As much as we complain about damage...

... it is far from being the only problem with the game right now.

Nowadays we don’t just have damage creep. We also have cc creep. Every new champion and rework more often than not brings with them a few hard cc options. If any of you remember season 1 and 2, having cc used to be something that differentiated your champion from the rest. And Orianna, who was relatively new, was extremely broken in the pro scene, pick or ban in fact, because she had decent mobility (for the time), good laning, good damage, and good cc (for the time). Nowadays you go into a game and I’ll be damned if 3-5 out of the enemy champs don’t have at least one hard cc spell. Usually even more.

On the other hand, with this ridiculous increase in cc and damage, we have loss of vision. Back before Riot released these stupid trinkets and got rid of regular wards, the map used to be lit like a Christmas tree. Exaggerations aside, you had to spend gold to ward, and it took some level of skill and thought to ward properly such that you know where enemy team is, and such that you don’t waste too much on wards.

But that’s not all. We’ve been lately (as in for the past few years) complaining about damage, but not the type of damage. There are four types of damage in this day and age that are seriously problematic.

(1) percent max hp damage. This used to be a rare thing, and was something limited to Kog’maw, Brand, Vayne, and maybe 1 or 2 other champions. Now looks at PBE here comes that 73% max hp damage Ornn. Enemy team builds hp? Get botrk or liandries. Or don’t. There’s a decent chance your champ has % hp damage anyway.

(2) true damage. While not that bad yet because mages don’t have an optimal way to itemize true damage, true damage has become more prevalent than ever thanks to conqueror, infinity edge, and a slew of champions with inbuilt true damage.

(3) mixed damage that scales well. In the past, roughly season 3 and before, or, heck, even in season 4, having mixed damage was a weakness. You were unable to properly benefit off of armor or magic penetration, and so having mixed damage was a liability because often you ended up being split between a small amount of magic damage and a lot of physical damage, or vice versa. But since one of your damage sources didn’t scale (optimally at least), it was balanced mixed damage. Today, we have champions like kai’sa and other rageblade users that deal significantly mixed damage, and scale while doing it, such that defending against their one item requires two defensive items on the part of the the defender.

(4) free damage from keystones, various runes, and items. As much as people were afraid of and whined about stat sticks and stat checks, I found that back in the day it used to be about how you used your champion properly. How do you make use of that 10 extra AD? It benefits you if you champion plays as it is supposed to play well, or vice versa. The addition of random damage numbersor mini games via keystones (and even some runes) and certain items has lead to champions actually changing their own playstyles significantly for something that is not a key part of their playstyle. In other words, we have a resulting loss of champion identity.

TL;DR: 1: damage isn’t the only problem with the game, vision loss and cc creep are just as problematic 2: when complaining about damage, it’s important to note what type of damage has brought us to our current state. 3: I have spent a lot more time and effort on this post than I should have or intended to :/