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Death timers are broken

Quantum313·3/2/2016, 7:55:25 AM·135 votes·5,667 views

The real problem with league now is that your team could be 10 kills and 6k gold ahead pushing down an inhib at 35 minutes. Your jungler goes a little too ham and your team gets aced trying to save him and lose because death timers are a minute long and towers are made out of wet toilet paper. I understand trying to make the games quicker paced, but the majority of games I lose now are ended because of one bad teamfight after 35 minutes of absolutely wrecking the other team.

There obviously will be different experiences when you look at better players, but I mainly am matched up with golds/low plats so youd think they wouldn't throw every game. Either the towers should be made a little more sturdy, or they should revert the death timers. I have been playing a lot of top lately so I haven't run into the problem as much, but when I played mostly ADC one wrong fight and you could lose your whole outer turret at 6-7 min to just the enemy adc. It got to the point where just not pushing your minion wave when you backed gave enough time for their bot lane to take it in one push. That seems like a very dramatic punishment for such a small mistake.

EDIT: IEM SPOILERS ~~For any disbelievers, go watch the first game of IEM Katowice. Even the casters thought they should only get an inhib because they are used to 5 previous seasons of balanced timers/towers. ~~

82 Comments

darkdill3/2/2016, 8:41:43 AM32 votes

Agreed. Lower the death timers so we don't have "League of Safeties" and people stop screaming for Lux nerfs.

Diananmen Square3/2/2016, 2:57:02 PM27 votes

This.

I literally just finished a game I shouldn't have won, but the enemy team got aced ONCE and we managed to walk half a map, break inhib and towers and get the nexus before anyone was even alive.

FioraWillCarry3/2/2016, 8:13:36 AM17 votes

Got my 1st penta on Azir a few hours ago and was able to win a game we were absolutely not supposed to win. We were way way behind on kills, gold, dragons and turrets. All because of long ass death timers.

Iqqi3/2/2016, 2:43:20 PM12 votes

So the story is Riot set out to reduce the overall length of games because asking the normal person to play 45+ min games was insane. Especially when you consider the huge number of games you have to play for anything to really matter or for you to go anywhere in ranked.

So their geniuses (who make 6 figures and have stock bonuses) decided the best way to do this was to increase the death timers after a certain point. Their idea was if you lose a team fight after X amount of time that unless you also kill 4 people on the enemy team, you just lost the game because of death timers. Lose a fight, lose the game.

It has been my experience that this has not reduced the length of games at all. In fact quite the opposite. See now instead of trying to push and fight after the 25-30 min mark everyone turtles and avoids confrontation for that "perfect moment" because they know if you fight and lose you have zero chance of winning the game. Even if the team doesn't have time to push and take the nexus, the increased time they do have means towers, barons, inhibitors, etc. etc. All of these things that provide bonuses to your team which only increase the likelihood of you winning the next fight (whenever that may be).

TLDR: Riots designers are really dumb. Or maybe their hands are tied by the people at the very top. By trying to reduce the length of games all they did was increase turtling and increase snowballing.

Rozair3/2/2016, 5:23:49 PM11 votes

Or you go all game without dying once and your 10/0/24 then you die and have a 1 min death timer

discopartyathome3/2/2016, 7:51:48 PM6 votes

I remember a thread about League having no comebacks and being a one sided stomp game. Now we're complaining about death timers being too long, which lets the enemy team comeback and end because of a dumb mistake the winning team made. sigh sigh

VMystikage3/2/2016, 8:10:09 PM6 votes

Then let your jungler die and don't die with him. Stop picking wrong fights. Stop getting caught. Death timers are fine.

OneSmoothDude3/2/2016, 5:47:03 PM5 votes

-_-

And if they raised death timers people would just complain that kills don't matter and that games are impossible to close out and there's no need to play early game champs because every game comes down to endgame teamfights.

I like having people be punished for mistakes, personally. It makes sense, and if it speeds up the game, I think it's a good idea. Not every game needs to be 45+ minutes.

KillerKell3/2/2016, 7:31:51 PM4 votes

Wait.

So let me get this right.

You have a Lead in Items, due to the Gold/Kill Lead.

Then your Jungle screws up... and instead of pulling back to defend with 4 you instead get yourself Aced.

And you're upset you lost? Why? You deserved to lose.

You failed to take the Advantage and close out the game, that's on your team. You were punished for making a really bad decision int he late game.

SoundChaosDebug3/2/2016, 7:57:55 AM2 votes

I lost a game like this because the team insisted on doing Baron, the recovery from baron wasn't enough time.

CoolKnightST3/2/2016, 9:56:53 AM2 votes

To be honnest, the same happend on 50 minutes previous season. Players just have to stop play deadmatch faster.

hgjkdlsaf jeldvb3/2/2016, 5:04:26 PM2 votes

both teams deal with it. Play with that in mind.

ZT Xperimentor3/2/2016, 5:58:30 PM2 votes

I concur, even just 1 kill at the beginning creates such a huge gap; the victim is now 2-3 waves behind in experience & gold, while the killer also gets to chunk the turret for 1/3-1/2 ontop of the level & item advantage.

Enrovy3/2/2016, 7:36:05 PM2 votes

Towers are so weak, they should ramp with champions, and a lot of champions are rendered near useless because their powerspikes either come late or unless you get fed so hard.

Sentinos3/2/2016, 10:21:07 PM2 votes

Honestly, it's part of the game. Imagine if you just killed the enemy carry that was fed and it cost you both of your bot laners. Now with reverted death timers, that guy just comes back to life and instantly 1v5 again. Without death timers, or shorter ones, there would be no penalty for playing bad or for dying. And in the end, if it was a game where the enemy team is already fed, a faster death timer would be useless because you would just be going back in to die again, and make your chances worse. With shorter death timers, there would be no point in killing the overextended guy before baron, because he would come back too fast. With shorter death timer, how will we push turrets in after we killed them if they come back really soon anyways. There would be no point in killing enemy champs, and there is no point in coming back faster, because you just died.

Clockwork Mouse3/3/2016, 3:52:49 AM2 votes

Better then the start of this season. Man it was awful. i go back to buy my BF sword, the jungler comes in, pushes the minion wave, and the tower is taken before i got back!

ModKnightsKemplar3/3/2016, 6:05:00 AM2 votes

Yup. You should win because you are ahead enough to win, not because you got a good opportunity when the other team was dead for a full minute at 30 minutes in.

Prozzak3/2/2016, 10:48:44 PM1 votes

Long death timers are the only reason teams behind ever have a chance to win a single game. Remove the long death timers and everygame is decided by the 15 minute mark instead of just 80-90%.

alvisez3/3/2016, 11:50:53 PM1 votes

i think that the problem is mostly related to the tower's health and the strenght of adcs to take them down. the problem is that an adc can take down a tower in few seconds. often the deaths timers are even too low. if the minions are pushing probably before 40 min an ace means nothing. i think riot should add something to make sure that an ace gives the right number of objectives always. something like bonus armor and mr to the next tower for 1 min after a tower in the same lane get down, immunity to the next tower if the first one gets down during the 60 seconds of armor boost. something like this. maybe longer deaths timers mid game so an ace means a tower even if the minions are pushing and the lenght of the game is the same because the only time taking more than 2 towers change the outcome of the game is when the victory get stolen

Mizaya3/4/2016, 12:04:13 AM1 votes

It's so that 35 minutes in, your team can't just screw around and still win the game.

tougherswede3/3/2016, 7:45:05 PM1 votes

I mean, if you lose a big teamfight at 35 minutes, maybe you shouldn't win the game.... Play more cautiously as the death timers get longer. If you have a decisive advantage then you should already be at a point where you have won the game. If you are just taking your first inhibitor at 35 minutes then it sounds like a pretty close game. Whoever wins a big team fight in the late game deserves to gain a big advantage from that, even perhaps winning the game.

DracosKasu3/2/2016, 6:13:05 PM1 votes

If the death timer was affected by how many tower you have lost instead of the time of the game it will be better. A team with 1 tower lost shouldnt have a bigger death timer then a team with 5 lost tower.

General Esdeath 3/2/2016, 5:16:20 PM1 votes

The idea was to punish people with a lead for falling behind

San5San3/3/2016, 9:31:45 PM1 votes

Im gonna agree with this one...death timers too long atm. Lost a game today at 40ish mins cause of one bad teamfight mid...enemy team went all the way through 4 whole towers, inhib and nexus before anyone respawned. We were ahead in every other aspect.

I dont consider this a skill thing either...like they executed a great team fight strategy and planned it out to win the game in this manner...thats not the case. They just got lucky in one fight...thats all it took.

I really think the timers need to be reduced around the 30-40 min mark. If the game gets close to an hour i think the long timers are ok...because at that point in the game that is the strat...win team fight and finish.