The new meta shows that LoL is impossible to balance and badly designed

Hi everyone,

I quit playing LoL for some time now primarily because with the shift to this new meta, and my overall experience over the three months I played the game, I came to the conclusion that Lol is a game which suffers from major flaws in its design which ultimately makes it very hard (if not impossible) to balance. Of course there is no such thing as 'perfect balance' only a state of balance which both the developers themselves and the playerbase can agree is reasonable, which that is no one element of the game is too strong over the other options available and where only skill makes the difference.

Assassins and ADCs are now dead

First, before the shift to this meta when the Assassins Rework came out, most of us have come to agree that Assassins have been pretty much dead and outclassed: it became apparent that other classes could fill their role more efficiently and with less risk such as mages. Now with the latest patch and the new meta ADCs have been gutted too. Go to Youtube and now you'll see everywhere videos showing why ADCs are weak now if playing the game itself as it is now isn't enough to convince you. Seeing that any new attempts to re-balance the game through patches and any shifts in the meta as a result of those patches or not essentially results in one or two whole classes/roles being gutted and thrown out of the window, I'm given the impression that Riot just can't properly balance the game; they can't buff one aspect of the game without making another outclassed or weak in the process. This is a strong hint of either poor decision making or bad game design overall (or both).

Damage and items available to all

Tanks, Fighters/Bruisers and Mages are now the truly dominant roles in the game. Why is that? Because they can deal loads of damage whilst being durable, decently mobile and with powerful crowd control which essentially means they cover all their weaknesses whilst assassins and ADCs cannot, hence why the latter two roles are now dead and outclassed by the former three. A full-tank Poppy or Nautilus which normally are meant to soak damage more than dishing it out can wipe out an Assassin and ADC in a fraction of a second. The way masteries, items and scaling are now means everything can deal tons of damage and the fact that every class can buy damage dealing items since all classes share the same pool of items to buy from only makes it worse. Maybe it would have been better if each champion had his own unique item pool to buy things from all of which are class specific, for example an ADC can only buy mostly damage items and a Tank can only buy mostly health and armor items.

Snowballing

Snowballing is fatal to a game's balance and it's running rampant in LoL. Though we don't want games to last too long (40+ minutes) it doesn't mean that when games last a mere 20-25 minutes due to someone growing too strong too fast because he got a lot of kills and gold and now is unstoppable and stomping your team that the problem is solved and neither it's fun. Nobody likes being in a game where someone has gone too ahead of you to the point where there's nothing you can do to close the gap and turn it round and you're essentially forced to play a losing game. Snowballing is a result of a fundamental aspect of LoL's design. The fact that you gain gold by destroying turrets and killing enemy players and you use it to buy items to strengthen your champion means you can grow stronger than the enemy players and, unless somehow they catch up, you'll keep stomping them growing stronger and preventing them from catching up. No one should be more powerful than anyone at any point only skill should make the difference! Snowballing will remain an issue unless the current gold system is changed in a way that ensures that gold gaps between teams never grow too large to the point that snowballing can happen.

At it's current state it wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that LoL might actually need something of an overhaul to the whole game's balance if champion roles are to return to a desirable state. We want tanks to be tanks and mages to be mages not 'jack-of-all-trades' where they can do pretty much everything, having no weaknesses and outclassing other roles! Moreover to get rid of snowballing there will have to be a fundamental change in the game itself, to be made in such a way that no matter how good you perform you can't actually grow stronger than all the others in the game. Think Call of Duty where everyone has the same guns to choose from but no one actually grows stronger than the others over the course of the match no matter how many kills he gets.