Let's talk constructive feedback, or at least try to. (Long post ahead!)
**LONG POST AHEAD. You've been warned. ** Okay so my last thread was a rage thread (Obviously, preseason is rage inducing). So let's (attempt to) put together some actually constructive feedback and criticism.
The AD Carries And let's start with the biggest culprits, the reworked ADCs. Now I know this was the "ADC Patch", oh sorry, "Marksmen Patch" (seriously nobody calls them marksmen) but that's exactly the problem. Their tuning is all over the place and it feels like they're the only viable champions right now, let alone the only viable ADCs. Some a little more than the others.
This point is probably a little moot since they'll be tuned properly over the next few weekls but it's worth mentioning. On top of that I heard there's a hotfix going at that addresses Graves.
Strategic Diversity and Items Next let's talk about that buzzword that Riot loves to throw around "Strategic Diversity". Never have I seen a phrase so horribly misrepresented within this game.
So far the preseason is hugely biased towards AD champions. And this isn't even down to all the new items per say. One of the reasons however is item related.
AP Champions got a huge shaft with MR being buffed across the board, and AP items being nerfed across the board with AP values going down, and costs going up. (I know ambient Gold went up but it's so freaking negligible and insubstantial). Riot's justification for AP items getting nerfed is something along the lines of them being too efficient.
Now let met tell you why that's bullshit. AD champions are largely auto attack reliant (excluding AD casters for the most part). As we all know if your AD is 100, your auto attacks will do 100 damage before resistances are accounted for. So for the purposes of this argument we can say that auto attacks have a 1.0 AD Ratio.
On the other hand, AP scaling abilities rarely have a 1.0 AP Ratio, in fact one of the only examples that I can think of are Veigar's Dark Matter and Primordial Burst. Pretty much everyone AP scaling ability in the game has a less than 1.0 ratio, so even if you have 100AP your abilities will only scale with so much of that AP.
Now granted that abilities usually have a base amount of damage the justification for AP items being TOO efficient is an ill founded conclusion. AP items needed either their cost increased, or stats reduced, not both. Both is just an unnecessary over-nerf.
Which nicely leads me into my next point
The removal of Mana Potions I'm going to be honest here, this one had my jimmies well and truly rustled. The biggest reason was the absolute weak sauce justification that was flimsier than a cookie on a scuba diving trip in an ocean of coffee. For those who didn't read it, the jist of it was that mana pots were too efficient on SOME champions. Not even a vast majority, just some. Implying a small subset. Now I could understand this logic if there were abuse cases...the problem is, mana pots couldn't be used in abuse cases (Not unlike Warlord's Bloodlust. More on that soon). So the removal of mana pots did nothing but gimp such a huge number of champions just because a few were supposedly too good with them. (like resourceless champions needed even more of an edge over mana users) So now anyone who depended on mana pots early are screwed and I'm going to bring up an example I keep using in my argument against removing mana pots.
Pantheon. Now as we all know Pantheon has a strong early, but that strong early requires him to spam spears to whittle his opponent down before jumping on them for the finish. He needs this strong early to get kills to remain relevant in the mid/late or else he horribly falls off (which is the balance to his excellent early) Without mana pots to sustain his early damage why would you pick Pantheon over anyone else? There are few (if any) items in the game that provide mana regen, without also providing a stat that Pantheon doesn't need.
"But champions got compensation buffs" I hear you shriek. Well let me tell you something, the compensation buffs do not compensate for this. The extra 50-something starting mana on the champions that got it is barely a single spell's worth. And mana regen is just simply so negligible the difference is imperceivable.
So for the time being, RIP AP mages and champions reliant on ability spam.
The New Mastery System I want to preface this by saying that the keystone masteries are a cool idea and a good direction (despite some of them being abusable but I'll get to that) And despite me clawing at Riot's eyes for butchering buzzwords, meaningful choice has actually been achieved with the keystones.
That being said however, the entire system is let down by it being severely cut down, restrictive, and overall limiting. Not to mention the entire system is heavily biased towards AD champions (something of a pattern emerging here)
In trying to create diversity and choice with the new Masteries, Riot have done the opposite by cutting corners off it like crunch time at the circle factory. There's little choice beyond: "A or B?" "Coca-Cola or Pepsi?" "Bacon or Nutella?"
Not to mention that, due to the massively cut down number of masteries overall, the distribution is all over the place as well. What was wrong with simply having Offense, Defence and Utility? That's to the point and makes sense. What the hell does Cunning, Ferocity and Resolve mean? Other than showing just how pretentious Riot can be sometimes. That may sound petty but it's not clear what you should be doing with your points.
With the old trees it was immediately obvious and there was plenty to choose from. I won't lie it was a lot of micro-math nonsense but at least it felt truly customisable and like you had actual choice.
Don't even get me started on how oppressively frustrating Warlord's Bloodlust is right now on Yasuo and Tryndamere (Hotfix is coming at least). Just makes me wonder how they didn't see this coming from 3 miles off.
Overall Masteries are hugely hit and miss, leaning more towards miss. Some cool ideas but too restrictive and dumbed down with little room for proper customisation, heavily biased towards AD, and little available for APs or Tanks. If Riot diversifies the trees, adds more masteries and rearranges some of the distribution I think it'll be a perfect system.
That about sums up my thoughts and feedback on the preseason changes. I hope Riot takes a look if only to add to the ever burning fire of feedback they disregard like unwanted children being thrown into a pen with a scary dog.
Please excuse the trace amounts of salt and thanks for reading.