User blog comment:Alartan/My appraisal of champions design in last year/@comment-27175337-20151115025730

Interesting read. I enjoyed your points but thought in some places you're being a bit counter-intuitive.

First of all, theres a lot of criticizing champions based on riots previously stated guidelines for character creation. Guidelines are great for coming up with ideas and setting a certain standard within the league but if you're only designing champions for the formula and not the bigger picture, you're losing out on the depth of play veteran players are looking for. Simply creating another run-of-the mill adc, for example, would restrict effective gameplay to bot lane, and off-meta builds that only see blind pick play. It is a fair assumption to be frustrated that riot isn't following their own guidelines to a "T" but in the end, they as creators can make calls on whether or not additions are a good fit.

I understand that champions not having regular names is also annoying, but it is only ever in a situation where the champion is not neccesarily an inhabited body by a spirit, but rather a spirit in its normal state. The names they have, although they are more of an idea than a label, are more like nicknames than actual names and further the lore and storytelling aspect of their creation. If their naming in anyway short-sold their play, i'm sure riot would make some pretty big changes before they even released them to the PBE.

In regard to Bard being poorly designed you called him uncreative. He is possibly the most bizarre and creative champion ever designed. His whole kit is meant to make ward roaming, a previously counter-intuitive to victory method, the core of what makes him strong. The fact that you can roam as a support and still receive experience while your adc soaks lane, completely changes the first 20 minutes of a game. His aoe zhonyas is unlike any spell in league before. Even though the single target form was in an item, its still something unique to league in that he can also target monsters and minions wtih it. Giving him two run-of-the-mill spells on the side merely balaces his kit, rather than making it more stale.

I would agree with you that kindred doesn't really bring much to the table in terms of wow factor, but I have yet to see someone play her well. Her counter-jungle is strong and if she takes advantage of the early invade she can outscale any jungler. Her design is unique in the fact that this is the first intentionally designed-for-the-jungle adc we've seen in league of legends history. On top of that, kindred jungle completely overhauls the meta in league of legends and not only opens up a lot of new opportunities, but makes them viable. As an adc jungler, she's not meant to be exciting from the get-go, but rather brings a new element to teamplay, and again, I have yet to see someone take full advantage of her kit. Dealing with a practiced 5v5 ranked team at a diamond or challenger level and a team that knows how to use her effectively would be very hard to justify her needing a complete or even partial rework in my opinion.