What do do for preseason... Riot

The game is very much turning into 1-shot highlight reels. People of all elo's and even those who don't play ranked admit to the fact the balance is out of whack with some champs, items, and runes just being way too good. Skill and tactics are being traded in for a quicker way to nuke your opponent without them having any chance at counterplay other than just... not being there. And while tons of people still play... with new players joining every year too, I believe many of these players are on edge. As in, a few more things go wrong in our perspective and we're gone. Not a few players here and there... chunks. And while that might sit ok with you so long as you get your investors up and running... that only works short term. Why? Because if people stop playing the game, you don't have a future player base. You don't have a future player base... you don't have future pro's for those investors to invest in. You don't have that... you don't have a game.

So... what to do?

You have to figure out how the game used to work, how it should work, and what is going wrong that it is not working right now. Allow me to list a few points that illustrate some issues that are commonly discussed or at least implied within discussions.

1. Adc gets 1-shot by bruiser, burst mage, or assassin. That's it. Literally 0 counterplay.
2. If I do my job as assassin or bruiser and dive the enemy backline and DON'T manage to 1-shot... I'm cc'd even for just 1 sec, I then die without having any ability to catch enemy adc again, any chance to do meaningful damage, and get blown up even if only focused by the enemy adc and support.

• I want to pause here and say these are related issues. Adc's get 1-shot because damage is so high AND because they are basically forced into an arms race to build pure damage. Doing anything less than the highest burst+dps route available to them means they auto-lose. Which means they can't afford the luxury of a qss, a or a . Not until possibly... POSSIBLY at full build. Well by that point it's too late. But why must they go full glass cannon? Because they are responsible for killing basically 4 of the 5 enemies... with their midlaner and jg or top combining forces to kill the 5th member in teamfights. This used to not be the case. Early/mid game adc's would have zeal item, lifesteal, and possibly ga or armor pen. They wouldn't be able to be 1-shot unless an enemy was really fed, and while their burst+dps was lower, they had lifesteal to kite and drain tank. Midlaners were responsible for setting up picks and nuking a target really low for their team to pick off at the start of the fight. Bruiser toplaners were the main source of dps with adc's playing cleanup duty/second string. At a later stage in the game this changed because adc's had more items... but mid game was when bruisers were king and midlane mages picking a key enemy was more important than one adc having half an extra item. Changing the game so that adc's can nuke down tanky enemies via purely crit and has led to this unhealthy arms race. It negates the importance of bruisers and mages mid game. It skews the tank vs bruiser matchups toplane... especially for bruisers with no reliable innate armor pen, and it leaves adc's in a position where they cannot feel good about building any sort of durability to deal with the burst of enemies at this stage of the game. In short, everyone actually loses out over this.

The other half of this - the bruiser, mage, assassin perspective... So you just dove and nuked the enemy adc for about 80% of their hp. Due to a single enemy cc... something as simple as getting hit by one morg binding or lulu polymorph or janna slow you couldn't stick on them and finish them off. So what happens now? Now if you're an assassin you just go poof. You got hit by 4 aa's from the enemy adc and you're dead. If you're a mage, you have only basic abilities coming off cd in awhile and aa's in the meantime. Since you did this from range, you're probably not getting insta-killed for it, but you have minimal ability to influence the outcome of the fight at this point. All you can do is hope one of your teammates finishes off the enemy adc before they lifesteal (purely via runes since they're 2 zeal item + stormrazor or something like that) back all the damage you dealt while killing your whole team. Even if you could somehow get on them again with your basic abilities combo, the adc will probably out-duel you. That should never be the case aside from severe outplay... like an orianna whiffing her shockwave or a syndra blowing ult on a tank by mistake/mis-click. If you are a bruiser... say you've even built cleaver, randuin, and spirit visage. Your cd's for basic abilities are around 5-8 sec cd. Your issues are 2 fold. The first is that in 99% of cases, you will never again be able to catch that adc you nuked because of stupidly spammable extreme mobility of certain adc's and due to crit basically increasing adc's in-combat movespeed so that it is higher than or equal to a melee's and thus requiring the melee to have a gapcloser ability just to get in range to deal damage. FYI... melee's have higher base movespeed (and the gap used to be higher than it is now... another problem) for a reason. You are killing that and hence turning everything into an artillery war with only long range champs being allowed to do damage. The second is that said adc with the help of even just a janna support will 2v1 kill you before your abilities come off cd to have a chance at catching and finishing off said adc. So in about 5 sec or less... and adc with no armor pen will chew through a tanky bruiser with tabi and randuin's with the bruiser unable to kite away nor chase and catch the adc to fight back. Again... there's a problem here.

What should be done about this?

Burst of champs needs to be lowered so adc's aren't getting 1-shot except in rare cases like a 3 item lb when everyone else is sitting on 1.5 items.

Assassins need a more reliable way to get into and out of fights - I think zed has a realistic exit strategy and can go back in and out of the fight, but talon does not. While it's not an issue so much right now... when you fix it so he can't 1-shot a full hp adc with a lulu shield on her it will be an issue and he'll need compensation so that he's viable via being able to use parkour to get in and out and in again to finish the job... something he currently lacks.

Burst mages and mages in general shouldn't have a near impossible time hitting their abilities on most adc's. It should take real skill to dodge a mage's abilities, but have good payoff. If mages are hitting their abilities... they shouldn't be losing duels vs adc's at probably any point of the game... but especially mid game. And they should be able to have an impact in fights via basic ability combo's after their ult is down.

Bruisers should feel good - especially mid game - about diving the enemy backline and wreaking havoc. They shouldn't have to rely on having multiple spammable gapclosers just to stick to an enemy. One to get to the backline and that should be enough. Sure it might take them time to run down the adc to finish them off, but their durability and higher movespeed (really need to restore that... it existed for a reason) should enable this. What's the counter play? The enemy has to focus their cc and damage into keeping the bruiser off their adc. Right now it's more a game of one side has a tank standing there eating damage from 4 people and tanks more damage and the other side has a bruiser that while he nuked the adc, tanks less damage and cannot finish off said adc so his team auto-loses or... he does finish off the adc in one combo (unfair) and his team wins. It should be a tug of war not a simple either/or... either 1-shot, or you lose.

Tanks should lose about 1/3 to 1/2 the base damage on their abilities. But this should be made up for with bonus damage to minions and monsters. Tanks having high base damage has been very problematic for the game before... for both bruisers/fighters and for adc's and mages. When they're super tanky and have high base damage, you can't peel them, they take no damage, and they nuke you. Tanks have high base damage so they can farm mostly and somewhat so they can deal with bruisers in the early game. So making 1/3 to 1/2 of their base damage be removed vs enemy champs ensures they won't be problematic for mages and adc's in teamfights while still letting them farm effectively in lane. But in exchange for this... tank items need to be more meaningful as far as making a champ durable. Crit alone should not be enough to give meaningful damage vs a tank or bruiser with several armor items. Armor pen (not mere lethality either) must be required in addition to crit to make individual aa's from an adc hurt. This is the other half of the equation for adc's and mages not having to fear the base damage of a tank.

Adc's would be able to play without getting jumped and deleted by an enemy that isn't even fed before they have any chance to counterplay. They would be able to furthermore feel ok about itemizing more defensively mid game to deal with a fed enemy rather than having to go full glass cannon crit rush just to stand a chance of dealing with the enemy team... because their teammates would have meaningful damage contributions beyond their midlaner providing burst onto a single enemy target. However, they'd also actually have to play properly to deal with enemies diving them. They couldn't braindead aa and outrun enemy assassins and bruisers. They wouldn't shoot an enemy assassin 4 times and kill them while healing for half their health bar off merely a keystone for lifesteal. And thus... the ability to choose between glass cannon for more damage but being much squishier to enemy burst or building say a 3rd item ga and taking much less burst from a diving enemy champ would come into play. They wouldn't auto-win just because they didn't get 1-shot, but neither would they be getting 1-shot with no counterplay.

Such changes would make fights more strategic for all parties involved. It would eliminate many problems both in teamfights and outside of teamfights for champions. It would introduce more diversity in certain roles and itemization. And it would just plain feel better for everyone involved. Because fights would no longer be about... I nuked you faster and you have no counter-play. It would no longer be... well I didn't 1-shot the enemy carry, so I guess we auto-lose.

There's so much more to cover - re-balancing champions so that their NET power curves are equal [(early+mid+late)/3], balancing champions independent of items and runes and then making runes and items balanced around that such that they do not upset the power balance among champions, etc. But I've already posted much of this several times and this post is pretty long already, so I'll save those for another time. But anyways, hope you will take some of this food for thought, reconsider how the game works, and fix some of these issues. Because while the game may be in a state of "balance" or be "playable" right now, it is far from the balanced or playable state most people - yourselves included - want.