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ARAM needs balance, its been ignored far too long.

Epikarus··6 votes·3,605 views

Riot's reasoning behind not balancing ARAM is that its supposed to be random. Which is great, except its not random, it isn't random because of two things. Champion selection is based on champions owned, leading to ARAM accounts. Second reason is because of rerolls, this leads to higher selection of champions like Lux, Sona, Ziggs, and etc. which are ideal for the linear map like ARAM.

How do we combat these issues?

  1. Champions selection pool needs to be based on all available champions This combats issue number one, because you cannot have a champion pool of just ranged AP mages or poke champions. I think this is the ideal solution to ARAM accounts, but if for some reason riot is against this due to selfish reason like allowing players to play champions they haven't purchased then the following suggestion may apply.
  2. Allow champion exclusion from Champions owned This is not a great solution, cause its just a bad idea, but an alternative to the above suggestion. This allows everyone to play on an equal playing field, aram accounts normal accounts would be identical. This leads to only poke comp games, which is not ideal.
  3. Get rid of rerolls along with one of the above changes, we need to get rid of rerolls completely or...
  4. Make rerolls team wide Vote to reroll every champion on your team.

Ideally rerolls should be eliminated because every champion should be viable and fun to play on this map, not just the range champions. To address this issue I have a couple suggestions.

Melee champions need buffs. This is just the truth, there is no other way around it. The fact that there is so much AOE, and almost impossible to navigate around AOE damage in a narrow corridor and linear map means melee suffer so much damage trying to reach the enemy and then trying to stay alive during a fight.

Some suggestions.

  1. Melee start with a trinket like item 2051 for free.
  2. Healing reductions need to be removed from melee champions. Its hard enough to be a melee, but to be suffering from 20% reduced healing effects like potions and self heals like those on Zac, Irelia, and Volibear and also suffer all that poke. These champions cannot really abuse their heal like Sona or Soraka (after soraka changes, its not that bad).
  3. item 3112 is completely useless, It costs way too much gold, by the time any melee champion acquires enough gold to purchase it, the damage is done. It also doesn't help when the enemy team has Cait or Varus.
  4. Ranged champions have increased mana consumption.
  5. Melee have increased movement speed (toward enemies, sorta like vayne) or tenacity or both. Champions that don't have gap closers like volibear and garen can get kited so hard. There is only two items in ARAM that give tenacity, one being item 3111 and the other being item 3172 . If item 3172 doesn't fit your champions you have to take mercury treads.

Another problem in ARAM is AFKs, at least one in five games I have an AFK. This is no fun whether its an ally or an enemy. AFKS IN GENERAL NEED TO BE DEALT WITH QUICKLY IN SR, ARAM, Dominion, TT, ALL MODES! ARAM being a mode for casual play is a great place to test out AFK buffs or debuffs or whatever. It not ranked, generally its a low stress environment so TEST OUT buffs like Team with a player down gets a 20% increased gold (1 man down equals 20% of your team). Or something similar... I don't care what you do just as long as you guys do something.

This may not solve all the problems, but atleast it will solve some if not most. It may create new ones, but we can cross that road when we get there.

19 Comments

Sun Tzu X24 votes

Honestly, ARAM takes flaws in LoL and amplifies them.

In League,

Damage is way too high

Defensive itemization is lacking (building a defensive item should make you safer against a champion who built a offensive item...problem is it doesn't because the itemization for defense doesn't do more than offensive itemization).

Ranged >>> Melee. It's absurd how true this is. Back in the day you could see games with 8 melee's in it. Now, teams scramble to try and get ranged at every position.

Drogmyre2 votes

Honestly I just want them to put more items into ARAM like Overlord's Bloodmail, since ARAM has a bunch of items removed but not replaced, which isn't fun.

Epikarus1 votes

True, there needs to be better itemization in ARAM especially for melee, but even with good items early game poke is just so unfun. This needs to be addressed.

Wehrmacht Bunny2 votes

The reason I stopped playing ARAM was because it is usually one sided. One side will get great ADCs with 2 tanks, while the other side will get something like 2 supports, 2 tanks and one Shaco. A complete ROFLstomp.

It should be something like this, each side gets a max of 2 ADCs 2 tanks and 2 junglers, No supports!

Shaco should never be playable in ARAM because he's not even viable in ARAM.

jmaishere1 votes

clearly you don't know how to play ap shaco in aram

Wehrmacht Bunny1 votes

clearly you don't know how to play ap shaco in aram

Really? Shaco is a surprise champion. He comes out of nowhere to destroy someone. Kinda hard to do when Shaco doesn't have nowhere to hide.

I actually did shaco on ARAM, built full tank and I was so tanky I did better then my team with 21/19/7, and we lost. Still though, he's not viable at all on ARAM unless you're vs. a really dumb team.

jmaishere1 votes

even if he's a surprise champion, depending on how you play him, a part of him is to confuse the enemy, in aram, when people attack usually they commit for an all in and if you can ult and stealth away at the same time, they'll usually get nuked by your clone

VocaIoid Miku1 votes

Without re rolls the % of dogeing will be up to 75%. which means 4 game you play theirs at least 3 game that someone will doge. ARAM is for fun. Why you have to play the champion that you completely don't like and don't know how to use it? After you die so many time due to the problem that you don't play him,The people from your team will just start to be toxic at you. Saying "You noob" "Little kid go to your bad" and other words.

Epikarus1 votes

That is one concern that dodging will increase if rerolls are removed. I suggest a IP fine for dodging, on top of the time punishment. I think excessive dodging should be punishable by bans, or at least restriction from ARAM. I rarely get people getting angry in ARAM for not playing well, sometimes its just not a good fit for the team, and most people understand that. Yes you will get the toxic player, but thats a seperate problem that is being addressed, although very slowly and ineffectively.

Zielmann1 votes

I'm okay with the first half of this, but vehemently against the second half. I also think that if they made all champions available (my preferred solution), some of the melee issues would resolve themselves because you're far less likely to be up against that godly team comp. That, and I honestly don't think melee needs a buff.

But at this point, I'd probably leave re-rolls functioning as they currently do, though I suppose I could be okay with a team-wide vote that would allow them to reroll an entire team. But if re-rolls are left as-is, it would actually give incentive for players to unlock more champions. I would set it up such that you still gain reroll points depending on the amount of champions you own, even though all champs are free.

Epikarus3 votes

I agree that all champ solution may solve some issues with melee, but I don't think its at the point where it will solve itself. My argument is when we look at win rates for champs in ARAM, they are all range, and all poke. LOLking is the sum of many games and as such should essentially, but not perfectly, indicate what champions are weak. Do to the general 'randomness' of champion composition in games and due to the sheer number of games that it emulates what it will be like even if all champs were available. An all melee comp should have an equal likelihood of winning vs an all ranged comp. The fact that there are "godly team comps" should be a red alert that there is indeed a mismatch between melee and ranged. Just because our teams are more random, doesn't mean that it will feel better to play an all melee comp vs ranged. Random doesn't ensure that the teams will have equal number of "strong" aram champions, yes in the big picture I'm going to win as many games as I lose, but its not about the big picture here, its about the satisfaction of individual games.

The truth is simply that ranged champions do better than melee on ARAM. This is due to the fact that melee generally depend on approaching enemies using different techniques. Because champions are generally designed to be balanced on SR where direction of approach and bushes and walls allow more variety of initiations this allows melee to be more or less balanced in SR. But in ARAM where the only direction you can approach your enemy is from the front which severely limits a lot of the ability to initiate against a poke comp. This is why melee need buffs.

Zielmann1 votes

I don't mind that a godly team could potentially exist. It's random. It happens. But right now, it happens far too often. Simply making all champs free for everybody would significantly decrease the chances that you wind up against one of these teams full of all top 10 champs.

And I've seen this in action on the PBE, actually. They sometimes enable PC Bang rewards, which makes all champs free (for every mode). I've played quite a few ARAMs on there while this is active, and you definitely see far fewer steamroll comps than you do on live. And that's even with re-rolls left as-is. You saw this to a lesser extent back when ARAMs were only a custom game mode on SR as well. ARAM smurfs weren't nearly as prevalent back then, so again, you also got much more balanced teams more often.

But I also disagree that melee is utterly useless against ranged poke. A melee-heavy team can win, and the longer the game goes on, the better their chances are. Melee teams usually hit their stride closer to 20 minutes in, but many players will unfortunately give up when they see a great poke comp against their melee-heavy team. And they give up before they can start to see that there's a glimmer of hope. Of course for this to happen, you do have to play damage control through the early game. If you get too far behind, then yeah, it'll be really difficult to pull out the win. But if you stay reasonably close, you'll start to notice fights going more and more your way as the time passes.

A good example of this from my recent games is this one. Just looking at the teams, I'm sure that a vast majority of people would just assume that Corki/Raka/Malz/Nid/Fid steamroll that game. And, indeed, we were down to a bare inhib before 12 minutes into the game. But we stuck with it, mounted a solid defense of the inhib (we finally started to get some of our critical items around this time). The rest of the game was a bit dicey, and they did end up taking our inhib a couple times, but we ultimately managed to pull it off.

Now, I do feel that we had a very good set of melee champs to pull this off. We had a lot of CC on the tanks, and then we had two strong damage sources with Vlad and Kha. We did need to have that one champ capable of just carrying us through (thanks, Kha!). But the three of us on the front line were able to hold them down long enough for Kha to get his work done. It's very exhausting to make it through a game like that, but it makes the win all the more rewarding, IMO.

Epikarus2 votes

I disagree, the potential for a 'god like team' existing is a testament to the fact that melee are under tuned for this map. Yeah once in a while you will have a game where you come back from being 4 towers and an inhibitor down, but those are few and far inbetween. An all melee comp vs a full poke comp shouldn't be an uphill battle. To have one team have a high chance of winning just because of the composition isn't balanced, and thats what we are talking about it, balance. Its not that certain compositions do better than other, its that ranged does better than melee. Clearly this is an fundamental flaw. rock beating scissors is fine, scissors beating paper is fine, and paper beating rock is fine, but if rock beat paper and scissors, then you have a problem, even if choosing rock paper or scissors is a random act.

edit: wording

Zielmann1 votes

I guess I just fundamentally disagree with that. And that's okay. My feeling is pretty much that the lack of balance is an accepted part of the game when you queue up for ARAM. I just wish they would do something to make it so that you didn't only see the same 10-15 champs over and over and over again because of ARAM smurfs. The fact that a godly team can exist doesn't bother me. The fact that you see it as often as you do does.

And I'd honestly be afraid of buffing melee and/or tanks. If you move their turnover point too early in the game, things could get out of hand really fast. A lot of people vastly underestimate the power of having a solid front line on your team.

Mushkai1 votes

Currently, the selection pool includes the week's F2P champs. Also, ARAM does give you more re-roll points for each champ you own...

Zielmann1 votes

I'm quite aware of all that. But it doesn't stop the fact that ARAM smurfs run rampant through the game, making you see those top-tier champions far more often than you theoretically should, given a random scenario. Sure, these people do have the free champs available, but half of the free roster usually isn't bad for ARAM, even if they may not be top-tier champions.

To try to compensate for that, Riot did add the re-roll points system to reward players who actually own more champs. But the smurfs are still gaining rerolls often enough that it doesn't matter. And with a little cooperation between players, if a 'bad' champ is rolled, somebody with a reroll available may offer to trade so they can roll for another person.

If you're gonna talk about tweaking the re-roll system to help deal with smurfs, you've almost got to get rid of the flat 30 points you gain per game. Then these players on smurfs with just 10 champs would only be getting a reroll every 25 games, instead of almost every 6 games. But I understand why they don't do that, because it would make ARAM feel very unfair to new players dabbling in ARAM for the first time when their roster is limited.

Mushkai1 votes

Hmm true true, I haven't really dwelled into such thoughts so I apologise and thank you for your explanation. Personally I played a lot of ARAM to try new champs even if I am not confident with them, but I never fathom the possibly of ARAM oriented accounts, given I haven't really play many game 100% one sided, maybe I been lucky xD Anyway thanks again =D

Mushkai1 votes

Concerning your first point, the ARAM champ selection pool is based on all champs you currently have access to, including the F2P of the week champs. It was quite amazing playing ARAM during the Shurima event cause the champ pool got an extra 10 champs, and often could trade between players when 3-4 of them got a FTP champ during that event.

Mushkai1 votes

forgot to say I did like the team buff for when you have a AFK. Though one thing I dislike most is those who dodge games... especially when you get that champ you wanted to try in ARAM and someone just dodges the game... and you later end up with a champ you don't really wanna play as..

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