Scaling and Pacing Problems in League, and my solutions

I would like to introduce myself first, i am a Karma-Nunu main (peaked at gold 3 in season 7, played since season 2), and i would like to thank Riot for buffing nunu a while back ago.

Now let's get into the main topic here, i would like to talk about the scaling of champions in relation to game time.

Topics:

**1. Itemization spikes being pushed earlier as a band aid to problems of game time - caused by power creep arms race (which i will get on to that) 2. Feast or famine nature of infinite scaling champ. 3. Problems of pushing for shorter games when the game was inherently designed for 35-45 minutes worth of game time. 4. Snowballing, the issue of the lack of COUNTER SNOWBALL. 5. Champions and late game fantasy. 6. linear VS multiplicative scaling **

1. When i see people nowadays complaining about "adcs op" "tanks op" "heals and shields op", "bruisers sucks" "hashinshin autist F**k", they are right - but not in the ways that they think.

The problems lies in the pacing of game time: namely the item and champions' spike timings. One example i give is Ezreal, Ezreal's strongest time is when he is at 2-3 items, completion of Manamune into Muramana and Iceborn Gauntlet/Trinity force. These 2 items are completed at around 20 minutes. Post 2 items Ezreal now has 10 minutes up to minute 35 to snowball and close out the game before he inevitably gets out-scaled by all other marksman. Any sort of tinkering of this game timings causes Ezreal to be OP or garbage as seen in season 7.

#Problem number 1

Riot lowered Crit item costs - to counter** defense & damage power creep** from bruisers (season 6 - preseason 7). Demonstrated by Lee Sin, Vi, Hecarim - junglers that have the access of defensive power and offensive power - Roam bot 4 man party.

Changes of lethality - meant that lethality marksmen + ezreal and ziggs dominated the meta, (looking back the problem was teamwide first tower gold that Riot should have nerfed). This meant that the snowballing turn from one lane (bot) into team-wide snowballing due to high amount of TEAMWIDE gold, you snowball top lane by ganking bot A.K.A invisible power, this was added by the fact that Bot tower DID NOT have bonus damage reduction as riot wanted to stop the lane swap meta back in Season 5 juggernaut disaster patch in worlds, thus leading to the 4 man + occasional TP bot from top.

The good, bad & the ugly by the live balance team.

1. The good: Live balance team buffed Blade of the Ruined King to offset brusier junglers building cinderhulk + triforce/blackcleaver into full tank (Lee sin is the exception - he went cinderhulk, titanic, blackcleaver, into Maw/Streaks.)
2. The bad: live balance team lowering the cost of Crit items. This lead to multiplicative scaling champions (marksmen + Crit skirmishers) power spiking at way way earlier time.
3. The ugly: Nerfing BoTRK, keeping the Crit itemisation buffs, buffing/reworking hyper tanks + juggeranuts (Maokai, Cho'gath, Nautilus, Poppy) to counter the earlier spikes of Crit scaling, before nerfing Nautilus and Poppy and keeping the tank itemization intact by changing cinderhulk to lower its base health and increasing bonus hp.

My proposed solution:

Return the BoTRK buffs Buff the celerity movement speed to ad/ap conversion, change celerity to scale from 1% - 3% at form minute 0 to minute 10 (standardizing with slightly magical boots + transcendence)
Increase the cost of zeal items by 400 each + buff the movement speed of Shiv and Rapid fire cannon to 7% + change rapid fire cannon bonus range to scale with movement speed gained by zeal items ONLY, change static shiv's bonus damage to SCALE with movement speed gained from ZEAL items only. Returning Atma's implarer to give: 65 ad + 10% Crit chnace. Unique passive Gains up to 20% bonus Critical chance with 1% chance per 6 BONUS ad.

This solves 2 issues-

1. Promoting marksmen to have a choice in sorcery tree instead of mandatory "free life steal" "free sustain" form the Precision tree - Fleet footwork (Unpopular opinion: Fleet footwork IS balanced for every single class - even ranged, except marksmen E.g. Kayle, Viktor, this Rune DOES NOT need nerfs) - meaning they delay their late game power spike to late game. (no more Vayne BF sword + shiv one shots at minute 15, so she get have room to be buffed), as this means that marksmen have to buy life steal first items, giving breathing room for Divers, Vanguards and Skirmishers their mid-game breathing room to do their stuff, without having to buff their numbers furthering the numbers arms race.

2. Allowing Riot to buff Assassins as new Atma's impaler stops casters adc's such as Jhin, MF, Lucian to ab(use) lethality items, and allowing caster adcs to have their "late game fantasy".

#Problem number 2

Infinite champions - Should NOT out scale late game marksmen or late game skirmishers (Fiora, Yasuo, Yi), unless it's a 75 minute game.

you might ask why 3daysof Moonlight?

Answer: Because infinite scaling champions scales linearly meaning they scale at a straight curve - if you are unlucky and made One mistake against them, you can NEVER catch up to team at any point, making champions such as Nasus + Veigar extremely punishing for low elo players who makes a lot of mistakes. High elo players can snowball and making little mistakes to prevent those champions from out scaling them.

Example - Kindred, Kindred, having to live and die by the stacks, if they have too much damage early, then they can out duels enemy jungler early game, gets the stacks, and then out -scales them late game. This Champion has caused Riot so many problems as they as a champion is too tied with the stacks mechanics which led the balance team to Olaf'd them

My Proposal:

Healthy infinite scaling champs:

Sion Thresh Bard

Unhealthy infinite scaling champs:

Cho'Gath Nasus Kindred Veigar

Make infinite scaling champ scales with a S curve, stacking with Diminishing returns [img]https://i.imgur.com/ef8T2Iq.jpg?1[/img]

1. You have Nasus, a mid game champion that's marketed as a late game champion. Instead of giving him crazy CDR in his ult to be more oppressive against melees whilst getting dicked on by ranged. Buffing his mid game before enemy adc has any items would be healthier than him stat checking your butt-hole. (this removes his 1200 stack spilt push god status in low elo, removing a frustration of the enemy team facing a ticking time bomb) (At min 15, he would have 300 stacks instead of 150 stacks to help him in the mid game team fights)

This allows him to be buff other ways.

2. Cho'gath -

Remove infinite scaling ultimate

Minions gives up to 10 stacks

Epic monsters gives up to 5 stacks

Bonus Health gained per stacks: ~~80/120/160 ~~ >>>>> 120 health per stack.

Champion stacks gives up to 5 stacks: Bonus 8 Armor + Magic resist per stack

Q Rupture: ACTIVE: Cho'Gath causes the target area to rupture after a 0.625 seconds delay, Airborne icon knocking up enemies hit for 1 second, Slow icon slowing them by 60% for 1.5 seconds afterwards and dealing magic damage. >>>

ACTIVE: Cho'Gath causes the target area to rupture after a 0.625 seconds delay, Airborne icon knocking up enemies hit for 1 second, Slow icon slowing them by 45% for 1.5 seconds afterwards and dealing magic damage. ** NEW: Casting Rupture gives Cho'Gath 40% movement speed for 1 second, if Rupture lands on Champion, he gains additional 35% slow resistance. **

Rewards Cho'gath for land Q's, gives him better target access with slow resistance. less oppressive slow for the enemy for counter play issue.

E Vorpal Spikes ~~ 20 / 30 / 40 / 50 / 60 (+ 30% AP) (+ 3% (+ 0.5% per Feast Feast stack) of target's maximum health)~~ >>>>>

30/45/60/75/90 (+50% AP) (+ 0.5% per Feast Feast stack of target's maximum health)

Making him less reliant on having stacks to do damage - making him less feast or famine, reliability and giving less frustrations for Cho'Gath players, less frustrating to play against when Cho'Gath is ahead. Rewarding Cho'Gath when building damage.

R Feast: ~~ 300 / 475 / 650 (+ 50% AP) (+ 10% bonus health) ~~ >>>>>> 300 / 475 / 650 (+ 90% AP) (+ 8% bonus health)

Champion should NOT be doing damage whilst being beefy - that has no counterplay. This change rewards him for building damage.

Veigar: Fuck this champ, not even going to touch him.

Kindred: too complicated, i will leave this for someone else

#Problem 3

League of legends during the era of Guinsoo, lol was designed with games to end between 35 - 40 mins, by changing the game to allow shorter game time, the new team led by Meddler and Ghostcrawler effectively fucked the whole ecosystem. Giving us 1 item power spike adc (Rageblade Kog'Maw, Varus) or adc getting to "late game" at 25 minutes.

Either all items and champions kit need to be retuned to suit the new game pacing, or game time needs to be longer (Solo queue, Competitive is a different beast)

#Problem 4

Snowballing and counter snowballing:

Solution: REMOVE global gold on turret kills - local gold gives 300 split among players

Reduce assist gold form 150 to 75 - stops support power creep

all shutdown gold gives to the killer.

This creates an "ebb and flow" to the plays in LOL

red team top laner snowballing > blue team shuts down red team top laner > blue team mid laner snowballing > red team shuts down blue team mid laner > red team adc snowballing.. .etc

This gives the opposing team to focus their resources to focus on one single enemy to stop their snowball.

1. allows solo carries (top lane brusiers) to thrive
2. clear options to counter a snowball.

**#Problem 5 **

late game fantasy

Every champion should have a late game fantasy - even lane bullies like pantheon and renekton (&Lucian).

This stop champions being Win lane - lose game champions.

Reduces the frustration where one mistake in mid game cost you the game, by allowing the team with early game champions to contribute late game in other sorts of utility.

Solution: Reduce early game power for lane bully champions (appropriately so they can still bully) , give them back some late game power.

More forgiving for players who made mistakes in the mid game. Less frustrating for players in lane when playing against lane bullies.

#Problem 6

Linear scaling should not be out scaling multiplicative scaling. By blurring this boundary makes linear scaling champions both good early game and late game.