Hello Everyone, before I post how I feel about each champion I'd like to introduce myself. My name is Fade and I am a competitive fighting game player, a League of Legends player and currently in my second prestige of Awesomenauts. Basically I'm trying to say that I've played a lot and dealt with a lot of balancing issues in my time. That being said lets run through some things.
First things first, I think this game is fairly well balanced. For the most part every character is a decent representation of a role that exists in League and or other Moba type games. Builds clearly determine what role you will be best at but one thing that has become clear is just like in any other game it is best to COMMIT TO AN IDEA. By doing this you clearly get the best out of each overall and then can customize how you want your power to evolve.
Leon-Melee Attack Damage Carry / Assassin / JUNGLER
Lets talk about the character everyone seems to be complaining about. The first build mentioned in this thread talked about Clone army build. Without going into the specifics of build order my basic concern about this build is that it can't kill champions. If people are diligent about pushing you back and are building towards champion murdering this build falls off very quickly because purchasing clone upgrades or tongue before building Attack damage is going to gimp you especially if you play the mirror.
You can also build this character as a hard carry building damage, speed, and lifesteal to become unkillable and able to destroy turrets without blinking, you will also be able to 1v1 anyone but will not have the ability to kill champions early very easily, something that again can be countered.
The last spec that I find to be dangerous is backstab based and is obviously very scary. It destroys champions and builds into almost a hard carry spec but is very expensive and is often hurt midgame because of its inability to kill champions who have high health and massive damage (Clunk) without some massive risk to your own life. (Adding slow to this spec is hilarious)
This champion is great and versatile but he has weaknesses. Leon's who build health early can't kill and can be countered by stealing their jungle and gimping their money, Leons with high damage abilities should be focused at all costs because of their LOW HEALTH POOLS.
Basically this character wins right now because he has the best jungle control and no 1v1 counter. What beats Leon is an aggressive jungler like Froggy G who can stay safe and steal his money or Team focusing. He might still end up being top. Anyone who doesn't build Surprise is an idiot, very cheap for what it does.
(If any nerfs were suggested the one thing I would agree with is nerfing stealth to break on damage. That's pretty fair.)
Let's move on
Voltar - Healer / Support / "Bottom Lane"
This champion is excellent as well he quickly became my second favorite after unlocking and I believe his is a good choice for most players. He is extremely weak early. No matter what you do if you are alone YOU WILL DIE. This is pretty obvious as you play the game anywhere but behind another champion. Until you have drones and honestly Drone upgrades you shouldn't be alone. That being said once you have those you can pretty much escape anything with boots as well, his movement speed is crazy, his damage output is good but becomes amazing in Teamfights which is the real reason I think his drones are so strong.
His major issue is that if he is alone at turret, you are losing that turret. It really doesnt matter what he does he can't stop someone from pushing the lane alone unless they are extremely low health and even then he can only annoy them he can't really stop them from farming.
(Can I get something that makes attacking Beam better? Can healing buffs buff it too? Otherwise I dont see it ever being viable, everything else is pretty amazing)
Lonestar - AD Carry / Bottom Lane
I don't really understand the thought that Lonestar is bad. I'm pretty sure people are just stupid. Something people are not thinking about right now is CSing. Once you realize how easy it is for Lonestar to stand and collect money I think people will change their tune. Yes he is an extremely expensive champion but when you max his gun he does a ton of damage very very fast to both towers and players making him the best pusher in the game, his dynamite when upgraded can take out 3/4's of a non upgraded lifebar....on top of that you can make that dynamite either stick around for a ton of time or you can make it blind people so they can't really get away. He is probably the hardest character out of the box besides Yuri to build well because he does require a lot of things but I'm not sure that is going to matter as Clunk/Lonestar/Voltar is an extremely cheap and versatile team. It only is beaten by Clunk/Leon/Voltar because hey guess what SHACO COUNTERS GRAVES....WHO WOULDA * THUNK IT. And if Clunk and Lonestar build Explosion/Dynamite early Leon pretty much gets destroyed by all the high damage.
Also SuperBreed 2.0 upgrade after Full Bullet Damage and Speed is ridiculously good for lane destruction.
(Technoviking explosion could be bigger or could make people stay on the bull till it exploded, 520 for full damage is a little steep considering attack speed is also crucial but I don't think it's UP)
Clunk-Tank/ AP Nuke / SOLO TOP LANE
Alright so lets talk about something that * bothers me to no end. How is it that most Clunks don't understand that they don't need to build health. I'm pretty positive at this point that if you build Tree and Piggy Bank on Clunk you are better off than having any health upgrades. Why you ask? Because with Clunk you can get Tree, Boots, and Bite with a solid drop. That means in about a minute and a half you can B to get Vacuum to gain health. At this point IMO you should IMMEDIATELY build Bomb and then Slow. The Bomb's ability to slow is one of the scariest things in this game. By making what might be the most powerful single damage ability in the game slow the opponent no one will be willing to mess with you. If you have a healer on your team and you forgo the damage reduction for cooldown reduction you are now the scariest single character there is in any team fight...you have to be killed...but since you bought boots and bite and probably got Vacuum 2 you should be basically unkillable and death isn't a big deal because stacks build fast.
(Question does upgrading the value pack and the other gun stuff do anything or is value pack there so I can buy area and homing upgrades? Regardless I think the gun is weak and needs an upgrade)
Froggy G - AP Nuke / Support / Jungle / (Alternate AD Carry?) / Solo Top
This character is...odd. He might be the most versatile of the whole cast but he is severely lacking in his early game no matter what and I feel that that part of him is extremely rigid. I am unwilling to go without boots on any character especially considering how fast Leon moves and controls the jungle so I feel like I have to start Tree and then B for Boots as soon as Im at 135. Now this is the big problem. While I would do that on any character no matter what I want to do on Froggy if I want to build Splash build, if I want to build tornado, if I want to build shotgun, I feel that I HAVE to build splash and stun first. Without those things I feel gimped and straight up die. Lets look at what can come off of building splash and stun first.
Splash Damage build- After stun you build straight damage to splash and don't bother with tornado. This build gives you a massive amount of burst damage and enables you to murder characters with low health with ease. You often follow this by getting tornado with invincibility and movement speed. This lets you essentially burn someone for free without taking any damage but makes you vulnerable to very patient play and high health pools. A good build but not my favorite.
(It should be noted that I believe tornado to be garbage without duration and movement speed making your options fairly limited in what you choose. Also to be noted why the * does tornado make me slower than base movement speed without upgrades this is the main problem with this move and forces you to spend gold on that instead of the other more interesting upgrades like explosion...also I feel explosion should be bigger just like I said for Techno Viking.)
Tornado Hilarity- This build involves going straight into tornado after splash building movement speed duration and attack speed evenly as you upgrade. This build is my favorite as I think it gives you the highest sustainable damage against all targets and gives you the ability to replace some of the damage on splash with cooldown reduction for a better late game combo. Sacrificing the shield is tough but the damage upgrade is considerable with attack speed.
Shotgun Spec-First off I think this spec COULD be awesome, it has potential to outpower Lonestar in raw turret damage and would kill champions quickly after Splash stun much like tornado. Basically you build damage, attack speed and extra bullet on his gun and go to town. The main problem with it is THIS BUILD IS TOO EXPENSIVE. I think it's something like 220 to upgrade damage, 150 3 times for speed and 250 each for bullets??!!!!???!!?? You have to be lvl 15 just to make that work and by that time you've been getting pooped on because all you had was a splash that stunned and did no damage OR you didn't get the splash and were completely useless. This build could be amazing but the character needs to be cheaper to run as an AD carry to do this.
(Tweak movement speed on Tornado, fix prices on gun, amazing character but hard to make work)
Yuri- Support/BotLane
I think this character is weak. Not incredibly so but...just weak enough where I would rather someone play Voltar every time. Lets look at his options. If you decide to run Bubble spec you have to run duration otherwise you are absolutely useless so thats the obvious choice. Most Yuri's are going to run the better healing buff as well as their team will probably not have a healer but if you do then it opens up more options. But basically those two are probably always going to be there so it brings us to what to get last. More slowing is good but ultimately isn't amazing as someone like Clunk might be able to walk in and not give a * killing your whole team with an explosion while the slow simply makes it funnier that you didn't get away. Size of the field is a good choice as it gives Yuri the ability to harrass from farther away which he is very good at and help the team but if he gets caught by Leon there is no chance of escape. My personal favorite is the team speed buff as it gives Yuri faster speed for both flying and for running meaning the little poo flinger can escape from things he really shouldn't be able to. His Laser is lackluster but not terrible especially if you build pulling damage and hit speed he can really take some people out. Carpet bomb and regular mines are good but I think duration may be a necessity to make him a real space control threat. Overall he is...underexplored but generally loses to other characters based on mobility. Maybe if the laser had a pushback it wouldn't be so bad.
This is my list of things I have learned and believe about the game. It is in the order of what I would consider the best to worst characters but with 6 characters this game is based on team comps and matchups so there is no real tierlist here just an opinion of a 3 day meta.
That all being said there are a lot of things people aren't thinking about right now
Farming- It doesn't seem like people understand how important this is. Kill creeps control the jungle collect money have * intercourse with wenches, its all about the money. If you keep farming hard enough your team will pull ahead if you don't get steamrolled.
Jungle control - While each maps jungle is different each map has a section of neutral monsters which give gold, not only that but there is neutral gold in the jungle on all maps. Right now the current meta of the Sarlacc pit seems to be 2 top 1 bot. This would be fine if there was someone on each team who was constantly going to the upper platform and getting the gold but that seems to be a rarity. IMO I would consider a smarter strat to be send 1 top and 2 bot so that you can support a gank top, control the sarlacc pit and control your half of the jungle while trying to grab the other half as well. This is just something I would think to be obvious but it would appear I am very wrong.
Counter Jungling - So say someone does have very good control of the jungle and is constantly watching it, say you are on the large jungle map and they are just ganking from the bush platforms, well you go steal the lower neutral minions on your side while your team pushes bot tower, they now have a choice to make. The other team can either chase you to your safe escape zone or stop the tower from being pushed. If they go after you tower gets pushed if they go after tower you get jungle control. It's all very simple.
Thank you all for reading I'm sure there is more I can say. Please take with a grain of salt but also be aware that I am the best.
