League of Legends General Discussion Thread

[Sullla]

Not buying anything at the start will always be a losing strategy. I expect that supports will still want to get their double gold/10 items (now philo and kage) as soon as possible. Everything does suggest that ranged supports will have a huge edge over melee ones, and supports that actually benefit from the AP on kage's will be better yet. Support Zyra in particular could very easily become the best support by a mile (ranged harass for Pickpocket mastery, ranged for safety with less health regen, actually gets something from AP, tons of crowd control, useful passive after dying, etc.)

I like the idea of introducing new items. At the same time, I'm a little concerned that Riot has been overzealous here. Did people really want them to change every single item in the game? I'm not so sure. Newness is interesting, but it also means relearning everything about the game from scratch. I don't particularly like having all the knowledge I've gained for the past two years suddenly becoming worthless.

I'm also puzzled by their drastic shift in design philsophy. Every new item seems to have an active of some kind. Sword of the Divine has a 25 second cooldown on its item active. Another one of the items has a 10 second cooldown - 10 seconds! To play the game efficiently after this rework, players are going to be forced to juggle item actives constantly. It looks exactly like DOTA, in other words. But that's a DRASTIC departure from the design philosophy behind League, which has always emphasized that the game should be easy to pick up and play for newcomers. Remember all that discussion about "burden of knowledge" that the developers like to throw around in their forums? This is the exactly opposite of that. Riot is very clearly increasing the skill cap and mechanical complexity of the game. Their core fans will love them for this. At the same time, League because the most popular game in this genre precisely because it WASN'T the most complex game. It was the opposite, the game that your non-gaming friends could pick up and have fun playing (and then buy Teemo skins to look cool doing it). I would really like to hear why they are embarking upon this sudden about-face in their design goals. Because this is a huge change, no two ways about it.

I have enough trouble managing four skills and two summoners. I dread the notion of managing all those item actives too.

[Gold Ergo Sum]

I have enough trouble managing four skills and two summoners. I dread the notion of managing all those item actives too.

Agreed. Terror is always bitching at me for forgetting I have Shurelya's before/after team fights.

[Sir Bruce]

Imo, a big part of mismanaging item actives right now is that people forget they even have them, not because of APM or coordination problems. If so, then more item actives will actually make actives easier as you get used to regularly using actives in most builds.

As an example, the number of times I hear people say 'whoops I forgot I had a red pot during that fight' is really high. If every champ started the game with a red pot, I bet we would never hear that again.

[Zargon]

<delurk>
Don't you think that the sight stone will effectively take the place of the 2nd gp/10 on supports rather than Kage's? It's effectively a HoG that costs a little less, provides a lot less health, but returns 300 gold in wards immediately. If you keep 2 wards up full time, it's good for 8.33 gp/10 in wards.
</delurk>

[Deceptus]

<delurk>
Don't you think that the sight stone will effectively take the place of the 2nd gp/10 on supports rather than Kage's?
</delurk>

Hm, wait, Philo... HoG... Where does the Kage come?

Given that they're removing HoG, I'm inclined to say that Sight Stone will be a replacement for HoG, and yes it does seem like Riot wants it to become the go-to early item for supports.

[Sir Bruce]

One other change that wasn't listed on that earlier link is that ambient gold flow has increased by 3 GP10, from 13 to 16. So fewer GP10 items are needed to buy the same ward coverage as before, and then you have the tanky ward-generating item Sight Stone on top of that...

[Krill]

I don't think that the problem is gold, yes the sight stone is great when contrasted to the Oracle nerf, but I think it is sustain in lane as more aggressive supports that needs consideration. Spirit stone, the ability jungler item, is 100g more expensive than Philostone, but gives double the health regen, and has a really nice tank upgrade (with giants belt, 2400 gold total, 500 health, 30 armour, 14hp5, 7mp5, and gives tenacity). Sure the damage to monsters is wasted but for champs like Leona Those stats are really important, and the mana is...meh.

[spellman]

I'm also puzzled by their drastic shift in design philsophy. Every new item seems to have an active of some kind. Sword of the Divine has a 25 second cooldown on its item active. Another one of the items has a 10 second cooldown - 10 seconds! To play the game efficiently after this rework, players are going to be forced to juggle item actives constantly. It looks exactly like DOTA, in other words. But that's a DRASTIC departure from the design philosophy behind League, which has always emphasized that the game should be easy to pick up and play for newcomers. Remember all that discussion about "burden of knowledge" that the developers like to throw around in their forums? This is the exactly opposite of that. Riot is very clearly increasing the skill cap and mechanical complexity of the game. Their core fans will love them for this. At the same time, League because the most popular game in this genre precisely because it WASN'T the most complex game. It was the opposite, the game that your non-gaming friends could pick up and have fun playing (and then buy Teemo skins to look cool doing it). I would really like to hear why they are embarking upon this sudden about-face in their design goals. Because this is a huge change, no two ways about it.

I have enough trouble managing four skills and two summoners. I dread the notion of managing all those item actives too.

Yeah, the "burden of knowledge" is going to become a serious issue imo.

Allowing characters to have a kit based on abilities plus what items they have will bring diversity at the expense of HOLY CRAP WHAT IS GOING ON????

The fact LoL didn't have a bunch of active ability items was a huge plus. Now they've removed it.


My intuition is that the pros complain about low skill ceiling and the tournaments have devolved to particular builds across multiple characters. They might be thinking they have a diversity problem that will hinder them compared to DotA2.

[Gold Ergo Sum]

They might be thinking they have a diversity problem that will hinder them compared to DotA2.

If they make the same game as DotA2, why would anyone choose to play the one that doesn't make all the champions free-to-play?

I feel like Riot would do better to distinguish its game further from DotA2, rather than increase similarities.

[Sullla]

Every League of Legends forum is wildly positive about the item changes. But that's kind of the problem: the sort of people who would go on a forum and read about upcoming item changes aren't necessarily the best audience to be catering towards. I think that trying to make League more like DOTA is a mistake. League became popular specifically because it wasn't DOTA, and because it had a much lower barrier to entry. With every new patch, League is raising its entry barrier higher and higher. More champs, more masteries, more items, etc. Have you seen the difference between the Season One masteries compared to the upcoming Season Three masteries? Let me try posting the images:





Stacking on more and more complexity makes the core players happy, but it makes it less and less likely that new players will join. That's a gigantic issue for Riot, which needs to favor a large playerbase more than virtually any other company with their free to play model. The overwhelming majority of League players have never played a single Ranked game. But they also buy skins and champs, and that's where Riot cleans up. The simplicity of League compared to other games in this genre is the very reason why it's been succeeding so massively. And these changes move in the complete opposite direction.

I'm genuinely curious why they seem to be making the game more and more DOTA-like. I think it's a serious mistake in the long run. I guess we'll see.