Flex Picks: Should They Be Allowed? | League of Legends
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- Опубліковано 7 чер 2024
- For many champions, they're only played effectively in one role: Top, Jungle, Mid, Bot(ADC) and Support. But a small number of them are able to go into two or three roles with equal success. Those champions are called Flex Picks. Today I want to talk about whether or not it's fair for some champions to have that privilege in League of Legends.
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#LoL #Flex #Picks - Ігри
Remember when Shen was so good he could be flexed to river…
RIVER SHEN
Shen did not flex on the river, boi...
*SHEN WAS THE RIVER*
still is
It’s less because of how good he was but how good he was as a team player
You also remember Split Push Shen?
Split Push Shen. Split Push Shen.
Split pushing, because I can.
I am slow, but I progress.
Tower down, causing stress.
Through our wards, I see you rush.
Blue-pilling in a brush.
Split Push Shen. Split Push Shen.
Here I go split pushing again.
Team fight bot, oh my, that's far.
Clear the wave, then I'm pressing R.
Taunt you all, the fight is won.
Watch me as I'm split pushing on.
It's Split Push Shen!
@@dannymunch4633 I never knew such a legend could exist, please, teach me more, master.
When Graves combo's your entire healthbar to 0 in under five seconds you don't usually think "wow this character that can be in this many roles is ridiculous!" it's usually just "this character is ridiculous!"
or when he 1 auto your adc to death late game
If he takes up to five seconds to kill you you're lucky
@@gido230 I think he means 5 seconds at lvl 2
Honestly the problem is lethality itemization has gotten too good. Graves himself in a vacuum is fine. A number of champs that shouldn't be building lethality are now. Because its just better then their traditional build paths being overly cost efficient and stronger. Graves is just EXTREMELY good at abusing it.
"If you're a jungle main and you one trick graves rather than actually learn new champions for whenever you get autofilled top or mid", I don't think I've ever seen a jungle main get autofilled.
It does happen but it's terribly rare and I love it.
I got auto filled 5 times during my 300 games this season lmao
@@diamondfrieza5391 what... what does this even mean?
@@diamondfrieza5391 Aurelion Sol. Also, old Yorick used to be a chad as welll.
It's due to auto-fill that I am a jungle player, I tend to main support but get auto-filled to jungle so often.
I will forever play junglers in the top lane since I like their kits but I don't like jungle itself
Trundle Warwick Zac and Sej top never get boring
@@SkyyWalker2137 you forgot about Rengo top
@@gniewomirkosiacki2927 rengar top is more cancer than vayne, that can stay
@@biggiecheese2004 just take Lillia and when Rengar jumps on you, use your W on your feet. The cat will stop jumping for a while until lane phase is over
The forbidden Ivern top
I feel like Pantheon wasn't getting enough attention in this vid compared to other champs since he was viable in all 5 roles at one point
He is still not bad in all 5 roles
(With the right support he can be played as adc)
pantheon and swain bot lane is funny :3
Poppy is viable in 3 lanes and can be played 4 currently (adc excluded) aswell.
People think pantheon sup is dead because he cannot block tower shots anymore but he's still pretty good at deleting adcs every time they step out of tower.
It kinda is his win rate is 47% and he doesn’t provide the utility as some other supports and is too dependent on winning lane or not
Think it depends how strong the champion is in relation to his main role, i.e if the champion has 50% wr + on his main role and slightly lower winrate on his flex roles, I think its okay, what I don't want a champ that can maintain a 53% + wr on 3+ roles at once, like panth or sett once had.
I don't really think that winrate is a good metric for measuring a champion's power, but I get the principle of what you're saying.
Just remove heimerdinger from the game and im happy
@@HamsterPants522 Oh yea winrates don't mean everything, that's for sure, but for the sake of getting my point across, I used it. Some examples of winrates not telling the whole story are; Akali having a low winrate, and still getting nerfed, asol dominating the rift with a high winrate and a sub 1% pickrate etc.
Quinn
I example i say of a good one is voliebear. Top and jun. I mean hes not super op and or is super good. But its a good pick if you know how to play him. I think it come down to frustration.
Op champs become flex picks because they’re op, then it’s bad
Other than that it’s usually fine
Came to say this. There is always an optimal role for a champion, and if they can be meta somewhere else, they are OP in their primary. There has never been an exception to this. When a champion is viable in 3+ roles they are invariably OP as fuck. Though its worth noting that as a situational counterpick, a champion might be able to flex without being OP.
Said succinctly and accurately.
@@Leaflar I disagree HEAVILY with this. Panth, outside of like rework patch, has pretty much been a triple or quadra flex since with incredibly mediocre stats across the board.
Others examples are something like Rumble who has also been a 3-4 role flex with mediocre results across the board. When you picked Rumble Jungle at worlds you usually lost the game yet it was perceived as a strong flex pick.
@@Leaflar Not entirely true, Nautilus used to be viable Jungle, Support and Top without being OP in any of them. Same for a lot of the old school tanks.
I feel like that non OP champs are allowed to be flex picks indeed. From the more common like lux mid and sup. And for champs that aren’t played a ton i think an exception can be made for 3 flex like for example Taliyah. Mid she’s ok, jungle she’s ok as for support very very niche in case you dont know what to pick but you wanna hard counter vayne or kallista.
Thats the reason why poppy support exist
This game need to have creative playstyle to be not boring
Creating a champion specificly for a lane ends up narrowing the potential new playstyle
Seeing lb and akali i rly wanna see supp warden based on stopping mobility like poppy
Yeah, in fact, remember when runes reforged came out, that's exactly one of the things riot tried to promote.
yeah the almighty poppy support and anivia adc. kappa
Poppy top, jungle and support 💫
Flex picks are a good thing for the game. Part of the game of league of legends is attempting to get a good matchup through champ selection.
However there does exist a problem that could be misinterpreted as flex laners being a problem. This would happen when a mechanic is so overwhelmingly good that champions that can take advantage of it can win games simply by existing in game.
Also if a game is using draft select you basically have to have flex picks so you don't have a guaranteed loss just because you are forced to choose first and just get counterpicked. The only reason that it works in a game like Overwatch is because neither side is able to see who their opponent is playing when selecting a character to play
@@Ultima64 also differently in overwatch is that players are allowed to swap heroes reactively as to give them a better chance of winning instead of being locked into one character for the entire game
Yes, irelia is so good as a flex because she can pull out 3 health bars worth of healing out of her ass, so did viego and sylas before they got nerfed, yasuo and yone became godlike flexes because of shieldbow for similar reasons.
If a champion wins every trade by default then obviously they are gonna be flex, not because they are good at the role, but because they just win by default.
@@pmangano so true
I think flex roles aren’t necessarily bad. It’s not bad to have the most often auto filled roles (jungle and support) contain flex picks, bc it lowers the number of jg diff/supp diff games. But it’s different when you find someone who is essentially escaping their primary role to bully someone else in their secondary role. Irelia was actually a strong example of this: she is pretty good in the toplane, but she stomps mid because mid is full of immobile squishies that she can out dps early in the game, and continue out dpsing bc most of these squishies have zero answer for her until they reach the late late game. However, the meta essentially shifted around her, and now she isn’t played as much mid bc people are bringing other toplaners to the midlane now, and mages are rare and/or played more often in the botlane.
TBH the thing with flex picks is that it should be something akin to Diana or Lux wherein that their kits make perfect sense for them to be able to flex. Irelia's primary reason for being able to flex is basically just how broken she is. She has everything both a mid and top laner want.
Sustain, Mobility and some burst protection. She literally can pressure people absurdly well because she simply has everything required to succeed. Mages, until now, had no real way to itemize defensively (Thank you Shattered Queen). So now Mages can go mid because they can simply opt to an item that allows them to scale easier.
Flex picks just really need to be selective and IMHO they should give it to those champs that actually, thematically and kit wise can fit in the role.
Seraphine in Mid and Bot, Diana in Mid and Jungle and top if you feel spicy because she can just go ham with conqueror and shield bash, Lux in Mid and Support.
The thing is more of the fact that they do the same things as you'd expect and they never exceed beyond that because of how fixed their values are. Seraphine has wave clear and harass. That never changes in mid and support and bot. Lux and Dianna are the same. Because they're required to be piloted well and they allow counterplay because you can interact with them.
Irelia and Graves don't offer that much if not at all.
@@gerohikaru2712 totally agreed. Not to keep complaining about Irelia, but yeah, I agree. At worst, she should be a niche counter pick in mid. At best, make her a toplaner only.
Reminds me of when Samira was just spammed bot alot early this year so I'd just pick Annie into her and that works out every time somehow.
@@alliu6562 I just used Irelia as an example because she kind of is the perfect example of what SHOULDN'T be in a kit like hers.
Another example's Yone. And as much as people say Gwen's broken. You actually have to know how to use your W and combo properly.
Both Gwen and Yone have properties that are very similar but why are so many people complaining about Yone.
Besides the Yasuo syndrome, there's also the fact that he basically inherited the abundant traits that Yasuo's broken.
A shieldbow abuser, free shield, absurd mobility, low cooldown abilities and the fact that they're always up (Because of how everything besides E and R for Yone is AS scaling) and hard to counterbuild against until super late game.
Someone mobile is already hard to deal with. The fact that Yasuo and Yone are enabled so much is what made them a problem and are frustrating to go against.
At least Yasuo is mostly kept on mid. But Yone can go top lane too because he can just freely farm level 3 at the safety of his tower.
As for Gwen, as a Gwen player. It's not hard to counter her if you play smart. She has all the tools like Yone but the thing she lacked to succeed is hard CC and sticking power.
An early bramble purchase actually screws her over early. And what's worse is that her scaling is horrible level 2 to 6 because of the fact that she relies on conqueror and passive.
Yone doesn't have this issue because on first item, he already effectively gained 3800+ gold on stats. (3200 on shield and the fact that he gains double the crit chance as well.) with a magic damage compartment every 2nd auto, %HP damage.
As much as I like Yone and his skills are ACTUALLY surprisingly simple. I can't refute how much of a problem he actually is in the sense that the champs as of late are just feature creeped versions of previous characters. Thus becoming flex picks because they're overloaded. Not because their kits are ALLOWED to or designed for that purpose.
So, something you aren't aware of, is that there is a general rule of thumb in game design that players will optimize the fun out of a game. Something Riot really struggles to understand.
If you make a competitive game people are gonna play as efficiently as possible so fun is lost for many especially for league where people would have a heart attack at flex picks that can actually work but don't fit in the meta. People take this game way too seriously not just ranked ,but things like normals,aram,or even urf that were intended to be fun. The game is so hard to enter at this point for most people as a result of how serious the game has become. Which then requires characters that make up for that skill gap by being Stat sticks that are easy to play and makes other Champs look like trash by just using abilities mindlessly. Saying the game has problems is a understatement.
@@joebazooka5679 it's not limited to competitive games. Case and point, skyrim and it's stealth archer. Fastest easiest way to dispatch enemies by a landslide. And everyone ends up defaulting to it.
@@dlcyKing even in characters where i do a non stealth archer build, I still level stealth archer a bit in case i don't feel like fighting the bandit wave
Flex picks are the entire reason why Gragas is the most chad champion, consistently viable in 4 roles for almost his entire history 😎
Heimer has 4 roles too
Poppy has 4 aswell
pantheon can also fill 4 roles. arguably 5.
I think it's 5, but as carry, he might need specific support.
@@poom323 yeah you can make that argument
I think “Why nobody uses”/“Why everybody uses” videos for runes would be awesome (like Conq or ravenous hunter)
those runes umentioned are obviously good. Not dying isa key role to win the match. Dead champs hardly push. Sustain and stacking damage is strong. Mobility is good. the rest is obvious.
@@Vektordeformacio I agree - what I think would be interesting is hearing why Vars thinks those runes aren’t as popular as other rune, even though they seem like they should be pretty good
A vid like that would probly have to encompass like every rune, but I dont think it would be all that interesting. People take runes when they're good, and take other runes when they're bad, I think its kinda cut and dry
I think the main issue is when a champion is so good that they can be flexed into other lanes like we saw with Rumble. Rumble was so unbelievably op that he could Mid,top, and jungle effectively. That is a problem. However when you have things like Lee Sin mid/top I think that brings in an interesting dynamic because Lee Sin takes some skill to play well. Despite how much people trash on the balance team my personal biggest issue is when Riot sees a champ being played where they are unintended and then they nerf said champion to force them back into the role they were "meant" to be played. We saw this with Pyke. They nerfed his lane sustain and made it so that he was almost unplayable in mid lane forcing him back as a support. It also bothers me when Riot says things like "we have been seeing a lot of diversity in the top lane" like the same 5 champions aren't always dominating that role and as soon as there is a good flex pick they nerf it into oblivion because it wasn't "intended".
Top has "good diversity" because it has so many options to be played there, not because there are so many meta options to be played there. You'll still see the same three to five champions being played on repeat, but if it's not one of those almost half the roster could show up
Riight.
Lee's "high skill" play is just placing a ward and jumping to it.
That's about it.
“I don’t think graves should be allowed to do what he’s been doing for the past few weeks”
This guy has been terrorizing the game so much that I saw him in almost 9/10 times in blind pick. Shoot, some games had him on both teams too. It’s ridiculous that he’s armor tanky, has waveclear, absurd kite, and assblasts all melee champs. He should not even be this problematic. When I think about an immobile champs worse nightmare, this guy is top 5.
On that note, maybe do a video like this?? Lol. Best/worst champs against a certain architype, I.e. tanks, mages, assassins, etc.
I have so much fun playing Lulu mid instead of support because I'm not limited to support experience or income. Personally I think it's best if champions can be in at least two different roles, so if you're not a fan of one you can at least be the other
I think flex picks are essential. Freedom of choice and creativity make the game more fun. That said, they clearly need to balance some champs more to keep them from being domineering.
Love my heimer MId... adc... support.... and Top. Just need to find a way to play him jg
Heimer is actually pretty good jungler, like Zyra. You just let your turrets take all the dmg from camps.
Also Zyra's ganks might be a bit better then Hemier's but it's fine
I also need to find a way for azir to go jg I can fit him in all lane except jg
@@dontflamemepls7256 Heimer would have The worst ganks possible lol
@@eVill420 Yeah I just didn't want to destroy heim jg with that fact :'D
@@frostfinal8876 watch tarzans video where he plays azir jungle
Pyke at one point could be played in all 5 roles technically. Granted it was seldom that he was picked as a bot carry rather than a support.
And I’m sad about that, they just went too far in terms of numbers regarding his passive in nerfing pyke mid. As long as it is a bit weaker on its own (independent of having some players who are just great at pyke and better at mid than support), what’s the issue? Particularly with champions that don’t see much pro play, it helps the health of the game if OTPs can play multiple roles, even if their offroles are a bit off meta.
@@TheTaquitoProject the saddest part is thst support and adc aren't allowed to be flex picks at all
Respect for blokes like Davemon who still make Solo lane Pyke work!
Pyke's a champ with a very clear set of strengths and weakness: great lane sustain/safety, roaming and kill pressure at the cost of abysmal waveclear and high cooldowns.
Mid plays very differently to support - that's a healthy thing when judging Flex picks.
Yes and its not like pyke mid was ever more threatening than zed, qiana and talon mid, also the dude couldn't push a wave against a yuumi if he doesn't manage to kill whoever is contesting, even worse that in S11 every assassin was running brawler builds but pyke cannot due to his max HP being hard locked.
@@lostwolf9873 Lucian, tristana and vayne are flex picks for adc. I don't know if twitch jungle is dead but i see one every now and then.
Flex picking is a really good thing to have, but the levels of flexing we have seen with Viego or Graves are really unhealthy. Flex picking is ok when you use the flex to vary your composition, but the latest flex picks have been used to dodge bad matchups for champs that are OP first pick so you have both the advantages of first AND a psuedo last pick advantage (as you will always send the OP pick to his favorite matchup from the ones present)
I think we need to go the DOTA way and strengthen the differences between positions so flexing a character into the top or jungle has a big impact on what they do and what they build.
Looking forward to this one as a pantheon, seraphine, galio support main.... Riot hates me, help
Mostly cuz you play 2 non-supports and Seraphine, though there's something you forget, you give your team a huge advantage if Enemy top or mid accidentally counterpicks you and not them
@@eVill420 galio is literaly a tank/mage with tons of cc, the only thing that draws him back is his low base armor and range. Won't deny I just play pantheon for fun
@@doglopmaz Galio also has very good waveclear and a global ult, he's just always better mid
@@eVill420 he wasn't, he was a super strong support when he could w flash and last year he was equally good in both, but maxing w got nerfed which is what support max first
@@eVill420 whentank galio is stronger than ap, support is better and viceversa
Before watching the video I just want to say that my opinion is that once every pick is flex, then none will be. Let's try to stay away from the 53%+ winrate on three roles type of phenomenon though.
One thing I still don't understand is how mages are not considered as mainly botlaners, APCs if you will, specially in this meta were if you are not a skirmisher or assassin when mid, you cannot literally play.
Because of Riot's favoritism towards marksmen. Most of their competition gets nerfed to the ground no more than a few patches after they become relevant. I too think mages make more sense bot lane nowdays, but how do you compete with the class the devs don't want to have competition?
Its because mages cant push waves earlygame and cant take towers. There are a few exceptions to this some mages like dps mages can shove adcs in the earlygame like karthus taliyah and cassiopeia and gun down objectives like an adc. Or have a unique mechanic that is usefull with a support. Such as ziggs blowing up towers or seraphine or lux apc double buffing eachother while shoving waves with aoe. But for the most part mages are too mana hungry, cant sustain or get outranged.
@@shacolin6546 That is a plain wrong since adcs are only allowed botlane.
and once you see one in any other lane like lucian he gets nerfed back bot.
And since riot only allowd adcs botlane they can't habe midlane mages push them out of there lane if they allow that they need to change a lot of adc so they can go mid or top which riot doesn't want
could not have agreed more
thanks for quality content. keep up the good work. wish you well
I don't know after the pre season changes, but I remember when Pantheon was being used as Top, Mid, Support and sometimes even JG.
Hey man I just want to say that I started on your MapleStory videos and I am not going to lie about missing MapleStory content but I am glad that you are finding success with League related videos! It just so happens that these are the only 2 games I play consistently. Thank you for what you do!
As a lux main i remember before the buffs when i picked her mid someone in my team would say "pick a real mid", then when i picked her supp, someone would say "pick a real supp"
5:38 that triple ward killed me
The Problem is when its a situation like Graves was a few seasons ago, where he was constantly picked in every role but support, not because he was so versatile that he could do all good, but because he was overall so busted, that having him in a sub-optimal lane was still better than not having him in your team.
did a search on your channel and genuinely surprised you haven't done a video of bard!
I am a Sion player and I can tell you he can run EVERY role in league.
Sion is a Tank Bruiser Assassin Support! I always run smite and TP no matter what lane/role I am in.
Azir, can be played as a good flex pick in Top, Mid, And ADC. The problem is that most of the players who play him (including me) don't know how to play him in the first place.
Shen can play pretty comfortably in all roles but ADC. This is mainly due to how each aspect of his kit can be used in a variety ways allowing him to meet the conditions of those roles. His passive and HP scaling for top, great mobility for middle, river, and jungle, and being able to protect allies for support. He has strengths that are not role dependent, but each one he can strategize off of in order to fit the needs of that role.
Appreciate the fire emblem music vars
That little piece of commentary on Vayne played in top lane... That's a very calculated move, and though I acknowledge that it is, it earned you my sub.
Also I cannot believe you went through this entire video not mentioning Lucian, who's been played in all 3 lanes for years now.
This really shows one of the huge differences between League and DOTA like heroes in DOTA can be played in different roles and no one really thinks it's broken. League it can be really broken if a character is able to play in a different role and it's really strange that people think that these games are at all similar. The share a genre but they're so different.
I do believe flex picks are 1 of the reasons why most "balanced" champions ( balanced meaning: Having 1 role, 1 lane, and 1 goal and as stats that are based on his role ( example- ADC: Low base stats into high growth continuing base stats late game, Support: High base stats growing less into stats given) ) are not given the same spotlight.
But all I see is cons when it comes to flex picks as other champions cannot also shine their light, yes they may have been given a good 1st impression as hybrid laners but seeing as league is a competitive game ( in nature, competitive: going against someone else in a contest ) this types will outshine balanced champions in overall gameplay.
In the popularity of things, people will get sick and tired of seeing the same champion in a tournament over and over again, thus this will downgrade the amount of people watching it overtime, they want something new like pure roles to be played as. People even cheered for teemo or even amumu or garen when they were first played in competitive
Overall, I do hope the patchnotes fix this types of champions. Even if it just for 2 lane hybrids that will be fine enough for me since 3 it overloaded
I just noticed you made Rotmg videos, I recently started playing it again.
Great guides :P
To that matter, I believe the only penta flex champion in League was Sett by the release. He was designed for toplane, but coud do Jungle and midlane as well, even played some competitive games at that role. In the botlane he was almost always the support until they discovered Fasting Senna and Sett was his "carry". Thats why I believe Sett was the only five role flex pick in the game(there is also Teemo, but nowadays is more like a meme than a fact)
One of my favourite flex picks is WW, especially in S11 where he had pretty much no chance to compete in jg because of tiamat changes and the general meta favouring 5/6 camp clears (you WANT me to do raptors?) I already played him a lot in top but now I prefer him both there and in mid lane, no one knows the match up and he has a better time there. There's a few bad matchups but it doesn't change the fact I enjoy him in those roles way more than jungle now
I remember hating Top Lane for a while, I’m a Singed otp. I felt so useless at some point I decided to play Singed jungle. It really does work, but he has plenty of counters, rather straight up better champs in jungle. However, I had fun with him in jungle. I have over 700 Singed games top lane, including games from separate game modes, and like 175 games of Singed jungle which is a hella lot. Mid Singed at the time was hard, Predator wasn’t as good and this wasn’t discovered/popularized until recently by Faker.
Singed jungle, it’s possible to do Red buff and Raptors at the same time, and Blue Buff and Wolves. You get heal when Raptors and Wolves reset. Also, Blue buff and Gromp can be done at the same time at a certain level.
I believe I remember that, "Solo que players, in this game, just want to find whatever brings the most results, for the lowest amount of effort." was from your Aurelion Sol video. I could be mistaken though!
I was mostly a top and jung player back when I started way back, but I am more used to the champs that are now considered mostly adc and support, though I do run some of them back in top and jung on occasion as while they aren't the strongest in their past roles anymore, some of them can still fulfill those roles if played properly.
What program is used to capture these videos and being able to move the camera around? This looks awesome
Vars i love u for using Fire Emblem songs in your vids, especially if it's from Tellius games :D
that's one of the reasons i love warwick and play him as my main.
you can play him top, jungle and mid
you can play him AD or AP
one of the simpler champs kit wise
one of if not the best built in sustain of the game
built in fear that also acts as damage reduction (35% at lvl 1)
and when you start upgrading your W you become the best flex pick of the game since you're pretty much everywhere at once with the huge speed boost
when you play him top or mid, even if you can't manage to get priority over your opponent, you can always be on the same power level thanks to your E fear and dmg reduction and when managed correctly you can even turn back on your opponent with an easy kill at lvl 6
as soon as you get your sheen, tour Q deals at least 400 dmg if not 500 and you regen 90% of said damage
even if your brought to low hp, guess what ? your healing is tripled and your atk speed is boosted so you can easily get back to full hp and if not, you can at least survive infinitely
even when facing ranged matchups, using your Q and E allows you to sustain a ton of damage and still get gold from minions
when fed, you suddenly become a 1v3 machine just because of the massive sustain you have
at full build, you Q does at least 1k damage every 2s which you heal 900 hp of, so unless someone manages to burst you by surprise you're immortal. and even if an assasin manages to catch you, with your R you just deny their burst, remove half their hp and regen almost all your hp, then you finish with a Q and get to your next target.
and the best thing IMO is if you face an ennemy team that's all focused around AD then with a combination of GA, death's dance, sterak's, thormail and your E, you're pretty much taking no damage at all while still dealing thousands of damage to everyone.
thank god WW doesn't deal AoE dmg because then that would be turbo broken
In general I am against flex picks. Most of the time champions are(more like should be) designed with a role in mind and some weaknesses (and strengths) that go with that role. If you design a mid laner to be weak early but a beast late game, he shouldn't be able to erase his weakness by going jungle. That for me is a balance/design problem.
The other flex that has happened many times is champions that are given a good early game, with high base stats and they end up as supports. That for me just seems sad for the champion, although it usually coincides with the champion in question having some hideous matchups in his supposed role.
Agreed, me when quiyana stays in jg without getting bullied in lane and getting level 6 one shotting my mid and adc 😍
One of the best quotes I've ever heard when it comes to game design comes from Extra Credits.
"If given the chance, players will optimize the fun out of your game". It is the devs job to make sure that optimal is fun because if they are in dissonance, your game will never be fun.
Its been years since I played league. I remembered my flex pick back then which is Gragas that can go Top, Mid, Jungle, and Support
I haven't fully finished yet. But to answer the question in general, YES. If you couldn't play characters in other roles then the game is forcing you to do a certain thing with no innovation.
Players don't like being forced into doing something with no creativity. That's what keeps the game fresh and evolving. So to take that away I can confidently say that League will die faster than is projected.
Great video and I'm glad you shed light on how flexing picking is beneficial and what it's implications are.
Short answer: Yes
Long answer:
When a champion adquires the same relevancy in another role compared to the original and that turns said champion into a top tier pick, give it a generic nerf as you would if other champion was too over the top in a single role.
If a champion is top tier in one role and average in another, it is alright to give a nerf that'll affect the former more than the later, but artificial changes such as "Hecarim's Q deals reduced damage to lane minions" isn't the way to go.
When a champion adquires more relevancy in another role than it currently has on its original role, balance the champion around the new role, not the old. Lucian is better mid than bot? He's a mid laner now. Sett's best role is support? Forget about Sett top lane. Ezreal got a buff to make him stronger bot lane, but he became a jungler? Might as well embrace it and balance Ezreal around the jungle.
@Buzz Buzz Changing and adapting is part of the game. In addition, bot lane is the biggest victim of league's lack of change. It has so few characters exactly because a vocal portion of its players are so resistant to change as every non-marksmen seeing play bot lane is met with backlash and "imagine playing adc in 2kevery-year" memes that more often than not don't even make sense. Season 11 is possibly the biggest example, as even though Shieldbow and Wit's End is the strongest item combo in the game, you still see adc get oneshot memes left and right.
@@shacolin6546 i mean...the adc getting oneshotted is still real xd tho they definitely got stronger with season 11 items now they actually feel like a champion with their mythic item so i agree with your point
I kinda agree but would like to see juggernauts able to go more than just top .I mean the mordikaiser rework failed but I did like the idea of a slow moving tank like character being able to be paired up with a engage or catcher in lane kinda like a hunter and their dog or maybe make that a new character now that I'm thinking about it give them like a long range stun or root that they can dash into auto range from like ivern but make them a melee range juggernaut character and make that their only movement ability maybe give them a ability that does more damage to hard cc'd opponents and either some kind of healing on their passive when killing Champs or a damage mitigating ability and a damage steroid for a ult that also reveals all stealth and camouflaged enemies around them
Rxcept for the part where that isnt good for the game being able to flex is onething but balancing a champion around a role they were never ment to play is another
@@cascas12345678910 if the champ works for it then why does it matter if he was designed for it as long as there is still counterplay
Flex picks are good so long as you are forced into playing the character in the late game differently because of the choices you have made earlier in the game. Morganna and Lux being flexed between mid and support for ages comes to mind.
I only hate seeing flex picks if the flex champion can build the exact same items in both roles. I like seeing creativity in itemization so most flex picks are pretty cool by me.
Is the beginning music the same music that’s in Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance because it sounds so similar to it? Thanks for the video ❤️
Weren't you premiering a let's talk season 12? I can't find the video x. X
I like the drafts in Dota 2 more. Way more heroes can be used as flex picks. It's good to see more freedom than simply bot, supp, jungle, top and mid.
Sometimes I feel like this channel is "should anything different be allowed"?
Well given how averse the league community is to "different" you wouldn't be too far off.
It sounds like just an excuse to talk about certain aspects
@@alex2005z Problem?
@@VarsVerum no. The content is great
@@VarsVerum thank you for the hearth. Was very much a surprise, but a pleasant one.
The car animation was really cool, did you make it?
That feel when you play some patches ago buffed mordekaiser jungle (his passive now works on any jungle minion and can be turned on by 1 q) and feel like a true gigachad when enemy jungle can't counterpick you, your top just chillin without teemo pick and surr 15 happens
There are a few Champs who are viable in a couple different rolls and are competitive to a degree in each, (Ekko, Akali, Irelia, etc) but there have been a few Champs who at times were Top tier competitive in 3 or 4 rolls at once, such as at the start of S11, Pantheon was one of the best Top, Jungle, Mid and Supports all at the same time, partially because of his much better itemization, quick camp clear speed, his lane strength, ability roam anywhere with R, and his blocked turret damage.
When things like this happen, it becomes an obvious balance nightmare, as it becomes impossible to counter pick, because in the Pantheon situation, if someone counter picked Pantheon in mid, then he would lane swap with top or jungle and carry anyway.
Flex picks are fun but in cases like Corki, I feel like he needed some changes to be viable in both Mid and bot.
About lane phase being ignored so early, I have seen my enemy team aram down mid at 14 min. It's mad
I like the part where you flame vayne top, it gives a lot of personality to the video
I love flex picks almost as much as I do off- meta picks. Nothing I love more than going Hybrid jhin top, Katarina ADC, Aphelios top, Qiyana support, Aatrox jungle, full tank katarina, bruiser pyke etc. If anyone has any suggestions for fun off-meta picks or builds please let me know!
I missed a mention of pantheon in the video, the chamo thst could go top, jungle, mid and support (technicly he still can go those 4 roles), he was disgusting
Personally, I do not only enjoy flex picks, I believe they should be encouraged as much as possible. The game wouldn't get boring just because you'd see the same champions every other match; in fact, I'd argue that even now it feels like there's very little variety when considering that there are almost 160 champions available, with the difference that if your role ever felt repetitive for that reason, you could just take your main to another lane to spice things up. I also don't care if it makes counter-picking more difficult, since it'd actually encourage adapting to the situation you're presented with instead of always just taking the easiest route. Besides, the overreliance on abusing matchups is an issue that stems from the overall design of the game and its balance, so people should be focusing on finding a way to solve it at its roots instead of complaining about off-meta/flex players.
Speaking of balance, the reason why many have begged for certain champions to be nerfed to the point where they'd only be viable in one role is _not_ that they disliked their versatility, but rather that they could only be flexed efficiently because they were extremely overpowered. Being flexed so often was the result of being too strong, not the other way around.
You have no idea how many times I've wished to play a certain champion, but had to give up because they couldn't be flexed in any of the roles I play. As a person who enjoys diving into many different playstyles for the sake of variety - a jack-of-all-trades of sorts, although there are a few subclasses I simply can't stand - I wouldn't be exaggerating if I said that I'd like every champion to be able to be played anywhere, although I do reckon that some people wouldn't enjoy it as much because they prefer sticking to one thing (and that's perfectly fine) and they'd be frustrated if they had to, for instance, rotate lanes every game because their lane opponent hard-counters their champ (e.g. a marksman put against an assassin).
I feel like flex pick can reward player to think outside the box sometimes.
I main Poppy and I have never played her top. Sometime I play her jungle but most of the time I play her support.
It is not the best pick, but botlane players just don't know how to deal with her at all.
That happy chime noises part hit home 😅
Everyone playing these meta Champs in every role while I still torture my team with autofill neeko
As a rule of thumb, I think flex picks should be incetivized by riot PRIMARILY to increase pick rate.
And removed, to reduce it.
Champions who are played too often should lose flexibility of being picked in other lanes and those who are played rarily should gain flexibility.
The other thing I think should just be the default: Every champion should have at least 2 places where they can shine. I hate how many junglers for instance have such high mana costs that laning with them is hard.
Or immobile champions not being allowed basically anywhere.
Oh I just thought it meant flex as in show off. I really only heard it when relating to pro play and someone chose off meta because they were really good/like the champ
I think you should have talked about gragas. Can be flexed on 4 roles. Top,jgl,mid and supp. And that wothout being broken
and heimer sitting in his little corner of turrets beaming everyone who dares come near
as a talon i will agree with this i dont want to learn jngle champ so i always dodge when put on jngle but thx for the buff on talon jngle make it easy for me to flex to two role with one champ
Flex picks should always be allowed, but for the right reasons. Someone like sett that could be played top, jg, mid or supp, it wasn't because of his unique gameplay that let him change builds or abilites to become better and worse in certain things. The reason you saw him in all those roles was because of how op he was with his absurd healing, true damage and so on. That can't happen, it's unhealthy, but something like galio or neeko it's fine.
I've been noticing some nice Fire Emblem OSTs in the background...
I’d rather flex picks than being counterpicked, there are some matchups that are just unplayable. I think flex picks are fine if they’re fairly balanced in each role similar to the Virgo change.
Honestly I think the this is a hard way to balance but it just goes to show for ingenuity. Veigar is typically a mid laner but can be taken bot and support (support being with the right know how he operates differently in that position) but he has some matchups in every position that cause him issues (Katarina, Sivir, Ezreal, Morgana, etc.) Making him pretty balanced in all those positions and prevent him from cheesing his non meta roles like how Ziggs can dominate bot lane. Swain although I love him is not really a good example because Swain can basically be taken everywhere excluding jungle and have few vey bad matchups excluding a few but most of those are poke champs or champs that have high mobility. Swain loves to trade which makes it hard for fighters, tanks, and assassins and can lock you down for long enough that even if he can’t trade with you he’ll make it so you have to engage his jungle or god forbid a lockdown or healing support. Making him hard to counter in general. Swain only loses if he gets poked down or he becomes a target early on.
The bg music is giving me pokemon tournament vibes-
Yeah, I think they should be more encouraged, even.
Signed,
A Salty Sett Jungle Player
That moment when your basic autos do more damage than your empowered autos
@@princeofspeedz8408 ...How?
I like to play Syndra and I've played her in every role, yes, even in the jungle, with quite some success.
I believe being able to flex two roles is ok, but anything beyond that is too mutch. Being able to do two lanes or a lane and jungle is ok tho. Top/mid, mid/supp and top or mid/ jungle for example.
I think flex roles are fine as long as it is natural, especially if said naturalness comes from making concessions away from a different play style. What made viego so ubiquitous was his q passive, allowing him to one-shot even tanky targets just by buying DPS items. That meant he could effectively go anywhere, as he was able to fill out the job needed for each position. He was able to provide pressure top lane, because of his ability to duel enemies quite well and can damage towers quickly if left alone. He can jungle, because of his ability to clear objectives and gank well. He can mid because he can roam effectively and he can provide kill pressure if left unchecked
Yes, as long as stuff isn't overpowered or too far out of line like Sett support
I do love ke the change of zed/talon/qiyana in Jungle. I played qiyana jungle before and now it's actually much more viable. It also just feels like the assassin's work well in jungle better anyway. Graves is broken tho
That's the funny thing, I main TF, and I've at one point in ranked had more success with him top than I was having mid, but nowadays top is the only role I don't feel comfortable playing him
I was wondering if you could talk about the AD/AP ratios and why a champ that would normally build AD has AP ratios on some abilities and vis versa
Reason why is 3 parts and riot has talked about it.
1) the champion existed in old league when there was hybrid itemization such as Akali, Jax, Old Sion.
2) giving up meaningful different ways to plays a champion. Such as shyvanna having bruiser and AP builds, Kaisa ap or adc, katarina with her ap and Ad/ on hit.
3) gives some champions a boost for Baron buff. Since baron buff gives a stat increase to AD and AP it gives champions such as tanks a damage boost so that they feel stronger with Baron now that they're ability ratios are being used due to the free stats Baron gives.
Every champ should be able to be played in any role the player wants they shouldn't limit us a set role
100 % agree.
Thank you for those words! Now i have to courage to go Janna jg
I like that riot doesnt do that themselves, its the community who gets mad about people "trolling" because they dont understand it. Playing an off meta pick or first-timing yasuo mid. One is forbidden, the other is accepted.
Pls Buff Kha'zix mid :( I really want more wave clear to be able to have fun in my friends in Flex
Surprised that Pantheon isn't mentioned considering he was viable in all 5 roles once (still viable in 2 roles)
Pantheon even until now can be considered a 5 role flex pick but what's interesting is that due to his lack of power in the late game, there is a tradeoff between role power and versatility. A more specialized character can run him over if he's unable to take control and end the game before he falls off too much. Sadly the same Cant be said for most flex picks.
I am an otp Ezreal (500k mp) and I usually go with ezreal Mid and sometimes Top, support sometimes work and Jg is almost a troll pick for me, altough I kinda wanna try Ezreal jg more
Question is - what makes a champion a flex pick?
A) Gimmick playstyle, ex. poke / cc / frontloaded burst machine as Xerath / Amumu / Pantheon supp
B) Overloaded kit, that no matter where the champion goes he'll perform. Ex, Viego. Take him top, mid, jungle, or even adc and he'll perform (seriously I am amazed more people don't pick him as adc, he obliberates enemy if he gets engage support).
i think there should be only be flex picks. the lane fixation was the worst thing that has happened to LOL (even tho it happened long ago)
Definitely, always a good thing. I shouldn't be forced to play a champion in only one way if I like them, if I want to play AD voli jungle as well as AP voli top, why not.
One of the most interesting pro games I saw was uol playing twisted fate jungle. Flex picks is what makes the game interesting
i think there should be more enchanter and tank supports that can be flex picked. Usually if a support is flexpicked its a mage support, but it would be cool to see something like braum venture into other lanes
U'd need to damage buff all those tank supports in order to be viable on top and/or jungle, which makes them op as support. So im afraid we will never see that.
me who watched the yuumi teleport, smite jg shorts: let's try it out
Flex is awesome I love having champions in multiple roles creativity and diversity is nice
I really enjoy your content. Keep them up.
1:22 That's not completely right because Blue has first pick and can pick the best champion. Red side has a better entrance to the dragon pit while Blue has the better towards the Baron pit