BADLY Designed Abilities (Part 5) | League of Legends 

~SPONSOR~ Check out the new Redmagic 9 Pro gaming phone! bit.ly/47QlmpK Merry Christmas everyone! ☺

Wither is a huge problem because its supposed to be a counter ability but in game its more of an engage than anything else 700 outranged every ADC in the game with the exception of Jinx Rockets. No ADC is allowed to attack Nasus because hey, he might just turn you off completely. Doesnt matter how much AS you have. Oh you're at the 2.50 limit? No youre not. You have 0.6AS.

Also a little fun fact: Nasus's slow is coded as a single type of slow (instead of being split as seperate slow, movement and attack speed) therefore having slow resistance also ignores cripple while it normally shouldn't

Active: Jax enters Evasion, a defensive stance, for up to 2 seconds, causing all basic attacks against him to miss. Jax also takes 25% reduced damage from all area of effect abilities. After 1 second, Jax can reactivate to end it immediately.

He can even talk about gwen w BUT GWEN IS IMMUNE

When I was playing old Morde, I remember absolutely hating Wither and Riposte. Why? Because when I used my Q and enemy nasus/fiora pressed the ability, my attack speed was so low that my autoattack buff simply dropped.

Completely agree, mundos passive is a perfect example of what a counter ability should look like while jax e is a disgrace, u simply cannot play certain champs and interact vs jax, especially if its a very telegraphed big hitting auto where if jax blocks it he just kills u and u dont really have a way to "bait it out" if the jax player is competent(tf gold card, voli q, gp q, etc etc)

i love when he said that kass get countered by cass even though hes one of her harder counters

OMG IS THAT YAKUZA LIKE A DRAGON MUSIC?????

Am i the only one who was today years old when they realised Cassiopeia's ult makes a projection of her face?

Using Yone and Sylas as examples against Fiora W balance almost made me like Fiora, but she is my permaban for a reason.

I think it's worth mentioning that while Miasma seems like a powerful slow it is actually rapidly decaying and similar to Fiora and Nilah, the primary counterplay to Miasma is it's Cooldown. These Cooldowns are all are over 20 seconds which means they are unable to be used carelessly. The whole theme to these spells is that they demand the player playing the champion to use them at the right time, and they demand the opponent to attempt to force them to be used at the wrong time

Nasus' W being so obnoxious is the reason why I play him support. You build Frozen Heart and enemy ADC literally cannot play.

Feel like it's a pretty big oversight not to consider cooldown or mana cost as part of the design of these abilities. Whiff a Riposte and until endgame when you finally have levels in the skill you don't have another answer for CC for almost half a minute and your opponent knows it.

When bros video can be compresed into a 60 secound short but you stick for the entire duration and actualy be intertained you have an amazingly capable content creator and writer

One important note is that Fiora *can* move while riposting - if she quickly q es, then she can dash while doing it, letting her dash into cc to make sure she gets a stun, like caitlyn traps or veigar wall.

if fioras w had to only be used for the sole purpose of hard cc she would be alot more balanced, rn even if she just blocked the damage of a regular ability and your champion doesnt have a way to dodge her w, thats still a won trade for her, if you want to keep autoing her at this point u have to stand still for what feels like an eternity, and at that point fiora has already procced her vital and gotten distance from u

I will come out and say it. I love wither. But I love it because it's allows nasus to be useful lategame. Alot of people think nasus is a late game champ, but he is really a mid game champ. Early he is weak, mid game he is raidboss, but late game, you are back to getting kited or blown up before you reach anyone. His Wither allows you to take a priority target out of the fight and let you focus on being an actual threat to focus on.

I agree with all besides cass. It's not that effective versus melee because it expands at max range versus only taking up one circle if it's dropped on you. So it does have a cost. Additionally I think the grounding is good for the game considering riots need to put so many dashing champs into the game

Top notch editing with this video 👌

Of these all, I think the worst offender still is Fiora's parry. Not only is it the most blanket countering one out there; with the immunity shutting down all casts, even ultimates, and the movespeed and cripple punishing auto attackers, Fiora really doesn't give up anything for having it, of all the champs listed, her kit still scales the hardest, and is relevant at all stages of the game. In a 1v1, you basically either need to surprise her or bait it out somehow else you straight up don't get to use one of your buttons as she stat checks you to death with true damage.

11:23 I wouldn't agree on Miasma being good vs Ranged Champions. Cassiopeia usually builds a Rylai's every single game and her e is point and click and has the same Target Range as her W and also has a shorter cast time than w (0.25s > 0.15s). Her q has a far higher range than both e and w. So if you want to kill an ADC or ranged Champion as Cassio, the best way is probably to hit Q or E for the Rylais slow in order to run them down. A good ADC player will see the Cassio stop running at them and expect them to either R or W them and just walk away. In order to chase down Ranged opponents that you are not already on Top of, q is the superior ability because it applies the Rylais slow for 4 seconds and speeds you up making it nearly impossible to escape for the enemy. Even without Rylais q is much better to chase down ranged enemies because the slow instantly wears off after leaving the grounded area.

This isn't exactly new to this video, but your production value and editing are insanely good. I just think this video in particular really pushes those limits and pops off especially hard with your presentation, making great use of transitions and having a constant stream of visual icons to help keep focus while also not being distracting due to taking up too much space. Edit: your closing thought articulates the balance risk of counter abilities perfectly. A well designed counter ability punishes engage. If the user and their opponent are aware of it, the counter ability creates a mind game, where the opponent tries to bait it out before actually committing to an all-in, while the user tries to withstand bait engages and correctly gauge when they *_need_* to use their counter spell or risk dying. A badly designed counter ability is so strong that it functions as disengage while also functioning as engage. If Cassiopeia throws Miasma at an immobile champion, that can work as an effective pick tool to catch and kill that champion. If Fiora or Jax go in with their counter spells, they can actually engage, rather than simply use their spells as intended. The intended way for Jax and Fiora to use Counterstrike and Riposte is to absorb engage, and duel through it. But the way they're both actually utilized is as engage tools, where Jax/Fiora jump in with their counter spell, get the stun/cripple, do a quick auto reset, and run away while their opponent can't fight back. Nasus Wither is just horse shit. It's given to a 100% immobile champion, and given enough Q stacks and itemizing tank stats, Nasus can completely turn the tide of a teamfight by reducing ADC damage and one-shotting them with only very, VERY, *_VERY_* specific counterplay. It was designed to bypass the design philosophy of Juggernauts, their immobility, which should never have happened. It's as bad as release Stridebreaker having a dash. The only reason Wither is allowed to stay is because Nasus would become completely useless if he had any other ability in the place of Wither, with the only exception that I can think of being Zilean's E, which is functionally the same exact ability when used on enemies, minus the cripple, but has the added effect of being usable on yourself or allies to grant the same amount of movement speed difference, only you're speeding yourself up, not slowing your target down.

when gwen's gyatt hits the griddy ong typeshit

I also think that shields are really good counter-type spells. They usually don't last long and you have to make sure you dodge a large ammount of damage with them to make them worth it. I especially love Lee Sins and Rakans shields for that, since you can bodyblock some abilities with these dashes as well.

love the Zardonic-esque beat in the background

✋ nasus main here, I absolutely love wither, I think its a great ability

You kind of touch on this in the video, but I don't think Riposte is actually a badly designed ability. Instead, the champion around the ability makes it broken. If you put it on a champ that wasn't hyper-mobile, it would be fine in 99% of situations, basically functioning as a spell shield with a bonus effect. The problem is that Fiora has so much artificial tankiness in her ability to dodge stuff and healing that the ability removes one of the few weaknesses she has. Maybe the cripple is a bit much, but IMO riposte is nothing more than the straw that broke the camel's back in the frustration of playing against Fiora.

Might I suggest for a future "badly designed abilities": - Yuumi's new passive; it procs even if Yuumi is undamaged, so she cannot poke with autoatacks. - Yuumi's new E; it does not transfer and lasts only 3 seconds, making it useless in many situations. - Yuumi's new R; it does less damage than her Q, and is so bad now that enemies typically ignore it. Yuumi's new Q and W are an improvement on her old kit. Q and W were both nerfs, and both were needed. Yuumi's old kit had a couple of issues that her new kit solved, but RIOT changed things that didn't need to be changed. It created a Yuumi that is terrible. All she really does now is aim the occasional Q and ult whenever anyone all-ins her anchor. Yuumi's old kit had her hopping off to auto-attack, tanking damage for her teammates before reattaching (or tanking some cc for them instead). All RIOT really needed to do to Yuumi was make her W attach/detach only, with no anchor buffing. Instead they gave her by far the game's worst rework of all time. Pretty much every Yuumi main hated the rework. It was the opposite of what we all wanted - we wanted a more active cat that was rewarded for taking intelligent risks, not a doubling down on the perma-attach itemcat tactic that everyone (including Yuumi players) felt was toxic. RIOT majorly dropped the ball on Yuumi's rework and more attention should be given to that mistake. Yuumi needs (imo): - her lost +5 base AD back - her lost 50 range back, and maybe 50 more on top of that - her old passive back, but with half the cooldown for half the mana and shield - her old E back, but the buffs only work for Yuumi not her anchor (in trade for a lower mana cost) - her old R back (nerfed slightly - 4 waves to root instead of 3, but a slightly larger strike zone to compensate) - her W to do nothing other than attach/detach - her Q cooldown doubled if Q is launched while Yuumi is attached. A cat that wants to detach and fight is a lot more fun and fair. The attach/detach mechanic is great, but RIOT has very much the wrong end of the stick with Yuumi. She should be limited in effectiveness while attached, not designed to just stay attached all game long. Attaching should just be how she defends herself from poke and positions.

Nasus wither is an overpowered counter ability for no cost just like jax, but unlike jax it has counterplay where u can just go phase rush and he can never fight u, unless u are the one making the mistake of walking up when phase rush is on cd and nasus has enough distance mana and w to run u down with ghost. Against jax there is nothing u can do if ure an auto attacker, he just presses his funny button and becomes invincible for 3 seconds while doing ur entire healthbar, only to get his invincibility back in 4 seconds with a cdr build(which every item he wants gives)

Bonus for the Fiora part. she can cast that with Q. Yes I discovered that playing agains't a fiora and she was losing, until she started to use it with Q. That completly removed any chance i had agains't her.

OK this is the first sponsor that has got me that phone looks insane

I raised my hand.

I remember I was playing Teemo and a Fiora said I was a broken champ, after she negated my blind and one shot me with her passive and 2 sec dash and ult which then healed herself and her team to full off my corpse… so glad you pointed out how busted that champ actually is

i literally just sat down to eat, bless you bro u saved me for looking for something 😂

Jax and Fiora do not have skill expression, they have skill oppression. Jax counterstrike should be a very short duration, that if used to dodge an auto attack becomes a powerful skill - and fiora the same but for hard cc abilities only. Having them stay active for such a long time and cover a wide array of options just make the champs into brainless counterpicks.

I wouldn't mind seeing the opposite of this, what you think the 5 most well designed counter moves are.

Id argue the best solution for riposte is that it, you know has to actually catch an attack, because the concept has skill expression but you get too much for nothing right now, at least for the cripple.

I appreciate you using the Mad dogs theme from Yakuza 8

You did calling back to old videos really smoothly here, I wish more creators didn’t pause in the video and more so kept it flowing during recall. Like, every time a creator says subscribe, there’s a noticeable pause in the video. It’s better when it flows

10/10 music selection

Don’t forget how minion hits also stack up Jax’s counter strike damage to you, so it doesn’t matter if you actually auto him or not when he does it as it will almost always do the full 200% damage every time which is really unfair

Fiora's W us a really powerful ability but what is mist insulting about it is the fact that her "counter ability" has some real mean offensive capabilities which is something that you cannot say about most abilities of the same type. Another thing is that logic of "I don't have crowd control so I should be fine" doesn't apply to it as it slows movement and attack speed which what us what Wither does and this ability was in this episode already!

9:35 you need to wait the little dog under the t1 tower and flank him with 3, but...only works once

Good juxtaposition argument with Fiora's Riposte goes towards Irelia's W as well. Conceptually a not so egregious counter ability, that's attached to the wrong champion, leading to little to almost no counterplay.

merry christmas vars!

Politely rewatching the vid after focusing on Yakuza ost for 15 minutes

like a dragon ost hel yeah

Always happy to see a good Fire Emblem reference. 9:21

Happy Christmas Vars!

Nilah w is a bit boosted but its the only reason why she is s tier and even playable. Without it she would be just dead. Her w was made to let nilah deal dmg and win trade when she has to go back from mele range. Without is she would not be able to trade and go in cuz before she even can close gap she lose half hp

imagine how good Miasma would be if you could decide its direction, like Victors laser...

Crowd Control Counters Counter Strike. Stun and walk. Duelist Thrive off of you engaging them, but lack neutral generally.

i would love for the base riposte to do no damage and no effects and only having a stun and damage on succesful counter

I like Fiora's w, but that's mostly because I play Evelynn and it's a super fun mini game. I can press w on Fiora and stand walking right beside her. Once the charm is charged, it's a mini game. Do I auto her to proc the charm? Or do I not? I'm so close to her that she can't react, so she has to predict when to parry. It's a fun mini game, but that's mostly because of how Eve's charm works. I agree on the main sentiment around it though

The actual problem with miasma is that its actually a trash ability against most dashing champions. It's got a reactable cast and travel time, so if you try to drop it on someone like fizz preemptively, he'll just pop e and combo you. If you try to use it defensively, he's already popped his combo by the time you get it off, and you're dead. This applies to pretty much most mid lane assassins. Zed? Diana? Ya, you're dead before this move lands.

I usually recognize every ability in the family but here I only know wither and fioras parry the platypus

I played this filthy game for years and the only way I ever found to somewhat combat Wither was Lillia with enough AP and swifties. You have enough movement speed to run laps around the dog even through Wither and it looks so goofy!

Only person i can think of that cant keep nasus at bey during wither is aatrox and that's only if you play perfectly

Editing in this video was brill. I absolute hate wither - wither and counterstrike are probably my least favourite counters. I actually don't mind Gwen W at all.

My problem with the grounded debuff is that some abilities (like ults) cant be cast as well when afflicted. Abilities like darius ult, cause apparently thats a leap or blink. Idk

I love going Nasus support when I see a kalista

Well morgana's E seems to have been forgotten in this video even as counterplay since it's usefulness skyrockets with good timing

Back before the item rehaul, the only champion I could play and win in a 1v1 against nasus was QSS and frozen mallet Quinn, she had enough ‘get off me’ tools, slows with frozen mallet and qss as a backup, now I can’t think of a champion who can fight him in a 1v1

2 things that feel the worst in League: getting engaged on by a champion you simply can never win against (Jax vs pretty much any AA based champ), or dumping an R on Fiora who simply says "nope" and blocks the entire thing, with Caitlin and Veigar being some of most frustrating ones to waste.

Nasus’ Wither is practically a 5 second root

Singed got mentioned, lets go!

4:30 DAMN that shot is powerful

15:40 This is a problem I have with a lot of champions. Having a button that just straight up negates an entire part of the game used to only belong to the early champions of league and were tied to ultimates (Trynd, Olaf, Yi, ect) so you could pressure them to use it and play around it from there. Having that power tied to a non-ultimate creates a situation where the champion commands far too much pressure on the map.

You guys want to know a maybe not badly designed but definitely overpowered ability? Warwick q. Ah yes it's a point-and-click ability that makes you unstoppable and can follow all dashes and it heals for 75% of the dmg dealt at max level and scales with ad and ap and it does 10% max health magic dmg at level one and you can dash through enemies. Balanced definitely not broken ability

When you said raise your hand if i like wither i was holding a glass of water but i had to drop it to lower my hand quickly, now there is water on the floor. I have no regrets nasus w is the worst

I think fioras Parry is kinda a good ability, apart from the attackspeed criple and slow. Imo it should do minimal damage and only be strong when you actually parry a CC.

Christmas Bonus? My company is too cheap to give one of those.

I like counter abilities which dint "interact" with the enemy. Yasuos windwall or Gwens hallowed mist are very annoying, but you can just back off and wait after its over, Nilah as well. But the rest of this list influence the enemy in an even worse way. Stun, slow, cripple, ground, damage, so much debuffs which are hard to avoid ON TOP of the buffs they give to their respective champions like dodging, being untouchable, getting empowered es, theyre so much worse.

I'd object against Jax. Brother Kax is fine. He helps me donate gold to his team.

Honestly I wouldnt have a problem with miasma if all it did was remove movement abilities. But if Im not mistaken it also completely silences you.

Jax E has huge mana cost and the tradeoff is that the rest of his kit is garbage. If you can bait the counterstrike and then kite it, you can then turn around and demolish him

Idk if youve done items yet but i think itd make a good video seeing as there are options like heartsteel, galeforce, and everfrost. (ik the latter two are going away with the mythic removal but I think itd be interesting nonetheless

Active: Jax enters Evasion, a defensive stance, for up to 2 seconds, causing all basic attacks against him to miss. Jax also takes 25% reduced damage from all champion area of effect abilities. After 1 second, Jax can reactivate to end it immediately.

Is that majima’s song i hear in the background

the long cd on jubilant veil doesnt actually matter cause nilah can build navori and boom in a long fight her team can have like 3 instances of dodge

4:53 in the other spectrum you could have an ability simply slow 20% and be instanitly cast. It isn't deadly but is certainly impossible to dodge.

Fiora W is my favourite ability in the game. It literally makes every matchup winnable if you have good enough reaction time and timing

Vars is a certified yakuzer player very cool 👍👍👍

I played jax for years and I believe the thing that made him unhealthy was the buff his counterstrike got around season 5, before that it negated all autoattack damage but not the empowered ones, Renek was a hard counter since his W worked through it and made him win all trades, TF could also stun you to get away, Leona was more able to peel for the carry and so on. I love Jax with all my heart but I believe that's what broke him, negating all autos was a huge thing, but in the moment his e became almost an spell shield it got unbearable.

The fact that there are five videos about badly designed abilities is super depressing.

The way I'd change Jax's E was to make it so that he cannot auto during it. That always seemed like an unnecessary part of it.

"What is the counterplay to wither? There is no counterplay... unless you got out of your way to counter it with tools the game gives you."

While I do agree that Jax’s counter strike is broken Imagine what he could do if he used a real weapon…

I'm sorry, Master Yi can ignore WHAT. Caught me off guard.

11:45 what's the background song it sounds very familiar

I would rework Jax E by making it a proper channeling you have to keep holding onto it. Jax can no longer attack or using other abilities when channeling, slowed by 25%, inflicts percent HP physical damage instead of magick damage, and no longer immune to melee autoattacks (now you simply deflect ranged autoattacks), and the hitbox is smaller and shaped more like a cone that's bigger upfront but smaller on his back. Now Jax simply taking 25-40% reduced damage from all sources, knocks back the target a little, and is also immune to CC when channeling.

I play cho in top and i always ban fiora. There is literally nothing i can do against her.

YO THE YAKUZA MUSIC THO?

for mundo, he can resist one hard cc and has a condition where if he picks up the canister, cooldown is reduced(resets in late game) and he heals. but enemies can walk over it and deny it so it's not a one sided interaction for fiora, press W and you are immune to *everything* that isn't a turret shot. some champions are singlehandedly shut down by this particular ability

I personally think Grounded counters better non dashing chanmpions than dashing ones: If you face a singed or a cassio, both grounding skills have a initial period that they dont ground allowing you to dash regardless, and hey dont stop dashes that go THROUGH the area, meaning that if you are an akali for example. you can just e to avoid the ground, if you are a fizz you can just dash, if you are any kind of dash heavy champ you can dash and get out of the effective zone of the ground. Casted dashes, like kassadin vi and viego, have less room for bad reflexes but grounding doesnt do nothing against a fiora katarina or anyone like them as they can dash before the effect or just dash trough. meaning that champions that rely on 1 dash or flash get screwed heavily as they have to burn the only escape to disengage or commit to the all in.

its crazy that they haven't reworked nasus W and jax E

i have said it time and time again, the most simple and best nerf to fiora you can do... is to remove the attack speed slow on parry. If you fight someone like jax and you fail to parry his counterstrike stun, you should be punished for misplaying. Instead she just takes the stun, then deletes your attack speed. I have calculated it and at early levels you have so little attack speed you cant hit her until it wears off, essentially rooting you if you try fighting her. Remove the attack speed slow so she can be a counterpick to stun champs like aatrox riven and shen, but lose to jax and tryndamere.

I do indeed like Nasus wither

9:48 "laughs in Illaoi"