Blaming “damage creep” for current balance issues missed an array of much larger problems at hand

Greetings,

As some of you know, I’ve been playing some league again (and if you don’t know me, relax! I’m merely an old boards spammer). I can confess to not being as informed about current game strategies, balance issues and the state of the game as I once was but I know a few things.

For quite awhile now, this Boards section has been known for having a hideously large mage and tank bias while being anti-AD more or less. The fact that damage creep even gets mentioned ignores that one of their favorite classes is partly responsible for this inane concept. Cognitive dissonance and the logic people bend to resolve it, my friends. Anyhow, I digress and now move on to some of my more refined points.

Damage Creep - is it real?

Theoretically, absolutely. The same way mobility creep is; the same way any other acceleration of one hyper-focused element of the game is when it leaves other elements it is entangled with in the dust. Unlike mobility creep though, damage hasn’t really accelerated to out of control levels in comparison to the other participating aspect of this two-headed coin: defensive values. There’s little doubt, defensive values have absolutely taken a hit over the years while keystones haven’t really panned our either. Indeed, offensive keystones have absolutely been the cause of several balance issues. That said, offensive values have had their fair share of hits over the years, too. That isn’t even mentioning how many offensive items - both AP and AD - have become more expensive, have worse build paths and quite frankly, aren’t really even viable. Narrowly focusing on damage as if it’s a culprit is disingenuous to your own argument since your argument is ultimately about balance. Damage has suffered, too - it just hasn’t suffered as much as defense. I should be clear though: individual, self-sustained defense. Because defensive utility items and tema defensive contributions like shields and %reduction on allies has been a nightmare for balance in recent years.

My interpretation of damage creep is that it’s a misunderstood and often time hive-minded upon phenomena that doesn’t hold water, lacks critical thinking, hasn’t had the skepticism from the community that it deserves and most importantly: is a symptom or a byproduct of much larger problems at hand. The narrow focus and tunnel vision on this one supposed aspect of the game because of it’s catchy nature and boards-trendy popularity has actually had some negative effects on many of you: you aren’t critically thinking about much bigger problems.

Does this mean damage has never been a problem? Absolutely not, damage has most certainly been a problem - it very well could even be a problem now. That’s especially true for burst damage, especially when many champions become very bursty when that’s not their intended design pattern (in the past, a full build ADC for example). However, this speaks to a much larger problem. Damage isn’t really causing these issues. As a byproduct, it becomes glaring and visually scoffing but in reality, damage creep isn’t a big problem, one of the problems mentioned above is: individual chanpions being independently durable. Sure, some champion me like Galio, Orn and a few others have such nasty built in steroids that they can accomplish this. But others rely on defensive items, but many of these items have been nerfed down and this has pigeon holed most into generic builds that get the few viable defensive items nerfed. Lack of individual defensive prowess through itemization. As I noted, this is not a problem for team utility defensive items but those don't always get used on front liners.

Another issue is that towers continue to become weaker, Baron has become easier to do and scaling across the board is so wonky right now that the best thing to do is pick up champions that excel in skirmishes and picks that also only need 1-2 items to snowball, many of these items being cheap to boot. Is this the fault of bruisers or assassins? Well, they might be a tad too strong but the real issue is that due to summoner rift balance adjustments that continue to accelerate game pace, the nerfed down ADC items and other factors, they’ve become a beneficiary of the current games dynamics and the cherished fruit that comes with it.

Let me be clear, these are the types of changes that cause long term problems and instead of adjusting these global changes, riot nerfs champions or classes of champions or sometimes, classes of items. Another problem is poor resource adjustment. The new champions are great and that’s a positive to the game every time something new and exciting comes out. But do these champions really need to be this complicated? Riot also fixates on certain design philosophies that make stretches of new champions abusable and absurd (ridiculous mobility plus the biblical three: 3 attacks procs insane damage from this spell!). This isn’t the fault of new champions though, this is riots failure to update older champions at an equal pace. Like really, how many times do you have to rework Ryze to realize his kit and it’s design can never work and it needs to be scraped entirely. Many of the reworks have also been poorly thought out, rushed and lack the same type of attention that they need - the attention of a new champion, for example. That’s not to say there haven’t been good reworks because there have, but the bad are most certainly more notable than the good.

In reality, all of these much larger problems are for more damaging to leagues balance and popularity than this nonsense term “damage creep.” The damage is what you see but high damage didn’t make Riot rework ryze 17 times. High damage isn’t causing most of the problems in fact, it’s just a byproduct of the problems and feels the most

TL;DR FOR THOSE WHO DO NOT ENJOY READING In short, damage is likely a problem but it’s not causing the problems you see today. It’s bad defensive items for individual champions, horrible tower and objective mechanics that favor early game champions and snowballing and pisspoor champion kit rebalancing and resource management towards that. There are other problems I also haven’t mentioned, or frankly, I likely haven’t even noticed. I urge others to bring up other aspects that are contributing to this because of you do, that’s when you’ll actually have quality discussion rather than this non-sense circlejerk over “damage creep” and an argument that hasn’t evolved or progressed since it’s inception.