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Stat Shard System: Issues and Solutions

ThrowsTheBird·11/14/2018, 12:57:34 PM·7 votes·20,782 views

I would like to discuss 3 key points I perceive to be problematic with the new system with regards to early game resistances.

1. Main beneficiaries are Tanks / Juggernauts.

While other classes / roles can and will use the defensive options it is safe to say - based on current rune usage - that the main users of armor / mr runes will be those who already go for defensive options with the current rune system.

The problem here is that when they introduced Runes Reforged in preseason 8 (patch 7.22) they already adjusted the base stats of all champions in game. Tanks got up to 20 armor which was not even possible with the old Quint system (3x4.5 armor if they took all Armor Quints).

Here you can check the adjustment (scroll all the way down):

http://leagueoflegends.wikia.com/wiki/V7.22

Tanks / Juggernauts do not need any more early game resistances. Tanks have a solid, even strong laning phase while they get shredded to pieces later in the game. This is bad for both tanks and for those who lane against them. Interaction in lane is minimal, most bruisers rush Tiamat irrespective of whether it fits into their build or not. The Tank can play safe so bruisers just push the lane and roam. Already Juggernauts and Tanks are pushing out true damage hypercarries according to win rates. At the same time some Tanks / Juggernauts are so tanky early game that they can be played mid lane because they shrug off ranged poke as well. This problem will be made worse if Tanks / Juggernauts will walk to lane with +10 armor or +12 MR.

Main point is that defensive shards benefit mostly two classes that do not need additional armor / magic resist EARLY game. We need strong tanks in the game to control teamfights and soak up damage in the front line. Currently we have tanks that are toxic in lane but useless later in teamfights.

2. Shard system ignores champion balance / design considerations

League champions are designed and balanced around not just lane mechanics but around scaling and power spikes as well.

Assassins in particular are designed to gain an early lead, snowball mid game and fall off late game. Obviously we are not talking about just Assassins, a lot of ADCs are similarly designed (Jhin / Lucian / Miss Fortune etc.) Having the ability to walk to lane with half a Null Magic Mantle or 2/3ds of a Cloth Armor will impact negatively champions who rely on early game aggression.

The other side of the coin is equally concerning: some champions were designed to be weak early game. Scaling champions like Ryze / Cassio / Vayne / Twitch etc. have a weak early game. It is challenging to get through laning phase but the reward is a strong late-game. This is a trade-off which is not taken into consideration in the new system.

Putting this much flat resistance into the game early completely ignores these design considerations and will only serve to further imbalances the game.

3. Laning Experience

From the previous point it follows that this system is a nerf to early game champions and a buff to those who are good late game and just wish to survive. It promotes a play style that is very passive and very focused on avoiding aggression in lane. This goes against everything Meddler said about laning:

> Laning in general: A period of small scale PVP, where it’s your skill against one or two opponents most of the time. Tests different skills from team fighting in particular. Should last for a fair duration and success during lane should set you up with a meaningful advantage post laning phase. If you win hard enough, and translate that lead into a wider advantage for your team, that could be very influential in deciding the game outcome. Your choice of champ relative to your opponents should matter, but shouldn’t decide the lane (strength in counter-picking, but not hard counters). Success should come from both how you play the lane (farming, zoning, trading etc) and how you contribute strategically during the laning period (roaming, TPing, objectives etc). Lanes should have frequent interaction between champions, not just passive farming.

See here: https://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/developer-corner/7VOAaqsF-quick-gameplay-thoughts-january-24

I completely agree with Meddler, unfortunately this is not the case at least for Top Lane anymore. Top is notorious for being the most uninteractive boring lane, I fear that the new system will hurt other lanes as well.

SUMMARY

The initial problem was that we had too much damage in the game, I think we are heading for the other extreme right now. There was base stat adjustment in patch 7.22. The damage problem was addressed not by changing items but by gutting Domination Tree while buffing tanks (again, not an ideal solution). On top of patch 7.22 stats, the Resolve Tree offers the Conditioning rune, and now they are buffing Doran's Shield for even more sustain. All this combined will result in a dull laning experience and less focus on trading.

POSSIBLE SOLUTION

Instead of pumping more flat resistances early game into Leauge why not try a scaling approach? Instead of + 10 armor or + 12 MR flat early why not have the option to have scaling resistances, like having 3 - 15 armor and 4- 18 MR?

This would ensure that Tanks SCALE to late game. They would have a better late game while having an opening early game (just like in every season before season 8). At the same time it would allow early game champions to be aggressive and fall off later while ensuring that late game champions have a well defined weakness during early laning phase.

Lastly, the scaling armor and MR stats would make squishy targets able to survive burst and this would dampen the effects of "too much damage" in the game.

Thank you for reading. What are your thoughts?

20 Comments

Healing Seraphim11/23/2018, 11:17:10 AM2 votes

Except Akali, Irelia (Bruiser Assasin, yey) and LB. Never forget Caps deleting an adc while being 0/2 with mercs lmao. These assasins are still overtuned to an extensive degree. Many of these champion were pick/ban troughout worlds for several reasons.

Real tanks are rarely played this season and for a good reason. They loose lane way too hard without jungler assist. In their stead heavy bruisers and juggernauts OR their counters were played. Urgot and AAtrox had insane pick/ban rates in worlds as well. Sion as champion was and still is broken. He and Ornn were the only played tanks in worlds (excluding the support tanks).

Also remove the hp stat from the runes. Its a noob trap. Also delete dark harvest. Thats TLD level of dumb.

Ridley Prime11/21/2018, 3:16:17 PM2 votes

I agree with the issues you brought up, but I also wanted to mention another one - which may change the approach to a solution.

In the 2018 rune system, you could take Inspiration if you wanted to stack the scaling Health bonus or start with 18% Attack speed. This option is now gone in the new system, leaving some champs without their optimal or favorite rune paths. Many junglers appreciate the armor, but I would argue overall clear speed is more important, especially with the race for scuttle early.

I think the new stats previously unavailable to the 2018 runes (CDR, armor, MR) should be one-ofs in the selection tree, while allowing health and attack speed to be taken twice to stack, similar to adaptive damage. This allows Riot to have less newer variables to take into consideration, and can more readily compare champion performance with the same starting stats as the previous season. Is this champion weak because they lost 9% attack speed at level 1, or is there a more probable reason?

Perhaps something like this:

ROW 1: Adaptive Force // Attack Speed // CDR/level ROW 2: Adaptive Force // Health/level // Armor ROW 3: Health/level // Attack Speed // Magic Resistance

This leaves the 'new' stats champions can start with in the third column without the ability to stack any one of them. It does not allow for pure tank (Health/Armor/MR) setups similar to the current system, and allows junglers that care about attack speed to further take what interests them (adaptive force for even faster clears, armor for the rough jungle spots, or HP to scale with cinderhulk).

Characters not being able to take 10 armor off the bat I think will address the dullness of laning phase you mention while still offering a primarily defensive choice setup for characters that want to survive the laning phase. The biggest issue I forsee with this system is the Adaptive/Adaptive/Attack speed pure offense setup becoming dominant, but I think that that option should be available to players. This does leave the laners that might want a pure defensive rune tree out to dry, but I think the power of the effective combination of health and a resistance can counteract the pure offensive setup. Or at least the stats could be tweaked a little better to even them out. Trades in lane will not too often get an extra attack in early on with just the 9% attack speed, but I'd have to do some testing for that claim.

This still does not address the last point you bring up, that the game could leave squishies feeling like there is 'too much damage,' but I think there are other levers that can be used to tune that within the rune system, typically via keystone adjustments.

As a bit of an aside, taking 10 armor or 12 Magic resist is very much a problem with this system for another reason - no option for penetration. Many rune pages included magic or armor penetration back in the day before runes reforged, which helped balance out the stats of runes. Champs that wanted to be aggressive early game could take flat AD/AP, and champs that wanted to scale could take penetration for when resistances became higher and their base damages got scarier with level.

I think Riot has come to the conclusion (one that I agree with) that penetration should be something you really have to build for rather than just get and take on every character. So I'd still say the scaling resists are better than reintroducing penetration in runes.

Do you think my proposal addresses the same issues that changing to scaling resists would, or would some combination of the two work better?

ModKnightsKemplar11/16/2018, 12:40:18 AM2 votes

My thought is that scaling runes are a much better option all around. That would really help make sure that the runes you selected continued to feel relevant throughout the game, instead of just picking based on lane matchup. I think that adds a layer of strategic depth that isn't present atm.

I realize that in the old runes system, no one took scaling runes. BUT, if that is all that you could choose, wouldn't that be interesting? Heck, they could even do flat damage runes and scaling tank runes. There are really interesting possibilities to consider here, imo.

Nausicäa 11/22/2018, 1:34:53 AM1 votes

Disagree with pretty much everything and quite frankly you're 100% wrong.

Point 1. Main beneficiaries are not tanks. Even if they are Tanks have been weak for the entirety of season 8 due to damage out scaling defenses from both runes and items and the abundance of true damage from things like conqueror. This is a fact backed up by winrates, champion popularity and worlds pick rates. Tanks were non existent this season.

The main beneficiaries are immobile squishy champions who have been getting shit on tby this 1 shot meta.

Point 2. Damage has been too high for the entirety of season 8. Riot has admitted it, the majority of the community has been complaining about it, Pro and former pro players complained about it and even the worlds casters said it MULTIPLE times during worlds. Damage in season 8 was WAY TOO HIGH. This not even a point to be disputed, its a fact.

Resistances made assassins who were way too strong weaker? Good, thats exactly what needed to happen considering assassins were basically 1 comboing people at level 3 for 100% of their healthbar consistently. Thats not good gameplay.

5-12 resistance doesnt even come close to moving us into the direction of too little damage. Damage has gone down by sub 10% to a single damage type if you take both of the same resistances, leaving you with 0% reduction to the other or 3-4% to both. To say that this is making damage too low is utterly absurd.

Your entire post is a massive exaggeration and filled with falsehoods.

The Bad Touch11/28/2018, 10:36:36 AM1 votes

I'd like to point out is was quite possible to start with 30+ flat armor and 12mr from just runes... + old masterys GAVE you more armor/mr and toughness.... as well as a good bit of health.

Not to mention you used to start with a LOT more sustain from flasks/potions and base HP regen values were higher for almost every champ.

I used to run full armor/scaling armor pages and start cloth + 5 pot into bursty ad champs all the time. Then you'd go heart of gold + philo stone.

Every season champs have done more damage and been less tough... with the exclusion of season 5 where for a brief time tanks were tanky again.

ModKnightsKemplar11/16/2018, 12:38:31 AM1 votes

Approved!

The Bad Touch11/28/2018, 5:53:58 PM1 votes

Did you personally ask all 100,000,000 of them? You could have had to for that to "literally" be true. Everyone I played with has at least 10 runes pages covering everything from "tank vs all AD" to FULL AS/flat armor jungle pages. Maybe it's something people that are new to the game made a habbit of? Hell dude there used to be very popular webpages that literally did nothing but post slight variations in rune configs. Do you even remember when Akali required a custom page? Or dodge runes?

The very things you started as being "wrong" were what made the game so damn popular to begin with my dude. The players were here BEFORE the recent changes.

Tanks traditionally have had very safe laning phases due to much higher sustain and much lower damage than LoL in it's current form.

Exactly when in League history are you talking about? I still remember when taric had an infinite healing ulti, eve stuned with an auto out of stealth, GP could kill his own minions, you could stack 6 sunfire capes and you could start 15 health pots and they healed for 200 each.

Ever try to force a Shen out of lane when he had 3000 points of health potions at level 1, a Q that heals, AND an activated shield? I assure you tank lanes back in the way were easy mode compared to now.

Stelyar11/16/2018, 3:02:29 AM1 votes

Tanks / Juggernauts do not need any more early game resistances. Tanks have a solid, even strong laning phase while they get shredded to pieces later in the game. This is bad for both tanks and for those who lane against them. Interaction in lane is minimal, most bruisers rush Tiamat irrespective of whether it fits into their build or not. The Tank can play safe so bruisers just push the lane and roam. Already Juggernauts and Tanks are pushing out true damage hypercarries according to win rates. At the same time some Tanks / Juggernauts are so tanky early game that they can be played mid lane because they shrug off ranged poke as well. This problem will be made worse if Tanks / Juggernauts will walk to lane with +10 armor or +12 MR.

Which tanks are you referring too? Like I can understand Ornn, bc of how strong his W is, but I find that even he is often bullied out of lane by popular bruisers. Even Sion, who just very high durability and good damage, is often killed by smart aggresive bruisers. Other than those two most tanks tend to get out damaged and out-sustained by most popular top laners (specifically thinking of Darius, Garen, Camille, Gangplank, Illaoi, Fiora, Irelia{maybe}). I also don't think the extra resists will do much since true damage is so prevalent in top lane meta with conquerer and built in true damage.

I am Razgriz11/18/2018, 9:40:44 AM1 votes

I agree with the end sentiment but not the argument presented as for why. Thankfully that's not really important if, in the end, we both agree "flat damage okay, scaling tank stats better".

Especially health like damn.