@@owoskan very much needed IMO, her R which are often used to control summons to move around for instance move them *AWAY* from harm, is used as an active to release Maiden, not to mention your ult won't start going on CD unless you release maiden, unlike Annie and shaco's ult it starts counting down the CD on summon. When I feel they will pursue my maiden I just release her cause they always kill her no matter how she seems to run away and so that the CD starts asap. Also, Yorick is my fave in ARAM.
They actually fcked up Annie ult. I remember when I played in season 6 or 7, If Annie died I could control tibbers. Now when someone kills me, tibbers goes full monke and runs at them.
@@bajinacovers2482 but it didn't help cuz if the enemy with high health killed Annie Tibbers will ignore the low hp enemy it will be better if he ran to low hp enemy champion
@@bajinacovers2482 If Yuumi kills Annie, Tibbers just stands still and doesn't attack anything. Otherwise the revenge mechanic is nice imo, especially if you build rylais.
Daisy suffers from mental degradation, when i play ivern she sometimes just sits there...staring into the void ,when i dont explicitly tell her what to do😂
Tibbers has an issue that STILL hasn't been fixed. He can't attack Inhibitors... And you can't make him target inhibitors manually either... He just randomly attacks them if there's literally NOTHING on screen at the time.
Allow me to pay respects for AD Malzahar where you had three voidlings with 700 AD each that didn't die to a single sneeze. June 1st, 2010 to May 4th, 2016 Gone, but never forgotten.
That nerf was stupid man. They could have cut down a bit of his damage or increasing cd but nope, 1 AoE attack of any kind will nullify your W, clean and easy.
@@chaoswraith you can, the point is you have to because she a) doesn’t have much automation, she’ll follow whoever she first locks on to forever unless you do; b) really likes to chase under a tower that attacks her first even when she’s not damaging a champion, getting prematurely killed. Honestly just making Daisy stay out of tower range when she’s not locked onto a champion would be a great improvement, as would making her lock onto whoever is closest or the attacker when you get damaged when she’s locked onto you. (This second thing might already exist I don’t really keep track of daisy AI in a teamfight.) Similarly an order to “guard” an ally (attack whoever is on them) would be nice.
I main Azir. He's not quite a summoner in the sense of his dudes being controlled by AI, but I think Azir's sand soldiers are probably one of, if not the, best approach to making a summoner champion in League. I don't want to bash Heimer or Yorik because I haven't played those characters, but what makes Azir's sand soldiers work is that the player has complete control over what they do, which prevents the three major issues (I suspect this video will discuss) of summons lacking player agency, having janky AI, and not making sense with the character's kit. Summons should have simple AI or be easy to control and they need to fit in with the character's gameplay theming. Neeko W and Shaco Ult are also examples of summons that I really like since they tie into the champions' themes of deception. In other words, I think Azir is a good example of character based around summons while Neeko and Shaco are good examples of characters with summons that are a part of their kit but not the central focus.
I think the fact that player has complete controller over Azir's solidiers is what makes them not summons which is entities that have some agency of their own (which is I believe what makes the so clunky in a competetive environment that league is). Azir is much closer to the likes of Oriannna or Gankplank (barrels) in the sense that he has some "outside" factor that he has to take into account but he has pretty free control over how that factor behaves
Azir is not a summoner cause his soldiers cannot act independently from him. They cannot move without his Q, they cannot attack without his command. The idea of summons is summoning another unit. The soldiers just like orianna's Ball cannot even block skillshots, the most basic feature of a summon. If they could block skillshots i would give them the summon identity. The soldiers are just tools just like orianna's Ball. They are their own category of champions. It's a hibrid between summoner champions and trapmasters. Funny how we don't have an actual trapmaster champion. The closest is teemo and he is barely a trapmaster.
As a Dota player, it seems bizarre to me that the summons are controlled by an AI at all in the first place. MOBAs stem originally from strategy games-- Controlling multiple units at a time isn't a mind-blowing or staggering thing. Lots of heroes in Dota have all sorts of micro they need to engage in to be used to full effect-- Though I know they're two very different games that aren't really comparable anymore, I still think League could take a similar approach. Why not tear out the AI and give the players full control of their pets? Right click to move, hold ALT+Right Click to move pet. If your pet does down the line get skills, hold ALT+Hit Q,W,E,R to activate the pet's skills, right? Why do they have AI anyway? It sounds like more of a nuisance than anything. I understand there would be a learning curve to controlling two entities at once in this fashion, but it's easily *doable*. Give players control over their own heroes' skills, I reckon. There's no way they could ever design an AI that has the pet always reading their owner's mind and doing what they want. Perhaps release a symbiote hero that permanently fights alongside a pet / second entity with complimentary skillsets, power budget spread out among the two? Items bought affecting them both, and so on. Like a Meepo, but only two Meepos. Idk.
Alt+Q,W,E,R is already assigned to "Cast on self" for things like Morgana shield, Kayle ult etc, that require you to click on a friendly champion. edit: and Ctrl+Q,W,E,R is already "level up ability", and I think Shift+Q,W,E,R is "ping ability". I guess it could also be like, ult recast or sth. Yorick's maiden already kinda has that w/ the ult recast making her just push a lane.
@@dobretomas5150 I heard a legend that if you say Yorick 3 times before a major teamfight, the enemy team will lose a member. However, a random lane will be demolished from the tier 1 tower to the inhibitor, just in the spam of that teamfight.
I feel like making summons interesting is simple enough, if the engine can support it. Click R to use the champion's summon ultimate. Whenever you hold R while the summon is active, you gain access to a Q/W/E that act as the summoned unit's abilities. Give the summon's abilities a bit of delay / channel time, and chain them together with your champion's abilities for some mechanically interesting executions. Granted, it makes for a champ with a high skill floor and massive skill ceiling, but I wager people want that in a summon champ by now. In terms of movement, alt-click can still work.
that would be equivalent to shape shifters, but even more broken due to having seperate cooldowns and they would be really hard to balance because the champions who have these abilities would be worse then kassadin early game and even then kassadin won't be missinv the equivalent of 50% of their kit due to the ult having to be balanced with the champs original abilities.
Another way to go about that idea would be have a character who in exchange for having an ult, used R to reposition their summon around. Then I'd make their abilities something like q can make the summon dash to the champion or champion to the summon, w is a low damage AoE that comes from both the champ and the summon and slightly slows, dealing double damage and rooting if the enemy it hit from both the champion's and the summon's slow, and e is a skillshot that's fired from the champion and the summon and explodes for bonus damage upon intercepting but it has low damage and is blocked by minions in exchange for having two places the shot is coming from and the big damage on intercept. Idk, that's a random thought I had. But I think you could make having a permanently out summon as a thing work.
This was my exact thought for a workaround. Yeah, having double abilities would be pretty broken, but I don't see why it wouldn't at least be doable. As long as the champion's and summon's abilities are "relatively" simple, I think they could still be fun to play without causing too much stress for the enemy team to deal with. Maybe give the summon's abilities really long cooldowns, or even only have them be usable once. I think it could work.
@@AgentYellowWang league is a faster game you can't have shit like brewmaster r or a summon with multiple abilities in league because the game is already retardedly fast and hard to play at a micro level, by the time you switch between the 6 abilities irelia has q'ed 12 times gone from 1 health to full like 2 times and stunned your jungler with her e while doing that.
No matter what he says I will love it when maiden takes 3 towers top while we fight for drag, and when the enemy team realizes they say "WTF Yorick broken.
The main problem is that pets would have been infinitely stronger had you been able to control them manually, the way you can in DotA. Or even - heaven forbid - the way you originally used Hero units back in Wc3. Summons are totally legit in a strategy game where both players control multiple units - that's what the original Blizzard RtS was MEANT to do. In fact, back in Wc3 each race has at least one hero that has summons and they are great tools without being overpowered (Humans have Archmage, Orcs have Far Seer, Undead have Crypt Lord, Night Elf have Keeper of the Grove). Except you can't do that because League doesn't support multitasking. Heroes of the Storm actually has fantastic examples of managing multiple things in an RTS. More than one hero has a controllable attached to an ultimate (i.e. Raynor, Kerrigan), one has them as the premise of the hero (Rexxar), and one hero is actually the combination of 3 units that you can control at once (Lost Vikings).
Hots should be more appreciated and stop being looked down. Its character design is fantastic and in my opinion they achieved true balance among their champs. True balance in addition to different maps make every game amusing by teamfighting and objective control. I played rexxar so much and its a same that such work is being tossed aside by blizzard pulling away staff from the project
yep i hate to be the guy who mentions dota in a league video but literally every hero in dota can have their own summons and pets with actives (necronomicon and helm of the dominator). there are multiple heroes who make extensive use of summons in their kits (chen, beastmaster, brewmaster, etc) and even summons with no actives (enigma, venomancer, natures prophet) have enormous skill expression in pure microing. not to mention meepo lmao. but league unfortunately will never go this route because probably less than 1% of the playerbase would be able to properly utilize true summons
League needs something first. Fights need to be longer and more complex. The burst damage this last season makes useless the pets or minions, its 100 times more efficient kill all your enemies with a 2 seconds combo than trick them to a "1.5 vs 1" that you could win, that needs more actions and time and gives them more opportunities to avoid their lose, even with cc or in a planned teamfight
Summons offer an interesting dynamic and it's a shame Riot hasn't implemented one, I do believe it's possible since other MOBA´S have functional summons based characters like Rexxar in Heroes of the Storm, who has to control his bear Misha, since she is the bulk of his DPS while his own abilities offer utility (slows, reveals, vision). Maybe we can see a similar approach to league as well
There are also very complex summons like Meepo in Dota 2 where if your summons die then all summons including the main hero would die. Such design isn't fit for League's more micro-oriented gameplay but I just wanna leave that out there.
It is possible, certainly, though it does go along with what he mentioned regarding the hotkeys; HotS has a lot more ability keys available to it since besides the four normal abilities, you have the D key for activatable traits and the number keys for bonus abilities. Since League already has those keys set for summoner spells and activatable items, it would take a bit more finagling to make work, I think.
then issue becomes that the BEAR is really the champion and not the champ itself that ur controlling, so if the bear becomes unusable or CC'd, or dies, then u start feeling like half a champ. Its like Skarner without his spires but worst, or Kled without Skaarl. It works when the conditions are in ur favor, but less so when they are not. At that point u could either play a normal enchanter/ support and get a Voli APC to be ur ally, or better yet, just play the bear itself, and maybe make the Rexxar the pet instead, at least there u have agency to do what u want, be a big bear and wreck stuff.
I think Ivern should be rework in that way, with Daisy with no expiration timer, since level 1 and being affect by stuff as a champion like Rexxar from hots. The only day some dev said anything about reworking Ivern he suggested making his R like Nazeebo's from hots but no Iverm main liked that idea
You talk about how you would need a new keybind to give the summon an ability but what if that ability was bound to recasting your ultimate, and you gave up your ability to explicitly control it in exchange? Imagine if that ability in turn synergized with the main champion, requiring the player to have really good mechanics and play literally two entities but then the reward for that skill would make them very difficult to beat or something. You could take away some cast damage to have an auto reset as tibber's recast plus maybe it just grants an extra pyromancy stack to annie or maybe marks them to receive bonus magic damage from the next ability in a challengingly short time frame. That gives her a lot more skill expressive damage than "I pressed R on you"
"Can't give active abilities to summons" *laughs in DotA Earth, Storm, Fire, Meepo, Lone Druid, and Visage* The trouble is not that giving these units actives is a balance problem, it's that Riot has a bit of an allergy to just how complicated and unintuitive fighting summons becomes if they're allowed to be more than a meat shield.
Yeah. I never understood Riot's fear of complicating the game too much (they barely implement items with actives for this reason) when every new champion has an ability that does 80 different things things at once
@@theodorotargino5444 everyone memes about the whole "we at riot don't think we have any overloaded champions" but honestly it's kind of true. New champions are overloaded in comparison with older ones but even the new ones aren't actually that complex on their own. But every time riot tries to do something new and innovative, the players lose their minds about requiring 4 brain cells to play a champion rather than 2. Although, riot has pretty rarely taken community feedback on champ design seriously so they can kinda just jam anything into the game and we have to be OK with it or stop playing. And we both know that isn't happening lol
@@maxsync183 yeah... That's definitely a thing. Truth is most of the new champs are just not... complicated? At least, not in a minute to minute gameplay. They need entire essays to describe how their mechanics work, but said mechanics are ultimately fairly straight forward. In contrast, we have Meepo over here playing Nth dimensional chess with less only two thirds of the total text of Nasus :V
@@maxsync183 like when Rell was released and no one played her because she is slightly harder than all of the other champions in her class, even though her character accomplishes more in the long run
I dont think Earth, Storm and Ember spirit remnants can be counted as summons, but there is still stuff like Brewmaster, Chen, Enigma, Chaos Knight, Visage, Phantom Lancer, and others that are full on summoners, there even is Manta Style to summon copies of your hero, and the Necronomicon, which lets you summon a fully controllable wave of creeps
I really feel like you should have talked about how Dota does Summons(Lone Druid,Meepo,Chen,visage), which it totally different than league, but represents how this is doable, but its not something riot does. I totally feel like Rexxar from Heroes of the storm could totally exist in league of legends. He's really elegantly programmed.
As a previous Heroes of the Storm Player, I dream for the day to get a Rexxar and Misha champ. That was my main, loved the way I could stun with Misha. She always followed you around and 2 of your abilities were directly tied to her.
DotA 2 is filled to the brim with true summonable characters with their own ability and such, it would probably be worth revisiting this topic after looking into that design space. It introduces a lot of complexity though because it requires mapping control groups and context switching between multiple characters you own, something I'm not even sure the league engine is currently capable of. I personally never liked the mechanic because I found it too complex, but some people go hard and basically turn dota games into starcraft.
DotA is different from league in this way. In DotA low mechanical skill heroes like ogre magi, juggernaut, and shadow shaman are just as viable at high level as their super high mechanical skill heroes like meepo. visage, and invoker. In League of Legends the basic characters like Garen, Warwick, and Annie aren't as competativly viable at a high level as more complex mechanical characters.
@@EzraTheEpic I think this might be a result of riot prioritizing accessibility over complexity. DotA 2 is just a way more complex game overall and that means there's a lot more levers to tune. LoL's "4 abilities and a passive" is super easy to understand but it's very restrictive to the design space.
I want an actual 2 character champion, like you could control them individually and they would both have 2 abilities. I want an ice climbers champion, not a Rosalina and luma champion.
The problem with summons is that you create a whole new entity that can interact like champions,( block projectile, soak damage, this is a bad example and, etc). Nerfing or balancing this is difficult since the champion main kit may revolve around its summons (Himmer, Azir, etc) unlike majority which is just themselves
In most games that have summoner classes I always play them, I simply love the idea of being able to control/lead an "army" or a single creature to battle/let them fight for me. Such as in Terraria or other games that have those kind of classes.
@Duckervert basically a hero that has ultimate that summons a copy of himself for a short duration. Eventhough, it lasts like about 15 seconds or so. The copy has identical stats and items to the original.
@Duckervert arc warden's ult summons a perfect copy of himself that can use all the same spells and item as the original...basically u get double the hero for like 15 secs or so
I think Heroes of the Storm has some really interesting examples for summons when you think about heroes like Samuro. He has an active skill with his Decoys that allows him to swap between them like Todo from Jujutsu Kaisen making them a primary part of his kit and not just beatsticks.
I think Dota 2 did summons right. Since they can be directly controlled by the player, like in an RTS, you don’t have to rely on shitty AI, making them way more reliable.
When I started playing Lol and heard of Annie and her bear, I was really excited to get to know her kit. I think I watched the cinematic before. I had no real idea how I would design a kit but still I was very disappointed, that Tibbers just works by clicking R and then he can only walk up and hit people. I would have liked to see him be more integrated in her entire kit. Like that it's just Annie with sometimes a thing. I could imagine a mechanic that works similar to Gnar or something, where Tibbers appears based on things you do (as Gnar gets big based on dmg and stuff). And her kit should then evolve around Tibbers, so she's more capable with Tibbers. Just like Azir, that's a pretty good point.
Mordekaiser's old summon was by far my favorite in the game. Not because it did anything different than the others, but because to me it felt like it complimented his playstyle. He didn't have any mobility or cc, so he functioned very well as a walking zone of death. The best way to play him imo was to embrace the fact that you will never catch someone walking away without your ult, and just focus on farming and objectives until someone walks into your bubble. His summon allowed him to extended his zoning range so he could go do other stuff without being kited.
I mean a pet summon with it's own abilities could work if there was a R you could control while you lose control of your champion. So basically using your R stops being able to use your champion and focuses soley on your summon with it's own abilities. Your R can allow you to swap between the 2 but leaves either the champion or the summon venerable to attack during the duration.
11:03 soooo if League is *_"too complex"_* than how in the world doe the Dota 2 rocket science their micro-heavy units that are either heavily reliant or purely based around utilizing their summoned units? *_Beastmaster - Lone Druid - Meepo - Lycan - Broodmother - Chen - Nature's Prophet_* just to name a few, and many of these summons have their own active abilities and moves to utilize - how are these characters supposed to be playable in Dota 2 if League is *_"too complex"_* to handle *_a single summoned unit_* for only *_a handful of champions?_* - IMO it's more that League still lacks the technology to handle summoned units, rather than the game being too complex to handle summoned units and/or summoned units being added mess on top of already allegedly complex game
this is correct. leagues engine actually can't handle multiple unit selection and was a major controversy when the game first launched back in the day. it's not built on an rts engine, and the original framework of adobe air can't actually handle things like box selection or multiple unit commands. the thing is, league moved away from this engine years ago. the only reason they havent changed it now is because they dont want to. it's a choice. and a terrible one at that, even HOTS has better summon design than league. hell in dota with helm of hte dominator you can literally get active abilities on a summon TIED TO AN ITEM.
Allow me to expand on the list: Enigma, Venomancer, Natures Prophet, Visage, Phantom Lancer, Brewmaster, Warlock, Wraith King, Chaos Knight, Elder Titan, Arc Warden, Terrorblade, Invoker (which isnt really fair because he does absolutely everything), Juggernaut, Techies, Shadow Shaman, Witch Doctor, Rubick if he gets literally any ability that summons Everyone that buys Manta Style, or gets an Illusion rune, or has the Necronomicon, or the dominators Helm And im really sure im leaving something out
@@furiouszealot Yep Enchantress, Undying's shard that lets it save someone with his tombstone, Hoodwink's aghs, Anti-mage's Aghs (the illusions are uncontrollable but figures), and TA's ult
I could see summons having some kind of ability like how some champions can recast their ultimate (Swain comes to mind) For example directing annie’s Tibbers with R, or if you hold the key with mouse in a direction could tell Tibbers to do some kinda fire bear charge and explode, or something.
You can make a summoner that has minions that don’t walk around on their own but rather float around the champion you play. You can make them ranged, auto attacking what the player wants to auto attack first or the closest enemy. It’d be a cool concept on a tank like champ since they can build health and resistances to tank for as long as they can for their summons to do as much damage as possible. They can be weak early but scale really hard late as their summons improve in power and the champ gains resistances and health.
What about if instead of a pet dealing damage or crowd control, be a pure support pet, where they can be used to gather info (you can send the pet out to a specific location then come back after reaching the location, it would have like a 50 sec cooldown), deliver items (to balance this mechanic I would make the pet need the money beforehand and then the pet will need to travel from the player to the fountain and straight back to the player). The pet, when it isn't in use, will be the champion's steed like kled and when the pet gets sent away the champion gets off the steed and will get a new set of abilities or the same abilities but just worse like when kled is unmounted. The pet is also killable while gathering info or buying items and will revive in the fountain after a time, after reviving it will go straight to the champion (if the pet died while delivering an item, the pet will re-buy it). Please share your opinions on my idea. Thank you!!
I really liked the concept of old yorick. The three different goals each with their own specialized use is really interesting. I think they could recycle that and maybe have it so that QWE all can be used on an enemy minion to convert it into a special unit similar to his old ghouls. The new characters ult could even be the old morde ult but maybe marking an enemy and if the die within 3 seconds or so they revive for a very short period as an Ally. This champion would probably be a balanced nightmare though I think it could be fun
When i play yorick i have 2 wishes for improving how his summons work, give maiden either an oh shit button where it runs to me or just any other means to force it away from danger other than running half a screen for it to follow me (i dont want full controll of maiden or ghouls) and 2nd i just want to be able to recall my ghouls from the minion wave not full controll again i just want to be able to go into jungle or roam with my minions instead of having to generate new ones using jungle camps or mid minions other than that i really like his summoning kit.
How do you counterplay the first point haha, the maiden would be unkillable,unless you kill it in an all in, in wich yorick is super strong bc of en %max health dmg that the maiden gives you
@@RochyTw the maiden dies after a second of being focused in any teamfight and its literally yoricks entire kit, without maiden he's half a champion, not to mention her shit ai makes it so she's a sitting duck. he's only strong in the 1v1 and there are better champs for that anyway (fiora, irelia, etc.) id prefer if they just made the maiden follow yorick much more closely but an oh shit button works too, it depends on how much you can spam it
@@davidlevi8981 thats if you focus the maiden, wich i doubt, and if you implement the return bind, how will you kill the maiden without comiting to an all in?
@@RochyTw speaking from experience, most of the time they do. its very easy for the maiden to stray pretty far from you because you need to be a screen away before she starts following you. and besides, yorick is frontlining in 9/10 teamfights, so him and the maiden will be taking the brunt of the damage, so the return bind wouldn't do much in that situation unless you try and retreat, as normally the maiden would just die after being abandoned in a teamfight. its not like the maiden is very tanky, either (she literally has 0 mr and armor, she just has a fairly decent amount of hp but that melts in an instant after being targetted). the return bind in most cases would only be used defensively to act as a bandaid solution for her clunky tracking and ai. for example, you go mid lane to clear a wave mid/late game, you clear the wave, the maiden is still sitting mid and is about to get killed by an enemy champion who was there to catch the wave, and you press the return bind. if anything it would improve yoricks gameplay by giving you more autonomy over the maiden.
@@RochyTw well most the times i require that button is when turret switches agro or she goes to dive an enemy champ because of an e and just keeps tanking tower shots. Most of the times my maiden dies is simply im bursted down, 2nd most is she is lagging behind me a lot which is understandable when im running away and lastly dumb turret shots adding up over some time so tbh that button would just make the random turret shots less common
This video did give me an interesting champion Idea, actually, which would functionally be somewhat of a shapeshifter / summoner hybrid Essentially, a champion with an ult that allowed them to summon a creature, and then take direct control of that creature, giving it a kit of it's own while leaving the main champion body behind. If the champion dies, so does the summon, if the summon dies, control swaps back to the champion. Naturally the summon would also need to stay within a certain radius of the champion, otherwise you could just use it from base. And of course, being a 2 champions in one thing would be quite a power spike, so it would likely have to be balanced down pretty well, but I think it could work. Similar in mechanical use to how Yone's Soul Unbound works, but without the direct risk to the champion. That being said, I doubt riot would do it considering they seem not to be putting out more shapeshifters, but I think it would be an extremely interesting champion.
In DOTA 2 this is not a problem becasue by default that game has two aditional key bindings for abilities (or more especifically, for their abilities' extra effects). So you can just use D and F to control your pet and such. League obviously can't do that cuz we have summoner spells.
"So you can just use D and F to control your pet and such." This isn't how it work in Dota, you control the summon exactly the same way you control your hero
If anyone has ever played Rexxar in Hots he and Misha are an interesting case study in summons. Misha is always active unless killed in which case she has a respawn timer, and is controllable using the D key. Two of Rexxar’s 4 abilities are all about Misha, one causes her to charge and stun anyone in front of her and the other heals her over time. Rexxar’s ult can also empower her depending on which ult you choose (all Hots heroes have the choice between two ulimates). The result is a champion with a steep learning curve, but a ton of power since Rexxar himself is basically a somewhat weak adc and Misha is a somewhat weak tank. However because Rexxar is so reliant on Misha when she’s dead he’s not all that useful, basically becoming half a champion. Idk if LoL would ever do a champion that’s that reliant on a single gimmick since it would seem to go against Riots design philosophy of having every champion be more overloaded than the last, as if the design team is in an arms race with themselves, but thought I would bring it up as an example of a pet champion done well.
Imo they just do not fit the game concept. Unlike dota, where you can (and are encouraged to) micro each of your units individually, league just doesnt allow for that level of freedom by virtue of a completely different game design.
I can imagine a champion with a summon ultimate that when it's used changes the champion basic habilities to new ones... Like shapeshifters, but this abilities now are focused around controlling or buffing the summon
You forgot Zed as a proof of concept. Making the pet activated abilities linked to the champions might be one way to give them more power. Like, making tibbers breath fire when annie casts W or just giving a unique effect to the pet upon ability activation instead of replicating an existing effect.
I'd like to see them make a companion-type summons, where the summoned pet follows the champion around, it'll attack whatever target you're attacking, and you'll also have abilities that works differently depending on whether you target an enemy or your own pet. For example, your Q will give your target a slow if you target an enemy, or it'll give movespeed if you target your pet.
I think the other idea for making a more active summon could be something like how zed's shadows operate but in more complex way. Give a champion an ultimate that summons a big one and this big one can be moved around with R key, while you hold R after summoning your pet, you move him around, but also when you hold R and use Q your pet uses his own version of Q instead of your champion, same with other abilities. But I feel this way you could make a balance nightmare, althought, the sole reason of being balanced nightmare doesn't mean champion is bad.
you missed the kindred approach: having an specific area affected by an untargeteable creature, it may not be controlled like azir's summons, but there are designs that can surely be extended from that concept
Another good way to design summoner, I think, is to give the summoning ability slot 2nd function when the summon is online, like a pseudo command button. You click that ability on the ground, the summon goes there, click on an enemy, the summon will try to attack that enemy. And then you can add some additional functions to the champion's based kit to make use of your summon's positioning, like casting the same spell from that angle (similar to Taric), or creating defense (like Braum or Yasuo)
I feel like summons could be given active abilities in a similar way to how Taric's stun works. Say if Annie Q's an enemy, if tibbers is in range he will target the same enemy with the cone flame breath ability you described. It doesn't make them have their own abilities per say but it would make them more interesting than just a stat-stick
you could give the AI a passive (active) ability if you make a summon ult that you can press R to give it a different passive, and each passive works like an active ability, for example using your Tibers hypothetical, you can press R to summon it, and when you press R you give him a passive that he will walk up to champions and attack, but every 3 seconds he will do the magic in a cone move to the nearest champion, and if you dont want your summon to walk away, then you can press R again to change its passive to something like, it will always try to stand between the summoner and the nearest enemy champ. You want your summon to do something else than just stand between champions since the enemy dont have many projectiles, then press R and give it another passive/behavior/ability; each passive could be labeled as a different color and you could make it that 3 seconds after you stop changing the passive, you need to wait 1 minute to change it again to another, so you cant really just change between 3 different passives in one teamfight. its not an active ability, but it behaves as a second passive, active or playstyle, which you can change according to your needs. It sometimes brings an ability to the table, other times its just a meat shield.
Look at nazeebo in HotS. His R is a summon. While active, R becomes a new button for thr pet that performs an AoE stun. No new buttons needed. Also, even outside of summons they offer new abilities all the time and we jjst assign them numbers. For example Xul starts the game with QWE1 and picks up R at 10 like anyone else. His 1 ability is a moderately long cool down. Uther used to have a build called piano keys bc you'd have numbers up to 3-4
This is an old(er) video, but DoTA does summons really well, because you can unselect your hero and select your pet. Some of the pets do cool things, like Lone Druid's bear can equip items, Chen can take control of jungle monsters who have actives, etc. A lot of pets ARE just stat sticks as well, but are freely controllable.
To me the best well designed example of a duo champion, the hero and it's pet, is Rexxar from Heroes of the Storm. 2 of his 4 abilities consists of interacting with his bear, Misha, one is a stun from where she is standing and the other is a heal. If the bear dies, the other team is credited with a 0,5 kill and you are left with half your kit paralyzed until she's back. The thing that makes this possible is a dedicated "passive" key, D, which in his kit allow you to command, attack and move, and also the overall game design, where just the presence of a hero (or the bear) is enough to warrant some objectives. I can say it's a pretty cool experience and quite a decent tank
The only way I can imagine it is something like having a summon on the ultimate that’s available from lv1 on a “frequent” basis, much like shapeshifters and whenever they are out, they either substitute your abilities or you have to use them with a combination of R + Q/W/E.
Well lets start of with i agree... kind of. yes you couldnt give a new keybound abbility to annie and such BUT there are abillitys that dont need a key! you could make its that for instance if tibbers attacks a unit or champ stunned by annie he instead breathes fire, as a balance you could lower the inital burst damage of tibbers or you could make it that if daisy pulls herself to an champ hit by rootcaller she hits them back for the rest of the duration of the root (since daisy instantly pulls herself towards) this would be balanced too since the longer daisy flys the less you get knocked back or new pet ideas A trickster pet with low durability that dies if hit by hard cc that has a aa range of teemo or so and instead of keeping the range teleports behind the target slowing them or stunning or fear or root (what the champ its attached to needs in its kit) and dealing a bit of damage The next would be an enchanter midlaner that buffs itself or an ally that summons an anciant mage that debuffs enemys with the contra of the buff abillity of the champ the sky is the limit pets could be sooo versitle and not just stat sticks. BUT i think the real problem is the playerbase! annie ivern yoric and shaco have really low pickrates most players dont want to play summoners thats possible the real reason why we dont see them get made anymore. Anyways good video and i like your content and sorry for my weird english its not my native language.
I would have nearly the exact oposite opinion. Passive abilities will not have the same feeling as active ones. Except the enchanter as an empowered state. New abilities can just be cast with R+ Q.
Annie in wild rift did get a rework kinds like this. Her ult now has a second activation where tibbere will run at a single enemy champ, jump at them and knock them up in the air. Its only single target
My favorite summoner in mobas is Rexxar in hots, his kit is built around his summon, every thing he does is a command that makes Mishra do something, a stun charge a heal and a hawk that blinds and marks a target like Quinn q. I think making a summon who is the focus point of the abilities of the champion would be similar to a puppet master but have the slightly more autonomous feel of current summons.
13:02 - 13:09 I can't speak for Illaoi and Heimerdinger, but Zyra is actually stomping right now. Regardless of how well she actually performs, her damage is always the top of the charts (frequently the #1 spot), even on a losing team. She's also above 50% WR at the moment. Her damage is surprisingly easy to control!! You just need a couple games on her to understand how & why her damage is the way it is. Max Q, not E, and you'll see a major difference. There's a few great builds for her, but I'm a whimp and grab presence of mind. Helps with laning phase a ton; all you need is 2 plant auto's and you basically get the mana back. *Highly recommend Zyra*
Ok I finally thought something about how to do a proper summoner class but I guess you are right it would be really broken. Basically the thing I thought was a champion whose whole kit revolved around his pet. The champion would essencially be a support for his summon and all of his abilities will interact in some kind of way. The summon will be a type of juggernaut or diver (P): 3 parts: (P1)Whenever he is in base he summons a monster (P2)All the stats and passives the champ obtained by runes and objects are affect the monster. The champion itself gets less value from them. (P3) Autoattacks dont do damage to minions/neutral monsters. The champion marks an enemy with his autoatacks. If the monster attacks someone marked he will do extra damage. The monster gains extra mvspeed towards marked enemies. Reason of passive 3 is to force the champion to take risks to take kills. Basically the monster should be at the level of any juggernaut only if the champion is actively fighting with him. If not he will be just a meat shield with a champion that cant do much by himself (specially since he wont get all the stats he coulf from his items). (Q) Is an AOE heal skillshot (so you can miss it) with a little delay, it would be similar to taric's Q. The heal will be less effective in other beings that are not the champion nor the monster. If you heal the monster he will overcharge and dealing damage to everything around him. This is his basic ability (the one that have the lowest CD). (W): After a little delay creates a sigil to summon your pet. Everyone that touch the sigil in the moment of invocation will be stuned. (This is basically Annie's ult without the burst. This is also the ability of disruption/chase that many Juggernauts have. It could be used as engage or disengage). For the E I must admit that I dont know what to do. The first thing I thought was giving the champ movspeed while the monster will get to slow enemies with his AA. The thing is, I would like a little help here. It would be cool if is something that can synergize with the rest of the kit while having the champion and the summon interacting with eachother in some way. R: is simply the button to control the monster at command. This will be super hard, because you have to take in mind the position of your champion to support your summon while giving commands to catch targets. I also thought about The thing with this champion is that if you can only kill the monster is basically a forced recall not a kill. Basically he have Akshan's passive everytime you go to base. (Limited to one champ).
Given that LoL was based on a mod for a 20 year old RTS game were hundreds of units with their own active abilities could be selected, controlled and commanded individually, a micro mechanic that was pretty much flawlessly replicated in DotA 2, I'll say that the lack of Summon Champions in the game is less of a balancing issue and more of a Spaghetti issue
I think a way of making summons work is by something like this: Summon big monster> lose 25% of your stats> monster has 50% of your stats> whenever you use an ability the monster has a follow up. For example; Root(champ) dash(monster), damage over time(champ) damage amp(monster), magic damage shield(champ) spell null(monster). It can be balanced by limiting to one or two augments depending on the numbers and then the monster can only auto attack. I think something like this would be super fun to do. It can also be thematically cool if the summon was the master of the champion or something (like Yi and Wukong).
To be completly fair, i miss a champion like Meepo from Dota, who copies himself as a stand alone playable champion. This is so challenging and cool to play and with funneling and a team who understands whats going on, you have a full controllable "Pet" . I really love Yorick because the maiden just pushes botline with my team and i can split top alone, throws many players off but works wonders ^^ Awesome vid Vars
Some ideas to fix summon champions 1: make the summons like jojo stands, in the sense that they could share a healthbar, and any damage take by any of then would happen on the other one (there should take damage only one time from each source, in case both get hit by an AOE spell) 2: make them fully controllable all the time with ctrl, even if the owner dies 3: if the summon has an active ability, allow it to be used with ctrl+Q/W/E/R, and have that ability share cooldown with the champion ability of the same slot (Example: If you use tibber's Q, also put annie's Q in cooldown) 4: make a similar champion to meepo from dota: multiple fully controllable copies of the same champion, all have the same abilities, with independant cooldowns, each one very weak on their own, if one dies all of them die. In exchange, when all of them work together and used correctly (it has a very high skill floor ), they have potential to do higher dps and cc than others champions
In Heroes of the Storm there is a Hero that controls a Bear through his abilities. The bear can do damage, stun and serve as a off tank due to healing properties. I think it would be a nice way to do in league, a champion that is a hybrid between orianna and summoner, whose abilities would be a form of controlling the pet, and killing the pet would entail a moment where the champion would be very weak
I mean, a thing you can do to "improve" summons is them replicating abilities, like Zed's Shadow. Tibbers Fire Breath could be a replica of Annie's Fire cone : When she casts it, Tibbers casts it. Or Daisy's grab could be activated if someone's rooted by Ivern's Q. Like, instead of dashing to the ennemy, she grabs the ennemy. This could make more interactions between a champion and his pet, instead of the pet just being a bag of flesh, while not adding a new keybind for the pet's ability.
Summons may have abilities that are related to the champion directly (as in take up a Q, W or E spot) but the base ability may have functionality. For example, in Eternal Return, there is a character called Chloe that has a little robot doll girl thing called Nina. Chloe's E is that she dashes, but if she recasts it then Nina dashes towards wherever Chloe is. Chloe's Q is only available when Nina is alive, as is wholly on her. Basically, it's like Ori ball but as a summon.
I think another potential way to handle summons is kinda operating like gnar or shyvana, but through a summon. A character having their normal abilities, but when they have their summon, those abilities change in nature and are cast through the summon. Can make a summon more than just a beatstick that you have more agency over.
I would like to see a twin character. where you come into the game with two champions and they each have 2 basic abilities, a swap on W, and a single combined ultimate that can only be used when both are alive. you can kill either one, and get the full gold for killing a champion, and you can give an auto attack command to one, and swap to the other. they will always stay nearby each other, and will auto attack whatever the other is auto attacking. it would be klunky, it would be complex, but it would only be 1 passive, 4 basic abilities, a swap ability, and a single ultimate. it would be a balance nightmare, and players would complain that giving the opponent double gold for killing you or having separate death timers would be aggravating. Which would obviously effect play rate. but one tricks who could master having two champions to play at the same time would see massive success despite the obvious downsides. I would imagine them as a top laner, but that's just me thinking about the meta and where they would go. one melee, one ranged, shared item slots. shared gold. separate mana, separate HP, separate cooldowns aside from the ultimate. Mechanically, maybe some mimes? or a couple of hextech soldiers? just some ideas going on the basic concept
I'm not sure if anyone else has noticed this, but at 6:05 when Daisy and Tibbers are being compared, they are labeled incorrectly on screen. So where it shows Daisy's icon on the left and Tibbers' on the right, Daisy's stats are on the right and Tibbers' stats are on the left. Just in case anyone is confused when he says that Daisy is stronger but on screen it says she is weaker.
Y’Know Annie’s revenge passive just gave me the video idea of undead abilities, such as tubers revenge, kog maw passive, sion passive, zac passive, and others that I don’t want to mention (you could even mention old zyra passive). Anyways love your vids thanks for doing such a unique style.
My thought for a summoner style champion is that they would have a shape-shifter style kit, where they have one ability that gets shared between both of their forms and have two abilities that change based on whether the summon is out or not. The ability that summons would be reactivatable to tell the summon to attack a target, and then you could have one ability that is maybe a dash towards a direction with some damage attached, and one that tells the summon to shield themselves and return to you. That way, the summoner is never completely defenseless, since they still have an ability they can cast, and they can control themselves, but also they have a good enough control over their ai to make it more than just a gimmick
One of my favorite characters from Heroes of the Storm was Rhegar and Misha. They acted as a true duo champion with Rhegar being the main one you wanted to target. Meanwhile you would send in Misha as cannon fodder. Positioning her was important because Misha could apply aoe stuns when using their w ability. It made for such a fun dynamic of trying to micro for both a tank and a marksman class at the same time and despite the rest of their kit being fairly simple, you did so much thinking about micro with both characters that it felt engaging anyways.
HOTS has so many cool multi character heroes in the game. I think they get away with it because the game is slower on a system level. Like characters have a slower attack times, move slower, and the missile speed of abilities is slower (Except healing and shielding that's somehow almost always only a few frames). Therefore you get more time to actually micro. And I am glad they made that design decision because the Vikings are a really fun champion to play.
I like Yorick mainly cuz the small bois can jump straight to the guy you mark with E, so they can't get stuck with minions. The bad thing is that the Maiden is probably the embodiment of the stupidity of League's AI. "Oh, I'm getting hit by the tower while Yorick is backing on a bush? Might as well just keep on getting damaged and absolutely die"
Would love to see a dedicated support summon champ. Always thought of something like Heim that can place down bots or some kind of summon on their abilities that give auras to allies to buff them up. Especially if they can create a venn diagram type situation where allies are getting two buffs at once. Would be awesome too if they could move, maybe to follow the lowest heal alley if they are a healer or one that gives movement speed to anyone following it as it rushes towards the lowest health enemy. Would love to see them try their hand at another summon or puppet champion
An idea Riot could use is a summon that copies your basic abilities at your cursor direction, something like Taric's stun and ult but on a summon and you recast R while the summon is alive to control where you want it to be.
Yeah I'm gonna comment on all of your videos lmao, i just love how in depth your analysis are and how it talks about stuff people don't really seem to care about but I love it. All of it. So, I'm gonna go out on a limb and say: If Yuumi is allowed to exist, then an actual summoner champion, with a full blown summoner ultimate, with actives and what have you for their summon, should also be able to exist. I do have a few ideias for it but far too complex and exhaustive to type it out, so I'll just leave it at that
They won't need to create a new UI or new keys to add control to summons as they could just use the UI that champs like Neeko and Kindred have to target champs. You already can bind those keys, so they could use them as a set of abilities for your summon
They could make a remote controlled summon, sort of like a mecha robot or smthn that the player can press R, go into a "Channeling" State and then you control the robot, which leaves your champion vulnerable but in return gives you a remote controlled robot that's basically another champion - it can farm for you (you get gold) it can use 4 new abilities for different combos and stuff - ofc it would last for a certain period of time, idk how long tho. Keeps your items as well.
For the annie hypthothetical Tibbers ability, u could just have the Tibbers ability activate by hold casting R which would activate the ability to cast Q for Tibbers, until you cast R again just like how Xeraths Q works. You could also make a champion that is a form swapper but they switch between their pet and their own body, and each body/pet has their own abilities. Its probably really hard to do right, and honestly making the pet summon via a basic ability like Azir/Orianna and be stationary unless another ability is cast to move them might be the way to go
I mean you could effectively make a scale heavy summoner, early power budget is practically non-existant but in exchange when they have their ult creature summoned everything is empowered. So let's use Annie as an example and base for this, remove the summon damage on ult and make it more utility but reduce its cooldown, her other abilities can be the same but with higher cooldowns which will force her into a poke role. Then when tibbers is summoned you can afford more power to tibbers, give him a command ability like you used as an example and give bonus affects to the other abilities, her shield becomes slightly stronger and AOE to her allies and summon, he cone has higher range and can leave a burn area, her fireball can be a guaranteed stun with longer range. Can make it more reliant on the summon by adding a target affect to her new fireball in that it creates an auto target affect for tibbers (eg you stun then he'll walk over and flip them), her cone can be projected from you and tibbers and those caught by both can take bonus damage and be stunned. This way you are forced to play as a summoner and effectively manage your summon using click move and your own empowered abilities, the power budget is heavily weighted towards the late game when you can max out cdr and have the summon up permanently and up until that point you're easy to bully. Creates high skill cap gameplay but effectively positioning to characters and also high utility and damage based on empowered ability cycling and comboing. Easy to understand and learn but difficult to master, and youre still a champion without the summon albeit a weak one
what do you think of this as a champ, R children of the grave (so shadow Ilse champ), does aoe dmg around target on cast & when they die then again when pet dies an maybe if this champ dies while pet. Q: make minion turret, W urgot W + blink (feels more on-hit than caster), E: decoy that if cast q(less time)/w will also cast them. pass: kill anything w/ spell lowers other cds, killing w/ aa lowers all, more so from champs.
I can see something along the lines of Tarics bastion link dual casting abilities off of a champoin and their summoned monster, say if Annie uses her W tibbers shoots his own ray of fire at the same time. Or you can have the summoners basic abilities work differently when used on the summoned unit specifically.
I like some of these analysis videos, though it would be fun to include within, comparisons to how is handled in other MOBA games, most predominantly, Dota. For example, when comparing summons with dota's summons, Decoys ARE the main damage source for champions that can make them, though they generally act in the same way as they do in LoL. Meanwhile, almost all "direct" summons (i'll get to that) in dota are pretty brain-dead attacker/tankers like in LoL, where their power comes in on-hit effects like Daisy. BUT, there is a small class of summoners (and one item) that take control of jungle camp creeps and use them as "summons". In dota, many jungle creeps DO have abilities, which then act as the summon's ability to use once controlled. There's a separate action bar on the bottom for when a summon is selected vs when the hero is selected, so you essentially have 2 action bars (or more). If LoL wanted to do something like that, they can make the hotkey of the summon change to a "access summon spells" button while the summon is active on the field, and it would act sort of like instant-toggle transforms
I always found it interesting lol kept trying to make itself different by having different names for already established things in other games, like decoys or the class names. I prefer illusions myself but thats just me
I created a whole character for league who's name is Pupper Master, and one of his ability would be the power to swap his conciousness to his puppet ( controlling her, and leaving his actual body as an empty vessel ). I think thats one way to make summons work ^^
I think a supportive summon character that would place something on you like Oriannas ball would be really interesting, or something like the maiden but it just buffs def stats and gives shields when you press E or something. I think it would be really interesting
There was a mistake at 5:55 Daisy and Tibbers' stats are swapped
Is the bgm Pokémon at the beginning?
I think the game should promote kled jungle by giving him courage when he kills jg creeps and attack epic monsters when he is off his Lessard
You forgot Fiddlesticks wards
do you think a puppet ninja would work well in this game, cause i personally do think so
@@singularity5098 It's Undertale soundtrack, The Ruin iirc.
My favorite summon is the enemy Lee Sin that seems to pop out of the enemy bot lane's butt into my face
that is called a premade summon, and you pick it when entering a game, but its a super secret hidden option
I hate my summon it's my jungler coming mid not doing anything and smiting the cannon minion
My favorite Summon is the mushroom on Top-Lane-Bush that came out of nowhere... but I am pretty sure I saw a rat go into that bush...hhmmmmm...ಠ~ಠ
Hey, at least that Lee Sin is sh*t
Lucky for me all the Lee Sins in my elo feed
"Why Summons Can Never Be Good"
Aatrox losing a 1v1 to Maiden of the Mist:
Tbf Aatrox loses the 1v1 to super minions.
@@milonchello1643 *caster minion
@@stayingmadwonthelpyou5402 scuttle crab*
@@kromtastic *honey fruit
@@sionkikuchi1807 ward*
The best summon is Shen, he can occasionally be summoned by very low health enemies, and often leads to intense rage.
Yorick's maiden isn't much of a beefstick, instead yorick would be the beefstick while the maiden allows him to do most of the damage.
Maiden is like a grandma with a machine gun in a wheelchair and yorick is her 10yo grandson pushing it
@@sekinnnnn1121 no more like a serial killer gf and he is giving her bullets
MAiden's only tankyness is her HUGE hp count after having hullbreaker and R lvl 2, Seriously having 5000 hp while yorick only has 3000 is funny
@@owoskan very much needed IMO, her R which are often used to control summons to move around for instance move them *AWAY* from harm, is used as an active to release Maiden, not to mention your ult won't start going on CD unless you release maiden, unlike Annie and shaco's ult it starts counting down the CD on summon.
When I feel they will pursue my maiden I just release her cause they always kill her no matter how she seems to run away and so that the CD starts asap.
Also, Yorick is my fave in ARAM.
@@sekinnnnn1121 this is the best analogy ive ever seen for yorick
They actually fcked up Annie ult. I remember when I played in season 6 or 7, If Annie died I could control tibbers. Now when someone kills me, tibbers goes full monke and runs at them.
"Full monke" 😭
@@bajinacovers2482 yep
@@bajinacovers2482 but it didn't help cuz if the enemy with high health killed Annie Tibbers will ignore the low hp enemy it will be better if he ran to low hp enemy champion
@@bajinacovers2482 If Yuumi kills Annie, Tibbers just stands still and doesn't attack anything. Otherwise the revenge mechanic is nice imo, especially if you build rylais.
Daisy suffers from mental degradation, when i play ivern she sometimes just sits there...staring into the void ,when i dont explicitly tell her what to do😂
It's Malzahar calling to her
Im Ivern main and i had that problem too, it was because i was pressing alt during battles for accident
They never fixed it. NEVER.
@@voilvelev6775 i think they did that on purpose add characters to daisy 😂😂
Tibbers has an issue that STILL hasn't been fixed. He can't attack Inhibitors... And you can't make him target inhibitors manually either... He just randomly attacks them if there's literally NOTHING on screen at the time.
Allow me to pay respects for AD Malzahar where you had three voidlings with 700 AD each that didn't die to a single sneeze.
June 1st, 2010 to May 4th, 2016
Gone, but never forgotten.
That nerf was stupid man. They could have cut down a bit of his damage or increasing cd but nope, 1 AoE attack of any kind will nullify your W, clean and easy.
Mannnn thisss this is what I miss about my poor malzahar
Dang, I loved AD Malz!
I was main AD Malza back in the days. I also played old Zyra with the first banner too (50 ap, armor and the 15% bonus dmg buff on the plants)
@@thierist4743 lol i played against liss as a malza, she literally use 1 q to kill all my bugs
For me it’s mostly due to the Summon’s AI being really clunky, as someone who plays Ivern you have to know how to manage Daisy.
You have to manage yourself an adc, a support and best girl daisy on top of that when ganking bot!
Can't you control her with R though?
@@chaoswraith you can, the point is you have to because she a) doesn’t have much automation, she’ll follow whoever she first locks on to forever unless you do; b) really likes to chase under a tower that attacks her first even when she’s not damaging a champion, getting prematurely killed.
Honestly just making Daisy stay out of tower range when she’s not locked onto a champion would be a great improvement, as would making her lock onto whoever is closest or the attacker when you get damaged when she’s locked onto you. (This second thing might already exist I don’t really keep track of daisy AI in a teamfight.) Similarly an order to “guard” an ally (attack whoever is on them) would be nice.
@@DavidVallner i Just want riot to bring back daisy's self heal.
Oh also
>ivern
>ganking bot
(might be me but in my Ivern games top works better, esp. with a bruiser champ, Ivern synergises with them very well)
Pre-rework Yorick was the summoner champ. He can summon a zombie to block skill shots, slow opponents, heal himself and even defy death.a
But only ultra elo min-maxers have known about this champion before the rework
@@indrickboreale7381 the reason of his rework
Well also the fact they where scared of putting yorick in a healthy place sense he was such a strong playstyle
old yorick, were good times
I got M5 with old yorick and now I have it with the new and I'm like "dude I don't know how to play this champion at all, ignore this emote"
I main Azir. He's not quite a summoner in the sense of his dudes being controlled by AI, but I think Azir's sand soldiers are probably one of, if not the, best approach to making a summoner champion in League. I don't want to bash Heimer or Yorik because I haven't played those characters, but what makes Azir's sand soldiers work is that the player has complete control over what they do, which prevents the three major issues (I suspect this video will discuss) of summons lacking player agency, having janky AI, and not making sense with the character's kit. Summons should have simple AI or be easy to control and they need to fit in with the character's gameplay theming. Neeko W and Shaco Ult are also examples of summons that I really like since they tie into the champions' themes of deception. In other words, I think Azir is a good example of character based around summons while Neeko and Shaco are good examples of characters with summons that are a part of their kit but not the central focus.
I think the fact that player has complete controller over Azir's solidiers is what makes them not summons which is entities that have some agency of their own (which is I believe what makes the so clunky in a competetive environment that league is). Azir is much closer to the likes of Oriannna or Gankplank (barrels) in the sense that he has some "outside" factor that he has to take into account but he has pretty free control over how that factor behaves
And those soldiers are actually useful while Tibers is just… there.
Azir's soldiers are an extention of his abilities and his attack range. They aren't really summons but part of the character.
Azir is not a summoner cause his soldiers cannot act independently from him. They cannot move without his Q, they cannot attack without his command. The idea of summons is summoning another unit. The soldiers just like orianna's Ball cannot even block skillshots, the most basic feature of a summon. If they could block skillshots i would give them the summon identity.
The soldiers are just tools just like orianna's Ball. They are their own category of champions. It's a hibrid between summoner champions and trapmasters.
Funny how we don't have an actual trapmaster champion. The closest is teemo and he is barely a trapmaster.
Ain’t that what Vars said in the video?
As a Dota player, it seems bizarre to me that the summons are controlled by an AI at all in the first place. MOBAs stem originally from strategy games-- Controlling multiple units at a time isn't a mind-blowing or staggering thing. Lots of heroes in Dota have all sorts of micro they need to engage in to be used to full effect-- Though I know they're two very different games that aren't really comparable anymore, I still think League could take a similar approach. Why not tear out the AI and give the players full control of their pets? Right click to move, hold ALT+Right Click to move pet. If your pet does down the line get skills, hold ALT+Hit Q,W,E,R to activate the pet's skills, right?
Why do they have AI anyway? It sounds like more of a nuisance than anything. I understand there would be a learning curve to controlling two entities at once in this fashion, but it's easily *doable*. Give players control over their own heroes' skills, I reckon. There's no way they could ever design an AI that has the pet always reading their owner's mind and doing what they want.
Perhaps release a symbiote hero that permanently fights alongside a pet / second entity with complimentary skillsets, power budget spread out among the two? Items bought affecting them both, and so on. Like a Meepo, but only two Meepos. Idk.
unfortunately ALT, CTRL, and SHIFT are already defaulted to other actions.
Are they? I remember that Le Blanc could control her mirror image with alt+rc, I don't know if she can anymore, the same with shaco.
League player's fingers are too fat to do micros.
There non time to control them
Alt+Q,W,E,R is already assigned to "Cast on self" for things like Morgana shield, Kayle ult etc, that require you to click on a friendly champion.
edit: and Ctrl+Q,W,E,R is already "level up ability", and I think Shift+Q,W,E,R is "ping ability".
I guess it could also be like, ult recast or sth. Yorick's maiden already kinda has that w/ the ult recast making her just push a lane.
Summons are a beautiful concept and since I main yorick I can safely say that most are also have terrible execution so I cant wait to see this video
What is Yorick?
@@dobretomas5150 hmm i think it's an item idk
@@dobretomas5150 I heard a legend that if you say Yorick 3 times before a major teamfight, the enemy team will lose a member. However, a random lane will be demolished from the tier 1 tower to the inhibitor, just in the spam of that teamfight.
@@dobretomas5150 Blue man with a shovel
Maiden is too suicidal at times
Everyone knows that the strongest summoning ability is GP's barrels
I feel like making summons interesting is simple enough, if the engine can support it. Click R to use the champion's summon ultimate. Whenever you hold R while the summon is active, you gain access to a Q/W/E that act as the summoned unit's abilities. Give the summon's abilities a bit of delay / channel time, and chain them together with your champion's abilities for some mechanically interesting executions. Granted, it makes for a champ with a high skill floor and massive skill ceiling, but I wager people want that in a summon champ by now. In terms of movement, alt-click can still work.
that would be equivalent to shape shifters, but even more broken due to having seperate cooldowns and they would be really hard to balance because the champions who have these abilities would be worse then kassadin early game and even then kassadin won't be missinv the equivalent of 50% of their kit due to the ult having to be balanced with the champs original abilities.
Another way to go about that idea would be have a character who in exchange for having an ult, used R to reposition their summon around. Then I'd make their abilities something like q can make the summon dash to the champion or champion to the summon, w is a low damage AoE that comes from both the champ and the summon and slightly slows, dealing double damage and rooting if the enemy it hit from both the champion's and the summon's slow, and e is a skillshot that's fired from the champion and the summon and explodes for bonus damage upon intercepting but it has low damage and is blocked by minions in exchange for having two places the shot is coming from and the big damage on intercept. Idk, that's a random thought I had. But I think you could make having a permanently out summon as a thing work.
ahahah dota 2 allow you to directly control an army and afk teamate that you can even use their ability
This was my exact thought for a workaround.
Yeah, having double abilities would be pretty broken, but I don't see why it wouldn't at least be doable. As long as the champion's and summon's abilities are "relatively" simple, I think they could still be fun to play without causing too much stress for the enemy team to deal with. Maybe give the summon's abilities really long cooldowns, or even only have them be usable once.
I think it could work.
@@AgentYellowWang league is a faster game you can't have shit like brewmaster r or a summon with multiple abilities in league because the game is already retardedly fast and hard to play at a micro level, by the time you switch between the 6 abilities irelia has q'ed 12 times gone from 1 health to full like 2 times and stunned your jungler with her e while doing that.
No matter what he says I will love it when maiden takes 3 towers top while we fight for drag, and when the enemy team realizes they say "WTF Yorick broken.
Agreed lmao
When a fed Yorick isn't pushing top or seen on the map the enemy team sweats.
The main problem is that pets would have been infinitely stronger had you been able to control them manually, the way you can in DotA. Or even - heaven forbid - the way you originally used Hero units back in Wc3. Summons are totally legit in a strategy game where both players control multiple units - that's what the original Blizzard RtS was MEANT to do. In fact, back in Wc3 each race has at least one hero that has summons and they are great tools without being overpowered (Humans have Archmage, Orcs have Far Seer, Undead have Crypt Lord, Night Elf have Keeper of the Grove).
Except you can't do that because League doesn't support multitasking.
Heroes of the Storm actually has fantastic examples of managing multiple things in an RTS. More than one hero has a controllable attached to an ultimate (i.e. Raynor, Kerrigan), one has them as the premise of the hero (Rexxar), and one hero is actually the combination of 3 units that you can control at once (Lost Vikings).
I was hoping someone would mention the Lost Vikings from HOTS! First time I saw that thing I was blown away by the concept
Hots should be more appreciated and stop being looked down. Its character design is fantastic and in my opinion they achieved true balance among their champs. True balance in addition to different maps make every game amusing by teamfighting and objective control. I played rexxar so much and its a same that such work is being tossed aside by blizzard pulling away staff from the project
Was going to mention the Vikings if nobody else had 😁 "Thank you for the food" as Olaf would say.
yep i hate to be the guy who mentions dota in a league video but literally every hero in dota can have their own summons and pets with actives (necronomicon and helm of the dominator). there are multiple heroes who make extensive use of summons in their kits (chen, beastmaster, brewmaster, etc) and even summons with no actives (enigma, venomancer, natures prophet) have enormous skill expression in pure microing. not to mention meepo lmao. but league unfortunately will never go this route because probably less than 1% of the playerbase would be able to properly utilize true summons
Domt forgot Abuthur :v
When I first started playing I played Illaoi, Yorick, Zyra, and Heimerdinger. I love it. The enemy is forced to walk into your house of horrors.
League needs some full on micro heroes. Chen, Meepo, Lone Druid, Arc Warden, etc. Be hilarious to see that happen
League players would actually explode
It would be funny to listen to the complaints though. Especially like Meepo.
They will react the same way Smash players reacted when characters from other more complicated fighting games were added
League needs something first.
Fights need to be longer and more complex. The burst damage this last season makes useless the pets or minions, its 100 times more efficient kill all your enemies with a 2 seconds combo than trick them to a "1.5 vs 1" that you could win, that needs more actions and time and gives them more opportunities to avoid their lose, even with cc or in a planned teamfight
Honestly, the map is too small and there is too much damage for a champion like that to exist in this game.
Can’t believe everyone forgot about the strongest summon: Kalista’s heads
Summons offer an interesting dynamic and it's a shame Riot hasn't implemented one, I do believe it's possible since other MOBA´S have functional summons based characters like Rexxar in Heroes of the Storm, who has to control his bear Misha, since she is the bulk of his DPS while his own abilities offer utility (slows, reveals, vision). Maybe we can see a similar approach to league as well
There are also very complex summons like Meepo in Dota 2 where if your summons die then all summons including the main hero would die. Such design isn't fit for League's more micro-oriented gameplay but I just wanna leave that out there.
It is possible, certainly, though it does go along with what he mentioned regarding the hotkeys; HotS has a lot more ability keys available to it since besides the four normal abilities, you have the D key for activatable traits and the number keys for bonus abilities. Since League already has those keys set for summoner spells and activatable items, it would take a bit more finagling to make work, I think.
then issue becomes that the BEAR is really the champion and not the champ itself that ur controlling, so if the bear becomes unusable or CC'd, or dies, then u start feeling like half a champ. Its like Skarner without his spires but worst, or Kled without Skaarl. It works when the conditions are in ur favor, but less so when they are not. At that point u could either play a normal enchanter/ support and get a Voli APC to be ur ally, or better yet, just play the bear itself, and maybe make the Rexxar the pet instead, at least there u have agency to do what u want, be a big bear and wreck stuff.
I think Ivern should be rework in that way, with Daisy with no expiration timer, since level 1 and being affect by stuff as a champion like Rexxar from hots.
The only day some dev said anything about reworking Ivern he suggested making his R like Nazeebo's from hots but no Iverm main liked that idea
Given Aphelios exists, I wouldn't put it above them to just add more hotkeys eventually.
You talk about how you would need a new keybind to give the summon an ability but what if that ability was bound to recasting your ultimate, and you gave up your ability to explicitly control it in exchange?
Imagine if that ability in turn synergized with the main champion, requiring the player to have really good mechanics and play literally two entities but then the reward for that skill would make them very difficult to beat or something.
You could take away some cast damage to have an auto reset as tibber's recast plus maybe it just grants an extra pyromancy stack to annie or maybe marks them to receive bonus magic damage from the next ability in a challengingly short time frame.
That gives her a lot more skill expressive damage than "I pressed R on you"
I mean you could still control the summon with alt+mouse2
Orianna
i play yorick so this makes me very angry
"Can't give active abilities to summons"
*laughs in DotA Earth, Storm, Fire, Meepo, Lone Druid, and Visage*
The trouble is not that giving these units actives is a balance problem, it's that Riot has a bit of an allergy to just how complicated and unintuitive fighting summons becomes if they're allowed to be more than a meat shield.
Yeah. I never understood Riot's fear of complicating the game too much (they barely implement items with actives for this reason) when every new champion has an ability that does 80 different things things at once
@@theodorotargino5444 everyone memes about the whole "we at riot don't think we have any overloaded champions" but honestly it's kind of true. New champions are overloaded in comparison with older ones but even the new ones aren't actually that complex on their own. But every time riot tries to do something new and innovative, the players lose their minds about requiring 4 brain cells to play a champion rather than 2.
Although, riot has pretty rarely taken community feedback on champ design seriously so they can kinda just jam anything into the game and we have to be OK with it or stop playing. And we both know that isn't happening lol
@@maxsync183 yeah...
That's definitely a thing.
Truth is most of the new champs are just not... complicated? At least, not in a minute to minute gameplay. They need entire essays to describe how their mechanics work, but said mechanics are ultimately fairly straight forward.
In contrast, we have Meepo over here playing Nth dimensional chess with less only two thirds of the total text of Nasus :V
@@maxsync183 like when Rell was released and no one played her because she is slightly harder than all of the other champions in her class, even though her character accomplishes more in the long run
I dont think Earth, Storm and Ember spirit remnants can be counted as summons, but there is still stuff like Brewmaster, Chen, Enigma, Chaos Knight, Visage, Phantom Lancer, and others that are full on summoners, there even is Manta Style to summon copies of your hero, and the Necronomicon, which lets you summon a fully controllable wave of creeps
I just love how they made a jungler enchanter by making his ult give him an ally to buff
I really feel like you should have talked about how Dota does Summons(Lone Druid,Meepo,Chen,visage), which it totally different than league, but represents how this is doable, but its not something riot does. I totally feel like Rexxar from Heroes of the storm could totally exist in league of legends. He's really elegantly programmed.
Rexxars kit from HOTS is built to be with Misha(the bear)
@@isislikesyou8605 So is Lone Druid from Dota 2. Lone druid is quite possibly worse than a ranged creep, if not for the bear.
really totally
@@Etensei Lone Druid isnt the hero, its the support for the bear lmao
@@furiouszealot 100% correct
As a previous Heroes of the Storm Player, I dream for the day to get a Rexxar and Misha champ. That was my main, loved the way I could stun with Misha. She always followed you around and 2 of your abilities were directly tied to her.
Same feeling. League doesn't scratch that microing itch that HotS gave me
DotA 2 is filled to the brim with true summonable characters with their own ability and such, it would probably be worth revisiting this topic after looking into that design space. It introduces a lot of complexity though because it requires mapping control groups and context switching between multiple characters you own, something I'm not even sure the league engine is currently capable of. I personally never liked the mechanic because I found it too complex, but some people go hard and basically turn dota games into starcraft.
DotA is different from league in this way. In DotA low mechanical skill heroes like ogre magi, juggernaut, and shadow shaman are just as viable at high level as their super high mechanical skill heroes like meepo. visage, and invoker. In League of Legends the basic characters like Garen, Warwick, and Annie aren't as competativly viable at a high level as more complex mechanical characters.
@@EzraTheEpic I think this might be a result of riot prioritizing accessibility over complexity. DotA 2 is just a way more complex game overall and that means there's a lot more levers to tune. LoL's "4 abilities and a passive" is super easy to understand but it's very restrictive to the design space.
I want an actual 2 character champion, like you could control them individually and they would both have 2 abilities. I want an ice climbers champion, not a Rosalina and luma champion.
The problem with summons is that you create a whole new entity that can interact like champions,( block projectile, soak damage, this is a bad example and, etc). Nerfing or balancing this is difficult since the champion main kit may revolve around its summons (Himmer, Azir, etc) unlike majority which is just themselves
In most games that have summoner classes I always play them, I simply love the idea of being able to control/lead an "army" or a single creature to battle/let them fight for me.
Such as in Terraria or other games that have those kind of classes.
I wish you'd bring up dota more - a lot of the design differences are pretty relevant
it probably comes up in his research but i think he's more comfortable explaining with games he's familiar with like smash or pokemon i guess
This aged like fine wine with Annie and Ivern both being some of the strongest in their roles right now
If League had DOTA micro mechanics it would be so much better. I want an Arc Warden for League.
I mean, they could always rework unit control. But ya, there’s no micro unit manipulation.
u want a Summoner that is an ADC in league 😳😳😳
@@redcraft6038 on one condition:
Exclusive access to manta style
@Duckervert basically a hero that has ultimate that summons a copy of himself for a short duration. Eventhough, it lasts like about 15 seconds or so. The copy has identical stats and items to the original.
@Duckervert arc warden's ult summons a perfect copy of himself that can use all the same spells and item as the original...basically u get double the hero for like 15 secs or so
I think Heroes of the Storm has some really interesting examples for summons when you think about heroes like Samuro. He has an active skill with his Decoys that allows him to swap between them like Todo from Jujutsu Kaisen making them a primary part of his kit and not just beatsticks.
I think Dota 2 did summons right. Since they can be directly controlled by the player, like in an RTS, you don’t have to rely on shitty AI, making them way more reliable.
When I started playing Lol and heard of Annie and her bear, I was really excited to get to know her kit. I think I watched the cinematic before. I had no real idea how I would design a kit but still I was very disappointed, that Tibbers just works by clicking R and then he can only walk up and hit people. I would have liked to see him be more integrated in her entire kit. Like that it's just Annie with sometimes a thing.
I could imagine a mechanic that works similar to Gnar or something, where Tibbers appears based on things you do (as Gnar gets big based on dmg and stuff). And her kit should then evolve around Tibbers, so she's more capable with Tibbers. Just like Azir, that's a pretty good point.
Do Fiddle's passives count as a decoy?
Yesn't... They're more like wards
They are decoys as his passive is while he is standing still his abilities will fear, even if the enemy team has vision...
Mordekaiser's old summon was by far my favorite in the game. Not because it did anything different than the others, but because to me it felt like it complimented his playstyle. He didn't have any mobility or cc, so he functioned very well as a walking zone of death. The best way to play him imo was to embrace the fact that you will never catch someone walking away without your ult, and just focus on farming and objectives until someone walks into your bubble. His summon allowed him to extended his zoning range so he could go do other stuff without being kited.
13:28
"He can only ever activate 2 of them at the time"
Me who uses 4 different Qs + R in 1 fight: "yeah, sure 😏"
(Aphelios mains' moment)
I mean a pet summon with it's own abilities could work if there was a R you could control while you lose control of your champion. So basically using your R stops being able to use your champion and focuses soley on your summon with it's own abilities. Your R can allow you to swap between the 2 but leaves either the champion or the summon venerable to attack during the duration.
11:03 soooo if League is *_"too complex"_* than how in the world doe the Dota 2 rocket science their micro-heavy units that are either heavily reliant or purely based around utilizing their summoned units? *_Beastmaster - Lone Druid - Meepo - Lycan - Broodmother - Chen - Nature's Prophet_* just to name a few, and many of these summons have their own active abilities and moves to utilize - how are these characters supposed to be playable in Dota 2 if League is *_"too complex"_* to handle *_a single summoned unit_* for only *_a handful of champions?_* - IMO it's more that League still lacks the technology to handle summoned units, rather than the game being too complex to handle summoned units and/or summoned units being added mess on top of already allegedly complex game
this is correct. leagues engine actually can't handle multiple unit selection and was a major controversy when the game first launched back in the day. it's not built on an rts engine, and the original framework of adobe air can't actually handle things like box selection or multiple unit commands. the thing is, league moved away from this engine years ago. the only reason they havent changed it now is because they dont want to. it's a choice. and a terrible one at that, even HOTS has better summon design than league. hell in dota with helm of hte dominator you can literally get active abilities on a summon TIED TO AN ITEM.
Allow me to expand on the list:
Enigma, Venomancer, Natures Prophet, Visage, Phantom Lancer, Brewmaster, Warlock, Wraith King, Chaos Knight, Elder Titan, Arc Warden, Terrorblade, Invoker (which isnt really fair because he does absolutely everything), Juggernaut, Techies, Shadow Shaman, Witch Doctor, Rubick if he gets literally any ability that summons
Everyone that buys Manta Style, or gets an Illusion rune, or has the Necronomicon, or the dominators Helm
And im really sure im leaving something out
@@furiouszealot
Yep
Enchantress, Undying's shard that lets it save someone with his tombstone, Hoodwink's aghs, Anti-mage's Aghs (the illusions are uncontrollable but figures), and TA's ult
I could see summons having some kind of ability like how some champions can recast their ultimate (Swain comes to mind) For example directing annie’s Tibbers with R, or if you hold the key with mouse in a direction could tell Tibbers to do some kinda fire bear charge and explode, or something.
My dream is one day there is a meepo style character in league, sadly I doubt it
You can make a summoner that has minions that don’t walk around on their own but rather float around the champion you play. You can make them ranged, auto attacking what the player wants to auto attack first or the closest enemy. It’d be a cool concept on a tank like champ since they can build health and resistances to tank for as long as they can for their summons to do as much damage as possible. They can be weak early but scale really hard late as their summons improve in power and the champ gains resistances and health.
That's literally describing yorick....
What about if instead of a pet dealing damage or crowd control, be a pure support pet, where they can be used to gather info (you can send the pet out to a specific location then come back after reaching the location, it would have like a 50 sec cooldown), deliver items (to balance this mechanic I would make the pet need the money beforehand and then the pet will need to travel from the player to the fountain and straight back to the player). The pet, when it isn't in use, will be the champion's steed like kled and when the pet gets sent away the champion gets off the steed and will get a new set of abilities or the same abilities but just worse like when kled is unmounted. The pet is also killable while gathering info or buying items and will revive in the fountain after a time, after reviving it will go straight to the champion (if the pet died while delivering an item, the pet will re-buy it).
Please share your opinions on my idea. Thank you!!
That sounds like a really cool kalista W lol
@@travisatessier You're right xd, haven't even thought of that
I really liked the concept of old yorick. The three different goals each with their own specialized use is really interesting. I think they could recycle that and maybe have it so that QWE all can be used on an enemy minion to convert it into a special unit similar to his old ghouls. The new characters ult could even be the old morde ult but maybe marking an enemy and if the die within 3 seconds or so they revive for a very short period as an Ally. This champion would probably be a balanced nightmare though I think it could be fun
When i play yorick i have 2 wishes for improving how his summons work, give maiden either an oh shit button where it runs to me or just any other means to force it away from danger other than running half a screen for it to follow me (i dont want full controll of maiden or ghouls) and 2nd i just want to be able to recall my ghouls from the minion wave not full controll again i just want to be able to go into jungle or roam with my minions instead of having to generate new ones using jungle camps or mid minions other than that i really like his summoning kit.
How do you counterplay the first point haha, the maiden would be unkillable,unless you kill it in an all in, in wich yorick is super strong bc of en %max health dmg that the maiden gives you
@@RochyTw the maiden dies after a second of being focused in any teamfight and its literally yoricks entire kit, without maiden he's half a champion, not to mention her shit ai makes it so she's a sitting duck. he's only strong in the 1v1 and there are better champs for that anyway (fiora, irelia, etc.) id prefer if they just made the maiden follow yorick much more closely but an oh shit button works too, it depends on how much you can spam it
@@davidlevi8981 thats if you focus the maiden, wich i doubt, and if you implement the return bind, how will you kill the maiden without comiting to an all in?
@@RochyTw speaking from experience, most of the time they do. its very easy for the maiden to stray pretty far from you because you need to be a screen away before she starts following you. and besides, yorick is frontlining in 9/10 teamfights, so him and the maiden will be taking the brunt of the damage, so the return bind wouldn't do much in that situation unless you try and retreat, as normally the maiden would just die after being abandoned in a teamfight. its not like the maiden is very tanky, either (she literally has 0 mr and armor, she just has a fairly decent amount of hp but that melts in an instant after being targetted). the return bind in most cases would only be used defensively to act as a bandaid solution for her clunky tracking and ai. for example, you go mid lane to clear a wave mid/late game, you clear the wave, the maiden is still sitting mid and is about to get killed by an enemy champion who was there to catch the wave, and you press the return bind. if anything it would improve yoricks gameplay by giving you more autonomy over the maiden.
@@RochyTw well most the times i require that button is when turret switches agro or she goes to dive an enemy champ because of an e and just keeps tanking tower shots. Most of the times my maiden dies is simply im bursted down, 2nd most is she is lagging behind me a lot which is understandable when im running away and lastly dumb turret shots adding up over some time so tbh that button would just make the random turret shots less common
This video did give me an interesting champion Idea, actually, which would functionally be somewhat of a shapeshifter / summoner hybrid
Essentially, a champion with an ult that allowed them to summon a creature, and then take direct control of that creature, giving it a kit of it's own while leaving the main champion body behind. If the champion dies, so does the summon, if the summon dies, control swaps back to the champion. Naturally the summon would also need to stay within a certain radius of the champion, otherwise you could just use it from base. And of course, being a 2 champions in one thing would be quite a power spike, so it would likely have to be balanced down pretty well, but I think it could work. Similar in mechanical use to how Yone's Soul Unbound works, but without the direct risk to the champion.
That being said, I doubt riot would do it considering they seem not to be putting out more shapeshifters, but I think it would be an extremely interesting champion.
what's the music being played?
the first song is from undertale, don't know which one exactly but it should be enough of a hint
Ughh that Ivern scene will forever be one of my favourite League moments - HUGE props to whomever made that
In DOTA 2 this is not a problem becasue by default that game has two aditional key bindings for abilities (or more especifically, for their abilities' extra effects). So you can just use D and F to control your pet and such.
League obviously can't do that cuz we have summoner spells.
"So you can just use D and F to control your pet and such."
This isn't how it work in Dota, you control the summon exactly the same way you control your hero
If anyone has ever played Rexxar in Hots he and Misha are an interesting case study in summons. Misha is always active unless killed in which case she has a respawn timer, and is controllable using the D key. Two of Rexxar’s 4 abilities are all about Misha, one causes her to charge and stun anyone in front of her and the other heals her over time. Rexxar’s ult can also empower her depending on which ult you choose (all Hots heroes have the choice between two ulimates). The result is a champion with a steep learning curve, but a ton of power since Rexxar himself is basically a somewhat weak adc and Misha is a somewhat weak tank. However because Rexxar is so reliant on Misha when she’s dead he’s not all that useful, basically becoming half a champion.
Idk if LoL would ever do a champion that’s that reliant on a single gimmick since it would seem to go against Riots design philosophy of having every champion be more overloaded than the last, as if the design team is in an arms race with themselves, but thought I would bring it up as an example of a pet champion done well.
Imo they just do not fit the game concept. Unlike dota, where you can (and are encouraged to) micro each of your units individually, league just doesnt allow for that level of freedom by virtue of a completely different game design.
I can imagine a champion with a summon ultimate that when it's used changes the champion basic habilities to new ones... Like shapeshifters, but this abilities now are focused around controlling or buffing the summon
You forgot Zed as a proof of concept. Making the pet activated abilities linked to the champions might be one way to give them more power. Like, making tibbers breath fire when annie casts W or just giving a unique effect to the pet upon ability activation instead of replicating an existing effect.
I'd like to see them make a companion-type summons, where the summoned pet follows the champion around, it'll attack whatever target you're attacking, and you'll also have abilities that works differently depending on whether you target an enemy or your own pet. For example, your Q will give your target a slow if you target an enemy, or it'll give movespeed if you target your pet.
Something like pix?
Look up Rexxar from HOTS ☺️
I like how you put music in your videos. I only notice it in the outro, but it's been there all the time (not bothering at all), still hearable
I think the other idea for making a more active summon could be something like how zed's shadows operate but in more complex way. Give a champion an ultimate that summons a big one and this big one can be moved around with R key, while you hold R after summoning your pet, you move him around, but also when you hold R and use Q your pet uses his own version of Q instead of your champion, same with other abilities.
But I feel this way you could make a balance nightmare, althought, the sole reason of being balanced nightmare doesn't mean champion is bad.
you missed the kindred approach: having an specific area affected by an untargeteable creature, it may not be controlled like azir's summons, but there are designs that can surely be extended from that concept
Another good way to design summoner, I think, is to give the summoning ability slot 2nd function when the summon is online, like a pseudo command button. You click that ability on the ground, the summon goes there, click on an enemy, the summon will try to attack that enemy. And then you can add some additional functions to the champion's based kit to make use of your summon's positioning, like casting the same spell from that angle (similar to Taric), or creating defense (like Braum or Yasuo)
When he starts talking about Smash Bros I always check out
Shaco's clone's name is Necati
I really love the clear visuals on this video, really clean. Especially from ~3:30-3:52. Awesome video!
I feel like summons could be given active abilities in a similar way to how Taric's stun works. Say if Annie Q's an enemy, if tibbers is in range he will target the same enemy with the cone flame breath ability you described. It doesn't make them have their own abilities per say but it would make them more interesting than just a stat-stick
you could give the AI a passive (active) ability if you make a summon ult that you can press R to give it a different passive, and each passive works like an active ability, for example using your Tibers hypothetical, you can press R to summon it, and when you press R you give him a passive that he will walk up to champions and attack, but every 3 seconds he will do the magic in a cone move to the nearest champion, and if you dont want your summon to walk away, then you can press R again to change its passive to something like, it will always try to stand between the summoner and the nearest enemy champ. You want your summon to do something else than just stand between champions since the enemy dont have many projectiles, then press R and give it another passive/behavior/ability; each passive could be labeled as a different color and you could make it that 3 seconds after you stop changing the passive, you need to wait 1 minute to change it again to another, so you cant really just change between 3 different passives in one teamfight.
its not an active ability, but it behaves as a second passive, active or playstyle, which you can change according to your needs. It sometimes brings an ability to the table, other times its just a meat shield.
Look at nazeebo in HotS. His R is a summon. While active, R becomes a new button for thr pet that performs an AoE stun. No new buttons needed. Also, even outside of summons they offer new abilities all the time and we jjst assign them numbers. For example Xul starts the game with QWE1 and picks up R at 10 like anyone else. His 1 ability is a moderately long cool down. Uther used to have a build called piano keys bc you'd have numbers up to 3-4
This is an old(er) video, but DoTA does summons really well, because you can unselect your hero and select your pet. Some of the pets do cool things, like Lone Druid's bear can equip items, Chen can take control of jungle monsters who have actives, etc. A lot of pets ARE just stat sticks as well, but are freely controllable.
To me the best well designed example of a duo champion, the hero and it's pet, is Rexxar from Heroes of the Storm.
2 of his 4 abilities consists of interacting with his bear, Misha, one is a stun from where she is standing and the other is a heal. If the bear dies, the other team is credited with a 0,5 kill and you are left with half your kit paralyzed until she's back.
The thing that makes this possible is a dedicated "passive" key, D, which in his kit allow you to command, attack and move, and also the overall game design, where just the presence of a hero (or the bear) is enough to warrant some objectives.
I can say it's a pretty cool experience and quite a decent tank
The only way I can imagine it is something like having a summon on the ultimate that’s available from lv1 on a “frequent” basis, much like shapeshifters and whenever they are out, they either substitute your abilities or you have to use them with a combination of R + Q/W/E.
Well lets start of with i agree... kind of.
yes you couldnt give a new keybound abbility to annie and such BUT there are abillitys that dont need a key!
you could make its that for instance if tibbers attacks a unit or champ stunned by annie he instead breathes fire, as a balance you could lower the inital burst damage of tibbers
or you could make it that if daisy pulls herself to an champ hit by rootcaller she hits them back for the rest of the duration of the root (since daisy instantly pulls herself towards) this would be balanced too since the longer daisy flys the less you get knocked back
or new pet ideas
A trickster pet with low durability that dies if hit by hard cc that has a aa range of teemo or so and instead of keeping the range teleports behind the target slowing them or stunning or fear or root (what the champ its attached to needs in its kit) and dealing a bit of damage
The next would be an enchanter midlaner that buffs itself or an ally that summons an anciant mage that debuffs enemys with the contra of the buff abillity of the champ
the sky is the limit pets could be sooo versitle and not just stat sticks. BUT i think the real problem is the playerbase! annie ivern yoric and shaco have really low pickrates most players dont want to play summoners thats possible the real reason why we dont see them get made anymore.
Anyways good video and i like your content and sorry for my weird english its not my native language.
I would have nearly the exact oposite opinion.
Passive abilities will not have the same feeling as active ones. Except the enchanter as an empowered state.
New abilities can just be cast with R+ Q.
Annie in wild rift did get a rework kinds like this. Her ult now has a second activation where tibbere will run at a single enemy champ, jump at them and knock them up in the air. Its only single target
My favorite summoner in mobas is Rexxar in hots, his kit is built around his summon, every thing he does is a command that makes Mishra do something, a stun charge a heal and a hawk that blinds and marks a target like Quinn q. I think making a summon who is the focus point of the abilities of the champion would be similar to a puppet master but have the slightly more autonomous feel of current summons.
13:02 - 13:09 I can't speak for Illaoi and Heimerdinger, but Zyra is actually stomping right now.
Regardless of how well she actually performs, her damage is always the top of the charts (frequently the #1 spot), even on a losing team. She's also above 50% WR at the moment.
Her damage is surprisingly easy to control!! You just need a couple games on her to understand how & why her damage is the way it is. Max Q, not E, and you'll see a major difference. There's a few great builds for her, but I'm a whimp and grab presence of mind. Helps with laning phase a ton; all you need is 2 plant auto's and you basically get the mana back. *Highly recommend Zyra*
Ok I finally thought something about how to do a proper summoner class but I guess you are right it would be really broken. Basically the thing I thought was a champion whose whole kit revolved around his pet.
The champion would essencially be a support for his summon and all of his abilities will interact in some kind of way.
The summon will be a type of juggernaut or diver
(P): 3 parts:
(P1)Whenever he is in base he summons a monster
(P2)All the stats and passives the champ obtained by runes and objects are affect the monster. The champion itself gets less value from them.
(P3) Autoattacks dont do damage to minions/neutral monsters. The champion marks an enemy with his autoatacks. If the monster attacks someone marked he will do extra damage. The monster gains extra mvspeed towards marked enemies.
Reason of passive 3 is to force the champion to take risks to take kills. Basically the monster should be at the level of any juggernaut only if the champion is actively fighting with him. If not he will be just a meat shield with a champion that cant do much by himself (specially since he wont get all the stats he coulf from his items).
(Q) Is an AOE heal skillshot (so you can miss it) with a little delay, it would be similar to taric's Q. The heal will be less effective in other beings that are not the champion nor the monster. If you heal the monster he will overcharge and dealing damage to everything around him. This is his basic ability (the one that have the lowest CD).
(W): After a little delay creates a sigil to summon your pet. Everyone that touch the sigil in the moment of invocation will be stuned.
(This is basically Annie's ult without the burst. This is also the ability of disruption/chase that many Juggernauts have. It could be used as engage or disengage).
For the E I must admit that I dont know what to do. The first thing I thought was giving the champ movspeed while the monster will get to slow enemies with his AA. The thing is, I would like a little help here. It would be cool if is something that can synergize with the rest of the kit while having the champion and the summon interacting with eachother in some way.
R: is simply the button to control the monster at command.
This will be super hard, because you have to take in mind the position of your champion to support your summon while giving commands to catch targets. I also thought about
The thing with this champion is that if you can only kill the monster is basically a forced recall not a kill. Basically he have Akshan's passive everytime you go to base. (Limited to one champ).
Given that LoL was based on a mod for a 20 year old RTS game were hundreds of units with their own active abilities could be selected, controlled and commanded individually, a micro mechanic that was pretty much flawlessly replicated in DotA 2, I'll say that the lack of Summon Champions in the game is less of a balancing issue and more of a Spaghetti issue
I think a way of making summons work is by something like this:
Summon big monster> lose 25% of your stats> monster has 50% of your stats> whenever you use an ability the monster has a follow up. For example;
Root(champ) dash(monster), damage over time(champ) damage amp(monster), magic damage shield(champ) spell null(monster).
It can be balanced by limiting to one or two augments depending on the numbers and then the monster can only auto attack. I think something like this would be super fun to do. It can also be thematically cool if the summon was the master of the champion or something (like Yi and Wukong).
To be completly fair, i miss a champion like Meepo from Dota, who copies himself as a stand alone playable champion. This is so challenging and cool to play and with funneling and a team who understands whats going on, you have a full controllable "Pet" . I really love Yorick because the maiden just pushes botline with my team and i can split top alone, throws many players off but works wonders ^^ Awesome vid Vars
Some ideas to fix summon champions
1: make the summons like jojo stands, in the sense that they could share a healthbar, and any damage take by any of then would happen on the other one (there should take damage only one time from each source, in case both get hit by an AOE spell)
2: make them fully controllable all the time with ctrl, even if the owner dies
3: if the summon has an active ability, allow it to be used with ctrl+Q/W/E/R, and have that ability share cooldown with the champion ability of the same slot (Example: If you use tibber's Q, also put annie's Q in cooldown)
4: make a similar champion to meepo from dota: multiple fully controllable copies of the same champion, all have the same abilities, with independant cooldowns, each one very weak on their own, if one dies all of them die. In exchange, when all of them work together and used correctly (it has a very high skill floor ), they have potential to do higher dps and cc than others champions
In Heroes of the Storm there is a Hero that controls a Bear through his abilities. The bear can do damage, stun and serve as a off tank due to healing properties. I think it would be a nice way to do in league, a champion that is a hybrid between orianna and summoner, whose abilities would be a form of controlling the pet, and killing the pet would entail a moment where the champion would be very weak
I mean, a thing you can do to "improve" summons is them replicating abilities, like Zed's Shadow.
Tibbers Fire Breath could be a replica of Annie's Fire cone : When she casts it, Tibbers casts it.
Or Daisy's grab could be activated if someone's rooted by Ivern's Q. Like, instead of dashing to the ennemy, she grabs the ennemy.
This could make more interactions between a champion and his pet, instead of the pet just being a bag of flesh, while not adding a new keybind for the pet's ability.
Summons may have abilities that are related to the champion directly (as in take up a Q, W or E spot) but the base ability may have functionality. For example, in Eternal Return, there is a character called Chloe that has a little robot doll girl thing called Nina. Chloe's E is that she dashes, but if she recasts it then Nina dashes towards wherever Chloe is. Chloe's Q is only available when Nina is alive, as is wholly on her. Basically, it's like Ori ball but as a summon.
I think another potential way to handle summons is kinda operating like gnar or shyvana, but through a summon. A character having their normal abilities, but when they have their summon, those abilities change in nature and are cast through the summon. Can make a summon more than just a beatstick that you have more agency over.
I would like to see a twin character. where you come into the game with two champions and they each have 2 basic abilities, a swap on W, and a single combined ultimate that can only be used when both are alive.
you can kill either one, and get the full gold for killing a champion, and you can give an auto attack command to one, and swap to the other. they will always stay nearby each other, and will auto attack whatever the other is auto attacking.
it would be klunky, it would be complex, but it would only be 1 passive, 4 basic abilities, a swap ability, and a single ultimate.
it would be a balance nightmare, and players would complain that giving the opponent double gold for killing you or having separate death timers would be aggravating. Which would obviously effect play rate. but one tricks who could master having two champions to play at the same time would see massive success despite the obvious downsides.
I would imagine them as a top laner, but that's just me thinking about the meta and where they would go. one melee, one ranged, shared item slots. shared gold. separate mana, separate HP, separate cooldowns aside from the ultimate.
Mechanically, maybe some mimes? or a couple of hextech soldiers? just some ideas going on the basic concept
I'm not sure if anyone else has noticed this, but at 6:05 when Daisy and Tibbers are being compared, they are labeled incorrectly on screen. So where it shows Daisy's icon on the left and Tibbers' on the right, Daisy's stats are on the right and Tibbers' stats are on the left. Just in case anyone is confused when he says that Daisy is stronger but on screen it says she is weaker.
Y’Know Annie’s revenge passive just gave me the video idea of undead abilities, such as tubers revenge, kog maw passive, sion passive, zac passive, and others that I don’t want to mention (you could even mention old zyra passive). Anyways love your vids thanks for doing such a unique style.
My thought for a summoner style champion is that they would have a shape-shifter style kit, where they have one ability that gets shared between both of their forms and have two abilities that change based on whether the summon is out or not. The ability that summons would be reactivatable to tell the summon to attack a target, and then you could have one ability that is maybe a dash towards a direction with some damage attached, and one that tells the summon to shield themselves and return to you. That way, the summoner is never completely defenseless, since they still have an ability they can cast, and they can control themselves, but also they have a good enough control over their ai to make it more than just a gimmick
One of my favorite characters from Heroes of the Storm was Rhegar and Misha. They acted as a true duo champion with Rhegar being the main one you wanted to target. Meanwhile you would send in Misha as cannon fodder. Positioning her was important because Misha could apply aoe stuns when using their w ability. It made for such a fun dynamic of trying to micro for both a tank and a marksman class at the same time and despite the rest of their kit being fairly simple, you did so much thinking about micro with both characters that it felt engaging anyways.
HOTS has so many cool multi character heroes in the game. I think they get away with it because the game is slower on a system level. Like characters have a slower attack times, move slower, and the missile speed of abilities is slower (Except healing and shielding that's somehow almost always only a few frames). Therefore you get more time to actually micro. And I am glad they made that design decision because the Vikings are a really fun champion to play.
I like Yorick mainly cuz the small bois can jump straight to the guy you mark with E, so they can't get stuck with minions. The bad thing is that the Maiden is probably the embodiment of the stupidity of League's AI. "Oh, I'm getting hit by the tower while Yorick is backing on a bush? Might as well just keep on getting damaged and absolutely die"
Would love to see a dedicated support summon champ. Always thought of something like Heim that can place down bots or some kind of summon on their abilities that give auras to allies to buff them up. Especially if they can create a venn diagram type situation where allies are getting two buffs at once. Would be awesome too if they could move, maybe to follow the lowest heal alley if they are a healer or one that gives movement speed to anyone following it as it rushes towards the lowest health enemy. Would love to see them try their hand at another summon or puppet champion
An idea Riot could use is a summon that copies your basic abilities at your cursor direction, something like Taric's stun and ult but on a summon and you recast R while the summon is alive to control where you want it to be.
Yeah I'm gonna comment on all of your videos lmao, i just love how in depth your analysis are and how it talks about stuff people don't really seem to care about but I love it. All of it.
So, I'm gonna go out on a limb and say: If Yuumi is allowed to exist, then an actual summoner champion, with a full blown summoner ultimate, with actives and what have you for their summon, should also be able to exist. I do have a few ideias for it but far too complex and exhaustive to type it out, so I'll just leave it at that
They won't need to create a new UI or new keys to add control to summons as they could just use the UI that champs like Neeko and Kindred have to target champs. You already can bind those keys, so they could use them as a set of abilities for your summon
They could make a remote controlled summon, sort of like a mecha robot or smthn that the player can press R, go into a "Channeling" State and then you control the robot, which leaves your champion vulnerable but in return gives you a remote controlled robot that's basically another champion - it can farm for you (you get gold) it can use 4 new abilities for different combos and stuff - ofc it would last for a certain period of time, idk how long tho. Keeps your items as well.
For the annie hypthothetical Tibbers ability, u could just have the Tibbers ability activate by hold casting R which would activate the ability to cast Q for Tibbers, until you cast R again just like how Xeraths Q works.
You could also make a champion that is a form swapper but they switch between their pet and their own body, and each body/pet has their own abilities.
Its probably really hard to do right, and honestly making the pet summon via a basic ability like Azir/Orianna and be stationary unless another ability is cast to move them might be the way to go
I mean you could effectively make a scale heavy summoner, early power budget is practically non-existant but in exchange when they have their ult creature summoned everything is empowered. So let's use Annie as an example and base for this, remove the summon damage on ult and make it more utility but reduce its cooldown, her other abilities can be the same but with higher cooldowns which will force her into a poke role. Then when tibbers is summoned you can afford more power to tibbers, give him a command ability like you used as an example and give bonus affects to the other abilities, her shield becomes slightly stronger and AOE to her allies and summon, he cone has higher range and can leave a burn area, her fireball can be a guaranteed stun with longer range. Can make it more reliant on the summon by adding a target affect to her new fireball in that it creates an auto target affect for tibbers (eg you stun then he'll walk over and flip them), her cone can be projected from you and tibbers and those caught by both can take bonus damage and be stunned. This way you are forced to play as a summoner and effectively manage your summon using click move and your own empowered abilities, the power budget is heavily weighted towards the late game when you can max out cdr and have the summon up permanently and up until that point you're easy to bully. Creates high skill cap gameplay but effectively positioning to characters and also high utility and damage based on empowered ability cycling and comboing. Easy to understand and learn but difficult to master, and youre still a champion without the summon albeit a weak one
what do you think of this as a champ, R children of the grave (so shadow Ilse champ), does aoe dmg around target on cast & when they die then again when pet dies an maybe if this champ dies while pet. Q: make minion turret, W urgot W + blink (feels more on-hit than caster), E: decoy that if cast q(less time)/w will also cast them. pass: kill anything w/ spell lowers other cds, killing w/ aa lowers all, more so from champs.
I can see something along the lines of Tarics bastion link dual casting abilities off of a champoin and their summoned monster, say if Annie uses her W tibbers shoots his own ray of fire at the same time.
Or you can have the summoners basic abilities work differently when used on the summoned unit specifically.
I like some of these analysis videos, though it would be fun to include within, comparisons to how is handled in other MOBA games, most predominantly, Dota. For example, when comparing summons with dota's summons, Decoys ARE the main damage source for champions that can make them, though they generally act in the same way as they do in LoL. Meanwhile, almost all "direct" summons (i'll get to that) in dota are pretty brain-dead attacker/tankers like in LoL, where their power comes in on-hit effects like Daisy. BUT, there is a small class of summoners (and one item) that take control of jungle camp creeps and use them as "summons". In dota, many jungle creeps DO have abilities, which then act as the summon's ability to use once controlled. There's a separate action bar on the bottom for when a summon is selected vs when the hero is selected, so you essentially have 2 action bars (or more). If LoL wanted to do something like that, they can make the hotkey of the summon change to a "access summon spells" button while the summon is active on the field, and it would act sort of like instant-toggle transforms
I always found it interesting lol kept trying to make itself different by having different names for already established things in other games, like decoys or the class names. I prefer illusions myself but thats just me
I created a whole character for league who's name is Pupper Master, and one of his ability would be the power to swap his conciousness to his puppet ( controlling her, and leaving his actual body as an empty vessel ).
I think thats one way to make summons work ^^
I think a supportive summon character that would place something on you like Oriannas ball would be really interesting, or something like the maiden but it just buffs def stats and gives shields when you press E or something. I think it would be really interesting