Season 9 - The Season of the Solo Loss Champions

After returning to the game and being hit by the dreaded critical error bug through patches 9.14 and 9.15, my ranked pathing took a bit of a hit. Big deal, I said to myself - I'll get my rank back without too much work. Heck, I did it before on other accounts as a support - no big whoop. Or so I thought. But I noticed something weird in the games. The games were even more fiesta-like than normal. There was a lot more raging, moaning, and whining. It seemed that one loss in one lane quickly spread like a pandemic across the map. And, it seemed that climbing was going to be more difficult than before - at least from a support perspective. So, I decided to take a look at why this was the case. And to be honest, it looks like a perfect storm created by so many independent changes acting together.

First, jungle is still a mess. No doubt about it. The timing of the camps, the overvalued scuttle, leveled monsters, and the excessive need to engage in vertical jungling are still causing problems in terms of ganks. In addition, the habits developed over the previous two seasons where one ganks when all the jungle farms have been exhausted is leading to ganks where there are not few resources available for the laners to help out the respective junglers.

Second, there has been a push by Riot to promote the use of champions that are solo carries. Big deal - right? This has meant that the high skill-cap solo-carry champions have been made easier for weaker players to play. More fun for all - right? Well, the problem is that the high skill-cap champions can solo-carry, but they can also solo-lose very easily. (This is especially true with the snowball mechanics that have been pushed these past two seasons.) Take a close look at the champions that Riot has pushed the player base to play - Riven, Yasuo, Qiyanna, Lee Sin, Akali, the reworked Irelia, and so on. Yes, they are fun champions (and great for esports highlights), but they leave the rest of the team helpless to deal with the problems created when they are unable to carry.

Third, damage and levels are out of sync. While the player base knows that the speeding up of the games has made it more exciting. Single items have power spikes that can prove tough for a lane opponent that is only one level behind to deal with (e.g., Infinity Edge) - let alone a visiting midlaner to the botlane which has one or two levels up on a targetted support and adc duo. If you increase the damage to levels where a player has no chance to react or counter the damage, then a player may quickly become disappointed or disaffected as a result.

Fourth, there seems to be some strange cross-role countering that have developed recently that weren't present before and probably were not planned. Here's what I mean. Let me pick for example two popular junglers, Yi and Khazix. Look them up on u.gg, and you will notice that the main counters to these champions are not other junglers but supports like Nami, Janna and Soraka (!). And I should point out that this has been a consistent trend. So, simply, we have champions in the game that are not countered by their lane counterparts but have to be countered by champions in completely different roles (that probably many players in the game are not aware of or would expect).

Fifth, and finally, the changes in season 8, extending into season 9, have increased the diversity of roles across multiple lanes. But this has come at the expense of a sense of comfort and control in the playerbase. And for those who are familiar with neuropsychology, they know that such situations can lead to the creation of a number of neuroses and strange behaviours (e.g., learned helplessness, superstitious and irrational behaviours, etc.). So, if you are seeing a toxic player in your game, then it is quite likely that these behaviours were triggered by the game not working in a logical manner, or at least in the way he or she expected.

In closing, this season has seen the rise of a new League. This is not the League that we have seen in previous seasons. The players have been given what they may think they want - but it is making them less happy as an overall result.