User blog comment:Xyclone010/What's the matter with CC?/@comment-15244341-20141001190423/@comment-15244341-20141013142446

Except "don't dumb it down" has nothing to do with "don't make it excessively complicated". I'm not saying that each hero needs to have the exact same CC and every skill should be the same. I'm just saying that "new forms of CC in every champion" is poor game design because there is no need to make obscure shit that people are FORCED to look up. I mean, I never ever ever look at Riot's champion pages because they are, to be blunt, worthless. They have this colorful useless bars, spells descriptions with videos and mana costs per level and some criptic tips. I instead go to LoL wiki. And with the new champions, I just go to see the numbers. However, when you do this fancy ass slow that is also a silence when it rains blue toads on monday, which is 10/10 cool spell to use, I can't even KNOW what to do. If Aatrox shoots his animu sword wave and it slows me I just know it is a ranged slow, on a sort of narrow arrow head pattern that deals magic damage. Bam. I don't know numbers or CD, but I know what to expect.

Also, I highly doubt you knew the numbers and CD of most of the spells in the game. You mostly have a rough idea of them and what the spells do. That is basically the reason 40% CDR Zilean is such bullshit, the reason because old Sion's Passive was bullshit and the reason no one expects being three shotted by a DFG Mordekaiser as, say, Ryze. Because you may know what all the champions' spells do roughly, but you don't actually know how strong these spells are, how often they can be casted and how your champion deals with it. I played Sivir, a champion with a fairly straightforward kit, and found Leona bottom lane, which is a simple as a kit as it gets. As a player, I'm quite confident in my game knowledge, but I never knew that you simply can't spellshield the CC from Zenith Blade. I imagined Leo would still jump, but as a matter of fact, even if you spellshield it, she not only jumps on to you but she also snares you. It did a thing I never expected, even if I knew how both of those champion's kits worked.

And as a last example, Alistair toplane. Suddenly, someone finds out that when Ali Headbutts, he can autoattack and proc Sheen. This leaves zero counterplay on a champion which just had been buffed and that provided with bot initiation, sustain and damage thanks to that trick. And I never knew. And Riot removed it, because it wasn't clear and led to a huge game imbalance.

This game hasn't got the amount of burden of knowledge Dota 2 has, which means LoL's learning curve is much less steep. However, and as a matter of fact, it has a huge amount of burden of knowledge and is not, as many people somehow qualify it, "easy". Getting competent at LoL is much more than "Ali has these skills that do this stuff". It also has "Ali can chain his Pulverize just after he hits his Headbutt, knocking the enemy into the air on top of the knockback, but only if he hits Q in this timeframe X". That is not something you discover easily, even less the Sheen proc.

So no, you can't know everything about League. You can have general knowledge of many things and specific knowledge about some things (usually it is your main role, especially when it comes to champions you main). Then you might be aware of some tricky stuff. But then bam. You just discovered that Vi's ultimate goes on cooldown and leaves her stranded if you activate ZH and now Vi is much less scary.

And Riot has some really good balance. Azir has fairly interesting spells and most people will agree with me, since his playstyle is very unique. However, you have a ranged slow and a dash with a knockup (Aatrox again, anyone?) but both are unlike any other spells with the same CC in the game. You have meaningful choices to make with both spells that dictaminate how you want to use them in a given situation.

Heck, Soraka's new silence is a pretty damn cool spell, so it's not like they don't like to try new takes in old spells, it's that some spells are just no fun to play against and dont gove you any choices. LB and Talon's silences are the best examples. You have NO way of preventing or outplaying those, and they simply let your oponent get an advantage on which to build a lead, while your champion does give them that "out play" potential.