Review of Patch 3.14 (Detailed Opinions)

Hi everyone, I play League and this is my smurf, and I just have so many comments about this 3.14 patch. There's so many points to touch on I don't know where to even begin, keep notice that that these are MY OPINIONS and by no means am I subjectively looking to offend ANYONE so feel free to agree, disagree, leave a comment, question or concern.

I will begin with the lanes/roles first.

Middle

As we all know, mid lane in Season 3 was more favorable to many assassins and there have been several patches in attempting to balance a few and nerf a few champions such as Kassadin/Fizz/Ahri/Zed etc. I think that these nerfs are needed as they were too strong and I agree that they were very difficult to play against as many players wouldn't be able to react in time to retaliate or counter what they were about to do.

Now that the era of AP Assassins are seemingly coming to an end, I would believe that AP Casters would be shown more frequently in matches, such as TF/Karthus/Orianna/Viktor etc. That being said, mid lane is less of an action solo lane and more of a farm lane than ever before. Why I say this is because for example if you pair up Morgana and Anivia, neither really have true kill potential for each other and they just spend the game farming and not missing CS which isn't even that important anymore. I'll get into as why these points are being brought up in the next role.

Jungle

With the new jungle update in patch 3.14, many junglers are complaining about many different things, a few in which might be why even after clearing two buffs, they still need to kill one camp or 3 minions to reach level 3, which is the threshold for many champions such as Elise, Nautilus, Lee Sin, etc. With the EXP rates being more diversified, junglers NEED to spend more time in the jungle to keep up with the other lanes and not fall behind by continuously killing camps and taxing whenever possible. Now despite the lack of EXP per camp, with the new Smite, junglers now can gather gold more faster than before, being able to impact the game by being able to purchase more items, while not falling behind too much to their top and mid lanes.

You're probably asking now, "Ok soo.... what's so bad about it? You lose a bit of EXP, but you gain MORE gold?"

See that is the absolute problem right there. As junglers spend more time in their jungle, it means less occurrence of ganking and inserting lane presence. Why risk a gank when you can just sit back and clear camps which also gives you EXP and GOLD but at a VERY safer rate? With this being said, it means that junglers don't really need to gank other lanes anymore, making the lanes just a total farm fest for either side. Now ganking isn't as rewarding as before, which also takes out the aspects of teamwork in League of Legends. Less coordination is needed because you don't even need to gank to stay in the game.

Also another thing I've been noticing in many games is that, with the new items specifically (Relic Shield/Targon), junglers now have a tendancy of just taking their buffs and rushing top lane which in most cases results in a 2v1 making it unfavorable for the opposing 1 champion. Players aren't even staying in the jungle to clear camps, they just take the buffs whenever they are up and rush top lane, and the saddest part is that you won't have a level advantage because the original player in the lane will be soaking solo exp and when the jungle comes he too will be on par making it 2 level 6 champions vs 1 level 6 champion in the end. This ends up being quite unfair, and it's not innovative in any means necessary, it's just a one sided advantage to the team who does so.

Top

With the new masteries and such I believe that top lane has actually yet again (unsurprisingly) got another buff. Why? Because you don't need a full 21 points in defense mastery to be tanky, you can just put up to 17 points into the defense tree to gain the complete benefits of the tank and but the extra 13 points in the offensive tree which has more offensive benefits than the before. Meaning tanky top lane champions such as Garen and Renekton, not only can just be naturally tanky and build towards being an unkillable top laner, but now they hurt more than before prior to this patch.

Also, of course, many top laners are switching to duo laners in which there is one of the notorious Annie/Zyra/Lux supports and a AD junger such as Jarvan IV/Xin/Nasus which makes it pretty much unwinnable in every situation unless they decide to take 4 tower hits each. Unfortunately the only lane that is buffed is screwed over because instead of it being a 1v1 skill matchup/setup, it turned into a number game.

ADC/Marksman

Ok ADC's have always been the backbone of teams, dishing out constant DPS in team fights sitting in the back and shooting out damage. A very important aspect of any AD player is the ability to farm well in lane, not miss CS and have a huge sum of CS in "x" amount of minutes in the game. This isn't that relevant anymore as you can buy the Targon brace along with your support and share CS among the two of you resulting in more gold income.

This mean as long as your support and you constantly last hit with the Targon effect, you will generate much more gold than your significant counter part who DOESN'T have the Targon Brace pair. That being said, putting aside the gold factor, Targon's Brace is too good for pushing lanes. Why? You instantly kill anything below 200-300 HP which allows you to push faster making it UNFAVORABLY against lanes who hard leash their junglers. Meaning minions will push into the tower which in return denies the minion making it difficult for you to trade back and last hit under the tower.

The Targon item is honestly too strong for bot lane, the gold income generated and the pushing power is just unmatched, especially at level 1-6. I personally main ADC, and playing a few games with this new patch I've seen some pretty insane ideas from innovative players. I've played against double AP bot lane and double bruiser botlane both in which gave me an INCREDIBLY difficult time, despite me having twice the amount of gold and items they had. At this rate ADC's will soon be obsolete as they will be nothing more than burdens that die quickly before they are able to get any damage onto anyone.

Also there are nearly no counters anymore, you just pick a hyper carry and farm with a Targon brace along with your support and wait until you get big items before making a move. See below.

Supports

Ok, now many of you guys think that this new update for supports are really good, and when you write it down on paper, it does look great. Unfortunately when it comes to perform in-game things aren't what they meant to really be. Why? Let's start off with the utility tree. The utility tree now offers supports to gain essentials without committing to a 21 point trait into the utility tree, meaning they can afford to put some points into their offensive or defensive mastery depending on how they want to customize.

That's unarguably good and would be considered as a "buff" by all means. The bad news is that now, many AP supports are rendered useless such as Annie/Zyra/Lux etc. These "AP carry supports" are very very very weak now. Why you ask? Well, even if these supports are running offensive runes, it will only be a matter of time before they fall off due to not having enough gold and exp to keep up, meaning their damage will be strong early game and give them a slight edge, but won't do much or be very useful in the long run. I'm disappointed because now the variety of botlane has dwindled to only a handful of viable supports to choose from. The only viable supports were actually the only supports that got buffed. Depending if a person has the right setups or not, ANY and EVERY utility based support champion is INCREDIBLY strong right now.

Champions such as Nami/Thresh/Alistar/Blitzcrank, they all are so fearsome in the bot lane that they actually negate ADC counters. If Team A had a Vayne/Thresh botlane vs a Cait/Sona botlane, even though Cait counters Vayne to the extreme, Thresh can easily provide safety and zoning preventing Cait from trading or landing hits onto Vayne without putting herself in a dangerous position. Eventually Vayne out scales Caitlyn and will have more damage output which results in Vayne "winning" because she will be more useful than Caitlyn as time in the game progresses.

General Thoughts

Honestly I can go into so much more detail, but throwing down the general ideas seem to be a good spot that everyone can work off of.

A final thing that I want to point out is WHY IS THE TRINKETS ON NUMBER 4??? You add a number 7 hotkey that most mouses don't even have macros for WHILE it is VERY difficult for most individuals to reach in the first place. I honestly want this to be reverted or at least customizable because it makes me nearly impossible to DFG/Bork combo properly since my fingers are quite small and short.

I just believe everything got nerfed and didn't play into exactly what you guys were thinking things when you were looking to apply to this patch. I honestly believe that this patch should be reverted and should be further looked into before being re-released in the public again. Just join any game and you'll see people stacking Targon Braces, taking jungle buffs and staying top lane, and mid lane just farm farm farm farm farm for days.

The strategy and mechanical skill part of this game is seemingly less significant and important traits to a player. The impact of one individual seems so meaningless now, although this game is a team oriented based game, a player that is doing well should be rewarded by being ahead, but with this new patch, a player doing well doesn't even seem to have any significant lead.

Gold is being generated too quickly, bringing end-game closer and faster, people are just picking OP team fight champions and zerging down towers the first chance they are able to get.

These are my honest opinions about this patch and I frown upon it. I know it is up to us as players to update to the game and playing field, but this is just not right. The necessity of skill has dwindled and it's just all about picking the right things and just playing the game and hoping you have better players that will catch a win.

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