Twisted Treeline needs it's own patches
Alright so this is a topic I think many people in the community should look at discussing. That is whether or not Twisted Treeline should have it's own balance patches similar to summoner's rift. For context, Twisted Treeline a long time ago used to have slightly different balance patches for both Summoner's Rift and TT. The changes were small things like numbers, functions of champions, etc. Since both maps were separate, there was changes that some people wouldn't know and some champions would function differently compared to Rift creating a weird disconnect for some people.
However, this was good because it meant Riot was free to react to trends or OPs as they like. Current TT doesn't have this anymore and everything that happens on the Rift typically effects TT. With the recent surge of support items, TT was massively effected and has created the most cancerous support meta around. For people that don't know what the Support meta is, you basically pick a hyper carry like Yasuo, Yi, Trist, etc. Then you pick a support like Tahm, Taric, Rakan, etc. That support and carry will then double jungle and then farm lane. They do this on repeat basically feeding 2 people's gold into 1. That hyper carry then scales way faster than the enemy can and it typically leads to a carry being impossible to shut down. This is not healthy and has been extremely painful to deal with. I don't know anyone that likes this but it exists and so we are forced to deal with it.
However, because Riot keeps Rift and TT on the same balance patch, we are forced to play with it and never get a real solution until Riot nerfs support items across the board. Why this sucks is because of the newly added Ranked Flex Queue that was added to TT this season. This is great and since the newly added ranked, TT has been an extremely healthy queue that I can hop into almost as fast as a Rift game which is great. However, because of this toxic imbalance, it is likely to push away people as they climb and the overall enjoyment of this experience isn't fun. So that brings me back to what I want to talk about mainly.
TT needs it's own balance patch because it is fundamentally too different from Rift to be balanced on the same means. Characters like Maokai, Rengar, Ornn, Taric, TF etc. can break the game mode or are so weak for the map that they will never word. Rengar is legit missing half of his passive and thus he is trash. Maokai on the other hand is unkillable because of the lack of carries in lower level games and has infinite vision on the map. These things all come together to create an environment that cannot work on the same level as Rift. I honestly believe with some care put towards it, TT could become a separate competitive environment for people looking for a faster paced action with a focus more on the moment to moment gameplay. However, this cannot happen as long as it is being held hostage to Rift's balance. Even if it's a tiny team, I really hope TT can get a group that focuses on it's balance and updates the gamemode on a more regular biases so we don't have things like Support meta, Maokai infinite warding, etc being so strong and never getting a true answer to them.
