Riot pushes big changes, but they're too slow to fix problems

Dope Solo·Aug 4, 2018·100 votes·17,222 views

Pre-season was over months ago.

33 Comments

PaffWasTakenAug 4, 201850 votes

Remember the i̶d̶i̶o̶t̶s̶ guys who claimed that it was normal for having an unbalanced pre-season since "it's supposed to be that way as a pre-season and that it's gonna be fixed before the real season begins"??

I wish I was this innocent

TerozuAug 4, 20182 votes

Do you remember how this whole season was supposed to be one big preseason due to all the changes?

AirKingNeoAug 5, 20182 votes

Spend the first half of the season fucking things up

Spend the next half refusing to fix it

Welcome to League of Legends

CatastrophicAug 5, 20182 votes

Yea hindsight is 20/20, but regardless, the pre-season blumberfuck is nothing new and it has happened many times, it's only that this time was the exception where it wasn't fixed early into the season.

Nea104Aug 4, 201823 votes

[{quoted}](name=Dope Solo,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=WPEZ7tZA,comment-id=,timestamp=2018-08-04T16:22:44.043+0000)

Pre-season was over months ago.

Like 8 months ago :P This is not even more "being too slow". It's just that what we see as problems, they think are cool improvements. Otherwise, they would have fixed the first absurd changes (e.g., crazy damage) in the very first weeks, maybe months.

Instead, they are keeping doing that kind of absurd changes, because they want this game to become what it already is. I don't know why.

Chromatic EagleAug 4, 20187 votes

Their rationale is that they're unsure what exactly is causing the increased damage. It's obviously runes, but it's also team comps.

MorganFreemanBotAug 5, 201812 votes

[{quoted}](name=Chromatic Eagle,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=WPEZ7tZA,comment-id=00020000,timestamp=2018-08-04T23:45:06.018+0000)

Their rationale is that they're unsure what exactly is causing the increased damage. It's obviously runes, but it's also team comps.

They say that damage-over-time hasn't gone up. And you know what? I believe them.

Duskblade is a terrifying item. It provides a brutal chunk of damage - and a slow - when someone pops out and hits you.. But beyond that it's not stellar. It's not weak (55 AD, 10% CDR, Lethality), but it's nothing to write home about outside of the passive. Previous assassin items, such as old % max health active botrk, Ghost Blade, and pure-damage cleaver were frankly terrifying. They were terrifying because of stats, and they were terrifying because of actives.

I'm moderately confident that if you had level 9 Zed with Duskblade wailing on a target dummy, and Zed with old ghost-blade wailing on a target dummy, their damage output over the course of 5-10 seconds would be relatively even. Shit, I'd actually put money on (old) Ghost Blade zed doing noticeably more damage in that span of time.

The thing is, Ghost Blade is going to have to catch up to Duskblade. Duskblade gets a MASSIVE burst right out the gate, but then falls by the wayside as the fight progresses.

This is summed up as Time To Kill, or TTK, by Riot, and I think that's where the problem lies; and why their statistics aren't really picking it up.

Damage wise, nothing's really changed. What used to be flat stats and stat buffs has been shifted into one-shot item effects and rune effects. I believe this was done to make things less of a stat-check in general, and was mathed out to make sure damage was the same over periods of time.

The problem is that all of the 'effect' damage can be front loaded. So while a 25 armor pen 40 AD item with a 40% attack speed boost active is going to shit on Duskblade over the course of 5+ seconds.. Duskblade is going to pump out all of its damage in the moment of contact. Stacking multiple effects like Duskblade leads to situations where it doesn't matter how much damage you deal over the course of a 5+ second fight, because the vast majority of the damage is front-loaded into the moment of contact; meaning that no one can survive it.

GigglesOAug 5, 201813 votes

If everything dies faster, not as much damage can be applied, which means that damage isn't "higher"

SomeKatAug 5, 20183 votes

exactly, if it's a prolonged slap fight, you get higher damage values verses potions/regen/backs/tp etc in shorter amount of time, than if you 100-0, and they are off the map for 24 seconds. my top laners often get similar damage values with far less kills. increasing damage over time would mean things are living longer.

PhDs NutsAug 5, 20183 votes

{quoted}

They say that damage-over-time hasn't gone up. And you know what? I believe them.

Damage over time probably hasn't gone up because you just get bursted and have to back or respawn. If you take 50% less damage, heal it up, stay in lane, and keep trading, you still take about the same amount of total damage.

Edit: Comments above me are pretty much saying the same thing.

flyingpeanut250Aug 5, 20181 votes

its either this or riot only looks at end game stats as oppose to actually playing and using the items to their peaks. Mainly damage dealt to champions. You wont be doing more damage statistically speaking because you have the same amount of hp as before. Or we are doing less damage because we are moved from a tank season to a damage season. Less tanks/tank item builds in this season so damage numbers in game are actually lower. Thus they added more dmg to runes/items and made tank items less gold efficient(dmg runes synergy with dmg items) to try to up the damage dealt champions also if dmg test are only done at test dummy that we have available, their baseline benchmark is 100armor/mr and infinite hp. Rather than the tankiness of a leona vs zilean.

MarothennanAug 4, 201818 votes

Remember the guys saying "it's just preseason"?

ParoeAug 4, 201814 votes

It isnt that riot is slow to fix problems... ... Its that riot is chasing "the LC$ dream" - by chasing E-sports and forgetting to simply have a good product theyve lost touch with what made them good to begin with. And also theres the fact that they have a to big to fail and "we never fail" mentality.

deadlychuckAug 6, 20181 votes

They're not just chasing E-sports, they're chasing viewership. Twitch & Youtube as well. They want people to feel like they can make the super flashy plays that happen when streamers play smurfs and youtubers edit together montages.

Despite the fact that what they're doing isn't, and shouldn't be, effective at their appropriate skill level. Which is basically just the "assassin" fantasy all things considered...

EuphoricToasterAug 4, 201810 votes

If you think Riots bad you should look at Blizzard with Hearthstone.

MalakAug 4, 20186 votes

{quoted}

If you think Riots bad you should look at Blizzard with Hearthstone.

blizzard went to shit after starcraft 2, their last good game

BigBrotherAnikiAug 4, 20181 votes

{quoted}

If you think Riots bad you should look at Blizzard with Hearthstone. If you think Riots bad you should look at Blizzard with their every multi games lul I still roll on the floor laughing when someone call blizzard games per better managed and better balanced.

EuphoricToasterAug 4, 20184 votes

Hearthstone generally only does 2 major balance patches a year, on top of that a lot of the time they just dont nerf things and you have to wait multiple expansions for the cards to rotate out. Thats far worse than what riot does if you ask me.

y0r1ckAug 5, 20181 votes

Yeah but hearthstone is different in that it's much MUCH easier to tech against the meta in that game.

AseraanAug 5, 20181 votes

{quoted}

If you think Riots bad you should look at Blizzard with Hearthstone.

Its a fuking card game......... whats next ur gona pair LoL with Tetris? Seriusly when u make a comparison compare it to a similar game.

EuphoricToasterAug 5, 20181 votes

{quoted}

Its a fuking card game......... whats next ur gona pair LoL with Tetris? Seriusly when u make a comparison compare it to a similar game.

Its a digital card game, and not making any major balance changes for half a year still feels terrible.

AseraanAug 5, 20181 votes

{quoted}

Its a digital card game, and not making any major balance changes for half a year still feels terrible.

Still i has way lower content than lol to balance and keep in mind they are pretty much do a money grab every 3 month to stay alive. Heartstone was never about balance but selling the most of possible by printing 20 retarded broken cards and 140 trash.

Andrey0345Aug 5, 20182 votes

{quoted}

If you think Riots bad you should look at Blizzard with Hearthstone.

It isn't in bad state, it's just the game is really dumb overall - RNG is beyond normal.

InfernapeAug 4, 20189 votes

Wrong. Preseason is still ongoing

[slayer-jinx-wink]

POMÆAug 5, 20185 votes

TF2 team works faster than riots, and they only have 14 employees :D

BoulderoxAug 5, 20185 votes

[{quoted}](name=Dope Solo,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=WPEZ7tZA,comment-id=,timestamp=2018-08-04T16:22:44.043+0000)

Pre-season was over months ago.

preseason never ended...

for real though, i will un- ironically say there was no season 8, it never had a stretch of stability in the game to consider it an actual season.

Teridax68Aug 5, 20183 votes

This is a good way to put it, imo. This season has been marked by large, disruptive updates, which introduced major systemic changes at a serious cost in balance stability, but also a relative dearth of actual balance work. For sure, champions have been rebalanced, but often those same changes tried to do design work at the same time, and resulted in those champions still having problems even after their balance changes. Effectively, the vast majority of changes have pushed towards greater flux, rather than stability, which is why it still feels like we're in Preseason even as we're approaching Worlds.

very dudebagAug 5, 20183 votes

too slow? they dont even intend fixing anything

AnateraAug 4, 20182 votes

If what reds say is true, it's because they have a lot of departments where the changes need to go through. Of course, this is entirely an internal company issue, so I don't know why they haven't just fixed that. Or maybe they're just slow to fix the slow changes? Or they're oblivious to their slowness?

Beacon AcademyAug 4, 20182 votes

Its all one big pre-season for season 9

Titanium70Aug 5, 20182 votes

While definitely true for some cases I'd not fully agree here.

Sometimes they're actually to fast. Especially whem it involves LC$ or new releases.

I dont want to funnel the meme here but... speaking of...

those random Support nerfs thinking it would actually prevent funnel starts which is a systematic problem grown over years ... (aka running around with a water can on a burning oil rig)
Frequent cases of new/changed Champions being completely overbuffed/nerfed by an amount a 5 minute fly over the patchnotes already tells you this will go wrong...
the recent changes to ADC Items WHILE they're already back in the game...

list goes on...

So I don't know - I'd say they have a quite broken system of prioritizing things. Sometimes they ignore simple, obvious problems for months, sometimes.. ^well water can - oil rig...

ISLAMICWARRIOR99Aug 6, 20181 votes

Wdym? Game is great bruisers and juggernouts being better assasins than actual assasins is nice

deadlychuckAug 6, 20181 votes

Tis the nature of mechanical power. It's expensive to make minor changes. If you're going to change a champion mechanically then it's better to wait for a larger overhaul.

Yet in the same breath, you also don't want to make mechanical changes immediately following a blatantly flawed designed that took time to implement. A good example of this is Malzahar W after the rework. They tried number changes for about 5/12 months before they just started making mechanical changes to try and balance the champion.