Issues with the "One Dimensional" nature of the game in it's current state.

(warning: long post)

So in a time where people are just arbitrarily pointing to "damage creep" and complaining because everything does too much damage and early game and snowball blah blah blah...I'd like to discuss some key points that led the game to be as one dimensional as it currently is. There always have been and always will be a meta, but in the early stages (I'd say first 4 seasons or so) the meta was defined by specific champions who were strong. The last season highlighted how now entire playstyles are being overvalued or undervalued. Last split of pro play was dominated by tanky frontliners with hypercarries from bot and/or mid along with a ardent censor support, and it turned out the only way to combat that was by stacking your mid game spike across all 5 rolls and playing very aggressive; only a couple of teams at worlds were able to pull that off and they did not make it far in the tournament. Now the preseason rolls in and we are looking at comps that excel at up front damage and aggression. I don't want to get too much into what is strong and what's not here, but instead we are going to look at some changes that have shaped the game in major ways over time.

Lifesteal - an element of the game that has been getting edged out more and more every year. The only champs who consistently build lifesteal items are niche champs like Fiora who have some strong synergy with it or last season we saw the on-hit Varus build. Sure Mercurial Scimitar has lifesteal on it, but not in a meaningful way that you can count on and play around, you pretty much just want to QSS and build into full Mercurial because it's got more damage (I'm fairly certain I've never seen any player build QSS then go vamp scepter, they always build the Pickaxe then go into full scimitar). Lifesteal as a stat just has little value any more. Now I'm not saying we should go back to having all ADC's rush Bloodthirster first item like back in the day, but it would be nice to have it be an option. Auto attacking ADC's have to build IE or ER and two zeal items or they just will not kill anything, and poke ADC's need to build CDR and/or Mana and/or Lethality. There just is no room for it in the vast majority of builds that will make it a worthwhile build, it delays your damage too much and offers little in the way of reliable survivability. Back in the day as an ADC main I knew I could lifesteal tank a certain amount of damage and sustain through a fight. Like ok I have flash up, so if Nocturne ults me I can flash to break his fear and I will be able to 1v1 him. Or, since I have BT I can walk up into this Singed poison and as long as I don't get hard cc'd or bursted by a different champ, I'm ok! Riot put in Warlord's Bloodlust in the old masteries which kind of actually worked, but now they have replaced that with a bush league version in Fleet Footwork. This new lifesteal mastery has shown to have limited impact outside of early fights during lane phase, maybe a very early skirmish in river. You typically go for the high value damage keystones, or go for high damage items, or go for a high value defense item like GA or Mercurial. The situations in which priorizing lifesteal is a viable option are very very rare, and situations where it is the "best" option are virtually non-existant. BT doesn't add enough damage and doesn't add enough defense, and BORK is now a niche item because it has low lifesteal stat and doesn't give you that big burst of HP from the use anymore.

--This is a good transition into my next point.

Damage/Tank Items- the kind of split damage/survivability that used to be afforded lifesteal builders to get through tough sections of the game has been instead given to tanks and juggernauts/fighters. There are multiple culprits here but the biggest three in my opinion right now are Black Cleaver, Titanic Hydra, and the new Thornmail. Mages and ADC's are always boom or bust to a certain extent because they are so vulnerable, but in the past melee beefcakes had clear troughs that you could abuse because they had to build both damage and tank stats. You could kill them from ranged with a little CC if they went too much damage early, or you could play through their damage if they went tank heavy early on, etc. These split items allow them to have their cake and eat it too. Take a look at Shen rushing Titanic Hydra. Early game damage, wave clear, defensive stats...everything he got from firecape...just better. Not really sure why a frontline tank with a global ult also needs to have such a smooth and strong laning build. Think of TF, he is supposed to get ahead by ganking or receiving ganks, so his laning is just meh. Balance achieved. Smoothing out the power curve for champs building damage and tank stats goes hand in hand with the lifesteal issue because as a carry player of any role you have to go hard damage to be able to reliable kill them, but they also kill you hella easy cuz they get damage from their tanky items. And Titanic actually makes tank damage scale to late game. For some reason Riot has deemed it unhealthy for these melee champs to provide early and mid game damage then transition into tanks in the late game. They don't transition anymore, they always do decent damage and are pretty tough to kill. Jax is even a culprit. In the past you'd go 2-3 damage items then go tanky. Guess what, now his second item is a tank/damage item that synergizes with the defensive and offensive parts of his core Triforce item. Your window to put him down has just been shortened.

Homogenization of damage - Sustain damage has become unreliable and poke damage now chunks so hard it is not that much different from burst damage. There are a number of contributing elements to this, but suffice it to say that it feels like up front damage is all that matters at this point. They removed Deathfire touch which is a direct nerf to champs who would prefer melt damage over chunk. And auto attacking champs get boned because a lot of the damage they could potentially get out of the Sorcery or Domination tree don't benefit them as much as they benefit other champs. Press the Attack is given high value because of what? It's burst damage. So now the only way to make auto attackers viable is to give them some early game burst. I would also argue that PTA is less value in team fights than Fervor or Bloodlust were because target switching is a huge part of team fighting (which auto attacking ADC's in particular are supposed to excel at), and PTA makes target switching bad, where Fervor could keep stacking and Warlords allowed mobility and sustain in lieu of damage if you switched. PTA does nothing if you don't get the third auto off, and does very little if you switch shortly after the proc.

Recommendations: -Give AD damage champs (not just ADC's but also things like Jayce) access to some sort of sustain that is meaningful in fights. Whether that be lifesteal items that actually have value, a lifesteal keystone that doesn't feel like you are just sacrificing tons of damage, or some other way. Allow the squishy AD champions to continually be a part of fights and reward them for playing around high priority burst or CC spells. If an assassin goes to 100-0 a adc but then they misjudged and only did 90% it's ok if the ADC or the Jayce turns and kills them. Assassins and other all in champs are supposed to be boom or bust.

-Implement bonus catchup xp for champion kills. This allows a window for scaling champions to do things like build ninja tabi for boots (this applies to carries of all types not just ADC) and they will have a strong window to come back from a tough early game. Like yeah, you weathered the storm with your defensive build; you might be losing right now but you finally got your damage items, now there is a chance for your choice to go defensive boots to actually pay off.

-Make defensive and utility runes equal to damage runes in terms of quantity and quality. And I don't mean add damage to utility or tank trees. Aftershock is an issue but so is Demolition as an example. Something like Leona who already has high burst and kill pressure abuses Aftershock, but now Maokai who is supposed to be high tanky and low damage all of the sudden gets damage to people and kills tower faster. Nothing to synergize with his identity as a utility tank meat shield, just add more damage make the games go faster. What we need are runes that can potentially allow us to play through or around the bonus damage being presented. Those who benefit most from the current runes already have tools like engage and/or high up front damage as part of their identity as a champ...they don't need more assistance from runes.

In their item and rune changes over the years, RIOT has stated that they want to see versatile builds in items and Rune/Mastery choices. While admittedly this has worked in some cases, the result from a zoomed out perspective is more and more emphasis being put on damage. Right now it's a lot on up front damage, but taking it farther back I'd say damage of all types being emphasized at various times.

Poke champs not working? - don't give them more burst, just tune down sources of out of combat regen like Warmogs and Spectre's Cowl so that damage sticks.

Hyper carries not working? - don't buff a Tanks and Ardent so that people want to pick hyper scaling carries, just give scaling carries flexibility to build things like ninja defensive boots and sustain so that they can actually play the game to some extent.

Assassins not working? - give them tools that give more damage or more opportunities to assassinate squishies on all ins, not just damage in general.

Tanks not working? -let them come online as meat shield's and/or CC bots earlier, don't give them more damage, make them good at TANKING.

When something is not working, before adding damage, RIOT needs to look at options in the realms of utility and gameflow before just adding damage. Hell now days even things like Raka and Janna deal decent damage. Here's the main issue - champions used to have all kinds of crazy stuff that made them good value. Janna's utility was so strong at one point that she was banned over and over. RIOT has gone down the road of "Every champion needs to do some damage to be useful", and now it's gone so far IDK if it's possible to real that back anymore. I'd like to see one champion rework that does not result in more damage or making the current damage more reliable. Take us back to the days where champs could lean on their utility and defense as like 95% of their value and still be considered a viable or meta pick.