Quick Gameplay Thoughts: July 18

RiotMeddler·7/18/2018, 3:34:27 PM·1 votes·92,217 views

Hi folks,

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Twisted Treeline

8.14 has nerfs to gold funneling on SR. We kept those nerfs out of TT however for that patch since we didn't want to add it last minute without enough consideration and at least some TT specific bug testing. 8.15's a possibility however, and to help us understand whether we should add the gold funneling penalty would be great to get a bunch of feedback from you folks.

What would be particularly helpful here:

A clear for or against position on the gold funneling penalty on TT
Some context on how much TT you've played and when (links to match history, boards posts with longer thoughts as potential examples)

To explain the second point one concern we've got is that when we talk about gold funneling on TT a lot of voices in the discussion seem to be well meaning people who don't actually play TT. Intent there seems to be good, but we're particularly looking for feedback from people with a lot of experience on the map since their experience will change the most with any changes we make.

Syndra

We'll be looking at some possible Syndra buffs in 8.15. She was one of the mages we considered in 8.14, but come patch lock we didn't have changes we were happy with. We think she's a bit weak in normal play, not particularly weak in pro, so want to add power in ways that pro is less sensitive to if possible, avoid pushing her back to pick/ban there. Options we're currently considering are increased Q damage at max rank from her passive (trying to avoid adding too much early power) or improved base stats.

Adding Color to the Rune UI

As mentioned a little while back we're working on some small stuff with the Runes selection UI to make it a bit smoother. First piece of that's adding color to the rune tree symbols as below to make it a bit easier to navigate between trees really quickly.

https://imgur.com/a/gwNdVJk

More work on stuff like this to come. Let us know if you've got ideas for similar changes that would be helpful and something we might be able to get in pretty quickly.

417 Comments

Leaves7/18/2018, 4:26:06 PM53 votes

Good morning, Meddler.

In regards to twisted treeline gold funneling (known there as support meta): last season I was Challenger in NA 3s for most of the season (Feb - Aug, and Oct). I played over 500 games of the game mode throughout last year, but hardly any before that. I am by no means anywhere close to being one of the best at 3s, and I do not play it much currently (mainly due to hating support comp), but I feel like some higher elo input might be helpful on this matter. I mainly played bot lane (which is basically mid lane in summoners rift), but I also played probably 50-80 games as the support in gold funneling strats.

After you hit diamond in 3s, it's like flicking on a switch and the entire meta changes. Up until then you almost exclusively see jungle meta with picks sucks as kayn, reksai, and Zac being common choices due to their ability to affect both lanes easily from many angles. At this elo both metas are considered equally good, since players are not yet coordinated enough to make full use of support meta's advantages. After diamond, though, you almost exclusively run into support comp picks, partially because you'll see a lot of the Challenger players smurfing in this elo. Having such a hard meta shift based on elo, much more severe than any seen on summoners rift, seems pretty bad for the 3s community since the way the game is played fundamentally changes based on what your rank is, meaning players hoping to get into high elo will have to basically throw away everything they've practiced and learned up until this point.

When high elo players explain 3s strategies (such as in the 3s Bible by Divine), you'll usually see them refer to 3 different possible matchups: jungle vs jungle, jungle vs support, and support vs support. Support vs support is by far the least fun of the 3 options, as due to the nature of gold funneling, one lost fight basically decides a game with little to no means of comeback, since the winning team will invade and take all jungle camps of the losing team, starving the losing side of any means of income. As someone who has played with, as, and against support comps, it feels very bad knowing that a game can be decided not only by one lost fight but also by which carry is the most efficient at farming.

Support vs jungle is similarly frustrating to play, mainly from the jungle side. This matchup feels like a race against time, as many of the funnel carries played in 3s are ones that can easily 1v3 with a lead (master yi, Kayle, Darius, yasuo, etc). This matchup puts the pressure on the jungler to be extremely aggressive, as even a moderate lead (3-5k gold) against support comp is not enough to guarantee a win. You can see this in the winrates of champions on the map-- champions only played in support comps can and frequently rise to over 60% winrates overall (such as Kayle and Taric), because the very nature of their strategy means they get to circumvent the usual interaction with other players that would otherwise keep their weak early games in check.

The final matchup, jungle vs jungle, is also very snowbally, but doesn't rely on a single person's performance as much as the other two matchups. A game can be won by a bot laner instead of only a jungler or hypercarry, which means bot lane can play more aggressive picks and be rewarded for gaining leads, whereas in support comp you'll frequently see players encouraged to pick passive utility champions like Morgana, Veigar, and Karma (although not exclusively). From the bot lane perspective, having a jungler on one or both teams makes the game more interesting-- bot lane in 3s is much like top lane on Summoners Rift, in that when both teams are running support comp you are frequently just left to your own devices and are rarely in any position of agency over the outcome of the game. Even if you gain a lead over the other bot laner, it doesn't matter if the enemy Yi and Taric have steamrolled your teammates.

I personally would like to see the jungle item changes implemented in twisted treeline. I don't think the ones currently live on Summoners Rift will kill the strategy in any way, mainly because people are stubborn. Those who are good at support meta will continue to do it, and I think this nerf (reducing lane gold when you have the most gold and a jungle item) will merely slow down support comp instead of killing it. Unlike summoners rift funneling, most hyper carries (with the exception of a couple, like Mordekaiser) on Twisted Treeline will rush their completed tier 3 jungle item, so this nerf will only effect their income up until that point, since it only applies to tiers 1 and 2. Slowing down their first item purchase will give jungle comp teams a larger window to impact a support comp at their weakest stage, which will make support vs jungle more of a skill matchup instead of a race against the clock. It'll also have the benefit of slowing down support vs support games, which in my experience have been very volatile and quick games depending on the matchup. Support comp does NOT need to be flat out removed, as it does actually help out quite a lot with overall champion diversity when it isn't crowding out jungle meta. Right now the balance is not even though, support comp is considered so much better in high elo that you're basically guaranteed a loss in a match with 2 even teams if you play vs a support comp team. If support comp can be reigned back in a bit with a nerf like this, then you might actually see a jungler more than once every 30 games in Challenger.

KING XXXI7/18/2018, 4:57:46 PM24 votes

Hello! Challenger 3's player here. (Although I've been in Korea for the past month so my rank may have fluctuated a bit.)

I've climbed the Twisted Treeline ladder for the past 600 games, peaking Challenger 400 LP in NA by exclusively solo queue. I would occasionally (very rarely) attempt support comp with insurmountable success. Even during games when incredibly behind, support items are too gold efficient and you can simply farm to catch up incredibly quickly. This makes support comp incredibly oppressive with very little leg room to mess up.

Most Challengers in Twisted Treeline indeed use supp comp, often times going as far as using hyper support comps, by putting a utility mage bottom lane, which will offer even more benefits to the hyper carry while also having an extremely easy laning phase (Morgana, Karma, etc). They may tell you that jungle vs support is an equal playing field, but don't be mistaken, they are top rank players, and they want to stay there. The rank 1, 2, and 3 being the most dominant and oppressive trio queue support comp users in the game, and they will comfortably tell you that the meta is in a good spot.

While I don't think support comp should be killed outright, it definitely does not need to be in such a strong spot as it is right now. I think jungle comps should have an equal chance of winning as support comps do. Right now, the only way to hit the top ranks is to trio hyper support comp, but I think that's not right. Please give us solo queue players a chance to hit the top ranks. Thanks :D

Cas7/18/2018, 5:44:47 PM16 votes

Hey Meddler. Speaking of me, I am a 3v3 player from EUW and finished last season as rank 3 challenger (peaked rank 1 there and got up to 900lp this season) and played around 1k 3v3 rankeds so far!

Like most other high elo EUW players I'm an adcovate of the hyper carry meta in TT. Not only because it's more fun and interactive in my opinion but also because of the jungle meta being unhealty for the gamemode itself. I'm not saying that gold funneling is the only way to play the map but it's by far the one with the most fights and snowball potential. There are many people out there saying that gold funneling promotes 10-15 minutes of farming the jungle and the lane without having a battle in lane, but that's actually nonsense. In high elo 3v3 (speaking of EUW only) we usually have a fight after the first jungle rotation which leads to a first blood in most situations. In contrast playing jungle meta you do a full clear, try a gank or get vision over the relic while waiting for your camps to get off cooldown.

Now my question is why you would want to nerf a playstyle which actually PROMOTES playing aggressively.

Ways of making TTL a better place for players:

Fix the bug where you get an extra smite charge if you smite before 1:27
Higher the death timers so that invading/fighting is more lucrative for "lower elo players" who claim that gold funneling leads to a slower game speed.
Lower jungle cooldowns and maybe even add a new camp. (My idea for the last point is to combine the altars with a new monster camp. You first have to kill the monster before you can take the altar!)
Buff altars this idea can coexist with adding a monster on the altar
Premade restrictions. Challengers and Master players should not be able to tripleq with d5-2

And for my last point, for the love of god, please don't remove support items from the twisted treeline.

Z3nith7/18/2018, 5:42:27 PM16 votes

Hi Meddler,

I am challenger in 3v3 with over 1000 games played (350 ranked this season, ~500 normal games and an unknown but easily > 500 from last season and preseason) and I'm against the full implementation of the SR funnel nerfs for TT and would probably stop playing the mode if jg meta was forced as the only viable option, though I do believe there are some changes which would help to balance between both metas without completely killing one off.

To begin with I'll go over some points as to why support meta isn't inherently a toxic playstyle as others, typically those in lower ranks who have much less experience as/against it would suggest. Many people think that when they play jg meta against a support meta team they don't have a realistic opportunity to win, however this is extremely untrue as for the first 8-10 minutes jg meta has full control if they know what to do. For some reason people don't understand that they have pressure as a jg/top duo against a hyper/sup duo before the carry has actually achieved their game plan of scaling and achieving an item threshold before their opponents, there are clear windows where they can force fights with the support meta duo, particularly in the choke from the jungle to toplane where a jungler such as Poppy can force a proactive fight or steal away camps whilst they are top. In all the complaints I've seen both in/after game and on boards/reddit players don't actually understand how they are meant to approach a game against support meta, for the most part they think that doing nothing and scaling like they are used to is the best and perhaps only option whereas this couldn't be further from the truth.

Furthermore a look at meta matchups reveals that support meta creates the MOST interactivity between teams which seems to be one of the major complaints against it. In jg vs support there are many different opportunities to interact as I've mentioned already which makes the game interesting, I've played both sides of this and there are clear windows of interaction between the duos and also botlane, especially when you draft a winning matchup and can pressure the enemy jungle as 3. For support vs support there are countless factors you have to consider from drafting, clearing (do we do 3 camps like usual, invade if we are stronger as a team or maybe do 2 camps to get to lane first to create a beneficial laning environment), knowing timings (when to base, go back to jungle or for support to roam bot) and knowing who has pressure in the 2v2 matchup. This dynamic is probably the most interesting thing about the map and is similar to botlane on SR but with additional considerations. In my opinion both jg vs support and support vs support create the most diverse games with a large range of viable picks for every role.

However, in all of my experience jg vs jg has a very binary game flow where you can usually determine the winner just based on champions selected if everything is played as it should be. Extreme nerfs to funneling will force either jg vs jg every game or some weird, new meta which is impossible to predict accurately. Complaints from jg meta players around low interactivity are ironic in my opinion as jg isn't currently well balanced, there is far too much downtime between clearing camps and them respawning but there aren't that many opportunities to gank either with the way the map is, so for the most part these games devolve into clearing camps and sitting in a bush waiting for something to happen or spam ganking bot with Zac/Rek'sai/Kayn who can get over walls which is a big limiting factor in how ganks can occur. This is boring and is purely based on champion matchups, if you can get early pushing top/bot and a decent ganking jungler the game is basically over since you can transition pressure around the map to steal camps/kill people/take turrets until your lead is so big it doesn't matter if the enemy champions outscale yours. This isn't enjoyable for me at all, but completely gutting support meta would make this the reality, I'd much rather both options to coexist at similar power levels.

The current nerf to funnel on SR is, in my opinion too harsh for TT and would push the meta too far towards jg vs jg every single game with the potential for some weird workarounds for support meta to hold on. Even if I'm wrong as support is still viable/optimal it would be an uneven nerf since not all champions are hit the same way, those who don't rush a complete jungle item such as Yasuo or Tiamat users become significantly worse for no real reason. Reducing the gold penalty from 10 to maybe 3-5 gold per minion would be a compromise which allows for support meta to exist but jg to have a larger window of pressure in the early game before the carry completes their item to remove the penalty. This may work as a temporary solution but I don't think it is the best available approach, I think there are several better, low resource changes which would achieve this goal in a better way. To start with I think support items could have reduced gp10, on TT they still give 4 per 10 which means supports get their items quickly and their carry is more resilient to jg meta with FoTM and Knights Vow being completed early. Extending the time it takes to get these items allows for the support/carry to be punished more easily and a lead to be established by a jg meta team. Another possible change is making camps harder/take longer to kill by multiple champions but unaffected by only 1 champion, this would result in more time for the toplaner to shove the first wave to turret and force the duo top, potentially reducing the number of camps they can do in their first clear so that the jungler could steal their camps or force a 2v2 fight when they aren't as high a level as they normally are. This penalty would be removed automatically instead of at a arbitrary time as is the case with the proposed change as the carry tends to solo camps after a certain point so the support can roam, get vision etc. These were just some ideas I quickly thought of, there is no doubt that a better solution could be found with more time taken to consider factors and test the impact of changes.

To conclude, I'm against the nerf being implemented as is but am open to support meta nerfs as long as they aren't overly harsh and it remains as a viable choice. The success of any change will be based on time invested, I really don't want something rushed out which could ruin the mode for me, I'd prefer this take a bit longer to be tested/discussed before being released. I could easily talk about this more and would be happy to do so if anyone is interested/wants clarification.

Thanks for your time.

ABACINATE7/18/2018, 4:42:32 PM15 votes

Yes hello,

I have 10,000+ games of treeline on accounts on NA and EUW, last season I attained D5 solely playing JG Teemo using the jg meta. I am in favor of funneling nerfs, as I feel at a high level of play running support carry is so much better than running jungle meta that played at equal levels of skill, the hypercarry comp will win roughly 75% of the time. It's simply better, and I'm hoping a nerf will bring it in line so that playing hypercarry is an option, but not a necessity.

Additionally I would like to see some of the valid criticisms hypercarry-preferrers have addressed, namely that junglers who do not have a wallhop are often left with periods of downtime owing to the map layout. Changes to vision around the vilemaw pit could greatly assist this. Additionally I would like to see an additional objective added at the center of the map to incite teamfighting. Vilemaw is generally an afterthought, the map could REALLY benefit from a central objective where the health relic spawns that encourages teamfighting. I'd also like to potentially see the center wall removed the bottom of the top lane potentially with some brush added to make room for this new objective.

Also, I hate that you removed dominion and don't even run real dominion as a featured mode. I would love to see some of the best parts of dominion and ascension combined into a permanent, teamfighting-oriented fast paced mode.

SulphoR7/18/2018, 4:33:50 PM14 votes

@Meddler Hi Meddler,

I was D1 Last season in promos for masters on TT where i played predominently the "hyper" carry in toplane. i personally beleive that gold funneling should be nerfed. This is mainly due to how the champion select works in 3's where champion power levels are distorted much further in the gamemode than compared to standard 5's. Most games are either won in champion select or within the first 5 minutes and then the slow bleed begins. Hyper meta makes this 10 times worse and if you have managed to get behind due to either scaling or pushing issues, you stay behind and there is pretty much not a single thing you can do to stop this from happening unless the enemy messes up hard or divine intervention happens and your botlane goes 15/0 rather than you making a valuable play. I can give an example of this below.

Lets say your funneling comp being ran is mordekaiser poppy into xin and leona . Early on due to the insane waveclear and XP advantage mordekaisers W gives he immediatly gets lane and jungle priority over xin / leona. This in turn lets him rotate and farm MUCH faster than the opposing enemy and force his lane in faster. Where mordekaiser does not have to worry about his resources, or poppies HP due to the absurd heal he has, the enemy xin and leona both have health and manacosts where mordekaisers combo pretty much does not at this stage of the game. Thanks to the fact that they are healthier, clear faster and push harder, Mordekaiser poppy can apply pressure to xin and leona in their own jungle and attempt to steal camps away. with level and HP advantage, leona and xin would not be able to engage on and kill mordekaiser poppy due to poppies kit and mordekaisers W heal. It would be VERY dangerous to attempt such an engage due to walls being very common around the jungle and giving up first blood to a hyper whos already outleveling you would pretty much end the game then and there. Thanks to this pressure you are applying, the enemy bottom laner would most likely have to come up and attempt to help you zone the hyper off alter and your camps. This in turn puts your botlaner behind due bottom wave being very easy for mages to push in early game. Doing this gets to the point where you cant even contest the enemy. because suddenly at 15 minutes in. you have 150 cs and they have over 200. You are "statistically" 4~ kills down even if you havent died to them. All from you having an unideal champion select.

While i can understand that champions are inherenently supposed to have strong phases in the game and spike at different power levels in games. In TT where you have the advantage or disadvantage into hyper, the snowball escelates due to how short the game modes are and how much farm you can get due to everything being so close together where powerspikes dont matter as much as they should.

While this is a "perfect counter" scenario. This is VERY common in high elo where numberous counters exist. (yi > nunu ) ( olaf > anything CC) (yasuo and braum > adc comps), (morde > melee) (kayle nunu, fuck those guys) (taric in general) Once you get into this position from champion select it feels like there is very little you can proactively do to get yourself out of the situation short of all three of you sitting in a bush and hoping the enemy is stupid enough to facecheck you.

That being said. Jungle meta is also pretty discusting in terms of the level of camping toplaners get due to jungle having way too much downtime on camps. but thats a story for another time. Overall the mode needs work.

Nikki Andersen7/18/2018, 3:37:14 PM12 votes

can u please do this again? https://i.imgur.com/FHRbA8b.png

Frozen Diva7/18/2018, 3:38:23 PM12 votes

Can't wait for the changes to Liss's passive & E. Sounds incredibly exciting. Lissandra

You've mentioned a partial reset for her W (but it did not hit the mark?) Do you have another approach or something new you can tell us about that or Liss in general? :)

A small knockback like Volibears E sounds nice imo but it might be too powerful. Maybe moving some dmg from E to W instead?

[slayer-jinx-wink]

Auve7/18/2018, 5:12:20 PM12 votes

Heya Meddler! My IGN is Auve and as of this comment I have almost 2500 normals played in 3v3 and over 1000 3v3 Ranked games over the seasons stretching back to Season 3. More than just being a fun map for me, it's sort of become the main way I enjoy League of Legends these days. The small, quick fights early on in the game remind me of old RPG games I played when I was much younger. Contrary to what I see a lot of people commenting, I actually prefer TT because of more interactions both with lane opponents and with the enemy team earlier on in the game. I also write guides for TT and help to organize a Tier List for newer players coming to learn about the map (which can be found here ).

And yes, I play support meta and I would like to stand opposed to the SR funneling changes being introduced to TT. In my view, these changes would not remove support meta from 3's but would cause it to mutate into something else that is far more passive but nonetheless just as strong - ignoring the early purchase of jungle items. This isn't an option in 5's where jungle items are exceedingly important in clearing the jungle, but they aren't necessary with lane/camps so close together in TT. The fundamental issue of funneling can be addressed in 5's, but it fails to apply the same way in 3's because the map is so small. Funneling is a natural response to having so much gold/experience in close proximity to the lanes.

The following are my contentions in the defense of support meta as it exists currently:

Interactivity - Contrary to popular belief, the interactivity of Support Meta is gravely misunderstood. Jungle Meta teams frequently find themselves playing against a passive Support Meta team. Rather than taking the initiative to make proactive invades to shut down the gold resources of the enemy Support Meta, the Jungle Meta team becomes frustrated that the other team isn't interested in fighting them. But how strange! If there is a kill lane in Summoner's Rift like Darius/Jarvan, why would the Adc + Support in bot lane try to fight them? Wouldn't you expect the ADC to farm slowly until they are able to win that fight? It's the exact same way in TT - Jungle Meta teams naturally have an early advantage because both the top and jungle have access to gold and experience. The problem isn't with Jungle vs. Support meta here, it's actually in Pressure vs. Scaling. You see this exact same interaction in Support Meta vs. Support Meta! A Support Meta team with aggressive picks like Renekton/Leona is going to have to be very proactive in invading a comp such as Yi/Taric. One team dramatically outscales the other - it's only common sense that you will need to use your early advantage to shut down their scaling. Games where this is understood tend to be very interactive with one team invading the enemy jungle and the other defending every jungle camp they can.
Evolving Opinions - last year when I began learning how to play Support Meta, the community in NA was almost entirely against it. Getting flamed in all chat during each game was common - even from your own teammates (not unlike how playing funneling meta in SR was this year). However, as understanding of the map has evolved and more and more players have found guides or discord channels to ask their questions, the opinion on the meta among TT players is shifting. When people learn how to play the meta and understand its strengths/weaknesses, they see how the macro strategy and lane interactions are different than Jungle Meta but nonetheless skillful. I help to run a discord channel focused on 3v3, and we have a fairly large base of players who are constantly asking questions about how to play as/against support meta. We help people find groups to play with, give them build order for very specific sets of hypercarry champions, and provide education for how to integrate this meta into the Twisted Treeline.
The Jungle Meta Problem - nevertheless, I cannot ignore the elephant in the room. Even taking into account strong Jungle Meta players who understand Support Meta and how to counter it, there is an advantage in favor of Support Meta. In Challenger TT across all regions, Jungle Meta is woefully under represented. I believe this is because of a lack of early objectives for Jungle Meta to take advantage of. While Support Meta gets to rotate between camps and top lane, TT Junglers only have 3 quick camps to clear and a lot of downtime. Ideally they would be able to keep up invades against Support Meta teams, but the reality is that even if the Jungle team get multiple aces the Support team loses so little and will continue to scale. I realize that devoting resources to add more camps or a monster buff would be too much for Riot at this time. So I have some suggestions that would increase Jungle Meta's early objective strength while being fairly low resource changes. . -Add First Turret Gold - This is very needed, since good Jungle Meta teams frequently get the first turret against Support Meta. This would reward them a little bit for doing that. I don't believe there is much danger of this buffing Support Meta since they take much longer to come online than Jungle Meta. Likewise, I don't think this makes the quality of Jungle v. Jungle worse, since that matchup is largely snowball based anyways. . -Increase Early Death Timers - one of the defenses Support Meta has at its disposal are very quick early death timers. They can be faster than recalling in some instances. This definitely needs to change - Junglers should be rewarded by clearing the enemy jungle after an ace, not barely starting one camp before the enemy hyper is back alive. . -Reduce Vile'maw Spawn Timer - giving a 3 man Jungle team the opportunity to clear Vile'maw earlier in the game following an ace would help them open up the map and give them an easier path to victory. Vile'maw has stats that scale down with game-time and a somewhat complicated "Boss Fight" that, when mastered, would allow teams as early as after their first item to clear him with no problem (I think 5:00 would be an acceptable spawn for him rather than 10:00). . Notice that all of these changes give initiative to the Jungle Meta team and reward early fighting / proactivity. I think these are the types of changes that should be added to balance Jungle v. Support, rather than a heavy handed band-aid solution created for 5v5.
Heavy Handed Band-Aid Solution - probably the most common response I saw in discord when our community learned that the Funneling Changes might be implemented for 3's was that it wouldn't address the problem and it didn't feel like it was for us. It wasn't a 3v3 change, it was a 5v5 one that would be slapped on without consideration of how Funneling works differently on each map. I'm happy to see Meddler polling our community rather than the voices of 5v5 against Funneling, but also consider that a different map might require different types of changes. At the very least, wait until Pre-Season to implement changes against Support Meta. Our ranked system has existed with this meta for years and suddenly changing it now so close to the end of the season would heavily undermine all of the work and theory-crafting dedicated by our already small, fragile population.

In conclusion, Support Meta is frequently misunderstood in 3's. People are learning overtime how to play with/against it - both of which leads to games with higher interactivity. Yes, Jungle Meta needs some help, but I think there are better solutions available that don't just copy-paste an idea from 5's. Changing Funneling in 5's so quickly makes sense since it hasn't existed in the meta for years - but it has in 3's. Our season is nearly at an end, and it wouldn't make sense to dramatically change the way our map is played with only a quarter of the season left.

I hope this reaches you well,

Auve

WOLVES Hero7/18/2018, 8:15:43 PM12 votes

Hey Meddler,

just wanted to leave my comment on some feedback for Twisted Treeline. I have been Rank 1 EUW last season.

Gold funneling is not completely overpowered in 3v3, because the map is in itself really small and therefore easy to move around. The main strategy of gold funneling is to get one person ahead as much as possible, but if both sides use the same strategy, how is that in any way different than a standard 5v5 Botlane? Except for the jungle gold being there to speed up the gamepace.

The concern with avoiding each other just to farm up is also overrated, since every game is a bloodbath. There is just too little space and too telegraphed movement for people to avoid each other.

The main issue i see, is that supportive items are just way too gold efficient and easily obtainable ( Knight's Vow/Zeke's/Solari ), which almost gives you no other option than to play one tank-style champion that opt's fully into these items.

Other problems that i see on the map :

• Jungle camps have too much downtime, playing "jungle meta" effectively meaning that you clear all 3 camps and have a mexican staredown next to the health relic until one camp respawns ( or one of the laners literally run it down )

• Vilemaw is way too weak and game deciding, any two champions ( including one with jungle item ) can kill her as soon as she spawns. Attack speed reliant champions ( master yi / kaisa ) can even solo her. But once she is down, almost always an inhibitor is assured ( if not the game ), there is just no way 3 champions can deal with the amoun of damage reduction the minions receive.

• Invading for the altar is never a solid decision, unless you killed the enemies. The small margin of sustain doesn't make up for the risk. And since there is only 1 item item 3104 that gives you a benefit for really taking the risk. Maybe add some kind of dynamic buff and automatically re-assign the altar to the respective team afterwards while locking it for recapture, or some new altar related items, specific for 3v3.

Problems outside of the map :

Matchmaking is really not working out. Sometimes you wait for 20 minutes, just to play against the SAME players, that have literally just been sitting in Q aswell. On other times you Q up for 5 minutes to get to play against players of 2 divisions skill difference.

Thanks for your time and listening to feedback summoner 30

Nawd7/19/2018, 12:04:02 AM12 votes

Hello, I am a 5v5 Coach that helps soloq players and competitive teams and high elo 3v3 player who wants to give an insight to the recent popularity of "gold funneling". For the record, I hit 230lp Masters in 3v3 last season and hit master this season whilst playing all roles which include but are not limited to : Top lane, jungle, hypercarry, support and botlane apc.

There is a main problem with the hypercarry/gold funnelling; when the strategy works, the enemy finds it the most unfun to play against as there is little that they can do to stop it. This is due to the lack of understanding of the hypercarry /gold funnelling strategy. Here are a few points that are specifically focused towards 3v3.

I use the term hypercarry because that is the term we used to use for characters like Tristana and Kog’Maw when they got to a certain point in the game where they were unstoppable with the right mechanics. This is similar in 3v3, in which you put your resources into the hypercarry and they will carry ONLY if they have the right mechanics. The “gold funnelling” occurring in 5v5 with combos consisting of Master Yi + Taric / Karthus + Nunu has a lower level of complexity to execute in comparison to the hypercarry meta in 3v3. The hypercarry is dependent on their synergy with their support as well as the botlane (discussed later). Not being co-ordinated will often just lead to the hypercarry combo feeding a double kill for free. This includes but is not limited to: Bad trades, towerdiving, overextending, greeding for more gold i.e. recalling too late/holding too much gold. These are a few of the consequences in 3v3 whereas in 5v5, dying will result in less consequences as a kill will typically only result in 300g when the hypercarry has the WHOLE of the jungle to farm + midlane. Bear in mind that the camp disparity between 3v3 and 5v5 is 3 to 8 (including scuttle crabs). If we do calculations based on average early game gold, 3v3 earns approximately 300g (including GoT) in 1 jungle clear w/o minions. In 5v5, this jungle clear includes both crabs and results in approximately 750g (including GoT). We should also take note that between camps, the 5v5 meta will typically push out midlane and then proceed to farming the jungle whereas in the 3v3 meta, the jungler typically full clears / clears 2 out of 3 camps before proceeding to lane.

Personally, I really dislike the use of the term ‘gold funnelling’ as it feels like it came into existence last month due to the popularity spurt in 5v5. Invading the enemy jungle for a camp is more dangerous as lanes are much closer to each other. In the early game before the hyper carry finishes their jungle item, the enemy is actually more often than not ahead. This is because the support will always be lower in gold than the enemy jungle and top laner. The objective of a laner in a hypercarry matchup would not be to farm but to disrupt the enemy jungler as much as possible so that they do not farm efficiently. A common strategy on EUW is for the “normal lane” team to perma push the top wave into tower meaning that the enemy hypercarry would lose gold and exp.

Very commonly, in the normal lane vs hypercarry matchup, the normal laner will push the wave in and that would be the end of their job. But it is important to realise is that this is what hypercarries want. If you do not punish them for farming, they will become monsters in the mid - late game. In the early game, these normal laners should push their advantage as they will literally have free farm. If the jungler is doing a camp, there is wasted gold and exp. Similarly, the “normal lane” will invade while top is pushed which further denies gold and exp as it pressures the jungler into making a decision between farming the lane or clearing the jungle. As the hyper carry, there are evidently flaws that the enemy can capitalise on and by doing so; you can cause grief to the hypercarry/support combo. Falling behind as a hypercarry typically results in an instant loss contrary to belief, as lack of levels and gold means a lot more in 3v3 than 5v5 as power spikes are reached earlier. Botlane plays a huge role in this strategy as if bot loses their lane; the game has a low chance to win.

I wanted to touch on the point that there is a larger variety of champions you can play in support. A few to mention; Sion, Bard, Maokai, Leona, Nunu, Alistar. The list really goes on if you're trying to be creative. The supports mentioned all have different strengths that deny engages and counter other commoly used picks. Taric is a powerhouse late game. has his weakness which is adcs from ranged and being pushed under tower in the early game in which he is quite kiteable. With the level disparity he only comes online after lv 6 which is quite far into the game for the support player in the hypercarry combo.

I want to note the fact that it is 100% possible to hit challenger and win games without using the hypercarry/ "gold funneling" strategem that is currently being used. An example would be an acquaintance of mine in 3v3: Chaosmustachen Chasosustachen has hit challenger multiple times with a team comp that he calls “the chaos meta” in which he primarily used Bard, Anivia and Poppy against hypercarry / jungle comps. The Bard and poppy would take smite ignite/heal and clear the jungle together then take the hypercarry to botlane. The Anivia would stall until level 2/3 in which she would level her W. After Bard hits lvl 2 in botlane, they push it out and gank using a portal to toplane and set up Poppy charges on Anivia’s Wall as well as Bard’s Stun. This cc lock would almost always guarantee kills if not prepared for and was primarily used to deny a single lane any gold and exp. This is one of the examples of devising your own counter to the hypercarry and there are many more to be discovered as the player count in 3v3 is evidently a marginal fraction of 5v5.

This little rant here has happened because it feels like every time I see a post on the reddit front page, it ends up gaining a lot of traction. There are many problems in the game and I know many players who have thoughts that could push the game in the right direction. If we are being frank, the last few patches of Summoner's Rift have flipped the "meta". We can see that Riot is trying to adjust this meta by buffing up Marksman's again and giving a nerf to overfarmed junglers however the main point from this statement is that Riot intends to keep the meta in 5v5 the same as it has been from the end of Season 1: Top, Jungle, Mid , Marksman and Support. Similarly, as a 3v3 player I ask, that the hypercarry meta is left untouched because it has been the **meta **of the 3v3 map for the past 3 years and there are disadvantages and advantages to this strategy which need to be researched more before shutting down this strategy. A very strong point that Doublelift mentioned in his recent video on the everchanging League of Legends is that “Instead of nerfing the strong, buff the weaker champions up to scale”.

These are just points that are currently on my mind as I add to this discussion and may not be everything. Do enquire about any points I have made and I will do my best to reply.

Sayong7/18/2018, 7:08:45 PM10 votes

Hello Meddler. Is there any chance we are getting changes or buffs to Phoenix Stance Udyr soon? The ability to flex into that spell or build around it is not there anymore, at least in comparison to what Tiger offers, but also as a standalone. One of the biggest problems is that the stance is supposed to give a PvE advantage, but Tiger Stance outclasses it even there. The ability is just too weak especially on the first ranks (second rank is double the damage compared to first rank entirely). It definitely needs a buff early game and a scaling curve into the mid and late game because it falls off hard against nonsquishies in particular. While Tiger scales off base AD and Udyr has a big AD growth combined with the AS steroid which ties into the AD growth, Phoenix Stance caps at level 9.

Phoenix Stance should in theory and historically allow Udyr to go for more durable and onhit focused builds to work for base damages, while Tiger is the more AD damage focused stance. In my opinion Udyr should have a % max hp damage on the spell (if it's on cone it can be harder to balance some lane Udyr shenanigans with guinsoo's splitpush, but if it's on the aura it can be hard to balance 5xx5 hybrid iterations I think, so it's a tricky choice). Other possible options outside % damage would be great as well.

This is coming from an Udyr player who played in master-challenger elo in the last 3 seasons with thousands of games, just for the sake of accurate feedback. The best thing that I have with Udyr is that his seemingly narrowed kit allowed for a lot of flexibility from game to game like choosing the damage type, building and playing closer to certain classes while still being a true Juggernaut, being all rounded to dps, dive, soak, disrupt, peel and basically be a Jack of all trades.

Another thing that is worth mentioning is that it would be cool if Phoenix Stance would have a good AoE impact against champions. Or Maybe it could have a similar mechanic to a weird Brand passive? Or maybe it could bounce around other people after 2-3 procs? I don't know, but that would give Udyr more flexibility depending on team comps and make the ability a worth niche.

I don't think that leaving it in the gutter for about 2 years now considering how things evolved overall is a good thing even if Udyr himself is doing fine with Tiger Stance and it doesn't look like much of a problem. This is supporting a champion's kit, fantasy and historical value. What would you tell to someone picking up league to learn that "oh that is the dead spell of league of legends that nobody cares about". I would also like to mention that working around and playing with AP Udyr is very lackluster, as itemisation for Tiger Stance is so much better because you also get damage to your auto attacks, while AP to Phoenix only increases the spell damage. The spell needs good base damage to work on its own while you are able to make use of stuff like Wit's End and Sheen for DPS.

List of things Phoenix Stance needs

higher general power
higher damage and especially clearspeed early game to differentiate between the skirmishing spell vs the farming and waveclear spell
damage curve scaling into mid and lategame and better efficiency against all targets; one of the obvious solutions being adding a % damage . There could also be a base AD ratio (an AD ratio on Phoenix Stance was explored in the Inner Beast iteration of Udyr on PBE from my memory) It could be a small base AD ratio that would not make worth building AD items for it (so it can still differentiate from Tiger stance), but it would work well with his high base AD and give a slight boost to items like Trinity Force.
HIGHLY OPTIONAL - make Phoenix Stance have a bigger AoE impact against champions in skirmishes and teamfights.

I hope you understood everything I tried to put out and I really hope for the best of this part of Udyr. Much love to Riot and all the great gameplay design changes this year.

SPX muyuu7/18/2018, 5:03:50 PM10 votes

Hi Meddler,

I want to share my opinion about any potential TT changes. First of all, for my experience of playing 3s:

I started playing 3s in S4; I can't remember my rank but I think it was diamond
In S5 I reached challenger with 2 friends
In S6 I was part of the rank 1 team with Heisenberg, ZetN, Dynamicc, etc. and actively ranked it up with them
In S7 I reached a top ~15 challenger spot as a solo player before I decayed towards the end and dropped to around the middle of challenger. This has all been achieved on the EUW server and I hope it adds some credit towards my opinion.

Now for my opinion: Please do NOT make jungle the go-to meta again, unless there are some big systematic map changes. Jungle vs jungle matches are absolutely HORRIBLE to play in. Thanks to the jungler literally having only 3 camps to farm, it just makes it very, very obvious where he is at any time. The entire "excitement" of a jungler is simply non-existant on this map, as long as the people playing actually have experience on this map. Furthermore, thanks to only 3 camps existing, junglers are pretty much forced to either fight early on or literally sit as a ward in a brush and do nothing. Farming up efficiently? Doesn't exist. Creating a jungle pathing to optimize gank uptime? Doesn't exist. Any kind of jungle path variety? Doesn't exist. Any sort of gank path variety? Nope. Champpool? Good luck literally playing the same 6 junglers for the entirety of the Meta. Thanks to everything what makes jungle good in 5s, not existing in 3s, there is pretty much no variety in what happens in the games: The junglers and lanes will have a forced fight around 2:30 or so and the winner of that fight usually wins the game, as even just stealing a single camp off the jungler is pretty much gamedeciding at high elo. The discrepancy between junglers that can jump the middle wall towards top/botlane and the ones that can't, is incredibly frustrating, even if the wallhoppers are not the best junglers to actually play. The best junglers are actually mostly the same champs that are played as support anyway (with a few exceptions), so it's not like having both metas would really increase the variety.

Jungle meta is an incredibly boring and repetetive style of play and should NOT be encouraged. Support meta has it's own problems, but pretty much any meta has issues; in comparison to jungle it is much better. There is a huge pool of hypers available to play: We just had a tournament on EUW with a bunch of challenger teams from EUW and EUNE and a lot of new picks were shown like Orianna hyper. In the finals, literally 5 hypers were banned each game and we still had 4 different hypers in total in just two games played. The support pool has a decent variation with supports you usually don't get to play on 5s as well like Poppy or sejuani, but it has more traditional supports like Braum, Taric and Leona available as well. In the ardent meta, we even had enchanters being viable. The mage pool is potentially the smallest, but it still has a decent variety imho. Furthermore, supp meta has way more possibilites to play out the game: You can pick a super aggressive duo like Renekton Sejuani, who want to fight asap, constantly invade and pressure with their botlane mage; you can pick a scaling comp like Yi Taric which has to give up a lot in the early game and try to get as much as they can to scale; you can go in between; you can optimize jungle/lane farm via an efficient route or you can take a slightly inefficient route to avoid the enemy duo for the first couple of minuts, etc etc. As a smart player, you actually have a lot of variety for things you can do.

In my opinion, most people complaining about the support meta simply do not understand it, get beaten by it and instead of admitting their mistake they want it removed so they can play their "standard" way (which they know from 5s already) OR they simply do not want to play support themselves (an issue in low elo especially). Instead of listening to those people, you should rather provide some form of explanation of the meta for new players and actively encourage them to learn and play it themselves. Maybe a small video/text guide combination that is linked in the client or smth like that. You could as well try to balance it further to increase the variety even more, but that might be difficult to do.

IxtaliKing7/18/2018, 3:38:01 PM8 votes

Hey Meddler, any word on who's taking over the work on Karma from Rickless?

Ivannite7/18/2018, 10:33:26 PM8 votes

Hello, Twisted Treeline players and Meddler! I have played Twisted Treeline since Season 1 and have loved it ever since. I tried to rant as little as possible, but I tried to mainly explain the thought process of how I have viewed 3v3 as a game mode and how it has been played over the years while simultaneously giving details about the gameplay. Anyways, here are my thoughts on Twisted Treeline and keep in mind these are just my opinions and said thoughts should only be taken in for Twisted Treeline alone, not effecting other game modes . :)

http://puu.sh/AYY8g/83419a15ad.jpg

^ Screenshot of my games played on Normal Twisted Treeline alone.

First off, let me say that I am a 3v3 bot main, and occasionally jungle as I mainly play mid or jungle on 5v5. I just played a 3v3 to take a screen shot of my games played on just 3v3 normals but I've probably played around 1k ranked games as well. I am currently Platinum 1 in ranked 3v3 with only 10 wins and I've been Diamond the past 3 seasons and I mainly started playing Ranked across SR and TT since Season 2. This doesn't account for my other accounts I play on as well, but when you work you can hardly gather your friends up for 5v5 all the time, sometimes you just want to play some quick games, and other times you just want to avoid the bot lane chaos. I have generally always had a fun time playing Twisted Treeline throughout the years whether it be ranked or normals aside from the funnel method. That game mode is what I hold close to my heart as home with League of Legends but the higher elo you get in ranked 3v3, the harder it becomes to have fun and really have a valued solo lane/role with the funneling method, whether it be played against, or played as. I would like to go back to trying to climb higher in ranked 3v3 but it is just too unhealthy and has been for far too long, so I just get Diamond and quit playing unless I need to stop decaying because I'd rather just avoid playing with/against the Funnel Meta altogether than play at all.

Let me follow that by saying that I have been playing League of Legends since Season 1 and Twisted Treeline has been my favorite game mode ever since I started. Twisted Treeline has primarily been idealized as a game mode without a bot lane, or pretty much a game mode only consisting of Top, Mid, and Jungle because of how long a bot laner took to scale and needed a support in lane to keep the ADC safe until they scaled. I have always liked playing a variety of champions that have solo lane skill and I have always liked playing highly impactful early to mid game champions and with Twisted Treeline it felt like it was home to that kind of player, including most of my friends. Typically playing Twisted Treeline meant that you would not play ADC due to how squishy you were, and how reliant you were on the rest of your team to peel for you with the brushes everywhere, that and if you wanted to just play a champ and build crit like an ADC there was still plenty to play.

To be fair Twisted Treeline has never been the most balanced game mode ever, i.e. back when Evelyn and Twitch would stay stealthed and chase you down in the jungle with sunfires until they could execute you, Atmog's Olaf/Cho'Gath, or Kennen obliterating your team in 3 seconds flat and the list could go on. Despite the few down sides and cheap tricks only applying to Twisted Treeline itself, it provided a unique experience of 3 players only, it taught you the values of all the unique buffs that could cater to certain champs (when they existed), invading, vision, MIA's, objectives, team comps, rotations and more, just in a faster manner due to the size of the map. All of those points I just made are TRANSFERABLE skills that can be applied to playing Summoners Rift which is key in keeping the game mode healthy and states it as being a staple part of League of Legends, and that is the MAIN POINT of my view on this whole situation.

With all that being said now let me go into the strategy itself, and how it goes for both teams. If the funnel method is played properly/above average, it nearly always wins over a jungle comp, even if the jungle comp plays their best/hardest and has a higher skill than the enemy. Also if played properly or just played safe, the funnel method offers little to no interaction because the Funnel isn't farmed yet, or if the enemy doesn't want to risk dying for farm and snowball the Funnel faster. Whether it be a Funnel vs Funnel Meta, or a Funnel vs Jungle Comp, nearly all games are decided in favor of the Funnel who got ahead over 1-2 team fights which don't even happen until mid-game (mid-game being relative to 3v3). Then they invade, get the Altar, steal the enemy jungle which puts whomever would be farming the jungle behind, and possibly takes 1-2 towers all from a single team fight and determines the game right then and there. However, once they are ahead it becomes very hard for them to lose with how hard the support can practically dive anyone, anywhere and not take damage which lets his teammates pick up the kills. The Funnel Meta is enforced with the player who I will call the "Funnel" who are usually Darius/Yasuo/Trundle/Xin Zhao/Renekton/Kai'sa/Vayne/Kayle/Kalista and most other people who are either an ADC with mobility or utility, or a Bruiser-like style of champ that has good self sustain, CC, low cooldowns, and/or high dueling potential.
The "supports" on the other hand are not always a support by nature, but rather just play the role of supporting, and most of these champs include Taric who is the king of the support role, Braum, Maokai, Leona, Nautilus, Morgana, Karma, Poppy, Sejuani, Trundle (again), Ornn, Sion and the higher the base damage while staying relatively tanky, the better. This not only allows to to "support" your Funnel by keeping them safe with CC, being able to soak a lot of damage, while having either %HP damage or just high base damage to help kill the enemy faster. On the flip side of that when played offensively, the "support" usually takes double offense summoner spells and when top lane is shoved they both go to invade the enemy jungle to steal camps and the enemy jungler cannot contest with the high amount of dueling pressure that 2 offense summoners bring and risk dying. Even if your top lane comes down, they give up farm to the tower since they had to play safe in lane and not die 1v2, so if your top lane comes down they typically might back off in the early game, but won't back off in the late game because they can easily win the 2v2 with how far ahead the Funnel is. On top of that if the bot laner comes up as well to try to defend against the invade, he risks losing lane priority or getting sandwiched by the 2v2 and his own lane and gets picked off if the enemy bot laner follows up just to CC them, so there is really never a punishment, or a reason for the Funnel and his support to NOT invade because it disrupts either the jungle or the lanes and sometimes all at once. If it is the Funnel vs Funnel Meta, then they typically won't invade at all if they are keeping the same pace of farming to avoid any risks.
Now about the AP carries/bot laners, on one hand if you are running the funnel strat, bot lane is a constant farm/shove match meanwhile your Funnel and support constantly shove and farm both lane and jungle, catching waves at the tower or invade the enemy. It is best to either play to your lane's strength as the bot laner and shove your advantage when you can, or just focus on keeping your enemy laner from leaving the lane so your Funnel can do his job and carry the game. If you are 100% playing to the Funnel Meta, you typically will also play a support-like Mage in the bot lane to provide EXTRA safety for your Funnel to carry the game the best they can, and these Mages mainly include Morgana, Zilean, Orianna, Lulu, Veigar, Karma, and ultimately Anivia (just like Taric) is either a pick or ban in most games with how strong she is. All of those champs above can decently farm and push a lane while playing safe enough to not die in lane so the Funnel can do their job and farm up until its time to team fight. On the other hand if you aren't playing the Funnel Meta as a bot laner, you STILL will just typically play safe and farm up to avoid casualties with how risk-free it is to do so, but it at least opens you up to playing aggressive bot laners to help be a true and overall deciding factor in the game.
Aside from the Funnel Meta involving a support there is another option EVEN if support items get nerfed or removed from Twisted Treeline that still involves funneling a lane and the jungle into a single player. That involves champions like Diana (she is the main culprit), who take smite, go bot and farm the lane real fast, even if they get beat up, just so they can hurry and go farm their jungle and use smite to heal any damage, get extra EXP and gold to slowly start gaining an advantage over the enemy bot laner if they choose to not do the same strat. You probably will never see this in Summoners Rift due to how long it would take to shove lane early, run from mid to a camp and back to catch minion waves, not to mention the lack of bonus mana regen and move speed that TT provides. Not only does this limit the game to making your other 2 players go top along with changing the entire typical playstyle of the game that TT used to have and SR currently has, but also heavily favors the game again in the user of smite and will heavily decide how the game is played out. This is why TT absolutely NEEDS to have the smite change, same as SR.
TL;DR: There needs to be a nerf or if not removal of support items in TT, the jungler item change DESPERATELY needs to 100% come through for TT as it did with SR as a start but it should give less minion EXP/Gold period. TT also needs to have 10 bans just as SR does. I support the idea of different strategies if they are balanced, and I am open for entirely new options of change for TT altogether such as removal of, replaced, completely new items, buffs, nerfs, map redesign as well as other possibilities to keep TT "mainly" as the idea of a mid/top/jungle role focused, fast paced game mode.

Timon7/18/2018, 9:32:11 PM6 votes

Addressing 3v3 Hello Meddler, I'm Timon, a high elo 3v3 player on EUW since Season 4. I ended every season but Season 6 on Master while being top 10 for a long time season 7/8. I play this map a lot and really like it however as you said it is not very clear what the map is and should be like. For me personally I think the map is not designed in a good way to make room for jungle meta. You have a lot of down time in camps as there are only 3 so there is no room for non ganking junglers making junglers like kayn that can easily gank a terror in lower elo where jungle meta is played. Support meta however offers many play styles as you can play ADCs to scale, bruisers to win mid game and even early game champions. Support meta has been a part of 3v3 for many seasons and is a core feature especially in higher elo. I think there should be a clear position that support meta is the way 3v3 is played. However things like the change of jungle experience being changed to only be taken by the jungler makes the support feel very underleveled so I think you should change that back so supports can have a legit level again. Also I think you should have at least one spoke person for 3v3 players so we can address issues we have with the map / gamemode so 3v3 will have a bigger audience again. 3v3 is a fun gamemode but you kind of left it in the dirt in the past. Timon

Consternation7/18/2018, 6:24:31 PM5 votes

Any thoughts on the state of Quinn? She can be an oppressive pick into many match-ups and is generally non-interactive to lane against.

Now with the TP cooldown nerfs, picking into Quinn is even more punishing because Quinn typically takes ignite and is unaffected by the nerfs.

Also, Quinn statistically scales well into the late game (likely due to her synergy with crit-chance) so simply "waiting out" the matchup isn't really an effective option either.

I personally think there needs to be more windows of opportunity to punish Quinn for mispositioning. Nerfs were done to Jayce and his disengage tool (increased cooldown) because of his oppressiveness and non-interactive laning phase. Quinn's vault has an even shorter cooldown (12-8 seconds) than pre-nerf Jayce and many gapclosers.

MoneyMonkeyGG7/18/2018, 11:55:55 PM5 votes

------------- Twisted Treeline -------------

tl;dr - Wait with adding the gold nerf on TT until next season when you should remake the map to allow interactions between junglers. Rank 1 EUW 3v3.

Main account op.gg: http://euw.op.gg/summoner/userName=moneymonkeygg

Hi! About the TT "funnel" also known as hyper/support comp. This should be left out of TT for now until next season start. It probably would not change a lot because the gold nerf is only until you have completed your jungle item. Which takes like no time. It would indeed make jungle comp a bit more reliable but there is another problem here. The map.

------------- Map ------------- The map does not let junglers do anything in my opinion. Only three camps to take in the jungle combined with the double smite in TT makes anyone complete the jungle at around 2:00. The health relic in the middle of the map spawn at 2:30 and is surrounded by brushes on each side. If a jungler would want to gank after he finished his jungle he have to pass one of the brushes. If the meta would be jungle vs jungle there would always be an enemy champion waiting there to punish an aggressive move. He would get first spell/auto on the aggressive invader/ganker and by default winning the trade, his bot laner would also know that the invade/gank is coming and can join the fight before his lane opponent. So the best thing they would be doing is just sitting in the brush passively waiting for the jungle to spawn and potentially leaching some xp from top while guarding (sitting close to the top wall of mid in the brush). This would basically repeat during most of the game.

------------- Snowballing ------------- We in TT are used to the "funnel" comp, had it for about two years or more. It's in a good state. Another thing if you would be adding the punishment to TT the map would be more heavily snowballed. Imagine that nothing would change if you added the punishment. Still funnel meta. You are in a winning matchup top and invades the enemy wolf camp at 2:35 when it spawn for the second time. You steal 100g from the enemy carry which will lead to you getting your jungle item completed a lot before the enemy carry. Forcing him to stay out farming lane minions longer that would be worth -10g each. If you can invade once you can most likely invade again, stealing another 100g. I do not have a graph on how the gold would swing but who knows, who does not like snowballs.

------------- Towers ------------- Small idea. Make the second tower left standing stronger. So if tier 3 is up and the enemy is diving your tier 2 tower that tower would be stronger, if tier 3 is down and they are diving inhib tower that tower would be stronger. Not sure what the buff would be but more damage, potentially true damage to deal with some annoying things. To hell with it, take pure damage for a part of the damage so things like Kayle/Taric would be unable to do their thing.

------------- Vilemaw ------------- Add a death announcer for our amazing Vilemaw, just like baron.

-------------LP LOSS ------------- Also please take a look on your LP system for TT. There have to be something broken there. Hit me up. A 5v5 flex person whined when he lost 26 LP. As a 3v3 player I am happy if I ONLY get -26 LP. Normal is -37 or -35. Makes the 3v3 flex a nightmare to play. Playerbase issue?..

-------------Please hit me up if you need to talk about TT Riot -------------

// MMGG

Caenen7/18/2018, 8:11:52 PM4 votes

While the knowledgeable players from higher elo than me

(Context: I'm Plat in 3v3 currently, I've historically never played much ranked compared to others however ranked 3's have been my favorite for a long time. I peaked D4 in 3's last season, where I then stopped playing)

are presenting their well stuctured arguments with some of which I'm agreeing (those pro funneling, but not opposed to any change), some disagreeing (remove funneling from 3v3), I'd like to use the former as a stepping stone to support my own single argument which reads:

The problem with the 3v3 ranked meta is not the existance of hypercarry comps, but rather the way players encounter them and the options they have in that situation.

Yes, this argument decouples itself from the the question wether or not hyper is overpowered compared to jgl meta, and just tries to answer whether or not they can coexist in a healthy state, and wether or not the proposed change would be helpful.

The opinion that the hyper meta is unfun and thereby unhealthy is a popular opinion on reddit whenever a post about 3v3 is made, and I can see why. Most importantly, I can't blame someone thinking it is: When you encounter a hyper comp for the first time in 3v3, you're likely to get steamrolled, for 2 reasons:

You're inexperienced with playing against the hyper comp, and chances are the hyper comp is, since jungle meta is basically nothing you have to learn anew on TT while hyper comps usually prepare for their new playstyle before going to ranked

this means you are unsure what the enemy champions will be capable off, and that ofc is a major disadvantage
it also means that you are almost certain to not prevent the hypercarry from sucking up all the resources they can get, which results in a massively overfed enemy since his scaling goes unchecked. It's like you were feeding and never knew it. Because you weren't proactive, because you didn't know that you needed to be!

You're more likely to face smurfs playing hypercomps than smurfs playing jungle comps, as smurfing players play what they know, which at high elo tends to be hyper comps. The ease of getting games with high natural mmr ranges due to the gamemode being less popular than SR, due to having less active support than SR, also cuts into this. This 2nd reason is the less impactful one.

The problem is that it is hard to aknowlegde that you do not know how to defeat a strategy you're new to, and struggling to do so on your own will be 'unfun' to you, obviously. Resources exists (like the '3v3 Bible' by Brizi & Divine, NA 3v3 challengers) but unlike SR, they're much more scarce and less popular - There are much fewer 3v3 streamers currently since, alas, the mode is unpopular and with it interest is low, and there is little encouragement to jump the hurdle of picking up 3v3 with the exception of a challenger jacket for the top 50 and in-game rewards (I particularly like that we got a Victorious chroma associated with the gamemode though), there is no competetive scene for 3v3, no great tournaments, no fame. These issues are all fundamental for the single issue of 'is the hyper meta healthy to 3v3', which honestly I can only so well answer without a degree or years of experience in game design: However my opinion is that in order to move forward, both metas need to stay relevant, because both have fans and neither one does fundamentally destroy another's fun or playability, only in balance hyper meta is currently a bit stronger than jgl meta (opinion), which could be changed. Implementing the same fix SR got however does seem like overkill to me.

I find that once you know what you should be doing in a Hyper mirror or a Jgl VS hyper matchup, the game becomes awesomely competetive and fun for both sides. (Reasons for and against found in the other comments all around here) And if you don't know what to watch out for in the Hyper VS jgl matchup, you can very easily lose. The map really makes you learn what 'pressure' is and how to dictate what the outcome of fight can be before it is resolved, often before it has begun. The only issue I have is that for each team there is only so many opportunities for mindgames or surprising tactics, as the age of needing wards to tell where the enemy team is going is long over, and the reworked map from late 2012 (back when the map art and visuals were a massive step of innovation) therefore feels just. that. small.

TL:DR Hyper meta is precieved as unfun (independant of if it actually is or not) because of a lack of resources and role models players know or think of, which is because of a lack of encouragement to play the mode (this incudes the things Riot could do, and the appreciation of 3v3 players by the community. These 2 things work themselves down the drain or up to glory hand-in-hand). Nerfing Hyper comps hard will not single-handedly solve the issues the mode has, and it'd be frustrating to those who do enjoy hyper comps in 3v3 not because of them being the most powerful strategy.

I appreciate feedback for this argument from anyone, native to 3v3 or not. It's been years since hyper meta was new to me, and I've enjoyed it ever since, for the most part (didn't enjoy ardent meta quite as much as the meta champions there were not my kind of taste, that's very subjective though, and it shows how change is refreshing and good). What are your experiences while you were climing the 3v3 ladder for the first time? What were your experiences with the change the meta does go though. And if you stopped playing 3v3, why is that, in your specific case?

Spideraxe7/18/2018, 6:17:55 PM4 votes

Oh yeah a while ago you said you'd give your thoughts on the state of tanks, I think you forgot to post it on that comment

Griefing Account7/18/2018, 8:01:56 PM4 votes

Greetings from oce ¯\(ツ)/¯

Currently d4.. only playing decays because a rioter murdered the mode on oce cheers @Riot GEHIRN

We can't premade past d5, we can only play ranked tt on Saturdays and sundays from 3pm to 2am? Beats me.. regardless he single handedly forced the entire oce community to play decays and hop bronze smurfs and slap low elo players around which lets be real is more fun than sitting on ur main for 2 hours amirite??????

Its even better when're forced to q solo and run into a premade of 3 ... now this is the part that irritates me, im forced to que solo with 2 randoms that don't play this mode, think about this IM DIAMOND and have fresh unranked , bronze,silver players in my games.

Now im forced to dodge because lets be real.. losing 3lp>losing 50 because the game expects you to 1v9 carry ¯\(ツ)/¯

If the funnel methods removed , ALL SUPPORT MAINS in tt will most likely leave the mode , or be forced to play a role they don't like which sucks.

Imagine nerfing summoner rift content because it was op in Twisted treeline, ????????????

This funneling methods been around for years, nobody batted an eye when "chinese boosting strat" was in every clickbait youtube title last year, teams play it in competitive now and you guys make it seem like somones discovered fire for the first time, gold wise sure its optimal what nobody else is talking about is the fact that the games literally a 2v3 because the supports literally given away all resources to the smite carry player, not only is the support gold deprived but they'll always be under leveled compared to the jungler/top ... if they get forced on they lose most 2v2 trades so i don't see the issue here ???

NightWind427/19/2018, 2:53:20 PM4 votes

Hey again!

So, Naerlyn/Nightwind here. I'm the Mordekaiser bug catcher but was also a big 3v3 player, peaking at rank 15 halfway into the season and stopping shortly after for numerous reasons including the fact that I can’t get the challenger rewards due to spending the last 3 months of the season out of Europe.

It’s not my first time discussing the state of 3v3, the last time being a 50+ word page post on the issues of 3v3, nor is it my first time discussing meta things, as I’ve been a mentor to something between 100 and 200 people from 2015 to 2017.

I hope that the fact that I stopped playing 3v3 a little bit shy of two months ago will be enough to prove that my claims aren’t biased and meant to “want Riot to keep the strats I need to climb”, while my previous post should attest of the fact that I’m dedicated and still willing to make the mode better in spite of quitting it.

http://www.lolking.net/content/gold-funneling-strat-in-twisted-treeline

I wrote in that article my opinions on the 3v3 metas.

koochario7/18/2018, 11:25:36 PM4 votes

{quoted}

Hi folks,

I watched an interesting video about the patch made by a Challenger support main. He has a lot of ideas about how the game should be changed. You can find it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwLd5Y6LcpE

One thing that I thought was interesting was his solution to gold funneling. It's clever and something I had not considered. [zombie-brand-mindblown]

Lady Faceless7/18/2018, 3:44:43 PM4 votes

Mh, well, Syndra is suffering pre-5, not in her mid game. But I get why you don't want to buff it (so she won't return to her lane bully nature, even if it is suppose to be her strenght). I'm simple not sure if buffing her Q is the way to go. Syndra already has a strong mid-power spike with her level 9 Q. Does she really needs more power in it? Changing her base stats should be better, imo.

Queš7/18/2018, 3:38:53 PM3 votes

Are you really going to give Irelia 16% bonus AD scale on passive per stack ?

Small Boobs Ahri7/18/2018, 3:40:44 PM3 votes

I don't know in which Quick Gameplay Thoughts but it's been around long enough, you said Ahri, amumu Renekton and other champions are going to have their spell icon redrawn, almost everyone got them but nothing new for her D:

Pistallion7/18/2018, 3:50:52 PM1 votes

To be honest man, this current solution to gold funneling is pretty lazy and it feels like a bandaid that hopefully will be removed when you learn how to fix it properly. I dont know what the solution would be to fix gold funneling, but it really doesnt effect solo queue much at all. After some changes that were made, its hardly done in solo queue at least from plat and below from my experience. I dont know why you need to rush this BS out to live. Isnt it possible to just make this something on the Tournament Realm rather than have it live.?

So now what we have is a mechanic that punishes junglers for getting ahead of everyone else on the team. Feels super bad. I hope you guys find a better solution. If i were you guys, i'd look to the past and why gold funneling never worked before and why it only worked recently. Look at mid lane and support. Support power creep has been crazy in this game over the years