Immobile Mages' toughest season, Riot's Assassin bias and the Abundance of Damage

Long post below.

Disclaimer: I am aware that Riot is going to try fix damage in preseason and that there has been a post about it in Dev Corner.

This season has been such absolute trash it's unbeliavable, and I'm saying that with no remorse. Everyone is constantly complaining on boards about decisions Riot is doing to balance just for "the sake of change" and it seems there is no end to it. But for Immobile Mages (I will refer to them as "mages" below) this season is literally the HARDEST it has ever been and I will describe why breaking down the article in several points of changes that led to that. I won't state every change there is but the ones I know and remember happened.

• Waveclear nerfs. Riot saw that mages were waveclearing constantly and not interacting with opponents that much, so they decided to increase minion's health grows over time, nerfed so that it can't be used as early, changed , nerfed mages' mana and mana regen. They also trashed and it's users over time as well (rip ) What happened next? Nothing has changed for midlane. The game on mid is still decided by who can waveclear harder and faster and then roam to river/bot/skirmish/whatever. Except now assassins waveclear faster than most mages because AD is cheaper (prime examples of better AD waveclearing: and ), more accessable and affect autos just as much as their abilities,so minion health growth is nonexistant for them, meanwhile mages primary waveclear tool is spells and AP is hard to get. So basically those who could not waveclear well prior to nerfs without early and extra mana regen got basically nerfed and assassins got buffed, indirectly.
• **Turrets **: are trash, paper trash that is. Today, they cannot defend you against any sort of dive or impudent aggression from assassins, you get dived and 100-0'd in seconds. They do not have tools to assist you or protect you, they are just standing gold waiting to be collected after you, as a mage, die repeatedly and unable to do anything about it because you need to scale and assassins don't.
• Constant assassin compensation buffs: Prime example nerfs and followup with LITERALLY EVERY SINGLE AD ASSASSIN BUFFS. What?!
• As a follow-up to that, questionable mage nerfs/tampering with runes. Some examples: Why would you nerf 's ult damage when that wasn't the issue? "I think they hit the wrong thing" - Scarra's comment on that nerf with which I totally agree. Though I'm glad it was just that, could've been worse you know; I can't remember a single buff, only nerfs; Now Runes: why would you remove Ultimate Hat from Sorcery? Why go on with manaflow band changes everytime (tbh all changes considering this rune were nerfs)? Most interesting question: WHY WOULD YOU MOVE INTO THE JUNGLE? WHO THE F ASKED YOU TO DO THAT? Well I kinda have an answer to that one: this was tied to waveclear nerfs as well, so they got rid of her midlane.
• Mage itemisation: was trash before, is still bad nowadays. Low amount of variance in AP itemisation ESPECIALLY when it comes to building defense. Moreover, Riot continuosly adds something that caters towards AD spectre of damage dealers more than AP mages. Change to AD items happen more frequently than to AP, and everytime I see one I think "It's a fucking miracle". Offense on assassin items spectre >>> defense and utility on mages' end of item spectre. Hell, even most runes are favoured towards you being AD. Mages just stick with what is somewhat acceptable for them. Which is basically nothing at this point.
• More assassin buffs: Remember how assassins waveclear better than mages? Well, the recent buff made her do just that, because previous nerfs hit her somewhat and Riot being biased as of now, didn't like that; Three consecutive Zed buffs; LeBlanc revert, because it was sooo fair to get half of your health cheesed out at level 2; Rengar revert and recent ultimate buff. Oh, but wait, Talon got slight W nerf. Which changed nothing and he still waveclears better than mages with . By the way, do you remember the last nerf? Yep, me neither.
• Damage and mobility creep: This season, damage in the game is SUPER HIGH. Also, there is a shit-TON of braindead mobility in the game. Moreover, constant addition of even more damage and mobility to the game as well as ways to avoid damage (untargetability/invincibility/invisibility etc.) Because of huge amounts of early burst, you as a mage have to play from assassins' mistakes and actions since if you yourself try being proactive in these lanes you either get destroyed by them more anyway or get ganked and have to sit under turret (which won't save you anyway) flashless hoping your mobile opponent doesn't abuse you. Or, what's even worse, goes roaming. Which you can't follow at all or you will die.; Abundance of damage limits champion choice DRAMATICALLY,IMMENSELY to the point where if you can't oneshot people early you are not a valid champion. Moreover, it leads to games ending very early: Tanks being almost nonexistant is a result of that,which makes mages rely on themselves for peel and defense even more. Hence, most immobile mages feel trash to play right now, they need time to scale and late game is nonexistant right now.

ONE THING I NOTICED THIS SEASON IS HOW RIOT ACTUALLY CATERS TO THE DAMAGE IN THE GAME AND NERFS LITERALLY ALL WAYS TO AVOID IT

Almost everything players did to avoid this nonsensical damage output in the game got busted and nerfed.

• Reminder how along with shield got nerfed because "waveclear and safety".

• Shield supports that provided actual safety got nerfed as well. People mentioned it was not on time at all, and Riot should have nerfed them when meta was prevalent, not now when they are needed the most to deal with assassin infestation everywhere.

• all got nerfed (though heal is back kind of). TP was the way to not lose the lane if you got killed early and actually stay on even ground but Riot said it's "dominating summoner" so it got nerfed. So now which was buffed is dominating summoner: because all we need in this game is more damage right?

• At some point Bone Plating/Chrysalis got nerfed which was one of the smallest sparks of defense for mages on mid.

• In turn, it took 11 fucking patches to nerf 's damage. Electrocute and damage Domination Rune Tree provides hasn't been adressed up until recently.

_So with that, the last bastion of damage neglection in this game is + time warp tonic. Are we going to see it getting hit next? _

You see how mages constantly get hit and neglected while assassins are getting buffed? Everything I have mentioned makes mages such trash to play nowadays. You one shot or you get one shot. You can't rely on towers for safety. You can't interact with assassins since you will get blown. Thus only a said number of mages remain playable, which is fucking sad. I want Immobile Mages to actually matter and seen picked more often again. But all I see nowadays is . I don't want to play a set number of "chosen" mage champions because they are ones that can deal with all the trash you keep throwing at mages thus restricting viable midlane pool. Old kits cannot keep up with that, they become obsolete and are left in the dust until further notice which sometimes takes God-knows how long. Why is still decent even after all the nerfs? Because of his passive and non-interactivity, he can go even, which for assassin means losing. Why is a decent midlaner against assassins? Because of his great sustain and semi-defensive build path. Why has suddenly became strong? Because he doesn't care if he gets blown up early in teamfight, he can still contribute immensely with his damage and ultimate. Everyone else remains underpicked and underpowered.

Are we becoming Blizzard now, Riot? You know, taking turns in terms of balance who is strong and who is weak, giving the bigger bone to whoever you see more "exicitng" to watch for LC$? Or which champions make more money/sell skins? Because that is not a good way to approach game balance. Entire rosters became unviable due to the abundance of damage, it affects everyone and noone likes it.

How abundance of damage affects entire class viability:

We all remember how ADC's got nerfed and mages went ahead and took their place on bottom lane. Well,the actual reason for disappearance of ADCs from botlane is only a consequence of the game state in general. LoL as of now is highly centered around early game. ADCs before their changes had semi-strong early game presence, and then Riot weakened them in that aspect, pushing their scaling further into the late game. They did indeed open up botlane, yes... but, ironically, to those who have a better early game strengths than ADCs do now. The abundance of damage and early game centered meta made late game nonexistant almost entirely, hence ADCs were basically dead as a whole class. Then they buffed a few ADC items and only a set number of ADC's are playable right now: the ones with early game presence.

The thing is, what happened to ADC's can happen to any class. The actual reason for disappearance of ADCs from botlane is only a consequence of the game state in general. Everything that is somewhat more or less scewed into "later game stage" with weak early game presense can dissappear just the same and viable champion pool will only get smaller if Riot continues in the direction they are going.

• One last thing I wanted to mention, is how I believe Riot is doing all of this because they want to see assassins being played in Worlds and on pro scene in general. Because watching people get blown is exicting and fun for viewer (NO). The truth in my opinion is, assassins will never be viable in pro play. Why? Because most of them except for a said number are hugely unreliable. They are feast or famine champions, meaning you have got to take risky plays. On pro scene, the communication in teams can shutdown this basically most of the time. Mages on the other hand are reliable and safe. It is why they have been picked by pros for years and will continue to be picked again and again. Feast or Famine playstyle that assassins have can be punished quite heavily and pros don't want that. They want to win and they need a reliable way to do that.

The more damage is in the game, the more pros will NOT commit to ANY lane interaction whatsoever since it's like taking a coinflip risk, the less there is diversity in champion picks, since some do the job of oneshotting better than the others, and those who cannot do that,do anything with that or defend against that are inferior to aforementioned choices. The more mobility there is in the game, the less viable mage roster becomes, since only a set number of champions are able to deal with all those additions and old kits cannot keep up at all. Add all that, and the game becomes less interesting as a result. It becomes DULL, HARSH and UNFORGIVING.

I'm sure you will probably find someone who is happy with the state of the game as of now.

But the truth is,for the most part, there isn't a soul