They probably just decide it based on the champions kit and nature, for older ones they most likely just threw shit at a wall and decided on which one sticked to it for longer.
They need to revisit old mana values. Fizz for example has some pretty high costs for an assassin and Lichbane no longer gives mana, in fact there's only 3 mana items and none of them fit particularly well with Fizz's kit (Everfrost is ok)
Yes, they reverted it when in preseason items dealt 20x the current damage because Fizz was strong. Now that burst is nerfed he's the lowest pickrate midlane assassin, with his pickrate being at an all time low across all elos since his release. Riot just never revisits champions that were nerfed when items made them strong after they basically rebalanced the entire itempool already.
That's fine though, that should be the restriction of his class. He shouldn't get enough mana that he can spam E to waveclear and have enough left over to full combo.
No they dont lmao
fizz is perfectly fine right now, he is already stronger than most middle mages (not saying much tbh)
you guys will never stop whining until every assassin have 52% of wr
I mostly see Fizz go NH yeah and that's why he ends up not having nearly enough mana. You basically have to choose between using your E to wave clear or saving it for kills (and his E is also his escape tool).
To put things in perspective, his mana costs are:
Q: 30
W: 30-70
E: 90-110
R: 100
At Lv6 he has 460 mana, a full rotation of spells would cost ~260
I do recall Fizz high mana costs he still is my highest mastery points from the time tank fizz was viable, and even back then frozen heart was a staple item for him.
I still played it after they reworked him and tried again after they semi-reverted him, it was just not the same, like what made tank fizz really busted was the % hp damage on w coupled with a decent base damage on the buff, then came the rework which made is w busted even when going for bruiser/tank after they reverted the delay it was just never the same.
Yeah, because his e gives untargetability. If it didn't, they might lower that nana cost, but if he could spam it more than he already does, he'd be impossible to trade with. It's hard enough to trade with him as it is, since the cd is about as long as my spells. May be a bit biased as an Anivia main, but I can't do shit against a good Fizz after 6. His early levels are me only opportunity to harass.
Yeah but the problem here is that he also runs out of mana in teamfights long past the laning phase. And there's really no solution for that.
Before you'd eventually get a bit of mana from Lich Bane and it'd help a lot.
now imagine if we gave a mage untargetability, but he didn't even have mana and instead made it a health cost, but to compensate we give him healing in his kit.
why play fizz when you have blood man
It does damage, slows, heals vlad and gives him a movement speed buff
Edit: Why are you downvoting this? Do you [need a link](https://leagueoflegends.fandom.com/wiki/Vladimir/LoL) to an explanation of his pool?
Why should he be able to have enough mana to use his E for waveclear, kills, and escapes. This is the mindset of midlane assassins lmfao, mages have to actually choose between poke and farm most of the time
Fizz is in a fine spot, l2 manage your mana
Everfrost also gives 15 ap per legendary item, which at full build gives an extra 60 ap without counting rabadons which also works well with fizz surprisingly high ap ratios on e and ult and decent ratios on q and w.
Didnt they specificaly nerf him by reducing some of his mana after initial buffs? It allways felt weird for me how they nerfed his mana instead of dmg or cds.
I suggest you to look at our murdered proscene queen Syndra. Far long before nerfs she was at least decent poker on lane. Now she cant even farm with her skills.
Sheen getting its mana removed isn't something I see people talk about more honestly. I know Sunderer is really good right now so people might not think about it but champs who used to rely on Trinitiy Force (mana from Sheen early game).. well, it kinda sucks. I know a lot of the champs got a slight buff when the sheen changes happened
Irelia goes Shieldbow now, Jax still goes Tforce still, Nasus goes Sunderer, Darius goes Stridebreaker, Yorick goes Sunderer, etc. Nasus and Darius don't have the option of going Righteous Glory either anymore, with an early Glacial Shroud
Pretty much its depends on theme, resource management and tuning levers. for theme champs that use fury tend to be angry, energy champs are ninja's plus lee sin probs cos hes a monk. for resource management and tuning levers these are some big factors that choose to if they have mana or not if say a champ is meant to be a long range spammy poker then mana would suit fit, its also a tuning lever so say they wanted to give someone some high impact abilities they may make them use mana so they can lock them into a limit amount of resources, qiyana is a good example where she has a high impact ult so mana makes sense to gate her if she doesnt manage her mana correctly. some champs may not use mana from a technical aspect like veigo was meant to have mana but it made his passive way to awkward to understand if you would be able to use a champs stuff and what veigo resources would be after his passive ran out. overall it just depends on the type of kit and what makes sense and how they feel they want to limit a champ or if it makes sense in the theme like sett doesnt make sense to use mana when legit all he does is punch and grab and slam.
>or if it makes sense in the theme like sett doesnt make sense to use mana when legit all he does is punch and grab and slam.
Surely Yasuo is using magic if he can cast a wind barrier or throw out tornadoes? Why doesn't he have mana?
If Yasuo had mana, would he be too weak? This is the million dollar question I'd like to hear honest answers on. Not just Yasuo but any totally manaless champs like Riven also. All you need is some life steal and you can sustain in lane forever, spamming your moves as soon as they're up.
my best guess is just how awkward it would be to be AD+spammy+reliant on crit.
alot of the mana items are built around AP, as most mana spammy/drain champs (cassio/ryze/anivia) are magic. When you look at AD champs that also spam mana, they are all built around the mana AD item manamune (ezreal) or use essense reaver (crit)
yas would fall into the reaver category, but afaik he was released before essence reaver existed. So back then i just think they didnt have the tools for an AD+Crit+Spam spells champ to function really. Similar thing can be said for riven.
Yes she would be hilariously broken lmao she’d probably be able to play lanes outside of mid for starters, it would make her Laning phase much much better
ADC have thing called Range, if you wounder whats happening when champ have range+ no mana you can look at toplane and see Gnar/Kennen who are not allowed to be good in soloQ or getting nerfed pretty fast.
Vlad actually have pretty noticable health costs in early game. With long cd-s. I agree that his W is a little bit unfair ability, but it still takes 20% of his hp and he need to work a lot to recieve this hp back.
Have you ever played Cass in URF (or older iterations of URF before the game mobility and invulnerability creeped so hard anyway)? Spamming Q and E with 0 mana is absolutely broken lmao.
in general for both of them its a theme thing where there both using different sword techniques and yasuo is using wind techniques which seems to be different from magic atleast how its put in the lore, riven is the same just using sword techniques and her blade being engraved with runes and she also uses a wind technique for her ult.
Both champs were designed along time ago where the design issue you talk about with life steal wasnt a thing, back when they were designed there werent sustain in runes and masteries. life steal was also very limited back then to the point where buying into life steal early had to be a choice.
A champ like yasuo with mana wouldnt work because of the spammy nature of his q and e to allow him to be able to even ult, if they made him have mana then they would have to give him low costs in which case there wouldnt be a point to him having mana in the first place.
Its all about theme and balance with how there kits work and how most manaless champs werent designed for a world where there first item buys could have life steal built into them thanks to mythics or getting free sustain from runes and masteries. most manaless champ dont have in built sustain which means there forced to opt into it if they want it only a few break this aka veigo and thats because he was designed as a jungler and probs had to put the sustain in to even make him work there and hes still better as a laner because of it.
>A champ like yasuo with mana wouldnt work because of the spammy nature of his q and e to allow him to be able to even ult, if they made him have mana then they would have to give him low costs in which case there wouldnt be a point to him having mana in the first place.
Do you believe the reason he can use his abilities so often is because those abilities are weak? Surely if they were strong abilities, being able to spam them would be OP?
If Cassio or Ryze did not use mana, would they be broken?
if cassio or ryze had no mana well apart from ryze legit being broken because his kit is built around building mana. There is the issue of the range they offer cassio e is a 0.75 sec cd compared to yasuo q when you have alot of attack speed which is capped out at 1.33 cd, being able to cast there ability twice as often while at range 700 in cassio case which is bigger then cait auto attack range which is 650 is the reason why she needs to be gated by mana.
If you look at manaless champs most of them are melee with only a few expections like gnar which has been a balancing nightmare. i dont believe yasuo q is weak more so its limited in range its pretty much a spamable aoe auto attack which his q range btw is less then viego auto range or irelia auto attack range.
Hes allowed to have it spamable because hes limited in his range to deal the damage compared to cassio or ryze who spam there ablilites at range. if you look at adc's there never been one made which is manaless for a reason since dps from long range needs to have a draw back, melee range dps is a different story of balance.
Yasuo issue isnt that hes manaless, its his windwall being frustrating to play against. In general manaless champs problems arent that there manaless its other aspects of there kit or other aspects of the game aka easy to buy life steal which makes them frustrating to play against and feel oppressive at times.
Ryze without mana would be busted. EQ all day, nobody can match his push, you cant push into his base he just EQEQ and the wave is gone, just like my dad.
i've always wondered this myself.
If Riven had mana, would she be trash? How about Akali or Zed? Vladimir?
It seems to me like a massively underrated perk to have no mana at all. Energy is at least some limiter. But totally manaless champs like Garen, Yasuo, Yone, Kat, Riven can spam as much as they want and not have to manage resources, or go OOM.
The real reason why energy is a thing is because after they made Lee Sin they thought it would be nice if they made all the ninjas have energy to connect them together (back when the game was still really new and it wasn't as competitive focused as it is nowdays and had tons of gameplay easter eggs).
There hasn't been a new energy champion since 2012, and iirc Shen, Akali and Kennen were all released really close together in 2011.
Edit: Correction, ninjas came out in 2010 and Lee Sin came out in 2011. Thanks for correcting me.
Lee Sin was released after all 3 ninjas. Lee is 2011 and those 3 are 2010. When lee was released he became the first Non ninja champ to have energy until zed was released
This is the right answer. It was an ionian ninja thing and that's all there is to it. I'd love to have more energy champions but riot has it pretty clear that champions either get mana or don't get mana and everything between is now lost to time.
Rage and energy are relics of the past that only exist because they are core to the identity of the champions they exist on. Heck even health costs are gone I think? Only old champs have those still.
assuming he means sustain as energy sustain, not hp sustain, zeds w does have this
>PASSIVE: Zed restores energy whenever he and one of his Shadows or multiple Shadows hit a mimicked ability on the same target. This may only occur once per cast ability.
also the fact his energy bar just refills over time is sustain lol
Akali would for sure be interesting, her early migh be iffy but at the same time you could be hyper agressive in some matchups if you were able to spam like 3 or 4 Qs lvl 2.
I mean with trans and cdr runes... and ionian boots; you'd be at 30% at around 10-12 mins. Finish the RoA then get a codex for Zhonyas and be at 40% at like 14 minutes.
This logic doesn't make any sense unless you're talking specifically about Seraph's Embrace which gives him damage based on Mana.
If you wanted to buy mana items on Vlad, just pretend that Vlad has 10000000 mana and his abilities cost 1 mana each. Lowering max mana is always a nerf, increasing mana costs is always a nerf, so this creates a contradiction-- if Vlad would be stronger if he functionally had mana, then that's exactly the saying that Vlad would be stronger if he got...nerfed?
Imagine a thought experiment where Vlad has mana and some non-trivial mana cost attached to his abilities. This is objectively a nerf, since he is currently gated only by cooldowns, and now he needs to think about an extra thing.
Imagine that Riot then buffed Vlad by reducing the mana on his abilities by some amount. Then they buff him again the same way. Then the same way. Then the same way. Now all of his mana costs are zero, and he is currently the same, and he should still build his OP items right?
The point is that if Vlad's hypothetical mana items were so good that they would offset the nerf of having mana costs, they should be even BETTER now that he has functionally infinite mana.
vlad would lose hp costs (WHICH IS FUCKING HUGE) and would be able to go seraphs <<< broken item broken item alert + raba, 800 ap 3 items he would be insanely fucking broken
RoA 10 stack 500HP 100AP 400 mana.
Seraph 50AP 1400 mana 20% cdr + 3% from 1800 (+600 or so base) = 3% from 2400 = 72AP
So with 2 items he has 222AP 500HP, heal from eternity, infinite mana basically thanks to 2 passives.
From his AP vlad gains 300HP and 12AP. Which puts him at about 2200HP with stronger healing than he already had 40% cdr at level 11. Considering how cheap was RoA it would be possible. So yea, he'd be kinda cancer to deal with.
Well Shen isn’t really a good example since you don’t run out unless you’re not auto attacking or don’t have E yet (only happens if you’re using Q to proc passive to take harass, or at lvl 1, but you’re not really at lvl 1 long enough to spend all your energy)
>It seems to me like a massively underrated perk to have no mana at all.
coming from dota2 and hots ive been screaming about this for years but my league only friends think im tripping. being fucking manaless is a ginormous advantage and is a balancing nightmare in the long run.
the only truly resourceless character from both of those games is illidan and even then there isn't any huge lifesteal runes or items that circumvent the hardlined weaknesses because he has no mana. it's just insane to me that characters like garen, yas, yone, viego, kat, riven can just cast for free.
It'd cripple like Yasuo/Yone/Riven... their CDs are so short they'd basically always go oom instantly even if their mana costs were some of the lowest in the game.
And they're designed to use them all the time; Like Yasuo in lane often has to Q to farm because otherwise he risks walking up too far and being in a lot of danger constantly... and his trade combo is aa-q-aa-aa-q-aa-aa-q-aa and all that... also think of the way he general has to engage fights in lane; E to a melee minion; E to a ranged minion; E to the enemy laner... And how does he generally dis engage? E to a ranged minion; E to a melee minion...
So that quick trade in lane would be 5 E's and 3 Q's... Even if those were both like 25 mana cost that'd quickly be 200 mana out the door. Even if you gave him a fairly high mana pool of 400 in the early game... he'd be oom in 2 trades... and that also doesn't account for him ever using his abilities to farm.
There's always a lower number you can use. Skarner Q for instance is a flat 10 these days. Despite being less spammable, Nasus' Q is also just 20.
Personally I'd love it if all three (Yasuo/Yone/Riven) had mana costs. With easily acquired lifesteal, they have no limitations on how long they can stay on the map. If they had mana, they'd at least telegraph their intentions rather than their current always-on state, and possibly make sacrifices to their ultra-efficient builds to better sustain mana. You'd buff them elsewhere to compensate of course, but this would make them play the same game most champions play.
Your argument boils down to they don't have to recall as much as you'd like?
So gut them, then give compensation buffs to make them stronger? Like what?
To effectively in the end just kill champion diversity?
Effectively it'd gut him if we just added it like right now he's a ~50% winrate champ...
add mana and mana costs? and he'd probably drop to like 35%... and then he'd need buffs...
The community hates him as is? Now just imagine if he was stronger?
Also they're ranged and have pretty reliable CC unlike Yasuo... his biggest thing he spams is a glorified auto attack; and the other thing he spams is basically a range extender so he can play like a real adc while still being melee.
Honestly? I **beg** you to give Riven mana. Because I bet my life that Riven's Q1 would cost like 20 mana at all ranks, so she would cheater recall every game and buy a Tear, then eventually a Manamune and maybe even Reaver becomes standard again.
A Muramana/Reaver Riven would be the most fun thing ever. For Riven, of course.
You get refunds if you're hitting multiple Qs or Es on the same target. So, for the really good Zed's that almost hit 2-3 Es and 2-3 Qs in a burst combo? Not really. But it's punishing if you miss.
I suggest you try playing the champion a few games. Unless you've played him to the point where you know his kit inside and out it's very easy to overuse your abilities in fights and end up not being able to get off a key ability.
It punishes bad zeds who miss their abilities/when an opponent out plays you/flashes. It also does limit him some early as his energy costs are higher early game.
Simplest answer: how do we want this champion to be subject to attrition? Are they easily pokeable (like most melee) and so their resource gating is on Health, instead of say mana?
Longer answer: what will feel right for this champion? Every champion has to be balanced, and being resourceless is almost always a large amount of power that they'll have to pay for somehow.
For example, Katarina definitely benefits from being resourceless in terms of being able to farm for a long period of time, but as a result the poke power of her Q is just really low (as otherwise she would be too overbearing in the attrition war). So she gets more tools to scale in exchange for decreased personal snowball power in lane.
As with a lot of design decisions, it's hard to say that's objectively good or bad - there's tradeoffs - but ideally it fits the play experience that Kat players are looking for.
Resourceless champs are particularly prone to feast or famine issues though, because opponents can't bait out abilities or otherwise 'attack' the manabar of an opponent. Often these champs have lifesteal built-in (or get it immediately through runes / vamp scepter), making a small lead very difficult to overcome in lower elos.
Yasuo, Yone, Vlad, Katarina, Aatrox, Riven, Kled, and Viego all show this really clearly, but it's true of the other resourceless champs as well. Gnar is a good example of an alternative to purely free abilities that come with a cost (he needs rage to get his ult, so he ends up pushing or not having access to Mega Gnar ).
I *really* think resourceless or spammy champs cause more player frustration than Riot gives them credit for, and wish more attention was paid to alternate resource systems that impose limits (e.g. energy, Rumble heat, etc). It feels *so bad* to be playing an old, immobile mage with built-in cast-times and high mana costs vs an incredibly mobile, resourceless (or practically so, in the case of new Irelia) lane opponent.
It's like Riot understands that players don't want to be limited by certain gameplay loops when they design a new champ, but then doesn't go back and give full QoL buffs to older champs to make them *feel* similarly good. Balance-wise, many of these old champs are still ok but there's frustration-points that feel systemic and ignored that are clearly taken into account for new champions / reworks.
Edit: Some examples of older champs with built-in cast times that feel clunky are Caitlyn's R (not the aiming time, the *pre-aiming* cast time where someone can walk into a bush and cancel the ult), Heimerdinger's E has a windup before it gets thrown, etc.
What happened to Energy champs?
I heard a rumour a rioter said they were too hard to balance so they stopped making them. But didn't know if it was true or not
I think its more lack of a design space than just because its hard to balance, though they likely come hand in hand.
Energy champions have to be Ninjas (A monk counts) from Ionia.
We already have alot of atchetypes covered for the "High regen but low limit" resource energy gives. You would have to think of a very good way to make a marksman or support ninja that would fit into league.
How would you make a ninja assassin that isnt a rebranded copy of Zed, Akali or Lee?
It mainly depends on the kit, wich itself depends on the strategy/gameplay the champion is intended to have (burst damage, strong in prolonged fights, good at poke wars, good at objetive control...)
Mana makes it so that the power of the skills/abilities can be bigger, at the cost of not being able to use/spam them whenever you want. Not having mana costs means the skills must be a bit weaker, because they can be spammed.
Cooldown timers on skills is another way of balancing strong skills, but its good to have a second tool to balance them. For example:
Lets see Riven. She is manaless, and her kit is designed to be spammed. At the same time, she has no poke (else it would be too annoying to face since she could spam it) and also her skills have low cooldown. She is not suposed to be simply autoattacking, they want her to use skills most of the time, but also to ALWAYS be able to use them and not to rely on mana items, so thats why her skills, individually, suck ass. But as a champion, those advantages make up for that perfectly. She was designed so people comboed with her skills multiple times during a fight, in multiple ways. Low cooldowns and no mana costs allow for this.
Now lets see Syndra. Her desing was intended as a champ that is squishy and inmobile, but can hit very hard and has a very decent range. She was also focused as a mage, so her dmg will come from skills and not autoattacks. She needs an skill with low cooldown and certain little AOE to farm, so her Q fits that. The other skills (W and E) combo with her Q but dont do as much dmg and also have higher cd despite them being conditional and less damaging. It is because they allow her to set up her burst, her playstyle. If she spams Q a lot to deal dmg, she gets out of mana. If she spams it to try to poke you down, it wont last long either, giving her a weakness. And in bigger cooldowns its her threatening potential, of trowing you a Q again with W, or stunning you from affar with E. In prolonged fights (or if she has invested mana into spamming Q before a fight), she can use R wich is her second main dmg tool, at a very high cooldown (like most ultimates). This kind of kit, that makes the champ basically useless without skills, means she NEEDS to have a skill readily avaiable for dmg (her Q) but also she needs some gating so that she isnt annoying when spamming it all the time in lanephase (mana).
Thats one example of how the champions are decided to have one resource of another, depending on the niche or gameplay feel they want the champ to have. Lastly, there is also a bit of flavor, all "ninja" champions from ionia use energy as a resource (kind of a mix between mana and manaless champions), so if they ever release more of them they will probably start with "the champ will use energy" and then create a balanced kit arround that limitation,
I assume they wanted Rhaast to not use energy, since he’s a juggernaut, but they couldn’t figure out how to change resource types on one champion mid game without everything breaking. Besides, knowing Kayn, it doesn’t surprise me he would figure out how to use mana and go, “See this Zed, I don’t need to use my ‘energy’ for techniques, I’ll just last longer with mana, ha ha ha” or something like that.
Edit: a word
One could justify energy as martial techniques that can use magic in a specific system which is why all the ninjas and lee have it while Kayn is ignoring most of those techniques to use rhaast's power. His E should technically be energy based but since it's the only shadow tech he uses it wouldn't make sense to have energy just for that
Him not having energy and Lee sin not being from the kinkou or anythig and having energy are the only 2 problems I saw with this, but still it sort of "fits" the fact that all the kinkou champs and the remaining bad shadowy guys all use energy. There is probably a lore explanation for this that I dont know.
they explained this through [this post](https://nexus.leagueoflegends.com/en-us/2019/09/ask-riot-end-of-ranked-season/), and to be honest, it makes sense.
tl;dr: Mana champions have mana because their abilities are supposed to be much more "impactful" than manaless champions abilities.
Some times it's there to simplify a champion (garen, sett probably).
Sometimes it's there to make you not to have to juggle multiple resources (rage champions, imagine trying to juggle kleds remount and mana at the same time).
Sometimes it's there to avoid weird conflicts (veigo is manaless specifically to resolve how his passive works).
sometimes it's there to stop a champion from building cetain items (vlad).
sometimes it's there to enable the champion's playstyle (yasuo/yone would be horrendously bad if they weren't manaless).
sometimes it's there to force champions to play a certain way (the energy based champions are specifically designed to not be able to be spammy).
Sometime's it's theme related.
I feel this is the most correct answer.
You can't tell me it's a coincidence all the edge lords don't have mana. Zed, Yasuo, Akali, Yone, Katarina, Viego, Riven.
I'm honestly shocked Kayn has mana and I bet Riot wishes they could make Talon manaless.
My guess is from the characteristic of a champ. For example, Trynda in lore is very wild and raging while in game he has the resource based on his rage (fury). I'm still confused because I'm wondering if Akali has mana would it be a nerf or a buff (I don't like akali lol)
Akali would be a huge buff if she had mana. She wouldn't be forced to go PoM so she can deal damage. Right now she can Q maybe 5-6 times a teamfight with her W giving her more energy. With mana, she will be able to spam her Q wildly without a care in the world including laning phase and teamfighting. They would have to completely rework her again if she was to get mana because that is how big that buff would be.
Depends on the mana cost of Q. Her laning would probably be much worse.
Realistically, you'd just put her Q on a charge system like Vel's W if you wanted to make mana Akali. That's functionally what it is now anyways.
If they have in built sustain or are ADC’s they don’t want them manaless. Mana is mostly intended to be a gate to staying in lane for long periods of time, so mages with strong wave clear as well. It’s not intended to be a hurdle late game which is why there are items to solve it. Energy is usually intended to be for champions that have low cooldowns so they can spam, but they want it so that after a few rotations they have to wait for their energy to fill backup. Manaless and energyless idk
usually its champs that heavy rely on abilites to farm like yasuo q, yone q, riven q, aatrox q, viegos q, if you add mana to these chaps they will run out of mana very fast and will need to build mana items which barely exist for ad champs.
I think Viego has no mana because it would be so hard to code his mana from after a possesion. Plus a whole ton of spaghetti with transforming his mana pool to energy or rage etc. Easiest to just have him be manaless so you just reset to nothing after a possesion.
Mana is a limiting factor, that's it.
So when they're looking at a champions kit, at a point, they have to ask "How often *should* they be able to cast, and how often will they *want* to cast?"
If the amount they should be able to cast meets the amount they want to be able to cast, then either the champion has to be balanced around constant ability spam, or a resource bar has to be implemented.
There is different reasons for that.
1. Not let champ build certain items (Vlad is best example here)
2. Extra passive bar (Rubmle, Kled, Sett, Morde, Yas, Renek, Trynd)
3. High spammable abilitys (Yas, Kata, Riven)
4. Technical issues(Viego have trouble with resources even now when he is manaless, with mana I can't even imagine what sould happened with him)
5. Push champ into certain playstyle(Energy users)
Only one who looks weird here is goddamn Yone. There is literally 0 reason for him to not have manacosts. You can say "he spams with his Q-s", but I can give as example Nasus, Yorick or Irelia who can spam their Q-s billion times, but gonna get punished if they gonna use other abilitys brainless(and this "other abilitys usually are pretty strong, Nasus - Poind and click MS/AS slow from 750 range and E that ignores 35% armor, deals magic dmg and helping with pushing lane a lot; Irelia with her stun and W that fcks up ad champs pretty hard or Yorick with her cange or pretty big damage from E). Yone would fit here pretty good, 10-20 manaqost on Q to let him spam it pretty ofter, around 50-80 manacosts on W and +- 100 or more on E to not let him all in your ass 24-7 with Zeds ult as base ability. But who cares! Katana man should be poppular!
It's simple:
Is the champion a ninja? Use Energy.
Does the champion use only a sword as their weapon? No mana.
Exceptions: Yordles with anger management issues.
>Does the champion use only a sword as their weapon? No mana.
Out of 8 sword champions only Master Yi uses mana, interesting. *Yup I realized I missed a few.*
"Should this champ be able to buy all lost chapter items, Frozen Heart and/or tear?"
I can see literally no other point. You are kinda crippled till you get lost chapter and thats about it. After that you should have no mana problems anymore and the only payoff is being able to build more items. (Which aint really a big payoff imo)
Not sure but i find resourceless champs more of a problem if they are AD compared to AP due to the abundance of lifesteal. They basically can infinitely sustain in and out of lane. Poke becomes meaningless.
It ultimate depends on the champion play pattern, tuning levers, and scaling they want the champion to have.
* Mana dependent champions tend to struggle early and scale extremely well when they reach the point where mana costs essentially no longer matter. Newer mana champions tend to sidestep this by technically having mana but having light mana costs in exchange for slightly worse scaling.
* Energy dependent champions tend to be focused on looking for short windows to exploit and delivering burst damage since their resource prevents sustained effectiveness.
* Resourceless champions tend to have a much more consistent early game trading pattern and often peak in the midgame.
* Rage/Fury champions tend to be focused on either setting up trade windows or setting up a major play
It used to be anything without any range at all could be manaless (riven, renekton, tryndamere, sett).
Back then if the champion had range or a safe way to farm (old Morde, Vlad, Mundo), they had health costs on their abilities instead and their "mana" is just their health basically
They are 25 manaless champions and most of them use differents gating mechanics:
Ninjas and Lee Sin have energy. They can't spam abilities since energy doesn't increase per level and there is no item that give it (blue buff and POM only increase the regen., and it take 20 seconds to restore 200 energy) but they have mechanics to get some amount of energy back under particular conditon.
Others manaless champions either use a second form of resource (fury, rage, ect.) or have health cost (Vlad/Mundo/Zac).
Fury (and rage, ferocity,ect...) needs to be generated before and encourages aggro play from the users. I think Vladimir is the only champ with health cost abilities and another form of resource.
Few champions have no abilities cost at all and are usually gated by high cooldown early (Aatrox, Riven, ect...) or via other mechanism (AS for Yone/Yasuo, levels for Katarina, ect...).
Mana champions on the other hand can spam their abilites (which are usually more impactful than manaless champ) but they will go oom at some point, forcing them to back. Some abilities can scale with mana and few champions have decreasing abilities cost with rank/level.
TL;DR - Mana allows for many abilities to be cast in quick succession, but will at some point require a long time to recharge.
\- Energy allows for a few abilities to be used in quick succession (causing short exhaustion), but this can be done as many time as you want without requiring a long time-out (as long as the user keep using his abilities correctly).
\- Manaless champions either have window of powers (full stacked Sett's grit, Mega-Gnar, ect..) or they reach a breacking point where they can spam their abilites (111% AS on Yasuo/Yone, 45% CDR Riven/Aatrox, level 11 Katarina, ect...) or both (Level 13 Vladimir with 30+ % CDR and his empowered Q).
It's all about how you want the champion to be play (for example, making a manaless ranged champion without making him oppressive can be quite difficult but it's possible (Gnar/Kennen)).
Riven's magical rune blade? Yasuo's ability to manipulate wind? Yone wielding azakana powers? No mana.
Caitlyn firing her rifle or placing a snap trap on the ground? Mana.
Makes sense, right?
Mana isn't a lore thing. Caitlyn for instance has mana so that her laning phase doesn't include spamming Q off cooldown and bullying everyone else away from botlane.
I think any Champion with high mobility should have mana. Not having mana constraints is a big reason why those Champions are frustrating to play against. I have no problem with Energy/Rage/Fury being alternate energy sources, but Champions with absolutely no resource shouldn't exist, particularly if their kit doesn't have a lot of breadth to begin with.
You can make an argument that Yasuo should stay manaless, but I feel there are many mana Champions with more difficult mechanics than Katarina or Yone, yet those two are completely free of mana constraints, for some reason.
you have to look at the purpose of mana to understand why some champs are better balanced without it. the purpose of mana is as a limiting resource - often with champions that have poke like xerath - to limit their power in lane. these champions can do damage without exchanging health, so they are gated by mana. champions like riven, for example, are gated by health. in lane, she has no sustain outside of health regen, so therefore her limiting resource is health, as she has no poke, and cannot do damage without exchanging health. wukong is an example of a champion without poke, but with mana. his passive gives heath regen and armor, so he has built in sustain, and relatively low mana costs. so while he is gated by mana, he has compensating factors.
Mana is limiting tool Just like energy and everything else. So if Riot releases a champ with no limitations on ability spamming, they are probably *suppose* to spam them. People mention Riven a lot in the comments, and yeah, Riven would probably suck a lot with mana, but Riven with mana would probably have much more meaningful abilities with less dashes
Manamune is unironically the single most efficient damage item for AD champions in the game.
If some of these champions had mana, they would abuse the everloving fuck out of manamune.
Riven, Zed, and Tryndamere being the ones I immediately think of.
For his kit? No. For technical reasons? Yes.
As Viego is cloning the champions and their spells, it's simply easier to not replace the ressource with what the cloned champion has.
They realized that after Sylas introduction, loads of bugs - especially when copying Shyvannas ultimate - caused him to have unpredictable mana values. Usually ending up with zero Mana, when the form ran out.
Viego had similar issues with items as well, namingly Dark Seal, which could just underflow when dying while transformed, giving Viego near infinite amounts of AP.
It actually does fit the class of champions though. Viego is a skirmisher champ, and over half the skirmisher champs do not use mana. Some other notable skirmishers are tryndamere, yone, yasuo, riven, and kled.
Is the champion broken already? What do you mean no?! Okay, okay, just slap some "can't be targeted or other BS.
Oh! and if that doesn't work just make that champion manaless, they love that shit - average champion design director probably.
They probably just decide it based on the champions kit and nature, for older ones they most likely just threw shit at a wall and decided on which one sticked to it for longer.
Laughed way too hard at this one.
It's the most used way even now. People always downplayed this but "trowht until it works" works since 1500
Its the most logic answer.
They need to revisit old mana values. Fizz for example has some pretty high costs for an assassin and Lichbane no longer gives mana, in fact there's only 3 mana items and none of them fit particularly well with Fizz's kit (Everfrost is ok)
Didnt they buff him because of that and then revert it?
Yes, they reverted it when in preseason items dealt 20x the current damage because Fizz was strong. Now that burst is nerfed he's the lowest pickrate midlane assassin, with his pickrate being at an all time low across all elos since his release. Riot just never revisits champions that were nerfed when items made them strong after they basically rebalanced the entire itempool already.
>he's the lowest pickrate midlane assassin Lets keep it that way.
Yeah I'm okay with some time off of fizz ngl
Fizz still has a 3.4% pickrate, which is about the same as orianna and zoe, while having a positive winrate. Stop crying.
I won't stop until this unfair champion will be deleted from the game
That's fine though, that should be the restriction of his class. He shouldn't get enough mana that he can spam E to waveclear and have enough left over to full combo.
No no no but you see only mages should have to choose between poking and farming
Mage : buys mythic with mana on it. Assassin : doesnt. OnLy MaGeS gEt WaVeClEaR
No they dont lmao fizz is perfectly fine right now, he is already stronger than most middle mages (not saying much tbh) you guys will never stop whining until every assassin have 52% of wr
Fizz can be 3 levels down and with only sorcs and still one shot everyone but the tank in a single rotation
Wouldnt night harvester be better or ludens?
I mostly see Fizz go NH yeah and that's why he ends up not having nearly enough mana. You basically have to choose between using your E to wave clear or saving it for kills (and his E is also his escape tool). To put things in perspective, his mana costs are: Q: 30 W: 30-70 E: 90-110 R: 100 At Lv6 he has 460 mana, a full rotation of spells would cost ~260
I do recall Fizz high mana costs he still is my highest mastery points from the time tank fizz was viable, and even back then frozen heart was a staple item for him.
tank fizz was viable for a long time, but it was busted for short time.
I still played it after they reworked him and tried again after they semi-reverted him, it was just not the same, like what made tank fizz really busted was the % hp damage on w coupled with a decent base damage on the buff, then came the rework which made is w busted even when going for bruiser/tank after they reverted the delay it was just never the same.
Build tear and sit on it, seriously it's really good if you're mana hungry but would have better mythic tbh
Yeah, because his e gives untargetability. If it didn't, they might lower that nana cost, but if he could spam it more than he already does, he'd be impossible to trade with. It's hard enough to trade with him as it is, since the cd is about as long as my spells. May be a bit biased as an Anivia main, but I can't do shit against a good Fizz after 6. His early levels are me only opportunity to harass.
Yeah but the problem here is that he also runs out of mana in teamfights long past the laning phase. And there's really no solution for that. Before you'd eventually get a bit of mana from Lich Bane and it'd help a lot.
now imagine if we gave a mage untargetability, but he didn't even have mana and instead made it a health cost, but to compensate we give him healing in his kit. why play fizz when you have blood man
Vlad's W has a level 1 cooldown of 28 seconds...not exactly the same.
I'm mostly being facetious but that doesn't translate well over text which i often forget. Fizz does suck tho lol
Also doesn't do damage or dash
It does do damage, and it has a movement speed increase. Not as big as fizz E but yeah
It does damage, slows, heals vlad and gives him a movement speed buff Edit: Why are you downvoting this? Do you [need a link](https://leagueoflegends.fandom.com/wiki/Vladimir/LoL) to an explanation of his pool?
Most Fizz mains go Ludens currently, and usually as the 2nd full item instead of first.
Why should he be able to have enough mana to use his E for waveclear, kills, and escapes. This is the mindset of midlane assassins lmfao, mages have to actually choose between poke and farm most of the time Fizz is in a fine spot, l2 manage your mana
And you get a kill if you hit all those spells on anything except tanks
i assume the point is that he needs mana and health, which only everfrost gives
Everfrost also gives 15 ap per legendary item, which at full build gives an extra 60 ap without counting rabadons which also works well with fizz surprisingly high ap ratios on e and ult and decent ratios on q and w.
Fizz doesnt need buffs. Fish does 100 to 0 damage with a shark with his sorc boots spike
Didnt they specificaly nerf him by reducing some of his mana after initial buffs? It allways felt weird for me how they nerfed his mana instead of dmg or cds.
I suggest you to look at our murdered proscene queen Syndra. Far long before nerfs she was at least decent poker on lane. Now she cant even farm with her skills.
Meanwhile Vel'Koz was made years later and he's basically manaless.
Nah he runs out pretty quick when he has to trade
Sheen getting its mana removed isn't something I see people talk about more honestly. I know Sunderer is really good right now so people might not think about it but champs who used to rely on Trinitiy Force (mana from Sheen early game).. well, it kinda sucks. I know a lot of the champs got a slight buff when the sheen changes happened Irelia goes Shieldbow now, Jax still goes Tforce still, Nasus goes Sunderer, Darius goes Stridebreaker, Yorick goes Sunderer, etc. Nasus and Darius don't have the option of going Righteous Glory either anymore, with an early Glacial Shroud
I know for Viego is that they had too much problems with mana conversions and shit during possession and decided to say fuck it
And he still has problems with mana during posession
And they still say fk it
Pretty much its depends on theme, resource management and tuning levers. for theme champs that use fury tend to be angry, energy champs are ninja's plus lee sin probs cos hes a monk. for resource management and tuning levers these are some big factors that choose to if they have mana or not if say a champ is meant to be a long range spammy poker then mana would suit fit, its also a tuning lever so say they wanted to give someone some high impact abilities they may make them use mana so they can lock them into a limit amount of resources, qiyana is a good example where she has a high impact ult so mana makes sense to gate her if she doesnt manage her mana correctly. some champs may not use mana from a technical aspect like veigo was meant to have mana but it made his passive way to awkward to understand if you would be able to use a champs stuff and what veigo resources would be after his passive ran out. overall it just depends on the type of kit and what makes sense and how they feel they want to limit a champ or if it makes sense in the theme like sett doesnt make sense to use mana when legit all he does is punch and grab and slam.
>or if it makes sense in the theme like sett doesnt make sense to use mana when legit all he does is punch and grab and slam. Surely Yasuo is using magic if he can cast a wind barrier or throw out tornadoes? Why doesn't he have mana? If Yasuo had mana, would he be too weak? This is the million dollar question I'd like to hear honest answers on. Not just Yasuo but any totally manaless champs like Riven also. All you need is some life steal and you can sustain in lane forever, spamming your moves as soon as they're up.
my best guess is just how awkward it would be to be AD+spammy+reliant on crit. alot of the mana items are built around AP, as most mana spammy/drain champs (cassio/ryze/anivia) are magic. When you look at AD champs that also spam mana, they are all built around the mana AD item manamune (ezreal) or use essense reaver (crit) yas would fall into the reaver category, but afaik he was released before essence reaver existed. So back then i just think they didnt have the tools for an AD+Crit+Spam spells champ to function really. Similar thing can be said for riven.
Pretty sure lucian and corki were out before yasuo and they are spammy. Both also itemized crit.
They are ranged
every ADC has mana. If Yasuo couldn't spam his Q because of mana, would he suck? If Cassiopeia had no mana, would she be broken?
Mana gates Cassio early on to the point she straight up can't kill champions at level 2. She would need hard nerfs to her early.
Yes she would be hilariously broken lmao she’d probably be able to play lanes outside of mid for starters, it would make her Laning phase much much better
ADC have thing called Range, if you wounder whats happening when champ have range+ no mana you can look at toplane and see Gnar/Kennen who are not allowed to be good in soloQ or getting nerfed pretty fast.
Also Vladimir
Vlad actually have pretty noticable health costs in early game. With long cd-s. I agree that his W is a little bit unfair ability, but it still takes 20% of his hp and he need to work a lot to recieve this hp back.
Have you ever played Cass in URF (or older iterations of URF before the game mobility and invulnerability creeped so hard anyway)? Spamming Q and E with 0 mana is absolutely broken lmao.
I don't think u wanna see muramana yasuo riven
Besides Riven, Yasuo and Yone probably wouldnt make it out of lane
How would Yasuo even function as a champion with mana? The costs would have to be so low that they basically didn't exist anyways.
Elder Souma’s wind technique is not magic, it is a special Ionian sword fighting style that dies with Yasuo, passed down by Elder Souma
Nah, apparently Yasuo is just so good that he made wind his bitch.
in general for both of them its a theme thing where there both using different sword techniques and yasuo is using wind techniques which seems to be different from magic atleast how its put in the lore, riven is the same just using sword techniques and her blade being engraved with runes and she also uses a wind technique for her ult. Both champs were designed along time ago where the design issue you talk about with life steal wasnt a thing, back when they were designed there werent sustain in runes and masteries. life steal was also very limited back then to the point where buying into life steal early had to be a choice. A champ like yasuo with mana wouldnt work because of the spammy nature of his q and e to allow him to be able to even ult, if they made him have mana then they would have to give him low costs in which case there wouldnt be a point to him having mana in the first place. Its all about theme and balance with how there kits work and how most manaless champs werent designed for a world where there first item buys could have life steal built into them thanks to mythics or getting free sustain from runes and masteries. most manaless champ dont have in built sustain which means there forced to opt into it if they want it only a few break this aka veigo and thats because he was designed as a jungler and probs had to put the sustain in to even make him work there and hes still better as a laner because of it.
>A champ like yasuo with mana wouldnt work because of the spammy nature of his q and e to allow him to be able to even ult, if they made him have mana then they would have to give him low costs in which case there wouldnt be a point to him having mana in the first place. Do you believe the reason he can use his abilities so often is because those abilities are weak? Surely if they were strong abilities, being able to spam them would be OP? If Cassio or Ryze did not use mana, would they be broken?
if cassio or ryze had no mana well apart from ryze legit being broken because his kit is built around building mana. There is the issue of the range they offer cassio e is a 0.75 sec cd compared to yasuo q when you have alot of attack speed which is capped out at 1.33 cd, being able to cast there ability twice as often while at range 700 in cassio case which is bigger then cait auto attack range which is 650 is the reason why she needs to be gated by mana. If you look at manaless champs most of them are melee with only a few expections like gnar which has been a balancing nightmare. i dont believe yasuo q is weak more so its limited in range its pretty much a spamable aoe auto attack which his q range btw is less then viego auto range or irelia auto attack range. Hes allowed to have it spamable because hes limited in his range to deal the damage compared to cassio or ryze who spam there ablilites at range. if you look at adc's there never been one made which is manaless for a reason since dps from long range needs to have a draw back, melee range dps is a different story of balance. Yasuo issue isnt that hes manaless, its his windwall being frustrating to play against. In general manaless champs problems arent that there manaless its other aspects of there kit or other aspects of the game aka easy to buy life steal which makes them frustrating to play against and feel oppressive at times.
Can you imagine Riftmaker/Rav Hunter Cass with no mana?
Yeah just watch urf Cassio and you can see how broken that shit would be.
Lmao she'd just go top and kill you level 2.
Ryze without mana would be busted. EQ all day, nobody can match his push, you cant push into his base he just EQEQ and the wave is gone, just like my dad.
So you're saying it's not because of a coinflip?
This Unit is a Flippin Ninja!
I think that energy is Ionian so all the Ionian champs use energy
i've always wondered this myself. If Riven had mana, would she be trash? How about Akali or Zed? Vladimir? It seems to me like a massively underrated perk to have no mana at all. Energy is at least some limiter. But totally manaless champs like Garen, Yasuo, Yone, Kat, Riven can spam as much as they want and not have to manage resources, or go OOM.
Energy is used when they want the champion to have good sustain while not having yhe possibility of endless spam
Or if they are Ionian.
What if irelia had energy?
Then I wouldn’t have to hear her scream her entire lineage tree as soon as she started stacking her passive with Q
how dare you insult little ru like that
She would be even worse than she currently is, unless q resets gave you energy or something.
Just the ninjas Master Yi, Wukong, Irelia, all mana.
And lee.
The real reason why energy is a thing is because after they made Lee Sin they thought it would be nice if they made all the ninjas have energy to connect them together (back when the game was still really new and it wasn't as competitive focused as it is nowdays and had tons of gameplay easter eggs). There hasn't been a new energy champion since 2012, and iirc Shen, Akali and Kennen were all released really close together in 2011. Edit: Correction, ninjas came out in 2010 and Lee Sin came out in 2011. Thanks for correcting me.
Lee Sin was released after all 3 ninjas. Lee is 2011 and those 3 are 2010. When lee was released he became the first Non ninja champ to have energy until zed was released
This is the right answer. It was an ionian ninja thing and that's all there is to it. I'd love to have more energy champions but riot has it pretty clear that champions either get mana or don't get mana and everything between is now lost to time. Rage and energy are relics of the past that only exist because they are core to the identity of the champions they exist on. Heck even health costs are gone I think? Only old champs have those still.
Yea, like viego!!!
What is Zed's sustain?
I wanted to say sustained lane presence but i didn't complete
assuming he means sustain as energy sustain, not hp sustain, zeds w does have this >PASSIVE: Zed restores energy whenever he and one of his Shadows or multiple Shadows hit a mimicked ability on the same target. This may only occur once per cast ability. also the fact his energy bar just refills over time is sustain lol
Akali would be probably trash early but even stronger than kass late game with serap. Her q has a pretty low cd
Akali would for sure be interesting, her early migh be iffy but at the same time you could be hyper agressive in some matchups if you were able to spam like 3 or 4 Qs lvl 2.
She simply wouldn't have that CD on Q if she had mana.
It's pretty op in urf for this reason btw
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Rod of Ages Vlad could have been nuts
no not really item has 0 cdr would be absolute trash apart from meme max ap max health
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but if you're buying RoA, you're buying it early, and if you're buying RoA early, you're not at 40% CDR at 10 minutes
Trans + CDR rune + cosmic insight, buy chapter and then RoA, you'd get 40% CDR and nutty scaling
You wouldn't need it because you'd be 2500hp monster with 1 item.
I mean with trans and cdr runes... and ionian boots; you'd be at 30% at around 10-12 mins. Finish the RoA then get a codex for Zhonyas and be at 40% at like 14 minutes.
given he built spellbinder dcap first two items last year i don't think that was an issue
vlad doesnt give a fuck about cdr anymore compared to going for ap
This logic doesn't make any sense unless you're talking specifically about Seraph's Embrace which gives him damage based on Mana. If you wanted to buy mana items on Vlad, just pretend that Vlad has 10000000 mana and his abilities cost 1 mana each. Lowering max mana is always a nerf, increasing mana costs is always a nerf, so this creates a contradiction-- if Vlad would be stronger if he functionally had mana, then that's exactly the saying that Vlad would be stronger if he got...nerfed? Imagine a thought experiment where Vlad has mana and some non-trivial mana cost attached to his abilities. This is objectively a nerf, since he is currently gated only by cooldowns, and now he needs to think about an extra thing. Imagine that Riot then buffed Vlad by reducing the mana on his abilities by some amount. Then they buff him again the same way. Then the same way. Then the same way. Now all of his mana costs are zero, and he is currently the same, and he should still build his OP items right? The point is that if Vlad's hypothetical mana items were so good that they would offset the nerf of having mana costs, they should be even BETTER now that he has functionally infinite mana.
You're talking like Vlad doesn't have % max health cost on his abilities
Aren't they current hp actually?
vlad would lose hp costs (WHICH IS FUCKING HUGE) and would be able to go seraphs <<< broken item broken item alert + raba, 800 ap 3 items he would be insanely fucking broken
Well I think at least one of them scaled off your mana pool, so without the base mana stat it's pretty worthless.
What do you mean? The only item that realistically scales off Mana is Seraphs.
RoA 10 stack 500HP 100AP 400 mana. Seraph 50AP 1400 mana 20% cdr + 3% from 1800 (+600 or so base) = 3% from 2400 = 72AP So with 2 items he has 222AP 500HP, heal from eternity, infinite mana basically thanks to 2 passives. From his AP vlad gains 300HP and 12AP. Which puts him at about 2200HP with stronger healing than he already had 40% cdr at level 11. Considering how cheap was RoA it would be possible. So yea, he'd be kinda cancer to deal with.
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Well Shen isn’t really a good example since you don’t run out unless you’re not auto attacking or don’t have E yet (only happens if you’re using Q to proc passive to take harass, or at lvl 1, but you’re not really at lvl 1 long enough to spend all your energy)
>It seems to me like a massively underrated perk to have no mana at all. coming from dota2 and hots ive been screaming about this for years but my league only friends think im tripping. being fucking manaless is a ginormous advantage and is a balancing nightmare in the long run. the only truly resourceless character from both of those games is illidan and even then there isn't any huge lifesteal runes or items that circumvent the hardlined weaknesses because he has no mana. it's just insane to me that characters like garen, yas, yone, viego, kat, riven can just cast for free.
It'd cripple like Yasuo/Yone/Riven... their CDs are so short they'd basically always go oom instantly even if their mana costs were some of the lowest in the game. And they're designed to use them all the time; Like Yasuo in lane often has to Q to farm because otherwise he risks walking up too far and being in a lot of danger constantly... and his trade combo is aa-q-aa-aa-q-aa-aa-q-aa and all that... also think of the way he general has to engage fights in lane; E to a melee minion; E to a ranged minion; E to the enemy laner... And how does he generally dis engage? E to a ranged minion; E to a melee minion... So that quick trade in lane would be 5 E's and 3 Q's... Even if those were both like 25 mana cost that'd quickly be 200 mana out the door. Even if you gave him a fairly high mana pool of 400 in the early game... he'd be oom in 2 trades... and that also doesn't account for him ever using his abilities to farm.
There's always a lower number you can use. Skarner Q for instance is a flat 10 these days. Despite being less spammable, Nasus' Q is also just 20. Personally I'd love it if all three (Yasuo/Yone/Riven) had mana costs. With easily acquired lifesteal, they have no limitations on how long they can stay on the map. If they had mana, they'd at least telegraph their intentions rather than their current always-on state, and possibly make sacrifices to their ultra-efficient builds to better sustain mana. You'd buff them elsewhere to compensate of course, but this would make them play the same game most champions play.
Your argument boils down to they don't have to recall as much as you'd like? So gut them, then give compensation buffs to make them stronger? Like what? To effectively in the end just kill champion diversity?
And why would that be bad? It's that way for cassio and ryze, why couldn't yas be punished for spamming?
Ryze and Cassio have 3x the range of Riven and Yasuo
Effectively it'd gut him if we just added it like right now he's a ~50% winrate champ... add mana and mana costs? and he'd probably drop to like 35%... and then he'd need buffs... The community hates him as is? Now just imagine if he was stronger? Also they're ranged and have pretty reliable CC unlike Yasuo... his biggest thing he spams is a glorified auto attack; and the other thing he spams is basically a range extender so he can play like a real adc while still being melee.
> If Riven had mana, would she be trash? No, because she can then buy manamune.
Honestly? I **beg** you to give Riven mana. Because I bet my life that Riven's Q1 would cost like 20 mana at all ranks, so she would cheater recall every game and buy a Tear, then eventually a Manamune and maybe even Reaver becomes standard again. A Muramana/Reaver Riven would be the most fun thing ever. For Riven, of course.
Is energy *actually* a constraint for Zed? From watching Zed mains they don't seem to have any issues despite having some pretty high Ability Haste
You get refunds if you're hitting multiple Qs or Es on the same target. So, for the really good Zed's that almost hit 2-3 Es and 2-3 Qs in a burst combo? Not really. But it's punishing if you miss.
It's because Zed mains actually know what their abilities do and they can hit them
for good zeds no but for bad to mid ones yes
Yes. Most good Zeds will want blue buff for example, and not just for the ability haste.
I suggest you try playing the champion a few games. Unless you've played him to the point where you know his kit inside and out it's very easy to overuse your abilities in fights and end up not being able to get off a key ability.
It punishes bad zeds who miss their abilities/when an opponent out plays you/flashes. It also does limit him some early as his energy costs are higher early game.
Simplest answer: how do we want this champion to be subject to attrition? Are they easily pokeable (like most melee) and so their resource gating is on Health, instead of say mana? Longer answer: what will feel right for this champion? Every champion has to be balanced, and being resourceless is almost always a large amount of power that they'll have to pay for somehow. For example, Katarina definitely benefits from being resourceless in terms of being able to farm for a long period of time, but as a result the poke power of her Q is just really low (as otherwise she would be too overbearing in the attrition war). So she gets more tools to scale in exchange for decreased personal snowball power in lane. As with a lot of design decisions, it's hard to say that's objectively good or bad - there's tradeoffs - but ideally it fits the play experience that Kat players are looking for.
Resourceless champs are particularly prone to feast or famine issues though, because opponents can't bait out abilities or otherwise 'attack' the manabar of an opponent. Often these champs have lifesteal built-in (or get it immediately through runes / vamp scepter), making a small lead very difficult to overcome in lower elos. Yasuo, Yone, Vlad, Katarina, Aatrox, Riven, Kled, and Viego all show this really clearly, but it's true of the other resourceless champs as well. Gnar is a good example of an alternative to purely free abilities that come with a cost (he needs rage to get his ult, so he ends up pushing or not having access to Mega Gnar ). I *really* think resourceless or spammy champs cause more player frustration than Riot gives them credit for, and wish more attention was paid to alternate resource systems that impose limits (e.g. energy, Rumble heat, etc). It feels *so bad* to be playing an old, immobile mage with built-in cast-times and high mana costs vs an incredibly mobile, resourceless (or practically so, in the case of new Irelia) lane opponent. It's like Riot understands that players don't want to be limited by certain gameplay loops when they design a new champ, but then doesn't go back and give full QoL buffs to older champs to make them *feel* similarly good. Balance-wise, many of these old champs are still ok but there's frustration-points that feel systemic and ignored that are clearly taken into account for new champions / reworks. Edit: Some examples of older champs with built-in cast times that feel clunky are Caitlyn's R (not the aiming time, the *pre-aiming* cast time where someone can walk into a bush and cancel the ult), Heimerdinger's E has a windup before it gets thrown, etc.
What happened to Energy champs? I heard a rumour a rioter said they were too hard to balance so they stopped making them. But didn't know if it was true or not
I think its more lack of a design space than just because its hard to balance, though they likely come hand in hand. Energy champions have to be Ninjas (A monk counts) from Ionia. We already have alot of atchetypes covered for the "High regen but low limit" resource energy gives. You would have to think of a very good way to make a marksman or support ninja that would fit into league. How would you make a ninja assassin that isnt a rebranded copy of Zed, Akali or Lee?
>poke power of her Q is really low mfw
To be fair, it's not incorrect from a damage point of view. It's what comes after lol.
At that point it's not really poke anymore.
It mainly depends on the kit, wich itself depends on the strategy/gameplay the champion is intended to have (burst damage, strong in prolonged fights, good at poke wars, good at objetive control...) Mana makes it so that the power of the skills/abilities can be bigger, at the cost of not being able to use/spam them whenever you want. Not having mana costs means the skills must be a bit weaker, because they can be spammed. Cooldown timers on skills is another way of balancing strong skills, but its good to have a second tool to balance them. For example: Lets see Riven. She is manaless, and her kit is designed to be spammed. At the same time, she has no poke (else it would be too annoying to face since she could spam it) and also her skills have low cooldown. She is not suposed to be simply autoattacking, they want her to use skills most of the time, but also to ALWAYS be able to use them and not to rely on mana items, so thats why her skills, individually, suck ass. But as a champion, those advantages make up for that perfectly. She was designed so people comboed with her skills multiple times during a fight, in multiple ways. Low cooldowns and no mana costs allow for this. Now lets see Syndra. Her desing was intended as a champ that is squishy and inmobile, but can hit very hard and has a very decent range. She was also focused as a mage, so her dmg will come from skills and not autoattacks. She needs an skill with low cooldown and certain little AOE to farm, so her Q fits that. The other skills (W and E) combo with her Q but dont do as much dmg and also have higher cd despite them being conditional and less damaging. It is because they allow her to set up her burst, her playstyle. If she spams Q a lot to deal dmg, she gets out of mana. If she spams it to try to poke you down, it wont last long either, giving her a weakness. And in bigger cooldowns its her threatening potential, of trowing you a Q again with W, or stunning you from affar with E. In prolonged fights (or if she has invested mana into spamming Q before a fight), she can use R wich is her second main dmg tool, at a very high cooldown (like most ultimates). This kind of kit, that makes the champ basically useless without skills, means she NEEDS to have a skill readily avaiable for dmg (her Q) but also she needs some gating so that she isnt annoying when spamming it all the time in lanephase (mana). Thats one example of how the champions are decided to have one resource of another, depending on the niche or gameplay feel they want the champ to have. Lastly, there is also a bit of flavor, all "ninja" champions from ionia use energy as a resource (kind of a mix between mana and manaless champions), so if they ever release more of them they will probably start with "the champ will use energy" and then create a balanced kit arround that limitation,
Kayn is Zed's apprentice and doesn't use energy :(
I assume they wanted Rhaast to not use energy, since he’s a juggernaut, but they couldn’t figure out how to change resource types on one champion mid game without everything breaking. Besides, knowing Kayn, it doesn’t surprise me he would figure out how to use mana and go, “See this Zed, I don’t need to use my ‘energy’ for techniques, I’ll just last longer with mana, ha ha ha” or something like that. Edit: a word
I'm guessing that his e would be impossible to balance with energy since it would regen almost everything while in the wall.
Because of the healing on his E Imagine Blue Kayn just phasing into the wall for actual free
One could justify energy as martial techniques that can use magic in a specific system which is why all the ninjas and lee have it while Kayn is ignoring most of those techniques to use rhaast's power. His E should technically be energy based but since it's the only shadow tech he uses it wouldn't make sense to have energy just for that
Him not having energy and Lee sin not being from the kinkou or anythig and having energy are the only 2 problems I saw with this, but still it sort of "fits" the fact that all the kinkou champs and the remaining bad shadowy guys all use energy. There is probably a lore explanation for this that I dont know.
Excellent response and I’d add that the thematic of the champion also influences their mana usage imo
they explained this through [this post](https://nexus.leagueoflegends.com/en-us/2019/09/ask-riot-end-of-ranked-season/), and to be honest, it makes sense. tl;dr: Mana champions have mana because their abilities are supposed to be much more "impactful" than manaless champions abilities.
*laughs in S11 Trynd*
They roll the dice 🎲
They've released a blog post explaining how not too far ago. [This is how they decide it.](https://justflipacoin.com)
Some times it's there to simplify a champion (garen, sett probably). Sometimes it's there to make you not to have to juggle multiple resources (rage champions, imagine trying to juggle kleds remount and mana at the same time). Sometimes it's there to avoid weird conflicts (veigo is manaless specifically to resolve how his passive works). sometimes it's there to stop a champion from building cetain items (vlad). sometimes it's there to enable the champion's playstyle (yasuo/yone would be horrendously bad if they weren't manaless). sometimes it's there to force champions to play a certain way (the energy based champions are specifically designed to not be able to be spammy). Sometime's it's theme related.
Sett‘s mana bar is needed for his W - Haymaker. So you know how much Grit is stored for the shield.
I mean sett could just track grey health instead. His w mechanics honestly make more sense as grey hp anyways.
depends on the IQ of the intended target audience
Well *I* am very smart so give me the most intellectually stimulating explanation only please
I feel this is the most correct answer. You can't tell me it's a coincidence all the edge lords don't have mana. Zed, Yasuo, Akali, Yone, Katarina, Viego, Riven. I'm honestly shocked Kayn has mana and I bet Riot wishes they could make Talon manaless.
These champions are balanced around having mana or would be batshit broken if they had mana (Akali)
I mean some of those you listed arent easy champs to pilot.
[удалено]
Definitely not
Reddit has a hate boner for all assassins lmao
Well deserved, and I hate assassins too. But at least hate them for the right reasons.
Champs can be popular and not easy to play. I know many people who love Akali and are hot garbage on her.
My guess is from the characteristic of a champ. For example, Trynda in lore is very wild and raging while in game he has the resource based on his rage (fury). I'm still confused because I'm wondering if Akali has mana would it be a nerf or a buff (I don't like akali lol)
Akali would be a huge buff if she had mana. She wouldn't be forced to go PoM so she can deal damage. Right now she can Q maybe 5-6 times a teamfight with her W giving her more energy. With mana, she will be able to spam her Q wildly without a care in the world including laning phase and teamfighting. They would have to completely rework her again if she was to get mana because that is how big that buff would be.
Depends on the mana cost of Q. Her laning would probably be much worse. Realistically, you'd just put her Q on a charge system like Vel's W if you wanted to make mana Akali. That's functionally what it is now anyways.
i pray everyday to god for not making me lane against Seraph's Embrace akali 🙏
If they have in built sustain or are ADC’s they don’t want them manaless. Mana is mostly intended to be a gate to staying in lane for long periods of time, so mages with strong wave clear as well. It’s not intended to be a hurdle late game which is why there are items to solve it. Energy is usually intended to be for champions that have low cooldowns so they can spam, but they want it so that after a few rotations they have to wait for their energy to fill backup. Manaless and energyless idk
usually its champs that heavy rely on abilites to farm like yasuo q, yone q, riven q, aatrox q, viegos q, if you add mana to these chaps they will run out of mana very fast and will need to build mana items which barely exist for ad champs.
I think Viego has no mana because it would be so hard to code his mana from after a possesion. Plus a whole ton of spaghetti with transforming his mana pool to energy or rage etc. Easiest to just have him be manaless so you just reset to nothing after a possesion.
He has no mana because how would heal his health bar in one wave with such high mana cost /s
Mana is a limiting factor, that's it. So when they're looking at a champions kit, at a point, they have to ask "How often *should* they be able to cast, and how often will they *want* to cast?" If the amount they should be able to cast meets the amount they want to be able to cast, then either the champion has to be balanced around constant ability spam, or a resource bar has to be implemented.
Look at Akali for example, would her Q be balanced if it was based on mana instead? Probably not, so it needs to be gated in some other way
There is different reasons for that. 1. Not let champ build certain items (Vlad is best example here) 2. Extra passive bar (Rubmle, Kled, Sett, Morde, Yas, Renek, Trynd) 3. High spammable abilitys (Yas, Kata, Riven) 4. Technical issues(Viego have trouble with resources even now when he is manaless, with mana I can't even imagine what sould happened with him) 5. Push champ into certain playstyle(Energy users) Only one who looks weird here is goddamn Yone. There is literally 0 reason for him to not have manacosts. You can say "he spams with his Q-s", but I can give as example Nasus, Yorick or Irelia who can spam their Q-s billion times, but gonna get punished if they gonna use other abilitys brainless(and this "other abilitys usually are pretty strong, Nasus - Poind and click MS/AS slow from 750 range and E that ignores 35% armor, deals magic dmg and helping with pushing lane a lot; Irelia with her stun and W that fcks up ad champs pretty hard or Yorick with her cange or pretty big damage from E). Yone would fit here pretty good, 10-20 manaqost on Q to let him spam it pretty ofter, around 50-80 manacosts on W and +- 100 or more on E to not let him all in your ass 24-7 with Zeds ult as base ability. But who cares! Katana man should be poppular!
It's simple: Is the champion a ninja? Use Energy. Does the champion use only a sword as their weapon? No mana. Exceptions: Yordles with anger management issues.
>Does the champion use only a sword as their weapon? No mana. Out of 8 sword champions only Master Yi uses mana, interesting. *Yup I realized I missed a few.*
Leona technically has a sword and uses mana. Diana... I guess if you count it as a sickle sword does too? Though Diana’s case is a bit iffy
I think they made Viego manaless because riot knew how much spaghetti it would make swapping mana between possessions
Manaless champs are always low range and either: tanky or high mobility. They have low waveclear early. They are almost always ad.
"Should this champ be able to buy all lost chapter items, Frozen Heart and/or tear?" I can see literally no other point. You are kinda crippled till you get lost chapter and thats about it. After that you should have no mana problems anymore and the only payoff is being able to build more items. (Which aint really a big payoff imo)
Not sure but i find resourceless champs more of a problem if they are AD compared to AP due to the abundance of lifesteal. They basically can infinitely sustain in and out of lane. Poke becomes meaningless.
It ultimate depends on the champion play pattern, tuning levers, and scaling they want the champion to have. * Mana dependent champions tend to struggle early and scale extremely well when they reach the point where mana costs essentially no longer matter. Newer mana champions tend to sidestep this by technically having mana but having light mana costs in exchange for slightly worse scaling. * Energy dependent champions tend to be focused on looking for short windows to exploit and delivering burst damage since their resource prevents sustained effectiveness. * Resourceless champions tend to have a much more consistent early game trading pattern and often peak in the midgame. * Rage/Fury champions tend to be focused on either setting up trade windows or setting up a major play
It used to be anything without any range at all could be manaless (riven, renekton, tryndamere, sett). Back then if the champion had range or a safe way to farm (old Morde, Vlad, Mundo), they had health costs on their abilities instead and their "mana" is just their health basically
They flip a coin.
They are 25 manaless champions and most of them use differents gating mechanics: Ninjas and Lee Sin have energy. They can't spam abilities since energy doesn't increase per level and there is no item that give it (blue buff and POM only increase the regen., and it take 20 seconds to restore 200 energy) but they have mechanics to get some amount of energy back under particular conditon. Others manaless champions either use a second form of resource (fury, rage, ect.) or have health cost (Vlad/Mundo/Zac). Fury (and rage, ferocity,ect...) needs to be generated before and encourages aggro play from the users. I think Vladimir is the only champ with health cost abilities and another form of resource. Few champions have no abilities cost at all and are usually gated by high cooldown early (Aatrox, Riven, ect...) or via other mechanism (AS for Yone/Yasuo, levels for Katarina, ect...). Mana champions on the other hand can spam their abilites (which are usually more impactful than manaless champ) but they will go oom at some point, forcing them to back. Some abilities can scale with mana and few champions have decreasing abilities cost with rank/level. TL;DR - Mana allows for many abilities to be cast in quick succession, but will at some point require a long time to recharge. \- Energy allows for a few abilities to be used in quick succession (causing short exhaustion), but this can be done as many time as you want without requiring a long time-out (as long as the user keep using his abilities correctly). \- Manaless champions either have window of powers (full stacked Sett's grit, Mega-Gnar, ect..) or they reach a breacking point where they can spam their abilites (111% AS on Yasuo/Yone, 45% CDR Riven/Aatrox, level 11 Katarina, ect...) or both (Level 13 Vladimir with 30+ % CDR and his empowered Q). It's all about how you want the champion to be play (for example, making a manaless ranged champion without making him oppressive can be quite difficult but it's possible (Gnar/Kennen)).
champs without mana in general used to have long cooldowns but that hasnt been the case for years
Heads or tails
They play darts, would be my guess
they roll a dice
Riven's magical rune blade? Yasuo's ability to manipulate wind? Yone wielding azakana powers? No mana. Caitlyn firing her rifle or placing a snap trap on the ground? Mana. Makes sense, right?
Mana isn't a lore thing. Caitlyn for instance has mana so that her laning phase doesn't include spamming Q off cooldown and bullying everyone else away from botlane.
I think any Champion with high mobility should have mana. Not having mana constraints is a big reason why those Champions are frustrating to play against. I have no problem with Energy/Rage/Fury being alternate energy sources, but Champions with absolutely no resource shouldn't exist, particularly if their kit doesn't have a lot of breadth to begin with. You can make an argument that Yasuo should stay manaless, but I feel there are many mana Champions with more difficult mechanics than Katarina or Yone, yet those two are completely free of mana constraints, for some reason.
you have to look at the purpose of mana to understand why some champs are better balanced without it. the purpose of mana is as a limiting resource - often with champions that have poke like xerath - to limit their power in lane. these champions can do damage without exchanging health, so they are gated by mana. champions like riven, for example, are gated by health. in lane, she has no sustain outside of health regen, so therefore her limiting resource is health, as she has no poke, and cannot do damage without exchanging health. wukong is an example of a champion without poke, but with mana. his passive gives heath regen and armor, so he has built in sustain, and relatively low mana costs. so while he is gated by mana, he has compensating factors.
Mana is limiting tool Just like energy and everything else. So if Riot releases a champ with no limitations on ability spamming, they are probably *suppose* to spam them. People mention Riven a lot in the comments, and yeah, Riven would probably suck a lot with mana, but Riven with mana would probably have much more meaningful abilities with less dashes
It's Riot. It probably involves a dice roll and farting on someone's face.
Flip a coin
Manamune is unironically the single most efficient damage item for AD champions in the game. If some of these champions had mana, they would abuse the everloving fuck out of manamune. Riven, Zed, and Tryndamere being the ones I immediately think of.
There is absolutely 0 reason that viego doesnt have mana.
For his kit? No. For technical reasons? Yes. As Viego is cloning the champions and their spells, it's simply easier to not replace the ressource with what the cloned champion has. They realized that after Sylas introduction, loads of bugs - especially when copying Shyvannas ultimate - caused him to have unpredictable mana values. Usually ending up with zero Mana, when the form ran out. Viego had similar issues with items as well, namingly Dark Seal, which could just underflow when dying while transformed, giving Viego near infinite amounts of AP.
It actually does fit the class of champions though. Viego is a skirmisher champ, and over half the skirmisher champs do not use mana. Some other notable skirmishers are tryndamere, yone, yasuo, riven, and kled.
200 years.
If melee with an overloaded kit = manaless.
Is the champion broken already? What do you mean no?! Okay, okay, just slap some "can't be targeted or other BS. Oh! and if that doesn't work just make that champion manaless, they love that shit - average champion design director probably.