Not sure if this is a great feature. You leave out that while he can be bullied pre 6, if he gets ahead there isn't much stopping him. And he doesn't have the same limitations as we may say trist gets even when she does get ahead.

Even more so both Jax and Irelia have multiple sources of damage and single/team fight wide abilities that effectively control a fight as much as a support carry who just sets up the fights.

Given this also means that unlike most regular carries in which if two opposing carries improve at the same pace within relative terms then they should still be equal, jax has a very early point where this can and never will be the case without creating unfair circumstances. And while then strategy becomes all important by this point, when you have an extremely capable and tactical team (anzubu frost, tpa, clg eu *or whatever they are now*) get this champion and be equal or superior in strategy it becomes a point where must bans are toxic in for the fact it isn't because it is a players personal best (like froggens anivia) but because whichever team at that level gets it has a huger advantage than those who would even complain about who gets which side.

Creating more of these especially to match the growing meta would eventually lead to a point where almost all classes or champions don' even come close to comparison. And thats why hyper carries are either nerfed until they can no longer be so (if I recall pre remake/nerf eve was in this boat), or are fewly made and have huge trade offs (vayne/kog and a few others arguably never get as much spotlight because of there inherent cost and inability to let them play their strengths).

However the above is specifically weird for jax because he has a very small window of weakness (pre 6) and then his item hunger for power is also relatively small compared to someone like ryze who also has a faster ramp-up from someone like vayne, but is much more manageable and depends on a multiple stats to fuel his damage, versus one stat almost fueling all the damage and defense for jax with little trade off.

So, Morello. On the topic of Champion design, which champion do you think you had the hardest time designing theme-wise? (I think a good number of us already agree that the ability-design challenge goes to Irelia.)

I'm not sure, you said Jax ramp up and get out of control too quickly if he gets ahead, but this is also true for Ranged ADC, this is just minimized by the fact that they have a support that help them delay such scenarios and potentially recover, if 2 ranged ADC where alone in a lane, the snowballing effect would be just as hard as a Jax getting ahead in top, heck, in that scenario god forbid one of them get Firstblood.

I wouldn't agree with the ranged ad portion. Most champions level 1-2 (maybe 3) are all at least equal in that if runed/masteried right killing can become a quick and natural process. But when we get to mid game (unless you are a special exception like leblanc) you generally are awkward. Like just looking at the fights from all the stages of the game, mid is obviously the weakest (kat ult really is only a good finisher, kass ult costs too much most of the time relative to be worth excessive use as we see later, tf ganks need support disables because the opening gold card/q + 1-2 autos generally won't do more than take a champion down to 75% health at best (unless support then they can be taken down to 50% or more).

All the early ramp up does for ad's is either allow them enough money to get the arp they need for their auto's to matter, or get enough speed so you are actively within a fight (another reason why someone like graves or mf is very nice early is because they have alot of easy base power). So assuming its just a natural game it is not uncommon when people hit 8-11 that they at least have boots part of a second item and a bigger part if not a finished first item if they farmed well. Yet when we see that twitch with his IE+boots + maybe vamp or something, this only allows him the bare minimum for team fights, because now he is a big enough threat that if left alone he is dangerous, but still is an easy weaker target compared to the mid or even top depending on their setup.

Jax doesn't have an awkward middle unless it is was a switched bottom-top lane scenario. His worst part is arguably from level 1-7. And if he just does okays and make it to mid, he is effectively able to 1v1 almost anybody due to his innate kit giving him just enough of a slight boost to get most advantages over equally geared/leveld players. Even worse if he does get gold early, his mid comes almost immediately at 6, and can spiral quickly into what the late game ap or ad would be doing equally in damage (now beginning late game damage is different then persistent late, because there is that awkward shift where all of a sudden the ad carry crits 2-3 times an AA, or the ap can clear waves, or knock off 10-15% of someone's hp without as much a hassle).

And the ad that can stand up to jax ( generally trist/vayne, but dravens and kogs have done well if its uber late game) are 10x more susceptible to early misteps or measures that are otherwise considered a setback. But as said with the high climate of lane switching in competitive play, the skill cap for jax to perform well is greatly increased. But we have seen from someone especially like shy however, that even when you keep jax down, his pace to recover is greater than most other champions.

Like I said: remake them into assassins or make them more tanky like a bruiser. Notice Jax can do tons of damage but is tanky enough to survive a bit? Not to mention he has more cc in his kit than all the current melee carries combined. He's also a champion that is borderline OP mid-late game, which is why damage must be balanced with survivability.

Not saying the solution of them stopping the production of melee carries was great, but it worked in the fact that it didn't create more problem champions.

I would say that there is a time and a place for every champion- I don't think every single champion should peak at the same time. Mid game is a great time for bruisers and the more melee characters to crush, before the ranged carries have time to get the levels and items to counter damage effectively.

The thing that has always made LeBlanc special is she peaks way before everyone else- yeah, if the game is 20+ mins long, she starts noticeably falling behind the other carries, but for between minutes like 5-20 she can be the dominant force on the map if she knows what she is doing. I think most non carry/tanks should be the same way- the mid game is the part where bruisers dominate the map, and many games are won or lost in that time period, so if you call forcing a win or lose carrying, then those bruisers are carrying.

On the other hand, by around 35 mins and more, when the carries really start hitting their stride, I think that the current system is right- the bruisers have had about 15-20 min of their turn to own the map, now the ranged carries have 15-20 minutes to do the same. Bruisers can still do tons of damage- but carries will now severely punish them for mistakes, whereas before they could get away with things because of base defenses.

I don't know if this makes sense- but I see the game in phases progressing over time. I like it that way- the transitions make the game interesting, people who try too early to transition and fail, or who don't recognize the transition happening and are punished for it, learn to effective map control. It encourages good warding, objective control, and gives people a sense of pace. Can people succeed in manipulating the phases to their advantage? At the S2 championships, we saw several Asian teams who had practice cutting short the phases and knowing their strengths and weaknesses dominate teams who weren't prepared for that. That is dynamic play- recognizing your enemies weaknesses, and having the skill to act upon them.

I think I went a bit far afield there, but my point remains- phases in general encourage good gameplay, provided the phases aren't too stale. And given that that the most equal teams still have intense games, like the SK vs Fnatic game from the other day, I'm not too worried about phase stagnation.

Actually, that reminds me of the problem with Jax- that he was staying relevant damage-wise too long. Late game, someone like Jax should be a damage soak with a moderate amount of damage, not someone you have to kill in the first 3 seconds or he'll get his stacks up and crush half your team. He has his time- Jax played right can be godlike mid game, plenty of opportunity to bring the other team to their knees. Use that time appropriately and the game will be over long before this issue becomes relevant, but Jax should not be a late game carry.

Well I know it's a big issue for you specifically Fox, and it's not something I'm thrilled about either. The problem with this is that it's a very difficult-to-solve problem with low overall impact on League. When I compare that to things like a broken item system, it's tougher to prioritize.

A couple of shots off the bow are things like Mercurial Scimitar or Bloody Hydra that really benefit melee more and have stats that are more carry-focused. If that actually has helped, no one has found a way to make it work.

This is generally the issue that makes this tough - good post.

If you're still here morello, something I want to ask about is communication. Riot has slowly faded to being not much better than any other company in terms of communicating upcoming content. You're good at talking over decisions after the fact, but it's painful dealing with being basically blind because it's all top sekkrit and will crash the entire company if it gets out :X This is understandable, however I see the path leading to where we are differently.

Consider Magma Chamber. You put out a bit of concept art, said "we were working on a 6v6 map", and left it at that. It would have really softened the blow if you had gone through some update posts and said "we're trying a different monster configuration" "hm its starting to feel too much like SR" "I don't know if this will work out, lets try some stuff" "ok yeah lets iterate on something different in concept to the SR paradigm of kill nexus". Updates are the key. If we could just have some stuff that would explain what you are doing/trying and why, then people would be a lot less upset that... oh, i don't know, it took a year and a half to make a mac client? Or that it's taking months on end to do stuff like a Sejuani tweak or any of a dozen skin related questions? I could go down the list of basically everything that we are going "wtf where is X" and if you could just update us on enough of what you're doing it would quiet so much.

So basically, the issue isn't "what is something cool that we can come up with" but "what is something cool we can come out with that won't detract from the rest of the game's content"

I a lot of cases, I've seen this issue solved by the Riot team by maintaining the status quo. This is most evident on many of the supports. Ally castable shields seems to be a popular trade mark amongst supports, and if you know a support has a shield it's likely going to have a 10 second cooldown with a base effectiveness of 80 scaling upwards by 40 for each level. Now of course this base has been pushed around a little on champs such as Morgana and Lux due to their complexity, but the rule seems to have been 10, 80(+40), and then add a unique effect.

Lately I've been noticing "shield" abilities on supports that seem to hardly behave like "shields" at all, and this kind of change ends up creating a much more interesting support. Lulu, for example, sacrifices a chance to harass in order to shield an ally, or if the cards are played right, harasses and shield an ally at the same time. Thresh's shield hardly seems to follow the normal shield rules at all, and as a result provide a lot of new interesting gameplay. It's cooldown is vastly higher, it can apply to multiple allies, and it has lower base effectiveness. Not only does this set aside Thresh's characteristic from other supports (it doen't really do him justice to just say he has a grab, a slow, and a shield) it also add more content to preexisting champions; if someone plays Thresh and wishes the had a better shield, they would likely be drawn more too Janna.

While using preestablish data is very important in designing new champions, (I do a few concept myself and would have no idea to start without being very familiar with all the different values of every champion ability) it's sometimes best to start of with a radical idea, break a few of your old rules, and start combinging things together in a way you wouldn't expect.Thresh has a great many things that make him similar to other champions. He has a grab, he has a shield, and he has a few slows, but these aspects of himself are tweaked to be very different from how those other champions function as a whole. Thresh has a theme that clicks.