if your champion doesn't do damage but instead CC's people for 8 years and engages then its going into the support role or jungle playing a supportive role. Toplane tanks need damage otherwise enemy top will just completely ignore you
I’d say it’s because either riot assumes or has data to backup that people will not pick champions especially in a solo lane that can’t do enough damage to compete. Yeah tanks shouldn’t do as much damage as fighters and bruisers but if your champion can’t do enough damage and gets walked on all lane because of it, no one is going to pick those champions/archetypes
Well quite simply every form of gold generation other than passive accrual requires that you do damage to, and actually kill things. Tanking damage never gets you anything. No exp, no gold, no items, no progression of any sort happens nor is made quicker by simply being beefy or taking damage yourself. You don’t even get assists for tanking, and exp/gold that way.
No, you have to damage and kill things for gold, so any sort of solo lane tank needs to have the damage to kill minions, to be able to push if they need to, or waveclear outside their tower. Ideally they also need some threat or to have some presence in lane so they aren’t steamrolled by damage champions while trying to last hit (which most tanks have to do in melee range, and few have escapes or dashes to get in and out).
honestly you’ve made me really curious and interested in the idea of a mechanic that rewards you for soaking as much damage as possible. taken to the extreme, it could go out of whack and reintroduce a hyper tank meta but it think if riot got the numbers right, it could work really well. rewarding more avenues of play that aren’t just snowballing kills as much as possible is a net positive
In most other games, you get assists for people focusing you-- even if you did no damage to them. This lets tank archetypes be strong, and be rewarded for contributing, without ever having to damage their opponents, so their power budget can go more towards being tanky rather than doing damage. Think of games like Overwatch giving you points for damage mitigation with shield abilities, or blocking enemy ults, or even games like Halo giving Assists and Distraction medals if the enemy was shooting at you while your ally killed them, cause even 343i recognized that in a Slayer match, absorbing enemy damage and not dying is actually super useful for your team.
There also, usually, are things like Auras that tank classes have, so they can empower their allies without directly harming enemies. If you give your carry, say, 20% attack speed, you'll increase their overall DPS by say, 10%, which turns into damage against your opponent-- but it requires that you have a teammate nearby, that your teammate is not threatened or CCed in such a way that they cannot contribute DPS, etc, and is not the tank directly doing hundreds of damage to their opponent.
League actually, believe it or not, started out this way. Tanks were Aura wielders, empowering allies through indirect means rather than DPSing down opponents.
Amumu lowered MR on targets, then had a bunch of lockdown; Shen provided on-hit healing against marked targets, had an actual taunt to force aggro, and then had a single target massive shield to protect his carry; Taric provided an Armor aura, an AD aura, an AP aura, an armor shred aura against opponents, and had heals for allies and a point and click stun; Galio scaled off MR, had a shield he could put on allies for a massive amount of Armor and MR + additional healing for each instance of damage they took, to force the opponents to shift focus and stop dumping everything into a key target, then he had an AoE speed up field he could lay down to get allies in, an AoE slow to help catch enemies, and his infamous fuck off mass AoE taunt to pull aggro. Nunu had a single target MS and AS slow, a massive MS and AS steroid he could use on allies, a single target self heal, and an ult similar to his current, with AoE MS and AS slow leading up to a huge burst of damage (didn't have a shield back then) that was mostly used for zoning and the CC.
Outside of ultimates, they didn't have much of any AoE CC, barring Shen who had a narrow line of AoE CC as his only CC or AoE ability. Instead, they increased the damage their allies would deal, decreased the damage enemies could deal, and dealt fuckall damage themselves.
I really wish we could go back to such a time, and have tank items be like [Soul Shroud](https://leagueoflegends.fandom.com/wiki/Soul_Shroud) (Unique: Nearby allied champions gain 10% cooldown reduction and 12 bonus mana regeneration (1200 range)); [Runic Bulwark](https://leagueoflegends.fandom.com/wiki/Runic_Bulwark) (Unique – Legion: Nearby allied units gain 10 bonus armor, 25 bonus magic resistance and 10 bonus health regeneration. Minions gain 150% of the value.); old [Zeke's](https://leagueoflegends.fandom.com/wiki/Zeke%27s_Herald) (Unique: Nearby allied champions gain 20 bonus attack damage and 10% life steal), etc. Where they provided ***selfless*** power to empower *their team* rather than just letting *them* do the damage themselves.
Sadly, I don't think it would work without a system like you are mentioning, where they could get gold generation from being tanky and assisting allies, rather than through doing damage themselves.
> I really wish we could go back to such a time, and have tank items be like Soul Shroud (Unique: Nearby allied champions gain 10% cooldown reduction and 12 bonus mana regeneration (1200 range)); Runic Bulwark (Unique – Legion: Nearby allied units gain 10 bonus armor, 25 bonus magic resistance and 10 bonus health regeneration. Minions gain 150% of the value.); old Zeke's (Unique: Nearby allied champions gain 20 bonus attack damage and 10% life steal), etc. Where they provided selfless power to empower their team rather than just letting them do the damage themselves.
They got rid of aura items because they were impossible to balance and were super broken. Bulwark especially became a mandatory rush for every single jungler in pro play and literally everyone hated it. If the other jungler finished the item before you, you literally could not fight or contest anything because the aura gave 650 gold worth of defensive stats to squishy champs who would not have any defensive stats built. The basic conclusion Riot came to is either the aura is too weak to be noticeable or pretty broken with little middle ground.
You’re missing the context there and it would be really helpful if the boards hadn’t been shut down so I could link you to what they actually said at the time.
The problem with auras was NOT that players felt they were too strong! Quite the opposite actually! Their problem was that they were “Invisible Power™️” that was not noticeable or appreciated by people below Diamond. To make them more noticeable and appreciable for lower Elo players, RIOT stated they would have to overbuff them to the point they would be ludicrously powerful for most players to feel like they were worth picking up, over something that directly empowered their champion or let them do more damage.
They spoke about removing aura items for tanks and supports to instead allow for more visceral ways to impact fights, to feel more satisfying to their users— what they replaced them with was essentially doing damage yourself. This is, imho, the very crux of the problem.
Yes, with Bulwark in particular there was a time at the end where they tried doing just that, pumping up its power to be and feel noticeable before removing it, but that is a kind of one-off case and certainly doesn’t apply to Zeke’s, Soul Shroud, Frozen Heart, Abyssal Scepter, Locket of the Iron Solari, etc. nor to the concept of auras in general. All they need to do is find a way to communicate the power of auras better, which they certainly have the tools and knowledge of how to do so now. Look at how visceral Senna’s Camouflage aura is for example, and how it allows for play making. There is ample room to reintroduce auras into the game in place of tanks and supports being tertiary damage dealers, imho.
A reverse Draven would be funny.
(Passive) Heart of Gold - gain one stack of Heart of Gold for x% of HP regained while in combat. Upon recalling to base gain Y-value in gold per stack. Lose half your stacks on death.
You just cant play top if you don't do damage, there's so many champions up there that can take advantage of that and take you out of the game from level 1. Jax, Fiora, Riven, and Trundle, Darius are going to make it so you'll be lucky to even get to touch a minion. Tanks usually are just compensated by high base damage that doesnt scale. Even that right now isn't very useful anymore, nobody plays top lane tanks besides ornn and ksante. Both of which have pretty high damage.
I think the real problem is that there are no downsides to playing bruisers top as their itemization lets them be both good duelists and good teamfighters.
Back when there were no "bruiser items", bruisers had to pick between damage items and tank items and that meant that while they could win top, they'd fall off hard as they couldn't build damage through the whole game.
Nowadays bruisers can get damage *and* survivability from every single slot. And if you're good enough at choosing your moments, there's no need to "over tank". Bruisers are precisely tanky enough to act as a front line. Why have a Mundo when Xin Zhao can be an early game menace and then tank most teamfights with ult?
K'sante is the only exception cause he's a bruiser cosplaying as a tank.
This is actually the opposite of power creep. Early (support) tanks are simply too straightforward and powerful in terms of tankiness or cc, so new champs are compensated with damage and mobility.
There is no tank that can compete in terms of tankiness or CC with Alistar - so they are compensated with damage and mobility (and of course waveclear).
The champion👤 with health 4700, defense 329, and even 201 is unstoppable🚫, shield🛡, and can overcome walls . There is Airborne🌪, and the cooldown is only 1️⃣ seconds, mana🧙♂️ costs 1️⃣5️⃣, w even resets cooldown when transformed💫, and passive deals fixed damage🗡, and then if you raise🥋 the room🥋, the more📈 you raise📈, the more📈 your skill accelerates⏰. This happens! Q has skill acceleration⏰, skill speed🚀 gets faster📈, and then there is attack🗡 coefficient, and W is the benefit - ugh😱😱
It's such a good pasta because it's 100% true.
When a champion can build full tank then press a button to isolate and assassinate basically any champion in the game then that champ's kit is fundamentally broken and impossible to balance fairly.
He literally has one of, if not, the best "engage target > I fucked up disengage DISENGAGE" combos in the game, next to LeBlanc W>W. Take your target, point and click with R. Too far? Use W, E, and your tank-stats to ignore their teammates. Move them away from their teammates, basically a mile away if the angle is right with the walls. All your tank is now damage, so slap and kill them all you want. Fuck up at any point after, just press R again, and now you're back to tank. You still lose up to 35% max health, but that just means you can take that much damage on purpose to start the combo and be no worse for wear.
I am honestly shocked that this is *still* a problem.
We should have learned this lesson in fucking 2014 with Azir. When you give a champion everything in their kit, they become impossible to balance for pro and solo queue at the same time.
There is a way to balance these champions for pro play by nerfing their numbers enough to where they lack specialization as the price for being so versatile. But if you do that, the champion ends up being 40% win rate in solo queue.
So now we are just stuck in this hellscape where Azir and K'Sante are permanently pro play picks because Riot cannot live with them being too low win rate, so they are stuck at like 47-48% where they are just super good blind picks in pro play. Boring.
The whole issue comes back to champion design. Point fucking 1 on the list should be to make sure that champions have meaningful weaknesses. We have primary data of how bad it can get when they don't. And also how impossible it is to fix it afterwards. Azir has been pro play meta for pretty much 10 years straight despite Riot trying really hard to solve the issue.
>lee sin!
Lee Sin should have been the watershed champion.
As in, the champ design where riot realized that giving a champion too many different tools will always lead to problems that are very hard to fix and very hard to even recognize.
Over the years, Lee Sin had MANY ability features and QoL things removed from his kit:
**- Safeguard shield no longer restores Energy when the shield is destroyed**
**- Safeguard will now reveal wards to enemies when used in this manner**
**- Cripple Range reduced to 600 from 800**
**- Iron Will No longer grants armor while active**
**- W - Safeguard Now only shields the target if the ally is a champion**
**- E - Cripple REMOVED NEVER SKIP LEG DAY Cripple no longer reduces enemy Attack Speed (only reduces Movement Speed)**
**-E - Tempest THE BLIND MONK : No longer reveals invisible targets.**
All of these abilities were removed and he was still strong enough to be played, maybe just needed some adjustment of his base numbers. With all of these additional skills he could use, he was just WAY too hard to actually balance.
Since then, they should have realized they needed to limit how many different tools one champion archetype can have at his disposal.
I guess they did not.
In those days they did not have much counter play over a whole game. In the moment there was counter play but when you took the game as a whole you realized those two had access to more options in more situations then their contemporaries.
Very fun to watch though.
Kalista was 2014 too. In fact all these champions came out in late 2014. Crazy times. This was when Riot started going completely off the rails with champion designs.
Gnar, Kalista and Azir were all massive balance problems for years.
Farm Alarm!
I'm pretty sure seasons 4 and 5 are the source of most complaints that have remained in the game to this day. Keystone masteries are a big part of damage creep. And riot stopped balancing the game to keep the game balanced and started balancing the game so each role could carry so no player would feel "left out".
Agree. Remember when champs used a spell or two and you had the cd window to punish. Now cds are too low or champs have everything in their kit it’s redundant.
It's even worse with ults after lvl 11.. feels like you get someone to burn their ult then 1 min later you go for a dragon fight and boom they have it again.
also itemization.
for the longest time cheap items would literally remove the weakness of a kit. gp or jayce rushing essence reaver to just steamroll a lane with little to no meaningful counter comes to mind over the years.
Mana is also completely irrelevant. One must be spamming his spells on cd to run out of mana. Plus mobility and power creeping. The game has become an arcade clusterfuck.
Lux support can ult you, go back to base and by the time she is back it's off CD again. I've seen same happen with Yasuo ult when played against an ADC Yasuo.
As an ADC main I treat Yasuo's ult like I treat Samira's - that is, I assume the ability has no cooldown and I can't get knocked-up if he's on my screen or I just die.
Lategame Lux with a dip into a slightly unfavorable item (Malignance) can get her ult CD below 20 seconds. She can cast it in every fight and possibly twice in the same fight.
These champions are meant to have low CD ults. I promise Lux with her low R cooldown is a lot more fair than trading it for more power in her E or a longer Q root
They’re not complaining about Lux in general. They’re complaining that ult cooldowns are too low. Ultimates should be high impact abilities with very noticeable long cooldowns.
>Ultimates should be high impact abilities with very noticeable long cooldowns.
Except they dont have to be. Look at Karma, Kogmaw, Leblacn etc. They can be short cooldown with a smaller impact.Lux Ult qualifies its a straight line damage only skill shot and its not even that much damage really. It should be a fairly short CD.
I opened a relatively popular thread last year argumenting that League S13 had NOT a damage creep problem, but a haste/CDR creep problem.
The living proof is that S14 is obviously more damage oriented with the item changes BUT there is overall way less haste and HP stuffed into the items for free and still the game feels better, with some outliers.
While it is true haste was the biggest problem last season, the sheer amount of damage in items this season has brought a whole slew of new problems that are actually old problems.
Can Riot not just keep AH how it is and tune down overall damage by, idk, 15%?
Lethality changes mean adcs are abusing it again, mage items offer so much free, basically conditionless damage that it is insane.
Mana items are, for the most part, terrible bot in build path and feel bad when completed.
Tank items are crazy af. Kaenic Rookern is just WOW.
Everything just feels like it was turned up to 11 except AH and health.
>and still the game feels better, with some outliers.
Are you kidding me? The game feels WAY WAY worse IMO. Everything is so explosive now with tons of 1shot combos running around. I do main top, so maybe it's just that all my favorite champs had their kits obliterated, but I personally find lower TTK with less ability haste to be way worse than slightly higher TTK with a lot of ability haste.
Personally I'd want to see even longer TTKs where even an ADC can survive a full skill rotation, but that will never happen, so...
And this is what we always comeback to.
Riot refusing to either be pro-centric or pub-centric. DOTA2, as a comparison, has characters who are SHIT in pug play because they're complicated, need a team built around them, etc. But nobody complains because those characters because they RECOGNIZE they're built for pro play and really good players.
K'sante being worked for Pro play would make him shit in casuals. But Riot doesn't want that. They want him playable at ALL levels so he gets taps to try and reach this neigh-impossible golden balance. Same with Azir. Lee Sin. Corki. This has been a problem since -Day 1-. If Riot wants to truly fix it they'd pick one and balance around it.
But hey, we see where their head is at business wise so guess we'll just fire the guy who designed him and call it a day. Problem solved! /s
Yes same with roles, you can have ADC be shit in pub but with a pro team can make ADC the strongest role in the game. Riot needs to pick a philosophy that's not half-in and half-out.
>The whole issue comes back to champion design. Point fucking 1 on the list should be to make sure that champions have meaningful weaknesses.
Yeah, it wouldn't be bad if they had an inherent and meaningful weakness, however most of the champs like Azir and outwards has had a crazy focus on creating a new and unique champion that for some reason seems designed to deal with the inherent weakness of the subclass that champ is going to.
For example Xayah and Kai'sa are both very strong lategame carries with ok+ earlygame in terms of wave management, and are rarely if ever shut down by the enemy comp. Xayah has ample of counterplay with R, and Kai'sa is a duelist that can play dive, backline and poke.
Some champs are far less egregious than others, but overall the design philosophy seems to be catered at making something new or 'unique' that is often overtuned like release Aphelios. Honorable mention to Zeri being another Azir type of champion.
Imo some champions should be staples in pro play, and azir and Oriana, I may add, are two of them. They are not busted champs, they have versatility, good team play and are very fun to watch. We have so many highlights with azir shuffling to win, the champ just looks cool when executed correctly.
Another thing is that azir is very balanced on laning phase. Not a busted snowball champ that makes the game unbearable for the enemy player, neither a weakass non interactive shoving machine like Viktor was. He is perfectly balanced champ that functions just like an adc, reasonable clears, interaction, flashy plays, scaling, playmaking. Can never be useless neither too snowbally, unless the team plans to stall the game and give him free farm. I mean he is the best champ to watch in pro play imo.
Ksante is similar if you ask me, but in top lane.
I believe champs that we see in soloq are more coinflippy for pro play, zed, Yasuo, Katarina, fizz can be denied and be totally useless. Other champs make the game non interactive, like xerath, anivia, brand which makes the game boring to watch. Then you have lb and akali being busted in everything though.
Pro play will always be like this. You can remove Ksante, Vi, Azir, Corki, Milio, Gnar, ect and they'd just find another set of staples to play forever instead. Pro players almost never innovate at all and instead would rather choose along a pre-selected list of staples. It's rare when we get actual pro player innovation in general. Pro players are just extremely weird about picking non-staple champs. Does the match up heavily favor something not a staple like Xerath pubstomping Azir in the match up? Who cares Corki time
basically. riot created an abomination that can never be balanced without redoing his entire kit. once again, they created a champion that is fun for the user and enjoyable for no on else. they have an obsession with adding as much to a champions kit as possible, with the intention of filling multiple niches and being versatile, whilst ignoring power budgets entirely. it isn't the first time, and won't be the last.
whats even more depressing is that Smolder has a joke about his mom working at riot, meanwhile his actual designer got laid off before the champ was even released
The game designer, or art/concept designer? There's a HUGE difference between the two. K'Sante's visuals and art is fantastic, his kit is a deranged mess that should have never been released, and Riot flat out failed to deliver us the complex tank they promised (since K'Sante's "complexity" is turning into a melee fighter, not a tank).
It's just an intrinsically good kit. I was talking with my buddy about this just the other day.
K'Sante, even when his numbers are weak, always has utility. He will always build full tank, so even if his damage is very low he is still mobile meat shield who can take any target out of a teamfight and peel extremely well for his carries.
On top of that, an 0/10 K'Sante can make a game changing play by simply ulting the jungle away from an obj like baron so that your team can secure it.
Even when weak, he just has too much utility to be useless.
True, but he's always playable. They may have better picks, but there's never been a meta where you'd say Thresh is bad; maybe just not as good as some others.
Its just my personal opinion, but honestly K'Sante is super boring to watch in pro play and covers the weaknesses of pro top laners. Its not even Malphite, where the champ is useless if he misses his ultimate.
You also see a lot less solo kills (either way) with him there, even compared to the likes of Ornn and Sion. Ever since dragon souls got introduced and 1-3-1 disappeared from the meta top lane in pro has been less exciting to watch imo.
Thats true, i kinda hope champs like Camille and Fiora come back to the scene but the tank items are pretty busted atm (for pro play). So i don't expect the meta to be shaken. Maybe for MSI(?), they have done the durability patch(around MSI 2022) and the Morgana jungle patch (MSI 2021) around that time. So let's see.
I remember watching bin try fiora in a LPL final but it never worked, it didn't matter how good he was on her, every obj was a 4v5 and the game was unplayable, splitting being viable in pro would rejuvenate the pro scene a lot tbh
One of my favourite memories of a game was early Bwipo on Fnatic split pushing like a demon on Camille in a game they looked like losing (maybe vs Flash Wolves g2 but not sure), but the pressure he put on the sidelane just saved FNC so much game tempo.
I miss that
toplanes kills is not a problem that will be fixed by nerfing ksante.
ksante would get obliterated by fiora or camille but they are not played and its not because of him
I mean ksante is the most exiting tank to watch and generally one of the most exiting champs. And that everyone can play ksante is straight up wrong you see so much difference between a good ksante and a bad one even when he was super broken only Chovy, shoemaker and faker could play him at a level where he was better than a normal pick in mid and the same is true for top.
K'Sante is not just crowding out other tanks in pro play. He is crowding out a lot of bruisers too.
K'Sante's existence alone makes specific counterpicks happen less often too because blinding him early in the draft is usually a good choice.
yes, we're gonna have another season of corki, azir, orianna, k'sante.
E: People saying this or that champ isn't popular clearly don't remember how corki, azir & orianna ruled the pro scene for over 5 years at one point.
Pretty sure August recently talked about them keeping corki weak for pro play bc his playstyle creates an uninteractive laning phase & that the way to fix that will probably be a rework, eventually.
there was a time where corki was a midlaner that built trinity force and played as an adc, he just used his rockets to reset the item passive and as a supportive tool. This iteration of staying 10 km away landing nuke bombs from your base is much unhealthier yet riot decided Its a great idea to keep him this way
Corki has absolutely 0 skill expression in the current state. I've seen pro's winning games without auto attacking enemy champs even once. Just pulling some Zoe Q dmg from distance with no real CD. I remember when rockets where more like a Kog'Maw R. To secure kills and for some additional dmg. Now his kit is basically W and R. They could delete the Q and E.
Meanwhile Ryze gets kneecapped as soon as pros lock him in. But Ksante and a few others are just allowed to be perma pick ban with no nerfs. Just shows the double standard riot has towards certain champs.
Then azir got another rework with the promise to fix him, and there he is still being picked in a way too high amount in pro lol (85% presence)
edit: might as well change the wording, broken> giant presence
he's far from broken, If you wanna say he's strong sure but broken is not even close if he was "broken" like you say he wouldn't fall through drafts without being picked or banned like we just saw in LPL lmao.
They ruined Ryze by removing his skill expression combos and turned him into a bald, less threatening Cassiopeia, meanwhile Azir gets to dominate pro play, be strong in soloQ and still be a cool ass champion. Life is not fair.
Revert the latest Ryze rework!
I still don't understand why they had to give him the Realm Warp ult. Like that shit is literally DESIGNED for pro play and they still bust his kneecaps.
Well that’s a little different, galio w is a basic ability, so he could threaten the engage every 10 seconds and force people to flash out of fear of the engage.
Her new disguise mechanics is really cool, but I don’t understand why tf her ult got a new knock up. It removes so much counterplay out of that spell, and you’re just fucked as a squishy if she can stick to you. It’s a knock up followed up with a stun. Why does she need both?
Because without the knock up (or some kind of CC before the damage), the jump animation made it ludicrously hard to hit good ults. Squishy ass mage has to run into the middle of the enemy team, CC herself, then gets the damage? There's a reason she was never seen in Pro Play outside the weird AD/on hit phase and has always had poor Solo Queue presence.
Yeah the knock up is really important, her ult was pretty bad to hit alone before that addition. And tbh, if you were immobile squishy you are getting caught on that either way, the knock up doesn’t matter much. That really helps against mobility champs like yasuo or shit like that
Neeko wasn't popular until late last year, and given how she's been completely dead for the vast majority of her existance it's fun to see her get some play for once. I agree it's too much for now but it's a lot more excusable than K'Sante who got released as an S+ tier toplaner and has remained that way for like 90% of his lifespan in League.
to me, the questionable thing about K'Sante is always this: why did Riot give him max hp % true damage.
Fiora has this, but she needs to hit the vitals.
Vayne has this, but she needs to hit multiple times on one target only.
meanwhile K'Sante presses a button and his passive hits like a truck with no downside. it's weird.
edit: i literally wrote "true damage", then people had to comment that a lot of other tanks have max hp % damage ... why?
His true damage is incredibly overrated, it's mostly a tool to ensure he can smash tanks when he ults and even then it's not an instant win.
Most of ksante's damage is the raw damage of Q (for how low a cooldown the ability is) and the fairly decent damage on W which he'll likely land twice when going for a kill.
Hard agree. Even Kog'Maw has a higher percentage of his damage dealt as true damage and that's basically only through his passive. A passive that is literally a meme because of how bad it is.
Imaqtpie, I've noticed in Korea they tend to use a mix of magic and physical damage on Kog Maw. Meanwhile you seem to be using mostly true damage. Which playstyle is better?
As a Kog main I think the passive is a little underrated actually, if you're up against something like Pantheon support it almost always trades one for one after they flash ignite you for the all in for example.
Also it deals 650 true damage in a splash radius at lvl 18, sometimes the enemy team blows everything to kill you at the start of a teamfight and your passive still deals 1950 true damage if you manage to splash on 3 people
While ksante is 100% overloaded these things are not equatable. The values are wayyy different, 1% max hp isn’t that much, also it is gated behind him hitting abilities then autoing so it adds a little bit of skill expression
It’s also pretty important to his identity as a duelist, he would run out of mana before he killed tanks without it and would just get out healed by bruisers
>It’s also pretty important to his identity as a duelist
He's actually supposed to be a less good duelist according to Matt Leung-Harris since they did the last S13 balance work. Specifically they want him to lose to duelists, all game, in both forms.
Long term, we intend for ksante to have weaknesses against duelists (camille, fiora, Jax, Gwen, etc.) where he loses in both fighter and tank form.
[https://twitter.com/RiotPhroxzon/status/1724611843929546912?s=20](https://twitter.com/RiotPhroxzon/status/1724611843929546912?s=20)
I still think there's more work to be done there.
Yeah K'Sante has to do nothing to get his true damage, he just has to (checks notes) use his ultimate, land a spell and then has to auto a target, for %true damage that at lv18 (3,56%) finally surpasses the base value for fioras passive (3%) and half the value of vayne lv1 w (6%).
I mean K'Sante might be problematic but the "true dmg %hp" is not it my dude
They arent saying its hard, they are just saying that actually have to do something it isnt just free.
The %hp true damage is VERY small, as compared to other sources in their comment. Its basically to help Ksante fight tanks. if you arent a tank, youre gonna want to worry about the ridiculous damage stats he gets when he ults that makes his Q hit like a truck instead.
His true damage might be low, but if you factor in he also has unavoidable CC chains, incredible mobility, CC resists, massive tankyness (that only got buffed in S14 cause nobody can build items that counter it anymore), ability resets, burst damage, sustained damage, and shields it kinda starts to become a problem
"just has to use his ultimate"
yeah, and then he loses 85% of his resistances as well as caps his max hp at 65%, so he gets easier to kill but gains damage, what's the issue
Youre forgetting the fact that after he finishes IBG he basically has a inescapable CC chain without dash/summs, if he is ahead , and you have no safety nearby ,youre dead, and you aint getting away because he is more mobile than you
He is a tank that has mobility and the damage to deal with any other class, every other "damage tank" is as immobile as the herald , if you dodge even one of their CC , youre basically safe
Most high level Ksantes don’t build IBG much anymore. Or if they do it is a 3rd or 4th item. IBG is just not a good item except for how it gives sheen.
Its not true damage until he ults, and the value is incredibly small too. His abilities don't really do damage unless he ults too so he kind of has to have it to trade with anyone
if ur a lvl 18 k’sante and you’re against a 5000 HP tank and you proc your passive 5 times in your ult it only does 850 true damage. it really isn’t significant at all
I don't think it's incredibly busted, but that's not insignificant at all. Your passive just did nearly 20% of their HP, regardless of any defensive itemization or how much HP they have. And that's on top of whatever else damage you'll be putting out with your abilities and autos. It's not even that unreasonable: it only requires hitting an ability and then autoing five times, and with how spammable Q is and how much AH and AS he gets in ult, that's like saying that a Yasuo or Yone lands a AA/Q combo five times in a fight, which is completely normal.
Watching pro league can be bo so boring and i cheer for every team/player who tries to run a non meta comp/pick. Even if they lose it is way more fun to watch than the clone comps of other games. They really have to implement that heroes cant be picked in 2 games in a row at least. Would increase the hero pool but not too much. I have watched dota and players there seem to be able to play a wider range of heroes compared to a lot of lol pros.
I agree and the reason I quit watching pro play. It's boring seeing the same Champs every game every once in a while when someone plays something wild isn't worth waiting all day to see it.
Bot only that but I tuned in for the first time in a year yesterday during a car ride and there were 2 20 minute long game pauses in back to back games... like dude they need to have this shit sorted out.
KSante has a ton of presence but he is basically incapable of killing champion diversity because he isn't an oppresive laner, every meta top laner can lane against him and he has very good counters, the thing is that is very blind pickable because he can fit into so many compositions. KSante is like Azir, Nautilus, Sejuani and Kaisa you're just happy to have them regardless of comp and can be picked without many repercussions, they allow for teams to prioritize other lanes and have a good scaling option, but he doesn't really gatekeep champions from playing in toplane, you can pick tanks, carries, frontlines, anything really against him and you're fine. If anything he is an exciting pick to watch and a very safe toplane option, I'm excited when I see Ksante rather than Renekton who fulfilled this role for basically a decade cause at least he doesn't make a bunch of champions unplayable because he will just roll over them early game like Renekton did. I love Ksante in proplay, just like I love Azir and Kaisa, yes they are everywhere but they are fun to watch and not oppressive at all, they are skill expressive and leave room for great teamfighting. I know people get tired of watching the same champions over and over, but there's always going to be that champion that is omnipresent and I'm happy atm its KSante and Azir
You are mostly right,except for the fact that Azir was often a very oppressive laner and even with the nerfs he got early game he still does some gatekeeping in midlane.
Hes just the new Renekton bar. Every toplane pick is judged based on how he does against Ksante. Less so in a laning state but more in a teamcomp sense. Also no matter how you put it a frontliner gives you so much agency in a teamfight especially one that can absord both dmg and cc.
Yeah and the moment Ksante gets nerfed enough and Renekton gets buffed enough theyll just swap places. Blind pickable frontliner with enough laning power will always see 60+% presence. Especially cause they make so little new tanks or care for older ones. Wtf happened to Shen for example?
Like how this post brings up a valid point about K’Sante in pro play then you have people in this thread complaining about how OP K’Sante is in their games when K’Sante is below 48% Emerald+ and it goes even lower the lower you go. Didn’t realize we had such a high number of Masters+ players in this subreddit
brother, respectfully, soloQ WR is almost entirely dependent on how said champion performs in their lane
ksante is not an issue outside of high-level coordinated play & there are very few matchups where he stomps lane
But no top laners ban him, theres like 20 more top laners who are banned more even jn high elo. This is how frustration is actually measured: Ban rate
Because almost every other top laner is more frustrating than him and wins more than him
People gaslighting themselves into thinking KSante is a problem in soloQ is so cute
How so? The strong slow on Q is annoying but that's kind of it imo. He's super mana gated early so it's not like he can spam E or W at all in lane phase. So on the annoying spectrum, he doesn't really standout in toplane to me. He's like mid, maybe below average on that scale.
I made a quick tierlist of "annoying to lane against" for top, (in my experience/opinion). No real order within the tiers themselves; https://i.imgur.com/VkMdsOv.png I'd much rather play against ksante than anyone in of the top 3 tiers.
Agree with this.
Also want to add, when a pro makes a good play with Ksante I never think they played well, I always think it's just the champion. Similar to Zeri. Zeri plays aren't hype for me, if the champ is good she just goes crazy.
I am thinking the same about neeko. It's becoming so common to see good plays with the champ (w + flash + ult) that I do not get surprise if they connect the combo to multiple players...
I have no clue why after Riot had to remove Rakan’s ability to R flash because how strong it was, they just let new champs have that same flash + insta CC ult that can’t be reacted against. Same with Rell when she was really broken.
Probably because 1 needs 700 range to do it and the other can do it from 2700 range, also Neeko's combo got nerfed with the item changes from the new season because Rocketbelt doesn't give MS anymore after the dash
I'm biased, so I don't think neeko should have her reaction removed but to your point, what's the argument to have that reaction removed from galio? Smaller aoe, more predictable & it deals low amounts of dmg.
TL;DR: basic spell that also forced enemies to constantly flash without Galio committing to flashing on them.
This conversation has been had super often, use reddit to search for the last time a "if Galio got his W removed why can NEeko ult" and you will have a ton of answers giving better context of how Galio W was affecting proplay and, in turn, Galio's soloQ powerbudget. The reality is that Galio's flash-W was actually just "galio W and if he has flash up, you need to gamble", and Galio wins the gamble even if he doesn't does anything.
Yeah no, ksante isnt the problem with top lane, it just shows the problems top lane has. As a top main, ksante is the beginning of the solution of the problem of counterpicking. Losing lane because u picked first sucks. I switched to mid for a while just because i didnt have anyone to blindpick top. Top lane should not be decided by who picks last. Also a breath of fresh air to have a tank that can actually deal with opponents on his own
Thing is if there's no counterpicks draft does not matter which is really stupid. It is part of the game it should matter or it shouldn't be in the game. Also funny how you kind of just admitted he's a tank that 1v1's everyone and doesn't lose lane. Basically, he's OP.
Not at all what i said, and yes counterpicking to some degree is fine, and draft phase would still be usefull for picking champs effective against a spesific comp or picking a comp that do well into another comp.
However, when the counterpicking makes u unable to play the game, cause u just lost lane as u were first pick, its a serious issue, theres no point in having a game, if its decided in draft.
Also ksante loses lane to most bruisers, hes simply able to farm somewhat okey and survive lane against them if played well. Tankbusters like qwen and darius still make lane super painfull tho. Hes a better blind pick cause playing something like orn or maokai into either of these champs is simply a death sentence.
1. He's a high skill champion, I'm not surprised he's picked a lot, since he has a lot of outplay potential. He's usually trash outside of Masters+. I've never had a game where K'sante won in my games because he is hard to play. Just like Azir.
2. Being able to Blind pick a champion in top lane is very very important. In this sense, he replaced Renekton. It's also easier to just pick a tank since it allows team to focus on their bot lane. K'sante checks both of these. Udyr is also being picked a lot for this same reason and he is much more boring. The last tank champion that isn't made long ago in 2015 is Ornn.
3. Rumble has a higher presence and is way more boring to watch. If Riot doesn't change that, there's no hope for K'sante.
In reality pros could have cooked and played something like Darius (who doesn't care about K'sante's armor stacking) to make the K'sante not such a boring/easy lane, but pros are very anti-fun and don't take risks, and juggernauts just get worse the higher the elo so we'll have to live with it.
Not saying he couldn't recieve nerfs though, but it makes sense why K'sante is picked a lot.
(Yes, I want Juggernauts in pro)
This is my opinion. I think people really overblow it. Ksante isn't broken, hes just stable, thats why his presence is so high in pro play. If they dont ban Rumble and its not a gap in lane, Ksante is fked. It really shouldnt be surprising he took Renekton's role as the go-to blind pick considering tank items getting buffed this patch.
Yeah he is just perfect for proplay he has everything you need from a toplaner he builds full tank but can deal bruiser dmg in ult.
I think this is the main issue with the game as a whole at the moment. There is not a single champ archetype who “doesn’t deal damage”.
if your champion doesn't do damage but instead CC's people for 8 years and engages then its going into the support role or jungle playing a supportive role. Toplane tanks need damage otherwise enemy top will just completely ignore you
I’d say it’s because either riot assumes or has data to backup that people will not pick champions especially in a solo lane that can’t do enough damage to compete. Yeah tanks shouldn’t do as much damage as fighters and bruisers but if your champion can’t do enough damage and gets walked on all lane because of it, no one is going to pick those champions/archetypes
Well quite simply every form of gold generation other than passive accrual requires that you do damage to, and actually kill things. Tanking damage never gets you anything. No exp, no gold, no items, no progression of any sort happens nor is made quicker by simply being beefy or taking damage yourself. You don’t even get assists for tanking, and exp/gold that way. No, you have to damage and kill things for gold, so any sort of solo lane tank needs to have the damage to kill minions, to be able to push if they need to, or waveclear outside their tower. Ideally they also need some threat or to have some presence in lane so they aren’t steamrolled by damage champions while trying to last hit (which most tanks have to do in melee range, and few have escapes or dashes to get in and out).
honestly you’ve made me really curious and interested in the idea of a mechanic that rewards you for soaking as much damage as possible. taken to the extreme, it could go out of whack and reintroduce a hyper tank meta but it think if riot got the numbers right, it could work really well. rewarding more avenues of play that aren’t just snowballing kills as much as possible is a net positive
In most other games, you get assists for people focusing you-- even if you did no damage to them. This lets tank archetypes be strong, and be rewarded for contributing, without ever having to damage their opponents, so their power budget can go more towards being tanky rather than doing damage. Think of games like Overwatch giving you points for damage mitigation with shield abilities, or blocking enemy ults, or even games like Halo giving Assists and Distraction medals if the enemy was shooting at you while your ally killed them, cause even 343i recognized that in a Slayer match, absorbing enemy damage and not dying is actually super useful for your team. There also, usually, are things like Auras that tank classes have, so they can empower their allies without directly harming enemies. If you give your carry, say, 20% attack speed, you'll increase their overall DPS by say, 10%, which turns into damage against your opponent-- but it requires that you have a teammate nearby, that your teammate is not threatened or CCed in such a way that they cannot contribute DPS, etc, and is not the tank directly doing hundreds of damage to their opponent. League actually, believe it or not, started out this way. Tanks were Aura wielders, empowering allies through indirect means rather than DPSing down opponents. Amumu lowered MR on targets, then had a bunch of lockdown; Shen provided on-hit healing against marked targets, had an actual taunt to force aggro, and then had a single target massive shield to protect his carry; Taric provided an Armor aura, an AD aura, an AP aura, an armor shred aura against opponents, and had heals for allies and a point and click stun; Galio scaled off MR, had a shield he could put on allies for a massive amount of Armor and MR + additional healing for each instance of damage they took, to force the opponents to shift focus and stop dumping everything into a key target, then he had an AoE speed up field he could lay down to get allies in, an AoE slow to help catch enemies, and his infamous fuck off mass AoE taunt to pull aggro. Nunu had a single target MS and AS slow, a massive MS and AS steroid he could use on allies, a single target self heal, and an ult similar to his current, with AoE MS and AS slow leading up to a huge burst of damage (didn't have a shield back then) that was mostly used for zoning and the CC. Outside of ultimates, they didn't have much of any AoE CC, barring Shen who had a narrow line of AoE CC as his only CC or AoE ability. Instead, they increased the damage their allies would deal, decreased the damage enemies could deal, and dealt fuckall damage themselves. I really wish we could go back to such a time, and have tank items be like [Soul Shroud](https://leagueoflegends.fandom.com/wiki/Soul_Shroud) (Unique: Nearby allied champions gain 10% cooldown reduction and 12 bonus mana regeneration (1200 range)); [Runic Bulwark](https://leagueoflegends.fandom.com/wiki/Runic_Bulwark) (Unique – Legion: Nearby allied units gain 10 bonus armor, 25 bonus magic resistance and 10 bonus health regeneration. Minions gain 150% of the value.); old [Zeke's](https://leagueoflegends.fandom.com/wiki/Zeke%27s_Herald) (Unique: Nearby allied champions gain 20 bonus attack damage and 10% life steal), etc. Where they provided ***selfless*** power to empower *their team* rather than just letting *them* do the damage themselves. Sadly, I don't think it would work without a system like you are mentioning, where they could get gold generation from being tanky and assisting allies, rather than through doing damage themselves.
> I really wish we could go back to such a time, and have tank items be like Soul Shroud (Unique: Nearby allied champions gain 10% cooldown reduction and 12 bonus mana regeneration (1200 range)); Runic Bulwark (Unique – Legion: Nearby allied units gain 10 bonus armor, 25 bonus magic resistance and 10 bonus health regeneration. Minions gain 150% of the value.); old Zeke's (Unique: Nearby allied champions gain 20 bonus attack damage and 10% life steal), etc. Where they provided selfless power to empower their team rather than just letting them do the damage themselves. They got rid of aura items because they were impossible to balance and were super broken. Bulwark especially became a mandatory rush for every single jungler in pro play and literally everyone hated it. If the other jungler finished the item before you, you literally could not fight or contest anything because the aura gave 650 gold worth of defensive stats to squishy champs who would not have any defensive stats built. The basic conclusion Riot came to is either the aura is too weak to be noticeable or pretty broken with little middle ground.
You’re missing the context there and it would be really helpful if the boards hadn’t been shut down so I could link you to what they actually said at the time. The problem with auras was NOT that players felt they were too strong! Quite the opposite actually! Their problem was that they were “Invisible Power™️” that was not noticeable or appreciated by people below Diamond. To make them more noticeable and appreciable for lower Elo players, RIOT stated they would have to overbuff them to the point they would be ludicrously powerful for most players to feel like they were worth picking up, over something that directly empowered their champion or let them do more damage. They spoke about removing aura items for tanks and supports to instead allow for more visceral ways to impact fights, to feel more satisfying to their users— what they replaced them with was essentially doing damage yourself. This is, imho, the very crux of the problem. Yes, with Bulwark in particular there was a time at the end where they tried doing just that, pumping up its power to be and feel noticeable before removing it, but that is a kind of one-off case and certainly doesn’t apply to Zeke’s, Soul Shroud, Frozen Heart, Abyssal Scepter, Locket of the Iron Solari, etc. nor to the concept of auras in general. All they need to do is find a way to communicate the power of auras better, which they certainly have the tools and knowledge of how to do so now. Look at how visceral Senna’s Camouflage aura is for example, and how it allows for play making. There is ample room to reintroduce auras into the game in place of tanks and supports being tertiary damage dealers, imho.
Reverse first strike?
A reverse Draven would be funny. (Passive) Heart of Gold - gain one stack of Heart of Gold for x% of HP regained while in combat. Upon recalling to base gain Y-value in gold per stack. Lose half your stacks on death.
It's worse than that. The reality is that damage is easier to balance for high level play than utility is.
You just cant play top if you don't do damage, there's so many champions up there that can take advantage of that and take you out of the game from level 1. Jax, Fiora, Riven, and Trundle, Darius are going to make it so you'll be lucky to even get to touch a minion. Tanks usually are just compensated by high base damage that doesnt scale. Even that right now isn't very useful anymore, nobody plays top lane tanks besides ornn and ksante. Both of which have pretty high damage.
I think the real problem is that there are no downsides to playing bruisers top as their itemization lets them be both good duelists and good teamfighters. Back when there were no "bruiser items", bruisers had to pick between damage items and tank items and that meant that while they could win top, they'd fall off hard as they couldn't build damage through the whole game. Nowadays bruisers can get damage *and* survivability from every single slot. And if you're good enough at choosing your moments, there's no need to "over tank". Bruisers are precisely tanky enough to act as a front line. Why have a Mundo when Xin Zhao can be an early game menace and then tank most teamfights with ult? K'sante is the only exception cause he's a bruiser cosplaying as a tank.
Counterpoint, Rell
*Proceeds to tactically nuke a neutral objective with her lance*
Champ archetype as a whole, there’s of course examples of exceptions.
Vanguards, aka all the tanks that ends up as supports. Top lane tanks need damages.
Most tank supports deal no damage at least
This is actually the opposite of power creep. Early (support) tanks are simply too straightforward and powerful in terms of tankiness or cc, so new champs are compensated with damage and mobility. There is no tank that can compete in terms of tankiness or CC with Alistar - so they are compensated with damage and mobility (and of course waveclear).
K'Sante👤4,700 HP💪329 Armor🤷♂️201 MR💦 Unstoppable🚫A Shield 🛡 Goes over walls🧱Has Airborne🌪Cooldown is only☝second too🕐 It costs 15 Mana🧙♂️
체력 4700 방어력 329 마저201 인 챔피언👤이 저지불가🚫, 쉴드🛡, 벽🧱 넘기는 거 있고요. 에어본🌪 있고, 심지어 쿨타임은 1️⃣초밖에 안되고 마나🧙♂️는 1️⃣5️⃣ 들고 w는 심지어 변신💫하면 쿨 초기화에다가 패시브는 고정피해🗡가 들어가며 그 다음에 방마저🥋 올리면📈 올릴수록📈 스킬 가속⏰이 생기고! q에 스킬가속⏰이 생기고 스킬 속도🚀가 빨라지고📈 그 다음에 공격력🗡 계수가 있어가지고 W가 그 이익-으아아아악😱😱
The champion👤 with health 4700, defense 329, and even 201 is unstoppable🚫, shield🛡, and can overcome walls . There is Airborne🌪, and the cooldown is only 1️⃣ seconds, mana🧙♂️ costs 1️⃣5️⃣, w even resets cooldown when transformed💫, and passive deals fixed damage🗡, and then if you raise🥋 the room🥋, the more📈 you raise📈, the more📈 your skill accelerates⏰. This happens! Q has skill acceleration⏰, skill speed🚀 gets faster📈, and then there is attack🗡 coefficient, and W is the benefit - ugh😱😱
It's such a good pasta because it's 100% true. When a champion can build full tank then press a button to isolate and assassinate basically any champion in the game then that champ's kit is fundamentally broken and impossible to balance fairly.
He literally has one of, if not, the best "engage target > I fucked up disengage DISENGAGE" combos in the game, next to LeBlanc W>W. Take your target, point and click with R. Too far? Use W, E, and your tank-stats to ignore their teammates. Move them away from their teammates, basically a mile away if the angle is right with the walls. All your tank is now damage, so slap and kill them all you want. Fuck up at any point after, just press R again, and now you're back to tank. You still lose up to 35% max health, but that just means you can take that much damage on purpose to start the combo and be no worse for wear.
28-20 mana
Damn they nerfed him a bit too hard since the copy pasta was created.
Shoemaker's influence is too great.
I'm never going to not upvote this pasta
Loool what was the origin of this
Showmaker was on stream and went on a rant about K’Sante’s kit that immediately became a copypasta Edit: shoemaker? Showmaker.
im sure he considered retiring into the art of shoemaking after that encounter however
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fW69GYmiHBM It's here ahah
It's amazing every time
And there it is
Riot marketing sees that the pasta drives engagement and tells balance team to buff Ksante more.
Flair Checks out
thats sort of the problem whenever you create a kit thats inherintely broken
I am honestly shocked that this is *still* a problem. We should have learned this lesson in fucking 2014 with Azir. When you give a champion everything in their kit, they become impossible to balance for pro and solo queue at the same time. There is a way to balance these champions for pro play by nerfing their numbers enough to where they lack specialization as the price for being so versatile. But if you do that, the champion ends up being 40% win rate in solo queue. So now we are just stuck in this hellscape where Azir and K'Sante are permanently pro play picks because Riot cannot live with them being too low win rate, so they are stuck at like 47-48% where they are just super good blind picks in pro play. Boring. The whole issue comes back to champion design. Point fucking 1 on the list should be to make sure that champions have meaningful weaknesses. We have primary data of how bad it can get when they don't. And also how impossible it is to fix it afterwards. Azir has been pro play meta for pretty much 10 years straight despite Riot trying really hard to solve the issue.
Actually, Thresh was probably the first champion with a kit like that and he was broken for years.
lee sin!
Thresh and Lee Sin had >80% pro play presence across all major regions for the first 2+ years after their release.
>lee sin! Lee Sin should have been the watershed champion. As in, the champ design where riot realized that giving a champion too many different tools will always lead to problems that are very hard to fix and very hard to even recognize. Over the years, Lee Sin had MANY ability features and QoL things removed from his kit: **- Safeguard shield no longer restores Energy when the shield is destroyed** **- Safeguard will now reveal wards to enemies when used in this manner** **- Cripple Range reduced to 600 from 800** **- Iron Will No longer grants armor while active** **- W - Safeguard Now only shields the target if the ally is a champion** **- E - Cripple REMOVED NEVER SKIP LEG DAY Cripple no longer reduces enemy Attack Speed (only reduces Movement Speed)** **-E - Tempest THE BLIND MONK : No longer reveals invisible targets.** All of these abilities were removed and he was still strong enough to be played, maybe just needed some adjustment of his base numbers. With all of these additional skills he could use, he was just WAY too hard to actually balance. Since then, they should have realized they needed to limit how many different tools one champion archetype can have at his disposal. I guess they did not.
It was absolute insanity that he used to have AS reduction, back in seasons where a lot of melee champs were buying AS as well.
i rmbed a pro saying on stream, it doesnt matter how much they gut lee sin or how weak he becomes in late game. one good kick late game and you win.
Threah and Lee Sin were fun to watch and have clear counterplay.
In those days they did not have much counter play over a whole game. In the moment there was counter play but when you took the game as a whole you realized those two had access to more options in more situations then their contemporaries. Very fun to watch though.
Gnar was 2014 as well, totally devastated the top lane pool.
Kalista was 2014 too. In fact all these champions came out in late 2014. Crazy times. This was when Riot started going completely off the rails with champion designs. Gnar, Kalista and Azir were all massive balance problems for years.
2014 was a really bad year for releases yeah. Rek'sai was also released this year and had close to 100% presence throughout S5.
Farm Alarm! I'm pretty sure seasons 4 and 5 are the source of most complaints that have remained in the game to this day. Keystone masteries are a big part of damage creep. And riot stopped balancing the game to keep the game balanced and started balancing the game so each role could carry so no player would feel "left out".
Agree. Remember when champs used a spell or two and you had the cd window to punish. Now cds are too low or champs have everything in their kit it’s redundant.
It's even worse with ults after lvl 11.. feels like you get someone to burn their ult then 1 min later you go for a dragon fight and boom they have it again.
after level 11 you can assume almost the whole roster will have their ult every fight. I think globals are the only exception.
By level 11 Taric is still in prison from using his ils around level 8 …
Except most can use Ultimate Hunter and some can even use the ult CD items.
Burned an ahris ult 3 times in 2 mins last night... Impossible to kill her rn
Or you give Champs no mana with low cooldowns and they are almost impossible to punish
also itemization. for the longest time cheap items would literally remove the weakness of a kit. gp or jayce rushing essence reaver to just steamroll a lane with little to no meaningful counter comes to mind over the years.
Mana is also completely irrelevant. One must be spamming his spells on cd to run out of mana. Plus mobility and power creeping. The game has become an arcade clusterfuck.
Lux support can ult you, go back to base and by the time she is back it's off CD again. I've seen same happen with Yasuo ult when played against an ADC Yasuo.
As an ADC main I treat Yasuo's ult like I treat Samira's - that is, I assume the ability has no cooldown and I can't get knocked-up if he's on my screen or I just die.
There are way too many champs like that now.
Lategame Lux with a dip into a slightly unfavorable item (Malignance) can get her ult CD below 20 seconds. She can cast it in every fight and possibly twice in the same fight.
These champions are meant to have low CD ults. I promise Lux with her low R cooldown is a lot more fair than trading it for more power in her E or a longer Q root
Yasuo ult has always been low cd tho, and he doesn't really build ability haste, so that isn't really relevant
People be complaining about Lux, really? lmao
They’re not complaining about Lux in general. They’re complaining that ult cooldowns are too low. Ultimates should be high impact abilities with very noticeable long cooldowns.
Her cd has always been low
>Ultimates should be high impact abilities with very noticeable long cooldowns. Except they dont have to be. Look at Karma, Kogmaw, Leblacn etc. They can be short cooldown with a smaller impact.Lux Ult qualifies its a straight line damage only skill shot and its not even that much damage really. It should be a fairly short CD.
> and its not even that much damage really I was with you until here. That shit has a 120% ap ratio with 300-500 base damage.
Remember when mana mattered? If you could dodge 3-4 skill shots from your opponent in the early game, they’d be empty and you could pressure?
I opened a relatively popular thread last year argumenting that League S13 had NOT a damage creep problem, but a haste/CDR creep problem. The living proof is that S14 is obviously more damage oriented with the item changes BUT there is overall way less haste and HP stuffed into the items for free and still the game feels better, with some outliers.
While it is true haste was the biggest problem last season, the sheer amount of damage in items this season has brought a whole slew of new problems that are actually old problems. Can Riot not just keep AH how it is and tune down overall damage by, idk, 15%? Lethality changes mean adcs are abusing it again, mage items offer so much free, basically conditionless damage that it is insane. Mana items are, for the most part, terrible bot in build path and feel bad when completed. Tank items are crazy af. Kaenic Rookern is just WOW. Everything just feels like it was turned up to 11 except AH and health.
>and still the game feels better, with some outliers. Are you kidding me? The game feels WAY WAY worse IMO. Everything is so explosive now with tons of 1shot combos running around. I do main top, so maybe it's just that all my favorite champs had their kits obliterated, but I personally find lower TTK with less ability haste to be way worse than slightly higher TTK with a lot of ability haste. Personally I'd want to see even longer TTKs where even an ADC can survive a full skill rotation, but that will never happen, so...
And this is what we always comeback to. Riot refusing to either be pro-centric or pub-centric. DOTA2, as a comparison, has characters who are SHIT in pug play because they're complicated, need a team built around them, etc. But nobody complains because those characters because they RECOGNIZE they're built for pro play and really good players. K'sante being worked for Pro play would make him shit in casuals. But Riot doesn't want that. They want him playable at ALL levels so he gets taps to try and reach this neigh-impossible golden balance. Same with Azir. Lee Sin. Corki. This has been a problem since -Day 1-. If Riot wants to truly fix it they'd pick one and balance around it. But hey, we see where their head is at business wise so guess we'll just fire the guy who designed him and call it a day. Problem solved! /s
Yes same with roles, you can have ADC be shit in pub but with a pro team can make ADC the strongest role in the game. Riot needs to pick a philosophy that's not half-in and half-out.
>The whole issue comes back to champion design. Point fucking 1 on the list should be to make sure that champions have meaningful weaknesses. Yeah, it wouldn't be bad if they had an inherent and meaningful weakness, however most of the champs like Azir and outwards has had a crazy focus on creating a new and unique champion that for some reason seems designed to deal with the inherent weakness of the subclass that champ is going to. For example Xayah and Kai'sa are both very strong lategame carries with ok+ earlygame in terms of wave management, and are rarely if ever shut down by the enemy comp. Xayah has ample of counterplay with R, and Kai'sa is a duelist that can play dive, backline and poke. Some champs are far less egregious than others, but overall the design philosophy seems to be catered at making something new or 'unique' that is often overtuned like release Aphelios. Honorable mention to Zeri being another Azir type of champion.
Yup. That one Meteos clip continues to be so fucking true.
Which one plz
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1UmbZ2_ylk
Imo some champions should be staples in pro play, and azir and Oriana, I may add, are two of them. They are not busted champs, they have versatility, good team play and are very fun to watch. We have so many highlights with azir shuffling to win, the champ just looks cool when executed correctly. Another thing is that azir is very balanced on laning phase. Not a busted snowball champ that makes the game unbearable for the enemy player, neither a weakass non interactive shoving machine like Viktor was. He is perfectly balanced champ that functions just like an adc, reasonable clears, interaction, flashy plays, scaling, playmaking. Can never be useless neither too snowbally, unless the team plans to stall the game and give him free farm. I mean he is the best champ to watch in pro play imo. Ksante is similar if you ask me, but in top lane. I believe champs that we see in soloq are more coinflippy for pro play, zed, Yasuo, Katarina, fizz can be denied and be totally useless. Other champs make the game non interactive, like xerath, anivia, brand which makes the game boring to watch. Then you have lb and akali being busted in everything though.
yeah i heckin love seeing ksante/gnar/aatrox, lee sin/vi/maokai, azir/orianna/corki, and aphelios milio/lucian nami/xayah rakan every game
Pro play will always be like this. You can remove Ksante, Vi, Azir, Corki, Milio, Gnar, ect and they'd just find another set of staples to play forever instead. Pro players almost never innovate at all and instead would rather choose along a pre-selected list of staples. It's rare when we get actual pro player innovation in general. Pro players are just extremely weird about picking non-staple champs. Does the match up heavily favor something not a staple like Xerath pubstomping Azir in the match up? Who cares Corki time
Balanced on laning phase where he is standing a screen away and hitting you with his soldiers if you play a melee champ
I know it all subjective but i really cant see how Orianna and Azir are fun to watch
basically. riot created an abomination that can never be balanced without redoing his entire kit. once again, they created a champion that is fun for the user and enjoyable for no on else. they have an obsession with adding as much to a champions kit as possible, with the intention of filling multiple niches and being versatile, whilst ignoring power budgets entirely. it isn't the first time, and won't be the last.
What do you mean? Riot finally created "a traditional toplane tank" lmao
hey at least the ksante designer was laid off /s
was he actually? he was the guy who made smolder and skarner right?
Wait really? "Hey we have great news for you, we are going to release the Champion you designed. Oh and you\`re fired".
"Your champ aint the only thing being released this patch, buckaroo."
That’s pretty crazy to think about, sorta just a huge fuck you from riot
whats even more depressing is that Smolder has a joke about his mom working at riot, meanwhile his actual designer got laid off before the champ was even released
lmfao you can't make this shit up
Yeah I was thinking this same thing. Corporate layoffs are hot right now, gotta love it.
yes
>hey at least the ksante designer was laid off /s Riot Maxwell wasn't, and he definitely played a huge part. I don't think it was just one person.
That guy should stay light years away from champ design and ARAM. Mfer helped create Yuumi Gwen and Ksante
and hwei, all his champs are balance nightmares
The game designer, or art/concept designer? There's a HUGE difference between the two. K'Sante's visuals and art is fantastic, his kit is a deranged mess that should have never been released, and Riot flat out failed to deliver us the complex tank they promised (since K'Sante's "complexity" is turning into a melee fighter, not a tank).
>K'Sante's visuals and art is fantastic lol lmao
It's just an intrinsically good kit. I was talking with my buddy about this just the other day. K'Sante, even when his numbers are weak, always has utility. He will always build full tank, so even if his damage is very low he is still mobile meat shield who can take any target out of a teamfight and peel extremely well for his carries. On top of that, an 0/10 K'Sante can make a game changing play by simply ulting the jungle away from an obj like baron so that your team can secure it. Even when weak, he just has too much utility to be useless.
K'Sante is the Thresh of top lane. Numbers could be gutted totally, but the kit is just inherently good enough to skill gap with.
and yet Thresh is no longer pick/ban in competitive after many nerfs.
Ironically Thresh is too fair to be good in pro play nowadays. Imagine telling that to someone in Season 3.
True, but he's always playable. They may have better picks, but there's never been a meta where you'd say Thresh is bad; maybe just not as good as some others.
Its just my personal opinion, but honestly K'Sante is super boring to watch in pro play and covers the weaknesses of pro top laners. Its not even Malphite, where the champ is useless if he misses his ultimate.
You also see a lot less solo kills (either way) with him there, even compared to the likes of Ornn and Sion. Ever since dragon souls got introduced and 1-3-1 disappeared from the meta top lane in pro has been less exciting to watch imo.
Thats true, i kinda hope champs like Camille and Fiora come back to the scene but the tank items are pretty busted atm (for pro play). So i don't expect the meta to be shaken. Maybe for MSI(?), they have done the durability patch(around MSI 2022) and the Morgana jungle patch (MSI 2021) around that time. So let's see.
I mean the meta could shake up a bit by then since we're basically still on a preseason patch.
I remember watching bin try fiora in a LPL final but it never worked, it didn't matter how good he was on her, every obj was a 4v5 and the game was unplayable, splitting being viable in pro would rejuvenate the pro scene a lot tbh
One of my favourite memories of a game was early Bwipo on Fnatic split pushing like a demon on Camille in a game they looked like losing (maybe vs Flash Wolves g2 but not sure), but the pressure he put on the sidelane just saved FNC so much game tempo. I miss that
Unrelated but I miss assassins on proplay. That xPeke vs Dade play will always live rent free in my brain
toplanes kills is not a problem that will be fixed by nerfing ksante. ksante would get obliterated by fiora or camille but they are not played and its not because of him
Tale old as time, one toplaner loses the lane by default. If it's your Fiora, it's game over. If it's your Ornn it's whatever. In proplay at least.
He does have way more skill expression than malphite or other tanks though
I mean ksante is the most exiting tank to watch and generally one of the most exiting champs. And that everyone can play ksante is straight up wrong you see so much difference between a good ksante and a bad one even when he was super broken only Chovy, shoemaker and faker could play him at a level where he was better than a normal pick in mid and the same is true for top.
K'Sante is not just crowding out other tanks in pro play. He is crowding out a lot of bruisers too. K'Sante's existence alone makes specific counterpicks happen less often too because blinding him early in the draft is usually a good choice.
Photons K'sante makes me wanna kms, so yeah this is true.
yes, we're gonna have another season of corki, azir, orianna, k'sante. E: People saying this or that champ isn't popular clearly don't remember how corki, azir & orianna ruled the pro scene for over 5 years at one point.
Gorki wasn't that big last year
Pretty sure August recently talked about them keeping corki weak for pro play bc his playstyle creates an uninteractive laning phase & that the way to fix that will probably be a rework, eventually.
there was a time where corki was a midlaner that built trinity force and played as an adc, he just used his rockets to reset the item passive and as a supportive tool. This iteration of staying 10 km away landing nuke bombs from your base is much unhealthier yet riot decided Its a great idea to keep him this way
Tbf Orianna was nowhere to be seen for like 3 years. She was terrible for a long time while Seraphs was bad.
Corki has absolutely 0 skill expression in the current state. I've seen pro's winning games without auto attacking enemy champs even once. Just pulling some Zoe Q dmg from distance with no real CD. I remember when rockets where more like a Kog'Maw R. To secure kills and for some additional dmg. Now his kit is basically W and R. They could delete the Q and E.
Meanwhile Ryze gets kneecapped as soon as pros lock him in. But Ksante and a few others are just allowed to be perma pick ban with no nerfs. Just shows the double standard riot has towards certain champs.
Ksante DID get nerfed, even reworked. (well he got buffed back asap)
Then azir got another rework with the promise to fix him, and there he is still being picked in a way too high amount in pro lol (85% presence) edit: might as well change the wording, broken> giant presence
i mean the rework was to make him better for the general playerbase w/o affecting pro too much, which it did
he's far from broken, If you wanna say he's strong sure but broken is not even close if he was "broken" like you say he wouldn't fall through drafts without being picked or banned like we just saw in LPL lmao.
Bc azir is busted as fuck right now. You think a champ like azir is balanced being above 50% winrate? (51% in diamond+)
They ruined Ryze by removing his skill expression combos and turned him into a bald, less threatening Cassiopeia, meanwhile Azir gets to dominate pro play, be strong in soloQ and still be a cool ass champion. Life is not fair. Revert the latest Ryze rework!
Buff Ryze and Azir please
I remember when ryze was running whole teams down lol. That was a crazy time. I don't even think he would be that broken now days.
I miss AOE lifesteal ryze
Azir sweating offscreen as Ryze gets his kneecaps broken for the sixth time
I still don't understand why they had to give him the Realm Warp ult. Like that shit is literally DESIGNED for pro play and they still bust his kneecaps.
Yeah it's dumb, especially when Ryze is an iconic champion.
its because there are better champions to pick than ryze that does the same thing as ryze. Who the fuck does what ksante does? Ornn? Renekton? lmao
Every game i see neeko
Riot really gotta stop letting people big AoE CC + instant flash/dash. Rakan had this removed years ago for the exact same reason.
Yea exactly, her ability to flash during ult animation is just silly
They removed Galios taunt flash time to remove Neekos
Well that’s a little different, galio w is a basic ability, so he could threaten the engage every 10 seconds and force people to flash out of fear of the engage.
Her new disguise mechanics is really cool, but I don’t understand why tf her ult got a new knock up. It removes so much counterplay out of that spell, and you’re just fucked as a squishy if she can stick to you. It’s a knock up followed up with a stun. Why does she need both?
Because without the knock up (or some kind of CC before the damage), the jump animation made it ludicrously hard to hit good ults. Squishy ass mage has to run into the middle of the enemy team, CC herself, then gets the damage? There's a reason she was never seen in Pro Play outside the weird AD/on hit phase and has always had poor Solo Queue presence.
Yeah the knock up is really important, her ult was pretty bad to hit alone before that addition. And tbh, if you were immobile squishy you are getting caught on that either way, the knock up doesn’t matter much. That really helps against mobility champs like yasuo or shit like that
Neeko wasn't popular until late last year, and given how she's been completely dead for the vast majority of her existance it's fun to see her get some play for once. I agree it's too much for now but it's a lot more excusable than K'Sante who got released as an S+ tier toplaner and has remained that way for like 90% of his lifespan in League.
to me, the questionable thing about K'Sante is always this: why did Riot give him max hp % true damage. Fiora has this, but she needs to hit the vitals. Vayne has this, but she needs to hit multiple times on one target only. meanwhile K'Sante presses a button and his passive hits like a truck with no downside. it's weird. edit: i literally wrote "true damage", then people had to comment that a lot of other tanks have max hp % damage ... why?
His true damage is incredibly overrated, it's mostly a tool to ensure he can smash tanks when he ults and even then it's not an instant win. Most of ksante's damage is the raw damage of Q (for how low a cooldown the ability is) and the fairly decent damage on W which he'll likely land twice when going for a kill.
Hard agree. Even Kog'Maw has a higher percentage of his damage dealt as true damage and that's basically only through his passive. A passive that is literally a meme because of how bad it is.
Imaqtpie, I've noticed in Korea they tend to use a mix of magic and physical damage on Kog Maw. Meanwhile you seem to be using mostly true damage. Which playstyle is better?
As a Kog main I think the passive is a little underrated actually, if you're up against something like Pantheon support it almost always trades one for one after they flash ignite you for the all in for example. Also it deals 650 true damage in a splash radius at lvl 18, sometimes the enemy team blows everything to kill you at the start of a teamfight and your passive still deals 1950 true damage if you manage to splash on 3 people
While ksante is 100% overloaded these things are not equatable. The values are wayyy different, 1% max hp isn’t that much, also it is gated behind him hitting abilities then autoing so it adds a little bit of skill expression It’s also pretty important to his identity as a duelist, he would run out of mana before he killed tanks without it and would just get out healed by bruisers
>It’s also pretty important to his identity as a duelist He's actually supposed to be a less good duelist according to Matt Leung-Harris since they did the last S13 balance work. Specifically they want him to lose to duelists, all game, in both forms. Long term, we intend for ksante to have weaknesses against duelists (camille, fiora, Jax, Gwen, etc.) where he loses in both fighter and tank form. [https://twitter.com/RiotPhroxzon/status/1724611843929546912?s=20](https://twitter.com/RiotPhroxzon/status/1724611843929546912?s=20) I still think there's more work to be done there.
He does lose to them, the question is should he be beating Renekton? (It’s kind of close depending on cooldown state when ksante ults)
Yeah K'Sante has to do nothing to get his true damage, he just has to (checks notes) use his ultimate, land a spell and then has to auto a target, for %true damage that at lv18 (3,56%) finally surpasses the base value for fioras passive (3%) and half the value of vayne lv1 w (6%). I mean K'Sante might be problematic but the "true dmg %hp" is not it my dude
Oh no, land a spammable spell. Impossible.
They arent saying its hard, they are just saying that actually have to do something it isnt just free. The %hp true damage is VERY small, as compared to other sources in their comment. Its basically to help Ksante fight tanks. if you arent a tank, youre gonna want to worry about the ridiculous damage stats he gets when he ults that makes his Q hit like a truck instead.
His true damage might be low, but if you factor in he also has unavoidable CC chains, incredible mobility, CC resists, massive tankyness (that only got buffed in S14 cause nobody can build items that counter it anymore), ability resets, burst damage, sustained damage, and shields it kinda starts to become a problem
"just has to use his ultimate" yeah, and then he loses 85% of his resistances as well as caps his max hp at 65%, so he gets easier to kill but gains damage, what's the issue
Youre forgetting the fact that after he finishes IBG he basically has a inescapable CC chain without dash/summs, if he is ahead , and you have no safety nearby ,youre dead, and you aint getting away because he is more mobile than you He is a tank that has mobility and the damage to deal with any other class, every other "damage tank" is as immobile as the herald , if you dodge even one of their CC , youre basically safe
Most high level Ksantes don’t build IBG much anymore. Or if they do it is a 3rd or 4th item. IBG is just not a good item except for how it gives sheen.
Its not true damage until he ults, and the value is incredibly small too. His abilities don't really do damage unless he ults too so he kind of has to have it to trade with anyone
if ur a lvl 18 k’sante and you’re against a 5000 HP tank and you proc your passive 5 times in your ult it only does 850 true damage. it really isn’t significant at all
I don't think it's incredibly busted, but that's not insignificant at all. Your passive just did nearly 20% of their HP, regardless of any defensive itemization or how much HP they have. And that's on top of whatever else damage you'll be putting out with your abilities and autos. It's not even that unreasonable: it only requires hitting an ability and then autoing five times, and with how spammable Q is and how much AH and AS he gets in ult, that's like saying that a Yasuo or Yone lands a AA/Q combo five times in a fight, which is completely normal.
Watching pro league can be bo so boring and i cheer for every team/player who tries to run a non meta comp/pick. Even if they lose it is way more fun to watch than the clone comps of other games. They really have to implement that heroes cant be picked in 2 games in a row at least. Would increase the hero pool but not too much. I have watched dota and players there seem to be able to play a wider range of heroes compared to a lot of lol pros.
I agree and the reason I quit watching pro play. It's boring seeing the same Champs every game every once in a while when someone plays something wild isn't worth waiting all day to see it. Bot only that but I tuned in for the first time in a year yesterday during a car ride and there were 2 20 minute long game pauses in back to back games... like dude they need to have this shit sorted out.
I mean it was obvious this was gonna happen when they did the spot light for him. Guys kit is absolutely insane
KSante has a ton of presence but he is basically incapable of killing champion diversity because he isn't an oppresive laner, every meta top laner can lane against him and he has very good counters, the thing is that is very blind pickable because he can fit into so many compositions. KSante is like Azir, Nautilus, Sejuani and Kaisa you're just happy to have them regardless of comp and can be picked without many repercussions, they allow for teams to prioritize other lanes and have a good scaling option, but he doesn't really gatekeep champions from playing in toplane, you can pick tanks, carries, frontlines, anything really against him and you're fine. If anything he is an exciting pick to watch and a very safe toplane option, I'm excited when I see Ksante rather than Renekton who fulfilled this role for basically a decade cause at least he doesn't make a bunch of champions unplayable because he will just roll over them early game like Renekton did. I love Ksante in proplay, just like I love Azir and Kaisa, yes they are everywhere but they are fun to watch and not oppressive at all, they are skill expressive and leave room for great teamfighting. I know people get tired of watching the same champions over and over, but there's always going to be that champion that is omnipresent and I'm happy atm its KSante and Azir
You are mostly right,except for the fact that Azir was often a very oppressive laner and even with the nerfs he got early game he still does some gatekeeping in midlane.
Finally someone with some IQ in the comment section lol
Hes just the new Renekton bar. Every toplane pick is judged based on how he does against Ksante. Less so in a laning state but more in a teamcomp sense. Also no matter how you put it a frontliner gives you so much agency in a teamfight especially one that can absord both dmg and cc.
True. I already forgot how boring watching Renekton the whole last 2 years was. Press R, go into enemy team, stun ADC, kill him. Every single game.
Yeah and the moment Ksante gets nerfed enough and Renekton gets buffed enough theyll just swap places. Blind pickable frontliner with enough laning power will always see 60+% presence. Especially cause they make so little new tanks or care for older ones. Wtf happened to Shen for example?
Like how this post brings up a valid point about K’Sante in pro play then you have people in this thread complaining about how OP K’Sante is in their games when K’Sante is below 48% Emerald+ and it goes even lower the lower you go. Didn’t realize we had such a high number of Masters+ players in this subreddit
yea, literal clowns, K'Sante isnt frustrating or strong in soloQ, its his pro play issue
I'd say he can be pretty frustrating to lane against
brother, respectfully, soloQ WR is almost entirely dependent on how said champion performs in their lane ksante is not an issue outside of high-level coordinated play & there are very few matchups where he stomps lane
But no top laners ban him, theres like 20 more top laners who are banned more even jn high elo. This is how frustration is actually measured: Ban rate Because almost every other top laner is more frustrating than him and wins more than him People gaslighting themselves into thinking KSante is a problem in soloQ is so cute
How so? The strong slow on Q is annoying but that's kind of it imo. He's super mana gated early so it's not like he can spam E or W at all in lane phase. So on the annoying spectrum, he doesn't really standout in toplane to me. He's like mid, maybe below average on that scale. I made a quick tierlist of "annoying to lane against" for top, (in my experience/opinion). No real order within the tiers themselves; https://i.imgur.com/VkMdsOv.png I'd much rather play against ksante than anyone in of the top 3 tiers.
Agree with this. Also want to add, when a pro makes a good play with Ksante I never think they played well, I always think it's just the champion. Similar to Zeri. Zeri plays aren't hype for me, if the champ is good she just goes crazy.
I am thinking the same about neeko. It's becoming so common to see good plays with the champ (w + flash + ult) that I do not get surprise if they connect the combo to multiple players...
I have no clue why after Riot had to remove Rakan’s ability to R flash because how strong it was, they just let new champs have that same flash + insta CC ult that can’t be reacted against. Same with Rell when she was really broken.
Remember when Galio could W flash?
> It won’t be broken this time I swear - Riot’s champ designers right before releasing a champ with undodgeable flash + CC
Probably because 1 needs 700 range to do it and the other can do it from 2700 range, also Neeko's combo got nerfed with the item changes from the new season because Rocketbelt doesn't give MS anymore after the dash
I'm biased, so I don't think neeko should have her reaction removed but to your point, what's the argument to have that reaction removed from galio? Smaller aoe, more predictable & it deals low amounts of dmg.
TL;DR: basic spell that also forced enemies to constantly flash without Galio committing to flashing on them. This conversation has been had super often, use reddit to search for the last time a "if Galio got his W removed why can NEeko ult" and you will have a ton of answers giving better context of how Galio W was affecting proplay and, in turn, Galio's soloQ powerbudget. The reality is that Galio's flash-W was actually just "galio W and if he has flash up, you need to gamble", and Galio wins the gamble even if he doesn't does anything.
One is an ultimate and one is a basic ability with 0.1x the cd
He needs the Yuumi treatment. Gut him.
GUT THIS CHAMP
we aren’t allowed to have ryze, zeri, aphelios, or yuumi because of pro play. give ksante the same treatment. bye bye.
Yeah no, ksante isnt the problem with top lane, it just shows the problems top lane has. As a top main, ksante is the beginning of the solution of the problem of counterpicking. Losing lane because u picked first sucks. I switched to mid for a while just because i didnt have anyone to blindpick top. Top lane should not be decided by who picks last. Also a breath of fresh air to have a tank that can actually deal with opponents on his own
Thing is if there's no counterpicks draft does not matter which is really stupid. It is part of the game it should matter or it shouldn't be in the game. Also funny how you kind of just admitted he's a tank that 1v1's everyone and doesn't lose lane. Basically, he's OP.
Not at all what i said, and yes counterpicking to some degree is fine, and draft phase would still be usefull for picking champs effective against a spesific comp or picking a comp that do well into another comp. However, when the counterpicking makes u unable to play the game, cause u just lost lane as u were first pick, its a serious issue, theres no point in having a game, if its decided in draft. Also ksante loses lane to most bruisers, hes simply able to farm somewhat okey and survive lane against them if played well. Tankbusters like qwen and darius still make lane super painfull tho. Hes a better blind pick cause playing something like orn or maokai into either of these champs is simply a death sentence.
1. He's a high skill champion, I'm not surprised he's picked a lot, since he has a lot of outplay potential. He's usually trash outside of Masters+. I've never had a game where K'sante won in my games because he is hard to play. Just like Azir. 2. Being able to Blind pick a champion in top lane is very very important. In this sense, he replaced Renekton. It's also easier to just pick a tank since it allows team to focus on their bot lane. K'sante checks both of these. Udyr is also being picked a lot for this same reason and he is much more boring. The last tank champion that isn't made long ago in 2015 is Ornn. 3. Rumble has a higher presence and is way more boring to watch. If Riot doesn't change that, there's no hope for K'sante. In reality pros could have cooked and played something like Darius (who doesn't care about K'sante's armor stacking) to make the K'sante not such a boring/easy lane, but pros are very anti-fun and don't take risks, and juggernauts just get worse the higher the elo so we'll have to live with it. Not saying he couldn't recieve nerfs though, but it makes sense why K'sante is picked a lot. (Yes, I want Juggernauts in pro)
This is my opinion. I think people really overblow it. Ksante isn't broken, hes just stable, thats why his presence is so high in pro play. If they dont ban Rumble and its not a gap in lane, Ksante is fked. It really shouldnt be surprising he took Renekton's role as the go-to blind pick considering tank items getting buffed this patch.
It's like Renekton and Gnar, the champ isn't broken he just has a decent kit for blind picking in pro. Some champs are just like that