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Can we please discuss the length of death timers?

1 Wing··5 votes·734 views

My main suggestion, is that the equation used to modify death timer length over time, should be changed.

Although it may be somewhat attractive to watch professional players play under such harsh regulation, I don't feel that the current state of the death timers embraces the spirit of the game.

Early on, the penalty for dying is acceptable. It's punishing, but so early on, the main time loss come from returning to lane.

In the middle of the game, I feel the death timers are not penalizing enough: often, it seems like players never even died, they're back up so quickly, for all the effort it took to kill them.

Suddenly, it seems like the death timers just leap up, and suddenly when someone dies, the enemy can become capable of taking out four turrets, and inhibitor, and the entire nexus before they revive.

In my view, if at least one champion--other than the support--is down, and that team is assaulting a base, and has to go through four towers, then someone should revive before they can take out the nexus, before the fifty minute mark. Even with two defending players, who defend well, the remaining death timer length often seems insulting high when the game ends; like it's not even a close victory, and they had to go through four towers! They could have stopped for a coffee and still had time to finish the nexus off, even with a couple defenders there!

It just feels like, suddenly, dying is permanent, and you just won't revive in time to do anything. There's really no warning when this time arrives, and that doesn't seem right in a game that's so focused around trading lives: suddenly, one lost life costs one side the game, and when they have four turrets up in front of the nexus, I don't think that feels right. Not when it's not even the forty minute mark yet.

I think, that by modifying the way death timers grow with a new equation, that this could better match the flow of the game. Personally, I think death timers need to be ten seconds shorter at the fifty minute mark.

4 Comments

ValyrianBlade1 votes

part of it would have to do with pushed lanes. If your team gets aced but has pushed all 3 lanes out, the other team either has to tank turrets or they'll only get 1 before you spawn (often this is when they'd go Baron). If you get aced and they have pushed their lanes, it can lead to a fast victory - but it isn't really that fast, it's been long in the making. They had to push those lanes before the fight, they to win the fight, then push hard after. It's also partially because they've built fairly strong items by that point that they can clear minion waves and turrets faster. I mean, when that happens it seems like the win is deserved, not random.

1 Wing1 votes

Just blatently I'm not even sure of that. I've seen teams just jump on towers and rip them up. A team can punch through two outer turrets without any minions backing them up.

Pikmints1 votes

I agree mostly with what you say about the early-game death timers. It takes the moment when champions' growth is highest (proportional to their current strength) and minimizes it. That seems to be an aspect that is properly balanced and I have no problem with (aside from lvl 1 invades resulting in your dead opponents rejoining the fight before the fight ends, but oh well that's not all bad).

I think that the reason the mid-game timers are the way they are is so that a successful gank doesn't suddenly mean you lost your turret. This would then provide much more gold for the team that already got the kill and put that enemy behind, granting additional map control and more breathing room for that lane to help out their teammates. I think avoiding the above is a shortened list of the main reasons the timer ramps up slowly early on, as well as alternative means of reducing that time through resources like the Revive summoner spell and homeguard boots are not overly common (and in the case of homeguard, especially before late-game).

With the late game timers, I'm almost ok with letting it be as long as it is, as each member of the team by that point holds a large amount of power that they shouldn't be able to quickly reimplement, but the fact that it scales indefinitely with the length of the match can cause problems really late. The already tense situation of half the champs being at full build is coupled with the fact that a single death on any champ secures an objective for the other team, and a double kill usually resulting in victory. I feel that some cap should be implemented on death timers to make the late game less damning than it currently is, but I still feel like the average game wouldn't reach this cap nor surpass it by much in the game's current state. A little touch up to the game, but I do see the point in denying the power of a champion by a good margin late-game.

1 Wing2 votes

So if the death timers are short in the mid game to prevent objectives being taken without the defending team having a chance to respond, then why is the situation reversed fifteen minutes later?

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