After Xia Luo, why hero alliance no longer see combo hero?
If you’ve ever watched the backstory of the League of Legends, I’m sure you know the relationships between the heroes in it like the back of your hand. For example, Barbarian King and Ash are husband and wife, Draven and Northerner are brothers, and Lucian and Xena are a loving couple. But unfortunately, these relationships are not reflected in the game, and even the combination of Lucian and the goddess Saina is a joint team of Lucian and Nami. This makes many players feel very sad.
In 2017, the emergence of the pair of combination heroes, Xia and Luo, caught the eyes of players. This hero pair not only traverses the battlefield handsomely, but also enjoys mutual attribute bonuses. It’s now been six years, but why did the designers abandon this highly acclaimed idea?
It turns out that to design a pair of combination heroes is a very tedious task. First of all, judging by the most popular skins, combo-type heroes usually have a set of skins, and each set of skins has to incorporate a variety of interactive effects, which undoubtedly makes it more difficult to develop. In addition, the original skins of the heroes themselves need to be specially designed, which further increases the difficulty.
In response, the designers said that this design was very laborious. Initially, the skins of the two heroes were always released together. However, there was a hiccup in 2018, which was the choice of Kasumi and Luo for the skins of Aizu and Baolan after Team IG won the championship. However, due to the conflict with the previous year’s SSG team’s championship skin, the designers of course did not agree. In the end, A Shui compromised.
However, Baolan was the exception to the rule, and the designers had to create an independently released skin for Luo. Since then, the designers have been trying a new approach. No longer designing a common city return effect for the Xia and Luo skins, citing that there are too few players in double-row, but do we really believe that reason?
However, the most important factor is the hero skill set. Since they are combo heroes, two heroes will definitely be strongest when they are together. Therefore, ADC (long-range physical output) and support are the best combination, and other positions are obviously not suitable. As an example, in choosing these two heroes, you are almost revealing your game strategy to your opponent.
Moreover, it is very difficult to design the balance of a pair of combo heroes. Just nerfing or strengthening one of the heroes is equivalent to indirectly nerfing or strengthening the other. Take the appearance of Xia and Luo as an example, if you choose to pair Luo with other heroes, Luo itself will be very weak. If you strengthen Luo, then this combination will become very powerful again.
Ultimately, the designers had no choice but to nerf the linking effect between the two heroes. Originally, combo heroes were supposed to be together in order to utilize the linkage effect, but in the game League of Legends, there are just too many options for players. Combo-type heroes not only have to work with their partner, but also with other heroes. However, once the bond between heroes is weakened, then the purpose of designing combo heroes is lost.
In fact, combo heroes don’t necessarily have to be like Xia and Luo, as long as the skill mechanics of the two heroes can collaborate with each other, they can form a synergy. For example, the current Shamira and Riel combos, as well as the Lucian and Nami combos, don’t have a strict bonding effect, but the matching of skill attributes can still bring huge bonuses to players.
So why hasn’t a second group of Xia Luo appeared in League of Legends? What is your opinion?
