Confused over Mage and Jungle Changes

The Eve of Night·Apr 28, 2018·53 votes·13,092 views

Botlane continues to be the most impactful role in the entirety of the game. ADCs DPS get to a certain point as to be able to out burst a mage or assassin's entire spell rotation with two auto attacks and supports have so much utility and damage that you are seeing some of them in solo lanes (Rakan mid, Alistar top). But instead of bringing botlane down a peg so that other lanes can have a chance at realistically carrying a game, they're hard nerfing mages and hard nerfing jungle while toplane, though slightly better with the addition of conqueror, continues to be the lane with the least amount of impact in the game. So the botlane meta, that has been here since season 7, continues.

I am getting seriously bored and frustrated with the balance changes of this game and am contemplating taking a long, long break. The changes just have no rhyme or reason and seem to be completely random decisions that don't fix anything. I implore any rioter out there to explain what exactly is going on.

26 Comments

SaiannaApr 29, 201812 votes

The changes just have no rhyme or reason

Here's my theory:

In high competitive game assassins can't assassin ADCs, because they are protected by powercreepeditems and supports. So The highest danger for ADCs are in fact mages. But how can you nerf mages without admitting that those changes are only because you want ADCs to make even more dominant.... Lets make bullshit reason "we nerfed mages because waveclear too strong".. Not that that was what they are supposed to be good at, but whatever. Nerf is a nerf. Then we have Jungle changes. You know how junglers tend to gank bot to hopefully win the whole game at the 3-4th minute by tilting 1 side? Fixing snowballing is out of question, but we can make junglers busy, really busy. Oh also decrease the chance for early gank with "random scuttler being random". Not to mention slower level gains as now you need to do more camps to level up (or be lucky with scuttler).

Overall: botlane is safe. Mages wrecked, once-fucking-again. Junglers are tossed to different corner like bag of potatoes. Surprisingly supports haven't received any new "free jail card for ADC" item, but I believe Riot will soon fix that.

Spicy RiceApr 30, 20181 votes

I love how toplane is so utterly worthless atm, it wasn't even included in your theory

SaiannaApr 30, 20181 votes

wait.. this game has more lanes than bot lane and jungle? What others do in different lanes? I though this game costsists of ADCs, supports, junglers and ADCs food....

LVL99 Helper TKApr 29, 20188 votes

meddler is a gold 4 adc main

RainfallApr 28, 20186 votes

Riot is pulling the classic balance strategy,skin sales are low on ahri leblanc and zed and just buffing them would be too obvious,so instead they are nerfing everybody else,they did the same thing with sejuani and tanks on the tank update.

Mafia LeBlancApr 30, 20181 votes

{quoted}

Riot is pulling the classic balance strategy,skin sales are low on ahri leblanc and zed and just buffing them would be too obvious,so instead they are nerfing everybody else,they did the same thing with sejuani and tanks on the tank update.

Lol leblanc has like 4 skins and 2 of them are not even buyable. By that logic they should be buffing the fk out of annie lux and teemo.

ReshiKillimApr 28, 20184 votes

Marksmen are getting some changes (crit damage nerfs from what I'm aware of, IE, Essence Reaver, and Dominik's getting changed afaik) that will be hitting the PBE along with the jungle changes, and as well as a potential new item for enchanters to be more helpful for AP champs and not just shieldbots for marksmen (AP friendly equiv of ardent)

Puppet33rApr 28, 201812 votes

But for the next ~2 patches botlane will become demigods singlehandedly deciding how the game goes because other roles got shafted first.

341123545652Apr 29, 201824 votes

{quoted}

Marksmen are getting some changes (crit damage nerfs from what I'm aware of, IE, Essence Reaver, and Dominik's getting changed afaik) that will be hitting the PBE along with the jungle changes, and as well as a potential new item for enchanters to be more helpful for AP champs and not just shieldbots for marksmen (AP friendly equiv of ardent)

I think most people are aware of this my dude.

The problem is that the constant backpedaling from each meddler's gameplay thoughts, as well as the bot lane changes themselves being pushed back to 8.11 for ADC changes and 8.12-8.13 for support item changes, leaves many of us wondering whether they **ever ** intend to fix bot lane power or not. They have had over a year since this problem was initially identified, especially the shielding one, so time really isnt an excuse. Because of all this, reminding everyone that bot lane changes are coming on the PBE isnt very useful or constructive.

Adding an AP friendly version of ardent does not at all fix the fact that and AD version exists. In fact, its comical that they would attempt to duplicate the problem with an AP version instead of just nerfing the actual problem. Finally, the fact that they are choosing to rework ER is also very bizarre, ER is hardly the reason why ADCs have absurd bps and aside from being a niche pick on a few marksmen, idk if ER is even that much of an issue, it just makes you question what their intentions are.

MizayaApr 29, 20182 votes

They said 8.12-13 for support changes? I didn't see that. Seemed to me they were planning to not nerf support at all.

Not too much directly in 8.10 or 8.11, though possible we might have an item aimed at helping supports buff AP champs (kind of like an AP Ardent Censer you buy if it looks more valuable to focus on buffing a snowballing Ori mid, Rumble top etc).

Might look at shields in general a bit post midseason, need to see where things settle though and still got a lot of midseason polish to get done beforehand regardless.

is what I saw on the Meddler post regarding whether or not supports were going to get changes. ADCs meanwhile they said they'd have definite changes for them with 8.10 pbe and 8.11 live as the timetable.

TerozuApr 29, 20181 votes

Essence Reaver lets you hit 100% crit while also giving 70AD and 30% cdr, as well as making it impossible to run out of mana. Add on to that I.E. and suddenly all your Autos are dealing 300% damage, which depending on your itemization, say Blood Thirster and Botrk, is 780 before reductions. One or two autos per second. Chang bork to Deaths dance and its 900, and thats not taking base ad values, on hit effects or any drags.

Tik115Apr 29, 20181 votes

Lets not also forget this other point.

This is a huge jungle change

This is a huge Mage change

This is a small Marksman change

until we see actual numbers and intent it just seems like Riot is gonna shift a few numbers on Marksmen items around and call it good.

Meanwhile you have the potential gutting of all mages mid and the Jungle pool being shrunk smaller with the big factor being "Who gets scuttle to take the lead?"

I'd love for a Rioter to give us some actual information about the Marksman update rather then vagueness when they seem oh so happy to showcase the potential butchering of two other roles

MuffledGarbageApr 29, 201817 votes

"WAIT UNTIL AFTER WORLDS, THEY'LL FIX THE GAME SOON"

"IT'S PRESEASON, THEY'LL FIX THE GAME SOON"

"IT'S BEFORE THE MIDSEASON PATCH, THEY'LL FIX THE GAME SOON"

no, Riot clearly won't fix the mistakes they made. Riot's official statement on toplane was already "Here take this conqueror rune and F*ck off toplaners cause we fixed you"

When Conqueror barely did Sh*t Riot wasn't seeing that there was still a toplane problem, they just went "oh well time to nerf the next thing that would make an ADCs life harder"

Slice n Dice emApr 29, 20183 votes

ADC's don't do dps they do BPS(burst per second). Currently don't even need to build last whisperer even against 3 tank comps(top,jng, supp). And life-steal is the least of their priorities, upgrading qss into mercurials last or getting bloodthirster last. There was a time when ADC's needed to build sustain to sustain, building lifesteal 1st or 2nd item.

HyquiemApr 28, 20182 votes

They will nerf things that counter adcs but next pre season will be the end of the sold call crit domination. Adc is not really the problem, the issue is the stat. Which IMO is crit. The only way logically to make a mage equal to an adc is making mage crit items,

Eye Of TerrorApr 29, 20182 votes

Easy. Failure of ADC mains balance team.

HügöApr 29, 20182 votes

"You force us to nerf our favorite role, we fuck your lanes".

HyquiemApr 28, 20181 votes

Riot told us this.

ElohavenApr 29, 20181 votes

Botlane isn't the most impactful role in the game. At this point, toplane is equally or if not more impactful than botlane with conqueror. At 3+ items, ADCs have the most impact but that's after 30 minutes which most games end by.

Saying toplane has the least impact in the game now is rightfully bullshit. Toplane has a lot more impact than ever with peel, CC, engage, frontline, etc. I don't see where you're getting this data from. I'm seeing more toplaners with positive winrates than ADCs and supports.

AjXtarApr 29, 20188 votes

Even dopa who is number 1 ranked on the best chinese server. He is called dark Faker for a reason and he is the one that said that top lane is pretty irrelevant. This was like 2 weeks ago. Many challenger players are saying the exact same thing. Even pro players(huni and soaz) said the the exact same thing and you are saying that top lane has more impact than bot lane with conqueror. Do you even know how conqueror works and that is not even that strong?

ElohavenApr 29, 20181 votes

No - that was before conqueror and toplane changes. Bring in an argument post-patch since many things in the game have changed.

AjXtarApr 29, 20182 votes

Conquror is not a strong rune. You have no idea how that rune works, do you? You've seen true damage and probably thought that the rune OP. Pathetic.

TeCoolMageApr 29, 20181 votes

are we seriously going back to the days where we go around and say "omg y u change this unhealthy thing when there is another unhealthy thing!" and act like it's valid criticism? Didn't we already debunk the belief that a champion being unhealthy means they should hold off from literally every other change?

ForeverLaxxApr 29, 20181 votes

{quoted}

are we seriously going back to the days where we go around and say "omg y u change this unhealthy thing when there is another unhealthy thing!" and act like it's valid criticism? Didn't we already debunk the belief that a champion being unhealthy means they should hold off from literally every other change?

I believe the problem is that the bot-lane issues have been identified by Riot well in advance of these changes that have nothing to do with them, choosing instead to nerf one of the few things Mages were expressly designed to be good at doing. The Jungle changes are just going to randomly decide who "wins" the jungle based on RNG (either that or encourage junglers to avoid the risk entirely and never leave their own jungle). The fact that Riot says "changes are coming" is no real consolation considering Riot's history with claims such as these. Besides, when you acknowledge something is a problem but still find time to put other changes before that problem, thereby allowing said problem to fester for longer in a sea of weaker opposition... well, it doesn't exactly instill confidence.

Not that Riot has much confidence left to instill in its players, but whatever.

º Kindred ºApr 29, 20181 votes

Im just concerned what they are going to do with Kindred ...