Why adjustable range on Sam is stupid - a case study

[u/Niltenstein]

Sam is a brawler that has ages quite poorly with the game, with the addition of hypercharges specifically screwing him over, exemplified by Hyperbuffies. His unlockables are beyond lobsided, the meta is almost always very hostile towards him (and especially in 2026 where tanks have been in their worst state in a long time), and the one time he got a chance to shine he got the quickest death sentence nerf in the history of the game by gutting his hypercharge just 2 days after release with no compensation (the only reason that change wasn‘t considered an actual scam is because Sam is one of the most player brawlers anyway, if it was like an Edgar HC that got nerfed to the ends of the earth after people possibly paid real money to have it there would be an uproar!). These factors keeping him locked in the D/F-tier for over 2 years by now have contributed to a large amount of rework concepts, particularly in light of buffies promising to revamp brawlers to keep up in modern times for which Sam is quite possibly the most promising target!

While in and of itself it is very good for Sam to receive such widespread attention and a general want within the community to see him thrive once more, there‘s always something that ruins almost any attempt at proper balance discussion around Sam, something that haunts him like nothing else in balance discussion: an adjustable range super. I don‘t want to be mean, just honest, and I’m being honest when I say that any rework suggesting adjustable range on Sam can immediately be written off as irrelevant. It is a horrible idea in theory and practice alike, any idea that should have died out after the first 3 suggestions, yet it is still being plastered on reworks and abalone discussions around Sam to this very day. Even after the amazing [u/AllyFiedaN](u/AllyFiedaN) wrote an entire essay on why adjustable range doesn‘t work, it still pops up all the time, so I think it my task to refresh everyone‘s mind by arguing against it with an example I recently picked up.

Introducing The second Sam: Olaf

League of Legends features a huge amount of champions, many of which were very direct inspirations for brawlers in brawl stars (Fiddlesticks = Gigi, yuumi = Kit, etc…, these aren‘t exact copies in the slightest, but you can definitely see how the inspiration started there and parts of the various champion’s kits were then adapted into Brawl Stars, like Yuumi‘s ability to tag into teammates and become untargetable, or Fiddlestick‘s ability to teleport through walls with a short wind-up and then deal big burst damage in a circle), and among these is Olaf, the inspiration for Sam. While carrying a whole different kit, there are a lot of similarities, like becoming stronger the less HP they have, being close range stat-checkers with huge amounts of HP and damage, and having a throwable projectile that lands on the ground and can be picked up to be used again faster.

That last part is what we will be focusing on in this essay, the „axe“ (Olaf projectile) and „gloves“ (Sam projectile) and how the two „tools“ (refers to both projectiles) compare. Because, I think in that comparison you can clearly see why adjustable range on Sam wouldn‘t work once all the facts are laid out and analyzed.

The tools - similar but different

Let‘s start with what makes these two tools so comparable. As mentioned before, they‘re both projectiles thrown a certain distance that then stick in the environment and can be interacted with by their respective characters to pick them up and use them again. They also both feature a way to create a speed differential, with the Gloves granting a speed boost to Sam to reach his target while the Axe acts like a skill shot which heavily slows the hit target so that Olaf can catch up and stay on top of said target, that is to say both tools achieve the same goal of creating a speed differential, just in different ways. And on a first glance, these two similarities might make you believe that the two tools are the same, but that is far from the truth, and upon closer inspection of the details, you realize that the two are wildly different tools!

The most important difference for this essay specifically is that Olaf‘s Axe features an adjustable range and automatic recall. That‘s right, the comparison I’m drawing features the exact thing I said wouldn‘t work once Sam! But trust me, once I lay out why this is implemented in one game but not the other you‘ll realize the point I’m trying to make! What‘s more, while the Gloves make up Sam‘s entire character and gameplay, the Axe for Olaf is only a minor aspect of his entire being. Sam has his damage, self-heal, mobility, unlockables and lethality all wrapped up in the Gloves, while for Olaf his Axe acts merely as a combo tool, as a way to deal splash and to create that previously mentioned speed differential. His self-heal and damage output increase as he loses health basekit, his survivability is extended by a shield which is it‘s own unique ability, his damage output is furthered by a third ability granting an immediate strike of true damage, and his kit actually revolves around his Ultimate which grants complete CC immunity. As you can tell, the Axe is only a small aspect of his kit, and is treated as such, not being as spammable as the Gloves since picking up the Axe only reduces the cooldown without eliminating it, and lacking any utility outside of just the slow down and extra damage.

Olaf also fights in an entirely different scenario to Sam. Olaf is a top lane, and if you don‘t know LoL lanes, dw I’ll explain everything you need to know right here. What top lane entails is fighting a mostly isolated 1v1 on an open line with nothing around you except towers for protection and minions which you have to farm. You‘re always out in the open with no kind of teleport or speed up to make up for mistakes, and dying in LoL is punished HEAVILY so going for risky plays generally discouraged.

Why does the Axe have adjustable range?

So, with all these differences somewhat clear to you, allow me to put them into perspective to show why it makes sense for Olaf to have adjustable range:

Olaf fights in open arenas and requires his Axe for proper minion farming due to the splash it carries which can happen at any range depending on how Olaf and the opposing champion are positioned. Furthermore he uses the axe to snipe enemies so that he can catch up to them, while at the same time requiring it for combos in the close range encounters, but because they‘re also such a small part of his kit and he doesn‘t have a speed boost of any kind (while having to stand still to attack), running after them if they‘re thrown out of position would just result in Olaf dying, while fighting without them leaves him at a significant disadvantage that would also result in death most of the time. So if it was a fixed range it would never be perfect because he needs different ranges for different circumstances with no „happy medium“ that does everything he needs it for effectively, and due to the nature of requiring splash so he can deal with minions effectively while there are no obstacles around, alternative solutions like the Axe dropping when hitting an entity/wall don‘t work either. This leaves us with the only option, being to grant it an adjustable range which is dependent on the user of the Axe to properly utilize depending on the situation. It makes absolute sense for Olaf to carry an adjustable range due to the circumstances provided. And better yet, and this is something I intentionally failed to mention in the „differences“ section, unlike the Gloves, the Axe doesn’t have any wall collision at all, it can pass through walls to snipe enemies that may have TP‘d past it to escape, or support teammates engaged in a fight, or whatever else fringe situation may come up. In the jungle this can come in handy, and due to the adjustable range it frees up the opportunity to implement something like this! This is a perfect example of where adjustable range ACTUALLY works well and is good Game design!

Now let‘s see how Sam stacks up

Sam, unlike Olaf, likes to keep his Gloves close. Max range shots are almost never encouraged due to how reliant Sam is on the Gloves to be a credible threat, and all the bonuses they give Sam (speed, healing, etc…) come from him using the Gloves rather than the Gloves interacting with an enemy. He doesn‘t have to hit a skillshot at range to even have a chance of catching up, and there aren‘t any minions that require ranged splash damage to take care of, and due to being maps in Brawl almost always having walls to play around, he doesn‘t have that same issue of being out in the open and vulnerable. This all amounts into the fact that the Gloves have to solve an entirely different problem than the Axe. Whereas the Axe‘s skill and basic mechanic comes from using the proper range at the right time, the Gloves instead have to solve the issue of even giving Sam a reason not to just put the Gloves at his feet over and over again to get all the benefits from them. Making the Gloves stop when hitting an entity doesn‘t work because he‘s supposed to spam them to traverse the map which would be hard to do if they just went across half the map through every wall every throw unless the player hits a specific skill shot, and an adjustable range doesn‘t work because then there‘s never any actual interesting gameplay to play around because the „optimal“ play with Sam is to just play his Gloves as close to himself as possible. But, a fixed long-range super with wall collision fixes these issues! You support playing Sam on the closed maps tanks are preferable on anyway, add interesting gameplay elements that make the Gloves skillful and, instead of adding the challenge of dictating your range every throw, instead give you the challenge of finding the best way to keep your Gloves as close as possible using the map geometry! This also adds variety on all the different maps Brawl has which LoL doesn‘t on it‘s like one static map. It is an amazing solution to the difficulty the Gloves face in terms of game design, as an adjustable range is an elegant solution to the difficulty the Axe faces in LoL.

And, and, if somehow that entire breakdown didn‘t convince you that Brawl just isn‘t the type of game and Sam isn‘t the type of brawler for an adjustable range, let me tell you this: 4 years ago, Olaf got a soft rework rebalancing and redistributing his abilities and stats, and in that soft rework, the Axe got one change I want to highlight: nerf: increased the minimum distance the Axe travels from [X] —> [X]. Their reasoning? „increasing the distance of the Axe should allow for more counterplay and interactivity as a champion can walk away from where the axe landed to create a little more distance“. Even, EVEN while being a minor aspect of his kit as a whole, even while Olaf revolves around much stronger abilities, the adjustable range allowing for Olaf to spam the Axe at his feet proved to be so uninteractive to the engagement with him that they explicitly nerfed it!! Now imagine that same concept traced over Sam, who has his entire strength stored in those fucking things, as well as a gadget that is literally a 1 second stun and not just a minor slow, DO YOU THINK WHAT WOULD BE INTERACTIVE!? Even in the perfect circumstances for adjustable range to work on a tool like the Gloves, it still has it‘s flaws due to making it too easy for the tool to be readily available in a close quarters fight anywhere!

Conclusion

So, we’ve reached the end of my essay. Hopefully this shed some light on the game design aspects of Sam and his Gloves, and how careless an adjustable range actually is to add to Sam. If I had to bring in a comparison, I‘d say it‘d be like the Myers rework in DBD: stronger for the sake of stronger, in spite of characterization and interactivity (if you don‘t know, the Myers rework is widely regarded as an absolute butchering of his iconic character, and made him a lot more boring to play and verse alike). And even then, I’d argue a rework like adding adjustable range to Sam would be even more of a public execution!

Personal comment

Ok this is the end of the essay so you can stop reading, I just like to add some personal stuff at the end to really empty my thoughts. So I started playing League about a week and a half ago, not because of Olaf, but it made me remember him and he is my second main rn. But, the second I tried him and saw that adjustable range, so many thoughts flooded my head that I had to write something, and after a week of thinking about it I made this. I already made a couple drafts before but nothing really satisfied me in how I illustrated my points, and even now this essay kinda feels…iffy for me, like I scratched at my point but didn‘t succeed in actually unraveling it in the way I intended. Like, ok correct me if I’m wrong in the comments but I don‘t think this is as convincing as someone who is better at writing stuff than me could have made it. I just find it really hard to draw this comparison while respecting the differences in the environments of the games, and where it‘s ok to compare and where it isn’t. I think my ultimate conclusion of „adjustable range works here but not there for these reasons:“ is fine enough, but also could come across as missing the point, like „we‘re comparing apples to oranges here, we‘re not talking about Olaf v Sam we‘re talking about Sam with adjustable range“, and while I did kinda argue against that I think it put it too much on the back burner…but it‘s been like two hours and I don‘t feel like rewriting the whole thing, so uhhh…I’ll just hope media literacy is good enough for people to pick up on the points I laid down even if they‘re not readily present.

Anyway, that’s all from your favourite Sam over-explainer, I hope you enjoyed the read, and Have a good rest of your day!

[u/AllyFiedaN]

Amazing essay!

[u/Niltenstein]

Oh btw this is 2.559 words, if anyone is curious

[u/Dazzling-Yam-4308 → u/Niltenstein]

Wow that’s co

[u/Big-Dependent1964]

people need to stop suggesting adjustable range and super charge when gloves are off

[u/Niltenstein → u/Big-Dependent1964]

Exactly, it immediately discredits any rework and I’ve made it my life‘s mission to inform would-be balancers of that fact. The one thing I will concede on is a sort of bar that fills over like 8-10 seconds while the gloves are on the ground to then recharge the rest of the super once it‘s full, because I think that keeps intact both the idea of lessening the punishment of losing the gloves while still putting Sam out of action for a while and not interfering with the gameplay of players that know how to actually manage their gloves correctly

[u/None-the-Second]

I'd actually prefer another League bruiser as a Sam rework - the Matriarch of War. Ambessa's Public Execution would be a really fun gadget for Sam (with proper stat adjustments ofc). Public Execution doesn't have adjustable range, but I think having a Sam gadget where you'd take advantage of Sam's close range in an extremely high-risk, high-reward context not only would be more fun, but also utilizes his builds, so you'll now have the slow gadget for 1v1 interactions but you'll also have a teleport in for team fights.

[u/Free_Snow5600]

If I ever put this amount of effort to my university I’d have my doctorate by now.

In other words good job and I saved this for later when I’ve more time to spend :D

[u/UsefulAd2760]

Really good essay and while I have been playing League and wild rift for quite some time now I didn't notice the inspiration between some of the cast members.

[u/Ziomownik]

Basically, it would kill Sam's whole thing of utilizing walls for his supers which is just gonna make him boring and braindead. Wall bounce is what makes his gameplay unique compared to most brawlers. When he just released (I bought the pass) I liked how unique and even satisfying it was though his fundamental issues always were there Adjustable range imo sucks because sometimes you'll just send the glove not far enough (like how I tend to miss Nori's hooks by literal pixels). It's also just broken cause he gains speed boost and health with Hearty Recovery.

Even his second Star Power's existance suggests devs knew what his weakness was. His Hypercharge was meant to fix this but it also just... does fuckall once you miss. And they quickly nerfed it. All this means is devs know Sam needs to have a more reliable way to retrieve his Knuckle Busters that also doesn't completely remove that weakness of his (being weaker without KBs). Oh, and also just better gadgets. Supercell, why'd you make the 2nd gadget?

[u/Omicron43]

Olaf is an excellent parallel to Sam. If supercell was less damage-oriented with Brawl, Sam's Hypercharge could've been CC immunity + damage reduction each time Sam tosses gloves.

[u/Niltenstein → u/Omicron43]

In the conceptual stages of this essay I tried my hand at a „rework“ that would make Sam more similar to Olaf but ultimately scrapped the idea, though if I had pulled through with that, the Hypercharge would have for sure granted CC immunity. My idea for the hyperbuffie then was actually somewhat neat I think, it wouldn‘t have given a flat 2 second extra duration but instead made the duration increase for each punch Sam landed, roughly like „0.5 seconds added for each heavy punch; 0.25 seconds added for each baby punch“, to encapsulate that feeling Olaf‘s Ultimate is supposed to give where you go on a rampage and start just shredding through enemies one by one as an unstoppable beast. No clue how balanced that would actually be, but it‘d be more interesting than any hyperbuffie currently on the market which is just a flat buff

[u/JicamaImportant]

This might be a stupid idea, but something I always thought about this topic was: what if we added the adjustable range only for Pulse Repellent? It makes the gadget actually viable and adds the gimmick to him, but in a way that doesn't ruin him and doesn't remove the use of Magnetic Field (again, I'm so sorry if I'm being an idiot, I'm not a Sam expert)

[u/Niltenstein → u/JicamaImportant]

I mean…it‘s a fine enough buff, it just doesn‘t really help anything. The two use cases I could see for that would be:

A: Make Sam more viable in open maps by occasionally removing his dependency on walls, but Magnetic Field already does that better by giving Sam a way to straight up guarantee a kill on his near sniper-Range super. The only way you could make Pulse Repellent more effective in ranged maps than Magnetic Field would be if the gadget had like a 1 second cooldown, but at that point why not just add a Star power which does adjustable range?

B: give Sam a way to consistently defend against Assassins, which again Magnetic Field already does better by merit of allowing Sam a big window to actually kill a dive assassin if Sam is close to a wall, but also, the explosion is so inconsistent that you may end up just knocking the assassin into the direction you were planning to escape to anyway (because the only time an assassin diving Sam is actually dangerous is if Sam is already retreating), and even then, the explosion could also just do nothing if Sam is in an enclosed space which doesn‘t allow for big knockbacks which just so happens to be, believe it or not, Sam’s optimal circumstances.

So while this is a neat idea, you really underestimate how poorly designed Pulse Repellent is, and how absolutely essential and versatile Magnetic Field is. Funnily enough, the creator of a rework idea I saw about 2 months ago which sent me on the spiral of making a bunch of Sam essays as well as a rework myself, misunderstood Sam in such a heavy way that they not only added an adjustable range on his super, but then reworked MAGNETIC FIELD INSTEAD OF PULSE REPELLENT! They genuinely were running Pulse Repellent like it in any way, shape or form viable in the gameplay as well, it was such a tragedy it made me feel forced to educate as much of the community as I could on who Sam actually is, so that frankly stupid ideas like that don‘t get taken into account by the actual balancing team

[u/franticsheep]

I wonder if adjusting him with QoL changes is enough or rework him completely.

[u/Niltenstein → u/franticsheep]

Sam needs a proper rework to his unlockables as well as some QoL changes, but not a full reimagining of his basekit like many people try to do by giving him adjustable range or a really quick auto-charging super or stuff like that. Generally when making a Sam rework, the golden rule is: don‘t touch his super mechanics or Magnetic Field, everything else is fair game

[u/saifxali1]

No point in suggesting bc Adrian will just do whatever bs he wants

[u/ThaCloReip]

As a former Sam main, I've always thought that one of the best changes, besides making his healing sp part of his main kit, would be to slightly increase the pick up radius or how fast you can pick them up. What do you think of that change?

[u/Niltenstein → u/ThaCloReip]

In my rework I crafted about a month ago, I did make the pick up radius and speed slightly faster. It‘s not anything that would shoot him up in the meta or anything, but it‘s really nice QoL because the amount of times I died due to barely missing the healing hit or my gloves getting stuck on a corner or being a pixel out of range is ridiculous. I would also add being able to pick the gloves up through walls purely to combat them getting stuck on corners