Set 2 is full of broken interactions and balance issues

Smyrage·11/24/2019, 2:50:44 PM·11 votes·3,375 views

I would quickly jump into this, because today I kept losing because players kept abusing the same "strategies".

Mage's cap Really, just change it to give Ocean buff. There is literally 0 reason for this item other than it makes the Mage buff way too easy to pull off and makes certain compositions beyond broken. Really, who thought it would be a good idea to give the mage buff to summoners? Or to Neeko? Or to literally every spell reliant champion? You haven't seen a Lv3 Renekton with Mage buff. He can wipe the team himself. Mages also include two Ocean champions, so this item needs to be removed, because from my games it noticed that it is the source of huge variety of gameplay problems.

Perma Glacial stun The current glacial units work through applying on-hit effects as much as they can and two of them are Berserkers. There really should be some sort of delay between two applied stuns, because permastunning the entire team is just nonsense.

Azir gets almost 0 benefit from the Desert buff I consider Azir a strong summoner, but he is a summoner. Desert buff gives armor penetration. Azir is a summoner, so he deals magic damage mostly. Really just makes no sense.

Predator builds are overloaded The predator buff itself is extremely potent. There would be no problem with this, but Predator units include some really strong secondary attributes which the player can go for. This include Glacial, Steel, Poison and Crystal. Secondary units can also be Ranger, Assassin and Berserkers. Even the 25% execute is too much for such solid builds and I suggest to either decrease the execute or just change it to something else.

Summoners mess up the targetting system, also summons can win rounds Summoners brought wide variety of annoying gameplay issues. First of all, some summons can keep champions distracted long enough for the summoners to summon another round of creeps. This is especially true for Malzahar, who because of whatever reasons starts with half mana (really just why?). Champions should prioritize summoners over summons or just make summons die, when their summoner is dead. Either way, if all champions are gone, but summons are still present, then the player should lose the round.

11 Comments

Stephenizgod11/24/2019, 11:16:39 PM3 votes

I think Set 2 is actually better than Set 1 as far as what is balanced and viable. There are more viable comps in Set 2 and also a bunch of very cool combinations you can do that alter how a comp works.

There are problematic units/comps though, you mentioned almost all of them but I'd like to add Poison in there as well since that comp shuts down too many other strats on its own and Singed is a stupid unit with Morello. Also I'd like to note that I think Veigar was and is a busted unit, his Ult was never healthy and now that its easier than ever to 3 Star a unit, he is all the more overpowered with Mage buff.

Speaking of, I think making it easier to 3 Star units without nerfing them was a huge mistake. Every game the top 4 people have 3+ gold units, its becoming more and more common to see 4-6 Gold units now. This is especially bad with Predator comps since they will often execute units from 70% HP and are impossible to kill. But Mage and Light comps are also ridiculous when you 3 star nearly all your units since you only really need 6 units to complete them. Basically 3 Starring a 3 cost unit is way easier even if other people are going for the same unit, and it offers a massive power spike and this is a huge balance problem. 3 stars should be a rarity and come at a cost to econ and levels, they come at almost no cost though, there is almost no downside.

I see people complain about Summoners all the time, but you pretty much nailed the exact problems with them. Targeting and the fact they deal damage to you even if you kill the Summoner. They are not an overpowered comp, in fact the only one who is truly a problem is Malzahar since he can spawn a shit ton of voidlings (Specially since its easy to 3 star him...) and its totally inconsistent whether your units will focus the Summons or the Summoners.

Rygee11/24/2019, 8:15:18 PM2 votes

I totally agree.

-- Double Cast = Stupid -- Summoned units staying alive and winning fights -= Stupid -- Perma Stun = Stupid -- Add the fact the Olaf gets his buff the entire fight with no stopping point = Stupid -- Predator Buff = Completely lacking in tactic.. insta kill at 25% of less... so predator builds only need to win 75% of the fight to win. That's balanced....

I really hope riot reads these. Set 2 is terrible.

BlownHeadGasket11/24/2019, 9:10:44 PM1 votes

Come on guys you act like we are not starting to see a pattern of Riots lack of RNG knowledge. After this round of BETA is over the game will be completely changed and we will have to start over. I mean if it's broken why fix it? Lets just change it to make new problems and make the game worse.

Poop Jelly11/24/2019, 10:27:21 PM1 votes

Agreed with most, but Azir is NOT a unit to sleep on. I have seen someone put 2 rageblade and he just rekts left and right

Sanitarium3311/25/2019, 9:00:36 AM1 votes

The imbalances revolve around mana generation and/or the ability to hit the enemy. Hence the following stuff is completely out of place:

  • Poison: you get your abilities off too late to be of any use anymore and that's just the first cast.
  • Ocean(this just needs to be reworked): you get your abilities faster than your opponent which coupled with poison can get to a bigger gap than before.
  • Glacial: you can't hit and you can't cast. Holy grail of crowd control. You can have full 3 star units full of items. It still won't count.
  • Subnote to glacial point: Olaf. Cone spread on-hit effects. See glacial now. ^^
Sire Hippington11/25/2019, 2:32:22 PM1 votes

I think many balance and design decisions are rather questionable in set 2(especially keeping glacial and the entier idea of summoners and mages also beeing rng based till you get all 6) However, the by far biggest issue for me are the changes to the pool size. Imo reduceing the poolsize was a massive mistake that destroyed the mode for me. There are usually 3-4 players that get it all with multiple 3stars, often not even sacrificeing their econ for it, and the rest struggles even getting 2 stars. It's all about beeing lucky to get the good units upgraded first, and then the rest has bad chances finding them. it leads to many frustraiting games where the ones that aren't lucky ust don't get any chance to compete cause the core pieces of all the strong comps are gone.

Now there are people that will say 'just adapt to another comp', but that comes with a massive disadvantage while makeing it easier for your opponents to get even more in the process. If scouting was less inconvinient(why isn't there a quick overview on tap like other autochess games have??) and if 2/3 star units would refund thier full goldcost, mabye adapting would be a bit more viable, but even then it's a big risk, cause with how fucked the RNG is, there is NO gurantee to ever get another setup running. I had MANY games where i choose to go for units that no one else used and strugglet getting them to 2. Games where not a single ashe comes with no one else haveing her, but 2 people haveing a 2star olaf and another 2 haveing a 2 star annie. Stuff like that is just beyond frustraiting and alot more common in set 2 then it was in set 1. Set 1 already felt RNG heavy, but set 2 is just so much worse in that regard, and i blame mostly the pool reduction for it.