I think Season 5 is the least fun I've had with League of Legends.

Hello, my name is Stendal, and I started playing this game mid Season 3. Since I've started, I've played League fairly consistently, never taking breaks longer than a few weeks. Season 3 was the learning period of the game for me, because as I was comfortable with my play style, Season 4 rolled around. Season 4 was exciting for me. The changes to vision and support income made the support feel like a member of the team instead of just the support, in my opinion. I saw the rise and fall of tank meta (which actually made me spread my wings and try out other lanes besides top, which was my S3 main.), the Banana revolution and shield meta, and had fun experiencing all of these neat champions that kept coming out. Flashback to only a few months ago, and Season 5 was almost upon us. Once again, I was excited. My friends were excited. A complete jungle overhaul? A new map? These were exciting things, and made for exciting times.

Now let's take a look at today. I'm no longer excited. Frustrated best describes my current feelings about Season 5. Don't get me wrong, individual matches had been frustrating to me in the past, but they were usually followed by highs which would then give way to lows, such is the cycle of these things. But now, even the thought of playing just a normal game of league frustrates me. Let's nail down each reason below.

The Jungle. If the goal of Season 5 was to have greater champion diversity in the jungle, you dropped the fucking ball on this one. Back in Season 4, it felt like there were a wealth of champions to jungle with. Udyr , Shaco , Amumu , Vi , Lee Sin , Nocturne , Fiddlesticks , Kha'Zix , Rammus , to name a few, provided the jungle with a ton of variation and fun. Some of these picks were better than others for sure, but each champ was something different you could do in the jungle. These days, however, you're lucky to see as many. Don't get me wrong, you still see these champions played, definitely, but how many games do you see them be a huge impact? When's the last time you saw an Udyr grab his red at level 2 and go straight to bot lane to make a play? When's the last time you saw Kha'Zix invading enemy buffs at level 1? These days, the jungle is more of a place to hard farm to level six, and then start ganking. And again, this isn't new, many junglers had to do that already. But now, it's become all the jungle is. Sure, you still might get the occasional early gank, but most junglers simply can't afford it anymore. It's sad that it has become quite common for the jungler to be almost 2 levels behind me when I play a solo lane. It's also sad that the most popular champions in the jungle right now all do basically the same thing. If you watch competitive play at all, you're used to seeing these four junglers much more than any others . Again, don't get me wrong, I understand that competitive is a completely different playing field, and that they always tend to play what's strong, but it just sucks that there are roulghly 4-6 junglers that are considered strong these days. Now, this point is a little hard to echo because of the Cinderhulk enchantment, which has seen many tank junglers on the rise, but it feels like Cinderhulk is just Spirit of the Ancient Golem thrown onto the new jungle items. Let's talk more about these jungle items. For those unfamiliar (all none of you), jungle items in S4 were dependent primarily on your champion. If you played an AP jungler, you got the AP jungle item. If you wanted to go tanky, you got the tank jungle item. Season 5 tried to do away with this by adding jungle items that would compliment your playstyle as well as your champion. If I may be so blunt, this failed fucking horribly. Let's examine the four current jungle items real quick. We have the slowing jungle item , the farming jungle item , the attacking fast jungle item , and the counter jungling item . I'm never going to learn their names, so I just refer to them as blue smite , purple smite , red smite , and white smite . I could write a lot more about why these items kind of suck, but I'll distill it into the bigger points.

White smite sucks because it has no clear audience. Tank junglers don't want it because they often have slow clear and prefer purple smite. Hard damage junglers don't want it because now they can't smite enemy champions. Second, counter jungling doesn't work as a hard play style. Your goal in counter jungling often isn't to live in your enemy jungle, it's about denying small bits of gold or opening up bits of the map to allow better ganks. White smite makes you want to live in enemy jungle with its bonuses, a move that more than often gets you killed when the jungler calls for some help from his nearby lanes.

Red smite sucks because you nerfed it. I won't claim to be as much of an expert on this one, but the way I see it, there were never a whole lot of attack speed junglers to begin with. Warwick comes to mind, but I honestly can't think of any more, as most champions who proc on hit effects or can benefit from having a lot of attack speed can usually hold their own in a solo lane. So in a sense, this one also lacked an audience. The big problem came when this item started attracting an audience. I'm sure most of us remember the Warwick+Red Smite wombo combo that could pretty much 100-0 everything. And I hear Fiora could do roughly the same thing with her ult. It seems most of the problem came down to individual champions, but you decided to nerf the item outright. I don't really blame you as, again, I don't see attack speed jungling as a super viable option, but it feels like a kick in the nuts to give us this item that we can no longer use.

So now we're down to two jungle items that people use. I'll spare you the long winded explanation and just go ahead and say that Blue Smite is the clear winner of the two, as the utility of smiting champions beats out an aoe clear that is already being nulled by Cinderhulk. I also REALLY don't understand why you made it cost gold to switch between the items. Having a free switch was WONDERFUL. It allowed the jungle to work in phases. If I wanted to counter jungle early because of an advantage I'd picked up, I could use white smite. Then, once the game had gone to mid or late game, I could swap to blue smite and pick up my enchantment to seal my role. Now, with the gold cost, it really isn't worth it to swap. Even if I gain an early advantage, it's much more cost efficient for me to just pick up my blue smite and keep farming away in the jungle. You actually curbed role diversity with that change, and I don't like it.

Now then, let's tackle the other lane that I feel got hit with Season 5.

Mid lane. This one I'm a bit more understanding of. Chalice of Harmony and Athene's Unholy Grail were staples in the mid lane. Nearly EVERY prominent mid lane mage used them, from LeBlanc to Xerath to Syndra. Athene's granted stats that weren't wasted by any mage, but its biggest boon was definitely its insane mana regen. I would understand wanting to nerf it. What I don't understand is the nerfs to ALL mana regen. Mages got their fucking balls busted by this nerf. Mana is a pool that fuels spell casting, which is where mages draw their power. The nerfs to mana regen effectively severed mages from accessing a lot of their power. If this weren't bad enough, you then went and removed one of the grandest of mage items, Ye Olde Deathfire Grasp. I'm not saying the removal of DFG was a bad thing, but it was poorly timed. With mages now crippled all across the board, we saw a select few champions rise to power. Champions like Zed, Katarina, Cassiopeia, and Lissandra have been dominating the lanes lately. Champions that either don't require mana, or were never big users of chalice in the first place. I don't know about you guys, but I am fucking sick of seeing these 4 in nearly every game I play. Just like jungle, you'll still see the occasional Orianna or Lux mid, but it's very doubtful you'll ever see them last long against a Zed or Cass.

To close, I'd just like to iterate, not all of Season 5 has been bad. I've seen plenty of champions I like be able to come to power again (Diana in the jungle, for instance). And I also understand that Riot has a very fucking hard job. Balancing one of the most played games is no easy task. You're bound to fuck up sooner or later, and most of the changes you make are going to be unpopular ones. But it just feels like Season 5 has been the grandest of fuck ups that you're having a hard time acknowledging. Anyway, I just needed to get all of this off my chest. I still love League of Legends, and I'm eager to see what you guys do going forward. See you then.

P.S. Fuck CertainlyT. Every other champion that guy makes is a clusterfuck of overpowered bullshit.