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League is still a strategy game, it's just nobody wants to use strategy

Rock MD·12/22/2018, 12:53:02 AM·16 votes·7,283 views

For context, we're defining strategy in this sense.

-Strategy is your plan of attack (via macro and micro) to win the game (aka your win condition). -Strategy can be employed by your enemy as well as your teammates. Everyone is going to have their own win conditions they want to play to, and part of strategy is knowing who you want to work with. Strategy is about when and where to compromise and where you should abandon a strategy altogether (i.e. stop trying to be a carry and play anti-carry for a stronger carry on the opposing team). -Strategy should be flexible, as an inflexible strategy is a surefire way to lose.

Now let's use a little psychology. Most people want to be the carry. Their win condition will often be, "I want to have the greatest impact on the game." because let's be real. You want to feel like you're good at the game. Nothing wrong with that. I want you to try your hardest in games, especially if you're on my team. The big difference is that some people see damage as the greatest impact, some see ward coverage, roaming and macro, some see lockup.

The problem is that most people get stuck on the first definition and cannot or do not process anything else. Also, due to perceptions of a high damage meta, people think that the best way to have that impact is to do the most damage. And you can see this in peoples' attitudes and perceptions about the current state of matches they're in.

Let's use Zed for example. You're playing against Zed and you have a lapse in judgment and he and his jungler kill you. You get frustrated because Zed has an insane amount of damage, and that's understandable, but what you fail to consider is that he and his jungler are employing strategy, and they knew you didn't have a brush warded so they used that to kill you. Maybe you get upset with your jungler, and that's another problem because junglers are bad and I hate junglers maybe the jungler has a different strategy from the one you had. Also, your strategy is inflexible because you're hoping that he'll match you 1 for 1 with the ganks that the enemy jungler performs, and that's simply unrealistic. Assuming you are right and the jungler should've counterganked, you still run into the problem that you're expecting another person to know the exact same things you know, and vice versa when he flames you.

Maybe you've got a bad teammate, and that's annoying in and of itself because people are extraordinarily inconsistent, but expecting everyone to perform to the standards you have of players in the role again is inflexible. Expecting people to play up to par every game means you leave yourself open because you don't feel the need to perform in that category. i.e. maybe you don't feel the need to buy more armor because your adc shouldn't feed in this lane. You don't buy armor and the 5/0 Lucian melts you.

The reason this becomes so difficult is because the choices you make will usually end up shafting a teammate. If you gank top, you leave bot exposed to getting ganked. If you go to help the jungler that's getting invaded, you risk setting yourself behind. Sometimes, it will end up feeling like you hurt yourself to help a useless teammate, or that a teammate is taking advantage of you to get to their win condition. These calls won't always work out and they can even lose you games.

And that gets us to the main point of this post. Many people see, "oh my teammate doesn't want to help me reach my win condition so they're selfish" or, "they're 2/0 and do more damage than me. I can't fight them. Game's over." and instead of changing their strategy to focus on another possible winning outcome, their mental shatters and they give up. It's frustrating. Some games are just lost and everyone gets outplayed and that's fine, but I've played countless games where one person is horribly behind and instead of relying on the guy who is ridiculously ahead and playing for them, they give up entirely. A good example of what I'm saying is that one guy playing Tryndamere who will feed 0/4 in the laning phase and will continue to afk soft int because he's not as strong as the other top laner but he says he can not play with the team under any circumstance (I know everyone here has had that happen at least once in their games, it's basically a League initiation ritual at this point).

The number of people doing that recently feels like it has gone up dramatically, and it leads to an unsatisfying and unenjoyable game experience. You see it when the midlaner dies over and over to LB but hasn't bought any MR or health or taken it in their runes. When one gank goes sour and someone calls for open mid, or the jungler doesn't come to your lane so you buy 3 tears. Personally, in my last 4 promos I've had at least one game where a teammate was so uncooperative that we simply couldn't win because they were too stubborn to change their strategy to better reflect the state of the game.

So anyway, despite the high damage meta, I still do think the game requires a good deal of strategy. It's just that people are simply unwilling to adapt.

P.S. yes that includes changing your champion picks. I don't think one champion should be all you need to play a role and I certainly don't think anyone should limit themselves to one single role, because both reduce your perspective of the game.

40 Comments

3TWarrior12/22/2018, 8:32:29 AM11 votes

I'll go over some of the things which have been almost systematically removed from the game, removing elements of strategy with them

  • wards other than trinkets -- supports can pick up warding support items, but if they are a damage support, this becomes largely unnecessary in favor of: more damage

  • resource management: while it's still impossible to spam everything, it is now possible to have large amounts of mana or mana regen or both at the start of the game; or even be entirely unreliant upon it without consequences

  • Poke damage - Poke damage is now irrelevant in a skirmish when a single combo can render you dead unless you have the highest range in the game and play for early advantage

  • gold income management -- gold income is easily double or triple what it used to be. Supports are now judged based upon their ability to crowd control/provide utility and their ability to provide high base damage compared to being able to function on a low income (which although this is good, did gold generation need to go up so much that supports are on par with their lane partners?)

  • item-based durability : most durable champions now rely on abilties(and in some cases runes) and only bolster themselves with items compared to any champion that builds properly being able to become durable if desired. Gargoyle's stoneplate can change this but requires premeditated actions and at least three enemies within its radius to be worth using the active. It also makes the champion more reliant on the item than on just playing the game

  • Generalists having trade-offs for their ability to do anything; Champions like graves, lee sin, Irelia and now even Jax are all main-stream problems

  • UNIVERSAL DEFENSIVE ITEMS: banshee's veil is now almost explicitly for AP champions (which makes little sense when it's purpose is to protect mainly from their abilities...) and Guardian Angel now only provides useful stats to AD-based characters

  • Banner of Command: they removed the item instead of fixing its simple problems that they caused...trading damage and favorable stats/item actives for map pressure was useful and had a give and take relationship

then I'll get into some subjective changes

  • champion balance changes are starting to more and more resemble a popularity contest than active attempts at balancing the game

  • Changes that end up unhealthy for the game take a long time to be changed again

  • Unnecessary changes for the sake of change, often without seeming to look at feedback

  • Parts of the game which upset the foundations of the game: random events, kits that break rules that all other champions are subjected to

#The damage being ridiculous is one thing, but all of these are another entirely

HEALTH FOUNTAIN12/22/2018, 1:16:21 AM10 votes

you don't need to use strategy when late game (25 minutes in) you can destroy someone with a combo

it's not that people dont want to use it, it's that they don't need to

ModCaptainMårvelous12/22/2018, 5:35:04 AM8 votes

Hey shut up if I can't lock in my favorite champion every single game and always get a 50/50 skill match-up Riot FUCKED UP. >:(

Cats Are Food12/22/2018, 2:12:57 AM8 votes

I've got a strategy that I follow every day:

Wake up Take meds Eat breatkfast Go to work

Every aspect of life can be pulled apart by a strategy to deal with it. Doesn't make it fun, or exactly needed.

Critmaster Garen12/22/2018, 10:04:16 AM4 votes

riot is intentionally killing off any and every strategy that doesnt involve constanlty fighting opposing champions.

  • farming junglers are dead
  • counterjungling is dead for the most part, unless its invading to kill the opposing jungler
  • they hate and punish when people play safe at their turret (even if its neccessary in uneven lanes)
  • passive farm lanes overall are dead
  • stalling out games to scale is a dead strategy

basically riot wants 20 minute death matches and thats it.

theyre taking care to make every other strategy so inefficient that theyre not feasable anymore.

when they have their shorter games as a result (basically one team just snowballs out of control), they "fix" the game pacing with ridiculous early game buffs to lategame scaling champions.

the game has become a giant pile of shit as a result.

lanes are more counterpick oriented, aggressive early game champions dominate the jungle since theyre the only ones that can contest scuttles and are simply more useful than farming and scaling junglers, and champion power curves are completely out of whack.

remember seasons ago when phreak was known for jungling every single champion in the game? that included champions like lulu, soraka or some that have much better suited kits but would still be considered downright troll picks in todays meta, because they cant defend themselves against the top dogs and cant gank lanes for almost 10 minutes straight.

Futanarilover12/22/2018, 1:02:03 AM3 votes

Ah one of those people intentionally being contrarian to sound more intelligent

Kaisha12/22/2018, 5:54:18 AM3 votes

[{quoted}](name=Rock MD,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=7HGqq4BA,comment-id=,timestamp=2018-12-22T00:53:02.129+0000)

For context, we're defining strategy in this sense.

-Strategy is your plan of attack (via macro and micro) to win the game (aka your win condition). -Strategy can be employed by your enemy as well as your teammates. Everyone is going to have their own win conditions they want to play to, and part of strategy is knowing who you want to work with. Strategy is about when and where to compromise and where you should abandon a strategy altogether (i.e. stop trying to be a carry and play anti-carry for a stronger carry on the opposing team). -Strategy should be flexible, as an inflexible strategy is a surefire way to lose.

Now let's use a little psychology. Most people want to be the carry.

Nope, this is pure projection. You might like being the carry, but not all. Whether 'most' do or not highly depends on your definition of 'most'.

Their win condition will often be, "I want to have the greatest impact on the game." because let's be real. You want to feel like you're good at the game. Nothing wrong with that. I want you to try your hardest in games, especially if you're on my team. The big difference is that some people see damage as the greatest impact, some see ward coverage, roaming and macro, some see lockup.

You're conflating ideas.

The problem is that most people get stuck on the first definition and cannot or do not process anything else. Also, due to perceptions of a high damage meta, people think that the best way to have that impact is to do the most damage. And you can see this in peoples' attitudes and perceptions about the current state of matches they're in.

The best way IS to do high damage. That's the problem.

Let's use Zed for example. You're playing against Zed and you have a lapse in judgment and he and his jungler kill you. You get frustrated because Zed has an insane amount of damage, and that's understandable, but what you fail to consider is that he and his jungler are employing strategy,

Lets pick a more realistic example. You're playing top. The mid feeds zed and now he's roaming and ganks you. You ward and see him coming, he misses every skill shot, you land a perfectly timed CC, he ults and 2-shots you none-the-less despite missing EVERYTHING else. OMG what skill.

and they knew you didn't have a brush warded so they used that to kill you. Maybe you get upset with your jungler, and that's another problem because junglers are bad and I hate junglers maybe the jungler has a different strategy from the one you had. Also, your strategy is inflexible because you're hoping that he'll match you 1 for 1 with the ganks that the enemy jungler performs, and that's simply unrealistic. Assuming you are right and the jungler should've counterganked, you still run into the problem that you're expecting another person to know the exact same things you know, and vice versa when he flames you.

Rambling nonsense...

Maybe you've got a bad teammate, and that's annoying in and of itself because people are extraordinarily inconsistent, but expecting everyone to perform to the standards you have of players in the role again is inflexible. Expecting people to play up to par every game means you leave yourself open because you don't feel the need to perform in that category. i.e. maybe you don't feel the need to buy more armor because your adc shouldn't feed in this lane. You don't buy armor and the 5/0 Lucian melts you.

Or you buy armor, and the 5/0 lucian still melts you... as rammus... with a full tank build. The problem is there isn't another strategy apart from 'don't let them get fed'. And that's not something you have control over. Once any hypercarry gets fed, its game over for everyone else. If you're playing a support and completely own ur lane, it doesn't matter what you did if the enemy talon gets 2-3 kills ahead, you can't stop him from stomping your lane repeatedly, even under the tower.

The reason this becomes so difficult is because the choices you make will usually end up shafting a teammate.

No the problem is the choices you make have almost no affect on the outcome of the game. If you're not a hypercarry, you don't matter.

If you gank top, you leave bot exposed to getting ganked. If you go to help the jungler that's getting invaded, you risk setting yourself behind. Sometimes, it will end up feeling like you hurt yourself to help a useless teammate, or that a teammate is taking advantage of you to get to their win condition. These calls won't always work out and they can even lose you games.

And that gets us to the main point of this post. Many people see, "oh my teammate doesn't want to help me reach my win condition so they're selfish" or, "they're 2/0 and do more damage than me. I can't fight them. Game's over." and instead of changing their strategy to focus on another possible winning outcome, their mental shatters and they give up. It's frustrating. Some games are just lost and everyone gets outplayed and that's fine, but I've played countless games where one person is horribly behind and instead of relying on the guy who is ridiculously ahead and playing for them, they give up entirely. A good example of what I'm saying is that one guy playing Tryndamere who will feed 0/4 in the laning phase and will continue to afk soft int because he's not as strong as the other top laner but he says he can not play with the team under any circumstance (I know everyone here has had that happen at least once in their games, it's basically a League initiation ritual at this point).

The number of people doing that recently feels like it has gone up dramatically, and it leads to an unsatisfying and unenjoyable game experience. You see it when the midlaner dies over and over to LB but hasn't bought any MR or health or taken it in their runes. When one gank goes sour and someone calls for open mid, or the jungler doesn't come to your lane so you buy 3 tears. Personally, in my last 4 promos I've had at least one game where a teammate was so uncooperative that we simply couldn't win because they were too stubborn to change their strategy to better reflect the state of the game.

They're giving up mainly because there's little point to try. You can't fight that fed LB... its futile to try. That 1% chance that it might go their way is just not enough incentive to waste the time. Better to find another way to enjoy the game (trolling/inting), move on (spam ff) or just leave (the ever popular old rage quit). And given how massively snowbally this game is I can't blame them.

So anyway, despite the high damage meta, I still do think the game requires a good deal of strategy. It's just that people are simply unwilling to adapt.

I think you need to play a real game that requires strategy. Try chess, or Atlas Reactor. The irony of league is that if the players that get fed and roflstomp were really so good to justify such 1-sided wins, they wouldn't need to be fed to do it.

P.S. yes that includes changing your champion picks. I don't think one champion should be all you need to play a role and I certainly don't think anyone should limit themselves to one single role, because both reduce your perspective of the game.

Malza12/22/2018, 8:28:17 AM3 votes

I use strategy all the time!

UlyssesISR12/22/2018, 11:25:35 AM3 votes

There is no room for strategy if you can blow your opponent up in under 3 seconds. Much less in a game where most matches end in about 15-25min.

Power Cosmic12/22/2018, 4:08:51 PM1 votes

The strategy is all still there in terms of good and bad choices. The difference is riskier choices are now 40/60 instead of 10/90 which makes it harder to be good but also harder to learn the game. But even in a damage heavy meta, some things are worth fighting for and some aren't (given the matchup). Newer players can't seem to grasp that bc they think they have a chance to win every fight. There is almost always something to do better than dying.

Jackin ur lawn12/22/2018, 5:30:11 AM1 votes

Yea. They don't want to use strategy and they most certainly don't want to communicate. I got flamed for not being able to read someone's mind.

Lemonfaace12/22/2018, 3:26:42 AM1 votes

Amen.

Lilin Ashe12/22/2018, 10:45:33 AM1 votes

In my opinion there are more tactics then i can imagine but the general tactics that most people ignore in solo is Balanced Damage... enemy team goes full AD, someone goes Full Armor Rammus and starts 1v3ing the team comp or 3 mages so get magic res and just nuke the AD's

Also you get the problem with blood lust where people just can not give up on a chase and start feeding non-stop because that ten health master yi using ult is suddenly goign to be caught up to, or that you can chase an ulting Sion, or that moment you try to finish people off with trist ulti and end up saving them. People are too greedy for kills

Greed is the number one reason for losses in games, unless you Rengar or Kha'zix where its actually a part of how they best work or Pyke with his ultimate

Even a good Zed can be useless if he keeps chasing people and gets one shot by a morg full combo hitting him right after he exits his ult and get hit by a point blank Q R W and death

The other thing is knowing when you have a Team Fight comp or a Split Push comp, A team fight comp has lots of AOE cc and ultimates that can hit entire teams while a split push comp generally has champs that will not lose most 1v1's and even in an even 1v1 can pull back forcing people to 2v1 him making the other lanes have a man down along the 4v3 or they forced to 1v1 send the tank to stop the push leaving their 4v4 team fight without front lines

There are many tactics, these are just a handful

Nyarlathοtep12/22/2018, 10:49:11 AM1 votes

maybe you don't feel the need to buy more armor because your adc shouldn't feed in this lane. You don't buy armor and the 5/0 Lucian melts you.

I know this is just an example but, armour does jack shit nothing. Yeah you might survive an aa and generally with a sliver oh health but, then what? Sure you dont give him gold but you fall behind because you recall. Stalling out IS NOT an option since turrets are fucking papers. As such going dmg and maybe hoping the enemy throws is far better than stalling with turrets that are more fragile than pretty much everything in the whole existence.

The Darkened12/22/2018, 10:13:30 PM1 votes

When i play against Zed, he kills me regardless of jungler or anything else. Or, if he is really terrible Zed and can't win a lane, he simply goes somewhere else, gets bunch of kills, and then he kills me. And everyone else. And escapes. Blink, blink. blink, in less than second, impossible to react, impossible to chase.

Somehow if i pick Pantheon, for example, to kill someone i must put mysfelf in danger, spent some time (allowing enemies to make a counter play), and doom myself at becoming totaly useles in late in exchange to good early killing potential. And i can't understand why Zed can do the same, but easier, faster, and with instant escape, while also being a beast in late. All new champs, especailly - almost all of the ninjas feel completly unfair compared to old designs. And with how many champs in league are currently exist for one singular purpose - oneshot you without giving any time to retaliate, i would say - no, it's not so much about strategy, as it about pressing buttons really fast.

Netorare12/22/2018, 2:32:08 PM1 votes

->Strategy ->Braindead one shot ?????? I remember when the nexus took ages to kill, that shit was good. MOBA's dont have strategy compared to RTS(bless RTS genre for not having to deal with a braindead team)

MiD Enforcer12/22/2018, 7:53:51 AM1 votes

Tbh it’s like the dunning Kruger effect. There’s definately strategy in this game and zed is terrible currently, he’s just like Diana, if u itemise ur items well you can just shut a zed down. That’s why Stylish and Faker (who’s known for that champion) can’t climb with them anymore. Zed is effective in gold and below where people doesn’t understand macro and itemisation much. Not saying plat or diamond are good at it but atleast they are better than gold.

mack911212/22/2018, 8:12:37 AM1 votes

I agree completely , everybody wants to be the carry simply because they don't trust the players they play with.

There was a point it was different and you saw players playing team reliant champs but times change.