Have they gone too far, or not far enough?

Tactical Salad·5/2/2015, 8:06:25 PM·2 votes·533 views

I feel like Riot has lost focus of the big picture. Too many times I grab a few friends and hop on league to have fun in normals', but I can't anymore. Riot focuses their attention on nerfing champs that are ranked gods, and buffing the weaker ranked pics, but they've completely forgotten about all the other champs. They do minor fixes to health regen and what not to "Balance" out a champion, but never truly fix anything. For instance, Katarina.

"Death Lotus Cost: No Cost Range: 550 Katarina becomes a flurry of blades, throwing daggers with unrivaled speed at up to three nearby Champions. Daggers deal magic damage and reduce incoming healing on targets hit. Becomes a flurry of blades, throwing daggers at the closest 3 enemy Champions dealing 350/550/750 (+375% bonus Attack Damage) (+250% Ability Power) magic damage over 2.5 seconds.Daggers apply Grievous Wounds, reducing incoming healing by 50% for 3 seconds."

Her ult is broken as all hell. And I don't want to hear the normal response off "Hard CC is a good counter to that ability." Guess what's a good counter to every ability? Hard CC. Riot doesn't focus on nerfing anyone unless they're a ranked powerhouse, and it's killing normals. Me and my friends don't like having to resort to playing the most OP champs to win, we like to have diverse champion pools and still win. The problem is, Riven walks into our group and stuns then Katarina throws out her ult and slaughters three of us. Because her CD's are now reset, she just shunpo's and ults again.

That and tanks. Tanks are now so ridiculously overpowered. Yeah, they needed a buff, but now they've taken over the entirety of league, and the whole game revolves around who has more tanks, and who has more hyper tanks.

Also, a quick question. Whose bright idea was it to have high damage, ad scaling, true damage attacks on tanks? (ie. Garen and Darius). Like seriously.

Yes, CC will affect every champion. However, they are affected to different degrees. Tanks and bruisers are can soak CC for their team because they are durable enough to survive. Squishy champions, especially those who rely on their abilities for survivability--like Master Yi, Riven, Zed, or Fiora--can be easily killed within a 2 second CC's duration. Katarina is especially vulnerable since it will cancel her ultimate's channel, severely reducing her damage and letting your team kill her before she can use her resets. Trying to say that squishy champions aren't obviously more negatively affected by CC than durable champions is just ignorance.

Tanks aren't really overpowering at the moment. The main issue is that strong tanks can't be bursted by assassins and require more coordination to shut down. Team fights are no longer about who can burst the enemy the quickest; teamfights require coordination for diving priority targets and peeling for your damage dealers.

ADCs are valued for their ability to deal high sustained damage to tanks and for killing objectives (towers, baron, dragon, etc). Assassins and burst mages are valued for their ability to remove a primary damage source (i.e. the ADC or squishies) on the enemy team and can no longer kill any target in a rotation of their abilities. Tanks are valued for their ability to soak damage, initiate fights, disrupt the enemies positioning, and protect their damage dealers.

Champions with high consistent damage or the ability to kill tanks (i.e. Karthus, Cassiopeia, Malzahar, Kog'maw, Vayne, etc) have come back into the meta, even though their lack of durability and mobility meant they weren't valued when assassins were dominant.

The current meta has made many champions viable and the top picks don't crowd out other champions in their role. At least, no where near as much as they have been in previous metas.

At most levels of play, the difference in skill between players is far more valuable than the differences between individual champions. You are better off picking what you play well than picking the current flavour-of-the-month champions, however you do have to pay some respect to team composition and counters.

Have they gone too far, or not far enough?

2 Comments

The reason those two in particular deal good damage is because they provide little utility for their team, which means that without damage the enemy would have no reason to target them.

The current meta has made many champions viable and the top picks don't crowd out other champions in their role. At least, no where near as much as they have been in previous metas.