League of Legends LXVIII: "MY PICK'EMS!" Part II: Who Didn't Get Out of Groups?

[Ashen Lilies]

My assumption was that it is an actual terrain effect, that applies Irelia's mark to everyone it hits on the way out. Irelia creates it by throwing a skillshot that explodes on the first champion(?) hit. In terms of design (assuming that it's actual terrain) it's interesting that Irelia can throw it out from decent range, and that it has an obvious exit - forwards. It could also just be 'soft' terrain like Thresh box that significantly discourages people from passing through but does not prevent it. In some of the clips there appears to be some swirly circle effect underneath units that touch the edge, which implies some sort of debuff.

We'll see.

[Dienekes]

Wow. Well, that trailer made her look absolutely infuriating to fight. So, kudos.

I maintain grounded should be a much much more common status effect.

[thracian]

Grounded is one of the least fun things to play against in the game. Due to the nature of movement in League, they also tend to be among the longest duration CC abilities in the game.

Jarvan and Anivia would both become way, WAY stronger with significant grounding.

Aren't literally the only useful skills Pantheon has both blocked by grounding anyway?

[Dienekes]

Grounded is one of the least fun things to play against in the game. Due to the nature of movement in League, they also tend to be among the longest duration CC abilities in the game.

Second only to watching a guy jump four times around you with little rhyme or reason. .

Aren't literally the only useful skills Pantheon has both blocked by grounding anyway?

Eh. All his skills are useful for a specific purpose. A decent poke. A decent kill move. A decent passive. A waaay overtuned gap-closer. And a decent map traversal.

I don’t think the ult would ever really be effected by a grounding. Since it tends to be used from safety.

[Ashen Lilies]

Okay I watched the teaser way too many times, here's what I can pull out of my ass just staring at (those pretty, pretty) particle effects.

1. Her dash gives her little green floaty particles and a red swirly from the target every time she uses it. So using dash = healing, the more times you can dash, the more healing you get, so her self-sustain is tied directly to being able to chain-dash effectively.
2. The mark 'pops' but remains active on targets after she dashes to them. So you can only dash to each marked target once for the reset(?), but there's still some active benefit to the mark, probably bonus damage from attacking them or something.
3. Her blades turn from silver to gold every time she dashes to a marked target. Probably some form of steroid being activated. The color change does not trigger when she dashes to Katarina, as she is not marked.
4. Her blade barrier turns from silver to gold after she absorbs enough damage with it, so there's some form of hard threshold that triggers, which probably buffers her counterstab at the end somehow. It triggers off of Katarina and Swain in the video, but not on Kayn because he only hits her with the W.
5. Targets that aren't hit by the initial ult projectile but by the wall as it's going out (Darius, Draven, that one caster minion) get a little swirly effect under them. Possibly a slow?
6. You actually CAN leave the ult, though it slows you. When Kayn and Cassio touch the ult edges, they get hit with a significant slow and get a little breaky sword animation, which probably means a damage debuff as well. Darius and Draven don't get the little breaky sword because they weren't hit by the initial projectile, so they get a more minor slow(?) and no damage debuff.

[thracian]

Second only to watching a guy jump four times around you with little rhyme or reason. .

Do you mean mechanically or thematically?

[Forum Explorer]

Second only to watching a guy jump four times around you with little rhyme or reason. .



Eh. All his skills are useful for a specific purpose. A decent poke. A decent kill move. A decent passive. A waaay overtuned gap-closer. And a decent map traversal.

I don’t think the ult would ever really be effected by a grounding. Since it tends to be used from safety.

Also Panth is one champion, and like Dienekes said, he isn't all that affected by it

Grounded is one of the least fun things to play against in the game. Due to the nature of movement in League, they also tend to be among the longest duration CC abilities in the game.

Jarvan and Anivia would both become way, WAY stronger with significant grounding.

Aren't literally the only useful skills Pantheon has both blocked by grounding anyway?

I disagree, but the only two champs I know who have grounding are Singed and Cassi. And it's not that easy to land on a target with a lot of dashes.

Who is suggesting we give it to J4 and Anivia? I agree, giving them grounding would be way too good. But adding it onto say, Leona's ult? That wouldn't be bad. Or Karthus' wall? Or even Maokai's sapling.

[Ashen Lilies]

I prefer the various Knockdown effects to Grounding as a mechanic to play against. Jinx Chompers, Poppy's Steadfast Presence, and Veigar's stun cage all penalize you for attempting to dash through them, but don't have the feelsbad "why don't my buttons work?" moment that standing inside Grounded does. It also meaningfully differentiates between dashes (more common) and blinks (much rarer, outside of Flash which is a 5 minute cooldown).

[thracian]

Also Panth is one champion, and like Dienekes said, he isn't all that affected by it

Yes, but Dienekes literally knows nothing about the game apart from how it interacts with Pantheon.

I disagree, but the only two champs I know who have grounding are Singed and Cassi. And it's not that easy to land on a target with a lot of dashes.

I don't know what part you're disagreeing with.

Grounding tends to be an ability that disproportionately hurts champions it shouldn't. It's strong against zero mobility champs because they don't have an easy way of not being in range, and then suddenly they can't Flash out either! Ezreal/Cait/Lucian/Corki/Etc. can all dash away when they see Singed/Cassio start running for them. For the champions without dashes, you either blow Flash when the enemy is 900+ range away before they even blow a CD or you get caught and then can't Flash at all. It's super frustrating to play against.

It also appears on two of the least visible ground-effect abilities with poor sound cues, little animation from the champion and poor indicator to the grounded player that they've been grounded. All instances of grounded currently have incredibly poor UX.

Who is suggesting we give it to J4 and Anivia? I agree, giving them grounding would be way too good. But adding it onto say, Leona's ult? That wouldn't be bad. Or Karthus' wall? Or even Maokai's sapling.

I'm saying stun-like amounts of grounding in the game would make Jarvan and Anivia incredibly strong, to the point of requiring sufficient nerfs to be bottom-tier unless grounding was present on their team.

[Ashen Lilies]

I've never been super comfortable with the way Grounding fx the couple of champions that have movement parceled into their primary damage moves, either, like Kayn and Riven. Not only can they not move, they can't fight either! Stuncage and Chompers give you a little bit of playtime around the "do not pass this" effects. Poppy kind of sucks, but at least she can only hit you with it once (and her kit is kind of balanced around it).

[thracian]

There are a huge number of abilities that would be useful to cast while grounded, even if it locked you in place when you used them. Although I suppose the same is true for snares.

[Ashen Lilies]

Imagine being able to abuse that by ulting in place while snared as Ekko to get huge melee burst.

[Renegade Paladin]

Ganking Yasuo mid is an exercise in frustration. He goes to the side of the lane, either river or the bluff above it, doesn't matter. If your mid laner and you go after him, he dashes to the other side. If one goes one way and one goes the other, he picks whichever he has a better chance against. And if you use your own dashes to go after him, he just dashes back to where he started because he has no cooldowns. And then he'll invariably flash his mastery token like he did something actually impressive.

[Dienekes]

Do you mean mechanically or thematically?

Mechanically. Mobility is king, always has been. This was fine when mobility was something special. But dashes and multidashes have become more the standard. And I generally find it annoying.

Besides. I’d be fine if Panth took a hit to make the game less annoying as a whole. And more ways to deal with the increased mobility of the game would help there.

Also Panth is one champion, and like Dienekes said, he isn't all that affected by it

He brings it up because I’m a Panth main. Admittedly saying I only know about the game through Panth is a slight hyperbole. I actually have a couple master 7 champs (not that that means much). But I’d say if I’m playing LoL about 60-70% of the time I’m playing Panth.

[Forum Explorer]

Yes, but Dienekes literally knows nothing about the game apart from how it interacts with Pantheon.


I don't know what part you're disagreeing with.

Grounding tends to be an ability that disproportionately hurts champions it shouldn't. It's strong against zero mobility champs because they don't have an easy way of not being in range, and then suddenly they can't Flash out either! Ezreal/Cait/Lucian/Corki/Etc. can all dash away when they see Singed/Cassio start running for them. For the champions without dashes, you either blow Flash when the enemy is 900+ range away before they even blow a CD or you get caught and then can't Flash at all. It's super frustrating to play against.

It also appears on two of the least visible ground-effect abilities with poor sound cues, little animation from the champion and poor indicator to the grounded player that they've been grounded. All instances of grounded currently have incredibly poor UX.



I'm saying stun-like amounts of grounding in the game would make Jarvan and Anivia incredibly strong, to the point of requiring sufficient nerfs to be bottom-tier unless grounding was present on their team.

I see.

That they are a long CC. Getting out of Singed's pool or Cassi's venom takes, well it varies on where you are in it. At max, maybe two seconds? That seems long, in my experience, I get a little over a second. CC wise, that's normal. Nasus has his perpetual Wither, Ekko's stun lasts a long time, and Malz/WW's ults supress you for over two seconds.

Or you take the second to walk out of the effect and then Flash. That's like saying Leona's ult punishes low mobility champs too much because it's easy to land, and lets her chain CC against them.

All two instances yes. I don't disagree with that. But it's not an uncommon problem.

Ah, I see what you mean. I'm not suggesting they make it as common as stuns are. Just more common then 2/140 champions.

Ganking Yasuo mid is an exercise in frustration. He goes to the side of the lane, either river or the bluff above it, doesn't matter. If your mid laner and you go after him, he dashes to the other side. If one goes one way and one goes the other, he picks whichever he has a better chance against. And if you use your own dashes to go after him, he just dashes back to where he started because he has no cooldowns. And then he'll invariably flash his mastery token like he did something actually impressive.

If only grounding was more common, then you could actually stop his dashes.

[thracian]

Or you take the second to walk out of the effect and then Flash. That's like saying Leona's ult punishes low mobility champs too much because it's easy to land, and lets her chain CC against them.

The thing is, you can Flash after Leona uses her ult. You're trading one CD for another. You can't trade Flash after the ground. One second is a pretty long time in League.

The length of grounding compounds with other abilities. If you're just two dudes standing on an open field, Ned!, grounded is pretty benign. If you're in a teamfight, you get caught by grounded, get flashed on, get CCed, Cleanse it, get CCed again, survive it somehow, Flash away and- oh wait, the grounded effect is 3 full seconds long. You're still stuck there. Grounded is a long enough effect to both start and secure a catch on someone.

[Forum Explorer]

The thing is, you can Flash after Leona uses her ult. You're trading one CD for another. You can't trade Flash after the ground. One second is a pretty long time in League.

The length of grounding compounds with other abilities. If you're just two dudes standing on an open field, Ned!, grounded is pretty benign. If you're in a teamfight, you get caught by grounded, get flashed on, get CCed, Cleanse it, get CCed again, survive it somehow, Flash away and- oh wait, the grounded effect is 3 full seconds long. You're still stuck there. Grounded is a long enough effect to both start and secure a catch on someone.

And you can flash when you see Singed or Cassi start their animation.


So does literally every other CC in the game. Replace caught by grounded with Annie Ult, or Malphite Ult, and it's the exact same thing. Or any other knockup you care to mention.

[thracian]

And you can flash when you see Singed or Cassi start their animation.


So does literally every other CC in the game. Replace caught by grounded with Annie Ult, or Malphite Ult, and it's the exact same thing. Or any other knockup you care to mention.

You can Flash Annie ult, you can flash Malphite ult, you can cleanse Annie ult...

If you survive the stun from Annie ult, you can immediately Flash out. If you get grounded, then CCed, you still can't Flash out after.

[Ivellius]

I don't remember us talking about it here, but the joke skins look good this year.

Also, if you can play on the PBE this Wednesday afternoon (starting at 3:30 PDT), they want as many people as possible to try to track down a Clash bug.

[Forum Explorer]

You can Flash Annie ult, you can flash Malphite ult, you can cleanse Annie ult...

If you survive the stun from Annie ult, you can immediately Flash out. If you get grounded, then CCed, you still can't Flash out after.

Annie ult is instant. It can be flashed, but holy crap, that's hard to do. Malphite ult is slightly easier to flash, but still harder then either of the grounding abilities. You can cleanse Annie ult, sure.


And if you survive the stuns from whatever hit you when you're grounded, you can walk out. Either way, it's a chain CC fiaso, and if you're surviving, you're likely a tank. Seriously, you are acting like it's some uber stun, but it really isn't. I mostly see it to help chase people down, to block choke points, and to occasional throw on top of a high mobility character at the start of a fight. But that last one is a lot like Cho Gath's Q. Great if it lands, but it's really easy to dodge.

And honestly, if I'm on a low mobility champ in a team fight, I either:

1: Don't care about the grounding because I'm pushing forward in the fight and depending on my team to peel for me anyways.

2: Have been caught and am about to die anyways

3. I'm being chased and I'm more concerned about the slow part then the grounding.

oh and of course

4. I used my flash much earlier to dodge someone's stun or to land one of mine, because grounding doesn't actually prevent any of my damage, so I'd rather be hit by the grounding then by say, a Leona ult or Cho Gath Q. Or to land my Annie Ult or Malz ult.

[thracian]

Annie ult is instant. It can be flashed, but holy crap, that's hard to do. Malphite ult is slightly easier to flash, but still harder then either of the grounding abilities. You can cleanse Annie ult, sure.

Malphite ult is one of the easier "hard" abilities to flash. Like, it's harder than Alistar combo but it's not an insane feat.

Annie ult is deceptively flash-able. Watch Annie Bot for a while and you'll see people flash out of Tibbers cast time. Hell, watch me 1v1 Yacob Shtedil when he plays Annie and you'll see a significant number of Tibbers dodges (like, 3 out of 5 ults).

And if you survive the stuns from whatever hit you when you're grounded, you can walk out. Either way, it's a chain CC fiaso, and if you're surviving, you're likely a tank. Seriously, you are acting like it's some uber stun, but it really isn't. I mostly see it to help chase people down, to block choke points, and to occasional throw on top of a high mobility character at the start of a fight. But that last one is a lot like Cho Gath's Q. Great if it lands, but it's really easy to dodge.

The impact of grounding on its own isn't super high, but the fact that the abilities that apply it are non-ults on individually threatening champions with a decent range and short cast time while being super easy to use are what makes it annoying. I mean, apart from the enormous UX problems with those two abilities. If I'm being honest grounding in general is an enormous pain in the ass, but those two abilities specifically are what make it a monstrous abomination to good design.

[Nadevoc]

I have no issues with the UX of the two grounding abilities (especially Miasma, which is super easy to read in my opinion). But they are quite frustrating. They're both decently large AoEs that also carry a hefty slow, which means it takes a decent while to walk out of them. In Cass's case, it even amps her already considerable damage and gives her healing. Plus, a lot of champs lose at least one damage skill (and on melees, it's going to be your gapcloser, too), so you often can't even fight back.

Stuns/knockups suck, but I find a second or two of no choices is actually usually less frustrating than a second or two of being left with only bad choices, which Grounded often does.


Also, I find Malph ult easier to flash than either grounding ability

[Ionbound]

I for one am very excited for the new Irelia. Between her and Kai'Sa, I might actually reinstall League.

[Ivellius]

I have no issues with the UX of the two grounding abilities (especially Miasma, which is super easy to read in my opinion). But they are quite frustrating. They're both decently large AoEs that also carry a hefty slow, which means it takes a decent while to walk out of them. In Cass's case, it even amps her already considerable damage and gives her healing. Plus, a lot of champs lose at least one damage skill (and on melees, it's going to be your gapcloser, too), so you often can't even fight back.

Stuns/knockups suck, but I find a second or two of no choices is actually usually less frustrating than a second or two of being left with only bad choices, which Grounded often does.


Also, I find Malph ult easier to flash than either grounding ability

I think, as you're noting here, the bigger problem with the current grounding abilities is that they're very difficult to get out of thanks to the slows. Movement abilities instantly mitigate some of a slow's effect, making them part of the typical counterplay, but Miasma and Sticky Adhesive go the extra step to counter the counterplay, so to speak. I think different approaches to "Grounded" have some potential, and I do like that the effect exists given how much mobility is in the game. (Basically, anything that makes Yasuo worse is fine by me.)

I also don't find the VFX difficult to read, at least in terms of a "I should stay out of this zone."

[Vogie]

I think, as you're noting here, the bigger problem with the current grounding abilities is that they're very difficult to get out of thanks to the slows. Movement abilities instantly mitigate some of a slow's effect, making them part of the typical counterplay, but Miasma and Sticky Adhesive go the extra step to counter the counterplay, so to speak. I think different approaches to "Grounded" have some potential, and I do like that the effect exists given how much mobility is in the game. (Basically, anything that makes Yasuo worse is fine by me.)

I also don't find the VFX difficult to read, at least in terms of a "I should stay out of this zone."

That's certainly true. Miasma & Sticky Adhesive had grounding tacked on as an afterthought (and to make them more powerful), while Poppy's Steadfast Presence doesn't have that problem.

I wonder if the next iteration of grounding we see will just have a large grounding area with no other movement effect.

[Ignimortis]

After actually getting to see new Irelia's gameplay, I'm somewhat more positive on the changes to her mechanically...

And I also detest what they did to her stylistically. Old Irelia was professional and calm. New Irelia is another edgy (and not in a good way, like Kayn was) angry anime (also not in a good way, even though I like anime tropes when they're not being used to death) vengeance-focused fighter. Visually, I'd say Aviator is about the only skin that gained from the update. Infiltrator is a discount D.va (which is not a good thing IMO), Order of the Lotus is unchanged, Frostblade lost all of its' appeal, Nightblade stayed relatively the same.

I do understand that they've changed the core concept, but it's also sad to see a composed and serious character disappear. The only non-edgy, amiable Ionians left in the game are now Yi, Karma, and Lee Sin, I think?

[Renegade Paladin]

Doing that to characters is an established pattern (ref. Poppy) and I don't see any sign of them stopping.

[Ivellius]

And I also detest what they did to her stylistically. Old Irelia was professional and calm. New Irelia is another edgy (and not in a good way, like Kayn was) angry anime (also not in a good way, even though I like anime tropes when they're not being used to death) vengeance-focused fighter. Visually, I'd say Aviator is about the only skin that gained from the update. Infiltrator is a discount D.va (which is not a good thing IMO), Order of the Lotus is unchanged, Frostblade lost all of its' appeal, Nightblade stayed relatively the same.

I do understand that they've changed the core concept, but it's also sad to see a composed and serious character disappear. The only non-edgy, amiable Ionians left in the game are now Yi, Karma, and Lee Sin, I think?

According to Riot, calm = boring. I don't think they really know what to do with characters who aren't angsty. Having said that, there are a few other Ionians that are relatively placid: Udyr's VO is calm, and Wukong is pretty upbeat (I think he should count, though I forget where he's actually "supposed" to live). Ivern I believe is Ionian as well...kind of.

I don't really get "edgy" from nuRelia, though. She does have a painful past.

I think I like new Infiltrator better, but I do agree Frostblade is comparatively worse. I don't like Lotus's small face changes, for whatever reason. Aviator does look a lot better.

[Olinser]

So I was just watching LCS (clown fiesta, btw), and suddenly.... I got a notification from Twitch that I just received a drop in Overwatch for watching Overwatch League! Which I refuse to watch because the jerky movement makes me nauseous.

So..... League of Legends is now Overwatch for the purposes of drops, I guess?

[Renegade Paladin]

Man. Perfect ARAMs are kind of frustrating. All that gold and never got to spend any. And it was only an A-.

Edit: I'm on a six game winning streak in ranked. Tore through Bronze III 0-100 in five games and now stand 1-0 in my series. I'm kind of scared to push the play again button, but you don't win if you don't play. Here goes.