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Malphite, Naut and Lux are powerful due to death timers.

BluePolarizer··12 votes·1,058 views

Right now, games are a combination of 2 things:

  1. Insane snowballing. If you get snowballed on, it is extremely hard to recover due to gold being tied mostly to objectives (instead of farm), making getting kills much more worth than playing passive and farming. Remember: kills are not just for the gold. They're also for the EXP lead and the denial of farm. If one champ gets a kill on another champ with a 20 cs lead, the champ with the kill comes out on top: he just made half that back, is half a level ahead of you (possibly an entire level depending on denying to tower) and now can freefarm a wave to make up the gold difference.

  2. Dying once post 20 minutes leads to objectives by competent teams due to death timers. Thanks to the super long death timers, a death after 20 minutes usually leads to the enemy getting an objective. A won teamfight can mean gg as early as 25 minutes in.

This means there are 2 ways to play:

  1. Attempt to snowball so hard, you can't lose past 20 minutes. This is risky because competent opponents will not allow you to snowball so easily. They'll play safe. They'll roam. They'll group.

  2. Win the post 20 minute teamfight or get a snowballing pick. This is where Lux, Malphite and Nautilus come in. With their insane AOE ults and CC (and Lux's on a super low cooldown) they can either directly win a head on 5v5, or get a snowballing pick. Win a 5v5? gg. Get a snowballing pick? gg. Get a regular pick? Objectives to snowball the lead or come back. This is why Lux is one of the best champs in the game right now: it is hard to punish her with snowballing, and even though her damage is medium for a burst mage, she has her burst FRONTLOADED and on a LOW COOLDOWN meaning that if she fails a play, she can try again in 40 seconds, while most other mages that fail their plays have to wait over a minute for their ults to be up.

14 Comments

Only Play Darius3 votes

Don't forget that removed wards make it hard to kill Lux in lane. Last season you could easily kill her in lane, but now it's too risky to play aggressive against her as you have only 1 ward but 4 or 5 gank paths. Her CC and long range also make her very good at responding to ganks even from under her tower so you can't really starve her either.

I think they need to either bring back green wards or revert the changes to yellow trinket.

EcchiOtakuTM1 votes

Oh wow I never thought of that, that's actually true. I just wish we had old yellow wards, yes I'm one who says not to bring back green wards to make every ward choice matter however the old yellow wards were better, I wouldn't even mind if they made the current yellow wards scale into the old yellow wards by lvl 15-18 that would be fine.

TiiGz2 votes

I think you make a lot of good points, I would also add in that the fear of dying against a snowbally champ like the ones you mentioned makes the first 10-15 minutes of games incredibly boring. This is because people don't want to feed or snowball the enemy laner as everyone is trying desperately to win the arms race for that one fight that decides the game.

So there are two games, both of which are incredibly binary in that one or two small events decide the whole game..

  1. a champion gets an early kill or two and snowballs the game from there, or

  2. The first 10-15 minutes of the game is farmfest, and then there's the awkward phase where the two teams dance for the right team fight, and then whoever wins is gg.

There's no early game, there are no comebacks, and you spend half an hour in a game that is decided one one or two plays.

BluePolarizer2 votes

pretty much.

That's why either snowballers like Fiora Pantheon Zed win games, or 1 fight 1 trick ponies like Lux Malphite MonkeyKing win games.

The "building up of advantage and gain momentum" type championsIrelia Orianna JarvanIV Jinx Chogath aren't doing so well because of this super binary playstyle.

BadmoonBC2 votes

So weird but so true. Except some ap assassins still aren't able to carry like before. My last five Leblanc ranked games I had at LEAST 14+ kills in EACH one and 6 or less deaths in each one. However I went 2-3 in those games. A great example is a game from last night. Enemy team had a kog and I made sure he was never in a team fight. I deleted him every single fight. He did nothing. But because they had garen, jungle shyvana, and ekko, they were able to just destroy our team. Especially ekko. I beat ekko in lane hard and he was held down after that until one team fight he ulted and basically got a penta. No matter how many times he did it my front line wouldn't leRn and continued to stand in his ult. my Tristana also wouldn't learn and stood there too instead of kiting back. I was gold 4 last season and this ekko was plat3, and undefeated with ekko. I thought I played damn near flawless, solo killed him in lane, got fed etc, but then no matter what happened he would demolish our team in team fights. My team was me as LB, lee sin jungle that was garbage(he went 3/11), a gnar top that was ok, a blitz support and a decent trist(she did have issues over extending), at one fight I was able to instagib enemy kog AND Morgana with one fell swoop, and then I recalled cuz I was low from it. However my team then lost the rest of that fight 4v3. And the reason truly is because you need to be good team fighters this season, or just snowball to hell n back. And even if you snowball, if your vs a ridiculously good scaling team fighting comp they can beat you if you don't end the game pre-25 mins

JavelinJoe1 votes

"competent" being the key term here

BluePolarizer2 votes

AP Urgot wins in bronze, so you have to assume competence.

Gene Freakz1 votes

I understand what you are saying but think about it from the other perspective: what if you have done a really good job laning and outplaying your opponent either through skill alone or a knowledgeable counter pick? Wouldn't you want to be rewarded for that? Imagine doing all of that and still being equal with your opponent. That doesn't sound right does it? I do think, though, that once a player gets ahead in a lane it can be hard for a jungler to complete a successful gank and equalize the lane. Players can possibly snowball too hard, which makes playing for the late game hard. But it should be a little difficult; players should not be able to just sit and farm without some kind of pressure from the other team.

Part of the game is risk=reward. If you pick an early game comp and successfully complete risky plays, you should be able to win early. If you, however, pick a late game comp and stall the other team long enough and have good teamfights, you should be rewarded for what you have done. It is impossible to totally equalize the game otherwise play could go on as long as 2 hours or more. I do not want to play those games (I don't know about you). I will admit that certain players are definitely much better depending on the current meta. If you are aware of so-called "OP" or "broken" champs, just play them and enjoy the freelo.

BluePolarizer2 votes

you still aren't rewarded. if you can't end the game pre-30 you lose due to 1 mistake being all it takes late game.

that's why Renekton and Riven are trash right now despite also being snowballers. They're against safety champs who deny their snowballing then kill them once in a teamfight post-20 and it's gg.

Gene Freakz1 votes

Ahhh so you're a Riven main eh? Well...............

BluePolarizer1 votes

I play Riven in ARAM only. I have zero games of Riven on ranked. I'm an ANTI Riven champ main.

Gene Freakz1 votes

So what you are saying is "Riven sucks right now and I take advantage of that by counter picking, but I feel bad for her and wish she could do better?"

BluePolarizer1 votes

pretty much. Riven isn't exactly a free win but she's not overwhelming.

darkdill1 votes

So true in Lux's case. People who bitch about her being OP need to realize that she's just good in "safety" metas.

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