Identifying Problems - Logic and Extrapolation
People like to claim that I, and others, provide zero grounds for our complaints on things in League of Legends. Very well, I will present MY path from issue to conclusion, insofar as I have run the thought process. You can agree, or disagree, however it stands.
Generally when I have a problem with balance issues I tend to skim the boards first. (I have some issues, like the loot system, that I simply don't LIKE, and I retain that right.) Complaints right now on the boards are, in order of commonality of posts:
- ADC Power
- Supports
- Tanks
Extremely few posts, actually, are made AGAINST these ideas. I've seen three this last week.
What we can do is extrapolate from this that either:
A. These three classes, during different game stages, are scaling with poor proportion to the rest of the game. They are, at different times, becomming extremely oppressive.
Or
B. The other classes need to be buffed appropriately until the forum complaints equalize once again. (Yes, people complaining about things fairly uniformly is generally a decent sign of health.)
Once we have these two ideas, we can look at each. The problem with (B) is that more people complain about the shortness of fights, and intensely bursty damage - than complain about the damage being under scaled. Being as the classes that are NOT being complained about are burst damage classes (yeah yeah, Juggarnauts, we will get there), we can then turn our attention to (A).
In (A) we see that a few classes are currently vastly outscaling the rest. They become the primary agents of gameplay towards mid-late game. (Time table also pulled from various posts) While we see complaints about junglers deciding the ultimate outcome of the game, this seems to primarily be because of their sway over feeding their bottom lane (more than any other, complaints are made about the jungle interaction with bottom. Feeding lanes is a jungler's job, and a non-issue)... bringing us back to our three outlined issues in (A).
Very well, so we come to three classes who are leaving the rest so far behind that it is intense. We can see from patch notes that tanks have both received, and will receive, itemization and stat solutions... they are getting TOUGHER. You only do that in response to them being unable to survive damage, so we narrow this down to two classes - tanks can be scaled back easily through slight item changes.
We arrive at:
- ADCs
- Supports
The only real thing that has changed in the theory of design for Support and ADC characters over... ever... has been itemization changes. Ultimately these two classes honestly lack any real mechanical changes since the game's inception. Numbers shift around, but the overall stylization is the same.
I narrow it from that bit of information to:
- Itemization being at fault for the current imbalance.
Disclaimer: You do not have to agree with my conclusion, and that is fine. You are going to argue that the threads on the forums are not a place to collect valid data, and I will point you to professionals and streamers who agree with things said on the boards. It will become circular, and waste everyone's time including yours.
Have a nice day!