Thoughts 8/1/2019
Hitting on Champions (not all too many). Items. Game health.
All of these will talk a bit about gameplay.
Champions are all way too overtuned, I would go to say that 85-90% of champions are overtuned. Even tanks. Now why I am saying this is because, everyone can kill really quickly. Does Pyke need 130 base armor at level 18? Does Yasuo need a shield reset on ulti? Did Akali need obscure under towers? Did Irelia need Disarm? Does Zoe need R to take her back regardless of being CC'd? Does Diana need mana on every third hit? Does Eve need to have charm proc even when her skillshot misses?
No, these small things make champions overbearing. Where is the counterplay to Zoe when she Clicks Q R Q, and it auto takes her back? Where is the counter. Remove all of those and the champions become a hell of a lot more bearable, a lot less frustrating to play against. Now you can reason with all of them such as Pyke and Diana. Pyke doesn't get to build HP and Diana has an outdated kit. But lets talk about those a bit as well.
Pyke has insane HP regen, even through ignite. That Additional HP he gets, is turned into AD. It isn't like Pyke is LOSING stats. He is getting stat conversions. So since we know the stat conversion is 1:1 for gold value or extremely close to 1:1. Him having 130 armor, by default makes him much stronger than he needs to be.
Diana has so much damage and decent enough CD's to where she can rush DeathCap first item, and be okay. The trade off here should be mana sustain. Diana has a massive zone of control around her.
But this isn't the case, even champion needs to feel satisfying. According to Riot. But that isn't realistically possible. Take a look at Ryze, he went from being a satisfying champion when he had shields, to now everyone I know, really really hates this shieldless, no base snare Ryze. Everyone said that he was unfun to play against. But he was satisfying to play. But now its the other way around, he is fun to play against, and unsatisfying to play.
All Champions should have weaknesses, and strengths. Diana SHOULD be strong and be able to blow you up, if she lands Q. And then goes for a all in. That is fine. What isn't fine, is her having mana sustain to always be a threat. That makes her unfun to play against. If we had options to how we play against champions, it would be fine. Pyke should be allowed to Q E R for kills. But Pyke shouldn't be able to eat all of the damage in the world and then walk away with 10% hp, come back 3 seconds later with 55% hp. That is poor design no matter how you look at it. An equal trade with Pyke is never equal. If you exchange 1:1 HP values at the same hp, Pyke will win because he comes back with more.
TL:DR Champions need to lose things that make them self sufficient for the sake of counterplay.
ITEMS
Items are and have always been a massive mess. But it is a mess we all love. But on a serious note here.
Items are a mess because of the following reasons. ADC's are ITEM dependent, meanwhile every other class and champion is level dependent. Which is why other champions are viable in the bot lane. So ADC items are generally much stronger than their counterparts. Each of their items should be valued at 1.25 of other champions items. But the issue with this are champions that also dip into their items. I think ADC's could be perfectly fine if other champions didn't dip into their items. Jax, Yasuo, Master Yi. These champions are Self Sufficient. Making it so where, they are able to build those items and still benefit the same and sometimes more.
AP items.
AP items have been a mess forever. There are plenty of reasons for that. First being that AP champions cover a massive range of things. There are going to be champions that use a certain special type of AP item better than other champions. Such as Ekko, Viktor, Diana with Lich Bane. Ryze with Seraphs. Viegar with Rabadons. Azir with Nashors. AP itemization needs to be broken up further than it currently is. I liked the direction that Riot went with the lost chapter items. They should have gone in further with those type of changes. Remove Rabadon's and replace it with different forms doing different things. Burst champions get a certain type vs Spell Slinging Champions getting a certain one vs Poke Mages getting a certain one. Example of these are as follows.
Burst champions get an item that procs every third spell, doing 20% of their post mitigation damage. (It is then mitigated again) on every third spell, with a cooldown of 60 seconds.
Spell Slinging champions get an item that increases the damage they deal by 5% of spell that lands on that champion, (applies once for DoT) and doesn't cap, but starts at 0% going up to 50% increased damage after 10 spells on that target. The target must be take damage within 1.25 seconds of the last spell, autos do not proc it.
Poke champions get an item that stores up damage, and procs on next auto attack against an enemy champion. Stores up to 90-450 + 15% ap and the store rate is 15% of the damage you dealt. But only stores damage when you deal damage from over 800 units away. This doubles as a offensive and defensive item. Because that means whenever a champion enters your auto range, they will take more damage, (A lich bane proc w/o AP ratio)
Tank Items.
Tank items are actually pretty good imo, they cover a very large range, and are diverse enough to fill whatever purpose is needed. Deadmans for MS and a bit of damage.
Spirit visage for sustain.
Ninja tabi, Frozen heart, Randuins, thornmail for anti attack speed, anti auto attack, anti healing.
Adaptive helm for spell slingers. They have an answer to everything. They as a class are the least demanding on their items, and are more dependent on their levels.
TL:DR
ADC items could be stronger, if they were contained to only ranged AD champions. Thus making the ADC role more fulfilling and more promising in the late game.
AP items need more diversity for the number of completely different champions that tap into AP.
Tank items are very very very well made and great where they are, they have answers to everything, and they have items that synergize with their champions.
GAME HEALTH
Overall I think the game health is actually pretty high, I would say about 85%-90% healthy. Now that doesn't mean that they shouldn't strive to be healthier.
Damage is stupidly high. This is a game health problem, because it throws out some basic core concepts. Such as phase strong champions. The idea of early game champion, mid game champion, late game champion is dead right now. Renekton is still as deadly as ever in the late game as he is in the early game. Late game champions are hitting their "late" game in the mid game. and mid game champions hit mid game at level 6.
Dumb mechanics make the game unfun. These recent champions are great examples. I am not saying their isn't merit to trying new things out, but when something is clearly not working, or is clearly too strong, it shouldn't take 6-9 months to remove those mechanics. At most it should take 3 months. You have millions of players playing around the world for enough data to understand it. You have Reddit, Boards, Twitter, Twitch, Mixer, Discord, etc to hear peoples opinions. Majority of the time the players of the champion in question will be like "Yeah this is a dumb mechanic that just takes power away from my champion. I would rather have more power in this area."
Not even going to go further here, because this one is pretty much complete opinion. This is just my stance.
TL:DR
Damage is too high. Too many dumb mechanics with no punishing returns.