigar, his scaling and stacking are extremely well suited for pro play, as the game duration is usually much longer, plus the coordinating nature of the plays compared to soloq allows Veigar to scale much more easily. Also, a major counter class to Veigar, assassin, hardly being picked also makes his laning phase much more breathable. In teamfight, his E is amongst the most broken skills in the entire game since most fights are centered around objectives, Drags and Barron, where his E virtually takes up half the river. Id argue his E alone already justifies his position in pro play.
As for Malphite, that rock pile has been broken for wayyyy too long and no one bats an eye. While In soloq, his ultimate-focused nature of a champ may be a detrimental drawback, pros can easily match his ultimate CD to guarantee one ult per teamfight. That and his ridiculously potent strength against adc, his insane laning ability (being able to win or equal against the majority of top lane match up), i just don't see why he arent picked more compared to other tanks. Except for the fact that pros are just too insecure to try anything new unless someone else has the ball to do first.
For teemo there is a good reason. His mushrooms around s4-5 iirc were butchered. About halved. He used to be able to one shot adcs with ONE SHROOM, And IMHO they over nerfed him
I mean you can only red Trinket a certain amount of space on the map so literaly one shotting invisible traps sound a bit too toxic 😅
I used to freaking despise teemo but after learning the matchup 9/10 teemos get unfairly destroyed and I genuinly would think it to be ok if teemo got a buff.
Than there is that 1 psychopath who will camp/go invis arround Redside Krugs for 2 minutes just to kill the 0/16 PRE-Rework Asol just to make their day worse and then I am not all to sure I want teemo players to be happy.
Creating fun by ruining other peoples fun just seems a bit onesided you know..
0:43 funniest vars joke in 2023
Can you make a video for blitzy boi he’s one of the oldest champions and he’s one of those champions who has barely been touched since his release with having each ability cost a 1/3 of his mana bar, a self debuff on his W all of this while still having one of the highest ban rates among any supports.
Love the VA-11 Hall-A music.
A thing that should always be considered is that when a champ is buffed or nerfed (does not matter how much) ppl will notice, f.e "XY is getting a buff" , then XY is getting played more because ppl assume "XY is now stronger" the same thing works with nerfs, it may be a small nerf but ppl notice and do not want to play a nerfed champion. Ofc this phenomenon happens more in lower elo because at some point ppl actualy read the patch notes, but thats still a good % of ppl
its mainly because these are champions that "dont feel good to play"
malphs abilities are disjointed from one another, lissandra is a mage that IS the set-up, rather than one that benefits from set-up, and kayle is kayle
due to their linear kits they need buffs to keep them matched with the newer champions that are coming out now.
Veigar must not be all that weak anymore, they've nerfed him 2 patches in a row now (13.6 and 13.7) to try and get him out of bot lane lol. The latest is more of an adjustment, as he gets slightly higher AP scaling on Q and W at max rank, which is intended to put him back into mid lane where he gets way more xp than in bot.
What about Mordekaiser? I think he had 12 buffs from his rework onward
Morde is in a steeplechase chasing birds, no amount of buffing will help him because his game plan is to remove himself
They are not overloaded the way many other champs are, so they have very distinct weaknesses
From that perspective, I almost see where Riot is going with 200 year champs, with the homogeneity of utility presenting a possibly less polarizing game dynamic.
I kinda wish that instead of that, Riot would put lower emphasis on early power and snowballing from lane phase so that champs could fight it out as part of a team, rather than spending the most important minutes of the game all alone.
It would bring more variety into games since you're experiencing far more fights between a lot of unique champions rather than played-out lane matchups. You're actually getting to experience the billions of possible matchups for real rather than laning phase already telling you who wins.
It's about comp and not lane counters far more in this case, and Riot has a lot more flexibility to let certain champs suck against x and utterly crush y
Very simple ideas: give a decent move speed buff going to lane after respawning (maybe recalling too), lower early cs and kill gold, nerf any scaling champ that gets to abuse this, prune stuff from overloaded kits. This is probably never going to happen, but I can dream.
Summary (sorta): I think overloaded champs are primarily a response to the issue that early game and snowballing is too powerful, so champs need to be able to perform generally well against most other champs.
Remember when Zed just kept getting buffs I think hes still getting buffed to this day x-x
Veigar is never a problem because you can delete him before he uses his skills. Nasus on the other hand is problem. He has innate tankiness. He has all the time to use his skills. This combines with his passive makes him true OP if properly farmed.
Maybe a cool video would be "the most balanced champions of League", that is, champs that receive almost no nerfs and buffs despite meta changes and makes them inherently strong. That is champs like Zilean or Morgana. Congrats on the video as always 😊
Jarvan could be in that number, new Warwick as well.
they might know more about what they are doing as the average guy maybe thinks but they make stupid decissions sometimes.
this is extremly evident when they list something as adjustments or buff/nerfs and it turns out the other way around.
they also over or undershoot the mark sometimes.
Sadly Veigar was pickable once in pro play now so they had to kill him off now.
I wish Sejuani got she same treatment instead of rework after rework. I miss 1100 q dash with full HP AP Seju from first iteration :(
Cham then: Cool! I got extra damage and free crit
Cham now
:📝📃📃📃📃📃
in my honest opinion, the power creep old champs is because new releases have overloaded kits and older champs can not compete unless you buff them until raw numbers matters more than overloaded kits. For example, dashes are now very common on new champ releases, meanwhile older versions of lol had very few champs able to spam dashes and dodge stuff... sooo mages had a harder time hitting things because everyone is dashing now, so you need more numbers to compensate.
Yea, everyone got dashes now
VARS the music. VALLHALLA ost so good. Also my favorite track.
Good video as always. L
I don't know dude. I'm a regular LCK watcher and both Veigar and Malphite are dominating in pro play. 😅
All these champs are niche counterpicks, mainly toplaners. You can't blind pick them. They are only good at their niche thing and no amount of buffs will make malphite win against morde. So they can get stronger if what they counter gets popular or if their items get better, but they still can't do anything against other picks. Teemo can have 70 wr against tryndamere, but that won't change the fact that his kit doesn't do anything against mages.
In my personal opinion if they knew what they were doing there would be strong champions but not beyond op champs like annie after rework aurelion and many other examples so I dont think they know :)
I almost fell out of my chair yesterday when I won a game against malphite as yorick and after the game he typed “nerf yorick broken champ” and left
Veigars rework wasn't a massive buff. His infinite AP he still got through kill monsters/minions with Q and champion takedowns. His cage was also instant and his ultimate didn't just scale on your opponent AP but also on your own and didn't have any enemy hp restriction. In late game his ultimate used to not only 1 click kill the enemy mages but also adcs. Altho if you went 0/20 it would only 1 click kill mages.
U forgot veigar lost his insta stun circle
It now has a short delay before stunning
Thats a mega nerf to his old self as he could have flash stun an entire team , but now cant
VA-11 Hall-A OST? Hell yeah
The champion that I think needs a much quality of life buff is Diana.she gets out skirmish and ekko or sylas plus akali are better duelist that are ap the only play you can get out of her is eat towers and anything at that time of game time that contest can duel her,she just needs heal already riot
Now all we gotta do is wait 10 years, and Teemo is FINALLY be instant pick ban, and be the BEST champion in the entire game. It is all apart of the plan...
Va-11 Hall-a OST is the goat
heca goes ballistic with small buffs because jgl is way more volatile
My only thought is simpler kits. Compared to the 200 year abominations we have today who have so much more in they're kit and are able to do damage with more, looking at you, Yone; these guys don't have a whole lot and due to how simplistic they're kits are because of the time period they were created. Veigar is all skillshots, most of teemos damage is from autos and his poison which doesn't tick a whole lot or at least not immediately since he's a AP ranged auto attacker, and Malphite... Well honestly I hate him cause he gets one armor item and I'm unable to fight him, but unless he's ap he doesn't have much else besides just being a Giant meatshield.
I thought about it too but there are champs with a simple kit but they are still pretty strong like Gwen her kit is pretty basic and easy to outplay but in higher elos she is still in a good spot or Rumble with no mobility and short range his kit is quite simple but he can still 1v9 games if he is ahead I think the problem about champs like Malph is that they are Win or Lose champs in a game with only AD DMG and no max health shred Malph just 1v9 without a problem but if the enemies have a champ like brand or zyra he just melts away and is kinda useless and it's the same pattern for Teemo if the enemies build no oracle Teemo shrooms will poke them and force them to Backport but if just one enemy build it the whole champ is kinda useless.
ngl malphite is not a champion that i feel needs buffed, dude can stat check *juggernauts* at this point, even darius in lane
Malphite and Veigar are both insanely good atm wtf
1:37 wtf happened in 2016 that gave Teemo a 69% Winrate?!?!
5:30 empowered AA video confirmed?!
Based editor using Va-11 Hall-a songs
"Riot knows what they are doing" Funniest shit i ever heard
The common point between all this champs is how opressive they can be with counterpick and how useless they are without. Malphite into a mage is useless, but into any ad champ he is just op. Same for teemo with his q. They arent stat checkers (or at least they dont need to be, malphite is still a stat checker) but insead are a "kit checker". Its bad design at its core.
Honestly i think you already mentioned the issue in the video anyway - despite getting a ton of buffs they're meaningless if they dont affect the things that make the champs weak in the first place.
I disagree on several points. First it is not the (only) the one dimensional stat check kit that ruins those champions it is *drum roll* their mutual counter: MOBILITY. As long as assassins stat check them they can have as much range damage or anything they will get outmanuevered and then oneshot without even a time to react. It is that simple fact that make them bad. And calling Kayle not a stat checker is a criminal offense. She is THE stat checker.
And now veigar got nerfed like 3-4 times after the range buff and malphite is op as hell and is also getting nerfed. Kinda funny if you ask me.
No buff can make up for having a teemo on your team
Those 3 champs are the antithesis of power creep
I lpve malphite i can either be a full ap malphite that can one shot any adc or be full tank thant can run and do great cc and a great entry
Riot: "Master Yi and Diana should not be able to build tank items while still dealing as much damage as they currently do."
Vars: "they know exactly what they're doing"
Riot: "... So we are changing their stat ratios and leaving everything else untouched"
Time traveler moves a chair to the left slightly the timeline - this is why no one plays pudge in Dota
What you think for Slowaoi, most known like Illaoi.
does any one thing that a big whole cast nerf (nerfing every champs) whill be a GooD choice
No, especially without clarification on what the nerf(s) would be.
I mean... why would a champion like Nasus or Skarner need a nerf?