League Chat Episode 2 (Patch 8.13, Now with 100% more effort and quality)

I recently posted in the 8.13 Patch notes, got a lot of positive feedback, so I decided to reattempt making a video about league, my understandings, and how we can extend the discussion to include more people, and build a directed consensus among the community. So, here is my video as well as a repost of the comments I made about the snowball changes in 8.13

What is this change to snowballing riot? What was the objective here? As a result, we're looking to dial back on how easy it is to get rolling in the first place.

Why? That is not at all, even the slightest bit what anyone in the community was asking for. This is going to take us right back to 15 CS limits on lane advantages, never being up in levels, and no one thinking its worth enough to risk it to get kills, because they are no longer as valuable. This is SOOOOO much backwards progress.

The current issue with not snowballing, is not that "its easy to get going" the issue is that there is less of a continuous need to outperform the enemy to remain in the lead. Objectives like towers and baron are too weak, meaning even the slightest lead guarantees the securing of these objective. The ahead team no longer has to use their gold advantage to win fights before objectives come up. The point of a gold lead is to be able to venture into enemy controlled territory and wrestle a victory from a position which would normally be very disadvantageous. In an even situation, attempting to fight on the enemy side of the map, zoning off the enemy, and being able to secure vision on the flank (and thus spread out and expose vulnerability) is a large downside, and to be able to compensate for the handicap of being the aggressor, a gold advantage is required to level the playing field.

Here are a few things that ACTUALLY contribute to the issues, not lane phase.

1. The overabundance of engage and mobility from champions who do not expose themselves or their team to sufficient downsides. (Camille Rakan Ornn) There are many champions who don't have to cost their team something for how powerful and reliable their engage is. It is unfair that champions like that also have tons of lane presence, are have inbuilt sustain so its hard to punish early, and have amazing scaling due to ratios or utility.
2. The loss of distinction between mage (and anything else ability based that isn't a fighter) specializations. There was a point in league history where mages had Waveclear, or DPS, or Burst, or Poke. Some mages would have a weird compromise between the two, especially assassins who had burst and waveclear to assist in roams. Now many mages triple or quadruple dip on all of these. Many mages are unviable not because their bad or uninspired, but because the niche they fill, is also occupied by drastically more flexible champions. Why would anyone ever opt into and play around the long range power of Xerath and his poke, when they could pick Taliyah and have the potential to chunk, but also have waveclear and DPS in fights? The solution so far has just been gutting champions like Ryze, Azir, and Taliyah, but this solution rapidly runs out of champions to throw on the chopping block.
3. There are so many instances where toplane champions like Teemo, make it so the enemy just doesn't get to play the game. They double dip on both safety and threat, with a potential to do well with a lead. Essentially, you are forced to concede the lane because its unwinnable, and if you try and lose, you suffer hard. Unlike someone like Darius, who easily gets a lead but does little with it, many of these ranged champions are miserable and need attention to make their lane less miserable
4. There are so many champs which are carries, that have no difficulty getting early game. Camille, Irelia, Yasuo, Yi, Rakan, Janna, Soraka, Nami, Taliyah, Graves. It all comes from a widespread issue of things in their kits that just don't belong. Why does a late game mobile hyper carry like graves have such potent early dueling? why does yi a hyper carry do any damage pre 20 minutes? why does camille, a lane bully, have so much utility in her kit that allows her to scale, especially with her heals on Q and her passive shield it gives her a deceptive amount of durability and allows her to be an off tank despite being really mobile and a lane bully. Its like if AD Poppy could also abuse every lane matchup. Rumble has so much damage early, and mindless clear and poke, 0 risk involved in that champion, so why does he scale so well?

Does riot even listen to their community? do you guys play the game. No one thinks death timers are the issues, its that there isnt enough time to mount a comeback, and everytihng is so mushed to gether that there is no longer and division or distinction between unique roles, archetypes, and designs. Everything is just gravitating towards one big mashed up mix of a little bit of everything, and the result is so many champions either have overloaded kits, and playable numbers, so they're OP, or they have overloaded kits and unplayable numbers so they terrible, but when people do play them, its super unfun win or lose for the enemy.

TL;DR The game needs more space for things to spread out and breathe. There is a point where compressing the games to make them more action packed just makes them meaningless, frustrating, and unfun. I want to play the game, its not just about the victory, its about the journey.