READ: Riot is breaking their own game
Hey, my name is Morten, and I've been playing league since end season 4, and I've spent a lot of hours playing this game, watching LCS and really trying to understand Riot's decisions and goal towards "champion diversity and game balance".
It is okay if you disagree with me on some points; these are all my thoughts on balance ad diversity threatening additions of the game since late S5
The Jungle
The jungle pool seems to be smaller than ever, and it is obvious the heavy AoE junglers are the winners. "The living jungle" has made the jungle so much worse. With pretty much every jungle camp having more monsters with Blue/Red being the only exceptions. More junglers are skipping warrior than ever, in favor if an early tiamat. This item is so good in the jungle meta, and improves clears by so much. Is this where we are going? AoE being the only way of clearing the jungle? Even Lee Sin gets tiamat, as if his clears weren't good enough.
This feels so forced, and the only junglers that do well right now are Vi, Lee Sin, Rek'Sai and Hecarim, all who abuses AoE or tiamat in some way.
Riot's solution? Nerf smite healing, so every other champion that clears bad, clears even worse and ends camps with even less health.
Keystones
At first, they seemed cool. Now, it just feels like unnessecary power. Colossus has made tanks way more obnoxious than ever, and they are basically invincible if they land any CC in a teamfight. And laning against them?
Riot claims they change how champions are played, while in reality, they are raw buffs to champions who have synergy with that keystone. Naut top wasn't a thing before, now he is freaking bs. What about champions that have little synergy with keystones, like Garen? You just go thunderlord's, because it's the least trash, even though you are pretty much full tank anyways, so it does less damage.
Old Kog was strong because he abused Fervor and on-hit effects too well. Now, his W does double base damage, but has half attack speed (compared to the marksman updated kog). Why is he then so trash? Because he lost synergy and OP'ness with fervor.
Oh, and who can forget tank Fizz, Ekko, Yasuo, Zed (in compeditive)? They didn't need the extra damage thunderlords offered, so it was better to just go tanky and have more survivability. Seriously though, if Riot even wants to consider melee carries again for compeditive, they really need to rethink the keystones, because they're not archieving their goal.
Plants
Even though, I don't see them creating meta, they still feel unnecessary. What even was the point for adding them? What is their goal? It just seems so random, and honestly just feels like Riot really is forced into implementing something new, rather than taking care of the game's problems.
Mid Year Mage update
This one is a bit more focused at Vel'Koz, and why he is still not seeing the amount of compeditive play even though he recieved true damage on his lazer.
The changes to Vel'Koz pushed alot of power (interms of damage) from his abilities and into his passive. Let me explain why this is a problem.
- He can't keep up with other waveclearing mids. With champions like Syndra and Viktor oneshotting waves, why is it a problem for Vel'Koz? I see that it decreases passive lane.
- He is way more unreliable. Hitting 1 ability does less. Hitting 3 abilities does more. This is a problem because counterplay is good for solo queue, and not LCS. Old Vel was able (he still is, just not as good), to poke and get away with hitting single abilities. New Vel doesn't do that, but only gets to do alot of damage when hitting all 3 of his abilities, and that becomes problematic when he recieves even more, unnecessary counterplay. He now is even more focused at punishing player mistakes than ever, and it has basically been a step backwards in terms of making him compeditively viable.
His R also relies on hitting 3 basic abilities, and without, well. It's just the same.
The same goes for Brand, even though he has a lot more ways to get his passive going (his R).