Mark/Dash Feedback From a 2600 ARAM Player

I'm going to try to let my frustration subside and just start with this. Mark was the last thing ARAM needed.

So let's talk about the problem you wanted to fix, what you should really be addressing, and what's happening now.

#What's the problem?

The problem you intended to fix is that some champions, primarily melee, have very low win rates. Poke comps are also perceived as extremely strong, whereas melee comps can't stand up to the poke and just sit under tower dying. Let's make a look at some of the symptoms that people are experiencing:

• Some games just feel like you're sitting under tower.
• Some games you just get poked down.
• Some games you get out-sustained.

In response to these symptoms, you added a spell that lets champions start fighting. Poke comp spamming poke? Now you can engage! Sitting under tower? Now you can engage! Sona healing 24/7? You get the idea.

Let's take a look at the 15 lowest win rate champions on ARAM for the last month according to lolking, ranging from 31.3% win rate to 41.9%. Keep in mind this is data for all levels of ARAM play:

Remember those champions and what their win rate range is. What do they all have in common? You'll notice that the majority of those champions are melee, non-tanks. Very few of them have poke or wave clear, and almost all have gap closers and engage tools. Actually, 7 of those 15 are also in the lowest 15 on SR.

#What's really the problem?

Again, note that almost all of those low win rate champions have engage. LACK OF ENGAGE IS ALMOST NEVER THE PROBLEM. I'll sum up what is almost always the problem with an anecdote:

A couple months ago I played on my smurf (regular smurf, none of my accounts are ARAM smurfs) with some friends from work. We had a range heavy comp and they had a melee heavy comp. Everyone on their team started offensive items. We'd push a wave into their tower and start getting tower damage. Anyone on their team that had no ranged skill would run away while anyone that did have a range skill would try to get some poke on us. Eventually we safely poked down the tower, poked them down, and got a gold lead. Then they'd be forced to engage us and lose due to our huge gold lead.

The equivalent of doing this on SR would be the following. You're playing Akali top against Jayce and you decide to start amp tome. Jayce pushes you into your turret, and instead of using your Q to last hit you harass. Once the tower dies and you're down 70 CS to 30 CS you engage him and get shit on.

In both of these cases you're in a difficult match up, but you're making it so much worse than it needs to be. In that ARAM match the other team could have started regen and defensive items first. You're not going to get use out of a pickaxe and doran's blade if you can't auto attack. They could have spend their skills clearing the wave instead of trying to land poke that won't stick. They could have not sat so far back they weren't even in experience range. They could avoid engaging as much as possible until our damage naturally falls off and they start picking up. You wouldn't play Nasus for his early game on SR, so don't try to play Jax as an early game hypercarry on HA. This all sounds like people just playing stupidly, but that really is a huge part of the problem. It comes down to people thinking that ARAM is all about fighting 24/7. They lose all respect for power curves, strategy, and smart play in general. I'm not pretending there aren't some real problems, but as long as people treat ARAM like a troll mode then they're going to complain it's not balanced regardless of whether or not it is.

#But let's get back to Mark and Dash

Let's look at the daily data on ARAM now that it's out. The lowest 15 win rates, ranging from 32.4% to 41%, belong to...

Hmm... pretty much all the same. But let's look at how some other champions have changed since M/D was released:

53.97% -> 59.87% 54.86% -> 58.72% 54.03% -> 56.74% 48.87% -> 52.44% 55.06% -> 59.08%

You get the idea. With the exception of Alistar these are all champions that were very strong already and have mostly strong engage and CC tools. What's happening now is that these champions don't need to depend on their own tools to start fights. They now have an extra extremely low risk gap closer that they can follow up with the CC they would have otherwise used to close the gap. Amumu is a perfect example of this that I've played and seen several times since the patch. You land Mark near a priority target, you Dash, ult, and land a Q you'd be hard pressed to miss. If you miss Mark you still have Q, so the enemy can't punish you for it.

Edit: Most upvoted thread is click bait about how fun tanks are to play in ARAM now. Yes, please cite your almost 60% win rates as a sign of balance.

Now let's look back at the bottom 15. They're almost unanimously very mobile champions that have very little problem engaging. I can tell you from experience why every single one of them is weak in ARAM.

Generally weak overall with higher skill floor. Magical journey is nearly useless on HA. Pick focused champion that doesn't do well in large teamfights on SR. No different on HA. Pick focused, hard to find an isolated target. Like most assassins getting behind means staying behind. Pick focused, easily peeled. Can't split push or use mobility to out roam. Power budget goes into stealth which is much less useful on HA. Unlikely to get a teammate with a knockup and has to provide his own. Can't harass like he can in lane on SR because breaking his shield means taking 5x the amount of damage. Stealth reveal items shit on her. Basically a 4v5 pre 6. The one champion I'd argue for having a real problem with engage pre 6. Can't flank and mobility means much less on HA. Can't roam on HA. Enemy likely will have aegis early on. Hard time using his built in sustain. Passive usually down due to frequency of team fights. Can't split push like he can on SR. Win rate hovers around 46% on SR already. Honestly in ARAM I see a lot of people play her like she's the old AP trist. Has a hard time making it to late game, which is exacerbated by players that don't put in the effort to stall for late game. Win rate also hovers around 43% on SR. Again, hyper mobility not so useful on HA. Needs to wait to finish a big mana item. Again, low win rate on SR already. Mage Elise is squishy and not very effective later in the game. Tank/CDR Elise is ignorable outside of her stun. Power on SR comes from map awareness and global presence. Neither of those are very useful on HA. Strength on SR comes from late game split pushing. Again, people don't like trying to get to late game and split pushing has no power here. Squishy late game carry that needs peel. Vayne doesn't win without it on SR, same goes here.

So I think I've beaten my point to death that engage is almost never the problem. The exception being pre-6 Akali, but stealth items are a much bigger problem for her than making it to 6. Anyway, not only is engage not the problem, but globally adding engage is not balance-able in ARAM. For any of those champions that get a little extra kick out of it you're going to have someone like Maokai that becomes an even bigger monster. If you nerf it you're nerfing it because of the strong champion, not the weak champion that didn't get stronger in the first place.

Not only that, but look at gameplay of pre-patch ARAM vs post-patch ARAM. It completely changed the dynamic of the game into dodgeball. If you want that then bring poro king back. This isn't ARAM anymore.

#Ok, we get it. Mark isn't helping. So what will?

First off, I want to see bucketed data. SR is balanced around players that know the game. HA should be as well. So few people truly complain about unwinnable comps in higher play. Sorry guys, but if you don't want to put the effort into learning a game mode then it shouldn't be balanced for you. That goes for any map. The few times I play Dominion I suck at it and lose to champions I think are OP. I'm sure they're not, and it's just me not knowing how to play.

With good data, we can actually look at the real problems. Finally, here are the real problems and some easily tunable mechanic ideas to fix them.

Early game wave clear

• Reduce the damage taken by the outer turrets for the first few minutes of the game. This stops heavy ranged comps from pushing down your tower immediately while not punishing pushing later on.

• Add a wave clearing laser on the outer that charges up when your team nearby and decays when nobody is around. By always requiring nearby teammates this will only be effective if your team is stuck under turret. Since it's only on the outer turret the effect should not be much of a factor later in the game.

Hard time making it to late game

• Increased health for the outer health relics that decays while the relic is left up (think reverse bard heal). The effect fades away as the game approaches 10 minutes. If your team is pressuring then you have to walk back, making you both spend extra time to get the relic and not get the full heal. If your team is getting pressured then you get the full effect. Unless the other team pushes you behind your inner turret very early then they can't take advantage of your relic.

• Increase the effectiveness of lifesteal on melee champions for the first few minutes of the game.

Inability to push towers as melee early

• Reduce (ranged) AoE damage taken by minions for the first few minutes of the game. This lets melee champions that win a fight have a little more time to hit a tower before having to run back out.

• Provide a small shield for champions near melee minions as they approach towers. The shield disappears upon damaging an enemy champion. This lets melee champions get a hit or two in without getting poked hard. The second part is to prevent it from being used to dive.

These are all mechanic that directly address the root of most melee champions' problems.

The last thing I want to say is that I understand that some people think that, regardless of balance, Mark is spicing ARAM up and it's fun. But it's fun in the same way that URF was fun. It's a good break from SR, but it quickly gets old for a lot of people. The difference here is that dedicated ARAM players can't go back and play normal ARAMs like URF players could go back to SR. For a lot of you I'm sure if you couldn't ever play the SR you enjoyed again you'd lose interest. That's what's happening to ARAM players now. Take a look at the Maps and Modes board. The discussions posted there are by the players that really love and dedicate their time to ARAM, and they're almost all saying that ARAM isn't ARAM anymore.