Despite I want more and better carry potential for solo laners I foresee huge problems

iTaLenTZ··5 votes·2,641 views

As a main solo laner I look forward to have more impact on the game but I also see a lot of issues. When people talk about more solo carry potential instead of spreading the gold evenly among the team they compare it to how the game was 2-3 years ago. But this game is not how it used to be. There are huge differences.

First of all we got more powercreep. Past 3 years we got more broken champions added, generalists, powercreep through keystones and items and towers being shit. When people talk about the old league where you could stomp your opponent in a solo lane and actually carry the game the powercreep was not that immense. At worst a bad matchup was 40-60 and there was a learning curve or strategic options like turtleing and farm under tower and try to scale. Such things don't exist any more or are very hard to pull off.

  • Keystones emphase and boost what a champ is good at. This means that if your champ is bad vs lets say a healer, the keystone will further emphase that and thus make the lane even harder than it already was.
  • After your first dead/gank you might come back to lane without tower
  • Diving towers has never been easier. It used to be a specialty trait of certain champs but nowadays everyone can towerdive. Safely farming under tower is in most cases not an option.
  • When you lose early game you set certain events in motion that are hard to come back from. If you lose an early Red Dragon or Rift Herald the snowball is in most cases inevitable. Sometimes the game drags on for another 10 minutes but was already decided hence the surrender option is now at 15m.
  • Learning curve in bad matchups has declined. Due to powercreep you are mostly left without meaningful options to do something to change the outcome of the situation.
  • Losing your solo lane didn't matter because botlane was all that mattered. Having a miserable 0-3 lanephase got compensated by still being useful for your adc to turn the tide in teamfights.
  • Where a champ would have 2-3 bad matchups it can now be 5-6 because there are way more champs in the game now.
  • Believe it or not the game has been dumped down. When choosing old runed and masteries you had many, many choices and noob traps but when choosing a keystone and filling the rest 99% is obvious. There are no meaningful choices.
  • Same goes for item builds. Items and builds have been pidgeon holed into the same building sequence every game.
  • Champ select. RNG decides wether you pick your solo laner before your opponent.

These are the reasons why games are mostly decided in champ select. Bad matchup nowadays are perceived as 10-90 instead of 40-60. What you get is a rock, paper, sciccor game. When rock beats sciccor it is done effortlessly and therefor doesn't feel rewarding while sciccor feels absolutely miserable because he didn't have any agency to chance the outcome of the situation. Sciccor completely depends on external factors to chance the outcome of the situation. Because of all this firstpicking a solo lane is more of a liability than it used to be. It leaves you open to get hardcountered and leaves you without player agency. This means the only viable champs will be generalists who are hard to counter due to having few weaknesses or a lot of different strenghts which in turn will lead to more powercreep for other champs to compete with them. Its a vicious circle of powercreep.

TLDR: Due to powercreep sololanes are mostly decided in champ select so having to pick your champ before your opponent does leaves you without player agency and a miserable lanephase. Until now you could lose your lane 0-6 and it wouldn't matter if your botlane won but those days will be over. Due to changed macro mechanics the game is way more snowball than it used to be so once you are behind you will get stomped even more. This will now impact other lanes more as well (drakes, tower gold, herald) and they have to face a huge threat. Games will become even more onesided that will be over within 10-15 minutes. I am all for more solo carry potential but the game must tone down in powercreep otherwise we will witness a rock, paper, sciccor meta/game mostly decided in champ select.

8 Comments

ZT Xperimentor4 votes

Well thought out, and I concur they're going to need to scale back snowballing if they want solo-laners to have more carry potential.

Teridax683 votes

What's worried me in recent seasons is that it seems like Riot's done a 180 on snowballing (again), and decided to increase snowballing potential on several champions. When Ahri received a mini-rework, for example, one of the stated goals was to have her snowball harder off of leads, and we've also seen some AP ratios added/increased on tanks for the same reason. Games in general snowball harder one way or the other, due to the changes in pacing, and so deliberately, so it's going to take a long time to undo everything that's been implemented if Riot is to ever reverse direction once more.

iTaLenTZ3 votes

{quoted}

What's worried me in recent seasons is that it seems like Riot's done a 180 on snowballing (again), and decided to increase snowballing potential on several champions. When Ahri received a mini-rework, for example, one of the stated goals was to have her snowball harder off of leads, and we've also seen some AP ratios added/increased on tanks for the same reason. Games in general snowball harder one way or the other, due to the changes in pacing, and so deliberately, so it's going to take a long time to undo everything that's been implemented if Riot is to ever reverse direction once more.

I expect the boards to go wild once the changes are implemented and people realize the increased powercreep we have witness the past years and how they have no agency in their lane vs bad matchups will make every game snowball out of control.

For now we have to wait and see because people aren't aware yet. Be careful what you wish for.

Teridax683 votes

I agree, and I think the big issue is with the way League does snowballing, as well. Like, everyone wants to be that one player who does amazing and solo carries, but so far League's manner of implementing that has been by making small leads quickly become impossible to recover from on the losing side, as the opposing team has an increasingly easier time winning fights, and by extension every objective in the game. By contrast, other games tend to have much more severe delays and means of recovery: HotS has quests, which only grant a large power spike past a definite, skill-based milestone, whereas Dota can have you lose gold needed for expensive items if you die. As much as I personally want to allow players to be able to solo carry when they really do pop off, I also want those kinds of situations to really be reserved to exceptional circumstances, where someone does consistently well, instead of everyone just sliding out of control the moment there's a meaningful lead. One of the major turn-offs in League for me since Season 6 is how little agency a pub team has on the losing side, and I wish Riot had found a different way of speeding games up.

MLDzXnRRR3 votes

There is a damage and mobility (ms buffs and more champions with dashes) powercreep. Some champs are also overloaded with abilities. There is no way that RIOT can balance the game both for normal and pro play. Look some pro matches - they play completely different game. I've checked some challenger/high diamond youtubers and their games are also stomps, so it isn't "just get good."

iTaLenTZ1 votes

I will repost this when the patch goes live if my predictions come true. For now people don't seem to care

ZT Xperimentor1 votes

"Believe it or not the game has been dumped down." So much of this, seen it coming when they threw their hat into the ring of esports. Besides the ridiculous amount of power-creep, but didn't think they'd take it far enough to make half the roster obsolete without some abusive interaction. It's devolved into a third person cod, there's negligible strategy because riot's stripped it down to 'kill or be killed', more or less.

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