What’s up guys it’s me Jeremy.
A while back, a really long while back actually I made a video talking about Riot wanting
to make every ability a skillshot, because at the time the ryze rework took place, and
there were a bunch of abilities being nerfed into skillshots to make the design of the
abilities more manageable to balance, and it was an interesting trend that popped up
in Riot’s design decisions about a year ago.
And while skillshots are great and all, there’s a new obsession for riot games when it comes
to designing their abilities, that I am really starting to notice pop up in a lot of cases,
and that is, giving an ability, or giving abilities a delay on their interactions.
Let’s get started.
Now the most obvious example of this mechanic is rework Taric.
His ultimate has a 2.5 second delay before activating, and his stun has a delay before
activating as well.
But in addition to Taric, we’re actually seeing it on a lot of new abilities too.
In the upcoming Vladimir rework, his E is being given a Delay.
The new brand passive works on a delay, heck even malzahar’s W kind of works on a delay,
sort of.
And there are dozens more, you got like Ekko’s W, Jhin’s E, and there’s more but by now
you get the idea.
All of these abilities share this concept of having a delay on them.
What I mean by having a delay, is that some part of the ability activates, and then nothing
happens for a while, until a second or two later the ability finally activates with a
meaningful effect.
So for example how Taric’s new stun shows like an indicator for a bit without doing
anything, and then after a short period of time it procs.
This is a mechanic that is not new to league of legends.
It was used in the past, and is periodically given to champions here and there, however
recently, we are seeing this kind of concept exist in almost half, if not a majority of
the new champions and reworks that are coming out, since around the second half 2015 or
so.
It’s an interesting mechanic, but I’m not entirely sold on it’s design.
Let’s look at the positives of this mechanic first.
When you give an ability a delay, it makes the ability very interactive for any opponents
facing it.
The ability is telegraphed, and you are given a window of time to react or prepare for the
actual activation.
You see it coming from a mile away, since it has this delay on it rather than activating
or being thrown out instantly.
This type of design is really healthy gameplay, since it’s extremely interactive for anyone
facing it, which is definitely the biggest reason why riot is using this mechanic so
often now.
It’s incredibly fair and interactive to play against, and as a result it allows you
to create an ability that is much more exciting, or honestly just flat our more powerful because
you have a delay on it.
Instead of being a single target stun, by giving taric’s stun a delay and making it
interactive, you can make it area of effect and deal more damage instead of just being
single target.
Or instead of making his ultimate single target like kayle’s ultimate you can have it effect
multiple allies, if not your entire team.
Those are traits of those abilities, Taric’s E and his ultimate respectively, that otherwise
wouldn’t be allowed to exist if they just activated instantly.
If you made taric’s stun or ultimate exactly the same as it is now, but instead of it having
a delay on it, you would click the button and it activated instantly, those abilities
would be broken beyond belief.
And now I’m not arguing that they are or are not broken by having a delay on them,
but they are allowed to exist in the way that they do because of the delay.
And this mechanic allows riot to create some very interesting abilities with extremely
powerful effects, without the abilities actually being that overpowered, since the interaction
creates this gameplay dynamic that makes it very fair to play against.
And so it’s definitely easy for me to see why Riot is starting to use this mechanic
a lot more, because it’s honestly just good design on paper, but they are becoming a little
bit obsessed with it, especially with taric, and this type of mechanic does bring some
downsides to it.
While making an ability have a delay on it, might be fantastic design in terms of playing
against that ability, it’s not really the best design when it comes to playing as that
character.
These types of abilities typically feel slow to play with, and because of the delay they
are unresponsive, you can’t just press a button and have something happen.
And that type of design is at risk of feeling unsatisfying to use.
Having an ability act instantly and using it to score a kill or make a play is an awesome
feeling, that gets lost with this type of design.
It’s definitely a trade off, and although I say that this type of mechanic is healthy
design, that definitely doesn’t make it the best design.
Now I know for a fact that Riot takes both playing as and playing against a character
when they are designing them, and if you had to pick, they probably design more for the
playing against feeling actually, at least that’s according to Riot Zenon.
With that said, that lackluster feeling that you get when you use abilities with delays
on them is contradicted by the idea that if the ability actually does land, the reward
is this massive payoff of a reward.
Something like Taric’s Stun is incredibly satisfying to land on multiple targets, just
how Ekko’s stun feels super awesome to land on a target, and the reason why they feel
so awesome to actually land, is because although they are difficult to land, the actual payoff
when you do is incredible.
If you are playing taric and you get a double stun bot lane as support, you probably are
not losing that fight, similar to how if you are playing ap ekko mid and you stun your
opponent with your w, you’re probably not losing to them in a 1v1.
And those effects that are essentially quite overloaded and just incredibly powerful, are
only allowed to exist in a kit because of the delay on the interaction.
Now is that flat out better than just making a weaker ability that is instant?
Yes and no, it really depends on what the champion is trying to accomplish.
It does create this dynamic of trying to set things up to land the perfect combo, but it
also makes the ability a bit more situational.
You have to plan ahead and think what you will be doing and where you will be positioning
in a few seconds, as well as where your opponent will be.
It creates almost like a mindgame of prediction, and I know riot really enjoys making mind
games of prediction within their abilities.
However, for a character like, say for example Yasuo, this type of mechanic would be terrible,
it would feel super clunky, and be extremely frustrating to play with.
And that’s because Yasuo is a very fast character, he acts and reacts incredibly fast,
and in a fight he’s using an incredible amount of spell casts between his super low
cooldown Q, his spammable E, and his windwall which absolutely has to be instant otherwise
that ability would be useless.
This mechanic of giving an ability or abilities a delay is great is you want a more slow-paced,
strategic style of gameplay, but it suffers when you are trying to create a mechanically
intensive, chaotic style of gameplay.
There’s no denying that this type of mechanic is very healthy design, and it’s probably
one of the best examples I could use to explain to someone the difference between healthy
and unhealthy gameplay, but I’d like to see maybe more mechanics intensive champions
that create almost a chaotic type of playstyle in a sense, where you have really short cooldowns,
and have always something to do in a fight.
Riot’s going a little bit overboard with this mechanic of giving a delay, and although
it’s for good reason, and it’s not too much of a problem yet, I’m all for diversifying
your design styles and creating different types of strategy and gameplay, and if they
remain obsessed with this mechanic, I’m just worried that it’s going to get stale
and result in unsatisfying experiences.
So, what do you think about this design mechanic?
Is it fun?
Not so fun?
Leave a comment, and if you enjoyed the video hit that like button, and if you didn’t
hit that dislike, subscribe if you want, thanks for watching, and I’ll see you guys next
time!