Logical Explanation of The Snowbally Burst Meta.
At Season 8, Runes Reforged remove the old system and added the new system. There are more damage available through runes than before, and resistances were removed from the same system. This messes with the potential damage output of a player vs the potential damage reduction of his target. The ratio of power growth as someone gets fed grows larger faster.
Well, this system led not only to snowballs in Season 8, but to towers melting. The games were horrible, they were not often close, and they were not often exciting. They didn't feel competitive if someone lost hard enough and his towers were shoved through quickly. Riot wanted to fix the paper towers, so they added Turret Plating.
Turret Plating slows the advance of a winning laner. It also gives him gold. This winning player will still grow in power to a degree his lane opponent can't fight him. His lane opponent will just die in 1 combo. It sucks and it's not interactive. However, Now, his turret will last longer so he can potentially last longer in lane. The downside is his oppoent can potentially get 800 or something bonus gold from his tower (not including first tower gold), which is worth 3 more kills. This dude could get like 3 kills in lane and get another 3 kills worth of gold from the tower. In an old meta, that could potentially be manageable, but not with these Runes Reforged. My 27 armor and magic resist rune page from old was deleted, and now I'm rolling 6 armor and 8 magic resist in it's place. Meanwhile, my winning enemy is rolling around with an item and a half or a 2 item lead, a 2 level lead, and is 1 shotting me while I wear these 6 armor and 8 magic resist from new runes. If I get a gank, he 1v2's us, quickly deleting us back to back.
This meta is crap. Runes reforged removed defense and added offense. Turret Plating added gold income for winning players. This creates a condition of massive leads and crazy snowball conditions. The snowball is severe enough that people get 1-shot now.
The solution to paper towers was increasing tower defenses AS you added damage into the runes pages. The solution to snowball is INCREASING defense stats and rune options available to the runes and mini runes. Give me back my total 27 armor and 27 magic resist at level 18 I used to build on all my champs (I'd sub out magic resist if it was an all AD enemy team). Please, this is why Garen feels OK to play, because he can get up to a passive 50 armor and magic resist in the background, and once he has around 30+ of it, it feels like good old league. EVERYBODY needs an extra 27 or so armor and magic resist available to freely slot so we can play the game instead of studying the respawn screen.
My simplest proposal is expanding mini runes to be BIG runes to ALLOW up to 27 armor and 27 magic resist, together, even if it meant you increase the magnitude of the damage options there as well. My favorite proposal would be allowing us to fully flesh out our stats with our old runes like we used to do, whether or not you keep Runes Reforged as a replacement of old Masteries. If you keep Runes Reforged as a replacement to masteries, then you ought to increase the effect of defensive runes or the number of them.
