A couple of thoughts about the state of the game

Hello. I apologise for the wall of text.

First of all let me introduce myself - I am a gold/plat EUW adc main (swapped to adc last season, I was a mid main before) who started playing league when jinx was released. Since the latest patch was aimed at adc power in the game, I felt the need to share my thoughts on the problems it caused, even though I feel like Rioters rarely read threads on the forums.

Let's be honest we've seen it all - people making videos on how the game is no longer fun and how they are quitting league for one reason or another and I never understood their point of view until recently.

My main champions were always crit adcs (Cait, Ashe, Jinx mainly), so the group that was specifically targeted last patch. Now I completely understand that marksmen were (and some still are) extremely overtuned. I've had countless games where I went 12/0 and just carried the game by myself with little to no help. However Riot is making the game unbearable every patch not just for me but for plenty of people who honestly loved the game.

This started for me with the introduction of runes reforged - I like new fresh stuff in the game (I really liked the baron/dragon changes they did the year before) so I was naturally excited for this change. It seemed completely fine in my eyes, as I only played adc and I had Fleet Footwork and I completely ignored complaints of my fellow teammates. We all know how runes work - if your champion has a rune that fits the playstyle it's immediately a lot stronger than the champion that doesn't synergise with the runes well. The runes were never balanced (and at this point I don't think they ever will). However this was still something I could look past to enjoy the game.

The second reason why the game became a little less likeable and enjoyable for me was the state of bottom lane - the fact that I, as a Cait player, could poke out anyone from lane and simply heal back up everything they threw at me was not balanced and I understand that. However what really bothered me was the ardent meta we had for too long (i think everyone knows it was because of LCS), which was absolutely insane and should've been hotfixed immediately. From then the lingering feeling I always got in games was that the more competent support wins the game. Janna was (and still is) terorizing the lane, however right now it's even worse.

This brings me to my third point - the patch of doom. Let me first state that I am apparently one of the rare players that don't enjoy stomps. I don't like 15-20 minute games (be it victories or losses). I enjoy games that show your personal skill, games that leave you feeling like you did something. A game where even if you lose you can look back and learn something. We've seen it a lot lately, how Riot is trying to make the game a lot faster, which I don't understand. You have an incredible potential to make the game very macro based and focus on the team aspect of the game (even though that can be quite difficult in lower elos, so in mine as well), however you instead want to make the game as snowbally as possible. The death of crit adcs came quite abruptly for me as well, since I rarely played anything else. When I was watching videos from PBE to prepare for the patch I thought that surely they will balance things out, they wouldn't make crit completely useless. However that's the case - I don't dare to pick Cait anymore and build crit, because by the time I build my third item and start dealing dmg enemy lucian can 1v5. The problem was not solved, bot lane is still incredibly powerful, you just shifted the power to different type of carries. And the carries in bot lane are not even marksmen, they are usually supports. That's why I think the Riot balance team should look into the game a lot more - you can't balance the bot lane just by looking at the marksmen.

The last nail in the coffin for me is actually the whole season 8. I understand that Riot wants to keep the game fresh and bring new stuff, however changing the game for the sake of change is never really the answer to that. To this day I don't understand why Janna received changes to her passive. However what I mean by season 8, in previous seasons the big changes came in huge patches in pre-season, where ranks were already locked in and everyone was just enjoying and figuring out the new stuff. However you are currently dropping new huge patch every couple of weeks and a casual player like me has no chance to catch up on all this. In one patch you pretty much completely changed the bot lane meta (from crit to on hit duel adcs, fiddle/brand/zyra support came back), mid meta (assassins are making a comeback), jungle meta and even top meta with more carries. The games are incredibly short, feel very unfulfilling and honestly I hate playing the game right now. Another thing is - when you were changing the mage itemization you did just that - changed mages. However by changing ad items you (un)intentionally buffed a lot of assassins who benefit from the items FAR more than adcs ever could (looking at ER jax with no cd on his parry etc).

In conclusion I think Riot should stop trying to match FPS games and their 'quickmatch' mode - having the game last 20/30, heck even 40 minutes is better than surrender at 15. Having the roles at least a little bit balanced is also quite nice - if you wanted to nerf marksmen and the impact of bottom lane, you should've buffed the bottom lane turret, and also nerfed support power, not just crit items. You created a chaos that seems to be incredibly hard to overcome for a lot of players. You always voice your opinion about how you want to implement more diversity into the game, however you killed most of the control mages in the mid lane, tanks top lane, crit adcs and mage junglers. You are ruining your own game and we're all victims of this fall.

Those were my two cents, it's all very broad and not specific, however I needed to vent my thoughts somewhere. Thanks for reading whoever did.

Rei.