Snowball may be bad, but what makes snowball uniquely shitty in this particular season/meta

Tychusfindlay918·Oct 13, 2017·46 votes·1,990 views

Is that no one is allowed to snowball except for bot lane.

I can "snowball" my lane as and come out of lane phase like 6/0, but then I get completely murdered in teamfights simply because the enemy bot lane at least has an ardent and a half as fed twitch or trist or kog.

There's something uniquely shitty about snowballing when only one lane has access to it. At least if every lane could snowball there would be some feeling of fairness for playing well in the jungle/solo lanes.

33 Comments

DunkinNoobsOct 14, 20176 votes

Have you tried playing top laners that aren't so vulnerable to kiting? The 6/0 Jaxes and Rivens I see seem to do just fine.

dominusxOct 14, 20179 votes

The 6-0 Riven and Jaxes i see just get raped once the tank that is 0-6 presses a cc ability on them. Then they procced to get oneshot.

DunkinNoobsOct 14, 20172 votes

{quoted}

The 6-0 Riven and Jaxes i see just get raped once the tank that is 0-6 presses a cc ability on them. Then they procced to get oneshot.

Kinda makes me wonder why you're grouping. The counter to the enemy adc doing way more damage than your has always been to avoid grouping as much as possible and I don't know why people have forgotten that.

nice tableOct 14, 20173 votes

you can't really not group when the enemy kog can just click on your team when you leave them out numbered.

DunkinNoobsOct 14, 20172 votes

[{quoted}](name=nice table,realm=EUW,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=QeM6HZca,comment-id=0004000000000000,timestamp=2017-10-14T15:11:16.139+0000)

you can't really not group when the enemy kog can just click on your team when you leave them out numbered.

I do it all the time; really not that difficult, especially if they have an enchanter support like Janna or Lulu as well. Protect the hypercarry comps are notoriously bad at engaging fights and you can abuse this weakness heavily by either keeping the game in a perpetual 4+1 vs. 4+1 via splitting or keeping the enemy at bay forever with poke+disengage.

Zero Skill TankOct 14, 20172 votes

While this is very true and upvote-worthy, it is worth to note that in current state of the jungle enemy jungler can basically prevent your snowball for free. The upside is that your jungler can use that to put enemy botlane behind, but still, your ability to influence the game as toplaner is very reliant on someone else performance.

DunkinNoobsOct 14, 20171 votes

They can if your own jungler ignores you, which admittedly happens a lot. That's their fault though, not yours. You can still win through top lane in season 7 and if your stupid jungler doesn't realize that and tries to camp for the Kog/Janna lane instead, that's his fault.

nice tableOct 14, 20176 votes

there are very few meta picks that can waveclear and poke against "protect the kog" comps.

LordGeovanniOct 15, 20171 votes

not grouping just split pushing and your allies wont pressure mid because they down a man and the enemy 5 man can come at you from every angle before you even reach past river in an off lane and it repeats it self every fight

Husha SeusOct 14, 20171 votes

Oh jesus christ don't get me started with fiora oh my god..

DunkinNoobsOct 14, 20174 votes

Don't hate the Fiora, hate the need for busted split push champs as a response to busted teamfight adcs.

dominusxOct 15, 20171 votes

Fiora isnt busted. All toplaners should be able to 1v4 as long as they dont royally fuck up. Kappa

AhrisOct 13, 20175 votes

Riot nerfed other lanes snowballing.

AirKingNeoOct 14, 20174 votes

Every lane can snowball.

I think you've been drinking the board's "blame adcs" juice again.

DuskDaUmbreonOct 14, 20172 votes

Well. Top has a pretty hard time snowballing, and doing anything with said snowball...

But every other lane can and does snowball. Even support.

It's hilarious to see someone try to kill a Soraka with two items up on them. XD

AirKingNeoOct 14, 20172 votes

Top is the snowball lane. Even in this meta, you still gank it first so they can teleport gank bot/teleport for dragons.

The difference between .75 item top laner and a 1.5 item top lane is the largest difference in power in the game.

DurzakaOct 14, 20173 votes

You gank it first because you have a more realistic chance of making something happen there at level 3 vs. mid or bottom. Not because it snowballs hard.

Bladerunner7777Oct 14, 20173 votes

Or you could realize that League isn't Call of Duty and maybe you're supposed to do something with your advantage other than chase down more kills?

Or you could provide an argument that isn't riddled with fallacies?

Yaśuo MainOct 14, 201711 votes

top is generally considered notorious for being the least helpful lane and/or weakest lane

DivewingOct 15, 20171 votes

The irony in that the current meta is dive shit mindlessly by outnumbering people

Bladerunner7777Oct 15, 20172 votes

Citation needed

FeathermaneOct 14, 20173 votes

There is too little snowball in this game. As a result, Worlds is marred by objectively better teams losing out because they didn't pick the hardest scaling carry and the best teamfighting jungler and their 10K gold lead doesn't mean anything.

Flawless FetusOct 14, 20172 votes

Meh. I'll give you top, but jg/mid can snowball and carry just as hard, if not harder than bot. I spent the majority of the season playing adc, but couldn't get out of plat. I got tired of the enemy jg/mid being worth so much more than ours, so I started queuing up jg/mid. These rolels carry so much harder. A handful of weeks later, no longer stuck in plat.

RainfallOct 14, 20172 votes

the botlane is the only snowballing lane in league.

CatastropOct 14, 20172 votes

Tbf, you're playing top lane. A lane notorious for its uselessness unless you play very specific champions.

Jg and Mid are perfectly capable of snowball, although mid kind of suffers from top lane's champion specific snowball these days. The difference is, even without those champions, the mid lane roster is still equipped with the tools(and range) to enable their other team members.

PePsiLemoNNOct 14, 20171 votes

''I'm gonna play a champion that is not really META and then complain why I can't carry games like META things'' - you.

stochastic42Oct 14, 20171 votes

Bot lane has almost always been the most important lane, that's why you send two champions there. If you want to carry games play champions like shen who can survive without jungle pressure and help his bot lane, or champions that have lane priority and can tp gank bot lane. If you just want to be able to take over the entire game because you got a weak opponent top lane go cry me a river. I don't miss those days at all.

statelesskillerOct 14, 20171 votes

im sorry but you are wrong.

you put your traditional carry in the mid lane because its the shortest lane and since most mid mages dont have dashes or movement spells this is the perfect place for them to survive

top is meant for bruisers who have alot of mobility, or tanks who have alot of survivability both of which can survive in the longer top lane

and in bot lane there are 2 champs because well adcs most of the time dont have mobility so they need help and thats why they have the heals and shields of supports

thats the logic behind it when it was first done in season 1.

statelesskillerOct 14, 20171 votes

this is gangplank. this champion snowballing is your worst nightmare. "whats that skippy your ADC kog empowered by his janna sex sl- i meant janna ardent slave is steam rolling bot lane. whats that skippy? my 4/0/0 ganplank with triforce at 10 minutes, and the serrated dirk of youmoos just 2 shot janna because of aoe then flash AA q to kill the kog? whats that skippy? maybe people should stop PLAYING FUCKING DARIUS/RIVEN/FIORA TOP IF THEY WANT TO FUCKING CARRY"

<---- totally not salty gp main about how every enemy top laners picks ape champs to fight him

not but like real talk there are many champs in top lane that will murder the fuck out of adcs and make them literally lol useless. GP does it well beaue 80% hard slow, they cant kite you if they cant walk. coupled with a executioners gp can apply a AOE heal reduction to a entire team and baically force jannas to ult then and there, or lulus to instantly drop there ult and shit, and ardent doesnt matter if a second barrel blows you up instantly

list of champs that do well against the current meta of ADC bullshittery Malphite Shen Rumble Trundle Urgot in my PERSONAL experience these champs are what you want to be using to deal with adcs

malphite because you cant really match his level of engage and because he slows a adcs attack speed by ALOT with just a single button press, coupled with a frozen heart your ADC wins because you reduced the enemy adcs gold value in stats to a hilariously useless degree. shen cannot only taunt the adcs but also entirely block his damage output and give your own a shield. rumble with good ults can fuck a entire enemy team. trundle can reduce the adcs ad and make there (usually) solo tank nothing. and urgot because urgot fires a chain at you and now your dead if you drop below that health threshold, doesnt matter what janna or lulu think about it or even soraka

Hayaishi2Oct 14, 20171 votes

Darius is trash, thats why.

UpDownLeftRightABOct 14, 20171 votes

Team composition matters more than ever this season. In prior seasons, anyone getting ahead was a threat, now it's more of a matter of WHO gets ahead.

Dygax37Oct 16, 20171 votes

What you described happens to many people every day. Gone are the days where Voyboy or other insane top laners would pick lee sin and go full AD carrying their team on their backs. With top lane no longer utilizing an agressive spell, we can't simply walk across the map at 6-0 and kill someone who played the game worse than we did. To carry as top lane, you play yi or tryndamere. We are 4 supports, hoping that 1 player is better than the enemy adc while we sit back and use our full kit and skills to gain objectives for their power.

You see it all the time in pro streams, when a carry is rotated to top lane the whole team has to go and deal with it before they kill the top laner with no effort MIDGAME.

What happens right now is since you are ability based the shields negate your kit and those who win out are ad steroid champions and natural hyper-carries. Because there is NO COUNTER to a full AD build thanks to the gutting of thornmail, we now face a meta where even AP are being pushed out of mid in favor of champions such as lucian and corki.

Our only answer to adc is to kill them before they inevitably kill you, since your 5 armor 1 dps item builds are simply not good enough to dive the carry. Which gives rise to cho gath. The new answer that 50 dashes can't outrun and 100 shields cant go off in time if they did not anticipate flash feast. GG wp.