The Current State of the Game (Pre-Season)

The game during seasons 7 and 8 was either really good for 1/2 of the community or really shitty, then the next season a complete switch. Obviously some liked or hated both and as this is the boards i'm gonna assume most people hated both but assassin's and bruisers on majority hate season 7 but liked 8 and marksmen and enchanters liked 7 but hated 8. I'm not gonna lie i enjoyed season 8 for the most part as a shaco one-trick. But now that pre-season has landed and i've gotten a chance at playing all my usual champions and over 2 dozen games, I think it's safe to say that the game is in it's best state and in it's most fun state that it has been in a while. The changes weren't too overwhelming and it's been very fresh and fun to play the game, i think there's a good balance between meta and non-meta.

First up there is the laning phase which lasts longer than before which is a really nice change that makes the game for as both a laner and a jgler a lot more fun to play. I was playing Ap shaco top and it gave me more time to farm up and juke my opponent and his jgler with box and clone plays which is most of the fun on ap shaco, being abled to lane for 13-15 minutes instead of 8-10 minutes. I was playing ap shen mid yesterday and i went about even but it being abled to hold my tower for that much longer allowed me to roam more and engage into a lot of skirmishes which i find are a lot more strategic to fight as oppose to the full-out team fight. The game length hasn't been changed almost at all but to be honest after 25 minutes it feels like the game is ending at the right time because we've had 2-3 teamfights and the longer laning phase so it honestly doesn't feel nearly as short.

This might be just me and the people i know but almost all my games were really close kill wise where neither team was more than 1 or 2 kills up during the game, and each game felt really close and exciting to play whether feeding or fed. The few game that were 1 sided i found that both teams could still comeback and just pick up our shit. My last 2 games today if you check my match history, i was playing in a 4 man against other premades, the first game our jg goes like 1/16 and we hold off for about 20 min and the game closes out fast or what felt like quite fast, what i'm trying to say is that it didn't feel as if i was trapped in the game. During the second game i was playing on-hit tf adc with dh for the first time in ages, and i went 1/15/2 which i have to say was pretty awful but with our trynd playing well and splitpushing he could get a lot of gold through shutdowns allowing him to grab turrets (btw this was the jg from the prev game) and with a base race at the end we managed to sneak a win with my unexpected damage to turrets. Suffice to say most game seem close and have the excitment a game like league needs to have.

Note: For the matter of darkharvest, i think i prefer the old one because it is better on shaco jg but it is a little strong on laners but tbh i don't mid it that much because it is fun to try out on variety of champions to see the best results also ad sion is so much fun with it. Edit: I realise that this may seem to say that i don't think it is a problem which it absolutely is and is way too strong and needs a change but when you look past it the game is actually quite fun

To conclude this mess, all i have to say is that i hope riot keeps the game as it is now for season 9 and we can have a good season, most of my old friends who quit are back and are actually enjoying the game, they enjoy being abled to play picks like kindred and rek'sai again or playing champions with inversed builds that can still work but not be overpowered. I pray that the balance team keeps the game as is with only the smallest changes, all in all i think they did a great job with patch 8.23 and am looking forward to nexus blitz and neeko next patch. The game needs to stay like this because i think the game is in one of it's most balance and fun states since i would say season 5.

Also I get that this will be downvoted for saying something good about the game and i know that isn't appreciated by the boards community since this is where they come to flame and complain but i feel like i needed to write my thoughts and express to riot that they did a good job.