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"More solo carrying" is the issue, not the solution!

Late For Tea·3/28/2018, 4:44:47 PM·26 votes·2,305 views

Lately I see a lot of posts on the boards regarding the current game state: People feel that a single bad team member can lose them the game, while they themselves can't carry. Either I'm stupid, but I get the feeling a lot of people here on the boards don't understand how the game works, and what the actual issue is. What people are complaining about and what they want are one and the same.

If you have a feeding midlaner that goes 0/6, that means the enemy midlaner is 6/0 (not accounting for kill distribution from ganks). This midlaner can then roam to other lanes, kill the players there and snowball the game. This midlaner is thus solo-carrying. If a player is losing you the game, that means the equivalent on the opponents' side is solo-carrying the game. You can be 3/0 in toplane, but you're still not as good as the enemy midlaner. Adding more solo-carrying potential will thus benefit the enemy midlaner more than you as a toplaner. As a result, the effects of having a bad midlaner on your team only become stronger and stronger.

The real problem is that there is no incentive to help out a losing lane. Therefore the game feels like you're playing as 5 individuals instead of as a team. As a result, a single bad player can lose you the game. Currently the risk of helping out a losing lane far outweighs the benefit. You will likely lose a large chunk of your turret's hp, miss out on farm, and there's no guarantee you can get off a successful gank. The promised increases in shutdown gold should help here, since the reward for risking a roam will go up. Of course more has to be done, but that does not include solo-carrying/snowballing. Good players should influence the game by helping out the weaker links on their team, not by one-shotting everyone.

Additionally each role should have an equal impact on the game, which is currently not the case. Lanes should be balanced so that one lane/role does not hold too much power compared to others. Otherwise it can feel like you aren't able to influence the game, when you play one of the weaker roles.

Edit: Since a lot of people are complaining this issue isn't solely related to laning phase, I agree. That said, it still does occur during laning phase, and some of the posts I refered to were specifically complaining about the laning phase. I have seen plenty of games myself in which a single opponent gets 6 kills by 10 minutes, then proceeds to solo-carry the game. This issue is much easier to resolve than fixing the issue of having a bad team member in the late game.

38 Comments

NodaYame1273/28/2018, 8:06:05 PM8 votes

I personally think there's too much incentive to gank bot with the lack of turret defence and all.

Spacesuit Spiff3/28/2018, 10:03:06 PM6 votes

Easy solution: make it worth more to kill 3 different people than the same person 3 times. Solo carry is good, solo feed is bad, so the two must be decoupled.

Those stacking runes are a good way to implement this, it just needs to be taken further.

LegitBusinessman3/28/2018, 11:11:53 PM5 votes

You can't overgeneralize the issue. I said this in another post: Solo carrying while ahead is easier than ever before. Solo carrying your team out of a deficit has never been harder.

Those are both significant issues.

2Charmnot2Charm3/28/2018, 7:31:33 PM3 votes

People feel that a single bad team member can lose them the game

No one said that player has to be feeding the enemy players kills. What they could of have been saying is that one person not being on the same page as the rest of the team can cost the game or doing something completely stupid 30 minutes into the game that ends up screwing the team over.

You're the one missing the point by focusing on KDA.

ChaddyFantome3/28/2018, 10:46:31 PM2 votes

i said this in another post. 1 person losing you the game does not strictly equate to 1 other person on the enemy team being super fed and vice versa. The game doesn't exist strictly in the vacuum of lane.

50000000000000003/28/2018, 7:47:16 PM2 votes

"Solo carrying" in a sense that a player is roaming to make sure everyone stays ahead/doesn't fall behind doesn't seem unhealthy to me, imo. "Solo carrying" in a sense that if a player wins lane, and there's nearly nothing the enemy team can do to stop that player, now I'd consider that unhealthy.

The former seems like team play to me, and this has plenty of counterplay. Wards in the river can help spot roaming, and teammates can warn each other about potential roams. Waves could be pushed to punish roams as well.

GripaAviara3/28/2018, 7:50:01 PM2 votes

I agree, solo carrying has no place in a team game. But on the other hand, the teams must be blanced which doesn't happen atm.

Aptest3/28/2018, 5:40:32 PM2 votes

[{quoted}](name=Captain Tea,realm=EUW,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=2dQbn1Ua,comment-id=,timestamp=2018-03-28T16:44:47.960+0000)

Lately I see a lot of posts on the boards regarding the current game state: People feel that a single bad team member can lose them the game, while they themselves can't carry. Either I'm stupid, but I get the feeling a lot of people here on the boards don't understand how the game works, and what the actual issue is. What people are complaining about and what they want are one and the same.

If you have a feeding midlaner that goes 0/6, that means the enemy midlaner is 6/0 (not accounting for kill distribution from ganks). This midlaner can then roam to other lanes, kill the players there and snowball the game. This midlaner is thus solo-carrying. If a player is losing you the game, that means the equivalent on the opponents' side is solo-carrying the game. You can be 3/0 in toplane, but you're still not as good as the enemy midlaner. Adding more solo-carrying potential will thus benefit the enemy midlaner more than you as a toplaner. As a result, the effects of having a bad midlaner on your team only become stronger and stronger.

The real problem is that there is no incentive to help out a losing lane. Therefore the game feels like you're playing as 5 individuals instead of as a team. As a result, a single bad player can lose you the game. Currently the risk of helping out a losing lane far outweighs the benefit. You will likely lose a large chunk of your turret's hp, miss out on farm, and there's no guarantee you can get off a successful gank. The promised increases in shutdown gold should help here, since the reward for risking a roam will go up. Of course more has to be done, but that does not include solo-carrying/snowballing. Good players should influence the game by helping out the weaker links on their team, not by one-shotting everyone.

Additionally each role should have an equal impact on the game, which is currently not the case. Lanes should be balanced so that one lane/role does not hold too much power compared to others. Otherwise it can feel like you aren't able to influence the game, when you play one of the weaker roles.

With that in mind, people do not complain about the lack of solo carrying. They complain that their specific lane is not the one doing the carrying.

MrB00mbastick3/28/2018, 6:46:37 PM2 votes

The 6-0, 0-6 comparison isn't a failsafe. Here are the KDAs from a game I almost lost last night:

My team: 4.2, 3.3, 8, 1.5, 8 Opponent: 1.4, 2.5, 2.3, 1.9, 2.8

Everyone except the ad was clearly outpacing the opponents, yet we ended up down 3 inhibs, (after taking theirs first initially a while before). Came back because my team landed some clutch cc, but this should have absolutely been a stomp, but was an insanely hard base defense because our ezreal started the game something like 0-9 - and it wasn't like the enemy had a 9-0 member. It was clearly a case of the weakest link determining the fate of the game. Luckily we drafted cc.

That's a single anecdote, but these are some of the situations to consider, as well.

T4underbolt3/29/2018, 9:46:33 PM1 votes

This mid laner can't do that because his bot lane just went 0/10 before he even got to start getting ahead and has nowhere to roam to. That is how it looks like. The amount of competent players that can hold a lane when they are losing instead of feeding is close to 0 nowadays.

5050BS3/28/2018, 7:13:23 PM1 votes

The game needs it so of you have someone tanking a game the other 4 can pull off a win if they play well.

Currently what ever team has a smurf with win (most of the time) and what ever team has a feeder will lose (most of the time) That game suppose to be a team game but as you can see it only takes ONE player to pick who wins and who loses.

Salson3/28/2018, 9:10:18 PM1 votes

The thing is, you can always stop one fed person. You can burst them down, CC lock them or itemize vs their damage type.

However the current, extremely unhealthy, level of jungle oppression means that if your Mid is 0/5, they don't have 1500 gold on 1 person. They have 2500 gold spread between Mid and Jungle, and good luck dealing with that.

When people say 'let me solo-carry', they really mean 'let me play the bloody game without waiting for ganks the whole laning phase'.

Additionally each role should have an equal impact on the game, which is currently not the case. Lanes should be balanced so that one lane/role does not hold too much power compared to others.

These are mutually exclusive. There are 2 roles in 1 lane.

Ideally bot should have about 130-150% of a solo lane's impact. That seems to be the ideal balance between 'Win bot > Win game' and 'Run into 2 people and one-shot both'.

Verxint3/28/2018, 10:25:30 PM1 votes

The thing is, it's not the fed midlaner that makes it so hard to win. It's that the guy who went 0/6 will probably continue to make dumb descisions like getting caught out or building poorly.

RainbowIcee3/28/2018, 10:53:18 PM1 votes

I think we need more viable methods of winning than to just peel for the ADC they can kill everything. I think split pushing should be able to contest better but that would mean towers would go down quicker by a single individual.

Shukr4n3/28/2018, 5:00:03 PM1 votes

im not jungler. but if a lane die once, peace. but if a lane die twice, me as jungler should take note. maybe tell that laner to let opponent push so u can gank. red trinket, pink, gank. maybe a 0/2 top can become a 0/2/2 because u feel to deserve kills. ok. it s something.

but honestly, leaving a losing lane after a couple of kills , alone, to me (adc) means will to lose the game.

since jungler is the only dinamic role, i point at it. but the same can be said to a good midlaner.

bot is lazy, helps just for drakes..called by jungler...

TL;DR: jungler calls plays. if no jungler call plays and team is losing ground, it s a good part of guilt on him.