First Impressions of LoL After 3 Year Hiatus

Hello! I am summoner Captain Justice on NA and I just recently picked this game back up after a three year break. Since Season 5 League of Legends has undergone many many drastic changes from gameplay to champion development and I found myself wanting to see where this game has gone since then. I played twenty games using a different champ every five games and took notes on my experiences. Please know that these are just the first impressions and opinions of the current state of the game from a casual players perspective and are in no way meant to cause offense or distress on those who religiously play or make it.

Games #1-5

• Soraka the Waifu
• Matches Won: 0/5 First real game since being back. My actual first game was a wash because I hadn't upgraded my drivers in a while so I was literally getting between 9 and 11 frames and had to leave and restart my pc. The game resulted in a loss with me going 1/8/6(whoops) I spent the game experimenting with new item builds and tested out the new support(?) items. Or I would have, but I never got around to finishing Salvation. From my understanding the new runes and masteries happened pretty recently, as in this current season. They add tons of build customization and nobody in my first game had the same setup like back in Season 5 and previous aaand probably between 5 and 8 but ANYWAYS the setup is much different and maybe even fun. I've been banning Warwick every time after game 1 because the enemy Warwick was very good at jumping out of nowhere and chasing me down while I scream. The ingame team chat toxicity seems to be almost nonexistant at times, instead replaced by spamming pings and emotes. I have yet to experience being berated by my botlane partner for my rusty and poor Soraka play. Around game 3 I changed my runes from being Inspiration focused to Resolve focused. I'm not sure which is the more popular option right now but I did better performance wise going Resolve by being tankier and sticking in fights longer in lane, yet on the other hand I was having alot more fun running around really fast when using the Inspiration tree and getting free junk. Felt like I was playing a casual role playing game. I don't want to look up any guides quite yet as I feel learning these on your own is part of Riots RUNE REMAKE EXPERIENCE. Overall, my first five games of League of Legends with one of my favorite champs since Season 2 were all losses. Granted these are all going to be normal games and I was playing support but still feelsbadman. I'm sure we could attribute this to a variety of reasons. This hasn't discouraged me from playing more though.

In between these games I messed around with the crafting system and got 43000 IP(y tho)

Games #6-10

• Handsome Galio
• Matches Won: 3/5 One of many changes that have happened on my LoL hiatus was a complete rework of Galio one of my other favorite champs. This I was looking forward to the most as Galio fell out of meta quite a long time ago almost to the point of being a niche pick I'd say. They completely changed his kit, design-EVERYTHING and I didn't think I could love this champion more than I already did. First game I lost then 7 Lovely League of Legends matches later I finally got my first win with handsome Galio himself. My que mates thought I was a rioter because of my riot ward and hextech skin and like I said previously I have yet to encounter any truly toxic players and I actually find myself enjoying the game. If I had gotten 4/5 matches won I was ready to take this guy into ranked, unfortunately the last game we had a ragequiter so we forfeited at 15min. But with the way the game was going it was a definite loss and not my best in comparison to the last few. I didn't even need to change rune pages, I went full damage and had tons of fun and did pretty well throughout 3 of those games. There isn't really much for me to say here, great champ and great games.

Games #11-15

• Hardcore Ornno
• Matches Won: 3/5 Time to do something with all that IP(i guess)and once in a while Riot does something that perplexes people. I decided to go through the list of champs released since I stopped playing which was around the Kindred release. I thought they finally added a dwarf but not only was I wrong but his kit was absolutely crazy. Ornn is a very technical skill champion. I whiffed a fair share of ults in these games but I also hit some game winning ones too. But I can't get behind his scaling, it's so odd that I don't even know what skill to max. My guess is W? I played him support because I think that's where he's best suited? A jungler probably but considering past seasons I think we'll stay in lane. Second game I took him top since I was autofilled(plsno) and the laning phase was dope but I did no damage and couldn't really do anything even with TP. I will have to try him out more toplane because I think that's a great fit. As I went through these games he seemed the most fun played support assuming you land your ult, otherwise it doesn't matter how good you played up to that point. Orn feels like Riot developed bipolar disorder and had enough of people saying they force the meta and went to the opposite extreme. Which is fine because Orn is hilarious in combination with the new runes like Futures Market which lets me buy items in botlane that I couldn't normally afford. Makes me feel like I'm cheating and it's a good time, unless I miss my ult...

After playing 13 games in a row I took a break and continued the next day...

Game #16-20

• Handsome Galio
• Matches Won: 1/5 For my last 5 games I returned to the champ I had the most fun with. I wanted to play a different 4th champ but there wasn't anything else I wanted to play. I had this similar issue seasons 2-5 where I feel like the whole champion roaster is just so hollow and devoid of depth. This I feel is LoLs main issue and as Riot further develops the game its almost as if they have a formula now for the champions they make. I was going to test out the new Urgot but then I noticed he as a dash now? Why? Galio has a dash now too, and Ornn? I dunno, obviously they are both distinctively different in forms of execution from over wall dashes but these three examples just feel like cop outs and I'll probably get flack for this but lazy too. I heard people were quitting this game now for a variety of reasons whether it be the new runes, champ balancing or the infamous reputation of its toxic community. I can see the threads of those reasons scattered around this game like the RNG plants around the map. It's a fun game for sure but for how long? Between the bloated client and the usual champ/role imbalance per quarter/per season I feel like this is the same game I stopped playing three years ago, only now its so large that its tripping over itself left and right. Riot has developed on a lot of promises and goals that for the most part felt like a meme for the longest time. It took almost three years for them to deliver on most of those promises and still they leave something to be desired, and I don't mean just gameplay. But you shouldn't value these opinions too deeply, im probably just out of practice and bad. Especially since I lost a majority of these games. The Soraka ones killed me and the last five I was super tilted for simple mistakes on my end.

I'll be knocking out more games with Galio and Ornn in normals until I feel confident enough to actually climb the ladder this season. (New wood elo player incoming) Considering picking up more top laners like and maybe even . I'll be streaming my progress @https://www.twitch.tv/captain_justice if you guys wanna join me on this Lovely League of Legends journey.

Love&Peace.