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The new rift SNOWBALL Conundrum

Wayis·12/20/2014, 8:44:03 AM·4 votes·1,271 views
Patch 4.20 notes

It has come to my attention and to the attentions of most of my League friends, that nearly all the new rift games we play these days end up in a surrender. It seems the new rift, with the changes to the gold and experience in the jungle, along with the new dragon buff make for a massive snowball with little chance for the comeback wins we all know and love. And personally, I hate surrendering. I can remember the days of yore, when being ten or even twenty kills behind wasn't necessarily a death sentence for a team but an opportunity for a legendary comeback. Now, it seems that first blood and/or the first dragon kill spells immediate doom for the unfortunate bunch of summoners. With each small anti-progression being met with FFS@20 or GG I find myself losing that competitive drive that pulled me towards booting up my computer like a medieval weapon, and battling it out for glory on the rift. Since the integration of the new rift and the loss of the old, I find myself playing so much more ARAM games than ever before. Don't get me wrong, I love the look and the feel of the new rift. The addition of the scuttle is ridiculously fun, as well as the animations for all the new jungle creeps are just amazing. But in ARAM the battle can rage back and forth with no winner emerging until a fateful last hit on a nexus that took serious commitment to destroy. Whereas the new summoners rift has clear defining moments there is no coming back from. Such as three dragon buffs to zero. My question for discussion is, if anyone else has experienced the same sort of snowball effect? And additionally would you like to see a ceasefire vote. Something like once per team, once per game, you can all vote for a two minute ceasefire. That's just one idea. Please only comment below with ideas to balance the competition!

13 Comments

Byrnes12/20/2014, 12:09:20 PM2 votes

On one hand, I completely agree, on the other I don't at all.

The ability to snowball I think falls out of the complacency of a lot of teams. Like, objectives are a lot harder to get these days if you are pressuring the opposing team back from them. But this means your team has to be awake/alive and warding. The moment you stop warding the map, the moment the other team takes every objective and lead possible. I know there are champions that excel at the new dragon, but a lot of junglers don't. That thing hurts man. If your team is on top of it, that's a bunch of free kills and probably dragon for yourself.

it really is a game of team effort now, and the moment your team stops working as one is the moment the snowball happens. However, if your team is together the game could go literally forever thanks to all the failsafes Riot has installed in defending oneself. I mean, the tier 2 gives a damn shield now. What.

Personally, this is why I was concerned with all of these changes. I don't know about everyone else, but it scares me that I have to rely on four random people, even more so than before, to have a chance at winning ranked games. My experience on this new SR thus far as literally been whatever team gives the most F's about the prioritization of objectives, wins. Like instantly. And a lot of times that has led to some really unfortunate games, specifically when it is two teams who could care less about objectives and hunt only kills - those games literally never end. Ever. It is so frustrating to play a 50 minute League game where the score is 40-40 and we have only tier 1 turrets down.

BloodDelmar12/20/2014, 12:39:31 PM2 votes

Rito - "In Season 4, we want to eliminate snowballing, because it's anti-fun. Any snowball champ you play -- except the most popular assassins with anti-fun mechanics -- will be gutted."

Rito - "In Season 5, we don't care if you have fun. Snowball away."

Zamiake12/20/2014, 12:51:22 PM1 votes

Basically riot doesnt understand how to make their game anymore. Hence why they keep steam rolling sona for no good reason when they should play with the balance of other supports to bring them to her level

Applesaucey12/20/2014, 1:20:16 PM1 votes

Haven't had this issue. Every game I've been in lately regardless of how far ahead i get my team they find a way to fuck it up and throw the game. But that might just be my shitty luck with teammates. I think the bigger issue is the ungodly amount of dc's/afk's there have been recently.

Meep Man12/20/2014, 1:37:18 PM1 votes

And personally, I hate surrendering.

Then don't. Farm up on creeps and jungle creeps as much as possible to catch up. I haven't had game be too snowbally lately although the winning team can notice they have an advantage.

Knight Devout12/20/2014, 6:20:46 PM1 votes

They should just move the dragon damage buff further down the line, while making the damage boost being an universal damage boost rather thane xtra ad and ap.

Extra ad and ap are bad, and will always feel bad, because champions who don's stack ap and ad don't benefit from it the same way. Also, it scales multiplicatevely with the damage you can do to turrets.

Kowe The Ewok12/20/2014, 6:30:38 PM1 votes

At the moment we've an assassin meta. If one gets ahead there is close to no way to stop them, even as a team (Zed or Blanc anyone? Blast an enemy within 0.5s and reappear 2 screen-width out of everybody's range).

It's just a pretty frustrating an unfun meta.

Dynamoses12/20/2014, 8:48:05 AM1 votes

Uh ya they do surrender a lot.. but thatz just cuz im a boss son

chumbler12/20/2014, 8:20:09 PM1 votes

The biggest component of snowballing is this game's terrible item design, but Riot is never going to fix that. Hell, they probably don't even realize it.

BluePolarizer12/20/2014, 10:59:06 AM1 votes

In my experience, the new summoner's rift is incredibly snowbally - worse than anything I've ever seen before.

Jungle gold changes/respawn time changes and scaling means fall behind once, and the jungle itself can destroy you with no chance to come back - the slower respawns are too punishing and jungle gold income is too low. I often have only slightly higher income than the support unless I am monstrously fed. However, an early kill means that jungler can clear the jungle even easier, which snowballs into gold efficient enchantments, etc etc. The old jungle was far more forgiving of falling behind, since you could always buy spirit stone and keep up, while fast respawn makes it easier to farm. It was also less snowbally, since the jungle was easier and the spirit items were not as huge of a power spike as the current enchantments.

As a laner, falling behind means that there's no recourse - new dragon buffs doesn't benefit everyone equally like global gold does. Instead it gets more gold efficient the more gold you already have and it is only gold efficient for offensive stats. Before, if you were down a kill to a Riven in lane, you'd be able to come back with a dragon + a tower and be equal again - you can put the gold wherever you want, whether that be defense, offense, whatever. However, now that only offensive stats benefit from dragon, if you were down against Riven, a dragon + a tower means you are still behind - you don't want to build damage if you are behind, you want to build defensive. If Riven's team gets the dragon though, that means Riven snowballs even harder.

Baron is the ultimate snowball. Whereas before you could wait out baron by waveclearing or simply engaging with a better team comp, you cannot do that anymore, since the team with baron can simply defend their minion wave and the minions themselves become hard to clear. Splitpushing 4-1 with baron buff is extremely powerful, since even 1 person can grant minions the aura and even a support splitpushing with baron becomes unmanagable if the wave is large enough.