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Can We Just Acknowledge: Riot Has no love for Top or Jungle roles

pwc2016·9/27/2019, 3:07:03 AM·3 votes·872 views

Basically, my point is this:

Riot has consistently shown that they dislike both these positions.

When tanks/tank items (I think the issue was mostly that tank items were far too good, could just be me tho) were great, the only reason it changed was an outcry from pretty much everybody because you would only ever play tank anything. Riot did not change tanks because top laners hated playing against them, they changed them because most people hated them. Now, look at the Fiora/Riven buffs. These champion did not need buffs in 9.19, Fiora was already good (how is Parry a fair ability?) and so was Riven (arguably too good for a champion that requires hardcore animation timings to play well). Jax didn't need the Q buff in 9.18, and, along with Shojin's, is a massive issue top lane. Can we stop pretending like Riot understands or likes Top lane? It's obvious they do not, and the only thing that could possibly give them a shred of credibility would be removing Shojin's in preseason.

Jungle wise, it's quite clear Riot also dislikes JG. Most Junglers I know hate the role right now, it is far more team reliant than ever, scuttle spawns too late making farming junglers useless because you're expected to be a gank bot. Counterjungling is dead and can even benefit the enemy, since you can just end up rubber banding that camp for your enemy. Jungle experience and gold has been nerfed to a point where most junglers are pretty much just a walking ward past 15 minutes into the game (excluding a few with useful ults like Gragas).

I feel as if Riot simply does not care about these roles in any way. I could be wrong, but I doubt it, though I wish I were.

2 Comments

RekSai CoffeeCo9/27/2019, 12:46:52 PM1 votes

Logged in to upvote OP as the logic is too much for a whole lot of people downvoting for truth.

On My Kill List9/27/2019, 7:01:05 PM1 votes

i agree with you that riot has shown a clear systemic bias against junglers and tops. the thing is a strong jungle ecosystem ends up destabilizing other lanes/roles because then ultimately games devolve into which jungler is better. and maybe thats one reason why riot hates jungle because jungle simply has far more impact and power then basically any other role when its working as intended and since riot has no real incentive or motive to make the game balanced or maybe they do but they don't have the skill so they find it easier to simply neuter the jungle and leave it weak so that way they don't have as much as a headache trying to balance the game overall. now many of the jungle changes throughout leagues history have always scratched my head in some way or made little too no sense. as for tops well top is both the most diverse lane and the most un-diverse. the core problem with top is its the only place in the game where bruisers outside of jungle or the weird mid pick can reliably go to. so we have to come to a standstill in design decision. do we want people like olaf kled to have the right to top? to have top lane exclusively catered to them? or do we want things like karma vlad teemo etc to have this right? ultimately you have several parties in a fight over ownership of this lane. i personally side with people like hashinshin in that top should be for bruisers/melee's only. as many of the ranged tops already had their own lanes in the form of mid and bot.(infact vlad was originally a mid til continuous nerfs due to his kit being broken whenever it was anyway remotely viable against other mages/mids led him being nerfed to the point where he can only reliably bully melee toplaners.(sure he can beat the occasional mage or assassin but most of them have a really easy time against him) i think that if we push bruisers out they'd simply become 2nd hand supports in the long run. but i think one of the things keeping this from happening is the lack of good gold gen for bot. we saw that when double targons existed that this happened for a patch where people would go double bruiser bot.(which in my mind was kinda refreshing to see;say a pantheon and leona bot) i think riot also has another problem in that there's always been a clear ranged bias in leagues balance/design. this is why almost all the of the melee that are considered good have ways of cheating the ranged melee system. anyways i'm going really off topic but jungle being weak is both a symptom of a bigger problem which is whoever is at head of balance not doing their job and how screwed up the game is on a fundamental level. ultimately there is nothing we can really do as players but suck it up and accept it. because this isn't just a jungle problem or top problem but a design problem.