Why Patch 5.4 proves Riot doesn't give 2 shit's about the player base

I don't think it comes as a surprise to anyone when I say the jungle has never been worse. Riot's idea of 'Strategic Diversity' includes a small handful of junglers, of which are the only ones who can get the job done. Vi, Jarvan (god knows his nerf did jack-shit to him), Nidalee, Udyr, Master YI and Fiddlesticks are, really, the only junglers that can make it right now. The few changes aimed at slightly lowering certain champions' power (Kat, Jarvan, Janna, KASSADIN) have either done near nothing or made them nonviable.

Without pointing out TOO many negatives, let's look at the changes that had a positive impact: DJ Sona, Kalista's attack wind-up, Mordekaiser's mini re-work, Veigar's ability tweaks, and, for some, Semi-Locked Camera. DJ Sona should be obvious - a new ultimate skin that has been hyped for some time, along with Dat Ass, and some cool music to relieve from the same old boring Riff music. Kalista's change doesn't seem too noticeable outside the early game, and helps to give at least some chase potential to less-mobile champions. Mordekaiser needed some changes after 5.2, and these, while I've yet to see a Mordekaiser (Like I saw any before), seem to be a step in the right direction for him. Not too over-bearing, but just enough for him to see more action again. Veigar got some overdue counter-play-ability, while also getting a potential buff on his Q, in that he can get 2 stacks per Q over the old 1. Semi-Locked camera is a great medium for people who are used to playing with locked camera. It gives them the ease of not worrying about their camera position, while allowing them the vision that non-camera locked players have.

AND onto the negatives. Everything else in the patch...Warrior -5 ad does nothing, Jarvan's armour change does next-to-nothing early game, and late game he still has enough damage and armour to do what he did before. Azir is still a "must-avoid", after 5.3, with no buffs to his destroyed W and E. Janna still can't seem to find a "healthy" medium with her passive, though I feel like the personal move-speed change to W isn't a bad idea. Kassadin is less playable than Azir now. He's more useless than a level 1 Magikarp at this point...Kat's change, while small, may be enough to push her out of viability. Xerath's stun, while in-need of the nerf, was over-nerfed. It's hard to land a max range stun, so a long stun should be rewarded well. 2 seconds is a healthy amount, but 1.75 is too low. Zilean has a nice change, but it's going to be even more painful to play against him now. Nice change on the Q, the stun it pushing it, but nice change all the same. W was barely changed, but good to play against, either way. The REAL problem comes with his E. Lower cooldown and a 99% TARGETED slow...with a LOWER mana cost, as well...Did someone say over-buffed? His ult got changed accordingly with the W change, so nothing too bad there. The updated splash arts are just...no. No, no, no, no, Riot please. Revive is gone, not like it was used by anyone other than PhatomL0rd and trolls, but still, sad to see it go.

And now for the best of all. So good it deserves it's own paragraph...Wait for it...The JUNGLE CHANG...cough JUNGLE DESTRUCTION. This is where "Strategic Diversity" is completely thrown out the window. I think Riot completely forgot about it, especially since it's not even in the patch notes! (Seriously, ctrl+f Strategic Diversity. The closest you get is Strategic for the Sweeping Lens). The change to the inter-changeability of smites slashes half the junglers that were semi-viable before, and now are just un-playable in the jungle. The smite range nerf is a complete mind-boggler. Why was the range nerfed? Because CHILLING SMITE is too strong. Not the Trailblazer, Skirmisher, or w/e that other one no one uses is. JUST the Chilling Smite. It goes without saying the change that NEEDS to be seen in 5.5. Again, up comes Jarvan. Such a small change it does nothing to his early game and next to nothing in his late game. 19 armour late game...what's that? 3% less physical damage after your build's all done? OH BOY ONE LESS AUTO-ATTACK TO KILL...seriously...just, really Riot. The -5AD...sorry, the SAD change on Warrior was just un-warranted and, like the Jarvan changes, useless. OH BOY ONE MORE AUTO-ATTACK TO KILL...yeah, because that's hard to do...Nidalee went unchanged, Vi hasn't received a change in god knows how long (not a bad thing, but I'll get to it), Udyr hasn't even been talked about, and every tank in the game is still waiting...it's been, what, 3 months? COME ON RIOT! How hard can it be to lower the cost of Juggernaut by 150 gold and give it 20 armour in-place of 100 health?!? There you go, did your job for you, you're welcome. Seriously, the lack of mentioning these, or, in the tank case, DOING them, just shows Riot's complete ignorance to the jungle and its players. Sorry to break the news to you, jungle mains, but Riot doesn't care about us nor our needs. Vi's in a healthy state, but when was the last time you heard Riot MENTION her name. Nidalee was better off before the AP change, where she couldn't one-shot anyone with Magus, and Udyr is still the only "farm until late game" jungler that teams like to play with and against. Sure, there's Master Yi, but let's be honest: Unless you're Cowsep, you're getting no where with Yi.

Good lord that was long. I would TL;DR it, but honestly it's all in the intro. I don't think there's been as many negatives over positives as there were in this patch. And the longer these types of changes go on, the more Riot is just proving they don't give one shit about their player base. Speaking of, have you seen the SpectateFaker thing? "Bullying and Harrasment" is the only argument that Mr.Marc Merril (Merral, Merrel? idk) can come up with, yet it's neither of those. The stream is simply catering to those who prefer Twitch over Azubu. It also goes into the realm of TOU, and I bet a lot of you are surprised to read this, but the ONLY thing you own about your account is the rights to play the game. Soooooo yeah. Riot has, yet again, shoved a pole up our collective asses and said "try to catch us, betchya you can't!" All while laughing at the money they're making off of skin purchases. Did I mention you don't own your skins, either!?

Oh, and Olaf is still waiting on some QOL updates, at least.