Patch 6.5 Notes: On Diversity

"being good at a lot of things and bad at very few things is a big no-no for champion diversity and balance alike" Yeah, no. Yi, Jax, Xin, Trundle, Nasus, Renekton, most of, if not all of, the tanks with damage and generally every, if not every, juggernaut don't really represent that Riot is aiming for that. The list of champs that fall under the wall of absolutely arguably broken haven't really changed. Those who do have either the most simplistic gameplay, do everything well, e.g. lifesteal, damage, and defense, and both. And if they suck as hell in one area, the others are enough to negate it--all Yi needs to says screw your CC and eat his lifesteal is QSS. Trundle, Volibear, and Malphite say that your attacks tickle. I read this patch before I went into a game, thinking; "Yeah, I don't really think this is where we're at." Then I gave Yi first blood and he snowballed off that to hell with 26/4. At least make even the most unstoppable forces always stoppable. But to be honest, our comp wasn't the greatest for CC and they had a Trundle and a Renekton. Everyone always says that there are counters to champions like Yi or Jax, like using a ton of CC, or that the counter to tanks are teams with heavy hitters--they're not wrong at all. The issue that these champs have such a concrete play and counterplay that your team needs--gosh darn it, demands--that you pick the right counterplay or you will lose. But the thing is that not every team is built to fight against every possible threat. Sometimes you have more than enough champs right for the task of taking out a tank, other times you have you too little to keep down a fast fighter. Heck, even in a group, you can choose any class you want and still end up not having the right way to deal with the enemy. When the diversity between the classes of the champs in a team are low, it's proportionally more difficult to deal with the cumulative threat the enemy faces or the cumulative weakness they give to themselves, but when they're paired up with even just one class that fits perfectly with them, there's no beating them; think of a Blitzcrank, Amumu, and Leona chain-ulting to hell with absolutely no means of escape while an Ahri and Viktor come on in and melt faces off. Here's a serious suggestion to help deal with teams with less-than-ideal or stupidly-ideal composition: make a system that restricts how many Summoners could play as the roles as a champion, like tank or fighter or mage, so that either team has a fair composition towards each other. At least alleviate the pain that could be a Leblanc with 3 tanky crowd controllers or an Amumu with three 5.00 attack speeders down to as little as one tank or one fighter. Stop letting people make teams that have 4 squishy mages with little mobility or four tanks with tons of CC or three URFers or tons of any champs that fit the meta. If it sounds restrictive, then you'd be right, but if the goal of Riot right now is to create diversity among the players and the champions, it would at least be a less-than-gentle nudge in that direction. And if someone argues that having several of the same class of champions on the same team counts as diversity between team compositions, it's not. It's either conforming to what the meta tells the players to play, a condoning of letting people play the same champ or champ class forever or until it doesn't work, or just being cheap. That second part and possibly the third is the undeniable exemplification that diversity will never completely exist in the League. As far as how many classes of champions people will try out, sure, there'll be plenty of that, but there will only be so many who try to master all of them because it's too time consuming and also because many at-least-semi-serious players would rather master someone and move up quickly with one or two or if fate allows it three classes: there's no incentive to what players perceive as a waste of time. And if there's a meta to follow, people are going to follow it, but will only play the champs of it while it's around; same thing with broken unmanaged champions that people who want to hyper-move-up will always use. When that happens, games go stale and predictable and people get tired of fighting the same URF mode fighters and the same sustainable tanky tanks; this has been happening forever especially with the champions Riot hasn't changed or refuses to change. Diversity won't thrive in League unless Riot pushes it harder onto its players and onto its champions, but they won't ever do that because they don't want to look like the heavy handed father, which is understandable, but still disappointing in that some things may never change because of it.