Author Topic: Moba balance comparison, please comment  (Read 183354 times)

Offline Wingflier

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Re: Moba balance comparison, please comment
« Reply #60 on: January 01, 2013, 01:15:38 pm »
I find that bruisers are much more fun and much less risky than other characters.  It's a much safer choice.

That's not to say that glass cannon carries can't be, and aren't just as powerful, it's just that they're extremely situational.

My friend who keeps up with competitive LoL tells me that Twisted Fate is the best champion in the game right now.  Some player on some professional team has apparently never lost with him.

And of course, I believe him.  Partly because he has no reason to lie, and partly because, on a perfectly coordinated team, TF would be a nightmare to deal with.  That's because his team is always protecting him, setting up situations for him to arrive, peeling off damage dealers, healing him, and whatever else is required to make a squishy glass cannon viable.

If you BREATHE on TF, he dies; that's all there is to it.  Playing TF well is not just a personal endeavor, but a team endeavor, and if you do it right, it is absolutely devastating.

However, you can't expect that kind of teamplay and coordination in a pub; even a high-level pub.  There's no voice chat for one thing, and you've probably never even played with all (or even some) of your teammates.

This is why my favorite champions are heroes like Darius and Xin.  They simply rip apart teams without perfect coordination.  You can stack health and armor and still do tons of damage, have plenty of disables, and be ridiculously tanky.

To give another example, Kayle is one of my favorite characters.  I love her aggressive, glass-cannon style, then ult just before you die.  However, the risk just doesn't pay off in pubs.  Darius or Irelia are much safer tops to choose than Kayle, even if I do like playing her.

What this all boils down in my opinion, is not that LoL is poorly balanced, but simply balanced for competitive play; as it should be.  However, that does leave a massive problem for mid-to-high level normal players (especially blind pick), who simply want to pick whatever heroes they want to pick, and not worry about losing because they didn't take the "safe" choice.

This balance issue, if you want to call it that, is a result of something I've been harking on from the very beginning.  LoL balances its characters in a very "samey" way.  That is, many characters have only slight differences with each other, and have pretty much the exact same role.  Therefore, only one character with that role will always ultimately become the safest pick for that position, and therefore be the best in pub games.

DotA, who balances its characters by making each one drastically different, doesn't have this problem nearly as much.  There are safer picks, and more situational picks, but ironically the situational picks work much better in pubs than they do in competitive games, which is the polar opposite of League, where situational picks excel in competitive games. 
« Last Edit: January 01, 2013, 01:21:05 pm by Wingflier »
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Offline Wingflier

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Re: Moba balance comparison, please comment
« Reply #61 on: January 01, 2013, 01:59:13 pm »
Quote
Currently, top lane has 4 viable camps.  Darius is one of them.  Since at present your top should only be 1 of 4 champs, Darius isn't pub stomping solo queue in my experience.  He's got a 1 in 4 chance of getting countered, a 1 in 4 of countering, and 2 in 4 that things are a bit more up in the air.
You're assuming that people in solo queue normal are going to pick 1 of those 4 heroes, out of a pool of what looks to be about 70.  Most of the time, they won't pick one of those heroes, and Darius WILL have the advantage regardless.

Secondly, you shouldn't be FORCED to pick a hero in normal blind pick in order to win; the whole point of blind pick is picking whoever you want and having fun.  It's not fun when you're forced into a small pool of champions, in the hopes that you get the right counters for the right situation, based almost entirely off chance.

Thirdly, I don't see how Jax counters Darius.  If anything, it's an even matchup.  Jax can jump onto Darius, autoattack him, and stun him, but as soon as he tries to run away once his combo has been exhausted, Darius can simply pull him back in and kill him before the stun cooldown is even up again (I think it's 18 seconds at level).  If you simply walk up to Darius and attempt to do your combo, then save your leap to escape, you might get away with it, but in that situation, all Darius has to do is walk away from you, Q, and take a 1/4th of your health away because you got too close.

In other words, at best its an even matchup, it's certainly not a hard counter like Darius is to Irelia.
« Last Edit: January 01, 2013, 02:00:45 pm by Wingflier »
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Offline Hearteater

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Re: Moba balance comparison, please comment
« Reply #62 on: January 01, 2013, 03:51:10 pm »
Quote
Currently, top lane has 4 viable camps.  Darius is one of them.  Since at present your top should only be 1 of 4 champs, Darius isn't pub stomping solo queue in my experience.  He's got a 1 in 4 chance of getting countered, a 1 in 4 of countering, and 2 in 4 that things are a bit more up in the air.
You're assuming that people in solo queue normal are going to pick 1 of those 4 heroes, out of a pool of what looks to be about 70.  Most of the time, they won't pick one of those heroes, and Darius WILL have the advantage regardless.

Secondly, you shouldn't be FORCED to pick a hero in normal blind pick in order to win; the whole point of blind pick is picking whoever you want and having fun.  It's not fun when you're forced into a small pool of champions, in the hopes that you get the right counters for the right situation, based almost entirely off chance.

Thirdly, I don't see how Jax counters Darius.  If anything, it's an even matchup.  Jax can jump onto Darius, autoattack him, and stun him, but as soon as he tries to run away once his combo has been exhausted, Darius can simply pull him back in and kill him before the stun cooldown is even up again (I think it's 18 seconds at level).  If you simply walk up to Darius and attempt to do your combo, then save your leap to escape, you might get away with it, but in that situation, all Darius has to do is walk away from you, Q, and take a 1/4th of your health away because you got too close.

In other words, at best its an even matchup, it's certainly not a hard counter like Darius is to Irelia.
Non-ranked games can be casual, so while I do see some variety in top lane, I see the 4 core top lane champs a ton.  As in, it is unusually to see either side be something other than the four.  And I agree, you shouldn't be forced to pick from those 4 champs.  It's a bruiser issue that I hope they resolve.  I honestly still think Black Cleaver is too strong, but we'll see.

Jax counters Darius by killing him.  He doesn't need to run away, and Darius has no escapes.  Then consider that Jax can escape a gank with his leap, while Darius must burn Flash.  Make no mistake, if Jax stacks Relentless Assault and Leap Strikes Darius, Darius will die unless he Flashes.  At 6 it isn't even fair anymore.  Guillotine gets hurt by Jax's ability to deny basic attacks through Counter Strike, costing 20% of its damage in general (3 stacks vs 5 stacks).  Not to mention Counter Strike stops Crippling Strike.  So Darius does less damage from Decimate since Jax Leap Strikes in, Crippling Strike does nothing, Apprehend is useless because Jax isn't running, and Guillotine isn't going to do full damage because you can't get Hemorrhage stacked fast enough.

Offline Wingflier

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Re: Moba balance comparison, please comment
« Reply #63 on: January 01, 2013, 07:35:04 pm »
Well I've faced Darius as Jax in top lane before, and I got crushed.

Maybe I just wasn't doing it right, so I'll try to be more aggressive next time instead.  It just seems like it is, at best, an even matchup, which is still pretty impressive against Darius.

You say that top lanes are the only major role balance concern right now, but from what I hear the supports are pretty stagnant too.  Apparently Lulu is picked in pretty much every competitive game without fail, which wouldn't surprise me because that hero is like a support god.
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Offline Hearteater

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Re: Moba balance comparison, please comment
« Reply #64 on: January 01, 2013, 07:51:26 pm »
For Jax vs. Darius, it is all-in aggression on Jax's part.  He can't poke Darius or he loses.  It is a pretty technical match-up, so it isn't an auto-win for someone who hasn't played it.  But since you face Darius a lot, if you play a lot of Jax you'll get the hang of it.  It's all about managing Relentless Assault stacks so you Leap Strike in at full stacks.  You also don't really want to Empower your Leap Strike since Empower is an auto-attack reset.  Empowering Leap Strike actually costs you a free auto.  That's okay when you are poking, but you can't poke Darius.  Your ultimate combo is at full stacks, Leap Strike in, Empower and Counter Strike.  Let the Counter Strike time out, which means he's going to go 3 seconds were the only damage he does is his Decimate at the inner damage range (which Counter Strike will further reduce since it is AOE damage) and a single stack Hemorrhage, unless he blows Apprehend for a second stack, but then you know you can safely back out if you want.

So don't try and poke him, just cave his face in.  And don't let him get much poke on you.  You don't need to go all-in every 5 seconds, but by level 6 just going all-in 2 or 3 times.  Each time you can generally push him out of lane.  Also be ware the enemy jungle, because when you do all-in him, you don't want the enemy jungle showing up.  Ward often and early.  First trip back should include a ward.  The match-up takes practice, but it is very winnable.

Support is still shaking itself out.  I'm not convinced Lulu is the god-support, but she's doing well at the moment.  We'll have to give it some more time, since the mastery and item changes are still getting felt out by the competitive players.

Offline RCIX

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Re: Moba balance comparison, please comment
« Reply #65 on: January 02, 2013, 04:20:52 am »
Hai!
Darius is broken.

I have never seen a reasonable argument against this.
He has no realistic mobility (you don't get more than 10% MS max without being in the face of and the focus of 5 people), is highly dependent on a short range pull that is long cd till midgame at best, and has no innate defensive steroids to serve as a proper tank. Among other champions, Elise will eat him alive. In return, he's in the top three for dueling and damage output given the chance to stick. It's a very sharp and vaguely binary champion design, but he's actually one of my favorite characters because he doesn't rely on anything but just outdamaging your opponent through sheer force. Darius actually functions as an anti-bruiser, which is also the source of the QQ (omg i cant pick favorite character x who is countered by darius and faceroll, i better whine about it). Whether counters should exist is another topic entirely, and one I'd probably be happy to discuss.


In general, the state of top lane has been acknowledged to pretty much be broken for the last year at least. Bruisers have been slowly and steadily inflating in power, and in order to operate in top lane you need to have so much free stats, power levels, or mechanics on your kit that you are flat broken in any other environment. This can be seen in 2 kinds of champions: Ones like Darius, who are fine at heart but just don't punish mistakes well enough because of how much damage their spells do to compensate for top lane, or ones like Jayce, Irelia, or Rengar. These champions just do too much, and as a result they are or will be nerfed down to a degree where none of it is particularly powerful, and still dominate because their kit gives them (f.e.) physical damage, magic damage, true damage, an onhit heal, a spell with innate spellvamp, a slow, a stun, waveclear, free tenacity, and a powerful gapcloser.


I've got a question.

The people in this thread say that "carries" can't burst people down as fast in League as they can in DotA, but after playing several games with Rengar, it's to still believe that's the case.

I'm watching Rengar, even in close games, kill people within literally about 1 second.  By the time he can click all of his skills (after he ults), they are dead.  Even tanks he tears right though almost instantly.  No hero in DotA kills people this fast.

Can somebody explain?

Okay so here's the deal with Rengar right now. He's obviously been nerfed since this post, but it's still worth talking about.

Rengar is and was always designed to be a physical assassin. The issue was that he got hit by the Irelia effect, and that he was released in a clunky state so Riot couldn't see how powerful he was actually. After they fixed his passive bugs and made W instant cast, he immediately became a dominating force. Q was a ridiculous burst and scaled hideously well, W was 550 AoE damage that would give Rengar a midgame 2-button waveclear, and R was a near-instant 7 second stealth with MS boost to catch anyone thanks to a reveal.

Then, as Riot is prone to do, they saw him facewrecking and by reflex started kicking him in the shins. W damage nerf, Q CD scaling nerf, less Hp5, ult lasted less time, took longer to get into, and had longer cooldown, and even reduced the heal when they saw him doing absolutely dumb things as a tanky splitpusher (*rolls eyes*).

I did end up asking about this on the forums, and Morello did say they were looking at doing a mini rework to get him back the focused power he needs to be a good character. Because right now, his ult is gimped, his heal is gimped unless you go tanky splitpush (ew), his burst is a lane bully's wonder that falls off after like level 6, and he is simply outperformed in any role he could have by... someone.

Here are those changes though, or at least the first round:
Quote
Rengar
Savagery's bonus attack speed duration increased to  4 seconds from 3 seconds.
Battle Roar now heals for ( 40 + 20 health per level ) instead of flat 10% of health
Rengar's stealth delay lowered to 1 second from 1.25
It's definitely a start, but I'm still not convinced this will fix him. Near as I can tell, they A: want him to be a more effective "sustained assassin" (open with large burst, then abuse steroids to finish the job), and B: want him to have a meaningful heal that is independent on his stats so that he's not forced to build tank to use it properly.

Problem is that this just leaves the same mechanics, but in a slightly different place. I'd honestly like to see him lose the snare on his empowered Bola in exchange for something like increased range or another bonus that's more easy to justify giving up your primary burst combo for, and then switch battle roar to physical. From here, he's now a stable character and can be given the power he really needs to do his job.
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Offline Wingflier

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Re: Moba balance comparison, please comment
« Reply #66 on: January 06, 2013, 12:08:41 pm »
I'm a little baffled at Riot's lack of features after 3 years of development.

No integrated voice chat, no official replay system, no selling items back for full price (seriously Riot, this is the most annoying thing ever) because you accidentally bought it, no pause feature for disconnectors, no gold redistribution for leavers, no auto-kick for someone who has been disconnected for more than 5 minutes total...

Then you've got not completely necessary but still important mechanics like:
1. Controlling an allied hero when he disconnects.
2. Being able to trade small items like consumables or (the DotA equivalent to) oracles, instead of having to continually go back to base.
3. Integrated voice-cast so that you can listen to the casters in-game instead of over a stream.

It's not like they don't have the money or the talent (or couldn't hire the talent) necessary to add these things, maybe they just don't care that much?

Maybe Riot just devotes too much of their team to making skins instead of adding features to the game, the biggest irony to all of that though is that Valve has created a system that lets the playerbase create the "skins" for them, all they have to do is approve them and put them into the game; which means they're literally devoting only a fraction of the resources to skins, and yet the quality is overall better because they are voted on before being released, and there are so many people making them.
« Last Edit: January 06, 2013, 12:11:49 pm by Wingflier »
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Offline Lancefighter

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Re: Moba balance comparison, please comment
« Reply #67 on: January 06, 2013, 07:09:15 pm »
voice chat is honestly a bad idea. In dota I rarely see it used for more than flaming or speaking languages other people dont recognize.

the rest is arguable anyway -  the whole 'leavers' gold distribution is probably ok, and other stuff related to that. Trading consumables I feel was intentional, and controlling a hero is not in their core game design as it is.

The replay and meta-game (by meta game, I'm referring to things that are part of the game but not strictly playing the game) stuff could use some work, but I feel like it would require their entire air client to be redone. Which is probably a good thing tbh.
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Offline Wingflier

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Re: Moba balance comparison, please comment
« Reply #68 on: January 07, 2013, 08:45:33 am »
Quote
voice chat is honestly a bad idea. In dota I rarely see it used for more than flaming or speaking languages other people dont recognize.
That's odd.  In higher level play, it's used a lot for coordinating attacks and for giving advice.

People respond better to the human voice than they do to anonymous text over a screen.

If I say, "Hey Axe, could you get blink dagger for us, we need you to initiate" in a pleasant way, chances are he'll do that.  If I type, "Hey Jax, could you build Frozen Heart, you keep dying before you can do any damage in battle", in my experience he'll be less likely to comply.

Also, voice has the priceless advantage of not interrupting what you're doing.  When you're in the middle of a hectic battle or trying to get last hits, trying to type messages to your team just isn't going to happen.  I'm sure we all have stories of dying when we were trying to type something to our team.

In addition, people often miss typed commands.  I know I'm guilty of missing typed messages more than once because my eyes and attention are too focused on another part of the screen.

For example, if in DotA (or LoL) you type, "Back bottom, back, mid is coming" while they're involved in a tower dive, they may or may not respond because of that intense situation.  If you massively ping the map, they'll be more likely to respond, but still may not.  If you scream in voice chat, "Mid is coming bot back back back" while pinging the map, there's a 100% chance they'll hear you.

So I guess I can see arguments for or against it, but overall I like it.  At worst, Riot could add it, then just have it disabled by default like all-chat.  "Use at your own risk" or whatnot. 
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Offline Hearteater

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Re: Moba balance comparison, please comment
« Reply #69 on: January 07, 2013, 10:44:10 am »
Let me toss out Riot's various respones on some of these:

No integrated voice chat
Other companies do it better, so there is no reason for them to re-invent the wheel at this time.  Granted, Riot is much larger now, so someday they may reconsider.

no official replay system
They are already working on it, and the spectator client is actually also the replay client.  The only difference is to do replays they need to support the ability to watch a replay from an old verison of LoL.  So for example, they want a replay you make now to be viewable next year in Season 4.  To do this they are adding the ability to silently "back-patch" the client so it can run as any previous version of LoL to match the version of the replay.  To do that, they had to rebuild their entire patching system.  They are currently testing full-on replays in house so they should be closing in a replay client soon.  In addition, I believe I've seen mention of some players getting surveyed about if they would watch a replay of the game they just played, so hopefully replays are getting close.

no selling items back for full price because you accidentally bought it
There is some potential for abuse with global champs (Karthus).  Heimer can also abuse this because the item would buff his turrets immediately.

no pause feature for disconnectors
Makes games longer, when disconnects are largely either short or permanent.  Pauses for permanent disconnects do nothing but keep people stuck in a 4v5 longer.  Pauses for short disconnects are of fairly minimal impact because the other team doesn't get notified of the disconnect immediately, so they can't rush to take advantage.  That said, tournaments have pauses now.  I do support pauses being available in custom games.

no gold redistribution for leavers
Riot has been very focused on not putting anything in the game that might make a team benefit from someone on their own side leaving.  This is to prevent teams from harassing their teammates into leaving for some actual game benefit.

no auto-kick for someone who has been disconnected for more than 5 minutes total...
Not sure what you mean by auto-kick.  Are you talking about ending the game if it is a 4v5 for 5 minutes?

Controlling an allied hero when he disconnects.
Same reason as the gold redistribution, plus it isn't technically feasible for their game design.  You can never "unselect" your champion.

Being able to trade small items like consumables or (the DotA equivalent to) oracles, instead of having to continually go back to base.
Although they haven't talked about this issue in awhile, last time they mentioned it they indicated they wanted players to get sent back to base.  Letting someone buy and bring you out potions means harassment becomes less effective.  It is also basically gold-trading, and they didn't want to do anything else to further encourage funneling all the teams money to the carry.

Offline Lancefighter

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Re: Moba balance comparison, please comment
« Reply #70 on: January 08, 2013, 06:26:47 pm »
Yeah. Or, like me, you could have your own voice chat running elsewhere, and the game sounds (including voice, because the game doesnt want to differentiate the two properly and let them come out of different speakers). So I cant actually hear voice chat most of he time anyway, unless I really try and listen for it.

And even then, sometimes their mics are bad, they are quiet, etc. They think they are talking, but actually arent doing anything worth hearing. Then suddenly, 'missing mid' turns into '...' on my end, and when I ask why no missing call happened, I get 'noob player plz leave'.

So yeah, voice chat in IDEAL conditions is really good. Unfortunately, voice chat in dota does not approach ideal conditions.

ON the subject of higher level play, yeah, id agree. However, I feel like itd actually be incredibly trivial for league or dota players to set up a teamspeak or something stupid for the entirely of highmmrland to go on and voice chat with each other.

However.. Youknow what else doesnt interrupt what youre doing? The chat wheel. I really like it. League needs one. A system like tribes could also work (basically the same as chatwheel, but bigger and more keyboard oriented). There are ways other than voice to solve these problems. 
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Offline Wingflier

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Re: Moba balance comparison, please comment
« Reply #71 on: January 09, 2013, 12:24:30 pm »
Quote
No integrated voice chat
Other companies do it better, so there is no reason for them to re-invent the wheel at this time.  Granted, Riot is much larger now, so someday they may reconsider.
This is a bad excuse.

It's like a mother or father saying there's no reason for me took cook dinner because restaurants do it better.  Well yeah, perhaps they do, but what does that have to do with it?  We need dinner.

Whether or not Ventrilo, Mumble, or Skype can host better chat servers is really a non-sequitur.  That's completely missing the point.  The point is that there is a massive number of people who solo queue in this game (possibly even the majority), and solo ranked is basically guaranteed solo queue with a partner here and there, and they have no way to communicate with their team except via chat.  I've never seen somebody post their vent or mumble info before the game.  As Lancefighter said, it would be ideal, but it doesn't happen.

So for the minority of games, where you have an entire team of 5 people you know, yes, those external voice chat programs are great; other companies do it better.  Otherwise, Riot needs to come up with a better excuse.

Quote
Yeah. Or, like me, you could have your own voice chat running elsewhere, and the game sounds (including voice, because the game doesnt want to differentiate the two properly and let them come out of different speakers). So I cant actually hear voice chat most of he time anyway, unless I really try and listen for it.
That's your own personal choice though to dampen the game's voice chat with your own chat that you aren't using/aren't using for the game.  I use Mumble and it doesn't really hinder the game's voice feature, and if it did I wouldn't use it while playing.

Quote
And even then, sometimes their mics are bad, they are quiet, etc. They think they are talking, but actually arent doing anything worth hearing. Then suddenly, 'missing mid' turns into '...' on my end, and when I ask why no missing call happened, I get 'noob player plz leave'.
Rarely in my experience are mics too quiet to hear.  You've got to think that if a person has been using the same microphone for 100 games, somebody would have told them by now they couldn't hear them.  I immediately tell someone when they are too quiet and they usually turn it up. 

Quote
So yeah, voice chat in IDEAL conditions is really good. Unfortunately, voice chat in dota does not approach ideal conditions.
Well it's not ideal when you have another program dampening it or interfering with it for sure ;p, but then, what feature is?
« Last Edit: January 09, 2013, 01:38:08 pm by Wingflier »
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Offline Lancefighter

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Re: Moba balance comparison, please comment
« Reply #72 on: January 10, 2013, 05:40:26 am »
Its odd you mention that. Mumble by default has the attenuation feature thing I absolutely hate.

Honestly, I would love to have lots more control over what sounds go where, but for some reason sound drivers arent particularly good or something. Why can I not have stuff coming out of the default speakers, and then tell something else I want it to come out of my headphone jack?

anyway, I digress. I have found that on average I can actually legitimately hear and understand, and voice is used effectively by about one half of the people who use voice that I meet. Of course, on the other side of that, at least one half of the people who use voice are not using voice properly - either because they are speaking a language I cant understand, its being used in a non-helpful manner (read: trolling or poor manners etc), or it is something i can not understand because of other reasons.

The overall problem is probably more that 80% of the players I meet dont use voice at all. Then again, I much prefer this anyway.
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Offline Wingflier

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Re: Moba balance comparison, please comment
« Reply #73 on: January 11, 2013, 10:29:32 pm »
After playing League nonstop for about 2 months now (ELO Rating currently 1339 after 4 ranked games), I've realized there are some massive balance concerns that Riot is extremely slow to fix.

Let's take for example Khazix.  Look, I don't mind when a hero is a little broken.  I don't even mind if a hero is hard to deal with, as long as you can deal with them (like Darius).  What bothers me is when a hero has no weakness.

What exactly is Khazix's weakness?  He can lane, he can jungle, he can gank, he can farm, he can burst, he can carry, he has an escape, an initiation, a slow, and can go invis several times, and deals bonus damage when a target is alone.

Who's design was this?  Are you kidding me?  What exactly is Khazix weakness?  How does any hero even compare to him?

Eve is equally stupid.  Luckily they're nerfing her next patch, but whoever thought it was a good idea to give someone a RANGED AOE ULTIMATE that does 25% of each hero's MAXIMUM HEALTH in magic damage, then gives her a SHIELD for that amount, on top of the rest of her great skillset (passive invisibility anybody) was just horrible at balance.  Horrible.

Let's talk about another flat out retarded mechanic in League known as true damage.  Yes true damage - can't be reduced by anything period.

Let's talk about how Irelia can build Triforce, then Randuins, Warmog's, and Zephyr's, and then jump onto the carry every team fight.  If you focus her, you're focusing a tank, but if you don't focus her, she crushes your carry.  Why?  Because it doesn't matter how much armor or health they have, she deals true damage.  So you want to Exhaust her?  HA!  You're wasting your exhaust on a bruiser for one thing, which means their ranged carry gets to go to work on your team.  Meanwhile Irelia's passive means 40% CC reduction, plus the defensive mastery which is another 15%, plus Zephyr or Mercury boots which is another 35%; sure, they stack multiplicatively, but in essence, you're using Exhaust on a hero which will probably only get about 40% of the full duration of it, when you could be using on the squishy carry which is affected by 100% of it.  Either way, you lose.

Vayne deals PERCENTAGE BASED TRUE DAMAGE...LOL.  This is balanced how?

Darius' ult is also true damage, for exactly what reason?

There is absolutely no reason you couldn't replace these 3 champions true damage skills with a buffed physical damage equivalent and still have them be viable.  The problem with League is that there is no counter to true damage, so obviously uncounterable mechanics lead to top tier heroes DERP.

Don't get me wrong, true damage exists on a few heroes in DotA, but it can be countered.  It doesn't go through magic immunity for one thing, and since there's an item that grants that, you're already a step ahead of League in the non-retarded mechanic department.  In addition, there are items that can disarm carries for 4 seconds like Heaven's Halberd.  Finally, there's an item that makes you immune to physical attacks for 4 seconds, which is another counter to it.  On top of that, the only heroes that have the "true damage" mechanic are squishy Intelligence Heroes, much inferior carries to the more potent lategame Agility or Strength heroes, which would be the DotA equivalent to Vayne, Darius, or Irelia.

So I look at the beta patch preview, and they're nerfing Amumu and Lee Sin.  AMUMU AND LEE SIN WHEN YOU'VE GOT HEROES LIKE KHAZIX RUNNING RAMPANT.

I've got to give it to Riot, they've got a really good game, but they've got a long way to go before the balance is comparable to DotA's balance.  People say that the fact that more of the pool is used is proof that LoL's balance is better, but they're ignoring one fundamental fact:  Most players only own a fraction of League's pool, so obviously they're going to become proficient with the heroes they own.  Where in DotA, you can play and become good with any hero, so there's no reason to waste time playing MF because you bought her instead of Vayne. 

I digress.
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Offline Lancefighter

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Re: Moba balance comparison, please comment
« Reply #74 on: January 13, 2013, 01:02:02 am »
I've never actually found khazix to be particularly strong. I tried to play him a bit close to release (was he buffed?) but he didn't feel worth playing.

Eve I feel has HUGE scaling issues that nobody wants to discuss. Look at her q's ratio and cd..

True damage is a big issue. Itd be more of an issue if vayne could actually survive laning phase (I've been thinking about some possible workarounds, but I feel like vayne is countered by the other team putting anyone bottom lane..). Honestly, irelia is a huge issue. Shes just not currently favorable. Imnot really sure why tbh. I also dont keep up with the competitive scene particularly much.

Darius has issues. Everyone knows. Riot doesnt give a shit.

Honestly, there is an incredibly longstanding issue that absolutely nobody seems to want to even think about - ATTACK SPEED REDUCTION. Think about for a moment how strong attackspeed reduction is. Then remember that the numbers on attackspeed reductions are almost exactly the same as slows - Lee's 60% slow? Also reduces your autoattack dps by 60%. Yay! Balanced! ON a basic skill! That costs no mana! I digress slightly more. Malph's stomp thing is like 40%. Yeah. Forever. I think I've ranted on this before, but I hate attackspeed reductions in league.

To riot's credit, they have nerfed carries. A little bit. By reducing the strength of ad carry items, they made it so that carries actually need smore than two items to win the game. Maybe three now. Unfortunately, this is a DIRECT buff to tanky dps........ Yay, tanky dps. I wish it was a buff to casters, but honestly if the caster doesnt combo the carry, the carry is going to win virtually every time. Casters still cant combo anything else, because innate mr scaling, innate hp, etc.

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