Hey, Riot, Community, Here's Some Civil Thought After 5+ Years of Playing
Skip to the bottom if you want the summary. I will just put my evidence beforehand, as well as a little bit of a glimpse into League's past for newer players. The bold statements are really the important points.
I've been playing for a long time. A LONG time. I think when I first started playing Lux was just released. I learned to jungle in the middle of season 1, and I've mained it since. I also played a lot of midlane back then, then a bunch of ADC, then support, more recently top lane has been my best secondary role. I've had a pretty wide breadth of experience and have tried to keep up with the way things shift, the meta changes... and more importantly, the way Riot and the overall design of the game has changed. What inspired me to make this thread is the amount of upset players at the more recent champion changes like Veigar and Morde, the failed Katarina changes, the constant complaints about Zed, Assassins, Mobility, the lack of variety in the jungle, Kalista... The list goes on.
Now, understanding what fuels these complaints requires one to understand the current state of the game. One really common buzzword is 'counterplay'. Some people use the term the way Morello did when he introduced it. Some don't. Some people hide behind it like a shield while others sarcastically use the word like a verbal damnation towards Riot. But... I believe, through a number of points, that the current state of the game has caused some confusion. All centered around not even the concept, but the notion of 'counterplay', and even the word itself. Let's take a holistic look at the game.
POINT ONE - The game was very different in season one and earlier
Look at the older champions. Mobility was relatively low on average. A lot of skills were direct target. The whole concept of 'tanky dps' was still being defined. You know the old ichtyostegids in earth's history? When fish first started walking around on land? They were very weird. Shapeless fish-blobs with teeth and stumpy legs. That's what Udyr was back then. That's what Mundo was. No-one really had anything relative to balance them around. The idea that a tank was low damage high utility was mostly unknown. Most of the tanks had quite a bit of damage on one or more skills. Immobile mages dominated because they packed in so much raw power that they ended up pushing out the then-common ADC mid. Riot went a little bit overboard and we got a big string of bruisers after Udyr. It culminated in Xin Zhao, Irelia, and Jarvan which dominated the game for quite some time, Jarvan due to bloated numbers and Xin and Irelia due to incredibly reliable kits. That let them accomplish their goal 100% of the time when played properly. Counterplay was not a consideration at this time nearly as much as counterpicking. Nasus midlane didn't have to be able to outplay Twisted Fate. You could just pick Lux and outrange TF. This was well before DotA 2's release, and as such it was before many of the characteristics that differentiated League emerged.
POINT TWO - Season Two, the bruiser crash, and the dawn of counterplay
Season two was a hell of a time to be a jungler. And not in a great way. The jungler was simultaneously the most important role on the team, capable of ganking at level 2, some junglers could start oracle's elixir to clear wards from the beginning of the game. This was when tank junglers became the meta. Junglers got almost no gold. They had to have innate stats that made up for that. Huge raw steroids. Since the bruiser nuclear winter made Riot wary of offensive steroids accessible so early, they were okay with huge defensive boosts. Back then, Nautilus' shield was considered a crazy good ability that gave him everything he needed and catapulted him above most other junglers. Skarner was an ult on a stick with crazy synergy with Shurelia's Reverie. Maokai had crazy powerful ganks with his W->Q combo even at level 2 or 3. This is the turning point in League's design history. A scorpion people ignored before S2 and after S2.
Skarner represented a problem. He was a bruiser with some interesting steroids, a shield and movement speed that could be disabled. He was purely melee. He had a permaslow if he got next to you. A lot of people didn't complain too much about him, but Riot nerfed him because there was the shadow of a growing problem. He presented a champion, that if you could not kill, you literally could not escape at all without a dash, and even then perhaps not.
POINT THREE - The Dawn of Counterplay
Skarner was nerfed because this was unhealthy. More champions followed. Skarner was too reliable if he closed the gap. There was one result, he got next to you and could probably beat you, or he couldn't. Olaf had a similar problem, but due to raw stats. He was nerfed too. These champions were simply too reliable. Xin Zhao which terrorized on release did the same, but people paid more attention to his strength than his design. Ever since this point, reliable champions kept getting repeated nerfs in power, while skillshot reliant champions tended to have increased power. Champions started to get gated by these smaller tasks instead of their strategic niches, Riot did not allocate resources to reworks until mid season 2. There was some belief that reliability could be balanced alongside skillshots if the reliable skills were simply weaker! Makes sense, right?
Well, several champions had no skillshots. Sona, Taric, old Sion, Kayle. These champions started receiving nerfs through seasons two, three, four, and onward. Riot started really ramping up their emphasis on counterplay, on champions being able to take on other champions they face without being totally counterPICKED. There are a WHOLE LOT LESS "can't do anything" lanes than there used to be. Remember old Garen versus Kennen top? Garen still has trouble with Kennen but it's not an auto-lose.
The Main Meat
Riot has been releasing more unreliable champions. Azir. Skillshot-based Vel'Koz. Even the more mobile ones like Zed still have to combo in the right order and have small windows where you can do things about their abilities. Sion got picked in LCS recently after his rework and every one of his abilities is heavily conditionalized. The problem is... this game is entirely different than in season one. Old champion designs stick out... many of them lack conditionalization or interaction. Now, instead of just letting the older, less powerful champions rot they are gaining conditionalization they previously lacked. Levers and mechanisms. Remember when people said Skarner's movement speed was useless because it could be broken? It was so minor compared to things like current Sion's conditions. Hell, even Zed has so much kit interaction people thought he was awful before because you could do things about his abilities.
In summary, it feels like the community and the game itself are going through withdrawals, perfect reliability is like a drug. "I like this ability because the enemy dies and can't do anything about it." should never, ever be uttered. It's why I hate Vi and Warwick more than any other champions in the game, and likely always will.
