BADLY Designed Abilities | League of Legends



Today’s video is sort of a continuation of my Overpowered Abilities episode way back in April! I want to take some time to talk about some abilities in League of Legends that have been designed very poorly, either due to a lack of counterplay or thought put into them!

League of Legends Discussion Playlist: https://bit.ly/3dzJuUZ

Support me on Patreon! https://bit.ly/3iy5pvu
Donate to the channel! https://bit.ly/36TpIQP

~Editor (TofuGraphics)~
Twitter: https://twitter.com/TofuGraphics

~Contact Links~
Discord: https://bit.ly/33M2iev
Twitter: https://bit.ly/3kv7CZU
Twitch: https://bit.ly/2XNes31
Candle.gg: https://bit.ly/3ndfU9r
Email: [email protected] (Business inquiries only)

Graphics (also) provided by: https://tofugraphics.carbonmade.com/

#LoL #BadlyDesigned #Abilities

Source

33 thoughts on “BADLY Designed Abilities | League of Legends”

  1. I think Death Realm should have some more interactivity between the characters in and out of it. Like being able to tag in by swapping with your Mord, or the enemy swapping with whoever he Death Realmed. You'd have to do something like stand in the same place (should add motes of red and blue inside the Death Realm to see where people are outside of it) and then be backing at the same time to just instantly swap, with some cooldown to prevent it from being spammed. It keeps at least 2 people in the Death Realm at all times and allows some counterplay from Mord just flashing on an ADC and pressing R. It also allows for Mord to coordinate with his own teammates who might be better suited to fight certain high priority targets that he just can't catch even in the Death Realm.

    Reply
  2. Im not sure if i agree with the karthus portion for one reason only.

    He’s the only artillery mage in the game to not have some form of hard lockdown and he still has the weakness of other artillery mages like being immobile and squishy. No need to mention his range in comparison is laughable, there are a bunch of assassins in the game that have a higher area of influence then karthus.

    I will agree that getting executed by a karthus during laning phase is kind of unfair, because what are you going to do? Flash it? Use the ability (you probably already used because he’s probably cleaning you up) you have to block it? but that’s why the cooldown is so ridiculously long.

    I can agree that having a lopsided kit could be seen as “bad design”, but up until karthus jungle became viable and dark harvest was released/reworked he had hardly seen play because the rest of his kit is just harder to use in comparison to other artillery mages during the laning phase while also being closer to the guy who can turn around and turn him off.

    I do think if karthus is going to be a jungler then his ultimate should have a range. He’s the only jungler in the game who can influence every lane while taking his raptors.

    Reply
  3. my contender for badly designed ability that isn't fiora's entire kit is sivir's spell shield she isn't broken by any means but it is instant can be used on reaction to any ability and feels bad with no skill or real couter play if your an engage, hook or all in support where you have to rely on your adc to do poke and get rid of it so you can do your thing and this stacked with morgana is just pain

    Reply
  4. i think morde stats should change for his ultimate.
    personally i find his late game very easy to play around and itemize against.
    my "fixes" would be remove terrain from the death realm, make it smaller, or lower the stats gained but make them permanent if the enemy dies in the realm.

    Reply
  5. Yasuo ult- you must land your wind thingy or be near a knocked up champion to use it for extra damage.
    Ahri ult- you have 3 aoe dashes that you must position yourself carefully to use effectively and in conjunction with your other abilities so as not to have it backfire.
    Karthus ult – you press R and get a free penta.

    Reply
  6. I agree with morde R and yuumi W, but I'd put yasuo w, ashe w and skarner R in place of the others

    fiora passive is too strong imo, but it's not necessarily a poorly designed ability, I'd define a poorly designed ability as an ability that can't be made balanced with just number changes. I think you can actually make fiora's passive balanced if you shift the level and ad scaling a bit, as you said, it shouldn't deal 20% max hp per vital at high level, but I think it should certainly still deal noticeable damage.

    Kartus R is a really strong ability, but it's a tradeoff and it still has counterplay. He has to stand still for 3 seconds, during which he can do nothing else and if he either dies or gets cc'd, the ability will do nothing and it will go on the full cooldown(which is long), and if you DO get it off, enemies can still counter it with either building mr(maw of malmortius), spellshields or other sources of invulnerability/untargetability such as zhonyas and fiora w. I think soraka shouldve taken the place instead

    Yi Q: hard agree, but shifting it to his ult and giving it a high cooldown is still within the realms of "just number changes" although its definitely a really difficult to balance ability. What I'd personally do is change the initial portion to a dash and only have him blink around once he reaches his target, so you have a window to actually stop it. I think then it would be a balanced ability

    as for why I'd put ashe, yasuo and skarner instead:

    yasuo w: It is just a ridiculously unfair and onesided ability. It has no tradeoff, no cast time, no cost, you can even cast it during other abilities and in trade for that you get a 5 second wall that prevents any projectile users from having any impact on any enemy in that area. This means not just ranged champions, all projectile users, including things such as skarner e, viego w which are vital to them being useful but even means champions like ornn, lillia ashe can't use their ult to engage as long as yasuo is in the area. things like gwen w, braum e and samira w are different in this regard, they have tradeoffs. braum e also blocks projectiles and he can move the wall around, but as a tradeoff he actually transfers the projectile's effects to him and they actually affect him so it has a cost. Samira w costs mana, for starters, but on top of that it also means that during this window she can't use her ult or q or autos, plus if she wants to do it during her ult, it will stop her ult and she will have to stack it again, so there is a tradeoff to using it. for gwen w, it is not a be all end all ability, it only blocks things that affect her, it doesn't block them for allies, plus it is possible to counter it, by standing in the area or knocking her out of it.

    ashe w: Simply because it is the definition of an uninteractive ability. It is one of the easiest abilities in the game to use, hitting effectively everything in a general area near your mouse, but as a tradeoff it has a high manacost, deals next to no damage and has a high cooldown. you just use it because it's off cooldown and there's an enemy there and then you forget you used it. there's no thought behind it, no counterplay and very little impact whatsoever.

    skarner R: exact same thing as morde R, while you might argue it does have the damage, this damage is negligible in the grand scheme of things, and half of it is lost if the enemy qsses this ability. plus, unlike mordekaiser, skarner's base kit has very little effect on it's own, the champion is literally the ult and his ult is either too impactful or too easily countered.

    Reply
  7. yasuo is a champ that can only be fought off at range or with stuns, but he has a wind walll that stops all ranged no matter what and a teleport to anybody knocked up that also reduces whoever you hit with ult, so really you can only kill him with a stun in the end, but to add insult to ijury he has a shield… his ability to do everything and not really get hit by his own counters makes it really really sucky to fight him and you can only play against him if everybody respects him, but most low ranks dont.

    Reply
  8. zoe w. not only is it a gross ability that punishes players for using their summoners and item actives, gives zoe objectively better versions of every summoner and item active in the game by virtue of her movement speed + missile passive being applied, and gives zoe extra reward for just doing what everyones supposed to be doing (farming) with summoners and item actives off minions, but quite frankly it's just out of place. zoe's entire kit revolves almost exclusively around her q, all her damage is centered there, her e locks her target down, and then her ult let's her get even more distance and start's allowing her to get trick shots/snipes etc, it's all about the q … and then w is just there… it just exists, it doesn't add anything to this game play necessarily (other than flash that your pretty much guaranteed to pick up every game) it's just there for some reason and it's so generically good it doesn't matter how out of place it is and inconsistent it is with the rest of her. like say what you want about certainlyT as a champion designer but generally his champions all have a really good just flow in their kits, everything going on makes sense. the idea of stealing summoner spells and actives sounds like an interesting (not necessarily good) idea to build a whole champion around, but as zoe w is… it just feels like certainlyT and his team came up with a kit that only had one passive and 3 abilities and then decided to just slap something random on there because … zoe random and silly so here's this really random ability, i guess?

    Reply
  9. i passionately hate the grey health mechanics (pyke and tahm) and high unconditional health regen passives (garen, sett).
    I'd rather see more strength in the champs individually then seeing them lose trade after trade just to shrug it off, sitting in front of me laughing while they regen to full hp in mere seconds.

    It is just not fun to have an enemy just disregard all the damage you just hardly earned to get off of them.

    I have no problem with conditional sustain, like trundle, Vlad or maokai, even warwick because they all have limits, they need to get in range of minions, have mana issues if they spam their heal or such. Thus it is possible to push them out of lane once they get too low to contest any minions.

    Sett and Garens just laugh under tower for 20 seconds and they are back in the game. Ist just not fun at all.

    Reply
  10. these might be "badly" designed abilities, but this video makes them look like they are op, which they're not. the champs (From the video) have plenty of ways you can outplay them or win against them and then if they're behind (and you don't throw of course) these abilities have little impact. it's not like these champions just win games cause of these abilities.

    Reply
  11. 12:00
    Yeah I play fiora and it is indeed kinda broken
    The thing is, remove her pasive and she is just a worse tryndamere, just an autoattacker with riposte, riposte might be strong but you are still not doing much damage without your passive
    Maybe the thing is just making her true damage scale less, because her ultimate can 100-0 literally everyone if you hit 1 vital first
    But if you make it so her ult only does 60% max hp as true damage then maybe it'd be more balanced, she would still kill squishy targets but tanks wouldn't get instantly shred to pieces

    Reply
  12. As a Vayne main, I have the unique privilege of countering Master Yi. If he Alpha's to me, he loses 100% of the time. I Ult and Tumble sideways right when his invuln ends, putting him between myself and a wall. The rest is history

    Reply
  13. My top 5 would be
    5. Camille Q – Low cd AA reset with a true damage nuke as a basic ability.
    4. Vayne W – Fiora's passive is more troublesome when you factor the R, yet both have a downtime and (as said) rely on positioning. Vayne can just ignore any stat other than attack speed as a ranged champion and use other ADC items without any major sacrifice or trade off.
    3. Blitzcrank W – Still don't understand why it's still there, it lost its purpose when riot decided he'd stick as a support. The attack speed component is irrelevant and the movement speed buff isn't that good when you get slow (with no upside) afterwards.
    2. Sivir R – It has the same effect as an active item that any support can buy, just slightly stronger, at a time where most characters can dash and/or jump over walls, yet her passive already gives her movement speed. Just feels completely out of place and isn't satisfying to use.
    1. Aurelion Sol E – Too slow, telegraphed, commits you onto a fixed location, can't be used with any other ability aside Q (in a champion that is all about his passive), can be disrupted by almost anything, has higher CD than most R's.

    Honorable mentions
    • Corki E – A direction based skill for a character in a class that wants to kite…
    • Evelynn Q – For some reason she can miss the Q and still get an auto aim damage follow up…
    • Kassadin E – Only skill in game with two cooldowns. It ain't that good to need it…
    • Kled W – Love to lose my valuable skill whenever i want to farm, using just AA…
    • Syndra P – How can she be the only champion in the game with no passive before getting an R?
    • Taliyah P – Free mobility boots, but only if you stick to walls…

    Reply
  14. What about fizz's untargetability? It honestly feels way more broken than master Yi; you can control the dash, you can go untargetable at any time, it deals more damage, and the cooldown is pretty low too iirc

    And with master Yi, if he isn't fed off his ass and can one shot you with his q, and you play around your team, you can catch out overextended Yi's by just bringing him to your team after he qs you

    Reply
  15. When you say fiora's passive is a problem but not Vaynes its clear you're just appealing to popularity. Vayne's true damage is essentially free and no risk, all she has to do is right click as a ranged champion. I don't like fiora as a champion but even i can understand that she has active counterplay with her vitals(putting yourself against walls or making it hard for her to hit them.) And she has to take the risk of getting into melee range of the champions she directly counters, allowing them to atleast make an attempt at counterplay.(Juggernauts, tanks.)

    Reply
  16. I can't think of a top 5 right now but Rengar W is a badly designed skill. So much power into it and completely guts the champion. Ap scaling on ad champion. Gets back dmg done in X time, and works as a cleanse. Plusthe AP ratios are insane

    Reply
  17. In terms of bad interactions, I think Unbreakable is badly designed. Like yes it blocks everything similar to Aegis Assault and Windwall but man he shouldn't be hooked or CC'd while his unbreakable is up and the ranged CC is towards Braum's shield.

    Reply
  18. I know i am in the minority, but i think yummi is fine for the game, as long as her power is in her passive not her e she is forced to interact and is thusly vulnerable. The nerf i think they should do kit wise is have her only give the adaptive force for a set time after wing so once again she is forced to be in an interactable state. People hate when yummi makes characters stat sticks but often in order for yummi and a frontliner to steamrolll a game it requires proper coordination from them and the enemy to never acknoledge the threat that yummi provides,as the majority of yummis healing sheilding coming from constant w passive procs with aery and moonstone.

    Reply
  19. i agree that % max HP true damage is unfair
    but i disagree that fiora's vitals are bad design in comparison to vayne W
    let me explain 1. vayne dosnt require anything to do the damage it's just her W lvl and attack speed while fiora's passive scales of her bonus AD
    2.if vayne has 3 items while everyone else is full build she deals so massive amounts of damage at this point of the game because the % scaling is the enemy HP not her AD (that she gets from items/ damage runes)
    on contrast fiora with 3 items while others have full build is laughable damage and she will get popped at this moment
    3.vayne gets 3 damage items which include attack speed and some sort of defence then continues with full defensive items to deal massive amounts of damage while fiora needs some time to generate her vitals and hitting them with low AD doesnt kill the enemy
    in conclusion iam tired of how free scaling vayne gets after getting her face smashed during laning phase then she comes with her semi tank items to carry the fight once she gets 3 items(she doesnt require any lead /glass cannon build or runes like other ADC to deal that damage)
    ik she lacks alot of stats but that to compensate for how broken that W is

    Reply

Leave a Comment