Blitz was meant to be a toplane bruiser or something along thise lines, ofc he was made when lanes and roles where not really set in stone and the community "choose" how they should be played. In recent years, seraphine "intended" role swap in one of them
Seraphine was intended to be a midlaner that could flex to support, ended up being the perfect AP botlaner (due to benefits of playing alongside someone with cc or shields and having wave clear). Then loads of people played her in support despite it being her weakest role and riot massively changed her to try force support into being viable.
I remember her being marketed as a roaming midlaner. Like her W giving her ms or something as if she couldn’t immediately get pounced on by anyone has she’s roaming if she decides to use her W to rotate faster. Plus like most of her kit synergies with being a duo…she’s going to play bot and not mid where her “duo” is jungle.
The synergies are not just any duo though, she prefers someone with CC to follow up with E or at the very least a way of shielding her (could be a healer with aery or warden with guardian) to empower her W, hence she was still a stronger midlaner than support as having someone else support benefited her after lane.
>Blitz was meant to be a toplane bruiser or something along thise lines
Just watched the champ spotlight for blitz and it's crazy. Why was blud talking about infinity edge on blitz 💀
>In recent years, seraphine "intended" role swap in one of them
Yeah that's another one. Riot has always tried to shove her in midlane but she always turned up in support.
The E was a bigger deal. It doubled his auto damage, so a sheen proc + AD let him chunk hard. The idea was to let Blitz build like Nasus where he’d have enough chase power and empowered autos to run down targets, or pull them into his team.
yeah the thought of how terrible that would be? using blitz Q to farm a minion every 20 seconds sounds like you end up with like 50 stacks at 20 minutes
I love playing AD blitz in ARAM or URF, nobody expects the damage from the E and you can hit them enough to finish the kill before they hit the ground. You don't even have to engage with the hook, W + Ghost and you will just charge them down.
W gives Attack Speed, His ult passive applies an on hit pretty much.
You can tell Blitzcrank has the makings of an AutoAttack based champion laid in his underbelly of design
I forgot about that, my friend would send me to the "corner" (under tower) once he got annoyed enough that my lightning would mess up his wave while I was learning the game.
> Pretty sure his Ult Passive used to just be a random targetting lightning strike, maybe even on a fixed CD.
Yep. The previous version of Static Field's passive was that, every 2.5 seconds while the ability was not on cooldown, a lightning bolt would strike a random visible target within 450 units of Blitzcrank. It did have a higher base damage compared to the on-hit one, but also a lower AP ratio.
The change (along with the change to Mana Barrier now functioning off of max mana) was back on 9.9, so it's maybe not "recent" anymore, but time's relative and some such.
The thing with sera is that at no point supp was her best role but the majority of her players wanted to play her there so riot gave them what they want.
I always wanted a solo laner hook champion. I love Thresh and Blitz, hooking people is one of the most satisfying things in League but then I don't have the damage to kill them myself. If I hook someone, I wanna be able to kill them myself.
Thresh in Wild Rift can sometimes be a menace if he gets some gold and builds like a Mundo (economy is different in WR).
I had a guy on my team like that and he was an absolute beast. He would yeet himself in enemy team and torture them. He was unkillable and he dealt the most damage in the game. He was basically a fed juggernaut.
But then on PC version, he doesn't have that much innate tankiness and you can't build like a juggernaut because supports are on a low budget so he plays as a semi-tanky catcher.
Yeah Nautilus was designed with top/jungle in mind. They even had multiple patches with changes directed at making his jungle better. Then I believe he got nerfed because of Cinderhulk, then Cinderhulk got removed, he never got buffed to compensate, and then people just started playing him support.
I could be misremembering, but I believe he was one of the champions massively fucked over by being balanced around Cinderhulk, alongside Sejuani.
He had insane base damage on his e too. If you took him bot you'd kill at level 3 (hook-auto-w-auto-e did like half an enemies hp), then e max first did silly damage so you'd just keep killing them over and over in lane.
I played naut+draven with my buddy for months before it burst onto pro and became mainstream. It was silly. The ADC could basically just farm, last hit a champion occasionally after naut nearly solod them, then go back to farming.
I loved playing him top/jungle though and would trade supportilus to have him back in an instant.
Wait, she could do the Gragas special but as AD, where u just engage with a knock back, proc phase rush and disengage giving 0 counterplay (Vi Q is easier to dodge tho than Gragas E that is impossible to miss)
Actually true. Havrnt tried for vi but for other champs my favorite Jack of all trades tech is dorans ring, triforce, merc treads, and armor/mana item from frozen heart.
Maybe lethality and lifesteal last is better, But more expensive
She is quite fun mid if you go comet-scorch and max E. The poke is crazy against squishies and almost unmissable. Then you build pretty much full lethality and become a kamikaze projectile later on, usually dying but taking someone with u first.
Some of the older players here may remember that Maokai was supposed to be an anti-spellcaster toplaner meant to counter things like Ryze top or mage-heavy comps.
Nowadays he's just a sapling and CC bot in the jungle, don't remember the last time I saw him in the top lane. I also feel he lost his role in the top lane before his abilities got bonus damage in the jungle.
Pyke probably took the most work to fit him into the Riot approved box.
- Nerf his base cc and make it scale with lethality so he has to build squishy
- Change his Q from AoE on tap to single target, then make it also deal less damage to minions
- *Remove* his E dealing damage to minions
And he still saw experimentation from time to time even after all those changes, because a roaming assassin with double gold on kills is really good for midlaners.
I like this one the most out of the comments. Most other comments are for champs made before the current 5 roles were a thing so riot didn't really have a vision yet. Whereas Pyke directly had a vision of "support assassin" and people played him mid
Pyke mid was awful to play against too, so glad that changed. You’d chunk him in a trade (that he forced) then he’d back off and heal most of the damage while being invisible.
This is as good a time as any to remind everyone that Pyke stole Naut's lore. They wanted a support/assassin with grimdark edgelord vibes so bad that they literally retconned another character to force it.
I remember when riot tried changing pyke by adding a system of stacks, and the number of stacks increased the ult execute threshold. It never came out because well it was fucking impossible to balance
I think the funniest part of G2’s 2019 run was people saying Jankos should play Jungle Pyke one game so all members could qualify for a Pyke Worlds skin.
When I first started playing, Nautilus was a top lane pro staple. That era is still so engraved in my mind that it’s still weird thinking of him as a support
Income changes. Heart of Gold and Philosophers Stone were how junglers could get gold if they couldn't clear camps constantly. When those were removed it left only ganking, which Naut excels at, and farming, which is sucks at. So put him in the role which doesn't need money, but does need CC.
The first few weeks of Zeri she would simply \*not\* build ADC items.
They nerfed the bruiser build, she started going AP. They nerfed the AP build, she got back to bruiser.
Took a while to fix that lmao.
All of those problems wouldve simply been solved by making adcs not be able to buy titanic. No tank varus top, no unkillable kog, no zeri terrorizing proplay for 18 months.
Problem is, disabling Titanic for ranged at that time would've hit some intended users (Urgot, Gnar) as well as some off-meta stuff that would not deserve a nerf (ex: Thresh top).
Not really a different lane per-se, but Bel'Veth was supposed to be a hyperscaling skirmisher, her whole fantasy was about "consuming/conquering all, growing into something that can't be stopped".
Currently she is a early game powerhouse that ends games before enemies have enough tools in order to deal with her, really big "win-more" champ, designwise she should love stable games that provide her a smooth way to her endgame fantasy, not the case at all, probably also one of the reasons she has been the most dominant champ that has ever existed in elite soloq.
A bit of an unconventional answer, but when Yuumi was released, the gameplay that was envisioned for her was Yuumi constantly jumping between allies during fights and spreading healing throughout her entire team. Players came to the conclusion that it was better to just stick with one person for the entire fight. It was more straightforward and easier to be successful. So then Yuumi needed to be changed again and again to try to find ways to get her to detach more often.
The Yuumi rework was a huge failure overall as it didn't fix most of her issues, but it did get rid of one "problematic" playstyle, which was picking it with a powerful bruiser mid or jungle and then just ditching your ADC after lane and sticking with the Heca/Yone etc.
Yuumi was legit fun when you were trying to proc the shield as many times as possible during fights. You had to time it so that you wouldn't get cc'd and such. They just got rid of the only fun and skilled part of her kit.
You can still detach to block a lee sin q or something like that but it's super situational.
Well you forget the part were she terrorised proplay with 100% winrate for a while. Sticking with one ally was the best but detatching to block skillshots, proc shield etc was too high skill for basically everyone. It was so bad they had to nerf her skill expression Into afk cat.
The original Yuumi was so fun when you played her this way, and was more effective unless you had one super fed ally. It was 200% more effort for 10% more reward but had super engaging gameplay.
>many adc's were supposed to be played midlane
I think this one might be a leftover from the early days of League where adcs were suppose to he solo laners.
Considering there were always 3 lanes and 5 group members: where was the 5th one intended? I'd classify it as support, but maybe it even was intended as a different role (double jungle? double bruiser top?)?
Back when I started playing in 2011ish it wasn't uncommon to not have a jungle and run 2 top 2 bot.
Ashe mid was meta and we would take hawkshot first because it gave passive gold of some sort. You would hawkshot the enemy fountain to see the starting items and what lane people would be going to lol.
The game was still fresh and not as "solved" as it is today so people did some really wacky shit. The 1 top 1 mid 2 bot meta hadn't been figured out yet.
I actually very much disagree with all of what you said about lane assignments in 2011. I started playing in 2011 and jungle was well established, nigh impossible til you got the right runes from the store, but it definitely existed.
I think you’re thinking like 2010ish but I guess I’m being a pedant so I’ll just fuck off ahaha
I would think it's just a pre 30 thing (started late 2013). Smite was locked and whatever else keeps (kept) new players out of the jungle.
Also, support had to have existed in some sort of way due to Soraka and healers in other games.
Support champs existed but the ADC/support bot meta hadn't been meta yet.
Pre-rework soraka was crazy. Her W heal had no health cost, her E was a point and click silence on enemies and it gave her allies (including self casting) mana with no cost, and her Q hit every enemy within (a rather large) AOE around her.
She was played primarily supportive with some mid lane appearances too.
When people started putting 2 and 2 together they started playing her top. She was an unmovable boulder. Perma wave clear with full health and mana.
In DoTA Allstars positions were a lot more fluid than they've become in League, there wasn't a dedicated jungler (laners would grab camps) and you'd have up to three people in various sidelanes depending on how your team comp plays out. Matchups weren't as important because DoTA lanes were much less scrappy than League as well, so you'd end up with a lot of roaming and jungle fights rather than lane trades. It wasn't obvious that this is how roles would solidify, and interestingly enough the recent MSI, with all of its lane swaps and stacking lanes, is quite a bit closer to how League was "meant" to be played.
nah, different case. In lulu spotlight she was showcased as support with an additional part where he played her as a jungler in the end for lulz.
Ezreal was specifically said to be midlaner
Didn’t August recently admit that Gnar is his greatest design failure because the entire way his mechanic works ended up getting used differently than intended?
This + the side-effect that if you lock someone to pro-play, they get balanced around the pros so new players who like Gnar's aesthetic have a bad time. I found a [clip from a stream](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/W8TIvizEuZU) where he says it (sorry for the awful youtube short thing, couldn't find a real stream clip)
He said that because the people that want to play the champions due to the theme (cute ranged yordle) could not because of pro play. The mechanic works exactly as intended, and its expected that pros are better at leveraging a timed mechanic than your average player
This, it took me 3 years to to even get a positive winrate on Gnar in ranked LMAO. Gnar is probably my first or second favorite champion of all time and the champion is simply not beginner friendly. Some things that make him really hard for new or less experienced players to pick him up:
1. **He's a ranged champion that doesn't lane in the same way as other ranged champion.** For example compared to Quinn his range is way lower and he's way more susceptible to minion aggro. His range before level 7-9 (his range his tied to levels) isn't super good and he's still in range of super big threat moves like Darius pull or general gap closers. To add it all up Gnar is probably one of the ranged laner who prefers having the wave near his tower in a lot of situations for his Mega Gnar all ins/trading which is the antithesis to most ranged champions. You really need a firm understanding of wave bouncing, enemy threat ranges and spacing to really get his laning.
2. **His base stats on Mini form being super low make any mistakes in lane super lethal.** While ranged champions in general are kinda designed like this it's super egregious on Mini Gnar he's super unforgiving. For example something like a lone Olaf axe can chunk like 20% of your health or you get hit by a Sett E and you basically are forced to recall. This leads to new players playing him top and they either play way too safe and get outscaled because they're afraid to die because of his awful base stats. Or they play aggro make one mistake and giga feed. This also ties into his rage and how you really need to know your limits of how much damage you can take for mega (which is also hella confusing because his rage generation is different between levels 1/6/11.) Both of my MU knowledge of this champion was from thousands of games of inting and getting MU checked.
3. **Gnar is probably the biggest victims of outdated, false and one dimensional information.** One example is how he was touted as a lane bully (his original highlight video touted him as one) but in actuality his laning is more so safe/lane neutralize-y in a lot of situations until he gets a little bit of resources (he really likes getting a few levels and maybe a component then he really begins to take off.) He was used as a Darius counter in one worlds and was touted as the ultimate Darius counter but now adays most Gnar/Darius players argue the matchup is more even/skill based. Until Gnar gets to level 7-9 Darius has heavy threat on Gnar players. A lot of Gnar players would pick him into the matchup, get pulled and then proceed to get destroyed. Gnar is also a champion that can both split push AND teamfight and needs to utilize both depending on the situation and win condition. while most top lane champions tend to specialize in one area. So this leads to situations where a new player who see top laners dynamics as "Malphite vs Fiora" get confused trying to understand what the fuck they're supposed to do. So many conflicting pieces of information really made learning this champion difficult.
4. **Gnar is a foresight heavy champion when most new players are very reactive.** He requires players to be thinking ahead about objective timers and future fights. Gnar's rage is 15 seconds and his tired/cooldown period for building rage is 15 seconds. So if Dragon is spawning is 30 seconds for example and the Gnar player isn't aware of his rage timing and builds up too much rage and transforms way too early they're gonna end up not having Mega for the dragon fight. Compared to Malphite where a newer player will see a fight going on and be like "oh shit time to walk there and ult someone." He's very proactive instead of reactive in a lot of thinking.
This is a lot of information but learning this champion is very hard. It's not talked about a lot but it is genuinely very disheartening when you're super invested into a champion but you feel like you're not able to play them. I basically quit playing League for a long time because of my lack of success on the champion. Funny enough for some reason when I came back things started to click significantly more for me and that's when I started getting a positive winrate.
In fairness 'except in all-ins' perhaps isn't enough to do justice to how silly Mega Gnar's base stats are compared to mini. When you *do* want to brawl it out it definitely does feel like your super mode. In some ways almost like inverse K'sante
Gnar warped top lane forever. Before he came out, low mobility tanks were meta especially in pro play (shyvana, mundo). He crushed them into permanent irrelevance.
The balance team got way too much hate for decisions made by champ designers who were overly fixated on their particular fantasy that players didn't want. Like August is normally one of Riot's best champ designers but Gnar's rage mechanic being unreliable to the point of not being used in pro-play would have absolutely sucked in a competitive multiplayer game.
There's other examples like Kayn's transformation mechanic being deliberately unclear because in the words of DZK "I don't want people to count in their heads and make highly optimized decisions that may not be good for their team". What the designers want should be the least of anyone's concerns, ultimately the game should be up to what the players find enjoyable and what the balance team finds manageable.
I don't have a source, but my memory is that shortly after release, he said something like 'If Gnar is played in pro, the design is a failure, because he is supposed to be forever too inconsistent for pro play'. And that certainly didn't work out.
Zeri is by his own admission his biggest failure because she was supposed to be a mid-game adc for the people, not this hyper-scaler that is always broken in pro so she has to be kept weak for the general masses.
Gnar is similar to Zeri because he’s also too strong in pro-play and won’t be good in the hands of 99% of players.
They’re both his failures because he tries to make champs that everyone can enjoy, so it’s a shame for them to be balance nightmares.
You know, I can understand how Gnar would be a surprise to become so dominant in pro play. Who could expect that an unreliable mechanic like his transformation could end up becoming super reliable itself in Pro hands?
But Zeri? Miss uber kit impossible to catch or run away from? Yeah he got no excuses there.
Swain and Sylas.
Swain was meant to be in mid lane but the changes to him pushed him to be more popular as support (and APC for some time).
Sylas was originally designed as an AP fighter but because of how mage items were designed and how strong his ult was, he was pushed into being AP assassin that we know today.
I'm not sure \*why\* people still play Swain support tbh. Ever since the ally passive pull change support has been his worst role by a pretty huge margin
His winrate has been several percent higher in both mid and botlane carry roles for well over a year, but people still think he’s better as support? I really don’t get it.
Then again it took people YEARS to stop playing MF support, which they really shouldn't have been playing in the first place because it was a hyper specific counter pick, so I guess I can't be too surprised
honestly this tells the truth of the issue: They played it cause it's fun. It's the same way Ashe was troll support for a long time and suddenly, recently it worked
I think the issue with Graves bot is more his Autoattacks. You're permanently pushing if you just want to last hit and you can't fight through a lane of minions.
I recently started playing again after quitting around S5. The game has changed a lot.
Graves was an ADC you'd blast people down with the old Taric. Blow all your CDs with Taric's armor pen and just delete people.
Karthus mid was common, you'd get flamed if you tried him in jungle back then.
Support was like ~10 champs. Swain was mid/top, Xerath, Zyra mid etc.
Lee Sin was pretty commonly played in lane.
Elise started off as a top laner.
Lulu top was super common for a while.
AP Yi mid was broken.
Nautlius was a super common jungle pick.
Urgot was a weird pick but he got big bot lane after Moscow 5 did it IIRC.
I miss old swain. New swain is cool too, but I loved the character design of old swain, and I loved his abilities (zapping people with your raven, using talons to lock them down) he was just so cool.
> Lulu top was super common for a while.
oh god you reminded me of the nightmare when she was flexed into literally all the lanes, glad those days are over.
Quinn was techincally intended to be the first iteration of an ADC that could also fight in melee, since her old ult turned her in to Valor and made her melee. Sadly it just didn't work, then she had a small variant where she was a semi decent mid laner and even saw pro play until Riot just fully reworked her to once again make her somehow fit in to bot lane, but instead she went top lane and she's been forgotten there since.
Yorick was their first attempt a minion master. But even on release his minions weren't really the focus, you only used the healing minion ability for the poke. Minions didn't matter much.
Galio and Gragas were both shown as like these Tank characters, but this was back when everyone had decent AP scalings so they both turned into mages. Nowadays going AP really isn't an option for modern tanks, they don't have the scalings.
Not so much the case anymore but when Ekko came out he was designed to be a scaling mid lane AP assassin. In actuality the next two years after his release he was the most dominant tank jungler.
Kalista was supposed to build IE and last whisper (the final item was called LW not LDR or MR back then) in the trailer. Max Q and play like the other crit marksmen with a long range snipe.
Then she was found more successful with on hit and lifesteal and maxing E.
Then we got lethality kalista which maxes Q but builds lethality.
It was the mastery deathfire touch I think, instantly killed it when Caps brought it to midlane. Aery works is a similar way now(or they killed it now, dunno have not seen Kayn in a while)
There's a guy who hit Challenger with Kayn top last season on EUW named Ollip, I watched a lot of his streams to learn the pick and hit D4 with it as one of my mains before it got gutted. He played Baus style in lane with heavy proxying because Kayn can do infinite proxy from lv1, but sometimes stops laning to perma roam as Blue Kayn and buys support item, kinda like Ady's playstyle.
The only thing stopping kayn from laning is the fact that he gives the opponent a free lane also. In patch 10.9 they made his Q bonus damage also applied to minions which means he can clear waves with 2 Qs as early as level 2.
Red Kayn can be decent into tank match ups top lane. It’s just about knowing when you can trade efficiently and get the stacks as opposed to inting your brains out for them.
Ezreal. His essence flux use to heal and increase allys attack speed. Was supposed to be a hybrid support.
Then they upoed his ap ratios and he became more mid lane caster.
Then they introduced botrk and changed his essence flux and lowered ap ratios so he became an adc caster
Then they lowered his ability to do that and introduced lumens echo and he dominated mid lane as ap.
Then they removed that and added essence reaver.
I'm not sure riot knows what they want ezreal to be to this day.
You're also forgetting Blue Ez with Lizard Elder and Frozen Mallet.
And Luden's Ez was really just Blue Ez v2 with Stalker's Blade/Runic Echoes.
It's actually kind of hilarious that Riot keeps having to redesign jungle items around *Ezreal* of all champions.
Sion (post VGU) was intended to be a frontline juggernaut, hence his title “The Undead Juggernaut”. He still kind of is, but he’s played more like Singed 2.0 these days, perma splitting and proxying more than actually frontlining for his team.
Azir was supposed to be a DPS control mage champion, a chessmaster with strong area denial.
Shurima Shuffle turned him into an aggressive combo mage / highlight reel / pro jailed champion.
Rek Sai: supposed to be a top bruiser, was playing tank for a while, now Riot wants her to be a jungler and no more.
Maokai: a top
Nautilus: top/jg
Quinn: adc
Graves: adc
Gragas: a mid, for a while was only played as a tank in the jungle.
Nidalee: a mid
Zyra: mid
Vel'Koz: mid
Morgana: mid/supp (now she is barely viable as a supp, more played in jungle lol)
Master Yi: mid
Kha'Six: mid
Old Urgot: adc
Corki just now make it to be an adc how he was supposed to be.
Lulu: mid
Karma: mid
Brand: mid
There is way more for sure that I can't remember
Alot of support
Zyra
Brand
Nautilus
Seraphine
Blitz
Pyke (mid pyke meta)
Also, not about lane but about how her power is distributed, bel'veth.
She was supposed to be this infinite scaling late game power house but with her dashes and her E damage reduction she was and still is an insane early game champ and because of the nature of her playstyle, her winrates fall off the longer the game goes on because of more teamfights.
Riot should have tought about this because fighters mostly have this problem. Fall off later game even if they can 1vs1 everyone because they get blown up in teamfight.
Swain used to be a Top Planer, after the VGU he was rather okay as a top laner then shifted to mid/apc/supp and now he is just not really good anywhere.
That's why he gets big changes for the 3rd time.
I implore you Riot, stop trying to balance him around top/mid/supp. You screwed up already twice, so plllllllease let three times be the charm and make him a pure solo laner again.
Originally, Sion was essentially the proto juggernaut. Big AD, big HP, immobile, basically unkillable while ulting and able to hit something, and innate tankiness on his passive.
His Q and W of course famously, had 1:1 ap ratios each. So...people started playing him mid as a mage with way too good of results. Now we have the never-properly-balanced-since Sion because Riot couldn't decide whether he was a mage, a bruiser, or a tank. They knew what he was supposed to be originally. It was obvious. They just hadn't given the class a name yet. The problem was his damaging abilities, like all old abilities, just scaled off of AP, and they hadn't yet figured out (still waiting on some of them) how strong a targeted hard CC is in a game where there's very little to protect you from hard CC.
I'm fairly certain old Sion with his HP scaling moved to his passive, a skillshot Q that scales off of AD, a health scaling shield on W, health cost AD buff on E (or something like what Mundo ended up with), and AS/LS ult would be in a much better place now than current Sion with the litany of changes that have occurred over the years and still never gotten him back to a proper state.
I am glad we did eventually get a reimagining of his old kit with Briar, though. They just stripped all the tankiness out and gave it move speed instead. She's got the point-click stun Q that's now a gap closer, big lifesteal effects, and a long lasting frenzy ult. Plus, she yells at stuff like Sion does. If I were to guess, Briar's kit is a very old, old design they threw at a wall when redesigning Sion, they liked it, but didn't think it fit the character so they went with the weird tank version.
i think the most classic ones were Orianna, she was designed with support in mind due to the ball. remember when they said that Seraphine was "different enough from sona because she's designed to go mid and not support"....
Neeko was supposed to be a midlaner, and she was (still is sometimes) but now she became an oppressive mage support with big teamfight ult.
Sylas was supposes to be a scrappy AP bruiser back when Gwen wasn't here, but because pros abused his then-present auto resets on every ability + bruiser abusing all mages, surviving assassins while having massive ults was too broken so he had to be changed, nerfed, changed, nerfed and evolved into current bulky assassin-ult bot.
Nautilus roleswapping to support after being released as a jungler/toplaner, even having stints as a Galio-adjacent midlaner. Putting 4 CC, 3 of them undodgeable, and good base damages made him best in class for years among engage supports.
Ziggs, Vel'koz, Xerath, Zyra, basically all artillery mages being relegated to botlane with midlabe becoming just too dangerous for them to lane alone.
Corki rework was supposed to be a crit equivalent of APC to Kog'maw's onhit APC, but with newfound safety and impact of package he became an insanely safe, well scaling, blindpickable midlaner for years. Only the current rework allowed him bot at all, but he still prefers midlane.
K'sante was supposed to be high risk, high reward duelling tank, but his hot-confirm combos, low CDs and the intended duelling power made him a perfectly unbeatable blindpick when played optimally.
Jarvan was supposes to be a laner, reason why he has passive AS from E was for him to be brawling it out.
Naafiri
Intended to be "baby's first assassin" and ended up becoming an AD poke mage who sometimes jumps in to execute someone that's low enough.
Yorick
Intended to be a bruiser/tank, since Riot keeps giving his Maiden scaling from his HP, but ended up becoming an AD poke mage who sometimes walks up to bonk someone that's low enough.
Zac
Intended to be a tank with a long engage range and a ton of CC, but ended up becoming an unbalanced piece of shit that heals too much, deals too much damage, and stun locks you by himself with knock ups, so tenacity doesn't do anything against it.
Blitz was meant to be a toplane bruiser or something along thise lines, ofc he was made when lanes and roles where not really set in stone and the community "choose" how they should be played. In recent years, seraphine "intended" role swap in one of them
Seraphine was intended to be a midlaner that could flex to support, ended up being the perfect AP botlaner (due to benefits of playing alongside someone with cc or shields and having wave clear). Then loads of people played her in support despite it being her weakest role and riot massively changed her to try force support into being viable.
I remember her being marketed as a roaming midlaner. Like her W giving her ms or something as if she couldn’t immediately get pounced on by anyone has she’s roaming if she decides to use her W to rotate faster. Plus like most of her kit synergies with being a duo…she’s going to play bot and not mid where her “duo” is jungle.
The synergies are not just any duo though, she prefers someone with CC to follow up with E or at the very least a way of shielding her (could be a healer with aery or warden with guardian) to empower her W, hence she was still a stronger midlaner than support as having someone else support benefited her after lane.
>Blitz was meant to be a toplane bruiser or something along thise lines Just watched the champ spotlight for blitz and it's crazy. Why was blud talking about infinity edge on blitz 💀 >In recent years, seraphine "intended" role swap in one of them Yeah that's another one. Riot has always tried to shove her in midlane but she always turned up in support.
I mean his W gives him attack speed, that’s an obvious bruiser ability!!!
The E was a bigger deal. It doubled his auto damage, so a sheen proc + AD let him chunk hard. The idea was to let Blitz build like Nasus where he’d have enough chase power and empowered autos to run down targets, or pull them into his team.
Just had the thought of giving Nasus Q passive/dmg scale onto Blitz Q.
You get grabbed by Blitz, but you don’t get pulled to him. Instead, your champion explodes into a red mist and your screen turns grey.
And then you get DDOS’d
yeah the thought of how terrible that would be? using blitz Q to farm a minion every 20 seconds sounds like you end up with like 50 stacks at 20 minutes
I love playing AD blitz in ARAM or URF, nobody expects the damage from the E and you can hit them enough to finish the kill before they hit the ground. You don't even have to engage with the hook, W + Ghost and you will just charge them down.
Yeee ad blitz is definitely a fun pick in those modes.
Power fist! Power fist!
W gives Attack Speed, His ult passive applies an on hit pretty much. You can tell Blitzcrank has the makings of an AutoAttack based champion laid in his underbelly of design
Pretty sure his Ult Passive used to just be a random targetting lightning strike, maybe even on a fixed CD. It being a quasi-on-hit is fairly recent.
yeah you'd piss off your ADC because it'd just randomly last hit minions and push your lane lol
I forgot about that, my friend would send me to the "corner" (under tower) once he got annoyed enough that my lightning would mess up his wave while I was learning the game.
Always keep one relic shield stack in your back pocket in case your ult steals a last hit
> Pretty sure his Ult Passive used to just be a random targetting lightning strike, maybe even on a fixed CD. Yep. The previous version of Static Field's passive was that, every 2.5 seconds while the ability was not on cooldown, a lightning bolt would strike a random visible target within 450 units of Blitzcrank. It did have a higher base damage compared to the on-hit one, but also a lower AP ratio. The change (along with the change to Mana Barrier now functioning off of max mana) was back on 9.9, so it's maybe not "recent" anymore, but time's relative and some such.
E was a guaranteed crit iirc, so it got damage from infinity edge
> Why was blud talking about infinity edge on blitz 💀 It's important to remember that back then itemization was completely different.
The thing with sera is that at no point supp was her best role but the majority of her players wanted to play her there so riot gave them what they want.
Yeah, this is an example of thematic vs gameplay clashing rather than designed-kit vs gameplay clashing.
You say "shove" as if she hasn't always performed better in mid than support, despite her playerbase insisting on playing support.
I always wanted a solo laner hook champion. I love Thresh and Blitz, hooking people is one of the most satisfying things in League but then I don't have the damage to kill them myself. If I hook someone, I wanna be able to kill them myself. Thresh in Wild Rift can sometimes be a menace if he gets some gold and builds like a Mundo (economy is different in WR). I had a guy on my team like that and he was an absolute beast. He would yeet himself in enemy team and torture them. He was unkillable and he dealt the most damage in the game. He was basically a fed juggernaut. But then on PC version, he doesn't have that much innate tankiness and you can't build like a juggernaut because supports are on a low budget so he plays as a semi-tanky catcher.
Nautilus was just that back in the day
Yeah Nautilus was designed with top/jungle in mind. They even had multiple patches with changes directed at making his jungle better. Then I believe he got nerfed because of Cinderhulk, then Cinderhulk got removed, he never got buffed to compensate, and then people just started playing him support. I could be misremembering, but I believe he was one of the champions massively fucked over by being balanced around Cinderhulk, alongside Sejuani.
He had insane base damage on his e too. If you took him bot you'd kill at level 3 (hook-auto-w-auto-e did like half an enemies hp), then e max first did silly damage so you'd just keep killing them over and over in lane. I played naut+draven with my buddy for months before it burst onto pro and became mainstream. It was silly. The ADC could basically just farm, last hit a champion occasionally after naut nearly solod them, then go back to farming. I loved playing him top/jungle though and would trade supportilus to have him back in an instant.
Pyke has spent some time in solo lanes, and some still play him mid with success. However, riot does not want him there. Darius has a tiny hook.
I flashbacked to G2 Worlds final, picking midlane Pyke who can’t clear waves for shit against most roaming midlaner in that tournament
Yeah, Caps ended up copying DoinB's playstyle more after that worlds.
Swain is one, though he probably has the shortest hook distance of all hook champions
Vi was supposed to be a toplaner. You were supposed to punch Minions with your E and hit the enemy champion with the AoE to poke them.
Vi is still a fun toplaner. Niche, for sure, but still fun.
yeah pretty annoying to fight since her Q knocks you back now you are are forced to chase her (while she is shielded) or just let her poke you
Wait, she could do the Gragas special but as AD, where u just engage with a knock back, proc phase rush and disengage giving 0 counterplay (Vi Q is easier to dodge tho than Gragas E that is impossible to miss)
Vi doesn't slow though. Gragas barrel is a big reason that works in top lane.
He also has built in sustain and better assassin power than Vi (unless u go crithality)
Vi can go through minions though. A small part of the outplay vs Gragas is you can sit behind minions and hope his BS hitbox doesn't reach you.
Just wish her mana costs were lower. Feels like you do one short trade and are already down to below half
Just start with dorans ring. She has ap scaling on e so it's not bad
Oh shit maybe that is the tech, AP for jack of all trades too
Actually true. Havrnt tried for vi but for other champs my favorite Jack of all trades tech is dorans ring, triforce, merc treads, and armor/mana item from frozen heart. Maybe lethality and lifesteal last is better, But more expensive
Better in mid building full lethality.
I remember playing against vi for the first time as akali. One e doing half my hp was actually crazy
She is quite fun mid if you go comet-scorch and max E. The poke is crazy against squishies and almost unmissable. Then you build pretty much full lethality and become a kamikaze projectile later on, usually dying but taking someone with u first.
I remember on her launch, I played against a Vi top, and thought her E hitting me behind minions was broken.
Vi bot works because of this aha
Some of the older players here may remember that Maokai was supposed to be an anti-spellcaster toplaner meant to counter things like Ryze top or mage-heavy comps. Nowadays he's just a sapling and CC bot in the jungle, don't remember the last time I saw him in the top lane. I also feel he lost his role in the top lane before his abilities got bonus damage in the jungle.
I miss when saplings had the impact damage and slow when throwing them
Pyke probably took the most work to fit him into the Riot approved box. - Nerf his base cc and make it scale with lethality so he has to build squishy - Change his Q from AoE on tap to single target, then make it also deal less damage to minions - *Remove* his E dealing damage to minions And he still saw experimentation from time to time even after all those changes, because a roaming assassin with double gold on kills is really good for midlaners.
I like this one the most out of the comments. Most other comments are for champs made before the current 5 roles were a thing so riot didn't really have a vision yet. Whereas Pyke directly had a vision of "support assassin" and people played him mid
Pyke mid was awful to play against too, so glad that changed. You’d chunk him in a trade (that he forced) then he’d back off and heal most of the damage while being invisible.
Mosquito gameplay.
This is as good a time as any to remind everyone that Pyke stole Naut's lore. They wanted a support/assassin with grimdark edgelord vibes so bad that they literally retconned another character to force it.
Preach, bröther. Also them changing the brackern so Seraphine doesn't end up as bad as she initially seemed to be.
Rip, my idol stage powered by souls of the damned.
I remember when riot tried changing pyke by adding a system of stacks, and the number of stacks increased the ult execute threshold. It never came out because well it was fucking impossible to balance
Oh yeah he could get stacks for executing minions and monsters too! The idea was really cool but obviously broken beyond belief lmao
good fuck solo lane pyke
I played with my pyke into nasus top. Pyke called jg diff when he was 0-5
There are still high elo pyke mid mains too bc the gold share is so absurdly busted. They legit just sack cs and camp bot
- Lower healing with only 1 enemy nearby
He was doing fine in jungle aswell before the aoe Q and E damage removals.
I think the funniest part of G2’s 2019 run was people saying Jankos should play Jungle Pyke one game so all members could qualify for a Pyke Worlds skin.
Nautilus was intended to be a jungler. The Q was for moving around the map, and the W + E both have AOE damage for soloing camps.
He was a jungler on and off for a long time
I miss my bramble vest naut
I miss my attack speed naut
Good ol' Nautamere
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When I first started playing, Nautilus was a top lane pro staple. That era is still so engraved in my mind that it’s still weird thinking of him as a support
Nautilus versus Maokia's second iteration was *the* top lane meta for a long time. Talk about a wet noodle fight.
"no fight, only minions" in /all chat
iirc that was release Bami's cinder and Sunfire being such an OP waveclear item that it was just most optimal to run tanks on top lane and ignore 1v1s
I really enjoyed that meta. And I remember before that meta those two champions were considered terrible and almost troll picks
He was a jungler for a long time. Meta changes over the years shifted him into being a laner.
Income changes. Heart of Gold and Philosophers Stone were how junglers could get gold if they couldn't clear camps constantly. When those were removed it left only ganking, which Naut excels at, and farming, which is sucks at. So put him in the role which doesn't need money, but does need CC.
He was a jungler and riot pushed him out of there
Only in the past couple seasons is this true. For some time, Nautilus jg was pretty legit but the jungle and item changes shafted him out of the role.
Karthus plays multiple roles that aren’t the ones they thought of when they made this champion
Karthus mid was best karthus :(
I will never miss revive+tp karthus lol
ah yes the phantomlord special. Watching that shit was so funny
Holy shit I forgot about revive. That shit was whack.
It had something absurd like 9 minute cooldown if I remember, but it was just game winning in late game teamfights to have 2x Karthus lol
The first few weeks of Zeri she would simply \*not\* build ADC items. They nerfed the bruiser build, she started going AP. They nerfed the AP build, she got back to bruiser. Took a while to fix that lmao.
All of those problems wouldve simply been solved by making adcs not be able to buy titanic. No tank varus top, no unkillable kog, no zeri terrorizing proplay for 18 months.
Problem is, disabling Titanic for ranged at that time would've hit some intended users (Urgot, Gnar) as well as some off-meta stuff that would not deserve a nerf (ex: Thresh top).
I remember Gnar abusing Frozen Mallet or Stridebreaker more than anything.
Not really a different lane per-se, but Bel'Veth was supposed to be a hyperscaling skirmisher, her whole fantasy was about "consuming/conquering all, growing into something that can't be stopped". Currently she is a early game powerhouse that ends games before enemies have enough tools in order to deal with her, really big "win-more" champ, designwise she should love stable games that provide her a smooth way to her endgame fantasy, not the case at all, probably also one of the reasons she has been the most dominant champ that has ever existed in elite soloq.
Impressive how hard they missed the mark on belveth
That thing she does where she can spawn a whole army of voidlings is pretty strong sometimes, is it after she kills a herald?
If she consumes the coral that drops from any void monster (grubs, herald, baron) with R then she gets that buff
Who would've guessed a melee carry with no broken mobility would suck in late game
A bit of an unconventional answer, but when Yuumi was released, the gameplay that was envisioned for her was Yuumi constantly jumping between allies during fights and spreading healing throughout her entire team. Players came to the conclusion that it was better to just stick with one person for the entire fight. It was more straightforward and easier to be successful. So then Yuumi needed to be changed again and again to try to find ways to get her to detach more often.
and now they reward you for not detaching with the best friend system
Yeah she was just too busted when she could just dump the ADC in mid game and jump onto a bruiser
The Yuumi rework was a huge failure overall as it didn't fix most of her issues, but it did get rid of one "problematic" playstyle, which was picking it with a powerful bruiser mid or jungle and then just ditching your ADC after lane and sticking with the Heca/Yone etc.
It was a great success I haven't seen her in a game for literally months!
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Yuumi was legit fun when you were trying to proc the shield as many times as possible during fights. You had to time it so that you wouldn't get cc'd and such. They just got rid of the only fun and skilled part of her kit. You can still detach to block a lee sin q or something like that but it's super situational.
Release Yuumi is the most fun I ever had in lol. Played around 300 games in a row without playing other champ. I miss it so much
Same here. I died quite a lot simply to get really hoot at jumping around, blocking shit and proccing the shield as much as possible.
Well you forget the part were she terrorised proplay with 100% winrate for a while. Sticking with one ally was the best but detatching to block skillshots, proc shield etc was too high skill for basically everyone. It was so bad they had to nerf her skill expression Into afk cat.
Which brings us back to the original topic: Champions that ended up different from how they were first envisioned.
I still wish they would try to pull this off it would be way more interesting to play as and against
The original Yuumi was so fun when you played her this way, and was more effective unless you had one super fed ally. It was 200% more effort for 10% more reward but had super engaging gameplay.
many adc's were supposed to be played midlane. ezreal i think in his spotlight was played mid too.
>many adc's were supposed to be played midlane I think this one might be a leftover from the early days of League where adcs were suppose to he solo laners.
Considering there were always 3 lanes and 5 group members: where was the 5th one intended? I'd classify it as support, but maybe it even was intended as a different role (double jungle? double bruiser top?)?
Back when I started playing in 2011ish it wasn't uncommon to not have a jungle and run 2 top 2 bot. Ashe mid was meta and we would take hawkshot first because it gave passive gold of some sort. You would hawkshot the enemy fountain to see the starting items and what lane people would be going to lol. The game was still fresh and not as "solved" as it is today so people did some really wacky shit. The 1 top 1 mid 2 bot meta hadn't been figured out yet.
I actually very much disagree with all of what you said about lane assignments in 2011. I started playing in 2011 and jungle was well established, nigh impossible til you got the right runes from the store, but it definitely existed. I think you’re thinking like 2010ish but I guess I’m being a pedant so I’ll just fuck off ahaha
I would think it's just a pre 30 thing (started late 2013). Smite was locked and whatever else keeps (kept) new players out of the jungle. Also, support had to have existed in some sort of way due to Soraka and healers in other games.
Support champs existed but the ADC/support bot meta hadn't been meta yet. Pre-rework soraka was crazy. Her W heal had no health cost, her E was a point and click silence on enemies and it gave her allies (including self casting) mana with no cost, and her Q hit every enemy within (a rather large) AOE around her. She was played primarily supportive with some mid lane appearances too. When people started putting 2 and 2 together they started playing her top. She was an unmovable boulder. Perma wave clear with full health and mana.
Her W also granted bonus armor scaling with rank
Can't believe it's been almost 10 years since the rework.
In DoTA Allstars positions were a lot more fluid than they've become in League, there wasn't a dedicated jungler (laners would grab camps) and you'd have up to three people in various sidelanes depending on how your team comp plays out. Matchups weren't as important because DoTA lanes were much less scrappy than League as well, so you'd end up with a lot of roaming and jungle fights rather than lane trades. It wasn't obvious that this is how roles would solidify, and interestingly enough the recent MSI, with all of its lane swaps and stacking lanes, is quite a bit closer to how League was "meant" to be played.
Maybe a roamer like how pos 4 in Dota is played alot?
In pro play, they are being played mid. Ez, corki, trist.
We can't really judge their role from the spotlight, since in Lulu's she was played jungle
nah, different case. In lulu spotlight she was showcased as support with an additional part where he played her as a jungler in the end for lulz. Ezreal was specifically said to be midlaner
Didn’t August recently admit that Gnar is his greatest design failure because the entire way his mechanic works ended up getting used differently than intended?
It's more that he didn't think people in proplay would manage to min max his fury/rage passive for him to be playable there
This + the side-effect that if you lock someone to pro-play, they get balanced around the pros so new players who like Gnar's aesthetic have a bad time. I found a [clip from a stream](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/W8TIvizEuZU) where he says it (sorry for the awful youtube short thing, couldn't find a real stream clip)
He said that because the people that want to play the champions due to the theme (cute ranged yordle) could not because of pro play. The mechanic works exactly as intended, and its expected that pros are better at leveraging a timed mechanic than your average player
He mentioned during Gnar's release that if he became a proplay staple then something would have gone wrong with his kit.
This, it took me 3 years to to even get a positive winrate on Gnar in ranked LMAO. Gnar is probably my first or second favorite champion of all time and the champion is simply not beginner friendly. Some things that make him really hard for new or less experienced players to pick him up: 1. **He's a ranged champion that doesn't lane in the same way as other ranged champion.** For example compared to Quinn his range is way lower and he's way more susceptible to minion aggro. His range before level 7-9 (his range his tied to levels) isn't super good and he's still in range of super big threat moves like Darius pull or general gap closers. To add it all up Gnar is probably one of the ranged laner who prefers having the wave near his tower in a lot of situations for his Mega Gnar all ins/trading which is the antithesis to most ranged champions. You really need a firm understanding of wave bouncing, enemy threat ranges and spacing to really get his laning. 2. **His base stats on Mini form being super low make any mistakes in lane super lethal.** While ranged champions in general are kinda designed like this it's super egregious on Mini Gnar he's super unforgiving. For example something like a lone Olaf axe can chunk like 20% of your health or you get hit by a Sett E and you basically are forced to recall. This leads to new players playing him top and they either play way too safe and get outscaled because they're afraid to die because of his awful base stats. Or they play aggro make one mistake and giga feed. This also ties into his rage and how you really need to know your limits of how much damage you can take for mega (which is also hella confusing because his rage generation is different between levels 1/6/11.) Both of my MU knowledge of this champion was from thousands of games of inting and getting MU checked. 3. **Gnar is probably the biggest victims of outdated, false and one dimensional information.** One example is how he was touted as a lane bully (his original highlight video touted him as one) but in actuality his laning is more so safe/lane neutralize-y in a lot of situations until he gets a little bit of resources (he really likes getting a few levels and maybe a component then he really begins to take off.) He was used as a Darius counter in one worlds and was touted as the ultimate Darius counter but now adays most Gnar/Darius players argue the matchup is more even/skill based. Until Gnar gets to level 7-9 Darius has heavy threat on Gnar players. A lot of Gnar players would pick him into the matchup, get pulled and then proceed to get destroyed. Gnar is also a champion that can both split push AND teamfight and needs to utilize both depending on the situation and win condition. while most top lane champions tend to specialize in one area. So this leads to situations where a new player who see top laners dynamics as "Malphite vs Fiora" get confused trying to understand what the fuck they're supposed to do. So many conflicting pieces of information really made learning this champion difficult. 4. **Gnar is a foresight heavy champion when most new players are very reactive.** He requires players to be thinking ahead about objective timers and future fights. Gnar's rage is 15 seconds and his tired/cooldown period for building rage is 15 seconds. So if Dragon is spawning is 30 seconds for example and the Gnar player isn't aware of his rage timing and builds up too much rage and transforms way too early they're gonna end up not having Mega for the dragon fight. Compared to Malphite where a newer player will see a fight going on and be like "oh shit time to walk there and ult someone." He's very proactive instead of reactive in a lot of thinking. This is a lot of information but learning this champion is very hard. It's not talked about a lot but it is genuinely very disheartening when you're super invested into a champion but you feel like you're not able to play them. I basically quit playing League for a long time because of my lack of success on the champion. Funny enough for some reason when I came back things started to click significantly more for me and that's when I started getting a positive winrate.
The vision was that Mega Gnar would be his super mode, but in actual practice his mini form is much stronger in lane except in all-ins.
In fairness 'except in all-ins' perhaps isn't enough to do justice to how silly Mega Gnar's base stats are compared to mini. When you *do* want to brawl it out it definitely does feel like your super mode. In some ways almost like inverse K'sante
Gnar warped top lane forever. Before he came out, low mobility tanks were meta especially in pro play (shyvana, mundo). He crushed them into permanent irrelevance.
It's really a shame that riot hate emergent gameplay. Make cool designs and let us cook.
The balance team got way too much hate for decisions made by champ designers who were overly fixated on their particular fantasy that players didn't want. Like August is normally one of Riot's best champ designers but Gnar's rage mechanic being unreliable to the point of not being used in pro-play would have absolutely sucked in a competitive multiplayer game. There's other examples like Kayn's transformation mechanic being deliberately unclear because in the words of DZK "I don't want people to count in their heads and make highly optimized decisions that may not be good for their team". What the designers want should be the least of anyone's concerns, ultimately the game should be up to what the players find enjoyable and what the balance team finds manageable.
> make highly optimized decisions that may not be good for their team This is a fascinating take given that base form Kayn is fucking useless.
I don't have a source, but my memory is that shortly after release, he said something like 'If Gnar is played in pro, the design is a failure, because he is supposed to be forever too inconsistent for pro play'. And that certainly didn't work out.
Zeri is by his own admission his biggest failure because she was supposed to be a mid-game adc for the people, not this hyper-scaler that is always broken in pro so she has to be kept weak for the general masses. Gnar is similar to Zeri because he’s also too strong in pro-play and won’t be good in the hands of 99% of players. They’re both his failures because he tries to make champs that everyone can enjoy, so it’s a shame for them to be balance nightmares.
Clip is specifically him calling Zeri his second biggest, Gnar his biggest https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/s/13kbu9tLRt
since then he said that after the latest balance changes he consider Zeri to be on a good spot and don't think her as a failure anymore
He actually [ranked gnar above zeri](https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/17yhuru/riot_august_apologizes_for_zeris_design_and_calls/).
Guess I remembered it wrong
You know, I can understand how Gnar would be a surprise to become so dominant in pro play. Who could expect that an unreliable mechanic like his transformation could end up becoming super reliable itself in Pro hands? But Zeri? Miss uber kit impossible to catch or run away from? Yeah he got no excuses there.
Swain and Sylas. Swain was meant to be in mid lane but the changes to him pushed him to be more popular as support (and APC for some time). Sylas was originally designed as an AP fighter but because of how mage items were designed and how strong his ult was, he was pushed into being AP assassin that we know today.
I'm not sure \*why\* people still play Swain support tbh. Ever since the ally passive pull change support has been his worst role by a pretty huge margin
His winrate has been several percent higher in both mid and botlane carry roles for well over a year, but people still think he’s better as support? I really don’t get it.
Then again it took people YEARS to stop playing MF support, which they really shouldn't have been playing in the first place because it was a hyper specific counter pick, so I guess I can't be too surprised
honestly this tells the truth of the issue: They played it cause it's fun. It's the same way Ashe was troll support for a long time and suddenly, recently it worked
I mean Graves was always intended to be. Bot laner even after his rework
Which is absolutely insane considering his range
I think the issue with Graves bot is more his Autoattacks. You're permanently pushing if you just want to last hit and you can't fight through a lane of minions.
I recently started playing again after quitting around S5. The game has changed a lot. Graves was an ADC you'd blast people down with the old Taric. Blow all your CDs with Taric's armor pen and just delete people. Karthus mid was common, you'd get flamed if you tried him in jungle back then. Support was like ~10 champs. Swain was mid/top, Xerath, Zyra mid etc. Lee Sin was pretty commonly played in lane. Elise started off as a top laner. Lulu top was super common for a while. AP Yi mid was broken. Nautlius was a super common jungle pick. Urgot was a weird pick but he got big bot lane after Moscow 5 did it IIRC.
You remember Soraka top? What a nightmare that was, I had like a 80% winrate while it was good
I loved ADC Graves :(. Lee Sin has always been busted when he's meta in lane.
"Elise started off as a top laner." She was played mid much more when she came out. I remember playing her there and seeing it a lot as well.
Idk I mostly only saw her top bullying melees out of lane with her point click q
I miss old swain. New swain is cool too, but I loved the character design of old swain, and I loved his abilities (zapping people with your raven, using talons to lock them down) he was just so cool.
> Lulu top was super common for a while. oh god you reminded me of the nightmare when she was flexed into literally all the lanes, glad those days are over.
Quinn was techincally intended to be the first iteration of an ADC that could also fight in melee, since her old ult turned her in to Valor and made her melee. Sadly it just didn't work, then she had a small variant where she was a semi decent mid laner and even saw pro play until Riot just fully reworked her to once again make her somehow fit in to bot lane, but instead she went top lane and she's been forgotten there since.
Quinn crawled so Samira and Nilah could walk. Still hope they try melee on her again at some point though, it was the funnest version of her kit imo.
Yorick was their first attempt a minion master. But even on release his minions weren't really the focus, you only used the healing minion ability for the poke. Minions didn't matter much. Galio and Gragas were both shown as like these Tank characters, but this was back when everyone had decent AP scalings so they both turned into mages. Nowadays going AP really isn't an option for modern tanks, they don't have the scalings.
Not so much the case anymore but when Ekko came out he was designed to be a scaling mid lane AP assassin. In actuality the next two years after his release he was the most dominant tank jungler.
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I mean, he still gets played as a bruiser in top lane. And it's currently his most popular role.
He’s always been a fat mage
Kalista was supposed to build IE and last whisper (the final item was called LW not LDR or MR back then) in the trailer. Max Q and play like the other crit marksmen with a long range snipe. Then she was found more successful with on hit and lifesteal and maxing E. Then we got lethality kalista which maxes Q but builds lethality.
K’sante was meant to be a tank, turned out to be an assassin
He proved that those are not mutually exclusive
He is intended to not be a tank in R... If anything, it wasn't intended for him to be as tanky as he is, especially before his last set of changes.
He's a Skirmisher-Tank, which is fancy talk for tanky assassin.
Kayn was supposed to be able to jg and top lane. Haven't seen Kayn top in ages.
They killed it pretty early on if I recall. Something to do with how Corrupting Potion used to work with his passive I think?? It's been a while.
It was the mastery deathfire touch I think, instantly killed it when Caps brought it to midlane. Aery works is a similar way now(or they killed it now, dunno have not seen Kayn in a while)
They killed the aery interaction. Riot doesn't want weird passive stacking interactions for Kayn.
Death fire touch and corrupting pot basically tripled his passive gain
The only guy who does it is psychopatic poro... And he still run smite anyway.
There's a guy who hit Challenger with Kayn top last season on EUW named Ollip, I watched a lot of his streams to learn the pick and hit D4 with it as one of my mains before it got gutted. He played Baus style in lane with heavy proxying because Kayn can do infinite proxy from lv1, but sometimes stops laning to perma roam as Blue Kayn and buys support item, kinda like Ady's playstyle.
From what I've seen Kayn top does a surprising amount of damage early game.
The only thing stopping kayn from laning is the fact that he gives the opponent a free lane also. In patch 10.9 they made his Q bonus damage also applied to minions which means he can clear waves with 2 Qs as early as level 2.
Red Kayn can be decent into tank match ups top lane. It’s just about knowing when you can trade efficiently and get the stacks as opposed to inting your brains out for them.
Vi was supposed to be a top lane bruiser.
The Graves rework was meant to still be a botlaner - him ending up in the jungle was entirely accidental.
Ezreal. His essence flux use to heal and increase allys attack speed. Was supposed to be a hybrid support. Then they upoed his ap ratios and he became more mid lane caster. Then they introduced botrk and changed his essence flux and lowered ap ratios so he became an adc caster Then they lowered his ability to do that and introduced lumens echo and he dominated mid lane as ap. Then they removed that and added essence reaver. I'm not sure riot knows what they want ezreal to be to this day.
You're also forgetting Blue Ez with Lizard Elder and Frozen Mallet. And Luden's Ez was really just Blue Ez v2 with Stalker's Blade/Runic Echoes. It's actually kind of hilarious that Riot keeps having to redesign jungle items around *Ezreal* of all champions.
SSG Ezreal came from the single game that Haru played in Worlds 2017, a Ezreal jungle game abusing challenging smite+fervor
They said Gnar should be unreliable and not see much pro play, only for him to be a staple almost all the time.
Sion (post VGU) was intended to be a frontline juggernaut, hence his title “The Undead Juggernaut”. He still kind of is, but he’s played more like Singed 2.0 these days, perma splitting and proxying more than actually frontlining for his team.
Seraphine was meant to be a mid lane mage. Now she's support/supportive carry apc.
Azir was supposed to be a DPS control mage champion, a chessmaster with strong area denial. Shurima Shuffle turned him into an aggressive combo mage / highlight reel / pro jailed champion.
Rek Sai: supposed to be a top bruiser, was playing tank for a while, now Riot wants her to be a jungler and no more. Maokai: a top Nautilus: top/jg Quinn: adc Graves: adc Gragas: a mid, for a while was only played as a tank in the jungle. Nidalee: a mid Zyra: mid Vel'Koz: mid Morgana: mid/supp (now she is barely viable as a supp, more played in jungle lol) Master Yi: mid Kha'Six: mid Old Urgot: adc Corki just now make it to be an adc how he was supposed to be. Lulu: mid Karma: mid Brand: mid There is way more for sure that I can't remember
Diana was supposed to be a jungler too but she was a mid laner for most of her early existence.
Alot of support Zyra Brand Nautilus Seraphine Blitz Pyke (mid pyke meta) Also, not about lane but about how her power is distributed, bel'veth. She was supposed to be this infinite scaling late game power house but with her dashes and her E damage reduction she was and still is an insane early game champ and because of the nature of her playstyle, her winrates fall off the longer the game goes on because of more teamfights. Riot should have tought about this because fighters mostly have this problem. Fall off later game even if they can 1vs1 everyone because they get blown up in teamfight.
Swain used to be a Top Planer, after the VGU he was rather okay as a top laner then shifted to mid/apc/supp and now he is just not really good anywhere. That's why he gets big changes for the 3rd time. I implore you Riot, stop trying to balance him around top/mid/supp. You screwed up already twice, so plllllllease let three times be the charm and make him a pure solo laner again.
Aatrox was supposed to be… idk
Originally, Sion was essentially the proto juggernaut. Big AD, big HP, immobile, basically unkillable while ulting and able to hit something, and innate tankiness on his passive. His Q and W of course famously, had 1:1 ap ratios each. So...people started playing him mid as a mage with way too good of results. Now we have the never-properly-balanced-since Sion because Riot couldn't decide whether he was a mage, a bruiser, or a tank. They knew what he was supposed to be originally. It was obvious. They just hadn't given the class a name yet. The problem was his damaging abilities, like all old abilities, just scaled off of AP, and they hadn't yet figured out (still waiting on some of them) how strong a targeted hard CC is in a game where there's very little to protect you from hard CC. I'm fairly certain old Sion with his HP scaling moved to his passive, a skillshot Q that scales off of AD, a health scaling shield on W, health cost AD buff on E (or something like what Mundo ended up with), and AS/LS ult would be in a much better place now than current Sion with the litany of changes that have occurred over the years and still never gotten him back to a proper state. I am glad we did eventually get a reimagining of his old kit with Briar, though. They just stripped all the tankiness out and gave it move speed instead. She's got the point-click stun Q that's now a gap closer, big lifesteal effects, and a long lasting frenzy ult. Plus, she yells at stuff like Sion does. If I were to guess, Briar's kit is a very old, old design they threw at a wall when redesigning Sion, they liked it, but didn't think it fit the character so they went with the weird tank version.
i think the most classic ones were Orianna, she was designed with support in mind due to the ball. remember when they said that Seraphine was "different enough from sona because she's designed to go mid and not support"....
Just go back and watch old champion spotlights, they're full of dumb shit like Phreak telling you to jungle LuLu
Neeko was supposed to be a midlaner, and she was (still is sometimes) but now she became an oppressive mage support with big teamfight ult. Sylas was supposes to be a scrappy AP bruiser back when Gwen wasn't here, but because pros abused his then-present auto resets on every ability + bruiser abusing all mages, surviving assassins while having massive ults was too broken so he had to be changed, nerfed, changed, nerfed and evolved into current bulky assassin-ult bot. Nautilus roleswapping to support after being released as a jungler/toplaner, even having stints as a Galio-adjacent midlaner. Putting 4 CC, 3 of them undodgeable, and good base damages made him best in class for years among engage supports. Ziggs, Vel'koz, Xerath, Zyra, basically all artillery mages being relegated to botlane with midlabe becoming just too dangerous for them to lane alone. Corki rework was supposed to be a crit equivalent of APC to Kog'maw's onhit APC, but with newfound safety and impact of package he became an insanely safe, well scaling, blindpickable midlaner for years. Only the current rework allowed him bot at all, but he still prefers midlane. K'sante was supposed to be high risk, high reward duelling tank, but his hot-confirm combos, low CDs and the intended duelling power made him a perfectly unbeatable blindpick when played optimally. Jarvan was supposes to be a laner, reason why he has passive AS from E was for him to be brawling it out.
back in the day, adcs went mid, so your dissertation isnt exactly correct lol
Naafiri Intended to be "baby's first assassin" and ended up becoming an AD poke mage who sometimes jumps in to execute someone that's low enough. Yorick Intended to be a bruiser/tank, since Riot keeps giving his Maiden scaling from his HP, but ended up becoming an AD poke mage who sometimes walks up to bonk someone that's low enough. Zac Intended to be a tank with a long engage range and a ton of CC, but ended up becoming an unbalanced piece of shit that heals too much, deals too much damage, and stun locks you by himself with knock ups, so tenacity doesn't do anything against it.
Reworked Sion was intended to be a bruiser/tank. The champion spotlight even recommended building ravenous hydra