I recently watched Sulla’s League of Legends retrospective on the state of the game in its early days, roughly when I started playing in August 2010. It got me thinking about the current discussion that seems to be blowing up on reddit, where the main comments getting upvoted are those lamenting the loss of the assassin meta from the beginning of season 3. According to this point of view, it’s much more difficult to carry games in season 4, with the majority of games being decided by bad players being out of position rather than good players making plays. Nerfs to champions like LeBlanc, Zed and Riven, combined with the lowering of first blood gold, have meant that getting early kills is no longer as powerful as a more objective-focused game. I thought I’d ask a different cross-section of players – those on Realms Beyond (there are still some active players here, right?!) – for their opinions on the subject.
My point of view, which seems to be an unpopular one, is that I very much like the game in its current state. I think Riot have done an excellent job in rewarding both teamplay and coordination (which I’ll loosely call ‘strategy’ for the benefit of this discussion) and individual skill (‘mechanics’) in roughly equal measures, where previously there was a bias towards mechanics. I’ll go through some of the changes which have led to this shift now – note that this is entirely from memory so apologies for any errors.
The rise in power of supports
![[Image: cmTvfbm.jpg]](http://i.imgur.com/cmTvfbm.jpg)
In probably the biggest single change to League of Legends over the last two years, the support position has shifted incrementally from its place in season 2 (where the main supports were Sona and Soraka, glorified health and mana fountains with few opportunities to make impactful plays) to its current season 4 incarnation, where supports come in various shapes and sizes, from the initiating power of Thresh, Alistar and Leona, to the peeling potential of Janna and Nami, to the (albeit heavily nerfed) sustain bots of Sona and Soraka.
The first major shift occurred at the beginning of season 3, where Sightstone and a few new support items were introduced. As important as these changes were – Sightstone is still a huge staple of the game – there were a couple of further problems that needed solving:
- The core support champion pool was composed of champions that are very undemanding (and unsatisfying!) to play: Sona, Soraka and Taric were the main culprits here.
- Supports were still extremely gold-starved; the gold generation techniques that existed – GP10 items, runes and masteries – were expensive in terms of opportunity cost and generally ineffective. The most effective way to build a support, as demonstrated most starkly in the season 2 world championships, was often to buy boots, a Philosopher’s Stone, and wards. Nothing else, for the rest of the game.
To solve the first problem, Riot released new champions (Thresh principally) that were both mechanically demanding and impactful. They also systematically nerfed pretty much every sustain support in the game. Taric got a rework which hurt his power, and Sona got nerfed several times through season 3.
![[Image: lol-trinket-guide.png]](http://808boosting.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/lol-trinket-guide.png)
The second problem was addressed at the beginning of season 4:
- Trinkets! These allowed every champion to place wards from the start of the game.
- New support items. The trinity of gold generation items – two of which (the most efficient two) are enabled by mechanics and active playmaking – have given supports a much bigger gold income, allowing them to itemise differently.
- Perhaps most crucially, they limited the number of active wards on the map to three per player. They also made vision wards visible, turning them into mini-objectives to be fought over.
![[Image: introducing_tank_support_item.png]](http://www.team-dignitas.net/uploads/tinymce/images/introducing_tank_support_item.png)
But, of course, there’s an elephant in the room here. By buffing supports, you necessarily nerf other roles. No longer is bottom lane all about the AD carries. No longer are teamfights all about who can get their insane damage combo off first. The result of these buffs has been that as supports have gotten stronger, AD carries and assassins can’t carry as hard. This is something that, in my opinion, has not been recognised for what it is. The respective power of different roles is a zero-sum game; if you want supports to have more power, other roles must have less. And supports were not only under-appreciated in season 2, they WERE severely underpowered. It was very difficult to carry as a support when they were in that state; yet every team was still better off with a support than without. This meant that one role on the team was a dead role, which was terrible for the health of the game as a whole.
I also think restricting wards to three per player was a key move. Wards are still OP – it’s almost always better to have a ward than not in almost every location on the map, given their cost and the length of time they last. Supports can no longer choose how much vision they can have (which is a good thing, because the ‘One Right Answer’ to that question is as much vision as possible).
So yeah, I’ve written enough. I’m curious to see what the RB playerbase thinks. Are you happier playing the current game or past seasons of it? If so, why?
- Terror
My point of view, which seems to be an unpopular one, is that I very much like the game in its current state. I think Riot have done an excellent job in rewarding both teamplay and coordination (which I’ll loosely call ‘strategy’ for the benefit of this discussion) and individual skill (‘mechanics’) in roughly equal measures, where previously there was a bias towards mechanics. I’ll go through some of the changes which have led to this shift now – note that this is entirely from memory so apologies for any errors.
The rise in power of supports
In probably the biggest single change to League of Legends over the last two years, the support position has shifted incrementally from its place in season 2 (where the main supports were Sona and Soraka, glorified health and mana fountains with few opportunities to make impactful plays) to its current season 4 incarnation, where supports come in various shapes and sizes, from the initiating power of Thresh, Alistar and Leona, to the peeling potential of Janna and Nami, to the (albeit heavily nerfed) sustain bots of Sona and Soraka.
The first major shift occurred at the beginning of season 3, where Sightstone and a few new support items were introduced. As important as these changes were – Sightstone is still a huge staple of the game – there were a couple of further problems that needed solving:
- The core support champion pool was composed of champions that are very undemanding (and unsatisfying!) to play: Sona, Soraka and Taric were the main culprits here.
- Supports were still extremely gold-starved; the gold generation techniques that existed – GP10 items, runes and masteries – were expensive in terms of opportunity cost and generally ineffective. The most effective way to build a support, as demonstrated most starkly in the season 2 world championships, was often to buy boots, a Philosopher’s Stone, and wards. Nothing else, for the rest of the game.
To solve the first problem, Riot released new champions (Thresh principally) that were both mechanically demanding and impactful. They also systematically nerfed pretty much every sustain support in the game. Taric got a rework which hurt his power, and Sona got nerfed several times through season 3.
The second problem was addressed at the beginning of season 4:
- Trinkets! These allowed every champion to place wards from the start of the game.
- New support items. The trinity of gold generation items – two of which (the most efficient two) are enabled by mechanics and active playmaking – have given supports a much bigger gold income, allowing them to itemise differently.
- Perhaps most crucially, they limited the number of active wards on the map to three per player. They also made vision wards visible, turning them into mini-objectives to be fought over.
But, of course, there’s an elephant in the room here. By buffing supports, you necessarily nerf other roles. No longer is bottom lane all about the AD carries. No longer are teamfights all about who can get their insane damage combo off first. The result of these buffs has been that as supports have gotten stronger, AD carries and assassins can’t carry as hard. This is something that, in my opinion, has not been recognised for what it is. The respective power of different roles is a zero-sum game; if you want supports to have more power, other roles must have less. And supports were not only under-appreciated in season 2, they WERE severely underpowered. It was very difficult to carry as a support when they were in that state; yet every team was still better off with a support than without. This meant that one role on the team was a dead role, which was terrible for the health of the game as a whole.
I also think restricting wards to three per player was a key move. Wards are still OP – it’s almost always better to have a ward than not in almost every location on the map, given their cost and the length of time they last. Supports can no longer choose how much vision they can have (which is a good thing, because the ‘One Right Answer’ to that question is as much vision as possible).
So yeah, I’ve written enough. I’m curious to see what the RB playerbase thinks. Are you happier playing the current game or past seasons of it? If so, why?
- Terror
![[Image: 10170826_816558838373595_4534058910945879484_n.jpg]](http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YIItUC04xc4/U1OsfTtAjMI/AAAAAAAADRs/PxRH64WXHCc/s1600/10170826_816558838373595_4534058910945879484_n.jpg)
). We have been playing with this meta for 3 years, but frankly I am kind of tired of it. I suspect that lots of the player base has departed LoL and LoL has simply captured more new players than it lost-- however that is not a long term sustainable model for Riot. Perhaps I am wrong? Champ diversity makes up for the stagnant meta...again can't agree to that. While we have 100+ champs to choose from, what we really have is a very limited number of roles?
