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Possible Reasons For The Current Snowball

The God Fâther·12/24/2017, 11:47:07 PM·6 votes·706 views

There is a large amount of complaint about the current state of the game due to its hyper snowbally nature. There are two major changes that seem to have played a large role in this. And the compound of them only exponentially worsens the issue of snowballing. The first I'd like to mention is the addition of the new dragons. Withis the additions of the new dragons a permanent powerful passive was introduced. Specifically the mountain and inferno dragon's passives play a massive role in determining pressure and power of a team in a game. The second issue seems to be the high amounts of damage output in the current state of the game. This leads to small leads turning into very advantageous positions. Once a team has a few kills lead and can pressure the enemy team off important objectives the game begins to become one sided very quickly. It used to be that the dragon provided a temporary boost and gold for the team. The defending team could give up the dragon and focus on enforcing defensive strategies. Shoving lanes and prepping for turtle. However this is no longer possible. Giving up an inferno dragon or a mountain dragon is highly damaging and makes defending much much harder. Without a really strong wave clear capability or proper defending composition it becomes extremely difficult to even maneuver out of one's jungle if even that. Towers go down extremely quickly too in the current damage meta. And their overall strength in terms of health or damage, idk which it's definitely an entire discussion of its own, should be analyzed. I know that there are more variables to be considered and balancing can be tricky. But giving thought to recent changes these two major changes definitely seem to have changed league from a game of comebacks to accumulation of uncontested pressure.

For those who claim a superior player can overcome and comeback I do not disagree. But games amongst people of equal elo should be as it used to be. Two sided, of comebacks, of both offensive and major defensive plays. It's sad for me to see that 80 percent of games lack these elements that used to make the game so much more engaging throughout its entirety. Thoughts?

14 Comments

with the answer12/25/2017, 12:40:45 AM4 votes

Triumph rune. It gives too much healing. Especially in 2v2 bot lane, which makes close fights a thing of the past.

Best Ekko NA12/25/2017, 2:41:28 AM2 votes

Yes but Riot did not adjust the game for the general players, it was based around trends in professional play. Dragon was a crucial objective when it gave gold as opposed to stats, and teams would stall entire games hoping to make a play around Dragon to get back into the game. Combine this with the 5 man tower lane swap meta which existed back then, and basically the game was completely non-interactive and super boring at the professional level. Watching the professional scene was like watching a Farmville simulator as teams traded towers for free, without fighting each other, then continued to farm long lanes until the Dragon was about to spawn.

Trust me, Riot understands that games are faster and that's exactly what they were hoping to achieve... and not for the general players. I'm pretty damn sure no one below Challenger was complaining that Dragons gave gold, or about lane swaps (because they were almost non-existent in solo queue). It's all about what makes the game exciting to spectate, and no one wants to watch Farmville 2.0 .

PokladnicaZla12/25/2017, 11:21:14 AM2 votes

Wasn't catch up exp removed/decreased ? Or ?

Infernape12/24/2017, 11:50:25 PM1 votes

I'd put it mostly down to everything doing a fuckton of damage.

Vapor Wave Vibes12/25/2017, 1:58:08 AM1 votes

You said 2 reasons, but you just blamed the dragons. Also the bottom lane turret being weaker than top and mid's turret is a biggest reason as to why the game snowballs so much.

Troll for Trump12/25/2017, 2:05:47 AM1 votes

Dependence on bot lane. Whether or not bot lane wins usually depends whether or not the game is lost or won. Only one bot lane can win, and that will usually snowball to a victory.

Very rarely can any other lane have as much impact as bot lane.

Jgl is also very important (if not the most important) role, but the jgl meta is more of a symptom of snowball than a cause in my opinion; the meta seems to be more gank-orientated jglers than carry-based