The Glaring Issues in ARAM That Have Not Been Addressed

While I am glad Riot has decided to give some much needed balance changes to ARAM, some of them have missed the mark.

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#Mana

The biggest issue in my eyes, is how much access mages have to mana.

is the biggest offender here, as it allows mages to essentially use their spells off cooldown during the early game on either poke or pushing the wave with little repercussion, thanks to how fast you level up.

Other classes by comparison, such as bruisers, run out of mana rather quickly in the early game due to them having small base mana pools and poor access to mana in general. Furthermore, mages benefit the most from the global mana regeneration increase, since it is based off of maximum mana, which mages will always have the highest amount of. Additionally, if a champ is very mana hungry such as , they can take and negate this issue. A big part of the reason these champions are so insanely powerful on ARAM is due to their weakness of being mana hungry is rendered virtually non-existent.

Case point, let's look at He's the only mana based mage that does not start with a because he is so dependent on his . If he opts to start a Lost Chapter, his E is fairly pitiful, and if he starts with his first Hexcore upgrade, he runs out of mana extremely fast compared to other mages.

With the changes Riot has made, only the nerfs to Presence of Mind have actually impacted these champions, causing some of them to need Clarity again.

My suggestion is to replace Lost Chapter with an ARAM version that restores 10% of your missing mana upon leveling up, change the passive mana regeneration to more equally effect every mana based champion (something like .5 mana + .1% of maximum mana instead of .15% maximum mana), and to remove Clarity. With these changes, perhaps some of the bandaid nerfs Riot added to poke champions could be undone.

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#Stacking Based Champions

Stacking based champions have been historically difficult to balance on ARAM, due to the faster pacing, lack of solo lanes/permanent laning phase and the absence of neutral monsters.

• One of two poster children of stacking based champions. Upon the release of ARAM, Nasus struggled to gain stacks due to having to compete with 4 other players to kill minions. In response to this, Riot doubled the amount of stacks Nasus gains, which put him in a fairly good spot. However, Nasus was recently changed to receive 12 stacks from killing large minions/monsters and champions. This change was geared towards Summoners Rift, but sent him over the top in ARAM, as it gives him 24 stacks from killing a cannon minion or champion, which allows him to get a huge amount of stacks very quickly. But instead of removing the double stack rate, Riot gave Nasus a bandaid nerf of -5% damage dealt, which has done little to alleviate this issue.

• The other poster child of stacking based champions. Veigar has been historically insanely powerful on ARAM due to his ability to quickly gain stacks compared to Summoner's Rift. This stems largely from the increased amount of takedowns compared to Summoner's Rift, and having 5 champions at all times to gain stacks off of by hitting them with abilities. In response to this, Riot hit him with a sizable nerf of -8% damage dealt and +10% damage received. However I believe Riot should have attempted to reduce his stack generation before applying a bandaid nerf, namely removing his ability to gain stacks by hitting enemy champions with abilities, reducing the amount of stacks gained from takedowns, or reducing the amount of AP gained by Phenomenal Evil.

• Kindred is incredibly weak on ARAM due to the absence of neutral monsters to gain stacks from, and the shorter game duration to gather stacks from enemies. Kindred is incredibly dependent on getting at least 4 stacks to be even relevant, but it's difficult for them to get this many stacks in 10 minutes, and at the point the game could easily be over. Riot gave Kindred a bandaid +10% damage dealt buff, but it does nothing to address their core issue. On the contrary, Kindred gained double stacks on Nexus Blitz, despite them having access to neutral monsters to gain stacks from. Why Riot didn't apply this same buff to Kindred is beyond me. Additionally, to address the absence of neutral monsters, Kindred should gain 1 stack from each enemy tower destroyed, similar to Shyvanna's replacement to dragons killed. With increased stack generation, Kindred wouldn't need a flat +10% damage increase, and would be much healthier and satisfying to play.

• Thresh is an incredibly powerful champion on ARAM in the right hands, but many players' lack of experience with Thresh and many opting to go off-meta ADC builds keeps his winrate artificially low, and ultimately has allowed him to evade any nerfs. Thresh's kit offers an insane amount of utility, and his ability to be both an engage tank and a peeling tank makes him incredibly powerful in the right hands. But this section is about stacking mechanics, and Thresh's stacking mechanic is rather overbearing. More often than not, Thresh is able to easily exceed 200-250 armor with only one armor item built making him deceptively tanky and allows him to opt for HP & MR heavy builds. This is largely due to ARAM being a permanent laning phase map, and a constant 5v5 map, allowing Thresh to gather much more stacks than he would on Summoner's Rift. While Thresh is mostly an issue in higher MMR ARAM, his passive needs to be addressed by either nerfing how often souls appear from minions or reducing the amount of armor he gains from souls.

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#Final Thoughts & Conclusion

There are plenty of other aspects contributing to the strength of certain champions, but these are much more difficult to change. Marksmen and Enchanters will always be incredibly strong due to how powerful they are in 5v5 fights. Duelists will remain weak due to the lack of 1v1 and small skirmish scenarios.

The changes made to the pacing of the game I still feel are both unwarranted and unhealthy to ARAM, and often leave me thinking "that's it?" when a neck and neck game ends. These changes cause close games to end abruptly with how easy it is to kill towers, and forces games to end before a late game team has to scale. I strongly believe the pacing changes Riot has made should be reverted.

The balance changes Riot has made to ARAM are definitely a net positive, but bandaid buffs and nerfs often do not fix the core issues of problem champions. Hopefully Riot will take what I've described into consideration.