When people were complaining about shields or healing, they wanted more widely available counterplay. What they didn't want is for you to select a small handful of champions that just completely remove mechanics from specific champions by pressing a fucking button. Is the future of League just going to be glorified rock-paper-scissors?
They seem to misinterpret "strategy". Strategy to them is who you pick. Strategy to me is considering long-term maneuvers and lane pacing.
You know how people say it's just a senseless meme to say "lol rito balances around LCS"? This is a good example of this statement being legitimate. I feel they're making the game about counterpicking because they play up the draft phase in LCS broadcasts to a ridiculous degree. This allows them to do even more of that. Counterpicking is a nice, simple thing that even a dolt can see happening during the draft, so it draws even more players into LCS viewership (in theory).
glorified rock-paper-scissors
Welcome to top lane!
because they dont want skill to exist and/or counterplay. instead make counterpicking king
Riot has minimized skill in a lot of ways in the past couple of years; why is this surprising? To be honest, this post (although I agree with it) doesn't even contend with one of the top 5 problems that reduce the impact of skill in the game. Here is my list: 1) shut down gold, 2) shutdown xp, 3) prevalence of broken champions, 4) drake rng, 5) shutdown death timers. Some of these things aren't explicitly acknowledged by Riot; they don't claim that there is something called shutdown experience in LoL. Instead, they exist in their effects.
All in all, it isn't a shocker that Riot's balance team is making another unpopular implementation. We are lead to believe that because Riot's primary interest is in their own bottom line (financially speaking), that they will be more inclined to make changes that the majority wants. But the majority isn't necessarily where the money is at. Think about it, why is it that Riven's 55%+ w.r in solo queue lasted for a period of months? The majority of us complained about it on Reddit, and through other mediums, but Riot did nothing to nerf her. The reasoning behind this, is that despite comprising only 15%-25% of the community, Riven players invest far more of their money into skins. Remember that it only took Riot about a week to nerf Amumu who hit the same win ratio this year. What is the difference between these two champions? The fact of the matter is that Riot can make unpopular changes to the game that cater to a minority audience, because the majority audience the implementations may displease is unwilling to stop investing in the game in the short term, which makes the toxic implementations profitable for Riot. However I will say, every time a new, popular PC game comes out, Leagues numbers take a substantial hit; although they recover eventually, they do so to a lesser extent each time. Riot's catering is good for short-term gratification, but in the end it is bad for the games longevity. Eventually a string of novel pc games will will steal what remains of the player base, who are frankly getting fed up with Riot's bs.
Ya I was thinking the same thing to... they seemed suddenly interested in adding in counterplay that was super specific. Shield busting and the 60% healing reduction on 2 champions each? Thats a sign of a very troubling trend, I dont think anyone things league needs to be more rock paper scissor based.
But like honestly... wtf is happening at riot? Seems like each patch is just a new way to make the game less fun than the patch before it... but hey here's some new project skins : /
Counterpicking hardly matters below masters lol, stop creating excuses.
Because the balance team is a bunch of overpaid hacks
Team comp is important too. People might say "Doesn't matter, you're low elo", but I have literally had games where people have played three ADCs with no tank. Thankfully, the enemy had an AFK, but even then, it was a close match. But yeah, right now it's just praying your teammates pick something that synergizes well into the comp, and having a wide enough champ pool to adapt to your team comp's needs.
It does feel pretty random; I've seen good players with great micros lose games just because the enemy team had a better comp, or lots of cancerous counterpicks.
oh my god this, what in the ACTUAL fuck were riot thinking.. this patch makes me want to never play league again. riot doesnt have a fucking clue.
I really think that theres no a real game philosophy for them to follow, i mean one patch there are working different people and the next match Riot moved that people and their philosophy into another game (like TFT) or into another project (like ranked rework that didn't work). One time they remark the soft counters being healthy, then they just make hard counters even more harder and annoying to play against even more for new players. One time they make "funny overloaded original champions" and after a year they just delete their mechanics, like theres no leader or game pholosphy behind game design and champion balance, it's just a bunch of people coming and exiting.
Its cause MORONS complained about Shields and heals. So riot takes that to mean Healing and shielding champions are too strong. When what is actually happening is people dont like that they focus an important squishy damage carry and that damage carry suddenly gets a heal that allows them to live due to their lifesteal or built in saftey in their kit which only matters because if you dont instantly kill those champions they kill you and get away scott free.
