@Riot, What I Really Want Fixed with this Game

Note: I'm very bad at condensing posts, see tldr's at bottom of each section if bothered.

Over the last year and a half I have been seeing some awesome balance changes come out as well as other things here and there. Riot may not listen to everything we have to say, but at least they do listen and consider what we say. So on that note I would like to point out the things that have seemingly been left to rot during that same time.

First off is the matchmaking system, and no I don't mean auto-fill. I mostly play normals, and the matchmaking there leaves a lot to be desired. Too often do you end up with someone who is significantly out of your skill level. We all get those games where someone is just so bad, that not even Faker could carry your team. Sometimes more than one of those people on your team. This has always been a problem, but it always feels like its becoming more of a problem. The better you seem to get in the game the more this seems to be an issue. This needs to be fixed, Riot needs to realize they can do better. I shouldn't be getting a 14 game losing streak with a 14% winrate(over 30 games) while trying to complete the nice list mission. Only a feeder should EVER have that happen, the fact it can happen shows that your MMR/matchmaking system has some serious holes in itself. I don't think if I was trying to lose I could get that bad.

I think we need to take the current MMR system, take the rankings as a starting point for the new one(so everyone doesn't start at the bottom) then remake it better. Have a very slow decay on MMR for people who haven't played in over a month(because lets be honest, we all get a bit rusty after a while, and also helps the stomp feeling if you are that player coming back). Maybe tie in champion scores to it a bit so that individual performance is accounted for better and they can't get boosted playing with friends as much. I can't really suggest any other changes as we can't see how MMR is calculated, but I'm trying, so please don't just dismiss this.

Also you shouldn't be able to grind ranked.

TLDR: Riot needs to do better at matchmaking, their system for it needs an overhaul on calculating skill level.

The essence system still has some issues, and it seems Riot is very hesitant to try and fix it, which is very understandable given how Riot need to stay profitable and that is going to become harder to do in the upcoming years. What currently feels bad about the essence system is that orange essence isn't worth a whole lot; the skin reroll values were low end skin favored(to the point you had almost no chance of getting a high end skin) for a little while after the changes; the value of chests has decreased with no price adjust or announced compensation for that in them; and now that blue essence is the main currency, and not a secondary currency, champion mastery feels too expensive. The reroll value problem has been given a temporary fix of unweighing the rerolls, thats good, thank you. However I do not think thats a good financial decision for the long run for Riot so I would suggest as a nice middle ground to just change them back to what they were before you messed with the chances(I know they weren't always like this because my lucky friend would always reroll and get the newest skin, thats how he got elementalist). If that doesn't suffice for financial sustainability in the long run adjust the number a bit. For example if it would have been 10% chance of 390/520 skins, 35% chance of 750 skins, 34% chance of 975 skins, 15% 1350 skins, 5% 1820 skins, 1% 3250 skins and that didn't work for Riot; change it to 8% 390/520, 36% 750, 40% 975, 12.25% 1350, 3% 1820, .75% 3250 which reduces the RP average value of a reroll by 19.75 RP while having no noticeable effect to players on chances. Something like that, although I would like to note the value needs to be higher than [RP value of all skins collectively available]/[skins available] otherwise why would anyone bother rerolling. For the value of chests, the easiest thing to do would probably be to add a bit of blue essence to them(20-50) because this was mostly covered by the chance to get a chest in a chest(roughly 1/8 chance from my experience). On this topic it seems free chests and bought chests have different drop rates, if that's true can we specify a difference in loot of which is which? For orange essence values feeling too low, I accept the justification for this personally, and think it this is probably a place where the community is going to have to accept "the bad end of the stick". That being said it has changed habits around orange essence, at least for me. I no longer reroll all unwanted shards to get random skins for champions I own(which was cool in a gambling or Christmas present sense) and now disenchant them to hoard essence for the best skins for champions I play that I get shards for. So it does still feel bad in that sense. Champion mastery had had a problem for a while now in my opinion. Riot made a system to show off "skill" with a champion, but wants people to pay into it as well. It takes away from the idea that it is to show off your skill in the first place, there's seemingly no reason except just to take up our in game currency. I tolerated it before because I only ever had to disenchant one or two champion shards previously to get one, and I didn't get masteries very often. On top of that it was a secondary currency, blue essence and champion shards used to be this little gift bags that Riot handed out on top of the IP I was earning, so to take the gift and use it on a cool flare to show off my "skill" on a champion didn't feel too bad either. Now Blue essence is my IP and it takes more disenchants to get my champion mastery too. I want the cost to go away, as I always have, there's no moral reasoning behind it, and if Riot is going to say they are a good company to their customers, then they shouldn't make you pay for an achievement. If Riot wants a middle ground on this, then Riot could halve the cost, or allow for gaining of twice as much tokens to unlock without BE as another option.

TLDR: Orange essence feels "worthless", but it's probably something we have to just accept. Skin rerolls have been temporarily fixed by removing weighting by skin cost, balance cost and fairness when you put on new scaling. Chests don't have the value they used to, add some BE to get it up to that old value. Champion mastery is the new currency sink(like old runes), remove BE cost on them or allow for alternative harder option to unlock free.

I really don't like how early game has changed, and this probably goes along with the snowball everyone is talking about. Two seasons ago I could play jungle and get one lane fed and we would have a decent chance of winning so long as the other lanes didn't go 0/4 or worse. Because two or three of our teammates would have positive KDA and the others wouldn't be feeding level negative. I could spend most of early game clearing jungle as fast as possible to gain gold advantage at the cost of camping or super frequent ganking. If I pulled off a good gank or saw the jungler somewhere I could invade and take two, maybe three camps. I could even do this if I didn't know where he was because I could afford not to gank every second I wasn't clearing my own camps. Now it seems that I have to gank every three camps or less, or else I risk just losing our team the early game, which usually means losing the entire game(unless they throw a bit and it ends up being a 40+ min game). I'm seeing almost all other junglers going high damage or high mobility lockdown and ganking 5+ times in laning phase. They get one lane fed and then map pressure and gold advantage just go in their favor, people's wards become obsolete do to their map pressure before they have a new one up, and then vision game just collapses. The fed laner is always too fed for a jungle gank to help, and meanwhile while the team tries to deal with that they either push another lane or start getting someone else fed. If your jungler can't initiate a gank under all conditions you're already playing a losing game it seems. And if they can't, then they can't gank on a timely rotation because a lot of junglers require the enemy to at least be past the half way point of a lane. It pushes counter-junglers and a lot of tanks completely out of viability(I love playing Nunu and a lot of tank junglers btw). Counter-junglers can't afford to counter-jungle because the team suffers from lack of ganking and the enemy is moving across the map for ganks so much there are smaller windows to invade. I want it so that there's more of a trade off with ganking constantly, there just doesn't seem to be any deterent from this. Junglers leave half their camps just sitting around while spam ganking, it makes me wonder if camps are even worth taking past second clear anymore. It becomes really annoying when you help 2 lanes go slightly positive, but because the enemy camped the last lane(and tower dove for those kills) that you lose. What I would suggest is giving more little more gold and XP to second clear and after to make clears more appealing. Another problem of this is probably caused by all the new movement speed runes. A jungler who can take Predator, magical footwear, approach velocity, celerity, or waterwalk without much opportunity cost has a large advantage over someone who might need the precision or resolve trees. Not only that but junglers get put at a disadvantage early game if the enemy laner has one of these because it means they have to wait for them to get further out to be able to gank. I like to play jungle in a way to scale my team up for mid to late game while just going even early or at least close, thats not viable right now it seems.

TLDR: The Jungle role has moved from gank to get self fed and/or help a losing lane to gank constantly or lose the game. Junglers aren't farming jungle as much in exchange, but seem to be unaffected gold and XP wise. Movement speed creep in runes and this shift in Jungler strategy is shifting champions out of the role. There needs to be an opportunity cost of farm to get self gold/XP advantage vs helping the team get fed while losing out on a bit of gold/XP; otherwise junglers who farm up early(tanks, counterjunglers) become unviable. There needs to be some advantage to farming up or playing a more passive early game, otherwise why have camps after first clear(besides buffs). There may need to be some work done on runes on top of this such as reducing speed creep in them, or adding runes that are more desirable to others in resolve and precision that give movement speed.