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Is gold funneling healthy for the game?

FirePro12··1 votes·2,378 views

So i stumbled upon a YouTube video while I was bored and it was about the gold funneling and I started thinking about it and I'm not sure if it is gonna be the most healthy thing for the game. I mean in some sense it is ideally what the ad carry and support meta is although to make a major lane like mid just roll over and willingly give up their gold to further someone else's gold pool just doesn't seem appealing to me. Yes, in the bot lane a support does a similar thing but they also have the ability to use items like relic shield to gain CS or they could simply just make a play that turns into a double kill and therefor giving that support some sense of accomplishment. One might receive the same level of accomplishment from holding a wave of minions for their jg and then when that jg comes to get the wave they may kill a mid laner and possibly even the enemy jg. All in all I just don't feel making this meta would be very healthy for the game but that could just be me. Any one else have an opinion re guarding gold funneling?

11 Comments

Nørse2 votes

I guess my prime issue with funneling boils down to one extremely simple issue.

It pushes you to a win condition (reward) while offering pretty much no risk. A funnel can reach their power spike without ever engaging their enemy, and then press their advantage when there is next to no chance they lose that fight due to said power spike.

Aptest1 votes

In theory, gold funneling is healthy for the game...

...because it presents an alternative macro strategy that is viable.

that is to say, instead of there being 1 way to play the macro game, which is 2 bot, 1 mid 1 top 1 jgl and try to gank lanes and get them ahead, now there are 2 strategies.

Generally in league there is only one most effective strategy at a time. That is a design weakness in league. Either teamfight deathball is best. Or split push is best. Or early dive comp is best. Or wave clear and poke is best. But funnel is not clearly the most effective, even though it is a big alternative.

that being said, there is a good case against funneling being good, which is that mid lane will become sucky to play.

Nørse1 votes

{quoted}

In theory, gold funneling is healthy for the game...

...because it presents an alternative macro strategy that is viable.

that is to say, instead of there being 1 way to play the macro game, which is 2 bot, 1 mid 1 top 1 jgl and try to gank lanes and get them ahead, now there are 2 strategies.

Generally in league there is only one most effective strategy at a time. That is a design weakness in league. Either teamfight deathball is best. Or split push is best. Or early dive comp is best. Or wave clear and poke is best. But funnel is not clearly the most effective, even though it is a big alternative.

that being said, there is a good case against funneling being good, which is that mid lane will become sucky to play.

The issue is gold funneling is non-interactive. You win the game by not addressing your opponents and actively avoiding them. If the game goes long enough, you inevitably reach your win condition with never having been pro-active.

Aptest1 votes

We see many variations on non-interactivity as a gateway to a win condition in the game. This is just a bigger scale variation:

Nassus or veigar are unhealthy for the game because of their weak early game and monstrous late? they seek to limit their interaction early while they farm. The same goes for Jax and Trynd, who have a win condition simply by reaching late game. Dealing with a late game jax feels absolutely horrible even if you are on par on items. Aurelian Sol and Taliah basically perfect the "do not interact while I push and roam" laning strategy.

In addition we have split push as a strategy in this game, which also actively seeks to avoid most fights.

Funnel strategies usually contest scuttles. So you can't claim them to be completely passive.

Nørse1 votes

{quoted}

We see many variations on non-interactivity as a gateway to a win condition in the game. This is just a bigger scale variation:

Nassus or veigar are unhealthy for the game because of their weak early game and monstrous late? they seek to limit their interaction early while they farm. The same goes for Jax and Trynd, who have a win condition simply by reaching late game. Dealing with a late game jax feels absolutely horrible even if you are on par on items. Aurelian Sol and Taliah basically perfect the "do not interact while I push and roam" laning strategy.

In addition we have split push as a strategy in this game, which also actively seeks to avoid most fights.

Funnel strategies usually contest scuttles. So you can't claim them to be completely passive.

No, funneling does not "contest" scuttles. Funnels, get the scuttles. You can't contest it in solo queue because your mid laner is pretty much never going to collapse with you, and even if they do. Funnels are two champions picked for working well together, meaning they have a distinct advantage in a 2v2, by extension you have to cede the scuttles.

FirePro121 votes

Personally I can see both sides of the argument and i suppose in some way it could be healthy in some ways. I guess just after something has been so concrete for so long in the game just kind of starts to collapse it scares people because if you're like me you might've spent a good amount of money playing the game so you just want to see healthy changes to the game so that the game can continue to flourish. idk that could just be me.

Aptest1 votes

currently IMHO there are two issues with respect to funneling strategies that are worthy of addressing, from RIOT's perspective.

1, that the carry part of the funnelers duo is usually a champion that is extremely oppressive and not fun to VS when he is ahead. If the strategy can consistently create a QQ scenario for the other team, irrespective of whether it is effective for winning, than the loss of fun merits attention.

2, that if funneling becomes obviously dominant over standard meta, Solo junglers will start attempting to play funnel, as the carry role, and demand from their mid/top to be funneled. The result is a game experience that is not satisfying for the mid / top player (these guys generally hate playing support), I.E. "best strategy = sucky game". Which also merits attention.

Aptest1 votes

In the case of the scuttle crab, it is not reasonable for you to claim, that funneling is avoiding conflict. The funnelers assert themselves into a contestable objective, and their opponents are the ones avoiding contact.

Critmaster Garen2 votes

{quoted}

The issue is gold funneling is non-interactive. You win the game by not addressing your opponents and actively avoiding them. If the game goes long enough, you inevitably reach your win condition with never having been pro-active.

"interactivity" is a term thats used too much as an excuse to maintain the game in a state of constant snowballing and clown fiestas.

people forget that league is a strategy game, and that strategies that dont rely on nonstop ganking and fighting should be just as viable. split pushing isnt technically interactive either. neither were certain forms of counter jungling. neither were farm lanes in which opponents didnt trade with each other and focused on cs leads, and denying minions.

the more "non interactive" strategies we remove, the more linear and scripted this game becomes. the more it turns from league of legends into your run of the mill death match.

Critmaster Garen1 votes

thats a good question with no real answer. where is the line?

gold funneling has been technically done since season 1 by funneling all the gold of bot lane into ranged carries. is this new gold funneling strat wrong, just because it works better than other strategies? then why wasnt or isnt funneling gold into marksmen an issue, considering it developed to be the only viable strategy for years?

i think the actual problem with the gold funneling srtat is why it works so well in solo que. because it mostly relies on superior communication of the duo compared to the enemy team. imo maybe its time to move duos out of solo que games and put them into flex.

the real problem isnt that it worked well, but more that it works well for boosters based on the line of communication with the person theyre boosting. nerfing the gold funneling strat in this sense is only fighting the symptom and not the cause.

even if gold funneling gets nerfed, it wasnt and wont be the first or last strategy that boosters are going to exploit. all of them so far were ultimtely based on better communication.

Provengreil1 votes

Funneling and game health is a bit of a weird conversation. Ultimately, I think it'd be a perfectly fine win condition, even with the whole non-interactivity thing, save for one issue:

The map itself dies too fast.

Overall, a funnel comp's concept is the same as a juggermaw comp, but atm the whole map dies too fast during what is ultimately a temporary power spike. level 18 6 items with elixer is as strong as that kaisa or whoever will ever reach, and if the enemy team ever catches up to her she SHOULD be screwed. It just doesn't really work out that way since the general snowball effect of the game is far too high right now, and "holding out and coming back" hasn't been an effective strategy since elder dragon became a thing.

Funnel comps push the carry into a power spike extremely fast, then rely on that power spike to end the entire game. This is only possible because Riot cut everyone's defenses, introduced craptons of mixed and true damage, added push power to several objectives, weakened said objectives, weakened turtle champions, and made towers successively easier, not harder, to take.

If this was really a strategy that would have been a good thing, it would have been seen long ago to almost auto win against the champions that act as time bombs on the opponent: Nasus, Kayle, Veigar, anyone who scales into a hypercarry late game but needs 3 items or some sort of time or minion based completion to really come online. However, winning the game not just on the back of, but entirely within a temporary power spike has never been viable before.

I don't like it. I don't like that everything and everyone can die in this kind of fashion. However, whether this is to be considered good is up to Riot in the end. The emergence of the funnel is a symptom of the state of the game, and it's up to them to decide whether they like it.

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