As with most controversial mechanics, I've always believed that introducing counterplay is way more interesting that just removing them

I think Pykes stealth is the healthiest stealth in the game. It allows players to know that he's around but not from where

I love how even Neeko’s 0.25 second stealth was throw in there

"Twitch can't just peace out when things get heated" Oh really?

“If there was no fog of war you could never be ganked” Tell that to my silver friend who gets 4 danger pings as the enemy Lee walks over 3 wards and a scuttle crab and he still gets ganked

Average human reaction time: 16 frames Me, playing with 10 fps: *I have no such weaknesses*

“I couldnt imagine it would be too much of a problem if sona or janna disappeared” And now the supp mains are crying thanks

Tanks with stealth are not really threatening. Malphite: Hmmmm.....

wait until people find out every champion can go stealth with items

The only issue with stealth I have is hitting an enemy champion who is stealth doesn't reveal them to me which is weird.

Honestly the biggest issue with stealth is they nerfed vision so many times while doing less to punish the invisible, you used to be able to have multiple pink wards (control wards) out and they weren't visible without your enemy using a counter ward, now they just take it out and rotate while you're left paranoid about the next time where you wont be lucky.

I love when my zed ult is cancelled after an alkali walks into a donut.

You forgot the Nunu stealth mechanic. Enemy Nunu jg would suddenly pop up right beside you rolling a huge ass snowball. The best part is that it existed in the game for quite sometime. It wasnt until a riot game designer encountered the problem where they finally fixed it.

Stealthy champions have a harder time in higher level play when vision control is much better like warding an Evelynn's or Shaco's camps will give info so that's tricky. I just wish Oracle's Lens updated the invisible champ's position more frequently.

"Stealth is gae" - Sun Tzu, before landing a blind hook on Kha'Zix.

"Champions with stealth usually don't have any other defensive abilities, the exception is Vayne" *Cries in i literally can't gank akali because she has 3 or more fucking dashes*

Dota 2 already solved this problem by adding dust to the game. For those uninitiated, dust is a consumable that reveals everyone around you for about 10 seconds. Adding counterplay to interesting mechanics is always a better solution then removing them.

Vars, has anyone told you that your voice is perfect for this? Real nice to hear your explanations, cause it is interesting and you have a good voice XD

and to think they were originally gonna make lux W stealth everyone she shields.....

you do not need to be an adc main to hate akali, we toplaners agree wholeheartly

The only champion I have a problem with is shako. He has absolute invisibility and as a main support I took that personally. Doesn't matter how carefull and consistent you are with your wards he's suddenly behind you and with no way of knocking him out of his stealth.

How do you lose a fight when the other guy doesn’t even know they are in a fight for half of it

Rengar is actually ok for me, the warning is hard to miss and if he jumps in first he's either gonna burst or get bursted in a teamfight. He also has no extra escape, so he can't just get away easily after jumping on someone.

Im actually surprised by how well you pick the video subjects and thumbnails. Nice video, keep it up!!!

Increase counter-play, make control wards invisible unless they're detecting an invisible opponent or ward, vastly increase the cool down on steath abilities, lower cd on sweeper etc. something along those lines i think would work great in reducing the annoyance of stealth.

I don’t think stealth should be longer than 1 second. Camouflage I’m fine with, things like neeko I’m fine with, akali having 5 seconds of stealth is one of the most frustrating things to deal with. Long stealth should not be a thing, that’s the point of camouflage.

Teemo is the only stealth I like, but because he has been powercreeped away from the game, so he can has a broken mechanic if he want (even if he can't move during his stealth (except in bush)).

What if they introduced a tiny armor debuff after leaving stealth?

Plot twist: everybody just has PTSD from hearing a rogue come out of stealth in WoW

i just think all stealth and invisible things should be revealed by pink wards. Like old akali W

I just wish there is a item that can help you fight against invisibility. ( not: While Oracle Lens do give red outline against stealth enemies still you can't auto attack or use your point and click abilities )

I think akali’s stealth is more unbalanced as she has many other tools to “stay safe”. E away, or to someone if less threatening, and double r dashes. Her kit is so overloaded its kinda insane. Sure she takes some skill, but ur rewarded wayy too much for playing her a couple games

Twitch has the same burst as evelynn but he doesn’t need something like her W to make it work. There is also no indication (like Pyke) to say if he is nearby. That’s why he is the most unbalanced stealth person in the game to me

There should just be something like dust in DotA 2; a consumable that reveals stealthed units in a targeted area.

Camouflage's counterplay is a lot better than the pure stealth given to some champions. Counterplay against Akali, for instance, holy shit good luck if it's a good Akali.

Talon has infinite escape + stealth, Kha Zix has his E to escape + stealth, le blanc can escape, Akali can dash with ult and escape with W, Akshan can just E away. Yep, all super vulnerable without stealth

The issue with stealth is the champions that have it, stealth give you protección from point and click (which is needed and healthy for the game, as counter play is needed), the logical counter play is skill shots as those still hit the target, but with the champions having stealth are high mobile you are virtually removing that as a weakness too and that’s creating the problem, as you remove the counter play of the mechanic, at the same time assassins are vulnerable to CC specially point and click, removing that weakness too, as you mention at the latest part of the video, I don’t consider stealth a bad mechanic, but the champions that get it should probably have another defense instead of this one

The problem with Evelyn is that her camo is nigh-permanent, you never know where she is and she doesn’t half to go through the jungle to gank you. The only counterplay to a good eve is to stay under tower all game.

I just think abilities where you can be on top of the person and not see them, like Akali’s smokescreen are very annoying

I’m so glad u mentioned dudkblade and a lichbane pen boots sona is very threatening

And he forget to said that most stealth champ have a dash or a jump or a blink

As a doctor mundo one trick i approve of this message

holy shit Vars your an amazing youtuber. Every 2 days I see a new video that is so well edited it looks like it took you a week. How are you managing to do it ???

Like you said a Game of information, and even when I ward a Eve just ran me down, and I can only place 1 Pink Ward. To me it is so frustrating because not only do the Champs have stealth, no, they are mostly assasins too, the other class I hate in league. I would wish it gets removed, because it is so frustrating to play against. And since the rework of it, I can't remeber who I can see with Pink Wards and who don't what takes even more Information away.

Stealth can be frustrating but abilities still hit you And personally i get way more tilted when i see an untargetable fish jumping around or an unstoppable duellist that throws your stuns back at you But even though im petty with my opinions on champs, i do think most champs have counterplay, say except for the obviously unbalanced

Maybe there should be a downside for turning invisible like a decrease in movement speed or something similar as @MANDRO says even using counters against them would be evenly helpful but the problem is the counter has to be an ability which is unfair . There is a downside to it creating imbalances so they should introduce a new item which should be available for every legend.

9:37 "vision prevents you from seeing" ~Some monk named lee sin

>With no Fog of War you can never be ganked SoloQ: You understimate my power!

Just bring back pink wards revealing stealth. Invis had actual counterplay before they removed it

Stealth is ok if it's in their kit. What's not ok is giving all champs access to it with duskblade.

I didn’t realise you got so few comments on your videos... Gonna comment on every video for the engagement algorithms. And like as many comments as i can read whilst watching.

I once spent 3 solid minutes chasing a Qiyana back and forth on a brush as Tryndamere. She was 0/6. I died because I couldn't hit her due to her spammable invisibility and her team showed up. That's just broken as a counter pick. If your team does not have a lot of high damage skill shots, you're just done. Qiyana not only has high mobility, damage and cc. She also has spammable invisibility. Un-cool.

I think dota2 has a good answer for this since there are items like the dust of appearance that slow and reveals invis units for a while and gem of true sight that basically turns u into a living ward bu letting u see invis units. Maybe it's too much since in dota2 u can buy items that make u invis but something like those would be neat.

Now imagine if lux's W (previously named prismatic wave, which gave aoe stealth to allies) is still in this game today

I think that invis that can be used inside of combat is the more controversial than outside of combat, also I think the worst invis ability is shaco's Q because it also gives him a teleport/movement that can be used to get over walls so you can never properly ward against him in solo Q.

you’ve got a really pleasant voice. thanks for uploading :)

It isn't Akali's stealth that triggers me, it's the fact that aside from that, she has way too much mobility and disengage capabilities along with that. If a character does have stealth, it should not have more than 1 other tool to escape. 2 defensives is enough, but having 3? Even 4 in some cases? Yeah, sure. Plus, pink wards don't work, not even showing her silluete. Good job, riot.

Should max health true damage be removed?

Generally champions with spammable stealth have to use it well because usually they don't have many more defensive tools. Then there's Akali, with her stealth, oneshot potential (the best defense is a great offense) and multiple dashes.

I would like to see a change with sweepers that makes stealthed enemies targetable. The team has to do a trade-off then of not only using sweeper's cooldown to kill a stealthed champion in a fight but also removes their ability to acquire vision through warding if more people get sweepers than the other trinket options.

"In Akali's case she can stay invisible on her giant smokey donut" LMAO

ok but Viego can easily f with some people with his E. OOOOhhh is he here or is he there!!!! You'll never know

The only invisibility i have a problem with is Akali's. It lasts 8 bloody seconds, which allows her to completely avoid ganks (unless playing against her one and only counter Lee Sin), but more importantly she can literally zone out large area in teamfight as an assasin. Your adc can't get anywhere near that smoke cloud without getting deleted and she can just sit there and make your main dps completely useless, unless you have one of the few champions that can reveal her. And this is the main issue with stealth - it has very little counterplay. In Dota there are multiple items to deal with stealth, most notable is Gem of True Sight, which does exactly what it says - gives true sight in a large area around you. However A) It doesn't give any stats, B) You have to sacrifice item slot to hold it and C)It drops on death, so it's mostly held by tanks. It also has long restock time (If someone buys a Gem it takes 10 minutes before anyone in the team can buy another one) so it's actually only bought when neccesary and it's only effective when it's holder is in the area. League needs something like this. I'm not asking to bring back Oracle Elixir, that would defeat the purpose of stealth, but an item or trinket that's situationally good. Twisted Treeline had trinket - Arcane Sweeper - which granted vision of a nearby area for a few seconds and revealed traps. It could be repurposed to reveal invisibility, maybe as an item.

disputes on favourable arguments to stealth: 1. Champs only have that as a defensive/ outplay tool. -Have u factored in the Ult on Evelyn? or her charm? -Have u factored in Draktar on Yi, wich also has intargetability with his Q and damage reduction and heal with his W? -Have u factored in the jumps on Kha, which resets at every asist? -Have u factored in the 3 milion dashes Akali can do with her kit -Have u factored in the AOE root on Senna's W? -Have u factored in the W dash/stun on Viego's kit, or the reseteable R dash? not to mention his lifesteal/untargetability/dash combo on pasive? -There isnt a problem with stealth perse, there is a problem tho with stealth on unbalanced (bad designed) champs. Twitch has stealth, but the moment he shows up, twitch goes boom. If his team doesnt protect him, he is dead, he has no scape. Shaco, even tho having stealth is so hard to master that only OTP can really abuse his kit and take advantage of that hability, otherwise, he is dead. Stealth on teemo is almos a gimmicky thing, not even to take in count. But the stealth on the champs mentioned earlier are just unnecesary and make their kit overloaded. I have to insist, is not that stealth is bad in the game, but giving it to champs that are just not well designed is what makes it so rage inducent.

Stealth would have been fine if they made some counter items like Gem of Trusesight in Dota.

Im old enough to remenber that potion that allow you to see all stealth units(wards and champs) they should reinstate that again.

For me the most annoying invisibility is the one from Shaco. I mean, he has it in two habilities, and one is not the ultimate. Besides, the duration of the same increases a lot. And for what i know is really broken in aram because riot took out the true sight to just wait to cannon wave (which longs nothing bc everyone focus the cannon). IMO invisibility should be removed but if it is not, it should be fixed to be a really conditional (or risky ) action to consider, and not just a spam like shaco or akali invisibility

something I would kinda like is to see an item kinda like the ward storing item for supports, nobody seems to buy it ever but maybe if it made it so that you would be able to place a controllward with extra range and its able to store two of theese, the item would be able to detect camo targets as usual and maybe reveal stealth targets like akalis W did after its rework (without showing stealth targets on the map) that would allow champs like shaco who heavily rely on their stealth still be able to use it unless the enemy is very aware and more heavily counter champs like eve who would have to gank from another angle, sense you would only be able to place one of theese, meaning everyone would still have options but it allso enables some form of counterplay.

Since you made a "Perfectly designed" video, can we get some badly designed champions? Or at least the ones people want to be deleted, like our favorite cat Yuumi.

as a mage and marksman main, I actually have never thought invisibility was unhealthy for the game.

It is only controversial when it's on an in-game item, that you can buy. Specifically "Dusk Blade"

Another banger video from vars

Stealth isnt a problem, the problem is the lack of vision in lower elos that in turn make way to stealth champions to thrive. Playing evelyn/shaco/fidd in low elo is "OP" because players don't know how to play against them, then those champions in higher elo arent as good as other alternatives when vision control is a thing.

In tearms of camo eve NEEDS it to even get close to her target, she doesn't have gap closers like rengar or attack range like twitch. Her only dash is 200 range, veigo's autos are longer than that. If she wants to assassinate someone, she can do 3 things, or 4 if you have 10+ stacks of mejais. She can use her W and hit with q. This has the downside to giving where she is away and has an arrow pointing to where she is when the charm procs. The second thing she can do is stand somewhere or walk to where her opponent is without using charm. This allows her take advantage of poor reaction time. Of course if someone is expecting it or just barely lives they can maybe term the fight. The 3rd option is to have an ally CC them. And then with Mejais at 10+ stacks you can use that MS to case down a target.

You overlooked what I consider to be the most important point. Even if invisibility is balanced at higher skill levels, it is horribly unbalanced in low silver and below. The invisible player has to press their ability key and walk into any lane the opponents push up. The opponent has to have the foresight to get the wave state under their own tower, ward effectively, use oracle lens and such. The counter play requires way more mastery of game mechanics and awareness than the invisibility does!

I don't know why but the dr.mundo onechamp part is just too funny

I would like to see more abilities that can reveal champions and maybe even gain true sight of a champion for a second or two. I feel like this mechanic isn't being used a lot and only exists in a very few champions like Lulu, Ashe, or Swain for example. It is pretty powerful ngl, but at least a single target reveal would be neat to see more of.

The thing you failed to mention is when you hit an stealthed unit, it show a shimmer of them for a second. With that, and the multitude of counters towards stealth, I don't think they're as busted as untargetable. Invisibility is definitely more annoying than camouflage though.

Random Question that I may be completely wrong to but was the outro song from Spectrobes?

I have two solution for this problem and It's pretty easy to implement this one come from how Dota 2 take this problem first sentry Ward which the tldr a pink Ward but without the sight vision but go invis like Totem Mean it can detect the invis if area have the vision or your Hero is around the area , second the tracking Champions / Hero in dota 2 they have 2 Hero that have ability giving debuff to enemy which even if the enemy go invis they still Visibel in map kinda like TF R1 but for singel target with long duration and Grant a debuff toward Hero that get it

6:00 what do you mean by akali only has her W do rely on fights ? she has like 3 dashes :/

I don't mind invisibility on champions with a built-in stealth. Then, there is duskblade yi, who combines invisibility and untargetability...

It'd be interesting to see a full tank with an Inv mechanic (not camouflage) One of the most frustrating things to me about Inv is the fact that is almost always on One Shot Champs ( Kha, Shaco) and there is also Eve, Twitch and Rengar, that although you could see them, they will always see you first, so THEY get to decide if they want to take the fight or not. This creates a very toxic interaction where the champion with the stealth mechanic is overloaded with the power of decision while the target can only react AFTER the stealth champion decided to make their move. Think of LB and Zed. Although they also have 1 shot potential, you CAN see the shadow before the Zed gets there, and if he ults you, you KNOW where he is going to appear, same thing with LB, although she one-shots you, you see her flying for a fraction of a second before she can do anything, and if you are far away enough she might need to blow her Two dashes to get you. So there is Some potential to outplay the enemy before they manage to get their damage out. The same is not true for Inv champs since they will ALWAYS have output advantage, meaning they would have already made the input for the attack/skill and will always land. And Camouflaged champions get a similar advantage albeit with a more telegraphed window of oportunity: Rat is squishy and has to get a few shots in before using his E burst, even needs to land her W if not super fed to one-shot you (although I think she should only be able to proc it from E or Q first cast, the repeated cast from her Q makes it almost trivial to land) Maybe adding a small delay (0.25 seg for example) before being able to input certain skills. Say Shaco's E and Kha's Q. So they have to be out of stealth for 0.25 before they can use their burst, this might give the enemy champ a small but significant window to react to the enemy Champ. At least it wouldn't feel so BS as it's right now where you get burst down from stealth with no counterplay for it. Also, maybe hard CC (stun, snare) could remove Inv, adding a much-needed counterplay for Inv with the removal of oracle years ago. If you manage to guess where the Inv champ is you should be rewarded for reading your opponent's movements in some way. Edit. Another issue with the Stealth mechanic is that it's so powerful that it takes too much from the power budget of the champion. A lot of people say Eve wouldn't work without stealth, when in fact if you remove stealth you would have to introduce a new mechanic/Skill which may or may not be less frustrating to play against than stealth, and may or may not open up new ways to buff/nerf the champion. As with untargetability, the lack of counterplay is what really bothers me.

Just your regular friendly reminder that on PBE some number of patches a go there was a mechanic that allowed Akali to be revealed in her shroud if affected by immobilizing CC. But it never came to live servers despite it feeling actually fair to play against. Longest invisibility in the game, by the way, at *7 seconds max rank* with the only drawback being limited to your big ol' donut. Next longest invisibilities? Two champs tie - Qiyana's brush Q and Shaco Q max rank - at *3.5 seconds each*. If you somehow have a more frustrating invisibility than *Shaco*, the champ literally designed around being a frustrating experience to fight, then something is up.

"The only champ with spam stealth and a defensive skill is Vayne" Yea alright I guess I'll just imagine the kai'sa ult doesn't shield as she jumps into invis for the 5th time in a team fight

Twin Shadows was a good counterplay option until they removed it. It was my main counter when I played as a support. You know counterplay through teamwork, something modern league doesn't like.

I play pike and I like to see how they react when I go camouflage and reappear it s a unique sensation

A reworked stealth could be an option, and it could work with the idea of "someone is looking at me" Its the idea of the stealthed champion that walks close to you that might "highten" your sences, the idea of "i realize someone is looking at me, but i cant see that person, so i am on the look out for it" It might be a buff in visibility or an icon that becomes visible when the champ is really close to you

Vars, my husband, I need you to tell ud why no one plays Qiyana or why she's perfectly design, you decide

Wish Oracle lense making them targetable to attack. Would need to see ingame if thats balanced. But I think it would be worth to try out that new mechanic.

I'm honestly surprised they haven't made the "stealth trapper" archetype by now. Someone (ideally support) who roams the map placing strategic traps and stealth while having very little up front damage and instead focusing on getting advantage through foresight and accurate predictions

I think longer stealths should be camo, while shorter ones like kha'zix ult should be regular invis. I feel like Shaco is an outlier because his q gives him a blink + a good amount of invis.

I think it's nice from a design perspective that the assassins have some kind of stealth while the fighters type have some kind of shield or protection to go all in no sneaky way

There are two issues I have with stealth. First, vayne. Second, they don't leave stealth if they get hit like they do with camoflage. If you were to make it so that after .5s or so, any non-dot damage would kick them out of stealth

Bit late but I feel camo is much more frustrating to deal with. Having a champion suddenly appear on you without you having any idea is completely unfun especially if they came from an area that you had warded. Invis is only temporary and unless it's on shaco/Akali it doesn't last long enough to be really annoying

as you said the problem with invisiblity is that u cant attack them with targeted spells and AA which is half of abilities

To reinforce your point, i want to talk about a character called Flicker. Flicker was a playable character in vainglory and in my opinion, he was an absolutely brilliantly designed, stealth based support. For context, Vainglory was another moba except it doesn’t really exist anymore due to not making enough money. Flicker’s passive and ultimate were his bread and butter stealth mechanics. His passive was that whenever he stayed in brush for a small period of time, he went invisible and got a massive movement speed increase and his ult was channeled global stealth for his entire team for like 8/10/12 seconds. He was also a support character with little to no ratios and low damage soft crowd control for his other abilities. I really remembered Flicker when you mentioned that fact about support characters not having any invisibility but I think he is a good reinforcement of your argument because even though he by himself was extremely annoying, people hated his ult far far more than his passive.

Invisible Sona isn't scary? Sona going Invisible and getting a perfect 5-man ult says otherwise

but input lag, latency, and reaction speed aside. having the experience to predict their moves and use good guess work to prepare your mouse and screen to their skills is what negates a lot of latency issues. simply by just hitting the spot they know is the next location.

The way HotS does it is real nice. Basically, you can see stealthed characters' outlines very slightly whenever they move, think like Sweeper on a stealthed unit but less obvious. However, after staying still for like 2 seconds or whatever, they become fully invisible.