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5.16 is a miserable experience

Vekkna··143 votes·8,994 views

5.15 was already particularly miserable dealing with champs reaching preposterous god-mod power levels at sated. XinZhao MasterYi Warwick Shyvana Kayle Udyr Jax

5.16 brought us inherently god-mod powered champs that do insane damage, move ridiculously fast, and become virtually unkillable by midgame. Garen Skarner Mordekaiser Fiora

This in addition to all the existing champs that everyone hates for their obnoxious, overloaded, or toxic kits. Leblanc Yasuo Riven Fizz Irelia Vayne Vi Annie Blitzcrank Ekko

It's not even that all of these are a guaranteed loss, though some are close to it. It's that champ balance has become an arms race instead of focusing on balance. Instead of nerfing Devourer, we get a new group of champs that stand a chance against sated by being virtually unkillable to the rest of the champ pool.

Right now I feel like a bystander watching a deathmatch between Mega Zord and Rita's giant monster. Even wins aren't fun because I can hardly contribute to the outcome, let alone hope to carry anything.

Playing mages is just super miserable. Positioning well is meaningless when the enemy Garen or Skarner can just run through your entire team to the back line, chase you into base, take 8 turret shots, and run back to the team fight and clean up. Then you're like "wtf did this Garen build!" and you see that he lost lane hardcore and has only built two items.

TL;DR: Balance is not an arms race. Hopeless matchups and being dead on sight are not good gameplay. There are too many broken champs to handle in bans. Even winning isn't fun with the amount of bullshit in 5.16.

216 Comments

A Miss Fortune49 votes

I want to play Syndra

Not happening when the enemy Yi kills me in less than a second doing 500+ true damage, the enemy Garen takes 0 damage from my ultimate, and the enemy Fiora just straight up blocks it.

Well at least she'll have true damage like almost every other new champion/rework.

BioticBrony8 votes

I am sorry to say that they reverted the changes back to live status

http://www.newsoflegends.com/index.php/wip-pbe-2408-changes-to-darius-garen-fizz-janna-and-skarner-new-project-summoner-icons-45507/

Sassmast3r1 votes

I want to play Miss Fortune xD, teach me your ways senpai <3

A Miss Fortune6 votes

There's not much to know about Miss Fortune. She's pretty simple and by all means viable, and probably one of the strongest solo queue ADCs. She not only is one of the most flexible and reliable ADCs, but she also has one of the highest damage outputs for all ADCs and is also the tankiest with only base stats. She also does mixed damage so It's impossible to fully itemize against her.

The community has a stupid myth that she's unviable, when she actually use to be extremely overpowered when she was released and even after a ton of nerfs she was still extremely strong. She was nerfed a while ago so that she couldn't just walk into lane and 100-0 you in a few seconds, but I think she's really balanced and healthy now. She statistically also does better than most ADCs in pretty much everything in pretty much all elo in solo queue.

Binxy Prime18 votes

While I am not having the same experiences as you are I understand your point and frustrations. If you are playing a mage like champ and you aren't focused on utility you tend to get run down. I have been finding a lot of success on Lulu and champions like Lulu that can kite those champions endlessly and easy do to low cd consistent damage with consistent slow application. This lets you actually hurt them since most build armor still while also kitting them, and they cant just use a riven e or some other low cd ability to dodge all of your stuff.

I do feel kind of bad for assassins though since they can only really win if they snowball the early game right now. Don't get me wrong a fed assassin is still insanely strong but they are virtually no threat late game if they aren't crazy fed. And as Lulu I can just W most of them even if they are and we win fights.

I do still hate the devourer jungles though, they get way too strong too fast. Not only are most of them usually very strong early game so you have to deal with snowballs but now they have a fallback pattern so that the game generally only goes 2 ways. They gank get fed get douverer super duper early and crush your team. OR they gank put your team behind a lot but they dont get kills or assists then they farm and come back late game super fed and crush your team.

Shield Villain15 votes

Every Garen I've played against for the last few days was essentially unkillable. I'd understand if he did no damage, but the fact he has a lot of kill potential now is just annoyingly absurd.

pacifishstick5 votes

Garen always had kill pressure. Now he just has more kill pressure but less mobility.

Shield Villain4 votes

Less mobility? item 3742 item 1306 All he needs is MS which he builds anyways, and with Dead Man's plate he essentially gets to become both tankier and faster.

I've seen garens rush into battle, and then immediately use Q to escape at about 500 movement speed despite only having 2 MS items, and a mostly tank build. And his Ult isn't really kill pressure, it's more of a slap to the face to anyone doing well in game. So even if you win trades against him, he's still going to do well against you.

Galewings6 votes

I agree.

Can we just revert to the cinderhulk days? Seriously I'd rather take a broken as fuck Sejuani and Gragas over all this Assasin/Bruiser/Devourer crap that runs around rampant.

Keevalroy3 votes

Aside from the Sej and Grag issue, the cinderhulk meta was the most healthy, balanced, enjoyable, and most accepted meta we've ever had. When will the balance team understand that not everything needs to be #LCSBigPlaysSwagYoloAirhorn for League to be fun? Maybe stop drooling over pro scene content and go back to being a player focused company instead of spectator focused.

JAGMAG4 votes

no the cinderhulk was not health as a adc i freaking hated it to many jungles were suddenly unkillable until i picked up a full 6 item build

KimchiFryRiceGG6 votes

I don't usually complain about champs being OP but Garen and Skarner are just ridiculous, i destroyed a garen in lane both in kills and cs and STILL he managed to come back...that and he had a fed skarner jg...it was utterly frustrating...

Really Garen was useless and annoying before, now he is annoying and OP....i think this is Riot's way of giving noobs a easy ass champ and saying go wild! thinking that substitutes for good mechanics and last hitting....

LittleRenen5 votes

Amen. Where is the patch to fix all of this? I can barely play without getting stressed over a Garen or a Mord that's 1v5ing the team and no level of outplay fixes the situation cause they just come back to murder us all. Where is a Rioter on this topic? Oh wait... Riot doesn't care about their player base unles You're LCS level and think something is off.

MasqureMan4 votes

If they are running through your team to the back line, either you don't have much CC or it's not being used right. Alternatively, they are just engaging better. If all else fails, kill them. Death is the best cc.

BluePolarizer2 votes

A Garen can tank a sated devourer/BoRK master Yi. Even full tank Nasus has a hard time doing that. If you don't have a fed ADC that is peeled for (using multiple hard CCs) you can't stop Garen very easily. His fast spin also scales hard with cleaver.

Skarner has Master Yi levels of attack speed in his shrines while building full tank.

darkmatchwaldo4 votes

Every game i've played recently has been my team ff at 20 or their team ff at 20. I don't even have much fun winning. There's no satisfaction of winning by taking nexus...the game kinda just ends randomly. If we're behind there's no turtling until my team can catch up in farm and steal a baron to turn the tides. 15-6 20 minutes in? Better ff and start over, nevermind the fact that the game is completely winnable if we play smart.

DarthSpectrum4 votes

I understand your point.

It is almost as if Riot is obliged to release more loaded champions to quell the last one they released. Some of these champions such as Fiora or Yasuo actually have some drawbacks as signified by their mediocre win rate despite high pick rate. However, most of these champions don't actually have signify weakness to justify their strength, such as Vayne or Annie

The problem with this predicament that the Arms Race started a lot time ago. Players didn't complain enough when Riot released Fizz, which led to Riot releasing similar champions such as Ekko Players didn't ask for enough Annie nerfs despite her insane burst and CC, which led to champions such as Viktor

At some point, Riot needed to make better champions to fight their previous atrocities.

Vekkna6 votes

Fiora actually has the highest win rate in top lane right now, neck and neck with Garen

The mobility arms race is definitely a thing, and people have been very aware of it. Most of those champs could be pretty easily killed if you could catch them, assuming you could actually target them before they killed you.

The problem with the new juggernauts is that they WILL catch you, you cannot catch them, and if you do manage to catch them with cc or an intercept, they still probably won't die.

The problem with the devourers is that they can afford to build tanky but still do assassin-level damage with adc-level lifesteal.

Madara8964 votes

I am not even enjoying league anymore. I played 4 matches straight today all lost and 3 were surrenders. Why? Because of the champions listed here. Also When I do a qq thread everyone starts giving arguments that it is not op and give bullshit "counter tips" but I can see here most are agreeing. Anyways, devourer is just too op. We were losing so hard vs a carrying jungler lee sin and I was playing jungle devourer irelia and then I finished my stacks, got a few kills and got my 2nd and 3rd item. Of course we won. Everything with devourer is op. My friend really can't play mid ad assasins he also doesn't really like them he only accepts playing mages and he recently bought malzahar. He played 5 games and 4 were lost and the win was he being carried cause mages are so terrible to play right now. League was so fun without runeglaive and sated devourer.

DazedOnlooker2 votes

I see what your saying, 99% of my games had a Shyvana or Elise jg, and each time my team got stomped to the center of the earth because they were unkillable by the time they hit lvl 8. Shyv and Garen can tank straight to the moon and back without taking much damage at all, even when focused down. And if we ignore them they get tons of free damage off on us. I just could not comprehend how they were able to tank and deal tons of dmg.

The Shyv in my last game had a sated, boots and a item 3068 but she was still able to tank damage from me and my turret until she destroyed my turret. She literally ignored me while she took out my turret, And then she was even able to run away from me afterwards because her movement speed was much faster than mine...i swear it felt like i was playing against a Nasus who stacked into infinity.....I mean, i felt like i wasted my time going to protect that turret from her....like i should have just left her alone in that lane by herself....I felt so useless and utterly humiliated because i was playing Sejuani jungle, and i built full tank since i was the only tank on my team, i had no damage what so ever. She chunked my hp down soooo much just by me being near her attacking her because she was wearing a Sunfire......

And during teamfights my teammates would be much to scared to go in, so i would **VERY OFTEN **end up going first and engaging the enemy team..and backup would not come until i was already dead..this happened more times than i could keep track of..like seriously guys it wasn't like i went in while you all were running in circles 10 feet away..they were in range to come help, but they were too scared , and we would then end up getting picked off. I ended up going from the teammate with the least amount of deaths to the status of "The biggest feeder" on my team with over 100 wasted Ults because my team would just run around like derps ,missing skillshots instead of attacking while the entire enemy team was either Q'd and/or Permafrosted..

RisenDarkKnight4 votes

Agreed the juggernauts are way to frustrating to play against as mages that aren't cassiopea, azir, or devourer kayle. With the new MR buffs regular mages just can't kill tanky champs, especially garen. And of course skarner is permaban status and morde is ridiculous in lane (I'm level 6 when you're level 4 and I'll keep the xp lead all game)

500 Minions4 votes

Vayne Riven and Yasuo are super high skill cap. Their kits are designed to have a lot of outplays. I think they are fine. Fizz is really not op. His ult can be dodged and if he missed that, he can't do anything to you. Garen and Skarner are really op now. Look at Skarner 's win rate on champion.gg : 65%. WTF? 65! 65! If that's balanced, I don't know what's not. I remember some pros said Garen is still going to be Garen , he is not going to be op, but no, his win rate gone up from 49% to 55%, the 2nd best of top laners. He is not brocken like Skarner , but he is definitely not the old Garen that no one pick anymore. And MasterYi is pretty good even his item 3710 is not sated... I played his a few times not, even with his passive bug (not reducing Q's cd by 2 seconds), I do really well.

SteelStallion9 votes

[{quoted}](name=500 Minions,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=mxHHteNt,comment-id=001a,timestamp=2015-08-24T21:03:56.406+0000)

Vayne Riven and Yasuo are super high skill cap. Their kits are designed to have a lot of outplays. I think they are fine.

LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL

RIVEN IS HIGH SKILL CAP BOYZ

Earthpine3 votes

I think she is, whenever I play her I feed to high hell. I don't know how other people do it but she actually does require thinking and how to use what when. Unless it's running away. Then just spam Q and E and if the enemy gets close then press W. OR I just suck at early aggressive champs.

Trias0004 votes

She has a lot of 'tricks' like animation cancelling and such, that you just have to master to be really good with her. Although, to be honest, to me it kinda seems like glitches that players abuse. Certainly not a good champion design.

Earthpine2 votes

I just don't get her, how do you do the level 3 cheese? How do you get kills all the time? You need to play her for quite a while to be able to do animation canceling in a high pressure situation, like a teamfight without dieing. Or to be able to trick the enemy into chasing you to kill them. OR I'm just really bad at Riven like I am with Lee Sin and Nidalee (ONE DAY I WILL LEARN TO THROW THOSE SPEARS WELL, ONE DAY).

BluePolarizer4 votes

Vayne is not high skill cap. There's only 3 plays in lane you do with her:

  1. Are you stronger than the enemy ADC? All in.
  2. Are you weaker than the enemy ADC? That's fine, they can't touch you so just farm safely. There is no pressure. Unless you are going against Kog, you outscale every other ADC anyways so there's no danger in them also farming.
  3. Are you only slightly weaker than the enemy ADC but they're mispositioned (here defined as "standing anywhere not in the middle of lane")? Condemn and all in.

Teamfighting:

  1. Are you being dived? Q away from CC cuz lol instant low CD mobility and just hit them.
  2. Are you not being dived? Just stand there and auto their front line cuz you melt them almost as fast as a squishy.
  3. Are you engaging? Great! Nobody can run away from you due to Q and your BS passive.
  4. Have you lost the fight? No problem, condemn the most dangerous enemy away and escape with stealthQ->flash over wall, hit jungle camp to reset Q.
Trias0004 votes

Riot, can you please test your shit before releasing it? Skarner is so OP it's not even funny. Garen is only slightly behind him. Is PBE's only purpose to show off new skins on Youtube?

RoyaiChaos4 votes

Well all the feedback on the boards were "OMFG Skarner so useless now" ...

Jeanne fan club4 votes

Ap is pointless when bruisers do more damage than assassins, are tankier than hypertanks because of mechanics in their kit, and almost all bruisers have some sort of gap closer and naturally counter ap because of this. There is NO point in having ap on your team after the recent armor changes. sure randuins lowers crit damage, but bruisers don't crit. Not to mention that a lot of bruisers have an armor reduction feature in their kit, and they almost always build black cleaver. Its not like last whisper is hard to build either.

Squidblimp4 votes

I played against a full tank Garen the other day. I was Vel'Koz. I did over 80,000 damage by the end. He did over 75,000. How is that fair?

LilxPaprika3 votes

i will say that i think some champions which weren't broken got a healthy bump from the new items. for example item 3053 is really cool on Chogath as well as Galio or even Poppy i've had really good result with both these junglers. which hardly see any play atm, have been relegated to low jg tier. I hope this elevates their presence a bit.

Krully11 votes

{quoted}

i will say that i think some champions which weren't broken got a healthy buff from the new items. for example item 3053 is really cool on Chogath as well as Galio or even Poppy i've had really good result with both these junglers. which hardly see any play atm, have been relegated to low jg tier. I hope this elevates their presence a bit.

you can get almost 1000 true damage on cho with two ap items, hes not balanced

LilxPaprika6 votes

{quoted}

you can get almost 1000 true damage on cho with two ap items, hes not balanced

ap cho is harsh agreed. borderline broken. its not unlike say veigar however. Ap cho comes with some costs as you'll likely be significantly squishier.

His ult did get a low channel time- though this was a refreshing change. Due to this i can see its ap ratio get hit, maybe only more dmg if target is low. or the other way around more dmg if target has high hp. i like to open up with his bite often. to let my team know who to take out first. but doing this telegraphs and gives enemy team chance to disengage/react

but this cho would remain viable as i wasn't going for an ap heavy build.

YumaS2Astral7 votes

{quoted}

ap cho is harsh agreed. borderline broken. its not unlike say veigar however. Ap cho comes with some costs as you'll likely be significantly squishier.

His ult did get a low channel time- though this was a refreshing change. Due to this i can see its ap ratio get hit, maybe only more dmg if target is low. or the other way around more dmg if target has high hp. i like to open up with his bite often. to let my team know who to take out first. but doing this telegraphs and gives enemy team chance to disengage/react

but this cho would remain viable as i wasn't going for an ap heavy build.

AP Cho is unfortunately a necessary evil. If weren't for him, assassins would have free reign on the mid lane against all mages. Currently, Cho is the reason why you can't just instalock Katarina, for example. Yes, there are other champions who can counter her, such as Diana or Annie. But they have a harder time doing so since they lack the same attributes that let Cho take out Kat, such as his innate tankyness, reliable CC, and sustain. Other Kat counters tend to lack sustain, and/or their CC has a delay, and/or they are squishy, etc.

The same thing with Zed. And Talon. And all other assassins.

Also, AP Cho'Gath is only really squishier than tank Cho because he is not building heavy resistances. However, being able to do significantly more damage more than compensates this fact.

ImSoFull3 votes

{quoted}

ap cho is harsh agreed. borderline broken. its not unlike say veigar however. Ap cho comes with some costs as you'll likely be significantly squishier.

His ult did get a low channel time- though this was a refreshing change. Due to this i can see its ap ratio get hit, maybe only more dmg if target is low. or the other way around more dmg if target has high hp. i like to open up with his bite often. to let my team know who to take out first. but doing this telegraphs and gives enemy team chance to disengage/react

but this cho would remain viable as i wasn't going for an ap heavy build.

building zhonyas and ROA and then 4defense items shouldnt let him 100-0 eveything while being tanky as hell.

gaby1best4 votes

And you need to get into melee range to do that. While you have no dashes. And your only hard cc is Q, which can be dodged by any player who's not half brain-dead.

SociopathFriend4 votes

Wow- 1000 true damage on an ability that is only just above melee range- boy that has zero counters doesn't it?

Champion Skin5 votes

For Cho'gath ult to actually deal 1000 damage he would need 500 AP which means he would have a lot of AP items and most likely be rather squishy (at least compared to tank Cho'gath)

Castman3 votes

I dont mean to be mean but judging by the champions you have listed I can actually see some diversity there.

Vekkna11 votes

My argument is essentially that the gap between god tier and everything else has widened enormously without any skill requirement. Assassins can be frustrating, but at least caught = dead a lot of the time.

Castman5 votes

I agree with your point man. I do. But I guess I'm trying to point out the upside in this, which is within that group of "god tier" champs with overloaded kits, I can actually see more than 3-4 champs being abused. We have a bigger "superior group of champs" than usual. You feel me?

Vekkna7 votes

Definitely, and that's why it feels unusually frustrating. A smaller pool means you can manage somewhat with bans and then the team can gangpile the one or two that end up on the other team.

With a group this large, you just have to hope your team has more of them. If you're not in the FOTM club, the difference used to be less than it is now where you're essentially relegated to being a spectator of your own game.

DirkTarTar2 votes

Viktor nerfs. Don't forget those Viktor nerfs.

hgjkdlsaf jeldvb2 votes

I gotta say, I chose a bad week to come back to this game. Fiora, Garen, Skarner, and Morde are all fucking insane. It's never felt worse to be a mid laner between all the mr items going to buff city, and new bruisers to destroy them. I've never actually felt like playing singed was a a detriment, but I'm honestly scared to take him top anymore because I'll be outclassed all game by the new top laners. Skarner has a 65% winrate and hasn't been hotfixed for some reason. Meanwhile, there's still no effective way to deal with a fed ADC. Zeke's Harbinger is literally the dumbest fucking item they've ever released. Who looked at ADCs and said "you know what would be cool? Giving them 8 seconds of having a 7th item, just in case 6 items is somehow not enough"?

Wukong and Heimer are still broken too. Aside from Morde and Lucian being outliers though, it looks like most ADCs are pretty close to each other in how heavily they dominate games, so I guess Riot got all the darts in the same area here, even if it is 2 feet to the left of the dart board.

dEAdbUs2 votes

Where is my 5 bans? If implement 5 bans, Riot will see WHAT actually people hate to play against.

Gafugarion2 votes

I'm glad I'm not the only one that noticed this trend. The power creep is crazy. In the tank meta I could pretty much get away with playing any jungle, now its all devourer all the time unless I'm goofing around(or playing Elise who got overbuffed lol.) Then the Juggernaut patch comes and we have about 5 more champs that need bans on top of all the bans we added in the devourer patch so there's always something broken and unfun getting into every game lol. Also nerf Vayne, 35%+ pick rate means she's crowding out the competition bot by way too much and needs adjustments.

What I find funny is they are making all these sweeping changes just before worlds... Totally killing the balance they were getting to mid season.

Seekêr2 votes

League before ghostcrawler: no power creep WoW with ghostcrawler: power creep by cc fest League with ghostcrawler: Power creep and horrible balance changes Wow without ghostcrawler: The game is more balanced now than it has ever been IMO

Tbh, he's just the face we like to blame. But sometimes i feel like he goes in a game "herp derp, lost to champion "x" better nerf next patch". Example) Kicking kassadin while he was down.

arcinex1 votes

Garen right now is ridiculous. Needs a nerf ASAP.

Pre-rework: Hard af to kill with moderate damage Post-rework: Even more hard af to kill with insane damage, not to mention incredibly fast.

zmmby2 votes

Indeed, Garen is just too OP.

He had like 2-7 and i was Vel'Koz with 13-0 and still have problem killing him, he just keep fucking me up

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