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Cool-down Reduction, Mobility, and Crowd Control -- The Trinity Force That Broke League

spri01·2/4/2018, 11:03:15 PM·49 votes·2,283 views

Now I know there might be some people out there thinking "Alright, this kid is clearly disabled and I clicked this post just to tell him that and down vote him." or maybe just came here to tell me that it is the ADC position that is at fault, or tanks, or whatever they just got mashed by. But Volibear with me here...

I am a pretty avid league player and have played a lot of league games over the years. I have been playing since around November of 2012. In that time I have witnessed a metric shit-ton of changes and meta shifts from tanks to assassins back to tanks and so on and so forth. I have watched the mobility creep in league get to the point where now it seems like every champion that comes out has at least 2 dashes and some other form of movement ability that is "new" or "unique". That coupled with the systematic removal of silences from the game made for some pretty hectic and wild game-play with champions dashing about every which way. In addition to this they have also added in many, many items that have CDR attached to them even when it doesn't really make sense to be honest.

This brings me to what, in my opinion is the real balance issue with league right now. The fact that CDR is attached to more items than it isnt. You don't have to go out of your way even REMOTELY to end up with 40-45% CDR. This is especially true with tanks/bruisers in the top lane. In my opinion this is a huge issue as it exacerbates the mobility creep that has completely reshaped the game from the way it used to be. Maybe that is even what was intended, to make the game fast-paced and move away from some of the slower, zone control, and traditional play-styles of champions like Karthus, Anivia, etc. If that is what was intended then fine, I am not going to sit here and try to tell Riot their vision of the game's future is wrong even if I don't like it.

All that being said, mobility creep isn't the biggest problem with the aforementioned excess of CDR injected into the game. The biggest problem with this is that champions like Sejuani who have insane amounts of CC built into their kit, and frankly, have very high base damage (or even % Health Damage) on their abilities, are now free to use these abilities A LOT. So many of these Tank champions whose roles are open to debate are able to throw out relatively high-damage, crowd-control abilities every few seconds in fights. That is so insanely hard to deal with that it makes the mobility they have added in almost necessary.

We have ended up in a place where teams have 2 champions boasting 4,000+ health, stout resistances to both AP/AD, and who can dish out crowd control spells almost constantly. We have ADC's who have reset mechanics like assassins and have given them abilities that provide them the ability to deal near 1,000 damage or more in some cases in a single auto-attack. We have mages who are capable of dashing around fights, providing CC, and dealing 1,500 damage in a second or less.

At a certain point we need to look at where we started, where we ended up, and take a step back and say "Holy shit, this whole thing really got out of hand." It has been a slow burn for a long time now and it is not that I'm just realizing this, but just decided to browse the boards today and see a lot of complaining about everything under the sun. Felt the need to post my 2-cents and actually provide what I felt to be a well thought out post on how we have gotten to such a volatile game state.

If you took the time to read this, you're the real MVP. Feel free to add me in-game, always looking for chill people to play with. If you don't agree with me, that's fine, I'm not perfect and I may be wrong, just my take on it.

35 Comments

Baron Barian2/4/2018, 11:35:29 PM31 votes

All of that does allow for Tons Of Damage.

Śhunpo2/5/2018, 3:04:26 AM18 votes

CDR used to be a stat. which was coveted and you had to build awkward items to obtain it. Now every core item gives CDR, whether it be Zhoyna's, Triforce, Essence Reaver, Black Cleaver, Spirit Visage, Warmog's, Morello, Youmuu's AND Duskblade, Maw, Death's Dance, Abyssal Mask, Righteous Glory, all the support gold generation items, Redemption. The list goes on.

Not to mention that runes give you CDR as well.....Seriously, it's like we're playing URF mode in regular games. There's hardly any opportunity to abuse downtimes when most abilities will simply be up instantly after casting or 2 seconds after.

Tychusfindlay9182/5/2018, 4:22:03 AM6 votes

Tri force should lose the 10% cdr it got a while back, even if that means compensating it with something else.

I'm hard pressed to think the same for black cleaver however, as many of its users tend to have only it and spirit visage as the only core items with CDR on them, and really DO have to go out of their way for the missing 10% if they aren't running transcendence (many of the cleaver juggernauts).

Sasogwa2/4/2018, 11:04:39 PM6 votes

And damage, don't forget damage. %health everywhere, crit busted, lethality, etc.

zero3562/5/2018, 4:30:27 AM5 votes

Feature-Creep

The average new or reworked champion generally ends up with 150% of what would've previously been considered a complete champion

And then you have CertainlyT where it's 200% #Salt

ÈvilMorty2/5/2018, 6:31:43 AM3 votes

Anivia my wall feels so useless against 50% of the roster

Dark Nephthys2/5/2018, 2:14:33 AM3 votes

Yea every one can easily reach that 40-45% CDR which isn't entirely what bothers me but what does bother me is that mages are the only one who's items generally suffered to get those extra CDR added to items. AP items has lost AP and in some cases also had their cost increased to allow CDR on their items and their reasoning was to make it so mages had their damage lowered a little bit but have higher CDR so they could spam more. Then not to long after, ADCs get item 3508 which gives them up to 30% CDR by itself without sacrificing any damage (in fact I think this was also when all the Zeal items cost was reduced as well).

And before anyone responds, I know that item 3508 technically doesn't give 30% CDR by itself as you need at least 1-2 crit items to make it, but I meant as it can give up to 30% CDR without investing in other cdr items outside of their normal build. As in most cases, the ADC would either get IE + 1 Zeal item, or 2 Zeal items after it anyways, they won't sacrifice any other damage by having to pick other items outside of their build path. Now ADCs can even just grab Transcendence and get that last 10% free (or worst case, lose a little bit of attack speed for item 3158 ).

Verxint2/5/2018, 8:08:06 PM3 votes

Literally cut the CDR on every item that gives it by half. 10% becomes 5%, 20% becomes 10%.

GigglesO2/5/2018, 7:04:02 AM2 votes

And yet I can't get a buff item 3070 Mordekaiser item 3070

sanaru022/5/2018, 1:15:09 AM2 votes

I agree that it is important to look at the small steps that have started the groundwork for the damage meta we have now. I think finally removing resistances from runes has shown off how messed up cdr, mobility, and cc have gotten. It feels like if any champ that isn't a tank gets near a teamfight, they either get instabursted, cc'ed til death, or both. If you aren't doing the oneshotting or cc'ing as a tank, you don't really fit into league anymore -- unless you can abuse a keystone. And with all the shields, knockups, and heals, bursting an ADC is as hard as ever. Not to mention stopwatch removes most of the snowballing that used to happen in lane. Add on spellbook so everyone has tp and now games stall out in weird hard to win teambrawls where fighters just struggle. Just feels less fun for me :/

devdev4632/5/2018, 2:12:31 PM2 votes

mobilty creep isn't even that bad tbh. Here's the last 10 champions released: Zoe Ornn Kayn Rakan Xayah Camille Ivern Kled Taliyah AurelionSol

The only champions who are really high on mobility here (I'm not counting taliyah or kleds ult) is camile and rakan, and while camile is problematic rakan is one of the best new champion kits they've ever done. It's suprising riot isn't leaning more towards mobility because lets face it, mobility is fun in this game. All these board warriors always talk about how they want more aurelian sols but just look at his playrate. You could practically delete the champ and almost no one would care. And it isn't like immobile mages can't handle mobile champions, annies doing fine for example.

I don't get where people are coming from. Checking a quick tier list for this patch I can see a ton of immobile champs in top spots or near top spots. I feel like the bitching about mobility is just from immobile mage players deflecting because they got outplayed. Like seriously, taliyahs great, annies fine, anivias great, vlads great, malz is fine. OK, sure brand could be in a better spot. I play mages off role and most of the immobile ones are perfectly fine.

Or are we talking about immobile adcs? kog maw is the epitome of immobile and he's one of the top adcs rn. Same with twitch.

Or are we just talking about Olaf Udyr DrMundoVolibear , 2 or 3 of which are terribly outdated and in need of reworks?

As for excessive amounts of cdr, that's how they've balanced the game. It isn't really an issue because everyone has high amounts of cdr, which was intentional.

"We have ended up in a place where teams have 2 champions boasting 4,000+ health, stout resistances to both AP/AD, and who can dish out crowd control spells almost constantly."

^ You mean a tank? Like that's what a tank is supposed to do.

" We have ADC's who have reset mechanics like assassins and have given them abilities that provide them the ability to deal near 1,000 damage or more in some cases in a single auto-attack."

^ The adc class can be problematic but this is diversity. You know, adcs that actually play differently from each other, which has been a staple problem of the class for a while due to the dependence on auto attacks. Now we have champs like jhin, who doesn't play the same as other adcs, which is a step in the right direction.

"We have mages who are capable of dashing around fights, providing CC, and dealing 1,500 damage in a second or less."

^ I'm sitting here looking at the list of mage champions trying to figure out who your talking about here but I'm not sure. Ahri? Like what mage besides ahri even remotely fits this description?

Poske2/5/2018, 12:16:01 PM1 votes

**Cooldown reduction is not relevant when teamfights end with 1 rotation ** There is nothing wrong with mobility

However Champions who relly on enemy engaging / be stupid shouldnt exist.

Good players ll never allow mordekaiser / Volibear and others to do anything

Juggernaut class is a failure of design as a whole

Juggernauts are sadly just a melee no counterplay / low counterplay statcheckers who cannot function even 1% in teamfights

Crowd control has been going down overall

Rammus, Fiddle, Le blanc, kassadin ETC

If you want a game broken by cc check doto2

When damage is insanely high CC is really influencal. This however doesnt mean that the CC is a problem its just a by product of another issue

ModCaptainMårvelous2/6/2018, 3:21:18 AM1 votes

I wanna add to what you said because, while you make good points, I don't think you've hit the more important reasons why we've got issues with stuff like CDR/CC/etc.

So, first and foremost, with CDR it's not the core problem. There's nothing inherently wrong with having a short CD or being able to get 45% CDR. However, the bigger issue is that mana costs have gone down, mana regen has gone up and overall it's easier to get resources if you use them. Having a 2 second CD Q isn't a huge issue if, say, you have to hugely itemize to get the most out of it. Ryze, Karthus and Anivia are old examples of this: They had huge spam or long channels but had to itemize heavily into mana to get the most out of their kit. These days, you really don't need to manage resources that much in terms of mana, which means it's easier to get the most out of your kit.

In terms of CC, again CC isn't the problem. In fact, CC used to be even longer. Most CC these days hovers between 1-1.5 seconds or so. Back in Season 1-3, CC could get anywhere from 2-3 seconds, which was enormous. Riot, however, instead moved more toward dipslacement effects. Knock-ups/knockbacks are the standard on most kits these days and, as such, they can't be reduced. The key part here is that you used to be able to shave off chunks of CC with tenacity and counter-CC items, which made it easier for melee to wade through CC walls while ranged didn't have as many tools available in this regard. Plus, displacement has a tendency to hurt melee more than ranged; knocking back a carry just skips an auto-attack whereas the melee you knocked back now has to run back up to hit you.

Finally, mobility itself isn't the issue. Again, the bigger problem was "free mobility" which was more present in older kits than in new ones. These days you usually have to do something to get the most out of your move or you can't go over walls, which is enormous in terms of mobility despite not seeming to be the issue. However, the older champions never got this update. Ezreal as an example, despite existing for almost a decade, has never had meaningful work done to his blink. Plus, the rapid removal of point-and-click spells has made it harder to deal with mobility. While it was worse back in the day with every champ coming out getting a free, any-direction, wall-hopping blink/dash/flash, more champions had point-and-click CC that lasted longer. These days, Riot has slowly removed more and more to the point of only a handful of champs having it.

All this isn't to say you're not right: To a degree, you are! But it highlights a major and nasty aspect of game design where we can't just focus on a singular thing (Mobility for example) and go "BAM. THAT'S THE ISSUE! If riot just nerfs all mobility, we'll be good". It's an ecosystem and Riot has been moving all parts of this ecosystem for years to get to where we are today.

Häxel2/5/2018, 5:32:49 PM1 votes

To the mobilitypart: Not every new champion has direct movement, lets look up since 2014: Velkoz , Bard , TahmKench (Bard e you can follow, Tahm "global" ult is no direct movement), Illaoi (w just a realy small dash like darius ult), AurelionSol (no fight mobility), Xayah (r just untargetable, no movement). Reworks would include Yorick , Taric , Darius , Mordekaiser . Also while maybe some Point and Click Silences and Stuns got removed, other Stuff got implemented for ehavy Movement such as Poppy w, Taliyah e, Cassiopeia w, Singed w. Items and new Runes Reforged giving multiple forms of slows or movementspeed to keep up like Predator or Glacial Augment. Sometimes even Movement gets removed like the Boots entchantments.

The Minion hunt2/5/2018, 6:34:02 AM1 votes

wait some Triforce shut down all of league's servers, and wiped the code, and back up files. I hate triforce this was a good game but trifroce must have a virus.

ChaddyFantome2/5/2018, 9:40:14 PM1 votes

I Blame the Mage update (or one could argue the marksman Update) for creating a bad precedent. item 3165 item 3152 ( item 3508 )

SwiftKitten882/6/2018, 1:33:47 AM1 votes

i down-voted this thread not becuase there hasn't been creep of the three things you mentioned.. and yes those ARE an issue.

but that's NOT what "broke league"

the points you made are correct, and these three things do need to be addressed i mean there was RekSai mobility

then there was Bard mobility now we have Kayn

this is indeed getting absurd

cdr yes.. is an issue item 3508 does not need to give adc's cdr there are a bunch more items but im not going to list them all

and yes.. it certainly seems like every new kit has CC. and most of the time for no real reason.

however desipte yout points being correct. this is NOT what broke like, these are certainly contributing factors dont get me wrong.

but he DAMAGE right now is the issue

the problem is AD itemization, crit, and the "runes" (because that is what riot apparently wants to call their new masteries) basically just being another absurd damage amp..

Craft Zeppelin2/5/2018, 7:48:35 AM1 votes

Remember when syndra was nerfed and buffed along for a long time with just her ult cd arranged.