My Take on the Preseason Changes
So with all these hateful posts towards the latest patch and Riot themselves, here's a crazy opinion, I'm loving patch 5.22.
TLDR: All in all, these changes from the items to champs are great and they feel like a breath of fresh air.
Marksmen update: Can you say DIVERSITY? The last month for me has been Vayne, after Vayne, after Mordekaiser. Either your Vayne owns, or your nexus blows up at the 20 minute mark with zero resistance from your allies cause she and her allies seem to be a 5 man pre-made. With the latest update, I think people are forgetting what lies at the core of the marksmen update. We received big updates to 6 champions and they are very unique now. (Graves' auto-attacking is one of the coolest things I've ever experienced.) So what does that mean? That means I have only run into 1 Vayne so far and that was in ARAM. I've seen a wider array of ADCs popping up left and right and it is so refreshing. Supporting them, I'm learning so much and improving my game play. The game has changed and I feel like I'm playing a brand new one but without having to learn how to play altogether. Back when I first started playing 2 years ago everyone kept telling me to ditch Graves and every other ADC and just buy Lucian. He was the big dog and no one stood in his path. Now I can easily pick anyone into anything and have fun, win or lose.
Masteries: I'll admit it is difficult to find something suitable for mages. The new masteries doesn't offer much for them but that isn't a deal breaker for me. Masteries actually make a huge difference in how you play. The factors they change are visible and you can see if what you're doing is actually effective. Another thing that no one has even mentioned is how user friendly the mastery pages are. It's no longer about making assumptions, it's about reading something and understanding right there and then what changes it'll cause. In other words, the newer players will have a much easier time understanding what to put points into. That's what I really enjoy about the new masteries, how accessible it will be for new players.
While the subject of new items, removal of mana potions, turrets, and the jungle are also important, I don't really have much else to say other than I'm for them. I see nothing wrong with any of the changes brought to these subjects. (If you spam your abilities, you're gonna have a bad time with or without mana potions.)
A lot of people are just focusing on one single factor, be it critical strikes or a new item, so I feel as if they're not looking at the bigger picture here. Riot is constantly updating this game, they're always looking to add new material. They haven't dropped the game nor have they sought out to destroy it. They've maintained a fresh take on everything they do and in this day and age, it's very difficult to do something like that. But Riot knows how to bring change in a positive manner, they know how to add new levels of depth without turning away their fan base. A lot of people will say they hate the new updates but they'll always have something they enjoy about it so we should focus on that instead of yelling at Riot nonstop.
There's a difference between constructive criticism and downright bashing.