Lack of meaningful teamfights is a problem for displaying skill at the game
The preseason patch brought many changes including changing things about death timers, masteries, tower health, ambient gold and more.However this has taken large parts of the game out from the game. Currently lane phase and jungle gank pressure is extremely important. Post 10 minutes a kill on a laner takes them out for long enough to get 2 towers which is insane. This also devalues freezing and last hitting because of how valuable lane pressure and kill pressure are in this meta.
What effects does this have?
- Team fighting is less valuable. The game feels like a series of 1v1,1v2,2v2 skirmishes instead of a 5v5 game.
2)Champion strength is highly tied to early and some mid game champions with some exceptions (mostly good duelist champions). This means picks that relied on farming under turret early game to be strong late game (vayne adc, shen top, nautilus top) are not viable at all.
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5v5 team fights do not happen unless the result of all the skirmishes throughout the game went relatively even. This means that 5v5 champions are not very good.
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Duelist laners and junglers are very strong because of the lane snowball. Wave clear and pushing power is also valuable.
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Traditional comeback mechanisms such as low death timers and lane freezing/slow pushing are inferior to the effect of the roam of a snowballed lane will have on other lanes. This means snowballed lanes are hard to come back from.
Players who frequently all in to win games will love the changes. However, players that relied on playing safe and scaling later in the game will not like this patch. Additionally, the champion diversity is going to shrink as dueling and wave clear and mobility matter more than team fight potential. While there are some standouts that benefit from the new masteries more than anyone (looking at you yasuo/trynd), there are many other champions that have gone from decent picks to poor options both due to masteries and the overall system changes.
Additionally, if the minion changes go live in the next patch this will likely make the snowballing lanes even worse.
