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What’s up guys it’s me Jeremy. Individual champion mechanics have become one of my favorite
things to make videos about recently, as there’s a lot to learn about the way a champion is
designed and the thought process that goes into them when you break it down into individual
mechanics, since champions aren’t made all at once, usually every individual thing is
developed on it’s own one at a time, so by studying these mechanics, we can get a
big insight as to how rioters design champions. Today we’re looking at riot’s new mechanic,
which is the cripple, also known as the grounded mechanic.
And a huge shoutout goes to proguides.com for helping me out with the video today. They
recently released a new service that allows you to ask questions to high rank players
and get a response almost instantly, and I think it’s pretty sick, but you don’t
have to take it from me because they have a free trial that gets you full access, so
you can check them out and decide for yourself if you like it or not. And without further
adue, let’s get started. So the mechanic that I’m referring to, for
those who don’t know, goes by the name of cripple, or the grounded effect, but I’ll
be referring to it as the cripple mechanic for the rest of the video just because it
sounds better. And what this mechanic is, is a new form of crowd control, that allows
you to still do everything, except for casting mobility spells when affected by it. You can
still move and use abilities, you just can’t use things like flash, or spells like ahri’s
ultimate, leblanc’s distortion, etc. This is a fairly new mechanic to league of
legends. We saw it first with what was I believe the Poppy rework, and we’re seeing it again
in the Cassiopeia rework, and kind of somewhat on Taliyah who has a similar interaction to
the cripple mechanic, just with a different effect.
And I have to say that this is a really interesting way to design a piece of a champion. Designs
like this that we can see in the cripple effect, and in some other mechanics, have always intrigued
me because it’s the type of mechanic design that is very on edge. It’s a very risky
way or risky type of thing to design for a mechanic actually. And the reason why I say
this, is because it’s the kind of mechanic that has a very situational effect. It’s
quite similar to something like the cleanse mechanic, which depending entirely on the
situation, can be crazy op and just totally counter the heck outta someone, or be totally
useless, sometimes its somewhere in between but it’s a lot more volatile design than
other mechanics, since it relies so heavily on countering something, and designing something
to be good for the sole sake of countering something else isn’t really ideal. You want
things to be good in their own way, and in their own right, and a mechanic like cripple
that is situational doesn’t really do that. And Cripple especially is a tough mechanic
to design for because a lot of champions in league of legends completely rely on mobility
to function, it’s a core part of their kit, while other champions don’t even have any
mobility in their spells at all, and so as a result it is a risky type of thing to put
on a champion. However, with that said, the way the cripple
mechanic has been introduced to league of legends is actually pretty good. The current
form that cripple exists so far in the game, is that it is used in a way that develops
a style of play for a champion that relies on someone not using mobility on you. It’s
not really used as a way to shut out and counterpick champions, but more as a way to allow a certain
champion to somewhat rely on their opponent not being mobile in a fight. It’s totally
true that cripple is kind of useless versus champions that don’t have mobility, but
with the way that cripple is implemented, the champions that have access to the cripple
effect, don’t need their cripple versus someone who is immobile. And it’s actually
pretty smart. The cripple effect is designed, at least at
the moment, to give a champion the ability to guarantee that their opponent cannot use
a mobility spell as an escape, and therefore allows you to have a short ranged playstyle
that also lacks mobility. Because the cripple effect is never a core mechanic of the champion’s
kit. Cassiopeia is a great example of this, and I think she makes great use of the cripple
mechanic. It totally makes sense for Cassiopeia to have a cripple, since she is immobile,
and skillshot based so someone with mobility typically would have an easy time versus her,
so her having a cripple is super awesome, but it’s also not that important for her.
She doesn’t really rely on the cripple to be successful, it’s just kind of a bonus
thing, it’s not a core part of her gameplay pattern or her damage combo’s. The cripple
is kind of just slapped on in a way where it’s just kind of there. However with that
said, it is totally true that at the moment Cassiopeia has a lot of problems, and I cant
ignore those, and I cant say that her cripple effect itself in the way that its implemented
is good, it’s more the fact that they actually put a cripple on Cassiopeia in general, which
I see as a very solid decision for her playstyle. And the reason why this is so awesome, is
because this type of implementation allows the cripple effect to exist on a champion,
without really punishing them for being in a situation that makes it useless. If Cassiopeia
plays against someone who is immobile, she wouldn’t need the cripple effect anyway,
and since it’s not a huge part of her gameplay pattern, it doesn’t matter that it’s useless
really, she can totally afford to not take advantage of it, because the advantage Cassiopeia
gets from her opponent being immobile in the first place, is enough to outweigh the disadvantage
from the cripple effect being useless in that matchup. And so by implementing it on champions
that already perform well versus immobile champions, you allow the mechanic to exist
in a way where it is good in situations where it is applicable, but when you are in a situation
where it’s not, it doesn’t matter, because you get an advantage from the matchup in a
different way. It’s a great solution to champions that have taken hits in the meta
due to the mobility creep, and I really like how the decision to put it in Cassiopeia,
although I’m not trying to say that her actual new ability is good or bad, just the
fact that Cassiopeia now has a cripple is awesome, and it makes a lot of sense.
And to put it in the words of the champion designers riot meddler and riot Zenon, they
believe cripple is a really solid mechanic that has a lot of potential. It’s not really
a question of if, just more a question of when and where to put this mechanic on someone.
And now they have some tangible versions of it, we’ll probably start to see it being
introduced a lot more, on new champions, on reworks, and they mentioned that they were
experimenting with it being on an item active effect. That’s definitely an interesting
thing to consider, maybe even putting it on exhaust or something like that, maybe an totally
new summoner spell. Cripple is an interesting mechanic that definitely has a place on more
than just poppy and Cassiopeia, so I’m interested to see where it’s headed in the future.
However, with that said, it’s still a very risky mechanic because of the other end of
the extreme. Sure because of the way it’s implemented, the extreme of where cripple
totally sucks won’t matter or at least it shouldn’t, but on the opposite end of the
spectrum you still have to address the situation where cripple totally wrecks and just hard
counters and destroys a champion. And once again that type of gameplay is at risk, since
it’s not really a fair way to design it if you just automatically hard counter someone.
Every champion needs to be good and bad in their own way, their merit should never be
based on the ability of another champion, sure it can be a factor, but riot doesn’t
want people to say “why the heck would you ever play X champion, you just play against
Y and there’s nothing you can do”. They don’t want that, and as a result, this extreme
on the other end of the spectrum isn’t entirely acceptable either. And with that now we finally
come to the actual way it is implemented in the game, at least so far. Since there are
champs that completely rely on mobility, and it's not really possible to make someone who
totally relies on cripple, the effect has to be interactive in the way that’s its
implemented, it CANNOT be a targeted debuff or something like that with little to no outplay
potential, without putting it at risk to be too hard of a counter mechanic. And so with
Cassiopeia and poppy it’s restricted to very specific ranges, that’s why cassiopeia’s
new W has a minimum range on it, and why it’s a skillshot, and it’s why poppy’s W has
a set range and is a generally predictable effect.
Now if you were to implement it on exhaust or on an item, that is probably not going
to be a good idea, ever actually. It just would be too powerful in the very specific
situations where it is good, and it wouldn’t be fair to the mobile champions. Making the
mechanic really changes the design of it as well, it changes cripple from something that
a champion uses to make their playstyle viable versus mobile champions, into something that
you opt in to to make the opponents kit weaker, and designing to make certain champions weaker
is not really a smart thing. Imagine if you implemented an item that gives you a cripple
effect into the game tomorrow, every single champion that is mobile would become weaker
as an indirect result, and the ones that rely on mobility like the assassins, would probably
become unplayable, or at least experience massive drops in win rate. And so something
that makes the mechanic accessible to literally everyone is probably not a manageable way
to implement the mechanic. However what might be possible, is to implement it onto a specific
champion in a way that is less interactive, like on a single target, targeted ability.
You would just have to make it so that the game plan of that champion revolves around
the cripple mechanic, and disrupting and stuff, like you wouldn’t be able to have an uninteractive
cripple ability and kill pressure on the target exist on the same champion. You either have
the interactive cripple effect, or lack the kill pressure and damage, but on like a disruptive
support kind of character, it’s potentially doable. It does make the situation where the
cripple mechanic is useless a lot more impactful though, but it’s an interesting design thing
to think about for a potential new way to implement the mechanic.
As well though it is still a defined mechanic, and giving it exclusivity is kind of important
to keeping those champions unique, and giving it to everyone also adds in the risk of making
the champions who have the cripple effect in their kit specifically become obsolete.
I’ll use the example riot Zenon did when describing this situation, for example if
you had an effect like Braum’s Unbreakable, His E, and you put that effect on an item
with like a 40 second cooldown, that makes Braum become a lot less special and lot less
interesting and fun and unique, and that really sucks for braum. So once again with items
it’s not really a good idea to implement that effect, and when implementing effects
on items, they have to either be super super generic like just applying a slow and dealing
damage, or like super specific and niche that exist for a specific purpose in a different
way than the champion mechanics do. For example, Zhonya’s hourglass doesn’t make Kayle’s
ultimate feel obsolete since they are implemented in very different ways, and Kayle’s ultimate
is vastly superior to zhonyas. So I guess maybe it is possible to implement the cripple
mechanic on an item, but it would have to be in a way that is vastly inferior to the
versions that exist on champions like Cassiopeia and poppy.
Anyway that’s gonna be it from me today, hopefully you guys enjoyed the talk about
the cripple mechanic, I for one think it’s super cool and interesting whenever riot implements
a new mechanic on a champion. If you enjoyed the video hit that like button and if you
didn’t hit that dislike, subscribe if you want, thanks for watching, and I’ll see
you guys next time!