LoL: AxeC's Analysis Episode 2 - Do Pubstompers have a Place in the Game?

Katarina is a good example of a pubstomper.

Hello and welcome to my weekly topic overviewing aspects of League of Legends game design. Today we'll be looking at one of the more controversial sets of characters - pubstompers.

First off, what is a pubstomper? It is someone who you can play in a solo queue game and absolutely destroy poor players with, but are often easily countered in ranked or by higher skilled players. Examples of these include Katarina and Tryndamere. Hopefully I'm going to be posting my ideas for changing Katarina soon, but that's for another time.

Right now in particular there seems to be a lot of upset about Katarina, so it begs the question, what is the point of these characters? They upset the players who cannot beat them, and are considered useless by those who can. Well, there are plenty of good reasons to have characters like these around. For example, being repeatedly victimized by someone whos easy to counter hopefully will eventually teach the player to learn to use that counter. In turn, this enables you to begin thinking of counters to characters who it is far less obvious on how to disrupt.

Lets look at some specific examples. Katarina obviously hinges around her ultimate. Should you be playing normal you will eventually be forced to learn the importance of using some form of interrupt, just like you would on say Nunu. Should she be picked in ranked you will possess the knowledge that you can counter pick with some like Malphite or Mal'zahar who can ultimate her straight back. Tryndamere is a little more difficult, as he is best countered in ranked. Should he be picked, hopefully you will have learnt the hard way to take lots of exhausts and laugh as he does nothing. Currently Nocturne is performing a fairly similar role, and can also be shut down with this kind of CC.

This doesn't really cover their problems at a higher level however - that they are simply not good enough as everyone has learnt how to stop them. This is true, but does every character need to be viable for competitive gaming? Why can some characters not have their use in lower level solo queue, and some in higher level ranked play? This is the way the current system works and there really isn't much wrong with it, balancing every champion perfectly for every aspect is near impossible. This is not to say that some changes shouldn't be made to some of these characters.

Currently pubstompers serve a highly unappreciated but vital role in the game. They appeal to neither end of the gaming skill level, but occupy a unique area as an obstacle for players to overcome in order to move from lower to higher levels of play. By pushing what is essentially unhealthy gameplay they promote healthy gameplay, all the while keeping the truely good and bad players where they probably deserve to be. Personally, I can't think of anything more important in this game.

Feel free to comment and discuss whether I have any idea what I'm talking about.