Simple way to *help* fix Snowballing

TL;DR: at the bottom

Statistically speaking, getting the first of any major objective has a dramatic impact on your chances of winning a game of league, but first tower especially.

Riot themselves know this, and it's nothing new (they even did a whole blog about how impactful first blood and other major events can be). Their own statistics (from 9 months ago so slightly dated) say tower FB alone puts you at an average of 71% win rate any given game. This preseason has only made things more snowbally than ever, and tower fb has become too powerful.

To fix this I suggest nerfing the tower FB global gold bonus by 125 total, or essentially remove the global aspect of the tower FB bonus.

However, tower and objective snowballing are still a major issue regardless of tower FB, so in addition I'd suggest nerfing the global gold every non-nexus turret gives by 25 per champ (adds up to a total reduction of 225 gold per champion for all 9, which isn't huge but is enough).

Then add in a catchup mechanic at the same time: If the enemy team has currently destroyed 4+ more total towers than you/your team, the next tower your team takes gives an additional 50 global gold per champion. Alternatively, if any given lane is down 2+ towers relative to the enemy team's half of the lane, this bonus applies to the next tower killed in that lane. Bonus gold is not applied to nexus turrets, and the bonus remains in effect as long as the requirements are met (in order to get more than one instance of this mechanic you'd be so far behind you'd need it desperately anyway).

For example your team has taken 3 but the enemy team has taken 7. The next turret your team takes gives an extra 250 total gold. Or your lane has been shoved in two towers and you hold them off at the inhibitor tower to push out for the first turret in your lane, hey, here's an extra 250 global gold for a good play.

THE REASON THIS WORKS:

• This reduces the overall gold given out by objectives (net team gold would be down as much as 1325 between all towers taken), slowing the game and placing more emphasis on farming until team objective pushing later on.

• It means that while still impactful (there is still a bonus for tower FB, and you still get a lot of turret gold), the amount a team snowballs off of consecutive turret takedowns will decrease, making it more manageable to make comebacks, and when a team makes a comeback and gets a turret, they come back just a little bit more than now.

• It anticipates and disincentivizes abuse by single lane hard pushing cheese strategies (something Riot hates) because it will trigger the gold bonus somewhat prematurely for your opponents.

• Furthermore, it's not really abusable because you have to be significantly behind before the catchup mechanic kicks in, and it requires your team actually pulling it together to take out the tower anyway.

My biggest prediction for how this change would likely impact the game is that tower FB will still be a huge deal, possibly more so than before due to the lessened gold impact of the other towers, but it will also create new objective tradeoffs between drakes, herald, and turrets where you have to weigh external factors. Now it's worth thinking "We're up 3 towers on them, we can push an extra one or set up another objective and deny them a chance at bonus gold for now." Or if your team is ahead enough towers, the enemy may well just leave drakes open to you but they'll go hard for that bonus gold on tower kills. Now it's up to your team to judge whether the drake is more impactful than the gold they could earn. The only problem is if this overly disincentivizes taking towers, which drags out games in a bad way.

TL;DR: Reduce global gold from Turrets and Turret FB, then give bonus global gold on towers as a catchup mechanic if your team is a certain amount behind your opponents.

I understand this doesn't address damage creep or anything like that, but that's not what I'm focusing on right now.

Thoughts?