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The problem with Lane Swaps

DestructoDave·3/21/2016, 11:55:18 PM·2 votes·491 views

Is that early dragons are pretty much worthless. Meaning, there is no reason NOT to lane swap a bad matchup. And then, its on the team who actually wants to punish a 2v2 or bad 1v1 matchup, to get lucky and guess the correct lane the team wants. This leads to a bad risk-reward ratio, and to the lane swaps we have now.

In the past, dragons were worth gold, or at least worth something. So, if you decided you wanted to lane swap, you just swapped, and the team who didn't, always went bot because they would get free early dragon control. It was far more strategic of a system instead of the current "where's waldo" searching of trying to find/avoid a lane swap. You had clear advantages and disadvantages for swapping.

This also made dragons a clear objective to fight over, and caused far more mid-game fights than now where teams just let someone else have it even if there is no objective to trade for it. There is no point in not lane swapping, or even fighting over a dragon, early in the game.

I think lane swaps are a key strategy to the game. However, there needs to be a penalty for picking bad matchups and then swapping them out besides just hoping you dont magically get found by the flip of a coin, like it was in the past where a lane swap cost you early dragon control and early game gold/pressure from said dragon control. It was a price you paid for picking such a bad matchup.

So, Riot really needs to look into dragon buffs and just general early game dragon worth. There needs to be a clear advantage to going bot lane with your 2v2 and top with your 1v1, like in the past, and the easiest way to do this, is to tweak dragon rewards. Specifically, early game dragon rewards. Something like the first one could give gold, and then the next one stacks in other ways, etc. There needs to be a risk to lane swapping besides just afk pushing turrets for 20 minutes because there is no punishment except getting coin flipped on. This honestly add MORE strategy to the game, instead of removing it. Is there really any strategy to just picking whatever champ is strong mid/late game and insta-swapping?

To me, thats the number one issue to lane swaps is that early game neutral objectives like dragons, are pretty much worthless to waste time on early in the game. If they made them worth getting early, then teams would actually have to choose if they want to lane swap or not for a reason other than well my lane's weak, time to turret trade for 20 min.

4 Comments

TurquoiseYoshi3/22/2016, 1:39:32 AM1 votes

That's pretty much it. I think Deficio even said this as well on Twitter.

Rian3/22/2016, 1:53:46 AM1 votes

I don't think dragon is worthless. If you are doing the math you will note that the first dragon buff can be worth a lot. Assuming red is laneswapping and take top tower and swich lane (4 tower variant) in order to take bot tower. Red is now able to take dragon while blue does herald.

The dragon buff increase ad/ap 6% which means with only 100 ad you actually have +6 ad. Does not sound great? But 1 ad is worth 35 gold (based on the gold efficiency chart). Herald give 50 gold which means there is an "inofficial" global gold difference of (210-50)*5 = 800 gold. (ap is not worth that much but mages can benefit from both ad and ap a little bit so it's quite similar)

In Addition this buff is scaling while an early herald is only worth if you try to rush tier 2 top tower. But lets be honest that should not work usually.

If you increase the value of dragon further laneswap becomes more viable in this scenario. Increasing the value of tower does not change anything (excapt an minor advantage for better mid/late game scaling team composition). Same thing for jungle obviously because it is mirrored.

If you want to change excessive lanswapping you need to improve counterplay. Vision? early blue trinket? maybe early game items/spells that improve tower durability/strange? Weaker early dragon so you can take bot tower and dragon? Just some rash suggestions with potential for discussion oc.

Levik3/22/2016, 8:29:23 PM1 votes

I feel like there should be a "First Dragon" reward similar to First Blood so that there is a higher Objective Gravity in the bottom half of the map again. There could also be a "First Tower" reward to promote a strategy of protecting towers, both would fulfill the idea that a lane swap is a clear tradeoff in some kind of Objective Control.