I think the game is just too fast (Come and watch me ramble)

In the last three months I can only remember one game where neither my bot lane nor the enemy bot lane got a huge lead. I remember when a bad trade in bot lane that led to a double kill WAS NOT the end of the world, there was still room to play safe or allow the enemy to push and get ganked by your jungler or take advantage of summoner's being on cd to get back ahead. There were also plenty of games where neither side would get a kill in the lane phase, instead it was more that one side would deal enough damage to force their opponent to be more cautious or back but it wasn't the end of everything.

Now though, getting ganked by the entire enemy team isn't just possible but something expected to happen in every game. Marksman items are too cheap, both marksmen end up with a BF sword on their first back, even if one side zoned the other all the time in games.

You also can't keep a lane warded because all you have are red wards and short duration trinkets, a lane that's behind has no way to get vision because they can't protect their red wards and their trinkets don't last long enough. You can either save your trinkets till you have 2 (or 4 for bot) and then use them to cover the proper paths but then once they clock out you have no vision for a long time, or you can sparse them out for very limited vision and watch as the enemy team leaks past them like water from a sieve.

Junglers don't have their own farm to worry about since the respawn timers for them are long so they just gank gank gank all game and the monsters are so much easier to deal with than before too. I remember when it was considered a unique trait for a jungler to be able to gank after a few camps, I also remember most junglers going for a full clear before backing and then ganking. Now everyone just clears three camps then goes on to start ganking lanes. It used to be that you had a bit of time where you could just worry about your enemy laners unless the enemy team had a Shaco or a really ambitious Lee Sin.

The game is just way too fast. Junglers gank earlier, more often, need to farm less, and don't lose as much for not farming. More and more ADC's have burst damage in their kits, abilities that scale better, items that are cheaper, easier access to sustain, more ways to ignore defense and more defense for themselves from their support. Spells don't cost as much, itemization gives more CDR so CD's don't matter as much and there's more items that make up for your mana usage too. Remember when Athene's Unholy Grail was your one stop shop for mana regen? I also remember when it had 60 AP and while you could buy it for mana regen, if someone felt they could manage their mana then they would buy a large AP item and could get lane control if they played right. Now everyone just buys and they get both a large chunk of AP and mana sustain.

Also, the change for mages from mana regen to mana. Used to be that you had to take your time with your spells in lane if you wanted a kill, you had to deal some poke and then wait for your mana to regen before going all in, with the change to mages having flat mana, it makes it so you don't need wait for your mana to regen, you just need to kill your enemy laner before you use all of it and then b for a full refill. With mana regen, even if someone was ahead there was still downtime where you could get some breathing room to farm and not be on edge since they couldn't use multiple rotations before going oom.

I remember when Zed was hated by mid laners if for nothing else than because he used energy and could constantly use his spells to farm or stay safe or harass. When was the last time anyone ever saw someone bring up the fact that a champion uses energy? Using energy is barely a distinction anymore since so many mana champions can do the same thing. Hell, when was the last time someone complained about a champion having no resource? Even in the cases where people talk about a champion being mana hungry like Ornn is now, it's nothing compared to what we used to consider mana hungry where a single rotation of spells could use up your entire mana pool.

And what about early, mid and late game? Vayne and Kog used to be considered late game champs, now they spike after two items, Darius and Renekton were considered early game champs that fell off hard if they couldn't close out the game, now even if you deny them kills in lane they can still go on to be enormous threats in team fights. When did the idea of late, mid and early become so blurred? What used to be considered mid game might as well be called the new late game.

Everything is too fast, too cheap, too inexpensive, too powerful. We need the game to get slowed down, make it so you don't have to be in high tension every second, make it so one mistake doesn't cost you the rest of the match, make it so that there's actually some time to think about the game you're in and plan out how you should play it out.

I remember when URF was first released, this was part of the joke.

The future of League of Legends is Ultra Rapid Fire and the future is right now. Set to go live next preseason, this massive update will help every player make impactful plays at every stage of the game. To give you a taste of this bold vision of the future, we’ve enabled a special preview queue that’ll be live for the next week. Check out a few of the hardest hitting changes:

 Every champion begins the game with 80% cooldown reduction on abilities, activated items and summoner spells
 Casting spells is fun, but running out of mana isn’t, so mana and energy costs have been removed
 Marksmen could dole out tons more damage, so attack speed bonuses for ranged champions have been doubled

Except the joke is becoming reality and the normal game keeps getting closer and closer to being URF.