My Thoughts on Preseason Changes
Just want to put here that this is all my opinion and everything here is based off of my experiences in game. Feel free to disagree or agree, lets just keep it civil. Feel free to add to what i say or if i forgot anything or there is something you think needs to be on the list, just leave a comment.
So i kind of want to talk about a few of the changes and just give my opinion on them. So lets begin.
#Yasuo/Warlord's Bloodlust
Ok so this is a hot topic right now, Yasuo is a problem right now. This also includes Trynd to a degree but i want to mostly talk about Yasuo because i saw Meddler post something about it and i slightly disagree with their approach. So for those who do not know, there are two major issues with Yasuo right now.
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Yasuo can hit 100% crit chance with only
and 
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and Warlord's Bloodlust which makes Critical Strikes heal for 15% of the damage dealt and gives 20% Attack Speed for 4 secons.
Yasuo hitting 100% crit chance with only those two items is a huge buff to him, he hits a major powerspike very early in the game, he already hits a large powerspike when he gets shiv, so this makes laning against him even more frustrating. Add in that Warlord's Bloodlust heals him for 15% of his crit damage and now he has Lifesteal for free with no lifesteal items. Yasuo was already a pain in the ass to lane against, even if you beat him to a pulp, a good Yasuo is never truly down. Even at 0/20 he has the potential to penta your team at any moment, to me this is bad gameplay, you are never truly rewarded for outplaying him because he will always be a threat (again if he is good, although a good yasuo probably wont go 0/20).
Meddler posted a comment about how they think Warlord's Bloodlust is the issue and that they will be looking at that before seeing if they need to nerf Yasuo and Tryndamere. I both agree and disagree, that mastery is indeed an issue but both of those champions have never been fun to lane against. I am not talking about win ratios or pick ratios or winning or losing or whatever, i am talking about laning against them. It is a pain in the ass and it is almost never any fun. Yasuo in particular has always been annoying to lane against, even when i beat him and we win, i always look back and say "wow that was not fun at all". Yasuo is just bad for the game because of his double crit chance passive.
So yea the mastery is definitely making it worse, but Yasuo has always been an issue so I highly recommend looking at what makes him annoying to play against first, and then look at the mastery. There are a lot of good suggestions on the boards about what to do with him such as removing the double crit chance passive and instead giving him crit chance per level or moving his crit chance to one of his abilities and have it scale with that. My idea would be to have it scale with his ult level only reaching double crit at level 16, that way he can be a true late game champion like I was told he was suppose to be.
#Towers Overall Strength
So this is a huge huge problem right now, i see all the posts about people wanting to quit because turrets are paper thing. This is indeed an issue, but maybe not for the reason most people think. I believe i understand why these changes were brought about, to make games end faster right? Well there is a problem in that strong pushers and early game champions become really powerful and snowbally champions snowball even harder. BUT! Making the turrets harder to kill might not be the solution you want, if you want them to fall faster while still keeping the balance of the game. My solution would be to make them smarter and stronger. This might be a bug, but currently when two champions dive you they can juggle the aggro and never take a single turret shot while still poking you. It takes forever for it to aggro from Minions to a champion, but it will switch from a champion to a minion instantly sometimes even while they are still in its range. They also hit like a wet noodle at first meaning champions like Katarina can dive you very easily, kill you, and get out only taking 1 maybe 2 shots. Also now that early 5 man ganks are a thing, i think it really sucks that if all 5 dive you, you probably can't even get a kill because they will just juggle aggro and you are dead.
So to fix this i suggest:
- Turrets deal more damage.
- Turrets aggro onto Champions easier instead of being able to come in, poke, and leave before getting aggroed.
- Juggling Aggro should not be so easy nor should it be so safe, it shouldn't switch back to minions so quickly.
- Early game Turrets should deal bonus damage for each enemy champion around it. If all 5 enemies it should go into Hyper Mode where its Attack Speed goes up.
I think if you make some of these changes to a degree we can solve the issue of turrets falling so quickly, its not hard at all for you to get your jungler to dive with you and walk away with 1 or 2 kills without anyone taking serious damage. My other suggestion would be to just make turrets harder to kill again, but that is a step backwards and id like to this work.
#Winning Teams Minions
This is a change not implemented yet, but will be in the next patch i believe. Now if i am understanding this correctly, every time you destroy a turret your minions will get stronger overall and the same goes for your enemy. I understand the thought behind this, but i wholeheartedly disagree with this mechanic. The winning team already has an advantage in gold, vision (or they should have), and Objectives such as Dragon and Baron. If they can not win a game with their lead, then they do not deserve the win. The losing team should be rewarded for proper turtling and control over the lanes that are pushing. If the Winning team can not use their advantage then they failed, it shouldn't be that hard for them to slowly whittle away at the enemies turrets. Im assuming the "slowly whittle away at" part is why this change is being made? Well I think this is good for the game, it gives the losing team the chance to make a comeback, if the winning team gets impatient and makes a mistake that can be capitalized on then i think they should be rewarded for doing so. Why should the winning team get to win automatically? They are only winning they have not won, why change that? Sometimes your team has a lot of late game champions, shouldn't you be rewarded for holding off until your teammates reach their powerspikes? Does this mechanic not favor strong pushers even more then the weaker turrets do and further cast aside late game scalers? I think everyone agrees we do not want 15 minute matches, 45 minutes should be the average game time. When i sit down to play league i do not want to be crushed in 15 minutes and i do not want to crush the enemy in 15 minutes. If you can not sit down for at least an hour to play, you should not be play League, this is what we all love about this game.
#Warding and the Removal of Stealth Wards
So idk if its just me but warding is really hard now. It seems like the trinkets do not last very long and it takes forever to get more than one. It might be that im just use to buying wards but I am noticing that i can't ward my lane as well as i use to, specially mid lane. I notice that the entire map is often less warded than normal, which is saying something because rarely anyone warded... Honestly i think the only thing that removing Stealth Wards did was make warding harder. When my jungler doesn't get Tracker's Knife i get a little ticked, we need vision and I cant ward everywhere even as the support. Sometimes i don't even take the Scanner because my team needs wards more than we need to destroy theirs. Its actually a bit frustrating to throw down a ward and go back to farming then a minute later you realize your ward died already... Plus i have lost an entire level of experience going to the Scuttle Crab spawn to place a ward then running back to find my opponent a level higher... oh well i warded right? Well it died 30 seconds later so that was a waste of time (yes i am exaggerating, but i always feel like no matter how many wards i place its never warded). I would suggest lowering the cooldown on Ward trinket or increasing the Wards life, or just bring back stealth wards.
#Mana Pots
This change i actually don't understand, i get that Mana pots benefited a lot of champions a bit more than others, but those others still needed them to stay relevant. Like with Malphite against certain match-ups, Mana Pots were the only way to stay in lane. I noticed that Malzahar didn't get a mana regen increase or at least was not on the list that i could see, is this because of his Mana regain system? He needs to kill all 6 minions with his E on them to get a full refund at level 1 and i dont know if this is intended or a bug but he does not get the refund if he doesn't get the kill. If the enemy blocks it by having it bounce to them or if they poke you away so you can't kill the minion, you lose out on your mana. Why is this an issue? well Malzahars mana costs are 80, 90, 60, and 100 at levels 1 and 100, 110, 120, 100 at max levels. He starts with 326 mana so he doesn't get to cast very many spells at first, specially since one of them requires them to stand on it for the full duration to do any damage. I'm not going to get into much more detail with Malz because there is a lot to discuss on what i've said and sum it up with his E's regain is unreliable in a lot of situations, so lets just focus on the removal of Mana pots again. Corruption potion is iffy, Doran's Ring is a much better start on a lot of heavy mana Ap champions, but it doesn't compensate for the lack of mana. So champions that can spam abilities fairly easily like Brand or Vel'Koz actually benefit more from not having mana pots because they can out trade their opponent. Resourceless champions or Energy champions also benefit a lot from this change because now their opponent needs to go back or sit around not casting for a long time. I don't know how to fix this because giving them even more mana regen will just benefit certain champions more than others, which is why you removed Mana pots to begin with. The reason being that those champions strengths are being held in check by mana, but some are being shackled a bit too hard.
Ok so thats all i have so far, i didn't want to go into Items because those need to be number balanced and i dont want to do that. I didn't go into all the OP champions because number balanced. I only went into Yasuo because i saw Riots opinions on him and i think they are purposely ignoring what is truly wrong with Yasuo. So like i mentioned above, if you disagree or feel there is something to add please comment. Just keep it civil people, this is a discussion thread for people to discuss thing not argue and complain.