My ARAM feedback

This is a feedback thread regarding the changes done to ARAM. These are my personal opinions so you may feel free to disagree on one point or another.

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#Champ select

Benching Champions

is one of the best features added to a gamemode within the last years imo. It feels super good to be able to reroll your champion and not being affraid of getting a worse one (unless a teammates switches your rerolled one instantly). You also have a better chance getting a champion without your teammate requiring to own the champion that you have. On top of that, you can even play champions that you do not own yourself and that are also not f2p when someone benched that champion.

Enabling triple free rotations

is also very positive to me. Some players already mentioned them being dissappointed by ARAM not being true random, but I think the way you went is a very good middle way. There's a reason why the last 30 missing champions are the ones what they are. I just don't like playing them and I'd not want to play them in 20% of my games. Increasing the free champion pool from 14 to 42 affects accounts with few champions (ARAM specific accounts) much more than they affect standard accounts with many champions because they own most of the free champions anyway.

Increased Rerolls

were definately noticed and I ended up with nearly one per game which feels really good. I didn't have the feeling anymore of jumping into a game of "I don't have a reroll, so if I get a bad champion I won't have any fun in the game". That's pretty unlikely now. Most effects are also in combination with the bench-a-champion-feature: Teams feel much more balanced since more players can reroll their champion while other players can trade those for free. That also leads to much less dodges at the end of champion select since it's much less likely that a player ends up with a champion totally hates. It also somewhat rewards standard accounts with a lot of champions against ARAM only accounts since the don't get as many rerolls (based on how many champions you own). Besides that, I felt like the randomness on champion picks has decreased (maybe a bug, maybe coincidence) but I ended up with Rakan 3 or 4 times in like 8 games but at least was able to trade him with a benched champion in some of these games.

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#Gameplay

Health Relic changes

are the one thing that made me suspicious on their announce and I found my concerns to be true. They are of much more use to the team that is already ahead or for comps that push and siege by their designs. I experienced quite an improve in team coordination at least when collecting the relics, but the downside overweights imo. I have seen many situations where one team was ahead and snowballed by capturing all the relics for the full team. In the past, the team that was ahead could be beaten by their disadvantage in current health when the losing team respawned. Now the winning team can capture the relics (e.g. after an inhibitor fight) and restore like 60% missing health for all 5 members.

Base Gates

are pretty cool and help all teammates get out more often at the same time. It was quite discouraging to rush out, scout the middle bushes and being raided by a 5-man team while the rest of your team is still at the inhibitor. That's still not impossible if your team is still strolling but it decreased the disparity by a lot.

Level 3 experience

makes a huge difference. I'm always surprised how fast I hit level 6 in ARAM now. That also flattens out the discrepancy for champions that are more reliant on their ultimate ability.

Surrender time at 8 minutes

isn't actually noticable. I don't even think it's enabled. I found my surrender vote to be disabled at like 13 minutes into the games so until looking that up I didn't even know it should be possible.

Mastery score

or performance score as I'd call it has been upped and made easier to obtain god ranks. It's basically raining S ranks for me at least so I can call it positive. I'm not sure if ARAM should be the gamemode to farm hextech chests in my opinion, but by the nature of playing champions one is unexperienced with and still gaining good scores sounds encouraging and rewarding.

Dark Harvest

I didn't see Dark Harvets in my ARAM elo that frequent so I didn't experience it being strong or not before the changes, but now I saw it even less. I think the changes are more impactful outside of my elo where blind "run into the enemy upon respawn" bloodbathes are more common.

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#Items

Warmogs Armor

I'm ok with it being removed since tanks could become pretty strong after surviving fights continously and the new health relics pretty much make up for the lost health regeneration. However I'm missing the option build large amounts of health and since I don't know how viable a Frozen Mallet is on tanks if you want to stack health. Especially with the increase in true damage some more health would be nice to have. Also the only champions that I can think of that really suffered from that may be Soraka at least with the Health build for infinite heals.

Ghostwalkers

is an item that I have seen on many ranged champions despite them being melee only. Since they don't grant anything but the MS, they should be disabled for ranged champions to remove the noob trap of it. Anyway, I share the most part of Ricje (EUW)'s feedback about this item: They lack sufficient counterplay by either granting a too reliable engage tool or a perfect escape tool since they grant untargetability. The item might look cool on paper since they enable melees the option to flank their opponents, but due to the width of the map that ends up just throwing every melee assassin onto the backline with no way to prevent that. It's pretty horrible to play against once the player knows how to use them correctly. On top of that I don't think there should be an item that copies a champion's ability that is that much of the champion's identity than it is to Kayn.

Spectral Cutlass

I have yet to see a player that's really outplaying their opponent with that item. Most of the times it's more a "playing around with it" in terms of efficiency and since it's an AD item, not many champions really get much out of it. Mostly AD Assassins and Divers are successfull with it who use their combos to burst enemies before being pulled back to safety. It's another item that you can't really play against since you will still be teleported back when CC'ed. The most counterply to both these items is their lack of stats which I'm not a big fan of.

Bloodletters Veil

does not stack with the magic penetration of Morello so you always have to chose between these two options once you opt into magic penetration. It's usefull when you can reliable strike an enemy first with your ability which increases it's usefullness for longer ranged champions or with a more flashy engage. It's again an item that removes counterplay from the game and feels better on AP assassins who don't plan to last long in a fight since the spell shield doesn't do much against 5 enemies anyway.

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#Other

Announcer

I was pretty excited for the announcer to reappear but it seems to be much much quieter than the standard one. I barely notice the announcer which isn't that positive to me since I enjoyed the old one from butcher's bridge. The next time I jump into the game I'll try to tone that up much more and see if that's fixing it.