My thoughts on Riot's Changes to League of Legends as Whole

Most people are complaining very much about the support item changes, I agree with this hotfix because

It's an anti-fun strategy, it doesn't even matter if you're doing it as a "counterpick" all you do is harass, and get free gold for basically nothing while making the enemy laner's life hell. Not allowing others to have fun, it's not a team related strategy either, having wards from it is just an added bonus, while you just get to be an asshole in the lane you're doing it in.

I disagree with this hotfix because

Personally, I feel like Riot intervenes too much in the meta of how things are done, not in regards to champions, but regarding playstyles. If you don't remember not so long ago, Inting Sion, how the community was in outrage about it and Rioter Maple came out with a statement on the subject speaking for Riot as it seems in his reply on a Reddit post saying:

"This strategy is something that requires a fair bit of nuanced understanding in order to execute well as the Sion player. It also requires that your team is able to play around the pressure you can create in your lane, and not misuse the opportunities it grants. his is emergent gameplay that appears to be a valid strategy for a player/team who wants to win and isn't something that should be punished." Taken from a Reddit reply from Riot Maple https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/9lmg47/inting_sion_is_doing_more_harm_than_good/e790zkq/

I believe that the spell thiefs meta top lane would fall under the same category as that, more closely aligning with "This strategy is something that requires a fair bit of nuanced understanding in order to execute well" Since this is something that people had to theory craft along with testing and attempting to for lack of a better word "math it out". It also did create enormous pressure in lanes considering although with wards it did basically enable map hacks in terms for the amount of vision it granted.

Gold Funneling/Jungle Changes:

This was a really weird time for League of Legends in terms of meta, and most of the things they did to counteract this I do not support, such as follows:

Monster Hunter: This effectively removed gold funneling in from the game entirely. I don't support it because sure it did get rid of the funnel which had nearly zero counterplay and was anti-fun for most, even the gold funnelers sometimes, unless you did weird stuff like old Aatrox and Taric. But for those that didn't do it, it nerfed them hard if they were to ever get ahead making jungle even less fun, especially for champs who don't rush the completed jungle item to get rid of the de-buff such as rushing Tiamat instead i.e Warwick, Rengar, Kha'zix etc.

They removed the debuff a little while back and then funneling immediately became a thing again, which I'm sure was expected, I'm not entirely sure on why they got rid of the debuff after having such a hard stance on it in the first place, probably to see if it was as bad as it used to be with certain gameplay changes. They then brought back the monster hunter debuff in what I believe to be either the next patch or the patch after next, I can't remember how long I watched RatIRL do it on stream.

I personally believe that this should be left alone as a whole and to let players do what they wish with it, it's just like any fad like diets and whatnot, it's eventually going to fade away, as it did and most don't even remember it anymore. Alternatively I don't think one should get a diminished gold return for the monster hunting debuff, but perhaps an EXP nerf to minions in lane, since they're already not getting full EXP with their support running around with them 24/7, although I'm not sure it would have to be tested, and math would have to be done for it to find a sweet spot.

Experience Changes:

Jungle is a playmaking role as I've heard several quote before, most notable to me is FoxDrop my favorite EU Chad. By nerfing EXP that camps give, once again, has put junglers behind in this rapid-fire game as games are getting shorter and shorter, junglers aren't able to catch up very well and it's definitely rough. Although I do not main jungle, I used to play a lot of it and have a lot of fun with it, I fear that I can't do that anymore unless I play some champ that I've gotten flamed for picking in the jungle before such as Rammus or Amumu, which are easily 1 and 2 respectively on my Fun Junglers Tier List. But even then, they're not as fun as they used to be, because I can't get to the point where I press R and they die, or I press W and the ADC just kills themselves auto attacking me, it just takes too long. A quote that I have taken from IWillDominate's stream regarding the EXP changes and the junglers that work with it is "Kayn is easily the best jungler right now, because Kayn is a champion that's only good if every other jungler is garbage" I unfortunately don't have a clip of this or know of the VoD for it, but it was shortly after the 9.2 Patch Update.

I feel as if, that if only one champion is good in a role something needs to be done about the role, not the champions, which brings me to my next topic of midlane (Don't worry we'll get to bot lane here soon"

The amount of diversity I see in midlane is non-existent. I always only see assassins nowadays such as Zed Talon Yasuo, some AP assassins like Fizz and Leblanc but rarely. I think something needs to be done to mages as a whole again like the Mage Update back in I think season 6, but perhaps not something as large of a scale, maybe just item changes to items that are rarely used and seen.

I feel as if that if you play a mage the build is mostly going to always be the same Ludens Morrello's Void D-Cap Sorc Boots and Zhonya's, that is a build for pretty much every mage I can think of off the top of my head, and there are a choice few who don't build all those items, meaning, you can change ludens for a protobelt or something as such. Although this is not because of items being weak, I believe this is because of a lack of diversity of items for mages to choose from, because you if you compare the amount of AD/On-Hit items that you can build to AP items, AP Items are left in the dust which is a crying shame.

Personally, I belive more items should be added for mages to choose from to perhaps bring some other champs out of the woodwork, and maybe allow many different champs to be played in the midlane as a whole (Mid Teemo anyone?)

Bot Lane More Specifically, ADC:

The dreaded bot lane. Yay! We got old IE and ER back, okay but what of it? They nerfed every other crit item so it doesn't mean too much. Everyone has agreed that this is an overall nerf for ADC, although it did make some of my favorite ADC's more meta such as Kalista and Sivir and the Forbidden Fruit, Bard ADC. I can deal with the overall nerf to crit items but the glaring problems to me are, Lucian and Phantom Dancer

Phantom Dancer:

So, lifeline on PD why? The item was just fine and no one has really complained about it too the point where it warranted a change. I guess Riot wanted to change it just because? Who knows what's going on in their head really. Although the 7% ghost on it is fairly nice it's neat and great for kiting and running down enemies I suppose. I'd prefer to have old PD back where I can look down and read 23 deaths defied in a 55m game against 3 assassins. It's a good feeling, but now I get a crappy shield that doesn't scale with anything except level, and it goes up to a 600 shield which is decent for ADC's I suppose but that shield is going to get absolutely destroyed and will not save an ADC's life nearly as often as the old PD passive. If you compare it to something like Maw of Malmortius it gives you AD, Spell Vamp, AND lifesteal UNTIL YOU'RE OUT OF COMBAT. Of course it's just a shield for only magic damage, and not a flat shield that blocks anything, so it needs a little more "oomph" I suppose, but I feel like something like that should be added to PD potentially to make it a bit more appealing, like a burst of movement speed or something with it when the shield pops for X seconds doesn't sound too terrible.

Lucian:

Why? The community as a whole has been complaining about him for ages, and just want something done to him, to just stop his terror reign in bot lane. Now I don't play very much bot lane, and can't speak much on him since I also do not play the champion, but in the recent games I've played against a lucian, it has not mattered if I've won lane which I have with a few unconventional means such as bush cheese with a karthus support. The man became a monster no matter what I did, even seeing him go 0/4 in lane and I had 6 kills nothing could be done to him, it's extremely easy to farm with him without being punished, and his harass capabilities are deadly, it's not even just poke, he can auto, q, then double auto for PTA proc and then you're nearly dead as an adc, god forbid he has a competent support to aide him in his slaughter. I will say again that I don't play bot lane very much or play Lucian, but there's definitely a lot wrong with the champion in regards to other adc's and I don't know what to do about him, but something should be done I believe.

You might be asking yourself, "Who in the f#%* is this garbage player to say things about the game?" I can't play league competively because of Carpal Tunnel, so my competitive days are over, but I can still analyze the game and give my thoughts. Why did I decide to write this? Honestly, I bought an esspresso machine and I drank too much and I was not having fun with league so I decided to write this at midnight working for nearly 2 hours on it. I also got inspired by a certain Mordekaiser enthusiast who recently got to playtest the new Morde which I am extremely jealous of I hope you know.

Overall, I'm just generally not having fun with League of Legends because Riot interferes with the players too much and won't let them do certain things to try and let players find some new stuff to have fun with the game. They definitely have some hypocrisy when it comes to things, they see things as okay and a strategy that creates pressure and opportunities i.e inting sion and support ghost smite singed (if you guys remember that one.) and on the other hand, there's another thing that they don't like, that they've seen done in pro play, so they do their damndest to get rid of it i.e gold funneling and spell thiefs top. Which all of those singed, sion, gold funneling and spell thiefs fall under a strategy that creates pressure to opportunities.

TL;DR

Riot doesn't listen to their playerbase very much anymore in terms of balancing, there are some glaring issues with the game that Riot refuses to fix even though they need to, they see things they don't like and get rid of it, without taking into account the work people have done to come up with and are slowly but surely sucking fun out of League of Legends, removing freedom and fun gameplay.

ONCE AGAIN THIS IS MY OPINION AND THOUGHTS ON THE GAME WITH A FEW IDEAS ON HOW TO FIX THINGS BUT I'M NOT ON THE BALANCE TEAM SO I DON'T REALLY KNOW ANYTHING [slayer-pantheon-thumbs]