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It's been said before, but here is a realistic perspective on ARAM and the new SNOWBALL.

darksinthe··5 votes·1,111 views

Let's face it, the snowball ability is cool looking, and it adds a lot of 'fun' to ARAM and makes it even faster paced than it was before. It gives most melee, and certain other ranged champions a chance to do things they were never able to do before this summoner ability was added. Riot added it because of all the positive feedback the Poro ARAM mode brought in. Seems logical, right?

Sure, its logical. It is a neat ability, and the general public loves it... I mean to the point where if you are in a 5's premade, there is a high chance every single player on your team will use it; even if one or two of the players on your team are champions like Varus or Veigar.... for some reason. What could that reason be? Well, its quite obvious that players who are good at skill-shotting are going to be good at aiming those snowballs... and even if they aren't good, they sure will seem good when they hit someone 2 screens away!

Ok, wait. Something seems off here. 2 screens away? Yeah. True damage from 2 screens away. This is not skill-shotting anymore, this is luck-barraging. The range is ridiculously long. This would be fine if the snowball didn't really do any damage. If you manage to hit a snowball from almost half the map away, you SHOULD be able to pop in on that target and kick their ass; if of course you are smart enough to be able to do it and get out in time without being wrecked by the enemy team.

Sure, the range is fine... but not paired with the true damage that the snowball deals.

Then there is the cooldown. Ok, it has a 20 second cooldown... Thats fair, right? Ehhhhhhh.... highly debatable. I would actually consider the 20 second cooldown completely fair if the snowball did ZERO damage and just gave you the ability to flash onto the enemy, even with its current range in tact. Even at that point it would be a HIGHLY desirable summoner skill to choose for CERTAIN champions.

Isn't that the point of summoner skills? That certain ones are more useful for certain champions than others? Why exactly is snowball desired and so useful for every single champion? Because it has a massive range, deals true damage, and has a ridiculously low cooldown. You can argue that flash is useful for every single champion in the game, and I would agree. But just because it is useful for every single champion doesn't mean you should take it every game regardless of which champion you are, or which champions the rest of your team gets.

Don't get me wrong, I don't wish to see snowball removed from ARAM entirely. I think it is a very useful, innovative, and fun ability. But in my opinion, at its current state it is beyond overpowered.

In my opinion changes need to be made to the ability in one (or perhaps more) of the following ways:

  1. The range is reduced to around the range of Xeraths max Q range.
  2. The cooldown is increased to 45-60 seconds.
  3. The damage from the ability should be removed entirely (or perhaps just provide a small debuff to a certain type of damage instead of dealing true damage itself)

I honestly think the ability would be fun, useful, and WAY more balanced if the damage was just removed from it without anything else being done.

I know that a large percentage of players think that ARAM is basically a fun/joke mode, so having an ability like the current snowball is completely copacetic, but there is a percentage that only plays ARAM because the games do not last as long and it is an excellent way to learn new champions and brush up on your 5v5 full team fight skills. I have talked with many people that find this new ability in ARAM to be completely unbalanced and some have even quit the game entirely because of it.

I hope riot reads this post and I hope some balancing comes to this ability, because whether the preceding is just my opinion or not, some of their fans are livid and others quitting entirely. Personally, I will still play the game as it stands, but I also hope that this ability is balanced, because it simply adds more chaos to a game that is already riddled with enough chaos.

**If you agree with even a tiny bit of this post please click the ^ button because its not going to be heard if you don't

6 Comments

Berry Állen3 votes

I Love You for this, A nice thread about the spell not complaining or whining just a nice calm opinion of how it should be changed and could help balance it out more. I really hated reading those QQ threads about with all of them basically just being "its shit, get it out, or "I am not coming back to this game until it is removed." I really like the snowball, while it has changed ARAM a lot from what it used to be (and it feels a lot different), it is still quite fun for me to play often. I get melee champs very often and this makes it much more fun for me than sitting under tower all game and maybe sometimes getting good engages and maybe win. You gave nice reasoning behind your discussion and I agree with all of you. Good Day.

Zielmann2 votes

Well, fortunately, they're changing up how the damage applies in this patch. Same total amount of potential damage, but it'll only do 25% of it upfront (I guess they still wanted to allow that possible snowball snipe on a low-HP target). The remaining 75% of the damage applies only if the Dash portion of the spell is used.

I think it has potential to help some. I probably won't be taking it on things like Xerath or Ziggs anymore. The super range poke champs who took it only as a supplement to their poke, and barely use the Dash at all.

I'm with you in that I absolutely hate how they implemented snowball to begin with. If it's going to have twice the range of a nidalee spear, the 20-second CD is unreasonable. On the flip side, if they want it to have a 20-second CD, then the range should be halved so that people using it are at some degree of risk of being poked when they try to use it.

What I'm not sure the snowball change will actually address, though, is that ARAM has lost the feel of ARAM almost entirely. I have some statistics tabulated from before snowballs were added and from the first rendition of snowballs, which I feel actually quantifies this change of feel to some extent. I'll be recording the same stats after this patch, and will see how the numbers and the feel change again. It'll take a little bit of time for the info to be ready, but depending on what I find, I may bring it up in a post of my own once I have enough data.

darksinthe1 votes

I hadn't read the patch notes before I posted this. I am relieved a bit to find that they are doing at least something about it. I guess riot should be (and obviously is) afraid to step on toes while making a change to a new feature that a lot of the community has given such a positive feedback on. Makes sense that the change would be so miniscule, as opposed to drastic.

But yeah, I whole-heartedly agree that the implementation of it in its current state in actual gameplay was ridiculous to begin with.

I feel that ARAM was a very good addition to LoL as a PRACTICE mode. No bots, just pure practice for full on 5v5 team fights and for champions that you aren't yet comfortable with in Summoner's Rift. Snowball is exclusive to ARAM and therefore alters the true practice you get from the mode.

AtheosisX2 votes

{quoted}

I hadn't read the patch notes before I posted this. I am relieved a bit to find that they are doing at least something about it. I guess riot should be (and obviously is) afraid to step on toes while making a change to a new feature that a lot of the community has given such a positive feedback on. Makes sense that the change would be so miniscule, as opposed to drastic.

But yeah, I whole-heartedly agree that the implementation of it in its current state in actual gameplay was ridiculous to begin with.

I feel that ARAM was a very good addition to LoL as a PRACTICE mode. No bots, just pure practice for full on 5v5 team fights and for champions that you aren't yet comfortable with in Summoner's Rift. Snowball is exclusive to ARAM and therefore alters the true practice you get from the mode.

Actually, the feedback has been the very definition of mixed. The fact that they added the spell with little warning or feedback from the ARAM community should actually tell you they don't care one bit about stepping on toes. And like Zielmann said, the issue is that ARAM just doesn't feel like ARAM anymore. They need to remove the ability to dash to minions, and they need to increase the cooldown to 60 secs. Until that happens I just don't have any interest in returning to the Howling Abyss.

junglerboy161 votes

How about this: Instead of dealing true damage, it shreds a % or armor/mr on dash, that way you actually gain the increased damage, but have to commit at least somewhat significantly to get it.

ThomasBones1 votes

I have pretty much stopped playing League since the implementation of mark/dash, and that's after 4 years of dedicated play over just about every game mode (outside of maybe Dominion.. have never really cared for Dominion). I love the strategic elements of this game, but mark/dash is so effective as a summoner that it's overused and subverts just about every element to the strategies of team fighting. Previously, there were a few comps that were INCREDIBLY hard to beat, but they were very rarely unbeatable with appropriate teamwork, and at the very least you went into it knowing it would be a rugged match that you could genuinely be stoked to have won.

Now, there is no point to the bushes on the map, because anyone can check them from distant range every 20 seconds. every champ can initiate without using any abilities (With a true damage component), and every champ has a free escape. ARAM for me was all about taking a random comp and finding a way to overcome the challenge of a random enemy team using normal summoners that exist everywhere else, at times with build paths that you probably couldn't get away with in other modes. Now it functions so differently from every other mode that it just doesn't really have a place for me strategically.

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