Its actually kind of nice for games to be faster for a change.

Pretty much this. Do i think everything is balanced? Fuck no, this is preseason, we can't expect anything near a balanced game-state for a couple cycles at the least. Champions and masteries have to be brought into line, proper item builds have to be set, and those items tuned to be fair in respective to how and when they're attained. But balance isn't what i think we need to focus on here.

Lord knows we've had a shit ton of posts in the last few months talking about the miserable state of hypercarries like dominating the board, and games stalling out into 50m losses. Bot lane has been stagnant thanks to double teleport making bot lane aggression almost a thing of the past. Top lane has always been an island with little impact outside of split-pushing and tele-ganking, and the only role that's had any true variance has been mid, which served to cater a large and diverse array of champions AD and AP.

That said, Its kind of interesting for games to end sooner than 45-50m, and to a degree reminds me more of when i was starting in s2, with games usually lasting around 20-35m with 40+ being considered "long". Now don't get me wrong, the novelty of being blown up instantly by more assassins than I can shake a stick at is going to get old pretty fast, but for the moment i'm going to stay positive and enjoy the fact that i can play a game and not have to reserve the entirety of the hour to not run the risk of needing to be somewhere and finding that i'm still under siege with a "We can do this guys" outlook.

That all aside, I miss the Tank meta, not gonna lie, and I'm really not looking forward to yet ANOTHER assassin meta, which is where i feel this game is rapidly returning to.

What are you guys' thoughts? Any unpopular opinions? Do you like that the game is a bit more frenetic now? Do you hate it? Are you scared or optimistic about the future of the season? Do you praise as you should?