Some Concerning Observations About Gameplay

FUUUBAAAR·Oct 19, 2019·20 votes·11,811 views

I've been seeing a lot of rather unhealthy team comps lately and it's beginning to worry me a bit. Almost daily (I play roughly two to three matches of League most days) I end up seeing some obnoxious cc spam comp that basically revolves around locking one player down until they die (most obnoxious example being for like 10 seconds straight just b2b roots and stuns to kill a heavy-duty damage soaking tank) and keeping them from playing the game during the teamfights (that RIOT has made league revolve around), or BS "hide in the bush all game after laning phase and wait for someone to get in range trying to place a ward" instant deletion combo teams (basically a really cheesy Malphite waiting to ult from out of vision, but with all 5 members of your team) and similarly fun-robbing comps. It's beginning to worry me in all honesty, seeing as NOBODY wants to queue up for a game of league just to sit there looking pretty and waiting to die (heck, even the trolls/actually intentional inters at least go looking around in bush from time to time, albeit not for the same reasons as more genuine players), which is what usually happens if you end up fighting 5 cc spammers.

The weirdest part is, you'd think folks would HATE comps like this universally (aside from the people abusing them at the time), but more and more games out there seem to be focusing on these cheap-thrill delivering instant kill/short fight setups where a "long" engagement lasts all of roughly 6 seconds before a winner emerges. Even a bunch of the new "battle royale" genre games seem to be picking up on this, with actual combat (not the part where you're all hiding from each-other looking for loot, but the point where teams have begun to get confident in their combat strength and are actively looking for victims to shoot at) seeming to get shorter and shorter all around.

There also seems to be a lot more "sub-par" teammates showing up in people's games, but this is something not even rito has much control over. I'm noticing similar trends in a lot of online games/communities in general. Much as it hurts to say it, it seems like more and more people online these days are just arsewipes you wouldn't hang out with irl, looking for someone to bother. Unfortunately in games like mobas where there's incentive not to leave/incentive to finish the match, lots of aforementioned arsewipes are taking advantage of it to harass not only the actually decent folks they encounter, but each other as well. All concerning trends, to say the least.

Is anyone else noticing these same trends? Are there any RIOTers who'd care to chime in (particularly in regards to possibly adressing some of those mean-spirited seeming team comps)?

40 Comments

SaevumOct 19, 201913 votes

The cc chain feels worse because of the amount of damage and increased cooldown items available for mages. They happen to dash or blink more often, shot some nasty cc skillshot and proceed to nuke if it lands. So basically, if you are not playing something with dashes too or decent movement speed, you will probably get caught more often.

IainG10Oct 20, 201911 votes

If they cut CDR from mages, they need to take it from assassins and brawlers as well. You should have to choose between hitting often and hitting hard.

Now to be fair, I am all for that. I just don't want to see assassins become even more oppressive (and remember, that will force more mages into supp, where they don't belong).

Doctor FillgoodOct 20, 20192 votes

Yeah...assassins are getting a banshee veil shield on one of the lethality items. This entire next season is going back to a crazy burst assassin style game. Nothing else is going to really feel all that good considering they'll be able to ignore the first ability that hits them and they'll get more lethality.

IainG10Oct 22, 20192 votes

TBH I actually prefer the Banshee's style rather than it being an active, because it means I can try to preemptively pop it before they engage. Currently a good assassin can start the cast as they begin their engage, so it becomes active as they get into melee range with their target, and by then it's too late to stunlock them.

SaevumOct 20, 20192 votes

{quoted}

Now to be fair, I am all for that. I just don't want to see assassins become even more oppressive

Lethality items are strong right now. They can ignore enough base armor to shred a mid laner hp bar really fast, hence why Kha'Zix, Talon, etc. are considered ban worthy. Also, assassins benefit from this fast paced meta where mages can root champions more often due to CDR, and also, snowballing more consistently due to plates, bounty, turrets taken from early mid-game.

Herald is another assassin and mage friendly mechanic. Both love to win extra gold to spike their damage asap.

FUUUBAAAROct 20, 20192 votes

That sounds pretty reasonable to be honest. When I started playing league stuff had longer cooldowns across the board, and deciding WHEN to fire your abilities was a lot more important than it is now, when only ultimates, item actives, and a few exceptions (like Aurelion Sol's e) have a cooldown that prevents spam/makes a missed shot no real inconvenience by comparison.

LankPantsOct 21, 20192 votes

To be fair, CDR is actually overall less degenerate on Mages than it is on Assassins and Bruisers. Mages are overwhelmingly immobile, which at least gives them an exploitable weakness for some of their strengths. Even if they hit hard and often they tend to be easy to kill. The same thing cannot be said about bruisers and assassins.

RebeccaUCuberOct 20, 20191 votes

Since when mages have dashes or blinks in their kit? With a few expections...

[sg-lux-2]

IainG10Oct 20, 20191 votes

Since when has an assassin used their entire combo on me from a screen away? The thing these classes have in common is their damage comes from abilities, so are both boosted in similar ways by CDR (more CDR, more abilities, more dps).

RebeccaUCuberOct 21, 20191 votes

Maybe you didn't want to reply to me, since you didn't answer my question and replied with another one...

Mages dont have dashes or blinks (or invisibiliy in a poor vision meta) btw, that's it. That's what i pointed out there. Ofc they need something else.

IainG10Oct 22, 20191 votes

Yeah, I 100% replied thinking you were replying to me, not the guy starting this sub-thread.

RebeccaUCuberOct 22, 20192 votes

it happens [slayer-pantheon-thumbs]

KatareenerOct 20, 201913 votes

Honestly, the game would feel so much better to play if they would just make tenacity work on knockups. That's it. Just do that and the game feels 1 million times better to play.

Zero ShingetsuOct 20, 20194 votes

{quoted}

Honestly, the game would feel so much better to play if they would just make tenacity work on knockups. That's it. Just do that and the game feels 1 million times better to play.

Actually an excellent idea, now that I think of it. Knockups are a huge part of the game right now, with damage as high as it is. I notice a lot of squishier champions dying before they even hit the ground, and there's no way to combat a knockup once you're up.

Hardstuck ThreshOct 20, 20191 votes

QSS?????

goodiesohhiOct 21, 20191 votes

{quoted}

QSS?????

You can't qss knockups. The qss overrides the stun component but you need a movement ability like flash to override the forced movement of the displacement. So like Gangplank can orange a knockup but he'll still be stuck in the motion unless he flashes out. Basically the cleanse allows you to input a movement ability like a blink to cancel the displacement. You can't just qss by itself.

Ionian VulpixOct 20, 20199 votes

So, someone gets chain CCed, and dies for it? That's what you're complaining about this time? That's what SHOULD happen. If the enemy team is devoting those resources to killing the target, they should be dead. Don't care if you downvote, but if you eat their CC and the damage followup, it only stands to reason that your life should hit 0.

Hayaishi2Oct 20, 20193 votes

[{quoted}](name=Ionian Vulpix,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=AZp00m9g,comment-id=0007,timestamp=2019-10-20T04:08:31.484+0000)

So, someone gets chain CCed, and dies for it? That's what you're complaining about this time? That's what SHOULD happen. If the enemy team is devoting those resources to killing the target, they should be dead. Don't care if you downvote, but if you eat their CC and the damage followup, it only stands to reason that your life should hit 0.

That isn't the point.

The point is that spending all your CC to blow up a single target has no room for punishing because of CDR.

You shouldn't want to just chain CC a tank and blow him up but since CDR is Op as fuck it doesn't matter, you get a pick and have all your important skills back in 5 secs anyways.

FUUUBAAAROct 20, 20191 votes

Exactly, what I'm worried about here is the lack of counterplay to it, even items like qss have a long cd on them and they'll save you from being spammed once, every like 90 seconds (which still doesn't work if the spamming team sees you pop it and holds off for a few seconds, or has cdr and just re-spams as soon as you're no longer protected). When you can force another engage 20 seconds later by just backing up a bit and re-group-pushing a turret, there isn't any actually effective counterplay to be had. As more and more folks realize this the cc spam comps become more and more common, and at least one player is effectively being kept from partaking in teamfights on pain of automatic, "nothing you can do about it" death.

Furthermore it's just not humanly possible to dodge the cc sometimes unless you're literally scripting to have your champion auto-move out of the way the second an opponent presses their cc ability (after all, when they fire it from a bush you're usually not going to see it coming in time to be able to move out of the way, and there's plenty of cc that is on-target, where no skillshot is needed, just the lock on). The damage creep that led to a cheap thrills-focused insta-kill meta is bad enough, at least let us keep playing the game instead of taking EVEN THAT away too lol.

FUUUBAAAROct 20, 20191 votes

AS EXPRESSLY STATED IN THE TITLE, these are observations, and I'm honestly concerned where they seem to be leading, please refrain from trying to start a fight here by accusing people of "complaining" (or whining/whatever else folks use to start crap on these boards). If you disagree with the observation, that's fine, but trying to devalue other's opinions for not matching your own is petty at best and I'd really appreciate not seeing it here.

Ionian VulpixOct 21, 20191 votes

What you "Observed" is someone getting CCed and dying. Like they should. Even tanks. People aren't supposed to be invincible save for a few abilities/items. Sounds stupid, but this needs to be said: "If you hit them, they will die." It's part of the game.

FUUUBAAAROct 21, 20191 votes

I'll try to point this out one more time, I'm not against cc, I'm against TRYING TO MAKE THE GAME REVOLVE AROUND IT TO THE EXCLUSION OF ALL ELSE by spamming it. I like seeing varied teamcomps that try other things too, but as it stands you either spam cc, get lucky and insta-delete cc users before they can react by using an assassin/burst-oriented kit, or you die for being in range to use your abilities most of the time with no real recourse to take against it. Apologies if there was a misinterpretation somewhere, I'd figured I was clear enough to get the idea across, but evidently I need to work on that.

League is more fun IMO when you see more than "the regulars" on the rift. We've always seen certain preferences in champ select, don't get me wrong, but it's getting downright obnoxious lately. A good example I can think of is; when was the last time you saw a team with like 1 or 2 cc abilities total do well against a team that revolved around firing hard cc as much as possible? In my case, I haven't seen it happen once this entire season.

Maybe I'm an outlier and just have bad luck, maybe not, that's why I started this discussion to get feedback from the community.

Ionian VulpixOct 22, 20191 votes

Of course the team with more CC is going to have an easier time winning than a team that is pure DPS. Have you ever wondered why the common answer to Yi is "Just CC him?" It's because Stopping them effectively neuters their DPS. You can't attack while CCed. You can't cast spells while CCed. You frequently can't even walk while CCed. CC is one of the two answers to damage; the other being higher damage.

FUUUBAAAROct 22, 20191 votes

"Of course the team with more CC is going to have an easier time winning than a team that is pure DPS." - That's kind of EXACTLY MY POINT lol. RIOT has said on multiple occasions that they want to "promote champion balance", but what, pray tell, is balanced about the team with more cc literally always winning regardless of the other team's comp unless there's a significant skill difference? I'm not concerned with cc countering pure damage, I'm worried about it negating the entire point of everything else that isn't cc (you know, like those other roles we used to see more of? tanks, healers, champions that did a little bit of several things instead of being focused solely on cc and lockdown, any of these ringing a bell?).

As it stands we seem to be in a meta where if you don't do insane dps, or even better, have a crapload of cc to spam, you lose unless you outplay incredibly hard (in a game where the devs try to keep overall skill levels about even in their matchups). THAT is what's worrying me.

vyodaOct 20, 20194 votes

item 3140 item 3222 item 3139 summoner 1

Down vote all you guys want, but if you can't dodge CC well, at least plan for an escape

KeiagaOct 19, 20192 votes

This is all an opinion alright

Cptn Han SoloQOct 20, 20192 votes

What else are u supposed to do? People told riot that mobility and damage are getting to ridiculous and all they do is throw even more of it at us. So people find ways to deal with it and CC-and-delete is the one thing that works against overloaded/broken/overstat/etc. champions. [unless u get into elobrackets where QSS is a playable item, then fck even that idea] [sg-miss-fortune]

AquariusGineOct 20, 20191 votes

I am guilty of playing champions that lock down 1 person and hard CC them to death because this stupid game has too many stupid mobile assassins that will 1-shot you if you make a single misstep. (Everyone is an assassin, even Caitlyn)

Malphite Lissandra Malzahar These 3 are my go-to now. I am sick of this meta as much as anyone else.

FUUUBAAAROct 20, 20191 votes

I mean, this discussion was never intended to shame anyone for doing it, and even if you as an individual play someone who's cc heavy that's fine. The problem I'm worried about is when people start ALL locking in cc heavy champions and maxing out cdr to spam it as much as humanly possible. Dying because a Morg landed a q on you is just a Morg being able to play the champ. Dying because you were locked in place by 3 or more separate instances of cc that effectively keep you from joining ANY teamfights (that RIOT tries very hard to make feel like important parts of the match) is practically just being locked out of the game when if it doesn't happen to you, it'll happen to a teammate of yours (which means trying to split push really just makes a 4v5 by spam into a 3v5 and lets the enemy team bulldoze your objectives with 5x your manpower when you're the only survivor).

There's just too much encouraging this cc overuse, so everyone's doing it.

AquariusGineOct 20, 20191 votes

Just today I play against 2 teams that CCed me for almost 6 seconds. Shaco boxes, Ivern ult, Ashe ult jesus christ.

CC is the counter to heavy burst. Riot brought this upon themselves.

IainG10Oct 20, 20191 votes

That and mobility; there are some champs that are such a pain to lock down (Yas in a wave, Vayne in Ult, any assassin) that if one person does land something, the best chance is to pile on them.

ßlameMyADCOct 20, 20191 votes

As a former Syndra Main on a different account I cried, not over high damage enemies, but mobile and agile ones.

meowwow7Oct 20, 20191 votes

you're being too generous with that time if they focusing the tank with cc and dmg

FUUUBAAAROct 20, 20191 votes

That was, as stated, the most horrendous example, the extreme outlier. In that particular match our opponents had kind of just stopped deleting poor Garen, and started toying with him instead (doubly painful to watch, since his q lets him break out of some cc).

Blue ShiftOct 20, 20191 votes

Nerf cdr, fix tenacity so it's not multiplicative, remove runes reforged, rank reset.

Hi im 12Oct 20, 20191 votes

what elo do you play in cause I see shit like trist mid, lucian top, ekko jungle, almost no CC comps lmao

FUUUBAAAROct 20, 20191 votes

To be honest, I stopped keeping track of elo a long time ago when I quit playing ranked due to all the salt/toxcicity/general admissions of being a total prick people kept displaying there, so I couldn't tell you off the top of my head. However as stated in OP, I was usually playing 3 matches a day or so, and almost daily I would run into comps with at least 3 cc heavy champs in them. It's died down to about one per day due to general lack of interest after getting crap like Vi mid on my team going 0/8/0 or seeing aforementioned cc spam. It just kinda kills my desire to keep playing when these kinds of things happen.

XJ99999999999999Oct 21, 20191 votes

id prob play the game and tolerate this shit if the community wasnt so trash in high elo

toxic as f, give up easily, and dodge if they dont like someone or someone is "trolling' or they didnt get the role they wanted. they then go on a smurf in the same elo and repeat. smurfs cause this issue

EyesOfTheFoxOct 21, 20191 votes

There's also a rune that lets you deal more damage to a cc'd opponent. If you have cc in your kit and you aren't running that then you're losing out on even MORE damage.