The Scales Are Tipped

As things stand at the moment, many different laners have certain complaints about each role. Mid laners often find themselves in spots where the meta changes so much for them that what they spent several hours investing in, could ultimately be nerfed into the ground by next patch. The mid lane meta is like a revolving door, never staying stagnant for too long. Top lane sees it's issues with the opposite of the former, it's been so one dimensional for quite a while now. It's been tank dominated, with certain bruisers being exceptions so long as they meet certain conditions. Those being things like team fight viability, sustain, or c.c. It seems long gone are the days of true lane victory, as long as their champion is better in a team fight ultimately most top laners feel there is only a certain extent to which they can carry, especially compared to the bot lane. Bot like top lane sees very little diversity, while certain items and champions have come in and out of the adc meta, ultimately there usually remains about 3 truly meta carries. At the time of this post, those would be Varus, Kog'maw, Tristana and (Only at her best when Rakan is present) Xayah. Not long ago, things like Lucian and Jhin were the standard for which everything was to be compared to, but isn't that diversity far too little? Ultimately, we're all slaves to the meta overlord, doing it's bidding or being thrown into the depths of hell that is bronze (it was a joke don't flame me). Supports like ADC's are very much little in diversity, towards the latter part of last season it was league of ardent, and bless you if you played anything other because those losses must have been tilting. Bot lane as a whole is also the most likely to snowball, meaning it also attracts the most jungle attention and rightly so. Bot tower is the easiest to take, there's two people for you to potentially kill instead of one, and you could get two members of your team ahead (or behind). As for jungle, it's been in an odd place for a while now. As it stands, and has stood for quite some time, it's either you gank or you stand there and wait for your camps to respawn. Obviously one would choose to gank, but due to the nature of some champions they aren't as good at ganking before level 6 as other champions. Nocturn, Amumu, etc. See a significantly harder time pulling off successful ganks without their ultimates. Meaning things like Amumu and Nocturn have seen little play for a while now, and things like sejuani, Zac, Lee sin, Elise, and so on have seen respectable play (all be it in and out of the top spot) because of the ineffectiveness of these "level 6 junglers."

Each lane has had its issues, but to every problem there is a solution. Here are my ideas for each: Top lane-

• Remove fortification on the top turret *Add more diverse items to the bruiser line *Increase the amount of solo gold earned from turret kills

As it stands, one can teleport from top to say bot for example, get a kill or two and come back to lane rather unscathed for the most part because it is so difficult to kill any turret besides bot early on. Increasing the solo gold as well as making it easier yo take the top turret, would make players have to assess the cost vs reward factor of leaving lane, making it so that lane dominant champions could still be viable even if their opposing laner were to leave and collect an advantage for their team. Also, the bruiser line has very little options in primary items. Ravenous hydra, Tri-force, and black cleaver have been the same 3 primary bruiser items for seasons now. While tanks have seen items added and changed in the form of abyssal mask, thornmail (bramblevest), frozenheart, etc. Adding more options for specific matchups and situations would help these bruisers be more flexible just as tanks have been for some time now.

Jungle- *Increase gold gained from camps *lower spawn times *Increase the cost and stats of jungle items

As things stand, farm heavy junglers do not have a respectable place in the meta. Reducing the spawn times and gold gained would allow them to amount an advantage if the enemy jungler were to either fail a gank or not get a kill. If they did get a kill, this would allow the "level 6 junglers" and farm centric junglers to still stay relevant enough so that the gank heavy junglers could not spiral the game out of control. This would also encourage counter jungling, in that if you choose to gank you could have that experience and increased gold stolen, once again encouraging a cost vs reward mentality. Lastly, increasing the cost of jungle items would mean that if you don't succeed in ganking then you can't just power farm for a bit and be in a similar state as the enemy jungler. Where as if you succeed, it could propel you to get that item spike faster and rewarding both smart play by you and costing poor play by laners.

Mid lane- *revisit the state of assassins *widen the option of ad assassins *Increase the gold gained from lane minions *Increase the solo gold gained from turret killing

Assassins have been the counter balance to mages since their creation. While most mages excell at aoe damage, c.c, or chain abilities, assassins primarily focus on a single target. Assassins without question are the biggest risk based playstyle in the game. Should you get behind, you are irrelevant unless you amount a respectable comeback. If you get ahead however, you are the cornerstone to your teams success. The options for your build however, are limited. Duskblade and youmoos have been the only real options for assassins since the creation of lethality. Edge of night hasn't seen near enough use because of its build up passive, which by comparison to it's mage counterpart banshees veil, has no build up time and becomes an instant spell shield. There should be more options for assassins to build, rather than just go ahead burst. Two items seems limited for any playstyle, but while adcs and tanks have seen items go up and down in priority, ad assassins have seen these two be their defining place in the meta. Increasing the gold gained from minions in mid would allow mages to get ahead in lanes against assassins who get bullied before level 6 (for the most part) and would make the assassins play style be even more on a knifes edge. Likewise, if the assassin is able to kill their laner, they could further amount a gold lead by catching up in cs. Should the assassin choose to roam, the mage can comfortably choose to continue farming and potentially take the gold increased turret to snowball themselves. In a mage vs mage matchup, we have seen a lot of roam heavy mages be able to taliyah, Aurelian sol, or twisted fate their way bot lane for instance and be able to get back to lane soon enough to not lose much. This shouldn't be the case, as mages without much mobility are then forced to either take teleport or gain little back to counteract their opponents roaming. This would allow for the immobile mages and assassins both to be able to be relevant in the event their counterpart roamed, creating a state of 3 respectable powers in mid lane. Lane mages, roaming mages, and assassins.

Adcs- *lower the crit chance of each item by 5% *Increase the cost of defensive items *lower the gold gained off of tower kills *Increase the cost of zeal based items *Increase the cdr gained from essence reaver *Increase the ad gained from Bork, BT, essence reaver, and IE

Bot lane is in the oddest place right now as widening the diversity is more difficult than with other lanes as supports factor in as well. As it stands right now though, crit based adcs reach their high point around 3 items. This should not be the case, the mid game is the assassin and mage domain, adcs that build scaling damage should be most relevant around 4 to 5 items. If ability based adcs like Lucian or varus choose to opt into more mid game based play styles, their late game should suffer. Increasing the AD on certain items gives them more of an immediate spike while lowering their crit chance makes them scale slower. Zeal based items in my honest opinion, are too cheap. Tri force for instance costs about a zeal item and a half, why with a little extra gold should you be able to get RFC and Shiv which greatly increase your tower taking ability if tri force (an item that increases ability damage and based around tower taking enhancment) is almost as much as the two items put together? It allows adcs to hit that spike all the faster, and with being able to potentially kill two people and having an easier time killing a tower, it makes it far too easy for adcs to snow ball. While I've mainly played adc and jungle this season, I have no problem with the adc role getting heavily tweaked as it is in a broken state at the moment. Especially since the defensive items are so cheap. Zhonyas costs almost 3k gold for mages, QSS, MAW, and even GA are all significantly cheaper. QSS is less than half and removes CC, MAW negates magic burst damage for only 1.3k gold, and GA for 2400g (if you take stopwatch) not only saves you like zhonyas does, but even refills your health bar! The defensive options for adcs are far too cheap, and for a role that should prioritize farm as much as the mid lane it's items are far cheaper in comparison.

Support- *Increase the movement speed on mobi boots *Increase gold gained from support items *lower the death times on wards placed from the support items

• Add a passive to gold items akin to kalistas oathsworn passive

Supports were created to do just that, support. They exist to help the team do better and make everyone's job easier. Increasing the speed of mobi boots let's them move around the map faster, putting down vision, maybe ganking mid, getting back to lane faster, etc. Allowing them to do their job faster is a good way to make them constantly relevant. To do that however, they need gold. Supports to no surprise, get the least amount of gold on average because they don't cs. Giving them more gold to become relevant faster rewards lane focused supports who look to kill or poke the enemy laner, and also rewards the ones who want to be mobile and affect the map more because they can get those items faster. However, while being able to place 3 wards at a time is definitely a good thing, shouldn't there be a cost for having 3 at a time compared to non supports who can only hold 2 normal wards at a time? This rewards good supports who stay on top of warding, and also punishes supports who don't. Lastly, there should be a bonus given to staying by your adc. If you're a support that likes to roam, good! You should be encouraged to do so! However, if you choose to lane and stay by your ally, you should receive some sort of bonus since you are normally at an item deficit. Depending on the item, coin could be "bonus 5 armor gained next to ally and bonus 1% movement speed for every minute next to assigned ally" for engage supports like Rakan. For spell theives, "increases ability power by 5 and gains 1 magic pen for every minute nearby assigned ally" allowing poke based supports to scale better. As for targons, it could be "gain 100 health and a 25 health shield for every minute next to your ally" making laning not as oppressive for supports like say alistar. All of these upgrading with their respective items of course.

Overall, league is a great game and it's success has proven that. However, even great things have flaws, and I feel like a lot of current flaws in the game could be reduced and the state of the game improved if we adopted some of these things I listed. Obviously this is my opinion, and I'm not a dev or a member of riot, but I've given a lot of thought to this and if even some of these changes were put into the game I feel like it could be beneficial for the game as a whole.

-See you on the rift, Silver Bishop :)