The only thing I disagree with you on is the fact that unless I agree with you on what I find fun and balanced, I'm automatically wrong. There is no discussion there. And I upvoted you before I wrote my response.

Did you watch the video? Answer yes or no.

Also imagine the same scenario occurring in League. Low health teammate gets grabbed by a Blitzcrank across a ledge, she has no Flash.

Yes I did, and I also find that very interesting spell combo. And I think that a teammate grab would work very well in league of legends, even if it is possible to be a bit "troll-y'. But I also find backing very nice in league that I would love to have in DoTA or mage scaling. But the companies that make both of those games have decided that they do not want that in their game, and while I may disagree with that, sometimes you have to take the good with the bad and realize that there might not be one perfect game for everyone.

" a +10 damage aura to a skill that every 10 seconds gives flaming weapons that make +30 damage to all teammates next attack (with fire and explosions!)"


Riot pls

your jedi instincts need a recalibration

just finished reading all the red posts...

me too. Too bad so many of them were in response to people not governed by developed reasoning abilities.

I kept wondering what Zileas meant by a pseudo-random ability. From what I could infer from his posts, it seems to reduce the chance that an RNG ability occurs in succession. It still wouldn't fix the damage that getting a crit twice over a period of 2 minutes in a lane could do. I sometimes wonder if the game would have been better off with no RNG elements; if crit were abolished altogether or perhaps replaced by some other bonus such as: increases damage by 10% (corresponding to a 10% CrC).

Crit is such a traditional feature in RPGs that people feel like every RPG should have it, when really I think its continued existence is somewhat questionable. If anything, the message sent by Zileas's OP is that game designers have in the past decade moved towards a perception that sensible game design/fun > maintaining tradition just for the sake of doing so.

In terms of LoL, Riot could easily replace crit chance with a flat percentage damage increase. They could even leave the name critical hit for the mechanic. The only issue that then arises is CrD runes would need to be removed, and the IE's unique passive would need to be translated into a % damage bonus number. Of course, the removal of CrD is unimportant. The runes themselves are rather underpowered, so no one would miss them. I believe a full set of CrD runes becomes useful once you have ~65% CrC from items. I have the number calculated somewhere.

People would complain for a while about it, but looking at this thread, people always seem to complain when they don't get the mechanics they expect, even though their inner justification (subconscious or not) for maintaining these mechanics is based on their own feelings and are thus arbitrary, rather than any logical reason for the mechanic's existence. In terms with consistency with the Zileas's design philosophy, I find a mechanic that has a flat damage percentage increase far more intuitive, with more easily understood game play ramifications, than a critical hit factor based on probability. I believe other players would feel the same way, especially ones who don't have years of experience with critical hit probability from other RPGs to have developed a gut feeling for its efficacy, although even this gut feeling is probably in many instances inaccurate in its judgment of crit's impact on the game. The more I write and think on this, the more I realize: what an unnecessarily complex and cumbersome mechanic.

Speaking of fun and anti-fun.
Why does the tanky-DPS design still exist? Nobody likes it and it only hurts the gameplay experience.

Frankly, picking up Dota 2 felt like a breath of fresh air because people actually die in that game and garbage play/strategy isn't cushioned by an "Oh it's okay since you built extra HP and defense."

Why is tanky-DPS design bad? I appreciate that there is a defensive factor in this game. It opens up more options for play and counterplay. Defense, in particular tanky DPS, is countered by overwhelming offense by an AD carry who scales harder.

If tanky DPS were OP, competitive teams would fill their team with tanky DPS. Instead, it is limited to one or two spots on a team, and sometimes is disregarded altogether. To me, that suggests balance rather than being OP. For comparison, an AP carry is *always* 1 or 2 spots on a team and is never disregarded. An AD carry is *always* 1 spot, and infrequently 2 spots (Kayle/Corki/Graves top) and is never disregarded. Support is *always* 1 spot, sometimes two (I consider Yorick to eventually become more support like), and is never disregarded. Tanky DPS is arguably one of the least necessary roles in the game, because teams can actually be made without a tanky DPS on it. I certainly wouldn't describe it as any more prominent than the other archetypes.

And, anyways, I find it fun. Your post is reminiscent of so many other posts in this thread that Zileas patiently answered, where you apply your subjective definition of fun to every single player in this game. Don't you see the logical fallacy in that?

I don't agree with most of these. I have some experience designing and balancing content in a similar genre and while PvP is a different beast, even I can tell you're way off the mark about Dota2.

This is because the auras are somewhat hidden, either as a passive on an item that is already loaded with stats or on an ability that does something else as an active ability. You get the auras "for free" and therefore don't particularly care about them.

It doesn't help that the auras are incredibly weak as well. Sona's Q aura adds about +10% damage (more like +5% for casters) while Vengeful Spirit in Dota 2 has an aura that adds +36% damage.

Also, a ton of abilities in League provide power without gameplay - except they are not passive so it looks like you're doing things while in reality your actions require no decisions. Hecarim is a prime example: neither his Q (the sweep attack) nor his W (the aoe dot aura) are tactical choices and there is no reason not to mindlessly mash QWQQQQQ in every fight because it increases your dps and has no downside. Many other bruiser abilities suffer from this issue as well.


This can easily be fixed through proper visual design. How do you visually explain Rupture? Simple: a debuff that creates small spikes on the ground that fade in as you approach and fade out behind you. It should be obvious that walking over spikes does damage.

Your Black Shield counter-example is poorly chosen because Black Shield does not clearly communicate that unlike every other shield in the game, it stops CC. It even looks identical to Udyr's turtle shield despite doing something completely different.

The Invoker diss you posted elsewhere is hilarious. You claim Invoker has a high burden of knowledge for the player fighting against him because he has 10 abilities? But each of these 10 abilities is blatantly obvious: when he casts a tornado at you, now you know that 1/ Invoker can cast tornadoes and 2/ you should dodge those tornadoes. Eventually you figure out his spells are colour coded to his orbs so you can make a ballpark guess as to what he'll be coming at you with.

Meanwhile Lee Sin has 7 abilities interconnected in a non-obvious manner, graphics that don't communicate what is going on and debuffs that go away too fast to read, and is generally impossible to figure out without reading up on how he works. Not to mention Volibear's passive which seems to exist mostly to bait newbies who don't know about it yet.


Trying too hard to avoid this pattern leads to one dimensional spells with very narrow uses. When you make it too obvious how a spell should be used optimally, you discourage alternative uses.

The result: "rotation" champions like Talon and Diana who do not have four individual abilities, but one big combo that just happens to involve four buttons and there is very little reason to use individual abilities outside this combo (unless you just want to poke). For instance, Talon's bleed is almost useless as a standalone ability because it is a melee attack on a squishy champion and deals less damage if the target isn't slowed.

Instead of encouraging on-the-fly problem solving, this style of design encourages players to just use the predefined combo and feel good because it does a lot of damage.

Or you just make sure you hit everyone on both teams and you'll have used it optimally.


Mana burn does have counterplay: buy a wand, arcane boots, soul ring, the kind of items that give you an instant mana heal. Mana burn cannot drain you below zero mana, so you just use those items a moment before you intend to use your actual spells. The enemy with the mana burn can then attempt to beat you to it and burn your mana off again before you cast your spells, creating counterplay on both sides.

If mana burn had no counter and you just had to sit there and auto attack, it would be a pretty poor mechanic. But Icefrog did implement the above countermeasures and you can buy them and use skill to overcome and negate the mana burn.

Of course this is a more strategic approach than the tactical skillshot/dodge gameplay Riot wants to promote. The real issue is that the League playerbase is borderline mentally deficient and incapable of making strategic decisions.


If either function is viable, you created essentially two spells in one: a powerful dps reducer and a nuke. See also Orianna's E.

Also, your example is weird. Why would a heavy damage nuke not be used at the start of a fight? Dropping a carry to half health instantly may well scare him out of the fight.


I don't agree that walking into the wall is always a wrong choice: if the wall remains for like 10 seconds you may well want to swallow the hit just so you can get through it (cfr Veigar's playpen).

Also, the point of this wall is not to place it on the ground and hope some idiot walks into it, but to cast it directly in front of a running enemy so he cannot stop in time. People do get zapped by Rattletrap's power cogs all the time. The enemy can then attempt to counter this by juking you.


Agreed on randomness being problematic. However, skillshots are also inherently unreliable and this may contribute to the lack of aggression in LoL because this generally only affects the attacker. Defensive skillshots are both much fewer in number and pretty easy to land when the enemy is coming to you.