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death timers: they're too dang long!

1 Wing··4 votes·1,074 views

Okay, okay: in a full teammade game, there can be reasoning for the current death timer length. But in solo queue, it just creates a scenario where, after 30 minutes: the first team to slip up, loses. When you're playing with random players, it just. . sucks.

Two of my team members, alone, with no one around them, used talisman of ascension to charge leona, who had baron buff, because the enemy team had just taken baron. They got caught out, then the enemy team just pushed 5v3, and won the game right then and there. It was only 32 bloody minutes in, and no one had time to respawn, so of course we lost. In the mid game, a death results in losing a tower, or losing dragon. Suddenly, a death means losing the game, because whomever dies just will not respawn in time to do anything.

Often enough I've seen players respawn, having only enough time to run down the fountain steps before the nexus explodes: even just a few seconds would mean they could have some impact on the game.

I get that death should be really serious, but in solo queue I can't communicate with my team, and they have no obligation to follow my pings. When someone--not the whole team, just a player--does something dumb, and we lose the game just because of that, and there's nothing that anyone can do; there's no analyzing what happens next: "oh, if you played this perfectly. . " nothing. Someone died: you lost. It just doesn't seem right in this game.

7 Comments

ValyrianBlade7 votes

I'm not going to vote, but I have a different view.

I HATE it when I get to level 18 with something like 8-0-5, then die for the first time in the game and have the same ridiculous death timer as someone who died 10 times already and obviously since I'm fed (and we haven't won yet, so clearly I'm carrying) while I'm dead the 5v4 advantage basically let's them take multiple objectives or win the game. I've had several Games where my first death is at level 17 or 18 and I respawn only to die again trying to defend the nexus 1v5.

I just think, the way death timers work, earning kills early is meaningless other than the gold advantage, and kills late game are way too OP.

Instead, death timers should scale with number of deaths and level. I understand that a death at level 2 shouldn't be for long since you'd get way too far behind instantly. I also get why higher level deaths should be longer, you're now contesting at least Tier 2 turrets meaning it's too close to the base that if they spawned too fast you wouldn't be able to take anything off of a kill. That said, if you reduced gold on kills and made death timers scale with deaths, you'd simultaneously reduce snowballing (due to less gold advantage) and increase the meaning of playing well throughout the game (my first death, even at level 18, would only have a 20-30 second timer rewarding me for not dieing, while someone's 10th death at level 12 would knock them out for long enough to take a meaningful advantage that was earned by consistently supetior play).

This sort of change would mean a team is no longer forced to turtle and try to stall to 45 min to catch up in full build and win with one teamfight when the other team was dominant for the entire first 35 min of the game (as you can't rely on low level death timers to allow you to defend your inhibitors). It would also mean a team doesn't lose for 1 mistake, if your death timers are long you must have been killed multiple times already.

The only issue would be how much to reduce gold for kills to not make the affect on death timers OP, while simultaneously still allowing people to play early game champions to try to earn a meaningful advantage. It could start small though, just adjust death timers by 5-10 seconds maximum and see how much influence it has.

1 Wing1 votes

I just think, the way death timers work, earning kills early is meaningless other than the gold advantage, and kills late game are way too OP.

A good point. Getting an early kill, means you can farm more, thus being a level about your competitor when they return. But, when they return, they will have more items, neutralizing the advantage. So either you stay and get an experience advantage and lose and item advantage, or you base to get an item advantage while experience remains the same. Either way, you're gaining a small advantage, with which high skill play can keep the enemy on the defensive, but only if you play well. A death late game does not have the same association with it.

ValyrianBlade2 votes

Yes, basically all you can do after a kill is push to tower then base for an item. They'll spawn fast enough to get the last couple at the tower and push it back to your tower before you return, meaning your only advantage is that extra 400g or whatever you got.

Meanwhile a death midgame almost definitely means a turret or Dragon. A death late game means an inhibitor turret, and multiple people dying late game means game over. These close games are more challenging, but it also gets kind of boring when the enemy team just turtles and since they're level 12 the death timers aren't long enough for you to win, then it suddenly gets to a point where they kill your level 16 and can take an inhibitor because the timer is so long.

Drunk Rummate2 votes

I'm not going to vote, but I have a different view.

I HATE it when I get to level 18 with something like 8-0-5, then die for the first time in the game and have the same ridiculous death timer as someone who died 10 times already and obviously since I'm fed (and we haven't won yet, so clearly I'm carrying) while I'm dead the 5v4 advantage basically let's them take multiple objectives or win the game. I've had several Games where my first death is at level 17 or 18 and I respawn only to die again trying to defend the nexus 1v5.

I agree with this sentiment but only slightly. There are a lot of different angles to consider here.

Consider an enemy team who is playing relatively well. They're beating your team but you (Ziggs, for example) have been playing very well and you're pretty fed. So in an effort to win the game, they hard dive you and finally manage to kill you off in a fight. Now, in this situation, if you had a reduced death timer it would be completely unfair to the team that managed to kill you especially because you are ziggs. You would respawn very quickly and be able to defend your turret with relative ease due to your range and waveclear.

Now consider a player who is being completely destroyed in lane. They're 0-2 and they die a third time. Instead of getting the opportunity to get back out and farm some to lessen the snowball effect, they have increased death timers. The person who killed them twice now has an even greater advantage in exp, farm, cs, and probably a lot of tower damage as well.

Shorter death timers for champions that die less would reward safer champions and it would punish champions with low escape or range.

ValyrianBlade1 votes

I understand what you're saying for sure, which is why it needs a lot of balancing.

I mean, if it was just your first death is 10 seconds shorter and your second is 5 seconds shorter, and any deaths above 10 are 5 seconds longer, it would definitely not cause any problems. So this shows that there exists a balanced range where the advantage is meaningful while not unfair to either the person who died a lot or to the team who let someone not die at all.

It also requires gold balancing as I mentioned. At low levels even if it's your third death you're not going to be gone for too long since it's a balance of deaths and levels. Besides, if gold is reduced appropriately, the person who killed them would be less snowballed because they'd have gotten less kill gold (basically part of the advantage of the kill is delayed to larger timers on future kills). I think by reducing gold on kills you'd stop someone from dying once or twice in Lane (possibly due to ganks) and then due to the item disadvantage being unable to stay in Lane 1v1, while the increased death timer gives the same overall advantage to the team that earned the kill (they just get to use that advantage later).

cshakes1 votes

I think that they should be slightly longer midgame and shorter lategame. Midgame, we can instagib the enemy Talon just for him to get a free double when we're cleaning up the same fight. Lategame, die once in a baron fight and you'll lose your Nexus turrets to the 4v5.

1 Wing1 votes

Yah, exactly.

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