My Season 8 in review...

Let me preface this post by saying this was my experience, and I want to put it here on the boards for other people to read and Riot. It's not a complaint post, I'm not so wrapped up in myself to feel entitled to anything in League. It's a game, and I play it for fun. So, with that out of the way... my thoughts on season 8:

A. The AD vs AP dichotomy. I do understand the need to not have similar items for AP and AD, they have different needs and often different roles, and it creates more diversity. However, this has been one of the first times where the shift towards AD has been this huge. First, everyone has a way to get Zhonyas now since the beginning of the season in stop watch (RIP Zed). For years they were saying that there should be no AD shield equivalent of Hexdrinker because Zhonyas existed and that was an AP only item.

Well, flash forward to this season they put an anti magic shield in the runes (Null orb) and we still have Hexdrinker, but now there is also Night's Edge and Guardian Angel is an AD item . Frankly Guardian Angel doesn't make much sense as an AD item anyways because the original trade off was that you were losing out on damage for defense; now you just get everything. AP has nowhere near the equivalent of any of these items, particularly for bruisers and there double as many because there are ADC and melee items. The magic resist items are also better counters to AP than armor is to AD, particularly with the amount of armor shred/true damage/mixed damage running around. Most AP users do all their damage in a burst combo so countering their initial burst is enough to stop them all together. It's very easy to run a full AD comp and be just fine, but AP can be punished much harder just by itemization alone.

B. Lethality vs. magic pen. Why is lethality still a thing. What did it accomplish? It's either broken and letting people 1 shot each other on Miss Fortune or Jhin or Talon, or it's under-tuned and useless. Yet for some reason we have a bunch of items that have lethality on them, and it's still being pushed. Duskblade would still be just fine with armor pen on it, and so would Ghost blade. It has felt like this whole season they have skewed the meta towards fighters and assassins, but in doing so have invalidated a dozen other play styles.

Especially in relation to magic penetration where mages have no equivalent. They wanted to make it so mages wouldn't have to build Liandrys so much, but instead we land up in a situation where you HAVE to build Morellonimcon . Back before the season started they gave all ranged champions built in MR per level, where previously they had none, but they took away any other way to get magic pen except for items. On the old system there was magic pen in both runes and masteries. So, now you have to rush Sorcerer boots followed by Morellonomicon just to get magic pen from anywhere at all. This is especially bad for AP bruisers who rely on having magic pen instead of high scalings. To add to this the only way champions are allowed to have magic pen in runes is through Sudden Impact, except the only magic users with dashes in the mid lane are all AP assassins (Akali, Fizz etc), so no one else gets any use out of it. I questioned Sudden Impact from the beginning of the season, because it rewards already mobile characters with even higher damage, yet is inaccessible to everyone else.

C. Tanks not being tanks. This one was especially frustrating for me. I like tanks, I'm a tank player. I jungle a lot, and when I do I like Rammus, Sejuani, Volibear etc. I don't think tanks should be able to one shot anyone, I believe in tanks having higher damage over time and the ability to smother priority targets, only securing a kill if they can stick to someone. A tanks main goal is (no surprise here) to tank damage. Earlier on all the health on tank items was nerfed, but the items were given stronger niche uses. So, ok that wasn't so bad by itself, but it did create a problem where you would land up building against one champion, but now the item you just built isn't as strong against the rest of their team because it focuses only on one aspect. What I'm saying is, if I built then I'm basically unkillable to a Teemo, but that item is expensive and does almost nothing against anyone else. Even another magic damage user, if they aren't the type that repeats a single spell to poke it loses strength very quickly. Again flash forward to this season, Cinderhulk has been nerfed a couple times as well, and the only way to get a consistent amount of health is through Overgrowth. For this entire season Overgrowth has scaled super slow, particularly in regards to the old system that gave HP per level and a flat 50 up front from masteries. The pre-season change to Overgrowth will make it scale a little bit more linear which is good, but it doesn't scale as hard later into the game for people actually building HP. Then they are also reducing the amount of built in health you can get from pages by adding it to stat shards, the maximum you can get is 90 at level 18. HP is a tanks main stat and the majority of tank abilities scale with it. That's several consecutive health nerfs across the board to tanks, what is going on here?

To add to this problem Conqueror was thrown into the mix. There are a lot of champions out there that already build Cleavers as their first item, then throw Conqueror on top of that. Worse yet if they have champions like because they all have built in true damage, percentage health damage or armor shred. That list may look familiar, they've been popular champions all season. So, basically if you liked playing a tank it felt like you were being told that your play style was invalid this whole season.

D. Vision. You were probably expecting this one. We need vision. League as a game is built around the idea that you have and can create vision. When you are behind what are you supposed to do? Put down wards and look for an opportunity to come back into the game. So please stop nerfing vision already. We don't have green wards, we can only carry so many red wards by next patch, wards don't last nearly as long, and supports have to complete a quest to get their vision item. Then scrying plants and Duskblade have also been added to remove vision. This might be great for assassins... but no one else is enjoying it. For one thing players who are regularly warding should be rewarded for doing so. Secondly, all the changes to objectives have made them exceedingly game swinging this season, and yet we don't have ability to keep vision on them. It's not fun losing an important dragon because your ward ran out 5 seconds early, or not being able to contest anything because the map goes dark.

E. Objectives. Relating to the above, I feel this needs to be said, objectives don't have to be so heavy handed and game swinging. Change infernal dragons to just give burn damage on targets you hit rather than a huge damage increase; make it so herald just tanks tower shots and has a big health pool rather than ramming down 1-2 towers before it dies. Make baron harder to take. Right now the team that gets ahead early just keeps that lead because they keep gaining a landslide advantage. A team should never auto win just because they gain an objective. You take one dragon early, that gives you a combat advantage to take the next one and secure scrying plants/scuttle for vision and the snowball just keeps going. I know because I'm often the one using these objectives to win games. I like to sit on dragons and heralds, and it's very easy to wait until I see the enemy jungler on the opposite side of the map, run to the nearest lane with herald and then just drop it on the spot and 2v1 the enemy laner. If I time it right the enemy laner can't contest and we take up to 2 towers right there. Even when I'm the one doing it I understand that I am basically making that enemy laner useless. There is nothing they can do about it, they either have to let the tower die or be tower dived 2v1. Teams should win because they outplay the enemy team, not because they can run around the map taking every objective as fast as possible (this isn't Heroes of the Storm).

F. Plants and Scuttle crabs. I don't take that much issue with blast cones, although they reward already mobile champions more than immobile ones. I understand that they create more plays for contesting dragons or invading by going over walls. Scrying plants and honey plants are just bad for the game. The team that is already ahead just runs around taking all of them, giving them permanent vision clearing and tabs on the enemy team as well as topping off their health. This just adds to the already low amount of vision and is just unnecessary. If you don't want junglers to gank as much early an easy way to do it would be to remove honey plants. Then ganks are riskier because junglers are on lower health and clears matter more. Scuttle crabs don't need to be another objective to contest either. No one really fights over them, whoever is better at taking them just runs around before the other champion can get there and kills it. As an Udyr for example you can just run up in bear stance and kill the scuttle in like 2 seconds, but if you are playing without hard crowd control prepare to be sitting there for a while. All of this only further pushes early game fighters.

G. Jungler exp. I'm really tired of always being 1-2 levels behind everyone else in the game when jungling. The more this gets nerfed the stronger earlier game junglers are becoming, early game junglers just want to gank more, but then they keep nerfing exp to try to stop that from happening. Problem is this hurts mid to late game junglers who do better with their ultimates because you land up way late to the party. By the time your level 6 everyone else has their ultimates already. Fiddlesticks for example, he has been a better support than jungler all season. Why? Because he gets a lot of power at level 6, but now takes longer to get there than ever. Lee Sin or Jax on the other hand doesn't care about being level 6. You take their exp away, ok who cares they just go gank more somewhere else to get the exp. It forces an early game meta. If you want to change this so junglers won't gank as much the camps should spawn less often and be worth more, not less. Make it so every camp except raptors/wolves spawns half as much, but is worth double the exp and gold (so same numbers just not around as much). This also gives enemy junglers more incentive to invade to take camps, and so junglers fight among themselves more instead of ganking and you don't need scuttle crab to push that interaction.

That's it. I didn't hate this season and I can understand anyone who enjoyed it because you play assassins/fighters and those champions were strong during it. I actually don't mind the new runes; I like the idea of them, there just needs to be more of them so we can micro manage runes to suit our play styles.

I also liked the Nunu rework and the Swain rework, although I wish Riot would stop reworking every champion I play. Of the champions I play since I've started the game 4 have received complete reworks and 9 have received kit reworks. I do feel the loss of old Swain all the time, but I like the new one even if he could use some DOT's in there somewhere and a cooler Raven form when he ults.

Ty for anyone who read the whole thing. I just wanted to get it down on a boards post instead of keeping it to myself.