Preseason Update changes - Thoughts and Discussion

Looking at what people are showing off on the PBE, it's gotten me thinking about a couple of things. Namely, Ekko, Rengar, and the jungle barrier of entry.

Tank Ekko has been a thorn in Riot's side for some time now, and they've had a lot of trouble keeping him down. They want to have the Assassin in'n'out playstyle originally envisioned for him, but I'm not so sure his kit facilitates that so much. I think the only thing keeping him Assassin-y is the execute damage on his W. Take that away and at first glance, I'd call him a diver. He causes a lot of AOE disruption and CC, while also able to get on and stick to a target. I think forcing him into the assassin camp is not working for him, and that's why we keep seeing these full tank builds.

The other issue is spellblade itemization. Champions like Kassadin and Diana and Ekko don't really have any items for them. While there is the distinction now between ADC/Assassin/Bruiser items, there's not really much distinction between normal mage items and melee mage fighter/assassin items, with a few exceptions like Gnashors and Lichbane, which see play on other attack speed related champions like Kayle. Frontline control mages (Aurelion, Lissandra) have different main item options than long range siege champions (Xerath, Ziggs). Reworking moonlight spellblade as a melee only item with benefits that befit a melee AP fighter might be one good option.

On a similar note to Ekko, Rengar's new kit seems very bruiserish to me. With the option between hard CC, health/sustain/escape, and high damage, but only ONE of those per 4 fury, he seems much less like an Assassin and more like a Diver to me. I think Riot needs to take a good hard look at what being a Diver means, where the line between Diver and Assassin is, and based on the description of Diver in the devblog about classes, Rengar seems much more of a Diver. Ekko is sort of a hybrid, but he and Diana need share the same issue of this.

Lastly, the jungle. I like all of the changes except plants. Camps are much easier to understand and routes can be switched up according to the game. I think plants are just adding a bit that only complicates an already complicated role. The difficulty and interesting interactions when jungling comes from the lanes, not the jungle camps. Being able to have a flexible route and watch the lanes for gank opportunities is something that should be exciting enough; the plants seem much more like a gimmick than anything interesting. There also seems to be a barrier of entry to the jungle (you must have THIS much game knowledge to jungle) that's a lot higher than getting smite at player level 10. Allowing people to play those farm junglers to learn how the jungle works before requiring them to start playing mental chess with the enemy jungler will go a long way into making people interested to play jungle. Less vision early (and thus the higher potential for more rewarding ganks) will keep junglers interested so they don't have to fall back on this "farm forever" mindset if they keep failing ganks.

Anyway, I'm interested to hear other people's thoughts on the matter and get some discussion going. I'd like Riot to see this so they can bring it up in some internal meeting to talk about it.

TL;DR

• Riot needs to consider re-classifying rengar and ekko as divers

• plants are gimmicky