Can somebody actually give a REASON why mark/dash is bad for ARAM?

Yankspanker·5/16/2015, 3:35:19 PM·35 votes·5,464 views

I'm seeing all these posts everywhere about how mark/dash is ruining ARAM, but no one is giving any REASONS why this is. All I see is pathetic whining about how people are quitting ARAM because of the spell. I see this as actually encouraging because if you aren't playing ARAM just to have fun and throw around spells and have a constant slugfest with the other team, you're doing it wrong. ARAM isn't there for you to practice mechanics. ARAM is there for you to have casual fun. If you want to practice mechanics, get off my queue and go play Co-op vs AI or something.

(Granted, I don't see the harm in increasing the cooldown and removing the dmg, I think those might actually be good changes for the spell.)

92 Comments

ValikK5/16/2015, 11:10:40 PM21 votes

Honestly, the real reason why it's not healthy for Aram is because it isn't exactly what it should be. It's supposed to be something to help champions who are melee close the gap and preform better initiations with team members, where melee champions are usually bystanders in a war of poking and zoning. Which is good, because this is something that can bring balance to the ARAM force - if you will - by making melee champs much more viable than they were before.

The only problem is that, while this item was made to help melee initiations and team follow ups, the utility exceeds that purpose and breaks certain fundamental laws of the game.

Vision is a big problem. You pop one of these snowballs of love into a bush and you can get free sight on an enemy within! A volley of snowballs into the brush can reveal many enemies hiding in wait, where you used to need to use powers and items to grant vision, this item gives it for free. And some champions rely on stealth for their play-style... champs like Twitch Twitch , Shaco Shaco , Teemo Teemo , etc. but now you can completely undermine their play-style by constantly shooting snowballs at them. Shaco, for example, isn't safe charging into the enemy team anymore. Shacos used to dive in undetected to pick off a low health foe, or use his ult from invisibility for maximum chaos... but now he will get caught in the constant volley of snowballs and smashed to pulp before he can do anything. item 3070 Shaco

Damage is nice on items, but Snowballs deal true damage, a good amount of it. Even with it nerfed - it's still present. It's there to make executing low health baddies easier - but it's unnecessary and broken. Before the patchpeople were shooting these bad boys at everything that moved, even tanks would eventually be widdled down to low health with the constant fire. Even now, champs can use it to hurass low health enemies and keep them from regenerating health... and I've seen it used as a minion executor that's much more reliable than auto-attacks for last-hitting at later levels. Why is a device used to initiate being used by the APC to execute minions? That's not right!

Range is another problem. We all know that it's to get into the fray, but the line of the snowball is a freaking sniper shot! If can outshoot this guys TwistedFate Wildcards, This girl's Boomerang blade Sivir... Jinx ... and that psychopath's Zap! It can very well reach from one turret zone to the other turret zone outright. And while this was probably intended to let initiations be more clever by catching people out who are further back... it turned into chaos pretty quickly. There's nothing worse then being a low health Brand Brand and staying far in the back of the battle to snag an inner-turret health rune, only to be snowballed from center-map by an enemy Janna Janna.. And even though she's super weak, she dashes to you and hits you with her Zephyr. You die instantly. Sure, she may get what's coming to her, but things like that shouldn't happen. Players who understand proper zoning should be able to outsmart those little snowflakes in a bundle... but at the range that they currently are at, there is no way to be smart with zoning. A random snoball can spell your demise if your even in the general vicinity of the enemy, and that's not cool.

The most glaring issue of all, though, is the Cooldown. You see, all of these things like damage, vision, range, they may be problems - but they aren't the big one. The big one his how frequently you can recreate the snowball fight from Elf with this summoner spell. Not even 30 seconds between snowball piffs, something that would make the writer of Calvin and Hobbs green with envy - but would make League players red with rage. Heck, they could probably BUFF the other aspects of the snowball if they nurf this one! If they made the snowball deal more damage and go further and grant vision for longer but gave it a 216 second cooldown, people would probably rage less. But as it stands, there is far far far far FAR too much utility in this little ball of arctic goodness for it to be on such a high frequency. Teemo summoner 32 Teemo getting hit by a snowball then may get ticked that his hiding spot was found out - but they used a 216 second cooldown on him, so he understands how it goes... but where it is now, they can get vision back on the little guy by the time it's worn off and he's gone incognito again!

All in all, there's no reason outright that you shouldn't enjoy the poro ball while its here summoner 31 ... but just so you know why other people find it so unbalanced!

I hope this helps! Velkoz

Vicvictorw5/16/2015, 5:30:21 PM18 votes

ARAM is a place where I practice mechanics, though.

It'll random champions that I can then practice with that I would never ordinarily pick in a match.

The champ select in every mode has a random button, but let's be real- you'll likely get reported for using it in a standard game.

Ghost Monster5/17/2015, 7:18:54 AM17 votes

Yes.

Tanks were in a good place before. Poke comps against tank comps happened and they beat pure tank comps early but that situation was exceedingly rare. The best teams were comprised of

2 poke 1 engage/disengage 1 adc 1 sustain

Some characters filled multiples of these rolls like lux being poke/disengage/engage/sustain. These were the strong champs.

Dodging a constant barage of skill shots with little to no counterplay wasn't fun. Now that's every single game when it used to be 1 in 20 games.

Positioning doesn't matter anymore. Snowball got rid of a core mechanic of league of legends and now it's just land a lucky snowball near or on a squishy and murder them. This is the main issue. No position is good positioning anymore. I played at a fairly high level. ADCs can't do anything anymore. You stand behind your frontline they tank a snowball the ADC gets jumped on.

If people hated dodging skillshots one in every 20 games who in their right mind thought that dodging snowballs in every single game would be more fun?

BIOWARESUCKS5/17/2015, 8:38:04 AM16 votes

If you dont see why mark/dash does nothing to improve balance in aram and actually makes it worse than youve never considered that it gives additional mobility to already mobile champs.... and giving high dps aoe champs a free engage just makes no sense.

When I play nunu, fizz, karthus, kat, blitz, heimer, amumu, fiddle, lissandra, orianna, swain, and wukong .... NOW... I just mark/dash and nuke the team. You may not kill them all or anyone, but you can do so much dmg that your team can clean up.

nunu - mark/dash e - ult... if alive zhonyas fizz - mark/dash r w q and either e to escape unharmed or e for aoe then zhonyas karthus - mark/dash e w qqqqqqqqqqqqqqq die qq ult blitz - mark/dash ult then zhonyas heimer - mark/dash q e r q then zhonyas amumu - mark/dash r w e then DONT zhonyas, youve already won fiddle - mark ult dash e then zhonyas lissandra - mark/dash wq ult then zhonyas orianna - e mark/dash ult w then zhonyas swain - mark/dash do whatever youve won wukong - mark/dash do whatever youve won

Lugg5/16/2015, 5:48:36 PM9 votes

It's bad for the long range champions since they can no longer have an automatic win. Mark/dash actually allows melee champs to have a chance to win.

Wickedfates5/16/2015, 3:39:48 PM9 votes

i would suggest you might not have read many posts then, you might disagree with what they say, but many points have been made back and forth.... here are a few quick links, but there are a great many going back about 2 weeks....

try out the search feature, its incredibly helpful

http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/gameplay-balance/XUjGETqu-markdash-balance-discussion-mega-thread http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/gameplay-balance/kXUYYvh8-feedback-for-snowball-implementation-in-aram http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/gameplay-balance/rdp3JhX4-markdash-feedback-from-a-2600-aram-player http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/gameplay-balance/TjUAJgrj-poll-markdash-snowball-survey

oh and just because you have a certain way of playing a game mode does not mean other people dont play it differently....

DarthSpectrum5/17/2015, 4:11:27 AM7 votes

Mark/Dash drastically shifts the game in favor of duelist melee champions.

Their inability to deal damage from range is what separates and balances them from ranged carries and assassins. However, Mark/Dash allows champions such as Poppy to instantly get on top of you from half the range of a Lux ult. With such low CDs on that spell, ranged champions have no hopes of kiting and are reduced to turtling.

Another problem with Mark/Dash is that it reveals stealth for an unprecedented duration. From experience, I can attest that Akali's shroud or Twitch Q is pretty much useless in ARAM now. Someone is bound to have Mark/Dash up when you pop your stealth, and if you cannot blink to a new location, that person can just point blank Mark you and negate your stealth completely.

I personally don't particularly care about the balance of ARAM; however, the issue with Mark/Dash is that it is an addition that is supposed to bring balance to ARAM, but instead it tipped the scale way too hard and made the game mode more imbalanced than before.

Dr Easter5/18/2015, 3:03:47 PM6 votes

Actually there has been good reasons on all these posts. But you see only what you want. As I said on another thread: if people used more their brains and were less fanboyish they'd notice the spell is not needed or at least need a ton of fixes/be allowed only on champions that really needed it. Aand those are what? Melee with no dash/gap closers. Nobody else really needed it. ARAM is a good fun mode. It didn't need to be a fun messy mode, this was reserved for the featured ones.

Jonsolo325/17/2015, 4:15:38 AM6 votes

ARAM is now a tank game. It used to be an all champ game but now anyone squishy gets wrecked.

lightdragoon885/17/2015, 4:18:10 AM6 votes

The biggest reason of all...it just makes the mode un-fun to play.

EchoZeero5/16/2015, 11:52:23 PM5 votes

It's bad because about half the champions can use it effectively and the other half has no use for it. The ones that can use it effectively gain a substantial utility boost, the others are left with nothing.

Alistar: Throws snowball, lunges, QW.

Soraka: Throws snowball, does nothing because she'd get #rekt if she lunged.

Kaipop5/17/2015, 6:46:52 PM4 votes

It's so annoying for Teemo who has to stay stationary while stealthed, he will get hit by one every time so his passive is useless