ARAM and Snowball - Riot, please reevaluate this spell.

Greetings,

Snowball. This spell has changed League for me in a negative fashion. I don't post here ever, really, but after playing some ARAM games, even with the new "reduced cooldown and damage" snowball, I believe that it makes the match less enjoyable.

I wish that the spell be removed completely or added to a new item where the activated ability can toss a snowball. Giving every champion a long range, 40 second cooldown gap close/skillshot is just overpowered, and unbalanced. In League today, Riot is attempting to stress that each champion may have their own "dynamic" end-game vision. The snowball makes ARAM's version of this vision obsolete. In the Rift, yes, I see this vision working for the most part. But in ARAM, giving champions with mass disruption skills, those who should rely on their skills to gain advantage, by giving them a gap close to get into place to use those skills, our one-lane random game becomes very one sided affair. it takes very little skill to sit back, wait until a minion comes to tower, ping it with the snowball, and start the engage cycle. If all 5 players take snowball, there is almost no chance to take action against a coordinated dive. Especially after an item or two is completed. Now ARAM is less about getting a feel for how to play the champion, or simply waiting for the opportunity to use (Ult) to give your team the advantage. Now ARAM is more about the 'when is my snowball up?' so I can dive in and then use Amumu's "Curse of the Sad Mummy" or Fiddlestick's "Crowstorm". These champions do not need this kind of help.

There are many champions in this game, and a good handful of those end up ruining the ARAM experience now. Yes, I know it is more of a light-hearted game mode, and not given much thought by professional players. But I play this game to have fun, not to be the best. I do not have fun when I am stuck with a overall squishy team in this new "Tank Meta", when out of nowhere comes a snowball. I dodge it in this hypothetical scenario, but behind me, teammate Miss Fortune or Soraka is not so lucky. In comes Poppy, Galio, Katarina, Amumu, Garen, Malphite, Shen, Rammus Jarvan IV, Mega Gnar, Volibear, Warwick, Cassiopeia, et al to wreck havoc and send us scattered (just pick one). If the initial engage wasn't enough, the wave of follow inevitably comes. Zap.

Or perhaps this situation. Our team is running from the turret, to regroup, when a snowball hits a minion wave and here comes Tahm Kench, who has devoured someone and they pop out to snowball one of us and begin the kill cycle again. Conservative playing and smart strategy (brush hiding ganks) are essentially gone. Oh yeah, snowball reveals people in the bush too. Not that ARAM gave us too many options in 'strategy', but those are now primarily out the door.

The key point here is that with the extra gap close (and vision) snowball affords, and the relatively low cooldown, even 40 seconds is too short, any player has the ability to be "the" hammer that creates the crack in the armor.

Those who say "Just dodge it, and pay attention." have a terrible argument. Only because in the chaos of ARAM, a single lane with most skill shots flying in from rapid fire rate, not everyone can see a small white ball, or orange in Butcher's Bridge, not everyone is Plat or Gold, and most of ARAM is chaotic mass engages anyways. A Snowball inevitably can be stuck to someone at almost any part of the game. One may also attach a snowball onto a minion, and then for instance, use Amumu's Q, to instant gap close again. There isn't a "pay attention" part. Mumu gets the advantage in a split second and with one keystroke, turns the opposing team into corpses. Snowball as many times as it takes -> Q -> R = Win (Amumu and Galio, among others strategy)

Sometimes ARAM games are fun with snowball, but more often than not I'm sitting, while dead, shaking my head, and feeling salty that Galio came out of the void to "Idol of Durand" 4/5ths of our team. No one even got hit by the snowball, some minion did. And because of our creep wave, I'm dead. Oh yeah, and because of the snowball.

Keep it to the Featured game modes, where it was novel, and pretty enjoyable. ARAM was a bit overpowered for the ranged champions before this tank meta, but they (tank comps) always had the chance to win late game if they got a good engage, as it should be. Now they always get a good engage.

tl;dr, because Internet;

1. Put snowball in an item's activated ability (ARAM unique)
2. Remove vision Snowball gives
3. Increase CD to what "Ghost" etc is. To make it a that much more harder to master and use properly or, what I prefer,
4. Remove snowball from ARAM entirely

Other idea: 5) Featured Game Mode Friday, where every Friday one is rotated in.

Thanks for reading, see you on the Rift. (Or the Howling Abyss)