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Burst builds are becoming the norm, and it sucks.

CØulrophobia·11/17/2019, 12:48:19 PM·147 votes·21,546 views

Can we just take a moment to analyze the current meta?

Shyvana- AP build is better than bruiser, tank or on-hit. Malphite- Same thing as above, AP build is better than tank build. Vladimir- The guy we thought of as a go-to tank mage plays like an assassin. Garen- The epitome of tanky damage is now just damage-damage.

It isn't just limited to champions, look at the support role. Only things that give absurd amounts of damage are played, to the point that Senna, the newest support needs to be given, AD, Range, lifesteal, and crit chance to work properly.

Pyke is literally forbidden from being a tank, though his tank itteration might be more healthy than his current one. I mean, even things that aren't supports will be played like supports if they do enough damage. Examples are Swain and Shaco that are actually good supports right now, and Brand whose default role has become support. Riot is even balancing around it, instead of helping Brand be a midlaner mage.

This is not ok. There should be more to a moba than simple who clicks on whom first. The damage of the entire game needs to go down by good 30-40%. I mean, look at the resolve tree. Even that gives offensive stats with Grasp and Aftershock doing damage and only guardian being the utility shield (guess which one is the least used out of all 3?)

Do we really need new lethality items and less vision in the preseason?

128 Comments

arowin24211/17/2019, 6:34:34 PM21 votes

Firstly, i agree on the part that damage overal needs to be nerfed, however i do have something to say about the champions you took as an example.

AP Shyvana and Malphite are literally hit or miss. If Shyv misses her E she wont do jack, if Malp misses ult then he becomes useless for the next 60-120 seconds.

Garen was effectively reverted back into a bruiser/juggernaut who will win trough attrition, his main weakness is and has always been his lack of mobility / weak teamfight. they gave him back the damage he lost in jugg. update from season 5 and took some durability as compensation. getting to close to him was supposed to be a death sentence

Vlad has always been a massive balance issue, so much so that before his rework WOTA (will of the ancients) was solely balanced around him. regardless until level 9 he's essentially a potato who relies on jungle ganks to get truly ahead.

Senna suffers from the same fate as Jhin and Graves before her: by altering how her AA fundamentally works they had to slam allot of crap in her to keep her playable. (it doesn't help that she's an unholy abomination made from parts of both thresh and lucian.)

Pyke was meant as an assassin support, riot failed once by making a tank playstyle/ solo pyke viable and promptly gutted both and gave him lethality scaling so his support-assasin role is the only thing he has left.

Swain and Shaco can both easily trigger Spellthief's edge for gold and both have utility that makes playing them as a support viable. (see glacial augment)

there are more egregious examples of damage creep in the game, if you wish i can elaborate.

That's all

Yaskamasandwich11/18/2019, 12:49:42 AM18 votes

I see overloaded champions becoming the norm, all thanks to CertainlyT.

RebeccaUCuber11/17/2019, 6:43:33 PM18 votes

There's so many dmg that even Nauti and some other engagers do too much burst to squishies

Weiner the Pooh11/17/2019, 11:35:32 PM14 votes

Yeah but now people in our glorious overlords Chinese Internet cafes can get multiple games in an hour! So it’s ok. :)

Troll Slaiyer11/17/2019, 5:55:22 PM14 votes

so many items come with mana, cooldown and lethality. bonus damage from items and runes. there is so much more damage available than ever before. . this game sucks.

JRobin3111/18/2019, 3:58:41 AM13 votes

For me it isn't just this season, it's ever since Runes Reloaded and the Assassin rework.

But this season is even worse with the Damage META.

Now someone who knows his stuff might come on here and say that damage is not really higher than in previous seasons that actually it is just in our minds that we are in a Damage META...

But Damage META is doesn't just mean that everyone builds damage. It means that there aren't other meaning ways to build. Take for example mana. Most champions don't have a meaningful interaction with mana like they did in previous seasons. For the most part mana is something your champion will get and not have to worry too much about. I know there are energy champions... and that reminds me that RIOT moved away from trying to develop a more interesting energy economy. So it's like this, damage provides the most interesting choices and the most benefit in game regardless of whether or not more or less damage exists in the game in this season compared to previous seasons. It's a Damage META.

And yes, burst is not in the right place for a bunch of champions. I have personally experienced the one-shot by Shyvana in Silver ranked play. And yes, it was a literal one-shot - not some combo of abilities, but literally Shyvana throwing out a single long range ability and if that ability connects my champion dies from the damage from that single ability. And I experienced this in multiple games, not just a single isolated game where some Shyvana happened to get fed.

And I think about the casters of pro games from previous seasons talking derogatorily about the tanks and "wet-noodle" fights. Is there a negative perception within RIOT concerning defensive options? Because you look at the Runes (I recently had to redo all my Rune Pages because a bug deleted them), and you see "choices" like: would you like to do damage using Rune A, or would you like to do damage using Rune B? In other words, crap choices. For example,

Press the Attack: 3 consecutive attacks deals 40-180 bonus adaptive damage. Electrocute: 3 consecutive attacks deals 30-180 bonus adaptive damage.

Am I seeing double? There's some extremely minor differences between these two keystones.

Anyways that's just one really glaring example out of many examples of how Runes offer really bad, borderline meaningless choices to players. Real crap. And a lot of times it's all about the damage and there aren't any really great defensive options.

So when we talk about Damage META we are referring to a lot of different things revolving around damage that are all problematic for the game and are particularly bad during this season 9.

TTg Scirocco511/17/2019, 7:45:37 PM12 votes

Mages item are just overpowered and need adjustement in preseason Plus magic resist item need buffs and we need new deffensive item in game

Toolmaker11/18/2019, 5:27:25 AM8 votes

I don't mind the support role being open to interpretation. There are aspects to the word support that are related to damage -- think about battlefields and such.

What I don't like is being one shot under my turret. =/

Nea10411/18/2019, 12:04:01 AM8 votes

Tank builds died years ago, at least when the "new runes" appeared.

611FVNKBlv11/18/2019, 5:56:10 AM7 votes

i can at least understand why basically 90% of League-Community left this season ^^

Thingamajig11/18/2019, 1:57:06 PM6 votes

s10 if tanks become viable we get to play the game like it's supposed to be played instead of this bullshit of who ints harder wins

hazerddex11/18/2019, 7:01:39 PM6 votes

even dps battle mages like AurelionSol were turned into a joke burst mage.

boricCentaur111/17/2019, 3:05:44 PM5 votes

Ok all I needed to know that you have no clue wtf you're talking is when you say tank pyke was healthier when tank was just pyke but without any weaknesses.

XJ9999999999999911/17/2019, 5:57:39 PM5 votes

"Shyvana- AP build is better than bruiser, tank or on-hit."

that's an opinion, not a fact.

Velzard of Koz11/17/2019, 5:28:08 PM4 votes

Even that gives offensive stats with Grasp and Aftershock doing damage and only guardian being the utility shield (guess which one is the least used out of all 3?)

Grasp is used the least in Supp. Ofc shield that requires someone else won't be used sololane. It has everything to do with its warden identity and small to do with dmg. But that's not the first thing in your post you fabulated without proof.

Lovelle11/18/2019, 1:14:03 PM4 votes

This is why Trundle is currently struggling, he doesn't have a cheesy damage build he can take advantage of. His full damage build basically plays like an inferior Jax/Yi, when his damage falls off after 15 mins anyway. If he goes tank he gets out-traded by champions he used to beat in the past, which sucks because he has no choice but to go tanky (if he wants to have a presence past 15 mins).

The fact is that damage outscales defense far too much. They need to give tank itemization and runes some real mid-late game scaling, because as of right now they're not even strong early and fall off of a cliff by mid-game.

xScarfy11/18/2019, 11:41:08 AM3 votes

This has been going on for a long time now...for example when was the last time you saw a Jarvan build tanky? Ever since Riot decided to give his ult aoe dmg, J4 players just went full lethality to oneshot as many enemies as possible with a E, Q, R combo + thunderlords proc.

Pandemic Punch11/18/2019, 2:29:02 PM3 votes

"Becoming"

Konsequence11/19/2019, 11:10:07 AM3 votes

remember when you had to have actual skill and outplay enemies to kill them cause you couldnt face smash your keyboard and one shot ppl

LightswornLance11/18/2019, 12:07:00 AM3 votes

Actually DrMundo was the epitome of tanky damage and still is. Garen was just a bruiser that had no damage so he had to build tanky, now that he actually has damage with a good build path (item 3078item 3046) he is finally viable.

Anyway I rather have more lethality items because then the assassins can keep to their oneshot a squishy and get out play style rather than being bruisers that also one shot with item 3071. I think we really need more defensive runes though, the fact that we only have 3 somewhat defensive runes and all of them being mediocre is pretty sad. Grasp is decent because it lets tanks win the laning phase and gives them a bit of scaling on what most tanks scale with being health. But it doesnt work in bot lane or in the jungle. Guardian only works in bot lane, but it is pretty decent at what it does, and aftershock is used by both tanky supports and some tanky junglers, but its getting hard nerfed. I think either a Sejuani passive like rune that is anti burst while sacrificing champion damage in some way would be healthy, or possibly a rune that increases damage reduction over time while in battle, because currently aftershock is mostly abused for easy tower dives way earlier than they should be occurring. Also we currently lack an anti poke keystone in any shape or form besides fleet footwork maybe?

Vladimir is a weird case, he has two possible playstyles, back line one shotting burst mage, or drain tank mage. As long as item 3089 exists in its current uncontested state he will always play as a late game back line one shotting burst mage with no counter play. Uncontested meaning that there is no other possible build paths aka no AP bruiser items.

AP Malphite isn't a problem anymore, and wasn't a real problem before his nerf either. His AP ratios were never that good, he relied mostly on magic penetration + base damage + item 3285 / item 1402 proc + maybe predator to oneshot and by the time magic penetration falls off and the game gets to late game (20-25 minutes) he is useless. One missed ult in a teamfight and he loses his lead and the enemy team probably wins the game. In the jungle he is basically an easier to play but worse and less reliable AP Gragas and in lane he is a worse burst mage.

CyberPhobic11/18/2019, 1:06:00 PM3 votes

I can backup the swain support thing, the second he got his passive change (Where it gave 5 hp) I took him bot with the intent of stacking freely with E.

Little did I know by taking him bot I could instead just freely stack by insta gibbing the AD carry. My build is just W max, you E the ad into your W and with electrocute they lose 80% hp and you ignite for a free kill.