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Maybe We Have Balance Wrong

Capn Of Capns·8/29/2018, 11:03:02 PM·1 votes·715 views

So I've been thinking a thought for awhile now and it only recently developed into actual words. It might not be a fully formed thought, but I think it's interesting enough that we can discuss it.

What if the true form of league of legends is supposed to be about killing people only with abilities?

This sounds weird, I know, but give me a second to explain. I think the best example to this is Wukong. Back in the day I used to jungle Wukong much the same way I jungled Nocturne. I built him with item 3111 item 3153 item 3022 item 3065 and then an adaptive build to whatever I needed. I maxed his E and I more or less played him as a duelist. These days obviously he's always built as a burst assassin.

As I look around more and more I am noticing that many champions who could be built as duelists are instead being built as burtsers, and champions who are really only duelists go unplayed. I personally don't like this, but it occurred to me that maybe that's the point. Items are slowly shifting from enhancing auto-attacks and defending against auto attacks to enhancing abilities and giving abilities/passives. Items like item 3146 item 3152 item 3030 show a trend towards abilities or ability enhancements.

I've never played DOTA. Never watched more than a couple highlight clips either, but friends of mine have played it and explained some of the broader aspects about it like how items don't give stats, items give abilities. It seems to me like maybe League is trending that way and that makes me sad. I miss the days where you could build multiple item build paths and the stats they gave you determined how well you did.

I'm sure I'm not explaining this well as I haven't spent an hour going over everything in my head but I'm confident others who are smarter than I can see where I'm going and expand upon this.

4 Comments

Jobriq8/29/2018, 11:14:57 PM6 votes

items don't give stats, items give abilities

the fuck? items absolutely give stats in Dota.

Capn Of Capns8/29/2018, 11:04:17 PM1 votes

I'll put this here since I typed this out as well but felt it would distract from my main point:

I even miss the old runes a little bit. They didn't do a ton, but I used them to help shore up weak spots in champions. For my mages for instance I used movement quints to make up for low base movements and sometimes I used flat ad to help last-hitting early. This new super mastery system we have actually bothers me somewhat, and not even because of the primary runes. The secondary runes just feel unbalanced to me in that some are obviously helpful and scale really well (lifesteal is always helpful even if locked behind bounties), while others are questionable at best. (Looking at you, Waterwalking.)