Power Creep in league of legends

Critkeeper··3 votes·1,285 views

This is a short summary of how league of legends has evolved since I've been playing:

Ashe used to be considered a broken easy mode champ with too much power for too little skill, who nobody could touch because of her range and permaslow.

Then all kinds of nasty bruisers were invented to kill her.

And then the tank meta happened.

And then RIOT buffed up magic damage hard mages utterly annihilated tanks.

And then Assassins became popular as a way to prevent mages from ever reaching full steam.

And then people realized that tanks don't do anything if both carries are dead, and so Assassins became popular for 2 seasons straight.

And then supports were given tools to peel assassins (and everything else), along with buffs to marksmen summoners and items that made them more difficult to gib.

And then people started playing burst mages (assassin's burstier but less mobile cousins) so that they could continue to gib marksmen.

And then burst mages were all nerfed hard to make that not a thing, with the removal of DFG.

And then tanks were given buffs to make it possible to kill marksmen, especially kalista, and the tank meta happened again.

If history repeats itself, the mage meta is up next. Ryze rework will likely be what starts people thinking about taking mages to deal with tanks again.

#During all this time, power creep.

And today's "Ashe" looks like Kalista.

I bet in 4 years kalista will just be an inferior version of "Vukdulu" because she only has infinite dashes, and he has infinite knock backs

8 Comments

Unlucky Number73 votes

infinite knock backs i like that idea. let's get CertaintyT on it.

SlytherinUmbreon1 votes

And he also has mobility

Best Darius KR2 votes

League of Legends? No power creep? Yea right

JustMyBassCannon1 votes

This is an old video. Literally nearly 3 years old. Power creep was non-existent then.

JustMyBassCannon2 votes

{quoted}

And today's "Ashe" looks like Kalista.

She traded a passive gold mechanic and her old Crit passive for an AS steroid and a pair of AD multipliers that are directly affected by her Crit.

She's not suddenly super-complex. It looks a lot more complex than it is. Her passive deals bonus damage to targets affected by Frost, scaled on Crit Chance/Damage. Her Q now has a (small) AS steroid, and if she has full Focus stacks, it gives a second damage multiplier that scales with her Frost multiplier.

Ashe has damage output in a fight, instead of burst at the beginning. That's quite literally the core change to her kit. Other than that, her E has a charge system, her W can't go through minions because one was hit by a Volley arrow already, and her R applies her passive's slow instead of its own 50% slow.

2pudge1cup1 votes

Power creep is something that is bound to happen in any system that constantly adds new content. The new content is going to shift rules or it won't be worth using.

And this isn't a bad thing overall.

Riot is so scared of power creep over the years that they've nerfed existing content while releasing new content. What this gives is a power vacuum where only a few are strong at once (either an unforeseen old pick with new interactions or a new pick).

They've gotten better at not being as pee their pants scared over an expected phenomenon recently. I'll grant them that. It still is a fallacy that power creep in general is bad and can be avoided.

Critkeeper1 votes

{quoted}

It still is a fallacy that power creep in general is bad and can be avoided.

I would agree if this were not a moba. The lifeblood of a moba is its champions, and making sure that the incomparables they provide is more significant than their raw power takes precedence over any other pursuit. If power creep exceeds a certain point, past which the incomparable differences between champions are trivialized, then the moba utterly loses its depth in an instant, and optimal strategies will quickly be discovered that exclude most of the roster.

Volt Cruelerz1 votes

Power Creep is like inflation. A little bit over time when controlled is good. A lot quickly is bad. Also, there is a place for nerfs.

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