State of the game with Meddler, Zirene, and more

Riot·3/30/2016, 10:18:33 PM·7 votes·33,754 views

Welcome to the latest installment of the League Community Podcast, a series in which we take you behind-the-scenes with the people who help make League possible. Expect new guests and new stories every couple of weeks or so, and make sure to hit us with those sweet comments and ratings so we can keep striving toward a Challenger tier podcast.

This week, Andrei “Meddler” Van Roon, Aidan “Zirene” Moon, Patrick “Scarizard” Scarborough, and Wesley “SmashGizmo” Ruttle bring their varied perspectives to bear in breaking down the current state of League gameplay balance.

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216 Comments

Nazahaki3/31/2016, 7:08:59 PM74 votes

In one word. "Unbalanced."

Noksterz3/31/2016, 8:37:22 PM60 votes

So annoying to listen to zirene. He can only talk about game balance from an epsorts perspective. The majority of the community doesnt care about the LCS. Its insanely boring. They play an entirely different game than the rest of us play. Only being able to talk from one perspective makes you a bad candidate for talking about game balance. This game isnt as screwed up as it was in the early part of the season but theres still way too many things wrong. I used to play league everyday before season 6, now i play maybe once a week and its mostly aram lol They have totally botched this game up

Neo Cyrus4/1/2016, 12:16:54 AM36 votes

AP amount heavily reduced
AP prices insanely increased
MR amount increased
MR prices decreased
Armor prices increased
Armor amount decreased
AD counterpart items far more efficient despite base AD efficiency values heavily being worth more
Maw/Hexdrinker are straight up broken
Masteries almost entirely favour AD champions and do a fraction on AP champs (30% on AD for TLD and 10% on AP despite how much of an innate advantage AD champs have, great idea that was)
Mana potions deleted
New AD items created to make being a mage feel even more like shit
A ton more I'm forgetting

The only defense mages have, Zhonya's, is absolute trash. Aside from its active having to be worth 1800+ gold for it not to be an insane buy, which it's not nearly worth, it leaves mages with no mana regen or CDR in a meta where they desperately need both. Basically they're forced to either die or bend over and buy Zhonya's and auto lose lane hoping to somehow come back later.

Amazing how none of this was mentioned, let alone discussed. I don't even play this game anymore because of how trash I think mages are relative to other classes. Win rates mean nothing when the opposing laner is also a mage, that doesn't mean mages aren't worthless when facing another class.

This isn't even mentioning how tanks can just take one of their insane new masteries and stack armor now that all they need is a single MR item to outright ignore mages. Mages are so nerfed that in turn ADCs are less effective against tanks now due to all the armor stacking. Any tank can 1v1 any mage in the game with just one of the 70 MR items. Maokai is picked all the time in the LCK, better buff him with a metric ton of MR for his upcoming Meowkai skin, no money grubbing here.

I'm just waiting for the "mage update" to see if they'll get equal treatment as other classes and start playing again or 100% quit otherwise. The only thing that kept me from quitting this game before was that all my friends played this game. As of season 6 most of them quit so I have nothing tying me to this game anymore.

TL;DR - Mages are trash and it wasn't even remotely mentioned for a second. It's the biggest problem with the game and the fact that it was completely ignored just makes it seem like everyone was intentionally dodging the issue or actually believe mages are not that horrible which is an even worse sign. Anyone who thinks mage win rates are indicative of anything can't put 1 and 1 together to figure out that mage vs mage cancels out that argument.

LuluInWonderland4/1/2016, 9:37:36 AM23 votes

Here's my issues with the current state of the game:

It's no longer fun to play solo. You're almost always matched with 3-4 people who are queued together and will beat up on you if you don't do the same thing they do. This is huge. Even duo queuing is having the same issue. The only way around it is to also queue with 2-4 other people, which only reinforces the current state even more. It's not fun, especially when you are the solo player with a 4-man queued team. I understand encouraging people to play together because that's fun, but it came with the unintended cost of not playing with friends is now less fun.

A very slow patch cycle. The game has evolved to a point where waiting several weeks for a new patch to fix OP/broken champ/item of the patch isn't fun. Minor number tweaks should be patched much more often (weekly?).

Too many patches change multiple aspects at the same time - a champ's stats along with his (or his typical opponent's) build also being affected, and it causes broken champs/items. If your goal is to nerf/buff/change a champ, then change that champ one piece at a time and see how it plays out. Multiple things change at once and not fixing the problem, and then - to put it bluntly - seemingly having no idea what part needs to be readjusted. Not all changes can be in a vacuum like that, but there are plenty of circumstances where you can adjust just one thing at a time. This goes hand-in-hand with the above point about making quicker, small changes.

AD champs, especially ADCs, have received way too much love this season. The rework was fine in concept and I understand it taking time to balance all those changes, but AD champs in general are just overwhelmingly too strong. They have so many build paths to adjust their playstyle to pretty much any circumstance. Not all ADCs, IMHO, should be generalists. Also, it feels like crit is too easy to come by now (and is already unreliable by nature), and lifesteal is very strong and there are many ways to come by getting it now. It pushes AP champs to the side since starting around later mid game most AD champs can't effectively be poked out anymore, but most AP champs have to recall to recover HP.

Mages are just outclassed by other types of champs with only a few exceptions. AP items are too expensive, not nearly as diverse as AD items, and MR is very strong.

Mobility creep. 'nuff said.

Turrets are way too weak and don't do much damage starting around mid game. Anti-siege champs were a bit of an issue as noted in the podcast, but the solution is not to just kill the ability to defend completely.

Neutral objectives almost entirely encourage the team that is ahead. If you're behind then the dragon buffs have very little meaning. Baron buff helps with sieges, but that's about it. Why not have an added buff for baron and/or dragon that increases armor/MR/HP while under your own turret (or increases the turret's damage or adds a slow or something)? It slows the game a bit, but without that there's almost no reason to go for neutral objectives when behind.

The new masteries are interesting and I like the idea, but they heavily favor certain types of champs. In particular, AP champs again feel lackluster in their options. TLD's free raw damage and burst just doesn't feel right.

While seemingly being addressed slightly in the last few patches, there's still a recurring issue with champs having too high base stats. This means they can go tanky and still do a fair amount of damage. There's no reasons champs who are primarily meant to be assassins should be effective when building almost full tank. Assassins should be squishy or do fairly low damage if they build tanky. As some examples, we had issues with tanky Ekko, Fizz, and Yi just in the past several months or so. There were plenty more before that. This isn't a hard one to fix - lower base stats and increase ratios and/or change base ratios to bonus ratios.

Not fun / frustrating game mechanics. Quinn's new blind wasn't fun to play against. TK isn't fun to play against in any role. Ekko is an assassin/mage/fighter yet has so many aspects to his kit for every situation so he's very safe (jumped in and couldn't kill or didn't have vision? Hit R). Bard. Fiora. Illaoi. Darius and Garen post-rework for several months. Don't get me wrong - the champs are fun to play and it's not a matter of balance. They're just not fun to play against. You're forced into picking strong counters or just having a very bad time (against similarly skilled opponents). There's ways to make champs fun to play without making them so frustrating to play against.

Too many generalists. This is not just an issue due to overloaded kits allowing many champs to play various roles, but the available items (especially on the AD side of things) promote it as well. This isn't bad in itself, but it doesn't seem like this is taken into account in the champ's power curve. I shouldn't be able to first pick a champ and be strong in multiple roles at the same time. Sure, I could pick Fizz or Ekko, for example (not to pick on them), and go mid or jungle fine. But I shouldn't be strong (top couple tiers) in both. It makes the champs safe to pick, which is fine, but that safety should be part of their power curve. They shouldn't excel at either role as a consequence of being good at both.

MasterVidallis3/31/2016, 9:18:40 PM17 votes

Nice podcast, share a lot of the concerns listed above so let me give you some suggestions for balance:

item 3053 is fine in terms of numbers but I think should be a melee only item. It should be a fighter item that is ok on AD assassins looking for some extra survivability because those characters at least have to dive to do damage. This item is however simply too good on ADC's by taking away what should be their weakness (burst) while boosting their auto attacks, which is their bread and butter. If it's available to them you'll have to nerf it to the point fighters don't want it.

item 3156 The nerf you have in the PBE is what it needs and should put it back in line.

Death timers should be perhaps right between what they were last season and where they're at now? That one seems easy enough.

Towers just go down too easily, just give them a small health boost and see how it goes. If you do it small and watch you can find a happy medium, it's frustrating that its taking so long to try adjustments.

item 3009 are balanced now the problem is movement speed stacking on top of it. Here is a solution: make the diminishing returns curve on increasing movement speed more sharp. I think if stacking multiple MS boost sources becomes less efficient you can keep the current numbers so they're worth getting individually while removing the egregious cases of uncatchable champions stacking 3 MS boosts.

item 3060 minion boost just needs a straight up nerf.

Graves and Corki just have too many stats and need nerfs, it's not the items as much as just overloaded champions. Not sure why you included Quinn in the "problem" list, she seems pretty balanced after the Q nerf and is a good generalist type adc to have in the game as is.

Bombzilla3/31/2016, 7:15:36 PM17 votes

I just want U.R.F summoner 4 summoner 12

Grimmrock3/31/2016, 7:23:47 PM9 votes

Oh, Im sorry, do you not like my ZZ'rot Sion top? well, I dont like how thats my only option against mobile champions, because you nerfed the hell out of my shield, my E, and made my ult the least reliable CC in the game for an ultimate. Feels good when Im relegated to a single strat.

Drakegaurd4/1/2016, 5:49:44 AM8 votes

One thing I've defiantly experienced lately is a tendency for games feeling as if one side gaining an early advantage over-frequently results in that sides victory. Capitalizing on early leads is fine, but Past an early point(10-15min), I've lately been feeling like one side has already pulled ahead enough that a comeback becomes exponential unlikely. It becomes a game of one side, demoralized, depressed, and salty, waiting for a 20min surrender. I don't want early surrenders. Recently my games have been total stomps, one side or the other. My favorite games are close ones, with tense clutch moments, and tug of war action into the late game. Even when i lose a close game i feel good, but stomps are automatically miserable for half the players. Also I'm always disappointed when I'm doing great and the fun dies abruptly when a sad enemy team agrees to throw in the towel rather than attempt to oppose us. More tools to prevent an early loss would be nice? I'm not an expert, but this is my personal biggest concern about the current game state. Thnx for reading this if you get it riot.

TwinTon33/31/2016, 8:11:02 PM7 votes

"Seeing early conflict at neutral objectives..." What? So Minions are gonna get stronger? Towers are gonna get nerfed? Scuttle is getting buffs? Deathtimers being lowered? What does that sentence mean??

Stevev453/31/2016, 8:07:10 PM6 votes

games not bloody enough, better nerf burst some more.

RO538UD3/31/2016, 8:18:54 PM6 votes

One word...doom bots

Vistha Kai3/31/2016, 9:04:38 PM5 votes

Is the TL;DR of this podcast "We think the game balance is fine as it is"?

AMYS GRAVE3/31/2016, 9:44:18 PM4 votes

"movement speed can narrow the difference between the champoins with dashes or blinks and those without, and historically we have seen champoins without those effects really struggle to compete and access to items like DMP or boots of swiftness or runic echos has empowered those champions who have really struggled."

Mobility creep - the comment.

mobility discussion begins at 29:50 if you want more context.

i aM DoPeY x3/31/2016, 7:44:47 PM4 votes

go back to pach notes on youtube

Mister Wonton3/31/2016, 10:04:24 PM3 votes

It seems like Riot is seeing a lot of turtling by players. This seems like a weird idea because it shouldn't be possible to in such a PvP based game. The reason (at least in my opinion) is that changes like Rot and Grasp cause this because of the emphasis on PvE not PvP like they were saying. This also lead to the rise of champions like Malphite and Rammus. So, keystones and items that promote turtling or playing a very passive game seems to be the problem. I may be completely wrong but this is what is seems like they were dancing around in the podcast and what they are trying to change.

Declined4/3/2016, 10:55:48 AM3 votes

Got bored and had some free time on my hands, I'll update this later but for now I just wanted to post it so I didn't delete it by mistake.

Right, hello and welcome to the League Community Podcast I'm your host, Patrick "Scarizard" Scarborough And I have some experts, some reported experts here. Find out how expert they really are, to talk with me about the state of the game.

This is march 16th for all of you listening from the future. Joining me today, I have the (what is it like) Lord of Gameplay, Lord of all Gameplay I think it is, Andrei van Rune Also known as Meddler. Alright folks ya

We have eh, Wesley 'Reddle' (?) also known as "SmashGizmo" also The Best Falco at Riot Games

- Thank you Patrick, that means a lot to me.

* And ofcourse we have Aiden "Zirene" Moon, known for his dancing skills and questionable sodium tainted analytics. How are you doing Aiden?

Aiden: I love how the salt theme is just catching on.

Patrick: Oh we were just, oh wait wait, that's a thing, people call you salty

Aiden: Salty

[General laughter] 1:16

Patrick: That's actually, that's one of those where you feel sad you didn't make it up. Just like okay that's quite good. So guys like I said, we're talking about the state of the game, and I kindda wanna focus this discussion on preseason to now, so that's patch 5.22-6.7 i the one that's going to be coming out. Assuming people are generally aware of the stuff that's going to happen there But yeah, general thoughts, how are we feeling about the game right now?

- I'm starting to feel a little better about it, I had a couple of patches where I was feeling pretty down on it, the last few were starting to make me turn up a bit in particular nerfs to Zz'rot portal, starting to tune down some of the particularly ininteractive top laners. Made me start to like the game a lot more than I was in 6.4-6.5. For me it's starting to get better but it's kindda been ups and downs this season.

Patrick: So more interactive top lanes this season. I mean I know you play a lot of top lane.

- Yeah.

Patrick: Aiden you primarily a jungler, at least when you wanna win. How has jungling been, how has that felt like for you since this season began?

Aiden: Junglings kindda been kind of all over the place right, we've had Runic Echo introduced and people have started playing Gragas again, we got that back. Now we got Kindred the Devourer so we have to really dabble in a whole bunch of different things that flow with the meta. I haven't really seen too many warrior junglers. You might play like the really agressive Lee sin and stuff like that, but other than that people like Lee sin and Sejuani. The meta keeps shifting every patch, that I'm trying to think of like what really is stuck the entire time. Rek'Sai has fallen down a tier list as well, Elise I guess is still up there. Yeah it's really adaptability. In terms of objectives dragon still not really hitting the mark in my opinion Like I don't think it's something people are going out of their way to contest unless it's like really far down the... 4th dragon place.

[General agreement] 3:13

#Rift Herald Discussion

Aiden: Rift Herald is really interesting, cause some teams are really prioritizing it more in Esports and trying to use it cause it's at least something you have over your opponent on the map. But I don't even know if that's even where we want it to be just yet.

Patrick: Right, it does give gold, right which is kindda even if I don't gaah (you guys mumble a LOT) use the buffs super well

Aiden: It's actually an interesting amount of gold too as well, cause it's just enough gold that if you allocate too many people to it, it's not worth it. So if you can get like your support and top laner to do it, or your support and jungler to do, it in like a laneswap. Then it's definitely worth it cause your supports not going to be acruing any gold right. So if you bring laners to it, so if you had your midlaner and toplaner doing it they'll be actually be missing enough cs that they go down in gold.

Patrick: Yeah this is, kindda interesting actually .... it's a good way to bring our conversation to the objectives, cause I think that's one of the big things from preseason we were like... We made a lot of changes to towers, we introduced Rift Herald. Previously there was nothing and now there is something. Andre what's your thoughts on how Rift Herald is playing out? In my opinion it feels a little bit like a math problem, right? It's like hard to know when I'm supposed to go for it or when I want it, I get really scared when I hear it Screech from across the map and I know someone has it, but other than that it's a little hard for me to gauge the value, what'd you think?

Andrei: Yeah, we still really like the idea of Rift Herald as something you can contest without your entire team, particular with your top laner or one other. Don't overall feel it entirely hit it's mark in terms of worthwhile contesting, and as you say clear enough when you should contest it in particular. So we're actually gonna be making some changes to Rift Herald, to Dragon as well and to a couple of other smaller objectives, things like red and blue buff and probably some tweaks to towers. In a patch coming up in the middle of the year, sorta trying to get some more focus onto those.

Patrick: Yeah, so, so I guess let's not talk around it, let's actually contextualize that real quick. [5:10]

#Objective changes

Patrick: Were calling it midseason?

Andre: So we're aiming for midseason, probably in late May at a best guess. That'll be a miniature version of preseason, not big and disruptive as those things tend to be, but a bundling of small changes together. We've already talked about the major updates, which will be about the sort big cornerstones in that. Our other big focus will be on updates to those objectives

- In a lot of ways this is about formalizing something that we've been at a lower scope for years now, which is like the break between competitive seasons. We take a little more liberty in terms of how we can balance the game we feel like we can be a little more experimental because it won't necessarily ruin people's jobs in the LCS. I actually feel empowered to do bigger changes, this year we're going gunho with it, right. We're taking that to the next level and actually doing a lot of big changes all at once.

Patrick: Yeah I think it's been exciting just to watch the process because it feels like.... I'll just say as a balance watcher, not just when I was working on design but then in resent years as well, it feels like we will make a big shift, or make a big change, and sometimes then just let it sit for a while. And it feels like oh well maybe we wait until preseason to change the jungle right? That can be a really long time away, so I don't know, having a defined base, to kindda really shape things up seems neat. Aiden how do you think this is gonna work, especially heading into (what is it) best of twos, best of threes?

Aiden: Yeah best of threes here in NA, best of twos over in Europe.

Patrick: NA is I believe the only region and language that we ..... ¿¿¿ think of?

[General murmur] 07:02

Patrick: What do you think about heading into midseason, Elise even being a think. You think it's gonna shake things up a lot?

Aiden: Well I think it's gonna shake things up a lot, like you know Cinderhulk and juggernaut updates did coming into worlds, where people are gonna have to figure out the meta and adapt. I mean League of Legends they're playing it for 6 years now and still always fresh, I absolutely love that we keep doing these things where we update it, that feels like a different game and you're playing different champions, you're trying to learn new things and you're playing against different champions. So it's constantly evolving, I absolutely love that. So I think this is something that's exciting for me from an Esports perspective. I wanna see what people catch onto and what they do with it, new types of 7.42

Lord Galvatron4/4/2016, 11:51:35 PM3 votes

You guys did a nice job covering some problems that made league of legends "unfun" such as the dragon, the mixed offensive/defensive items being abused on ranged/normally squishy champions, and the death timers (which I agree are hard to balance).

However, there are some things that were either glossed over or simply left unmentioned. I will list them to be a little more "digestible"

The state of towers; simply put, they are too weak in the game to keep up with the current meta and the state of league as a whole. This doesn't necessarily straight up buff towers, but maybe decreasing the respawn timers could amend the situation as well as nerfs to items such as Banner.
Guinsoo's Rageinducingblade; curently the most "game changing" item in league of legends. As of now, the only reliable counter to this is a good malphite with FR. This item happens to be the reason why Kog' Maw is sitting happily at a 56% win rate with 0 mention of him to be seen.
The unmentioned or glossed over champion that should be spoken up for. Mordekaiser for example, was mentioned as a expirmenral ADC and had some success during the Jugernaught patch/LCS and was therefore nerfed. However, no one mentioned him after the ADC overhaul where the conventional ADC's were revamed. This made, Morde even worse then the pre-juggernaughts. Another champion that experienced a "happy little accident" was Hecarim, this was expressly disappointing to see a champion nerfed for the wrong reason. If you can close your eyes and remember the season 6 preseason, where minions put on their wizarding hats and decided to be Gandalf the grey. I remember this and I saw that Hecarim, Fizz, and champions that were comfortable building PD, were much more common (top lane). Subsequently, Hecarim was a top pick, and because of his natural kit, and him already being a good top laner. You can see how this goes. TL;DR, Hecarim was nerfed, and then his win rate/ playability plummeted after the reset (mostly) the creep block.

Hope you guys at Riot can look at this, and give some feedback.

Edit: The comment is clumped/bugged, for some reason sorry about that.

1Maza4/5/2016, 1:30:26 AM3 votes

The problem with "more early conflict" is that champions snowball so fast it's fucking ridiculous right now. You fight for dragon and their Zed/Talon/literally-any-AD-champion gets a double kill while your AD and mid died and they miss 2 waves of minions? That game is basically over before the first tower has even fallen.

zZl Master lZz4/5/2016, 3:32:37 AM3 votes

I stopped playing league last summer or whenever the tank meta rolled in. I had no interest in playing and had better things to do with my free time. I logged in around the re-release of one-for-all. Played it, loved it and continued to. decided to try this game one more time for my friends sake. Got back into it and then preseason hit.... Holy crap, the most unbalanced, p.o.s, garbage version of this game I've ever played. I stopped and waited for the season to start again Gave it a try and fell in love with jungling. I've been Jungling for about 3 months until now.

This ad meta I can deal with it but as most of the time with ad assassin meta follows a tank meta. I've stopped playing league, for now, ill get back into it when this transition into tank meta is over, maybe.....

For any new person that has joined league in the last year, don't expect much from riot. I'll be frank with you guys. Riot is a company that doesn't listen to their community at all. They don't listen to anything we say, their arrogant and tend to baby us, thinking they know everything wrong with the game. The relationship with the community is trash and become broken due to these reasons.

Ad defensive items are way better than anything for ap mages. You get these really great anti-burst item 3053 or anti-crowd control item 3139 and anti-mage or app assasin item 3156 along with great ad bruiser items. build paths are limitless with ad, Tank zed was a thing, why, because of items (I main him, I know I've tried it) mages are left in the dust this rework doesn't need to happen to champs beside Vlad. The items need to be revamped, changed to fit more of defensive options for mages. I think ap assassins are good as is. the ap jungle item was changed because of other champs abusing the passive (AP UDYR). That's says something.

I will not play this game and will probably avoid this game. I've played since early season 2, from multiple accounts. I don't want to do this, but its not fun any more. I'll probably play robotcraft or vainglory from now on. I'm sorry riot. See ya when urf is released and that's it.

TL;DR: I rant about the ad items, and ap mage issues. Along with the relationship between riot and the community. Also why I'm quitting for now or for the rest of this game's relevance.

Goodbye for now and possible rest of the game.

-zZl Master lZz

Tacitus244/5/2016, 7:37:36 AM2 votes

I love playing mages but I agree with some of the other comments about how mages are getting REKT right now. I couldn't understand why when they buffed all the AD items that they nerfed the AP items? They made Zhonya's more expensive and took away some AP on Luden's echo and Zhonya's....I've noticed a huge difference in my gameplay because of it. I don't enjoy playing mages as much and I think it's really hurt the game. Why doesn't Riot talk about the state of mages and about how weak they've made them in comparison to AD champs?