Can we increase diversity in the game? @RiotRepertoir

Hey, I have been thinking about this subject for a while. And I would like to request that riot consider making balance changes to increase the diversity in this game specifically regarding team compositions. As the game plays out right now, the way the game snowballs is largely stacked toward teams/botlane, as opposed to individuals. This translates into situations where in order to abuse your lead as a team your forced to group up. I feel like the result of this type of balance restricts the champion pool in regards to which champions can be played. Basically you are force to play champions which can win lane and have solid teamfight presence.

Back in the early seasons of the game, when I started playing. There were three main team compositions which were all used, and they all had degrees of success. I am not saying the balance back then was perfect but it did allow for variety. And you kinda had a rock paper scissors type of interactions which came out in gameplay as poke>split>engage>poke. It allowed for more interesting gameplay for the players and more interesting for LCS viewing. Obviously in the past, there were some outliers. to the extent that nidalee pre rework was so good at poking and so bad at everything else she could turn every team she was on into a poke comp. But the way the game has evolved now poke and split push comps dont, and cannot exist because of the flow of the game and the power distributions into champions kits. Right now we have champions which would eccess in these types of compositions (yorick in a split comp and ap kaisa/zoe for poke comps) but they are simply not viable because that style of gameplay just is not a viable strategy outside of low elo.

Reasons that I believe this change has happened.

1. over emphasis on TP in toplane. The oportunity cost of taking tp vs not taking tp is incredibly low for toplane. Its nearly impossible (vs a good opponent) to cheese into a snowball toplane by passing up TP to take and aggressive summoner spell. The results in teleport simply being the best option all the time. You can easilly avoid dying and if you manage to trade evenly in lane you get massively ahead due to the free back. In fact, so long as you dont die you can trade poorly and still end up massively ahead due to the free back. I strongly feel like TP needs some restrictions put on it to allow aggressive players to actually eek out an advantage by taking an aggressive summoner. and at the same time the late game aspect of it should be a little stronger. something like TP starts the game on cooldown and unlocks at 5 minutes. and the channel time reduces based on summoner level. starting at 4.5 seconds and reducing down to 3 seconds late game. Also maybe mild buffs or other options for agressive laners.

2. Team wide gold. TBH this really needs to go. Back in the day the only teamwide gold in the game was dragon/baron and was contestable for both teams. and could be equalized if you played well. IE if team A got first dragon then they had a 1.5k gold advantage for 5 minutes, but if the second team managed to take the second dragon without team A getting a solid additional advantage then the initial advantage was equalized. Now if a team gets first tower, that is an advantage which requires the team behind to somehow get "ahead" in tempo to equalize. IE Team A gets first tower, now team B need to take 2 towers to equalize that differential and even out the game. Possible fix, Remove first tower gold/give each team first tower gold for the first tower per side which goes down.

3. Dragons are too polarizing. Lets face it. some dragons are good and snowball the game cough mountain cough fire cough. and some dragons dont really mean much. the other two. Ocean is good in the first 5-7 minutes if the towers stay up but past the first tower falling its pretty meh also. So A team which takes first tower (an advantage which cannot be equalized without playing significantly better) and happens to get a fire/mountain dragon off of that gains a huge advantage which is extremely difficult to equalize. Especially if that team got a fire and the rest of the game all that spawned were oceans/airs. This is an unmitigatable advantage which the now losing team can do nothing to fix. They now have to be ahead on turrets to get the gold back and ahead in items to be even. Possible fix. Remove fire/mountain and add more interesting dragons which grant more interesting but less powerful bonuses. (im not creative enough to come up with any so any suggestions are welcome.)

4. Homeguard bonus at 20 mins/ms in general. THis is what really kills split push strategies. MS has been raised across the board IIRC in the last few season, add in the nearly worthless but sometimes useful air dragon, and its very difficult to actually set up splitpushes. The opposing team can be toplane and completely back and defend an inhib turret in like 10-12 seconds due to high ms and homeguard bonus. This completely invalidates split comps unless the rest of the splitpushers team wins a 4v5 elsewhere on the map, in which case the split push wasnt even needed because at that point you could have just trashed a 5v5 under tower and won the game. Also even without backing the increased ms allows people to travel between lanes faster to respond to multiple points of pressure easier. Possible fix, remove homeguard bonus/move it to air drake to make it more interesting. and reduce ms across the board.

5. champions who fulful unique niches have been nerfed repeatedly. Take most poke champs and splitpush champs. They are not allowed to be good for a few reasons. FIrst they have shown to be very hard to balance. Take old nid again as a point of reference. She was so good at poking and so bad at everything else that she would turn a team with all engage into a poke comp by herself. But instead of slightly nerfing to poke and adding interesting things to her kit to promote the siege aspect of her they completely removed that aspect. Or nerfed it so hard that its simply not effective anymore. A team comp with jayce nid ez/cait should be extremely good at sieging towers but if they get engaged on well they should lose. and as such I would like to see something done with nidalees traps to (if properly used) reduce incoming agression. Maybe have an aoe zero damage detonation which reduces enemy ms if heading toward allies. And jayce should lose power from his melee form meaning that the long range damage is good but the short range damage is lacking. Back in the past poke comps wanted to fight with a 30% hp advantage even while ahead otherwise they would simply lose the fight.

6. agressive champions in the toplane simply fall flat. What I mean by this is that against tanks, baring maybe camille and fiora, no other agressive champion is going to be able to actually apply meaningful split push pressure. The tank will simply stand under tower and clear the minion wave and if you dive him he cc locks you under tower and you die. A champion which is designed for dueling/splitting should be able to have kill pressure or map pressure. So shen and TF have map pressure with their ults and they force someone to respond but they dont actually want to take the tower, they want to join the teamfight which their allies are going to start. But with the global ults they can apply pressure that way. Fiora camille yorick nasus jax and other champions who do really poorly in teamfights should be able to apply pressure in a lane against a teamfight oriented tank enough that you force someone to come help him out. (again if played well) but with homeguard bonus and tanks being so strong to neigh un killable in a 1v1 this just isnt possible. Possible solutions would be nerfing tanks tanking ability in a 1v1 senario but adding more things simular to stoneplate where they get bigger tankyness and cooler stuff if they are taking damage or around multiple members of the opposing team. This allows them to tank for the team but also allows champions who should be beating them in the side lanes to do their jobs as well.

TLDR. There is a lack of variety in available teamcomps which are able to be played successfully. resulting in "deathball comps" being the best and only available choice. I listed what I feel the problems are above. Basically TP being too good at everything while it should be more niche, teamwide advantages being to strong with global gold and bonuses from dragons, MS being too high, Champions who would specialize in specific areas get repeatedly nerfed incorrectly, and tanks being too strong in 1v1 fights.

If you have anything to add please do. And if you disagree with me please let me know what you disagree with and why. I would like to return to a game where you can build different teamcomps and actually have it effect how you play the game.

If you feel like this is worth discussing please feel free to chip in your two cents, doubly so if you disagree or have differing ideas about what could be done to increase diversity. The more ideas the better. :)