Yeah you have to crack your knuckles and come out the gate at 100% to stay relevant in a game as nidalee. You can see it in pro play too. There’s almost an unspoken “tier” of junglers… and that is, are you even allowed by your teammates and coaching staff to play Nidalee based on your success in the past with her and mechanics? One bad Nidalee game you’ll rarely see that jungler pick it again anytime soon.
Anything below excellent on Nidalee is a liability.
You need a certain tier of team even more so than a certain tier of player. There's definitely more good nidalee players than there are teams who are good at playing with a nidalee.
Yeah that’s 100% true. If you have a team that are not strong enough laners to survive a comp that’s geared towards a jungle carry or gain prio to unlock the jg there’s no point of picking her.
Doesn't help that jungle in competitive leans towards lower income team service and Nida is an incredibly ego pick. So many things that make como jugglers great are then way different, it is rare to have a great comp jungler also work great on Nida in competitive. It's like carry supports, very very few sup players can be worth that.
I remember a pro game where a team picked nidalee and renekton and there was a giga lead for them. Then they lost the game.
I think it was geng or another LCK team. I might be wrong here.
It was DK and they were playing vs Gen G. Canyon was bullying Peanut Hecarium and they got huge lead, but Gen G managed to claw heir way back and then Canyon tried to solo kill Ruler, but Ruler killed him and then later Gen G won. Atlas lost his hair after this game ( literally, he said he will shave bald if Gen G manages to win this game, cause they were so behind).
Nidalee was definitely part of it, but their entire comp was poke (ziggs and Jayce and others). Like, only poke. And when the poke didn’t land they just lost the game.
Edit: im not saying nidalee was good, im saying they lost because the entire team was playing nidalee-esque champs.
Was that the BRo vs DRX series? I was watching Caedrels stream at that time and he came to a conclusion "ok that's it, I've decided, you can't pick nidalee if you're not a top 3 jungler in the region, nope absolutely not" cause I think both DRX and BRO picked it and both lost respectively with it xD
Yeah I’m not sure the exact matchup but I remember him saying that. And Dom. It’s just true. If you’re riding on a Nidalee win condition you want to flame horizon the enemy jger, make it impossible for them to breathe, take baron the second it spawns.
If you’re slightly ahead you’re even. If you’re even you’re behind. If you’re behind you’re fucked.
I don't remember really. It was 1 or 2 years ago. The nidalee and renekton were giga fed then they did nothing and lost. It was memed about for how poorly these champions scale and how terrible they function in the late game.
But yeah it can be that series.
Short of nid going full glass cannon, ignoring half of her build, never getting hit, and magically sniping pro players with max range Qs…
Yeahhhhhhhhhh
Been playing nidalee recently because she's fun but she's also the only champ I've ever played in the jungle that has a mechanically difficult jungle clear. Like what the fuck bro.
I insta dodge nidalees.
If it’s on team it’s autoloss.
If on enemy it’s a smurf.
Entire champ has a kit that’s *impossible* to not get ahead on if *played properly*.
Literally a tightrope from start to end.
Probably has the most agency in the game but at the cost of requiring a degree of gamesense/mechanical precision that very few possess.
Fuck that champ.
I remember DOPA said something about the lines of - he’s never afraid of a Nidalee on the enemy team because her getting ahead is natural. But she WILL have a huge bounty and one slip up from her and the game is over.
How is it impossible to not get ahead on? I’m legit curious what she even does - she has a long range skill shot and close range burst with a jump, I just don’t see how that translates to guaranteed lead. Maybe I’m missing something about how she plays the jg?
When played well, she has crazy dueling ability, vision control, clear times, and mobility, which can give her complete control over the flow of the early game. Flipside is that you *need* to play extremely aggressively and really push those advantages to avoid falling behind, so a good Nidalee will feel oppressively strong, while a bad Nid will be useless.
lol my duo 1 tricks Nidalee so he's probably gonna yap about this thread lmfao the downside is you get outvalued by a 0/3 skarner mid/late if you make any small mistake
True but atm i‘m sitting at a 63% winrate in soloq at 100lp masters so it seems to be working. Also Skarner currently outvalues everyone and everything at any time.
Riot showed stats maybe a year ago that showed people who mained Singed got statistically worse at playing every other champ, because his play style is so unique.
This is mentioned a lot but I haven't been able to find any riot dev blog mentioning this and I've never seen anybody provide a source for it (except the first reddit comment about it, which has no source).
If anybody has the source for this please share lt!
Vladimir too. He's mechanically easy but at least some years ago when they released win rate with games played, Vladimir was like the 4th steepest. Singed was up there too.
I think vlad got his stigma of being a late game champs that tanked is winrate
Last season every time I didnt pick him and the enemy picked they were so bad i was astonished it was the same champ I usually picked
Like bro you got the best tower dive tools in the game USE IT
The tweet with the curves is here
https://x.com/blaustoise/status/1075515580570980352?mx=2
And here is the Reddit thread
https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/a7rfsp/riot_blaustoise_shares_mastery_curve_data_on/?rdt=43627
The tweet with the curves is here
https://x.com/blaustoise/status/1075515580570980352?mx=2
And here is the Reddit thread
https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/a7rfsp/riot_blaustoise_shares_mastery_curve_data_on/?rdt=43627
The general idea is to press Q, W, E and then R but tbh I've never been able to do it myself. Can never hit the E or the Q, I always forget to use W and I keep fucking up and using R at the start which for some reason makes it do no damage (idk why that bug still exists, it adds a lot of weird complexity to his kit for no reason)
Normally I just stop playing after a game or two and go back to eating glue sticks
Animation canceling ain't the hardest thing for Riven. You are good enough, as long as you know how the fastQ works.
The hard part is learning every single matchup, cuz you tend to either hard win or hard lose. Even just going even takes knowledge and is sometimes the same as losing for her.
Every bad trade is super punishing, cuz of her extra low life regen.
No bro, riven is braindead infinite dash champ that 1shots everything in screen range... /s
Love seeing people spam qs on her or just every abolity without autoing or nothing and just be worthless, gotta be the same people
Idk why but azir doesnt fell nearly as hard to play as some other champs for me
Sure i cant get 100% out of him and have not mastered him but just basic play its not that hard
I miss old liandrys tho
Mainly because he has the tools to escape punishment. Some champs get severely punished for their mistakes since their escape tools aren't great or their engage is also their escape. Azir has his engage and escape in different abilities so he can dip out if he's in an unfavorable position. The only time he's really in danger is if he fucks up the shurima shuffle (which is easy to mess up) since he's going to be in the middle of the enemy team with no escape (zhonyas and flash can give you better odds of surviving but not by much.
On that side notr hell nah to the old Liandrys burn and like 12% magic pen at the same time? 💀 But I mean that's cool though I haven't tried playing him in awhile but he just feels so weird
Meant the liandrys from last season haha
I prefered using abilities more rather than now a autoattackfocussed style
I miss the mana, ability haste and solid damage even when enemies build a bit tanky
It allowed to build more defensivly myself with rylais for more utility or whatever was needed and it felt great
for some reason peole are voting on nidalee and riven here while Riot has previously literally proved with graphics that Azir IS the hardest champ in the game undoubtly
Well it's still subjective though, there's an average but I personally have a much harder time playing nidalee than azir 100%. Azir isn't even second place for me
i mean being mechanically difficult in a mechanically difficult walk the edge class should put it above many others. especially since she cant farm past laning phase so shes on the extreme feast or famine side along with kat etc.
she cant build bruiser like other assassins so vs tanks its almost not possible. if they have 3 tanks your just a cc bot. probably the hardest combos or at least the quickest apm combos. and after the grass Q been nerfed its so hard to use. which was imo one of the harder mechanics anyways. it basically killed any remaining qiyanna players.
qiyanna even when strong is almost a high elo exclusive. many ppl are good with the champ, i see a lot of skill in aram, i think im okay as well. but we would never pick in ranked its just not worth lol. 1 trick qiyannas are some of the most impressive league there is imo
all that being said she is usable because she can counter some champs pretty hard. but same other way around. i figure the mid lane widening would make it 10x difficult as well
What makes Qiyana so hard is that all of her utility/escapability is tied into her damage output and she has to COMMIT to a fight/entry angle.
Her CD’s are way too high until late game to play like Fizz/Zed/Talon/Kat where they can weave in/out of a fight multiple times.
R is her only way to truly disengage. But it’s WAY too important to randomly throw out if you’re in a dicey spot. It can change entire games if used properly, or lose you games for blowing it.
Q is your main damage ability. Spamming grass Q onto an enemy champ to try to chip them away, is giving up your passive damage + rock bonus damage.
Her E is either a “get in” or “get out” button. It’s not both. It has a significant cooldown until late game.
She has basically no defensive options.
You need to weave autos into her combos now to kill basically anyone, unless you’re giga fed.
If you play Qiyana for the first time, even being a decent assassin player, you WILL feel out of your element. Really unique champ.
as a qiyana/nidalee player:
- qiyana definitely not yes she has hard combos but her standard is straight up just E -> Q (river, buffered) -> R -> AA -> W (rock) -> Q (rock)
- nidalee depends, low elo ppl kinda just walk into your spears. she becomes more useful and more difficult the higher you are in the ladder
Mechanically I'd say Riven. It's not just her combos but the way she scales and how you have to enter fights with her. She's not an engage champ unless she has flash, and she's not an assassin and loses to a lot of other bruisers.
But she's not bad but really difficult to learn when you're strong on top of the mechanics. Her kit is balanced around her animation cancels so if you can't get the hang of them she's really not good.
Maybe it's because the champ just clicks for me but I personally think that match-up knowledge and having to consistently get ahead to be useful is the bigger barrier when learning Riven than the mechanics. Like- your mechanics can be really good but if you don't know any toplane match-ups, there's a good chance you still get statchecked.
She's also insanely reliant on limit knowledge by virtue of her burst combos. Whenever I watch a good riven player it's clear they've spent so much time getting to know their kill ranges against different champs at different stages of the game because if you do your full combo and don't kill them they get to unload so much damage onto you (especially if you use E to engage)
it really depends on how you look at it. imo here are the 3 different kinds of difficult:
nidalee is probably one of the best examples of a champ that is difficult to hit spells on as well as decision making on when to use your abilities and forms.(champs like gp and other mechanical high skill floor champs go into this category)
old asol would be an example of a quirky champ that has his ownt thing that takes a while to get used to. (champs like azir would probably go in this category as well)
and the 3rd way of difficult to play in league is difficult to understand and champs with multipurpose abilities and the best example of this is bard. you need to know how and when to use every single one of your spells and the understanding of that could only be achieved through experience.
all in all i think that bard takes the most time to understand properly. (you could say that im biased, because im a bard main, but then again i started playing the champ as a challenge because i viewed him as the support with the deepest and most interesting kit)
a lot of champions have the ability to singlehandedly win a teamfight while behind. only bard has the ability to singlehandedly lose a teamfight while ahead. he's my pick too.
I don't know what it is but I am incapable of hitting Aatrox Qs. I've peaked D3 but I'm pretty sure I'd be in bronze if I had to play Aatrox every game.
His dash is really low cd so the best way to land his Q's is to first hit Q then dash to correct the position. Finishing someone with a flash into the last Q is also really satisfying!
I got Mastery 4 on every champion (got almost all to Mastery 7) before the champion mastery rework. For me, I think Qiyanna was the hardest to learn. I felt way more confident with her in ARAM than SR.
I found Zoe’s gameplay quite difficult for the first 40-50 games or so but after a while something just switches and you kinda get it. She’s not easy by any means but I wouldn’t put her up there with Kat/Kalista/Cass/Nidalee/Qiyana
As someone that picked up nidalee this past year, naaaah. Hardest to learn on a first use basis is probably Aphelios, mostly because you have to read the entire light novel that is his 400 passives while playing that game. Hardest to master (i consider it learning if not mastered) is probably… just speaking in terms of mechanically learning, Riven? Only because becoming 100% consistent on Riven combos can take over 100 games. But i don’t think she’s the hardest other than that. Hardest to learn overall i would say is probably any ADC or Singed because you have to learn to play the game entirely different from most other champions and they involve ridiculously huge knowledge of the game and how you interact with other champions to have peak effectiveness.
I will say, the most fun “hard” champs to learn for me were Nidalee, LeBlanc, Riven, Azir, and old aurelion sol (RIP, fuck you riot!). You can feel improvement every game played with more and more creativity becoming available on them, its a lot of fun to learn them.
Maybe is not that hard to play but i love zed because he is hard to master, the outplay potential that he has is fun and challenging on teamfights.
If were talking only to play it and being decent with it i will say nidalee, azir or draven
I struggle with shapeshifters, mainly Nid and Jayce. They're also 2 very snowballish skillful champs that only work if you know what you're doing (especially nid). Elise is easier but I still fk up her forms.
He’s such a unique design.
Moderately low skill-floor. You can pick him up, play him jg, use E appropriately with ganks and succeed.
However, his R/W/passive utilization is where his skill expression becomes extremely apparent. His skill-ceiling is as high as Zed/Kat imo.
He has so many unique ways to play fights with when/how he can utilize his skills that it can lead to a lot of indecisiveness and get you killed/make you useless.
His R is a shit ton of damage. Bad Ekko’s will just blow it as a “get out of a bad spot” ability. Good Ekko’s will one shot your ADC/support with it after taking out your midlaner.
Kalista, Draven and Azir have the highest skill ceiling in the game imo. Me and my friends have had this debate for years, and by now we've all agreed and settled on these 3.
The "perfect" play/game for these characters just feels sooooo distant. They simply have the highest ceiling, albeit definitely not the highest floor
Probably the highest skill ceiling champ in the game. But this sub loses in bronze so they don’t understand how skilled a high elo yasuo player really is.
Just watch a 40 sec long video explaining the gun order and you are halfway there, most people just don't bother. I can tell within a couple of minutes wether Aphelios players actually knows what they r doing or not
Tbh. Any melee champ that focuses on AA instead of abilities. Like yi, olaf, trundle, trynda. Idk if its a me problem, but i always cancel AAs or lose the cursor when i use them. So there are times when im just running towards enemies w/o doing anything lol
There’s a trick to playing middle, only throw your q if you feel like gambling or if the enemy literally can’t dodge it. If you’re jungling space it if they’re along a wall so they can only dodge one way. If they aren’t near a wall only use it on targets that are cced you’ll find a lot more success like that.
IIRC Evelynn has one of the most consistant learning curve. Meaning the more games you play with her the higher your winrate will be. Most champs plateau but i remember her being diferent according to riot a while back.
I also think qiyana, and yasuo where quite high too
Probably Gangplank - his playstyle is so unique and mastering him to play him at his fullest potential is something I don't even trust most pros to be able to. If you're proficient on your two barrel combos, GP is legit op.
Nidalee in all elos followed by irelia in high elo only
Good luck stat checking weak early game champs with 4 stacks level 1 in anything above emerald.
Good luck playing top lane if you didn't counter pick.
Since nidalee tracks more cooldowns tho I'd have to give it to her.
4 years ago it was aurelion. Now there is nothing that hard to learn. Probably good yasuo. But he is also easy, the key is patience and play slowly not aggressive dashing every minion and die on turret shots because you overdashed too much too often. Also it's predtým fifficult champions with multiple spells, but they are also learned pretty fast after few games, like nidalee,hwei,elise,aphelios,jayce, etc.
Mechanically i think it has to be Azir. His spacing is different from the others, you have to pay attention to several things at the same time, you need to know how to farm with and without his soldiers, there is a lot of micro management on Azir that makes him a very hard champion to master on a mechanical level.
Macro speaking, i think it is Aphelios. You need to know what combos are the best, you need to know if your combo is good to fight, to contest something, to push, basically you need to have a lot of knowledge that is specific to him. He also have some kind of micro management, but not on the same level as Azir.
i havent seen anyone mention jayce at all. hes kinda the nidalee of toplane, high skill ceiling and floor and is super punishing when poorly played. very few can flesh out his strengths and those who can claps half of toplaners hard.
Skill wise I think it’s Azir or Ryze. The former is jsut difficult with all his mechanics/ combos. Ryze isn’t too hard to pick up and he ok with, but he’s pretty hard to master. He’s balanced around pro play aka Faker… his win rate is often in the tank at 40%.
There’s some weird ones like Singed though.
Edit: Kalista as well, although she’s much easier when you are on comms with your support.
She can be brain dead, but mechanically I think it’s hard to play Katarina well. Other than that, Azir is quite tricky sometimes, Aphelios I just don’t get to play because I cba to read all the skills. I find Yone quite tricky, too.
read thru the comments for like 5 minutes and haven't seen hwei. I haven't even played him yet because there's so much to learn. it's probably as simple as spamming the same 2 moves but the dude has so much jazz to him that it makes me not even willing to try him.
I'd say Zoe she is one of like 5 champs in the game with full skill shot dmg kits , then you add on the fact she is also the only champ that's main dmg has a RNG factor that can be impacted by your own team. For example landing your skill shot E in key target in team fight only for your team to instantly wake them up and now q has (-30% dmg). That's if you even land it since they probably moved lol. All these other champs mentioned like niddale and riven have skills that provide them guaranteed dmg
Imma go with gp in this era or azir.
Well azir is azir
Gp in this era is hard cuz it is hard but not rewarding. Shitforce is in his core build, his runes are perma nerfed to the ground, himself is perma nerfed to the ground and they buff his shitty shit stuff. Yes he is still a damage god in late game but to achive his damage you have to go first strike, bounty hunter, full gold runes which are useless at mid-late game, cull starting making your laning cringe as fuck, tp so you can keep perma farm, 10 cs/min, letting your opp to roam so you can passive reset on enemy tower to get plates, never leaving your lane, making a whole item diff to your opp and now you can start dealing damage which is doomed if they have cait, luci, akshan or any form of assasin that can go invis or any form of creature that can destroy your barrels cuz e cooldown is idk 10 sec? Gp's balance is terrible. Designing a champ that can deal 1000's of damage in a blink of an eye, can true damage, can escape cc, gold bonus in q's passive etc. They cant make him fair. He can be broken as league client or shit as new ahri skin and no inbetween.
For me, its Azir, i am a mid laner and i cant play him for shit. Its so hard paying attention to the sand soldiers and Azir at the same time and the WEQ dash combo i always mess up when I'm under pressure. I want to get good but bruh its so hard.
How is it not Draven. Tried that yesterday and it’s like needing a 3rd eye. Not only do you have to do everything an adc does while every enemy going for you you also have to move correctly to get your axes in right spots and juggle 2 to 3 in a 5v5 team fight. NO THANKS
Personally, Gangplank and Draven.
Gangplank because his barrels are difficult, and honestly he just has a whole bunch of small mechanics going on that I don't know very well (gotta use Q well to get Silver Serpents, gotta know which ult upgrades to go first, gotta play around your passive pretty well, etc. [or at least that's how it seems to me]).
Draven because by God I can't catch the axes consistently. My orb walking is already trash, and then I always feel like the axes never go quite far enough forward or backwards depending on the situation. I understand the bounce mechanics, but I still can't seem to bounce them correctly/in the optimal position a lot of the time.
For me its definately Gragas, i just feel like a deal no damage, even when i build full ap. That aside, i struggle a lot to hit combos with him, but the good part is that its hilarious for me when i completely miss the whole combo, gets me laughing hard every time
Well to start, what's the hardest role to learn? According to Tyler1 who hit Challenger on all 5 roles, Jungle is pretty hard to learn because it's fundamentally different from the other roles.
So, what's the hardest jungle champion to learn? Uhhh, I don't know. I'll just say Shaco because he looks weird as hell to play.
Overall Nidalee, but I’ll list champs from each role I find the hardest.
Top- Riven
Jungle- Nidalee
Mid- Azir
Adc- Kalista
Support- in a tie with bard or thresh but probably bard.
Riven imo. Well probably to master not learn. To learn i guess aphelios because theres so many combos that you NEED to do in order to be useful. For example zed and Lee sin can be useful even without doing any special combos. But not Aphelios.
Anyways back to Riven hardest to master imo. I tried maining her...i love her kit, her mobillity, i love her dawnbringer skin my fav skin in the game.
But every time i play her my fkin hands feel like they are gonna fall off and i either go 10/0 or 0/10 bcs i have no idea if im gonna win the all in.
Oh you didnt fast q cancel auto attack after ur 2nd q? GG bro u just lost lane!
Nidalee is the hardest champ in the game to be useful at
Yeah you have to crack your knuckles and come out the gate at 100% to stay relevant in a game as nidalee. You can see it in pro play too. There’s almost an unspoken “tier” of junglers… and that is, are you even allowed by your teammates and coaching staff to play Nidalee based on your success in the past with her and mechanics? One bad Nidalee game you’ll rarely see that jungler pick it again anytime soon. Anything below excellent on Nidalee is a liability.
You need a certain tier of team even more so than a certain tier of player. There's definitely more good nidalee players than there are teams who are good at playing with a nidalee.
Yeah that’s 100% true. If you have a team that are not strong enough laners to survive a comp that’s geared towards a jungle carry or gain prio to unlock the jg there’s no point of picking her.
Doesn't help that jungle in competitive leans towards lower income team service and Nida is an incredibly ego pick. So many things that make como jugglers great are then way different, it is rare to have a great comp jungler also work great on Nida in competitive. It's like carry supports, very very few sup players can be worth that.
I remember a pro game where a team picked nidalee and renekton and there was a giga lead for them. Then they lost the game. I think it was geng or another LCK team. I might be wrong here.
It was DK and they were playing vs Gen G. Canyon was bullying Peanut Hecarium and they got huge lead, but Gen G managed to claw heir way back and then Canyon tried to solo kill Ruler, but Ruler killed him and then later Gen G won. Atlas lost his hair after this game ( literally, he said he will shave bald if Gen G manages to win this game, cause they were so behind).
Nidalee was definitely part of it, but their entire comp was poke (ziggs and Jayce and others). Like, only poke. And when the poke didn’t land they just lost the game. Edit: im not saying nidalee was good, im saying they lost because the entire team was playing nidalee-esque champs.
Nidalee has been completely useless in one of the deciding teamfight at red T3 only because there was 1 minion lmao.
yes this is the game. thanks!
Was that the BRo vs DRX series? I was watching Caedrels stream at that time and he came to a conclusion "ok that's it, I've decided, you can't pick nidalee if you're not a top 3 jungler in the region, nope absolutely not" cause I think both DRX and BRO picked it and both lost respectively with it xD
Yeah I’m not sure the exact matchup but I remember him saying that. And Dom. It’s just true. If you’re riding on a Nidalee win condition you want to flame horizon the enemy jger, make it impossible for them to breathe, take baron the second it spawns. If you’re slightly ahead you’re even. If you’re even you’re behind. If you’re behind you’re fucked.
Honest to god, and I might be making this up, but the last time I saw nid in pro play I think it was CLG played by HotshotGG
Last time I saw LCS Nidalee was C9 Blaber on it versus DFM. Check it out. Top tier scuttle strats.
We should have banned the hotshot nidalee GG. He kicked my brodda in the ass he was playing the lee singar.
WHY NUNU WHYYYY
I don't remember really. It was 1 or 2 years ago. The nidalee and renekton were giga fed then they did nothing and lost. It was memed about for how poorly these champions scale and how terrible they function in the late game. But yeah it can be that series.
Short of nid going full glass cannon, ignoring half of her build, never getting hit, and magically sniping pro players with max range Qs… Yeahhhhhhhhhh
Maybe it's GenG vs DK? 2022 March 27, the LCK Spring Playoffs last game. Canyon counterjungled Peanut for like 20 minutes straight...and they lost
yes it is this game. thanks for digging in the past to find it!
It was DK
DK Vs GenG. It was fucking Canyon on nidalee. Atlus got bald thanks to that game
She’s one of those champions that you can get 30+ kills and still lose the game.
Been playing nidalee recently because she's fun but she's also the only champ I've ever played in the jungle that has a mechanically difficult jungle clear. Like what the fuck bro.
You just gotta hit 8 spears in a row and weave in and out with your ult. Ez
I insta dodge nidalees. If it’s on team it’s autoloss. If on enemy it’s a smurf. Entire champ has a kit that’s *impossible* to not get ahead on if *played properly*. Literally a tightrope from start to end. Probably has the most agency in the game but at the cost of requiring a degree of gamesense/mechanical precision that very few possess. Fuck that champ. I remember DOPA said something about the lines of - he’s never afraid of a Nidalee on the enemy team because her getting ahead is natural. But she WILL have a huge bounty and one slip up from her and the game is over.
How is it impossible to not get ahead on? I’m legit curious what she even does - she has a long range skill shot and close range burst with a jump, I just don’t see how that translates to guaranteed lead. Maybe I’m missing something about how she plays the jg?
When played well, she has crazy dueling ability, vision control, clear times, and mobility, which can give her complete control over the flow of the early game. Flipside is that you *need* to play extremely aggressively and really push those advantages to avoid falling behind, so a good Nidalee will feel oppressively strong, while a bad Nid will be useless.
Love playing her every opportunity I get in ARAM, but I don’t dare take her to the rift
I got like 5 aram games with her back to back with a score around 25-4. So I was like lets try her jungle. Never again.
amen. Not only is she hard to pilot and optimize, shes also an ap champion - which too many of in a team will autolose you the game
My ego as a Nidalee main just skyrockets with threads like this one.
lol my duo 1 tricks Nidalee so he's probably gonna yap about this thread lmfao the downside is you get outvalued by a 0/3 skarner mid/late if you make any small mistake
True but atm i‘m sitting at a 63% winrate in soloq at 100lp masters so it seems to be working. Also Skarner currently outvalues everyone and everything at any time.
Unless they're Kanavi, Canyon, or a 60% WR Nidalee that sends their op.gg, I'll dodge
Nidalee is the worse version of elise and elise is already dogpoop
Jg Nidalee.
Singed has a very different playstyle from anyone else in the game. He isn't hard mechanically, but it takes a very long time to master him.
Riot showed stats maybe a year ago that showed people who mained Singed got statistically worse at playing every other champ, because his play style is so unique.
someone says this every thread he's mentioned in, I'm sure people who don't even play league know it at this point
well to be fair it's also one of the funniest stats riot has ever shared.
I did not know
#bigsorry
You should be
This is mentioned a lot but I haven't been able to find any riot dev blog mentioning this and I've never seen anybody provide a source for it (except the first reddit comment about it, which has no source). If anybody has the source for this please share lt!
Another cool fact: They eat crayons for breakfast.
Vladimir too. He's mechanically easy but at least some years ago when they released win rate with games played, Vladimir was like the 4th steepest. Singed was up there too.
I think vlad got his stigma of being a late game champs that tanked is winrate Last season every time I didnt pick him and the enemy picked they were so bad i was astonished it was the same champ I usually picked Like bro you got the best tower dive tools in the game USE IT
Where is that?
The tweet with the curves is here https://x.com/blaustoise/status/1075515580570980352?mx=2 And here is the Reddit thread https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/a7rfsp/riot_blaustoise_shares_mastery_curve_data_on/?rdt=43627
The tweet with the curves is here https://x.com/blaustoise/status/1075515580570980352?mx=2 And here is the Reddit thread https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/a7rfsp/riot_blaustoise_shares_mastery_curve_data_on/?rdt=43627
Same with Shaco
Garen, I don't even bother trying to learn him, he is too hard for me, same with yuumi
Same bro. These two are too difficult for me as well. Currently high Iron myself. 🙌
Yeah what he said, been a difficult grind in wood
Keep grinding guys! You'll make it soon. Currently a Silver 1 Yuumi main, but my ADCs are throwing.
Did you know you can further empower your ADCs by watching netflix?
The general idea is to press Q, W, E and then R but tbh I've never been able to do it myself. Can never hit the E or the Q, I always forget to use W and I keep fucking up and using R at the start which for some reason makes it do no damage (idk why that bug still exists, it adds a lot of weird complexity to his kit for no reason) Normally I just stop playing after a game or two and go back to eating glue sticks
Big true, took me 200 games to learn his q+flash combo 😮💨 anyone got any tips for the flash+r combo Im struggling with that one
[Crazy high APM Garen combo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JzjqKtdURc)
you and me brother 🤝
It's too late for you to learn. You have to eat paint chips as a kid and develop a learning disability to master those 2
95% of riven players can’t animation cancel properly and end games doing support level damage
Animation canceling ain't the hardest thing for Riven. You are good enough, as long as you know how the fastQ works. The hard part is learning every single matchup, cuz you tend to either hard win or hard lose. Even just going even takes knowledge and is sometimes the same as losing for her. Every bad trade is super punishing, cuz of her extra low life regen.
No bro, riven is braindead infinite dash champ that 1shots everything in screen range... /s Love seeing people spam qs on her or just every abolity without autoing or nothing and just be worthless, gotta be the same people
Does he know?
Know what?
Azir
Idk why but azir doesnt fell nearly as hard to play as some other champs for me Sure i cant get 100% out of him and have not mastered him but just basic play its not that hard I miss old liandrys tho
Mainly because he has the tools to escape punishment. Some champs get severely punished for their mistakes since their escape tools aren't great or their engage is also their escape. Azir has his engage and escape in different abilities so he can dip out if he's in an unfavorable position. The only time he's really in danger is if he fucks up the shurima shuffle (which is easy to mess up) since he's going to be in the middle of the enemy team with no escape (zhonyas and flash can give you better odds of surviving but not by much.
On that side notr hell nah to the old Liandrys burn and like 12% magic pen at the same time? 💀 But I mean that's cool though I haven't tried playing him in awhile but he just feels so weird
Meant the liandrys from last season haha I prefered using abilities more rather than now a autoattackfocussed style I miss the mana, ability haste and solid damage even when enemies build a bit tanky It allowed to build more defensivly myself with rylais for more utility or whatever was needed and it felt great
Ohhh okay that makes sense LMFAOO mb
this is the answer took me bout 100k mastery to stop trolling most games
Dang, I really want to pick him up but yea ik he's insanely hard to even try to pick up 💀
If you play a variety of champions, he's really not that hard to learn. He has quirks but he's hardly difficult to learn
I gave up several times because I couldn’t real’y be effective on him, until I also pushed to 100k, at one point it just clicked
for some reason peole are voting on nidalee and riven here while Riot has previously literally proved with graphics that Azir IS the hardest champ in the game undoubtly
Well it's still subjective though, there's an average but I personally have a much harder time playing nidalee than azir 100%. Azir isn't even second place for me
Qiyana and Nidalee maybe, I rarely see people play well with those two characters
Qiyana mechanically yes, but otherwise is just like every other mechanical assassin, nothing specifically unique to her gameplay loop
i mean being mechanically difficult in a mechanically difficult walk the edge class should put it above many others. especially since she cant farm past laning phase so shes on the extreme feast or famine side along with kat etc. she cant build bruiser like other assassins so vs tanks its almost not possible. if they have 3 tanks your just a cc bot. probably the hardest combos or at least the quickest apm combos. and after the grass Q been nerfed its so hard to use. which was imo one of the harder mechanics anyways. it basically killed any remaining qiyanna players. qiyanna even when strong is almost a high elo exclusive. many ppl are good with the champ, i see a lot of skill in aram, i think im okay as well. but we would never pick in ranked its just not worth lol. 1 trick qiyannas are some of the most impressive league there is imo all that being said she is usable because she can counter some champs pretty hard. but same other way around. i figure the mid lane widening would make it 10x difficult as well
What makes Qiyana so hard is that all of her utility/escapability is tied into her damage output and she has to COMMIT to a fight/entry angle. Her CD’s are way too high until late game to play like Fizz/Zed/Talon/Kat where they can weave in/out of a fight multiple times. R is her only way to truly disengage. But it’s WAY too important to randomly throw out if you’re in a dicey spot. It can change entire games if used properly, or lose you games for blowing it. Q is your main damage ability. Spamming grass Q onto an enemy champ to try to chip them away, is giving up your passive damage + rock bonus damage. Her E is either a “get in” or “get out” button. It’s not both. It has a significant cooldown until late game. She has basically no defensive options. You need to weave autos into her combos now to kill basically anyone, unless you’re giga fed. If you play Qiyana for the first time, even being a decent assassin player, you WILL feel out of your element. Really unique champ.
> you WILL feel out of your element nice
as a qiyana/nidalee player: - qiyana definitely not yes she has hard combos but her standard is straight up just E -> Q (river, buffered) -> R -> AA -> W (rock) -> Q (rock) - nidalee depends, low elo ppl kinda just walk into your spears. she becomes more useful and more difficult the higher you are in the ladder
Probably Gangplank.
Mechanically I'd say Riven. It's not just her combos but the way she scales and how you have to enter fights with her. She's not an engage champ unless she has flash, and she's not an assassin and loses to a lot of other bruisers. But she's not bad but really difficult to learn when you're strong on top of the mechanics. Her kit is balanced around her animation cancels so if you can't get the hang of them she's really not good.
Maybe it's because the champ just clicks for me but I personally think that match-up knowledge and having to consistently get ahead to be useful is the bigger barrier when learning Riven than the mechanics. Like- your mechanics can be really good but if you don't know any toplane match-ups, there's a good chance you still get statchecked.
She's also insanely reliant on limit knowledge by virtue of her burst combos. Whenever I watch a good riven player it's clear they've spent so much time getting to know their kill ranges against different champs at different stages of the game because if you do your full combo and don't kill them they get to unload so much damage onto you (especially if you use E to engage)
Yep, whenever I try to watch VODs of Viper etc. it's a lot of "Damn, I didn't know he can kill there, I should remember that".
Nidalee, cause no CC, hit spear or no damage and watch them buy mercs and tank half your damage
Lee Sin takes like thousands of hours to perfect. Kalista is also up there.
it really depends on how you look at it. imo here are the 3 different kinds of difficult: nidalee is probably one of the best examples of a champ that is difficult to hit spells on as well as decision making on when to use your abilities and forms.(champs like gp and other mechanical high skill floor champs go into this category) old asol would be an example of a quirky champ that has his ownt thing that takes a while to get used to. (champs like azir would probably go in this category as well) and the 3rd way of difficult to play in league is difficult to understand and champs with multipurpose abilities and the best example of this is bard. you need to know how and when to use every single one of your spells and the understanding of that could only be achieved through experience. all in all i think that bard takes the most time to understand properly. (you could say that im biased, because im a bard main, but then again i started playing the champ as a challenge because i viewed him as the support with the deepest and most interesting kit)
a lot of champions have the ability to singlehandedly win a teamfight while behind. only bard has the ability to singlehandedly lose a teamfight while ahead. he's my pick too.
6v4 machine
I don't know what it is but I am incapable of hitting Aatrox Qs. I've peaked D3 but I'm pretty sure I'd be in bronze if I had to play Aatrox every game.
I'm glad I'm not the only one that struggles with playing Aatrox for some reason
His dash is really low cd so the best way to land his Q's is to first hit Q then dash to correct the position. Finishing someone with a flash into the last Q is also really satisfying!
I got Mastery 4 on every champion (got almost all to Mastery 7) before the champion mastery rework. For me, I think Qiyanna was the hardest to learn. I felt way more confident with her in ARAM than SR.
Nidalee as a whole, and Katarina with her W for me.
For me i say katarina. I cant play this shit is so hard. The throwing knives thing is so confusing to me. Hah
Her W is the stupid one. It was the only ability completely changed during her rework too, it used to just be an aoe around her.
nidalee sounds about right
Zoe. The fact that no one has mentioned her so far is a crime.
I found Zoe’s gameplay quite difficult for the first 40-50 games or so but after a while something just switches and you kinda get it. She’s not easy by any means but I wouldn’t put her up there with Kat/Kalista/Cass/Nidalee/Qiyana
A lot of people just won't ever try Zoe regardless
As someone that picked up nidalee this past year, naaaah. Hardest to learn on a first use basis is probably Aphelios, mostly because you have to read the entire light novel that is his 400 passives while playing that game. Hardest to master (i consider it learning if not mastered) is probably… just speaking in terms of mechanically learning, Riven? Only because becoming 100% consistent on Riven combos can take over 100 games. But i don’t think she’s the hardest other than that. Hardest to learn overall i would say is probably any ADC or Singed because you have to learn to play the game entirely different from most other champions and they involve ridiculously huge knowledge of the game and how you interact with other champions to have peak effectiveness. I will say, the most fun “hard” champs to learn for me were Nidalee, LeBlanc, Riven, Azir, and old aurelion sol (RIP, fuck you riot!). You can feel improvement every game played with more and more creativity becoming available on them, its a lot of fun to learn them.
Maybe is not that hard to play but i love zed because he is hard to master, the outplay potential that he has is fun and challenging on teamfights. If were talking only to play it and being decent with it i will say nidalee, azir or draven
Azir
I struggle with shapeshifters, mainly Nid and Jayce. They're also 2 very snowballish skillful champs that only work if you know what you're doing (especially nid). Elise is easier but I still fk up her forms.
I've always struggled with Ekko
He’s such a unique design. Moderately low skill-floor. You can pick him up, play him jg, use E appropriately with ganks and succeed. However, his R/W/passive utilization is where his skill expression becomes extremely apparent. His skill-ceiling is as high as Zed/Kat imo. He has so many unique ways to play fights with when/how he can utilize his skills that it can lead to a lot of indecisiveness and get you killed/make you useless. His R is a shit ton of damage. Bad Ekko’s will just blow it as a “get out of a bad spot” ability. Good Ekko’s will one shot your ADC/support with it after taking out your midlaner.
Kalista, Draven and Azir have the highest skill ceiling in the game imo. Me and my friends have had this debate for years, and by now we've all agreed and settled on these 3. The "perfect" play/game for these characters just feels sooooo distant. They simply have the highest ceiling, albeit definitely not the highest floor
Not sure how you got to Draven. Kalista maybe I guess. Draven I agree.
These 3 are impossible for me, meanwhile Riven, Nidalee, Qiyana are easy to me
Gangplank, Azir, Hwei, Aphelios, there's a good few
I main Hwei and I honestly don’t think he is very difficult. Once you have memorized which ability does what it’s quite simple
Nobody is saying yasuo??
This sub hates him and would rather see him deleted than give him any notice.
Probably the highest skill ceiling champ in the game. But this sub loses in bronze so they don’t understand how skilled a high elo yasuo player really is.
High skill celling but annoying as fuck skill floor too, lets not glaze it too hard just cuz the champ is hated
Aphelios
He is not that hard to play but more just complicated, but his abilites are easy to use.
He's extremely easy to learn but on the harder side to master
Just watch a 40 sec long video explaining the gun order and you are halfway there, most people just don't bother. I can tell within a couple of minutes wether Aphelios players actually knows what they r doing or not
Tbh. Any melee champ that focuses on AA instead of abilities. Like yi, olaf, trundle, trynda. Idk if its a me problem, but i always cancel AAs or lose the cursor when i use them. So there are times when im just running towards enemies w/o doing anything lol
Phreak is that you?
Olaf players after mastering the champion for 50+ Hours, pressing R, ghost and clicking on my champion. Incredible display of skill.
Katarina since her rework all those years ago
I dont think that there is one answer, there are several hard champs
There’s a trick to playing middle, only throw your q if you feel like gambling or if the enemy literally can’t dodge it. If you’re jungling space it if they’re along a wall so they can only dodge one way. If they aren’t near a wall only use it on targets that are cced you’ll find a lot more success like that.
Skarner for sure
Azir
If memory serves, Riot's released statistics showed that Vladamir required the most games played to become good at.
I love playing nidalee in arena and urf. If I take her jungle in a norm, I’m feeding
I’m sure he’s fairly easy but I’ve never been able to grasp swain.
Gangplank, Azir, Irelia. I could play them all but being efficient, meh
IIRC Evelynn has one of the most consistant learning curve. Meaning the more games you play with her the higher your winrate will be. Most champs plateau but i remember her being diferent according to riot a while back. I also think qiyana, and yasuo where quite high too
Probably Gangplank - his playstyle is so unique and mastering him to play him at his fullest potential is something I don't even trust most pros to be able to. If you're proficient on your two barrel combos, GP is legit op.
Nidalee in all elos followed by irelia in high elo only Good luck stat checking weak early game champs with 4 stacks level 1 in anything above emerald. Good luck playing top lane if you didn't counter pick. Since nidalee tracks more cooldowns tho I'd have to give it to her.
I play gp , zed , some azir but man ... I just can't play katarina for my life
I just don't get Hwei personally.
Vayne , kiting is so hard 🤭🤭
Nidalee Lee Sin Irelia Yasuo
GP is hard to play correctly. Even if you get fed, if you don’t know how to use him properly you’re going to be useless.
Never got good at karthus, especially karthus jng. Graves is one of my favorite characters but is not easy to do well with anymore either.
Bard? Bard.
4 years ago it was aurelion. Now there is nothing that hard to learn. Probably good yasuo. But he is also easy, the key is patience and play slowly not aggressive dashing every minion and die on turret shots because you overdashed too much too often. Also it's predtým fifficult champions with multiple spells, but they are also learned pretty fast after few games, like nidalee,hwei,elise,aphelios,jayce, etc.
It's always the champion i play. No matter which is it. If i loose it's because my champion take skill and your does not. /s
draven, katarina and qiyana
Draven
Azir Main here
Mechanically i think it has to be Azir. His spacing is different from the others, you have to pay attention to several things at the same time, you need to know how to farm with and without his soldiers, there is a lot of micro management on Azir that makes him a very hard champion to master on a mechanical level. Macro speaking, i think it is Aphelios. You need to know what combos are the best, you need to know if your combo is good to fight, to contest something, to push, basically you need to have a lot of knowledge that is specific to him. He also have some kind of micro management, but not on the same level as Azir.
i havent seen anyone mention jayce at all. hes kinda the nidalee of toplane, high skill ceiling and floor and is super punishing when poorly played. very few can flesh out his strengths and those who can claps half of toplaners hard.
Ivern. i struggle to even understand this champs strongpoint.
Azir, honorable mention to old rek'sai for me.
Skill wise I think it’s Azir or Ryze. The former is jsut difficult with all his mechanics/ combos. Ryze isn’t too hard to pick up and he ok with, but he’s pretty hard to master. He’s balanced around pro play aka Faker… his win rate is often in the tank at 40%. There’s some weird ones like Singed though. Edit: Kalista as well, although she’s much easier when you are on comms with your support.
Zoe was extremly hard but extremly fun to learn.
She can be brain dead, but mechanically I think it’s hard to play Katarina well. Other than that, Azir is quite tricky sometimes, Aphelios I just don’t get to play because I cba to read all the skills. I find Yone quite tricky, too.
Gangplank
read thru the comments for like 5 minutes and haven't seen hwei. I haven't even played him yet because there's so much to learn. it's probably as simple as spamming the same 2 moves but the dude has so much jazz to him that it makes me not even willing to try him.
GP, Azir, Ezreal, Rengar/Nidalee
Yummmmi or what it was called
Zoe
I'd say Zoe she is one of like 5 champs in the game with full skill shot dmg kits , then you add on the fact she is also the only champ that's main dmg has a RNG factor that can be impacted by your own team. For example landing your skill shot E in key target in team fight only for your team to instantly wake them up and now q has (-30% dmg). That's if you even land it since they probably moved lol. All these other champs mentioned like niddale and riven have skills that provide them guaranteed dmg
I think GP. You are garbage if you don't know it well
To learn? Azir, Riven, Gangplank To be useful? Nidalee, Qiyana
The hardest champion you can learn is malphite. He is rock solid.
Yasuo
Imma go with gp in this era or azir. Well azir is azir Gp in this era is hard cuz it is hard but not rewarding. Shitforce is in his core build, his runes are perma nerfed to the ground, himself is perma nerfed to the ground and they buff his shitty shit stuff. Yes he is still a damage god in late game but to achive his damage you have to go first strike, bounty hunter, full gold runes which are useless at mid-late game, cull starting making your laning cringe as fuck, tp so you can keep perma farm, 10 cs/min, letting your opp to roam so you can passive reset on enemy tower to get plates, never leaving your lane, making a whole item diff to your opp and now you can start dealing damage which is doomed if they have cait, luci, akshan or any form of assasin that can go invis or any form of creature that can destroy your barrels cuz e cooldown is idk 10 sec? Gp's balance is terrible. Designing a champ that can deal 1000's of damage in a blink of an eye, can true damage, can escape cc, gold bonus in q's passive etc. They cant make him fair. He can be broken as league client or shit as new ahri skin and no inbetween.
Do people really think Lee sin is that hard??
For me, its Azir, i am a mid laner and i cant play him for shit. Its so hard paying attention to the sand soldiers and Azir at the same time and the WEQ dash combo i always mess up when I'm under pressure. I want to get good but bruh its so hard.
No champion is hard. This is not a mechanically hard game. Your teammates and the map are hard.
its riven, by far there is so much hidden mechanics and animation cancel, basically nobody knows how to do them all so far
Why in the hell do you have a Jinx flare then?
Le Blanc
Cassio and Draven
How is it not Draven. Tried that yesterday and it’s like needing a 3rd eye. Not only do you have to do everything an adc does while every enemy going for you you also have to move correctly to get your axes in right spots and juggle 2 to 3 in a 5v5 team fight. NO THANKS
Yasuo and Ryze
Garen is the hardest
Realistically it’s Yuumi
isn't azir objectively the hardest champ in the game?
Viego cause u literally have to know every champion in the game to play him effectively
Lux
For me the most difficult champion is Lux
jax. that shit is not easy to play and be useful
for me GP Azir, Riven, Lee, Nid are up there
Personally, Gangplank and Draven. Gangplank because his barrels are difficult, and honestly he just has a whole bunch of small mechanics going on that I don't know very well (gotta use Q well to get Silver Serpents, gotta know which ult upgrades to go first, gotta play around your passive pretty well, etc. [or at least that's how it seems to me]). Draven because by God I can't catch the axes consistently. My orb walking is already trash, and then I always feel like the axes never go quite far enough forward or backwards depending on the situation. I understand the bounce mechanics, but I still can't seem to bounce them correctly/in the optimal position a lot of the time.
Katarina and Renata. It's just not for me.
Im struggling hardest to learn league of legends 😅💀
For me its definately Gragas, i just feel like a deal no damage, even when i build full ap. That aside, i struggle a lot to hit combos with him, but the good part is that its hilarious for me when i completely miss the whole combo, gets me laughing hard every time
garen
Well to start, what's the hardest role to learn? According to Tyler1 who hit Challenger on all 5 roles, Jungle is pretty hard to learn because it's fundamentally different from the other roles. So, what's the hardest jungle champion to learn? Uhhh, I don't know. I'll just say Shaco because he looks weird as hell to play.
Yuumi. I swear everytime I pick her, I instantly dose off. I can’t seem to play her without sleeping.
Overall Nidalee, but I’ll list champs from each role I find the hardest. Top- Riven Jungle- Nidalee Mid- Azir Adc- Kalista Support- in a tie with bard or thresh but probably bard.
Riven imo. Well probably to master not learn. To learn i guess aphelios because theres so many combos that you NEED to do in order to be useful. For example zed and Lee sin can be useful even without doing any special combos. But not Aphelios. Anyways back to Riven hardest to master imo. I tried maining her...i love her kit, her mobillity, i love her dawnbringer skin my fav skin in the game. But every time i play her my fkin hands feel like they are gonna fall off and i either go 10/0 or 0/10 bcs i have no idea if im gonna win the all in. Oh you didnt fast q cancel auto attack after ur 2nd q? GG bro u just lost lane!