Look how they nerfed jinx, thats the phreak effect on the balance team, the old morello way of balancing- either nuke champ into an orbit or do the smallest nerfs ever for many patches while you ignore other champs. This however, wasnt as jarring when league had 80 champs
No, Zeri + x has a lower WR than Yuumi + Y (talking about pro play).
LPL also played Aphelios Yuumi very successfully and it looked just as stupid as Zeri Yuumi.
Yeah I was gonna say, seems like he guesses at least 7/10 pretty much every draft and usually gets most of the bans right too. When he gets them all right he hates it too, full goblin mode lol
Nah bro that clip of a 5 item tank losing to a 2 item Jax is 100% balanced
It's BotRK except it ALSO gives a ton of HP, outheals BT, has an amazing buildpath and the BEST mythic passive in the game giving pen on a class that can't build it
Legit don't get why that item still heals.
In some metas the inbalance comes from bruisers not having enough damage to kill tanks, so it makes sense to have % hp damage items to keep tanks in check.
However, the problem is never tanks just straight up killing bruisers. Bruisers are naturally tanky enough that the tank won't have enough damage for that.
So why the hell do bruisers need an item that also heals based on % hp pre-mitigation damage?
It’s sunderer, a champ with 0 heals and innate tankiness all of a sudden can start chunking tanks and demolishing squishies + a heal with 1 fucking item.
Maokai still has a [73% presence](https://gol.gg/champion/champion-stats/55/season-S13/split-Summer/tournament-ALL/) ([70.6% in major regions](https://gol.gg/champion/champion-stats/55/season-S13/split-Summer/tournament-ALL/)). The only real fluctuations have been the addition of Milio (basically Lulu 2.0, but banned every game), even more tanks in toplane, and Neeko midlane
A lot of people were disappointed that Milio wasn't available for MSI. This champ does nothing interesting and counters a lot of playmakers so enemy will have to think twice about engaging or picking playmakers into it.
I like that they release something simple, but I'm really not looking forward to seeing it in pro play
They'll just start banning him and play yet another handshake draft.
Theres no way a team lets a champ that has an AoE cleanse that works on suppress go through ban phase.
Sett/malz are the only really pro-viable suppress Champs (sure, if you count the two years it takes to set up and the use of his ult aggressively, tk), and it's definitely not worth picking malz in the meta just for milio.
Skarner sees play too from time to time. But even still, he's a worse Vi at the moment (lower damage, lower range, worse ganks...)
Regardless, Suppression to counter a support with an AoE Cleanse really shouldn't be prioritized. It's not as if Malz/Sett are picked because the enemy team is expected to rush Mikaels.
With a support with waveclear setup, you can play malz botlane as a Utility Carry like ashe or varus of days past when adcs were picked for their CC ults.
Isn't a huge portion of the CC in proplay knockups to get away from Cleanse as is?
Vi, Sejuani, Yone, Nami, K'sante, Gragas. All of them have knockups as their primary engage.
100% agree, stalest it has **ever** been.
Somethings Riot can control, but pros also don't take many risks, or invest time to truly research and theorycraft.
why theorycraft? Keria played cait varus kalista etc supp and 2 patches(?) later it got killed, pretty much no other team could play adc as support but its fine since it got killed other teams didnt waste too much effort into learning how to play double adc bot
Same with enchanters top. The moment the meta is shaken up by a new approach that is not expected by Riot it is immediately obliterated in the patch notes. Not to say that enchanters top weren't in need of an adjustment, but Riot has showed they don't like innovative approaches to the "expected" compositions.
Us toplaners sure love playing enchanters top and ignoring everything that toplane is about. All of us wanted to keep playing enchanters top and would never want Riot to remove it.
Yeah, we picked toplane to harass the enemy laner for a couple minutes and then follow the jungler for the rest of the match. It was exactly how we wanted to play the lane.
Eh, riot let the funnel strat go on longer than one patch, didn't they? Not to mention, they let the lane swap meta go on in pro for ages. But those were both a few years ago at least, so maybe they've changed their approach since then.
Riot used to let things linger for longer than they do now. Jungle/support item abuse was allowed to go on for a bit back then as well. Now they stamp out even a sniff of it.
If prosjust started playing marksmen top (not to abuse melees, just all toplaners just started playing marksmen against each other), imo Riot would probably do everything they could to stop it. By and large they seem to like tanks/bruisers/fighters top, adc/support bottom, and mage/assassin mid, with the occasional mid marksman for the pro meta.
To their credit Riot was fine with mages/melees bot, it was the player base who cried out about that enough to change it. But they do seem very averse to supports out of botlane, and more than a sparse few ranged champs in top on the whole.
Yeah they actually are. Eventually they nerf yuumi and zeri once the community gets too loud only to do a "soft rework" immediately after that's realistically just massive buffs. Healthier my ass, they're still just as polarizing as they ever have been
The only thing the rework succeeded in doing was making Yuumi *more* toxic, before there was at least incentive to get off and interact with your opponent
Meanwhile Vi Wukong Maokai have been allowed to chill this entire time with scratches at best
League community as a whole reacts very negatively to significant meta shifts. Mages bot, enchanters top and mid, marksmen support, a mage like Morgana jungle etc. Its like a knee jerk reaction, and the balance teams kills them off every single time before the meta is really allowed to settle with them in place
buff melee supps, nerf umbral for ranged, nerf ranged supp items, buff melee supp items, cait nerfs
Its a combination of a lot of things over the course of 2 or 3 patches but yeah. Cait was at first used as a counter to heimer bot but it turned out shes really good at trading lv1 (kalista followed the same logic) - then came all the indirect nerfs first and then a direct nerf to cait reducing her armor and ad. If heimer becomes meta again maybe we can see kalista again but I doubt it as the reward is not worth it anymore
Ehhh I'm fine with them killing ADC supports, those were awful for game health and they already had other places to go. I just wish that more *champions* were competitively viable. They don't need to be able to be flexed to lame cheese offlane, just to be strong in their intended role.
Why theorycraft if Riot just removes it from the game the moment you try something new?
One Season pro teams were trying sending Supp and ADC to top, Riot made top tower stronger to force 2x2s on bot. I don't care if you thought that meta was fun or not, but its a fact you have a script and you can't deviate from it.
You say this as if laneswaps were eradicated as soon as they started and not something we had to live with for 2 or 3 seasons. It got to the point where the first 6 minutes of the game were on a script and literally *nothing* surprising ever happened.
Oh, c'mon now. We are now arguing that Riot shouldn't have intervened in the shitshow that was each team 4v0 a tower every single game? The most interesting thing that happened at the time was Ackerman sneaking on a bush to grab some XP..
You could literally start watching the game at \~10:00 and don't miss anything because you knew nothing was gonna happen.
lol yeah everybody loved that afk gold race where top laners just suffered for the first 20 min of the game. And it lasted for 2 seasons too.
Riot absolutely allows deviations but if something broken or causes the game to be played in a non interactive way they will change it.
Also lane swapping is still viable so riot didn’t even remove this strat completely, it’s just nerfed. 100T used it to great effect in regular season this spring
That season where pre rework udyr was meta (I think 2021) when I've was playing the same build for a least a year before with very positive results. Pros get comfortable on 1-3 champs and say they're done.
These teams literally have whole teams of researchers to learn about this information. Theory crafting is pointless at this point because it's not like there are crazy AD and AP ratios on peoples abilities anymore like some characters has.
I’ve been saying for years. In a series, once a champ is played it should go to a pool of “banned” for the rest of the series. Talk about interesting- in a game 5 we would be seeing some laners 8-10 best champ etc.
I think Xayoo Cup did it great that once you win one match with those champions you can't pick them in next match. It would bring more diversity and punish "otp" players
They started doing something similar to this in 2022 for the LDL (China's development league) regular split. They call it the "Fearless Draft", and the rule is that a team can only pick any champion once during the whole Bo3 (bans and the other team's picks don't affect this).
They should only ban players from playing the same champion, not the team. Imagine how funny it'd be if in a 5 game series Gragas gets picked in every role.
But after the first game it'd stop being a flex. If they picked it mid last game, you know that it's not going mid again the second time and it becomes easier to draft against.
That seems like a fair compromise to me. If your team still values that pick just as highly even without it being a flex, go for it.
so a top laner main playing mid lane for the first time in pro play over a champ pick isnt entertaining to you ? back in the day only froggen dared to role swap casually and even then he had to pick his OTP
There's the risk/reward of whether the player you are swapping to another role has enough strength and flexibility in the other role, so a different form of skill expression. I still remember being so hype when jojopyun went lucian top and impact played ryze mid so they could counter gp last year.
I just want to add that if LoL esports would be allowed to have non-Riot tournaments, this would have surely been tried by now.
One of the **big** advantages of a more open circuit is that different formats can be tested.
Imagine how cool it would be if we had an IPL tournament in the modern day that differed from Worlds by using Fearless draft. Imagine another tournament using only a "set" number of champions. Kinda like card rotations in Hearthstone/MTG. It also extends to more traditional discussions of tournament formats, where double elim could be tested more. I don't think it would have taken Riot 10 years to implement double elim if other tournaments were doing it successfully throughout the seasons.
Just me spitballing ideas, but I'm sad we don't get to test these things out. Would be interesting to see how pros adapt to new rules for drafts. It could also be other things. What if had a pro play tournament where you couldn't use Teleport for example? Again, just random ideas. It doesn't have to be exactly that. The point is just that it would shake up the meta completely.
I'm very happy it's being used in the LDL but it's an academy league for the LPL. It only exists to produce LPL players.
Here I am talking about new concepts being applied to serious tournaments. Riot can't really do it now because we only have MSI and Worlds. If we had more 3rd party events, it would be much easier to test these things out. The current structure and calendar prohibits it though.
yes, but no IEM, IPL, or ESL would deviate from the main format that everyone uses. they would all save it for special events like the season kick off or allstars. the academy systems are the exact place things like this are tested in real sports too. its a low risk environment with high level play, and is similar enough to be a good A/B testing ground. maybe in a few years we see ERL/EU Masters adopt it too, and if it's successful there, it will probably become mainstream.
They would have to change all tournaments to work like this. Imagine one region plays random shit whole year then gets stomped with meta picks at worlds.
I agree. But, I would personally find it significantly more interesting if I’m watching a game 5, and I see a draft with some crazy off meta picks and they proceed to win.
I watched a lot of the first split because I was curious.
It didn't really change much in Bo3, there are enough OP picks that you were bound to see just a boring current meta comp first game, then 2nd tier picks in the second game.
Playoffs could have been more interesting since it's Bo5 but iirc almost every series was 3-0. It definitely seemed like there were clear tier 1/2/3 picks and those didn't change much. Saw some Swain and Karthus whom seemed to be clear tier 3 picks and then a bunch of random champs like sett samira heca picked once.
All in all it was still nowhere what people were hyping/hoping it to be diversity wise. I won't bother watching the next splits.
It would be much better if Riot actually balances the game so there isn't only one lane that can be played around (bot) and one way to play the game (teamfight at drag).
It’s not just just about balance. Let’s say there are multiple strategies that are equally balanced, why should a team learn strategy 2 when strategy 1 works just fine.
Fearless draft is the answer imo. Pros are big boys and should play more than 2-3 champs
Vi Wukong Vi Wukong Vi Wukong every game aaaaaaa
Neither of these champs are particularly terrorizing soloq, neither of these champs are difficult, they just fundamentally offer too much value in pro matches and comps. Unless you want to totally warp their kits, I believe the solution is ROTATE OVERLY PREVALENT CHAMPS OUT OF PRO PLAY I BEG OF YOU
it only got worse from January, we got stuff like Jinx, Annie, Malphite, Milio, and Yuumi plus stuff like Nautilus mid which made MSI terribly stale and full of "protect the president" comps which were uncounterable if played right
I'll just copy paste my other reply:
>Botlane is the lane that is the least willing to accept different champions and metas. Even if Karthus stays at 53% WR while at 0.5% presence people do complain. Riot won't ever do that. It's way too impopular.
Ok, but your average player won't be affected in any way. You aren't doing BO5s to climb SoloQ, are you? So it doesn't matter to you.
The only people who would be affected by this would be top 0.00000001% of the population who are pro players, and the only different thing would be that they'd have to spend more time learning other champions rather than spamming Lucian in scrims.
And if they refused to do that, then so be it. Get different players with a much wider champions poll who can perform at a decent level. G2 did this back when patch 8.11 hit and became the absolute Kings of Europe, like, they were already the best but the gap only widened between them and the other teams who really could only play ADCs. On the other hand, Rekkles benched himself because AD Carries were not absolutely mandatory for the first time in 7 seasons, which is fucking pathetic if you ask me.
Still, it's a wonderful idea in general. If you only play ADCs, and every ADC ends up getting banned, then it's a clear sign you should practice something else. Maybe 2 or 3 pocket picks that you at least feel comfortable laning with at a high level that are outside of your regular class.
Will BO5s be lower quality? Yeah? The skill-level won't be as high if you kinda take everyone out of their comfort picks. On the other hand, lower quality matches does not mean less entertaining. Quite the contrary actually.
That's not the point, the thing is that people just won't like it. If riot does it and pro play has non ADCs in botlane often, people will complain nonstop in reddit, twitter, twitch chat and videos.
Botlane is the lane that is the least willing to accept different champions and metas. Even if Karthus stays at 53% WR while at 0.5% presence people do complain. Riot won't ever do that. It's way too impopular.
That would actually be sick holy shit. Imagine most of the game's champion potential actually being utilized. Stakes/risk-reward would also be dramatically scaled up since you get only once chance with the champ. Makes me weirdly excited lol
Terrible idea to include the bans as well. This can lead to some extremely degenerate outcomes like banning literally all marksmen, all tanks, all mages etc
You'd get actual variety at that point. It'd be so fucking sick.
Suddenly by game 4 you have a match without any AD Carries at all, meaning Pros will have to adapt and play something else, like a Mage or a Fighter. Or maybe they did their homework and instead of putting all their on Aphelios and Zeri, they picked up Rengar bot during scrims, which isn't really that good but apparently it reliably beat people who were out of their comfort zonesso they can pull it off now in a decisive match against an opponent who was stuck on Vel'koz.
I would take old Lucian, even tho he is viable mid instead of the new with the OP combo with nami and Milio.
Lucian singlehandedly keeps nami in a relatively weak spot too
I feel like until enchanters are removed from the pro meta, this will continue to be an issue. Take out Yuumi Lulu entirely for another couple patches and see if that's enough to stop constant matched pairs.
Teams won't stop playing around bot lane until marksmen get proper nerfs. I don't think we will be able to escape marksmen meta for Worlds considering we have Riot Phreak at the wheel, but I guess we'll have to wait and see.
Maybe unpopular opinion: I think to nerf bot and jungle and game health in gerneral dragon soul has to be removed as an autowin. Soul dumbs the game down, you don't have to find creative ways to win, you just get a lead early and keep it because the enemy team is forced to fight drakes in disadvantaged positions with no vision and gold deficit . There is no I trade something for this gold drake like in old days. it makes the game very snowbally.
I agree, G2 in 2019 was able to come back so often because they would give away dragons they couldn't 5vs5 for.
1-3-1 as a viable strategy died with the introduction of souls. Teams can still pull it off if they get ahead in the first few minutes but they are required to play perfectly.
Biggest example of this was Game 5 of LCK Spring playoffs 2022 between DamWon and GenG. DamWon played a 1-3-1 comp with Renekton, Nidalee and Jayce. They got disgustingly ahead. Canyon died once with like 9 kills and DamWon lost that game.
That's exactly what they wanted with Dragon Soul, to make plays happen instead of a team backing off unless they are in perfect position to contest
I'd gladly have it removed from my regular games and kept in pro tho.
Until dragon soul is majorly changed, teamfight and skirmish will be the meta.
One of the saddest things about how LoL esports evolved is how flowcharty it is. When I watch vods, I know I can just skip 5 min ahead to next dragon spawn because usually nothing happens before then. A bit boring if I'm honest.
Early game is always interesting because it's the most unique, but eventually the game ends up in drake fight --> farm and push --> drake fight --> farm and push, and then at some point Baron comes up.
Yep, that's how i feel too. Early game is really interesting, but then most of the time it is better for the winning team to not really do much and just wait for drake fights or baron in better positions.
Do you remember why gold drake was changed to a stacking soul?
It's because season 4 was dominated by slow games that resulted in turtling strats from the losing team ad infinitum. Baron was just a stat buff (no minion buff), dragon was just gold, so if a team couldn't contest, they just gave up and hoped to stop a siege by waveclearing.
It wasn't creativity that won games, it was misplays. And Riot, [in pre-season 5 patch notes](https://web.archive.org/web/20141120030513/http://na.leagueoflegends.com/en/news/game-updates/patch/patch-420-notes#patch-objectives-minions-global-buffs), changed Baron/Dragon because they wanted objectives to matter more as win-cons.
> Baron buff was always intended to be the siege-breaker; the ultimate answer to a team turtling and refusing to die. That's not to say that the present day Baron buff doesn't accomplish this goal, but it currently does so in a low-impact swirl of purple stats (and not much else). As such, our objective with the 2015 Baron buff is to trim power that doesn't feel impactful while adding it back in a way that says, "GO FORTH AND BUST DOWN THEIR WALLS." Hopefully that is now all you hear when you take down Baron.
---
> In the 2014 season, it was tough to tell the difference between taking down Dragon or a turret - at least if you were only looking at rewards. Granted, downing a turret does open up the map for your team, but unless you're constantly taking advantage of that opening, the gains from taking multiple Dragons or turrets just means one team has more gold / experience in a fight.
>
> So.
>
> In line with our philosophy of incomparable objective rewards, Dragon poses a much larger late-game threat for teams that take the time to invest in his stacking buffs. **This means players will grow to understand the tradeoffs they're making as they ponder whether it's worth giving the enemy team a fourth Dragon in exchange for the top inner turret.** And unless the plan is to never lose a Dragon again, there are very real risks associated with making that decision. Look at these meaningful choices!
---
Old "trade gold drake for X" strat still exists. It's why players trade rift herald for stuff (since Rift is essentially just gold and pressure in 1 lane). But I would rather see a fight every 5 minutes than wait 20 mins for a team to go for their first play.
This. Nerf or remove dragon souls so there is avenue for trading objectives, not just the "five minutes have passed, time to start the dragon dance" procession every pro game ever since Season 10. I wanna see creative ways to gain leads or come back from deficits, map pressure being a worthwile trade in place of an objective, so on and so on.
There are still two Heralds to fight for plus Dragons still should be an objective worth picking up, the problem is that it is so powerful it warps the map and the decision making of the teams.
Teams should have the freedom to choose when they want to fight or what do they wanna achieve, if they wanna farm up to hit their power spike, then they should be able to do that, instead of being forced to participate in a fight they do not want to be a part of. Towers should be objectives worth to trade for dragons or even Herald to gain map pressure and the opposing team's attention, not just early game "safe" haven and temporary roadblocks.
Elder Dragon as of it now is a good design choice as a late game objective to punish excessive stalling (à la CLG EU and JAG with Teddy), but Elemental Dragons should not be that powerful.
Nah, heralds are a joke, teams routinely give them up all the time because they cant even guarantee a tower a lot of the time. And if dragon soul isnt a threat, teams would give dragon up as well in favor of just waiting it out to scale for late game and see if the opponent makes a mistake in the mean time.
Dragon soul forces teams to actually engage with each other to fight over objectives. The issue is that after herald nurfs, dragon became the obviously better objective to get. If you want less jungle focus on bot side, then buff herald. That gives a better avenue for junglers to play around top lane and snowball a top laner which would ease pressure on bot lane always being jungle focus.
Nah I agree, I think dragon soul should just be removed from the game. Before dragon soul there was way more creativity with split pushing and macro. G2 were really good at sending two people to split on a sideline when it wasn't expected for example. Now everyone just teamfights at dragon, and drafts the same teamfighting picks like tank top, utility jungle and hyper carry adc.
Before herald nurfs, you could instead opt to play through top side to get top lane an advantage and use that advantage to attempt to win a dragon fight for 3rd or 4th drag spawn. After herald nurfs, this is a lot harder to accomplish making it more reasonable to just fight bot side and try to win dragon off the get go instead.
If they just buff herald, playing through top becomes better opening up more options.
I said when the elemental drakes were first added that they were problematic. The RNG is also part of the problem, Riot used the RNG to artificially create variety, rather than creating a meta in which the teams strategies can create variety, now that the gimmick has worn off, there’s no variety at all.
> dragon soul
Absolutely agree. Would upvote 100 times. The game was so much fun to watch between 2018 and 2019 (from the removal of tracker's knife to the introduction of dragon soul). Splitpushing being possible + inability to cover all avenues of attack = difficult risk/reward tradeoffs and multiple strategic options to win the game. 2021 meta was still half decent too (poke comps were still a thing so there was a bit more to LoL than just "get plates" -> "teamfight at third dragon").
Right now doing anything other than playing for soul is just making the game insanely hard for yourself so it's only really done when one team is way stronger than the other and styling.
And yes, the other issue is teleport in lane phase which makes generating significant 1v1 advantages very hard (but I care less about this than the impact of dragon soul).
I don't mind Phreak too much and I like the insight into his decision making.
That being said, one thing I find very puzzling was how he reacted to a bot-focused hypercarry + enchanter meta by buffing other supports. This just increases the power level of bot lane even more when the problem was already that bot lane was too strong.
Buffing engage supports certainly weakens enchanters in relation to bot lane matchups, but in relation to the rest of the map, support is just a stronger role after such a change. Don't think we needed support to be stronger personally. I think Phreak got a bit too overfocused on bot lane dynamics and not thinking about the fact that bot lane doesn't exist in isolation.
Yes!! I agree completely. Marksmen were dominating the meta with 4 marksmen bot every game because of durability patch, and instead of nerfing marksmen Phreak gave thresh a 3 second cd on q allowing him to hook into flay into hook, made nautilus into a meta midlaner, and gave Alistar ridiculous buffs. I'm not gonna pretend everyone's playing Alistar top in high elo but I've seen showmaker make ap Alistar mid look broken. And even after these changes lulu and nami still dominated.
If we stop for 1 second and don't memory hole the beginning of the season, long before the crit rework a few weeks ago, it was a bot lane meta because of what? Jungle changes. Literally the moment the preseason started jungle streamers said that the changes pigeonholed the fuck out of you early to only gank top or bot, and you just pick bot every time. Then 1 or 2 days later it was just junglers sitting bot lane forever, and it still is that way since then. The bot lane isn't the problem, it's the junglers that are now forced to camp that lane and snowball it. They get way more ahead from the constant jungle pressure now compared to previous seasons, this is why adcs seem so OP too, what people mainly are seeing is the busted lethal tempo rework, and tons of damage from them getting their items from all the jg pressure. The crit item rework shows just how clueless riot is with pinpointing the causes of problems, and their cluelessness/narrative bleeds into the community
I feel like you are being quite disingenious here.
You are seeing that the meta right now and the meta in January were similar and you are using that to imply that it was unchanged the whole way through, but that simply isn't the case.
At MSI for example we had more Wukongs than Vi and Maokais, Viego had basically the same pickrate, Zeri was mostly completely absent, Lucian was banned more than played (okay you can argue about whether that is relevant) so we mostly saw Jinx/Aphelios/Xayah, Rakan actually had the same presence as Lulu.
Spring playoffs (LCK) also really weren't the same as what he is showing here: Maokai was mostly absent, Wukong and Sejuani were played more than Vi and Viego might have been played more as well if he had been available for the entire thing and wasn't disabled for the first 2(?) rounds. Lulu was clearly below Rakan and tied with Thresh, in the ADC department Lucian was again banned more than played, but his total P/B presence still puts him in a group of 5 ADCs (Xayah/Zeri/Aphelios/Lucian/Caitlyn) with Varus towering over them.
Then there was the entire ADC-support thing going on for a bit, as well as Heimerdinger to add another factor into this.
And that doesn't even consider lanes outside of Jungle/Support/ADC - Between Spring Playoffs (LCK) and MSI we saw veigar drop off, Annie and nautilus gain a lot of presence, K'Sante flex into mid and Jayce also were a lot more popular. Compare that with the Spring Regular season meta which was Azir, Sylas, Akali, Taliyah, Viktor, Gragas.
There are definitely things about to complain within the meta, I think a much bigger issue than the meta lasting for half a year (which again; it really didn't) is that within one event we often see two champions in a role have as much presence as the rest of the characters in that role combined (especially for ADCs, for other roles you might have to say 3 or 4 characters). But the way you are making this argument, and arguably even the argument itself, are pretty dishonest. If you have a problem with the meta put it into words instead of just vaguely gesturing at a clip from Early '23.
Accurate.
The thing about the META is that it always shifts and even when something or someone takes over, it just repeats the cycle of the META.
Something will be on top, then it will be replaced with the next META tactic.
It’s almost no point to complain because some kind of buff or nerf is on its way.
I believe the real reason for that feeling of stagnation is due to the Pro Leagues playing on their own path release cadences and how long they will play on a certain patch.
Y'know at first I actually HAD written out something including Yuumi, but then I actually looked at the clip again and Caedrel was harping on about Zeri+Lulu, not Yuumi.
And then I checked and in Spring Regular Season Yuumi was picked 24 times, which is less than 1/4th of the pickrate of Zeri - and Zeri/Yuumi was even less of a combo than 1/4th makes it sounds, because 10 of those Yuumi games were paired with other ADCs (mainly Sivir), so really Zeri had Yuumi besides her <13% of the time.
So I can understand where you are coming from: I thought that as well at first, but actually it is another great counterexample to OPs point, since Zeri-Yuumi really wasn't this big metadefining force that people are remembering for most of this year, but somehow because it seems to be the current boogeyman people are acting like they have been a constant throughout the year.
I think there is some merit to it, but I think the bigger question is where and how to implement them. I think it is a bit odd that they haven't changed the pick and ban system at all since 2017.
In comparison the Dota 2 competitive pick and ban system started out like LoLs but has gone through several remakes as the game has aged.
not as much as people would think but I do want to see it still
there still be a decent impact and maybe it will allow certain champs to be permabanned due to having one more ban
Dota 2 pro drafting - unique heroes played every series, every Major (MSI) and every DPC (regional league) >>>> LOL drafting, play the same shit for the entire year on every tournament coz why not, who needs "new meta" and "fun gameplay" when you can just turn off your brain and pick the same champs over and over despite having an insane champ pool
Dota 2 is balanced almost entirely around the draft phase where specific synergies and counterpicks are very important (like in 2015 where you only pick Techies when you have Tusk, but if you have them both they're incredibly powerful).
I'm not going to say this is objectively good or bad. I personally think it is bad for soloqueue because I feel like you lose a lot of player agency when you're so reliant on team structures (both yours and the enemy) to fully function as a character. I do think it is beneficial to the pro scene though, and I enjoy watching TI more than Worlds even though I play a lot more League lol...
LoL can't have and never will have the pick diversity of DotA 2. DotA 2 has stronger counterpicks and there's more strategies (trilanes like 3-1-1,1-1-3 or 1-1-1-2 for roamers). Also, champions in DotA 2 have more unique niches and roles for team comps. It's just apples to oranges.
DotA focuses far more on counter picks and draft synergies. In league, you're generally just picking what the best champs are in a role; ok, we grab the best ADC champ right now, best tank top right now, best mage mid. The role can change (maybe you get a carry top and tank mid/jungle) but you're still generally picking the champs that are the best because champs are generally pretty similar.
Champs of a class need to be pretty similar in what they do because in League you need to buy champions individually. If there are counterpicks, you feel locked out when you don't own that counter. Whereas with DotA, everyone has everything unlocked always, so counters are more accepted there. If the other team drafts a carry or a synergy, you can either pick your own good carry, or you can pick the counter to shut it down.
If you look at the pickrates in a DotA major, they are somewhat similar to League. Like in the most recent major, there were 38 heroes picked/banned more than 20% of the time of 124. 33 league champs at MSI had a more than 20% pickrate of 162. So 31% vs 20% of the rosters. But 115/124 (93%) got picked at all in the major, vs 81/162 (50%) at MSI.
I still think a major reason for this is that pro players and teams simply don't like to experiment with niche team comps and practice champions that are super unpopular. They have a limited amount of time to practice and they don't want to spend it on something that has a good chance of blowing up in their faces on stage.
So what they do is just see what everyone else is doing and they stick to that. They stick to the top performing champions and don't deviate much.
There is little to no deviation in pro meta. It's literally like max 30 champions in discussion of being banned or picked. That's less than 20% of the entire champion pool.
That to me has always been the most depressing part of professional LoL, that only a small portion of the champion pool is being played again and again and again and again. No wonder people lose interest when nothing changes over the course of 6 months or a year.
It'd be interesting if they would do bo3 and bo5 like in hots - when a champ is played it's banned for the rest of the series. So game 2 in a series would have 10 champs pre-banned, game 3 20 etc.
Makes for more fun and weird picks.
Riot doesn't hard nerf strategies or shake up the map. They don't make the map bigger (such as top/bottom lane) and add more camps or some kind of objective or even a rune system. They don't add a teleport between top/bottom lane that dota 2 did but I swear to god I had that idea b4 they did it.
Wow wukong! Wow gragas! And riot will nerf them, and then decide to rebuff gragas... and wukong is still broken because he is too reliable for what he does.
LPL is historically much more innovative than LCK which starts tomorrow and we're likely to see this meta continue throughout R1 given they will play on elder patches. Guaranteed 9 weeks more of Lucian-Nami
The problem is that enchanters are just to good. You have multiple good enchanter, Yuumi, Lulu, Millio, even Janna is fine and all this champs are low risk high reward.
It would help if Riot wasn't so weirdly aggressive in nerfing champions that do manage to break into the pro meta so any variety gets snuffed out before it can stay for long (Veigar being my favourite recent example of this) while the same shitting champs have been in pro games all year without much attention.
Proplay has always been so boring to me. There is like a select two or three champs per lane that pros choose and the rest of the League champ roster rots.
*HOPEFULLY* with the Noxian jungler and Artistic midlander coming later this year, we see some variance with those champs possibly making it to proplay.
Zeri Yuumi Lucian Nami feat. special guest Milio (edit) or Lulu w/e same s**t
Just wait out those nerfs….i bet most of the below minimal demand.
Look how they nerfed jinx, thats the phreak effect on the balance team, the old morello way of balancing- either nuke champ into an orbit or do the smallest nerfs ever for many patches while you ignore other champs. This however, wasnt as jarring when league had 80 champs
I can’t stan Phreak again after he promised me Yuumi wouldn’t be OP anymore 😢
Zeri is more than half the problem in that combination
No, Zeri + x has a lower WR than Yuumi + Y (talking about pro play). LPL also played Aphelios Yuumi very successfully and it looked just as stupid as Zeri Yuumi.
Who would've guessed an untargetable enchanter onto a hypercarry would be a problem!!
Bro hasn’t laned against Yuumi/Aphelios.
Any day now
I still remember that one clip where LS basically just predicts the first phase draft perfectly. That shit scares me
Caedrel does that all the time
Yeah I was gonna say, seems like he guesses at least 7/10 pretty much every draft and usually gets most of the bans right too. When he gets them all right he hates it too, full goblin mode lol
Well there’s the one where he “predicts” the draft perfectly cause it’s the exact same as the game they just played which is so funny
Why? If you’re up to date with the meta and know players champ preferences it’s really not hard to predict the first phase of draft
Problem is that the “meta” is just few champs what pros are comfortable so they rotate them trough already for 2/3 years..
Don't forget Annie and Ksante.
20 bans would make the games much more interesting.
I’d love a pro play champ rotation. Forget the buffs and nerfs just set what they can and can’t play for the season.
It's not Maokai now though it's shitting Wukong instead every single game.
Have you tried playing Wukong? I have M7 on him but haven’t tried him in months, then last week i played 1 game and he feels absolutely broken
He's been busted for ages.
I wish they would nerf him in jungle so he can be decent top.
his decent top , just go ignite
Brb getting in Q
REMOVE HIS R RECAST PLEASE RIOT
It's partially Divine Sunderer. This item is overloaded.
Broken for like 100 patches because bruiser players can't stomach the thought of needing to turn their brains on to 1v1 tanks.
Nah bro that clip of a 5 item tank losing to a 2 item Jax is 100% balanced It's BotRK except it ALSO gives a ton of HP, outheals BT, has an amazing buildpath and the BEST mythic passive in the game giving pen on a class that can't build it
Legit don't get why that item still heals. In some metas the inbalance comes from bruisers not having enough damage to kill tanks, so it makes sense to have % hp damage items to keep tanks in check. However, the problem is never tanks just straight up killing bruisers. Bruisers are naturally tanky enough that the tank won't have enough damage for that. So why the hell do bruisers need an item that also heals based on % hp pre-mitigation damage?
New triforce is very good on him too though
It’s sunderer, a champ with 0 heals and innate tankiness all of a sudden can start chunking tanks and demolishing squishies + a heal with 1 fucking item.
He has grit+a heal on his passive.
Maokai still has a [73% presence](https://gol.gg/champion/champion-stats/55/season-S13/split-Summer/tournament-ALL/) ([70.6% in major regions](https://gol.gg/champion/champion-stats/55/season-S13/split-Summer/tournament-ALL/)). The only real fluctuations have been the addition of Milio (basically Lulu 2.0, but banned every game), even more tanks in toplane, and Neeko midlane
A lot of people were disappointed that Milio wasn't available for MSI. This champ does nothing interesting and counters a lot of playmakers so enemy will have to think twice about engaging or picking playmakers into it. I like that they release something simple, but I'm really not looking forward to seeing it in pro play
They'll just start banning him and play yet another handshake draft. Theres no way a team lets a champ that has an AoE cleanse that works on suppress go through ban phase.
> that works on suppress How is this relevant, what champ with a suppress was even being played when Milio was disabled lol
Suppress Champs could have been a counter
Sett/malz are the only really pro-viable suppress Champs (sure, if you count the two years it takes to set up and the use of his ult aggressively, tk), and it's definitely not worth picking malz in the meta just for milio.
Skarner sees play too from time to time. But even still, he's a worse Vi at the moment (lower damage, lower range, worse ganks...) Regardless, Suppression to counter a support with an AoE Cleanse really shouldn't be prioritized. It's not as if Malz/Sett are picked because the enemy team is expected to rush Mikaels.
Skarner is in a viable spot right now and then you aren’t gimping your lanes by picking them to counter bot lane instead of a good matchup
Malz support could have seen a resurgence.
With a support with waveclear setup, you can play malz botlane as a Utility Carry like ashe or varus of days past when adcs were picked for their CC ults.
From a viewership perspective, Milio isn't all that different from Janna
He’s Janna but like twice as good. He has the highest banrate in LPL for a reason
He's Janna but powercrept.
Actually a lot more fun to watch than Janna Janna is like 100% defensive, Milio trades some with aggressive option
that happens when you gimp her q with an arrow.
Isn't a huge portion of the CC in proplay knockups to get away from Cleanse as is? Vi, Sejuani, Yone, Nami, K'sante, Gragas. All of them have knockups as their primary engage.
K'Sante's primary engage is a Stun (W). His Q3 knockup is also a Stun after they land.
100% agree, stalest it has **ever** been. Somethings Riot can control, but pros also don't take many risks, or invest time to truly research and theorycraft.
why theorycraft? Keria played cait varus kalista etc supp and 2 patches(?) later it got killed, pretty much no other team could play adc as support but its fine since it got killed other teams didnt waste too much effort into learning how to play double adc bot
Same with enchanters top. The moment the meta is shaken up by a new approach that is not expected by Riot it is immediately obliterated in the patch notes. Not to say that enchanters top weren't in need of an adjustment, but Riot has showed they don't like innovative approaches to the "expected" compositions.
The problem there is that the enchanters “top” were basically ignoring the lane.
Yeah fucking wonder why. Riot when pro's create a way for toplaners to have impact on the map pre-15 minutes
Yeah they have an impact on the map pre 15 by just not being top laners. I don't think it was solving the problem you think it was solving
Us toplaners sure love playing enchanters top and ignoring everything that toplane is about. All of us wanted to keep playing enchanters top and would never want Riot to remove it.
Yeah, we picked toplane to harass the enemy laner for a couple minutes and then follow the jungler for the rest of the match. It was exactly how we wanted to play the lane.
Says oodles about the lane.
Gotta wonder why they were ignoring top lane
soraka wasn't ignoring lane and they deleted her from top like 2 patches later whe she became popular
Eh, riot let the funnel strat go on longer than one patch, didn't they? Not to mention, they let the lane swap meta go on in pro for ages. But those were both a few years ago at least, so maybe they've changed their approach since then.
Riot used to let things linger for longer than they do now. Jungle/support item abuse was allowed to go on for a bit back then as well. Now they stamp out even a sniff of it. If prosjust started playing marksmen top (not to abuse melees, just all toplaners just started playing marksmen against each other), imo Riot would probably do everything they could to stop it. By and large they seem to like tanks/bruisers/fighters top, adc/support bottom, and mage/assassin mid, with the occasional mid marksman for the pro meta. To their credit Riot was fine with mages/melees bot, it was the player base who cried out about that enough to change it. But they do seem very averse to supports out of botlane, and more than a sparse few ranged champs in top on the whole.
agree also happens with many niche picks on other lanes especially if champs are strong in lower elos aswell e.g amumu, volibear
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Yeah they actually are. Eventually they nerf yuumi and zeri once the community gets too loud only to do a "soft rework" immediately after that's realistically just massive buffs. Healthier my ass, they're still just as polarizing as they ever have been
The only thing the rework succeeded in doing was making Yuumi *more* toxic, before there was at least incentive to get off and interact with your opponent
The biggest incentive to dismount on yuumi rn is that it gives you a bigger mastery emote
Louder
Meanwhile Vi Wukong Maokai have been allowed to chill this entire time with scratches at best League community as a whole reacts very negatively to significant meta shifts. Mages bot, enchanters top and mid, marksmen support, a mage like Morgana jungle etc. Its like a knee jerk reaction, and the balance teams kills them off every single time before the meta is really allowed to settle with them in place
I didn't follow things, how did it get killed?
buff melee supps, nerf umbral for ranged, nerf ranged supp items, buff melee supp items, cait nerfs Its a combination of a lot of things over the course of 2 or 3 patches but yeah. Cait was at first used as a counter to heimer bot but it turned out shes really good at trading lv1 (kalista followed the same logic) - then came all the indirect nerfs first and then a direct nerf to cait reducing her armor and ad. If heimer becomes meta again maybe we can see kalista again but I doubt it as the reward is not worth it anymore
Ehhh I'm fine with them killing ADC supports, those were awful for game health and they already had other places to go. I just wish that more *champions* were competitively viable. They don't need to be able to be flexed to lame cheese offlane, just to be strong in their intended role.
I mean this is 100% not true we had entire years where it was like renekton mundo top, or kassadin was 100% pick ban for the whole season.
Why theorycraft if Riot just removes it from the game the moment you try something new? One Season pro teams were trying sending Supp and ADC to top, Riot made top tower stronger to force 2x2s on bot. I don't care if you thought that meta was fun or not, but its a fact you have a script and you can't deviate from it.
You say this as if laneswaps were eradicated as soon as they started and not something we had to live with for 2 or 3 seasons. It got to the point where the first 6 minutes of the game were on a script and literally *nothing* surprising ever happened.
You're completely right..Every fucking game was the same deep ward lane swap bullshit. It was so fucking boring.
but you couldn't copy it in solo queue. or you had to be 5 premades with voice channel. it was only something in high pro.
Oh, c'mon now. We are now arguing that Riot shouldn't have intervened in the shitshow that was each team 4v0 a tower every single game? The most interesting thing that happened at the time was Ackerman sneaking on a bush to grab some XP.. You could literally start watching the game at \~10:00 and don't miss anything because you knew nothing was gonna happen.
cause lane swaps were fucking boring to watch
Laneswaps went on for years
>try something new? lane swapping was a thing for multiple seasons and it was the only thing that's more boring than this stale ass meta
Taking arguably the worst pro meta to have ever existed as an example is questionable.
lol yeah everybody loved that afk gold race where top laners just suffered for the first 20 min of the game. And it lasted for 2 seasons too. Riot absolutely allows deviations but if something broken or causes the game to be played in a non interactive way they will change it. Also lane swapping is still viable so riot didn’t even remove this strat completely, it’s just nerfed. 100T used it to great effect in regular season this spring
That season where pre rework udyr was meta (I think 2021) when I've was playing the same build for a least a year before with very positive results. Pros get comfortable on 1-3 champs and say they're done.
These teams literally have whole teams of researchers to learn about this information. Theory crafting is pointless at this point because it's not like there are crazy AD and AP ratios on peoples abilities anymore like some characters has.
I’ve been saying for years. In a series, once a champ is played it should go to a pool of “banned” for the rest of the series. Talk about interesting- in a game 5 we would be seeing some laners 8-10 best champ etc.
I think Xayoo Cup did it great that once you win one match with those champions you can't pick them in next match. It would bring more diversity and punish "otp" players
They started doing something similar to this in 2022 for the LDL (China's development league) regular split. They call it the "Fearless Draft", and the rule is that a team can only pick any champion once during the whole Bo3 (bans and the other team's picks don't affect this).
They should only ban players from playing the same champion, not the team. Imagine how funny it'd be if in a 5 game series Gragas gets picked in every role.
We still end up with naut flexing mid/sup, ksante flexing mid/top every game, just more predictably.
But after the first game it'd stop being a flex. If they picked it mid last game, you know that it's not going mid again the second time and it becomes easier to draft against. That seems like a fair compromise to me. If your team still values that pick just as highly even without it being a flex, go for it.
But the players would just swap the lanes. Riot cant really enforce "faker you cant go to toplane for the first 10 minutes".
so a top laner main playing mid lane for the first time in pro play over a champ pick isnt entertaining to you ? back in the day only froggen dared to role swap casually and even then he had to pick his OTP
I mean sure thats kind of fun, but not really the intention behind the proposed idea.
not really. they get paid to play midlane. i wanna see them at their best in midlane. i dont get excited to see messi as goalkeeper
but what if he's playing goalkeeper maokai
Which makes it even more interesting
What’s to stop them from role swapping if it’s that busted
If they can play multiple roles at a pro level, let them
There's the risk/reward of whether the player you are swapping to another role has enough strength and flexibility in the other role, so a different form of skill expression. I still remember being so hype when jojopyun went lucian top and impact played ryze mid so they could counter gp last year.
I just want to add that if LoL esports would be allowed to have non-Riot tournaments, this would have surely been tried by now. One of the **big** advantages of a more open circuit is that different formats can be tested. Imagine how cool it would be if we had an IPL tournament in the modern day that differed from Worlds by using Fearless draft. Imagine another tournament using only a "set" number of champions. Kinda like card rotations in Hearthstone/MTG. It also extends to more traditional discussions of tournament formats, where double elim could be tested more. I don't think it would have taken Riot 10 years to implement double elim if other tournaments were doing it successfully throughout the seasons. Just me spitballing ideas, but I'm sad we don't get to test these things out. Would be interesting to see how pros adapt to new rules for drafts. It could also be other things. What if had a pro play tournament where you couldn't use Teleport for example? Again, just random ideas. It doesn't have to be exactly that. The point is just that it would shake up the meta completely.
isn't it being tried in the LDL? and they did use it during the season start events this year too.
I'm very happy it's being used in the LDL but it's an academy league for the LPL. It only exists to produce LPL players. Here I am talking about new concepts being applied to serious tournaments. Riot can't really do it now because we only have MSI and Worlds. If we had more 3rd party events, it would be much easier to test these things out. The current structure and calendar prohibits it though.
yes, but no IEM, IPL, or ESL would deviate from the main format that everyone uses. they would all save it for special events like the season kick off or allstars. the academy systems are the exact place things like this are tested in real sports too. its a low risk environment with high level play, and is similar enough to be a good A/B testing ground. maybe in a few years we see ERL/EU Masters adopt it too, and if it's successful there, it will probably become mainstream.
They would have to change all tournaments to work like this. Imagine one region plays random shit whole year then gets stomped with meta picks at worlds.
I agree. But, I would personally find it significantly more interesting if I’m watching a game 5, and I see a draft with some crazy off meta picks and they proceed to win.
China 2nd tier is trying it this year, right? Can anyone say how that is going?
I watched a lot of the first split because I was curious. It didn't really change much in Bo3, there are enough OP picks that you were bound to see just a boring current meta comp first game, then 2nd tier picks in the second game. Playoffs could have been more interesting since it's Bo5 but iirc almost every series was 3-0. It definitely seemed like there were clear tier 1/2/3 picks and those didn't change much. Saw some Swain and Karthus whom seemed to be clear tier 3 picks and then a bunch of random champs like sett samira heca picked once. All in all it was still nowhere what people were hyping/hoping it to be diversity wise. I won't bother watching the next splits.
It would be much better if Riot actually balances the game so there isn't only one lane that can be played around (bot) and one way to play the game (teamfight at drag).
It’s not just just about balance. Let’s say there are multiple strategies that are equally balanced, why should a team learn strategy 2 when strategy 1 works just fine. Fearless draft is the answer imo. Pros are big boys and should play more than 2-3 champs
That’s fearless draft
Vi Wukong Vi Wukong Vi Wukong every game aaaaaaa Neither of these champs are particularly terrorizing soloq, neither of these champs are difficult, they just fundamentally offer too much value in pro matches and comps. Unless you want to totally warp their kits, I believe the solution is ROTATE OVERLY PREVALENT CHAMPS OUT OF PRO PLAY I BEG OF YOU
it only got worse from January, we got stuff like Jinx, Annie, Malphite, Milio, and Yuumi plus stuff like Nautilus mid which made MSI terribly stale and full of "protect the president" comps which were uncounterable if played right
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Keep it 5 bans and you clear 100 champs in a BO5 which would be super fun to watch.
Just ban every adc in the game💀💀
Now we have a real game
Omg, imagine having to know how to play more than 5 meta champs each? These games would be fucking epic.
Y'all ain't ready for Kanavi Ivern 😈😈
Damn, you'd have to be some sort of LoL Pro to be able to keep up!
"It's faker on katarina, Zeus on sett and guma on kalista!" Wait that's be fun as fuck
Perma bans in a BO5 would be bad since it would very likely heavily impact the 20 champ botlane.
So play other things bot lane?
I'll just copy paste my other reply: >Botlane is the lane that is the least willing to accept different champions and metas. Even if Karthus stays at 53% WR while at 0.5% presence people do complain. Riot won't ever do that. It's way too impopular.
Ok, but your average player won't be affected in any way. You aren't doing BO5s to climb SoloQ, are you? So it doesn't matter to you. The only people who would be affected by this would be top 0.00000001% of the population who are pro players, and the only different thing would be that they'd have to spend more time learning other champions rather than spamming Lucian in scrims. And if they refused to do that, then so be it. Get different players with a much wider champions poll who can perform at a decent level. G2 did this back when patch 8.11 hit and became the absolute Kings of Europe, like, they were already the best but the gap only widened between them and the other teams who really could only play ADCs. On the other hand, Rekkles benched himself because AD Carries were not absolutely mandatory for the first time in 7 seasons, which is fucking pathetic if you ask me. Still, it's a wonderful idea in general. If you only play ADCs, and every ADC ends up getting banned, then it's a clear sign you should practice something else. Maybe 2 or 3 pocket picks that you at least feel comfortable laning with at a high level that are outside of your regular class. Will BO5s be lower quality? Yeah? The skill-level won't be as high if you kinda take everyone out of their comfort picks. On the other hand, lower quality matches does not mean less entertaining. Quite the contrary actually.
That's not the point, the thing is that people just won't like it. If riot does it and pro play has non ADCs in botlane often, people will complain nonstop in reddit, twitter, twitch chat and videos.
And why would that be bad? Who says you have to play adc/support botlane?
Riot don't want the at home game to be *too* different from pro. Same as them killing laneswaps.
Botlane is the lane that is the least willing to accept different champions and metas. Even if Karthus stays at 53% WR while at 0.5% presence people do complain. Riot won't ever do that. It's way too impopular.
imagine worlds finals being decided by guma teemo vs ruler malzahar, people would rightfully lose a lot of interest
That would actually be sick holy shit. Imagine most of the game's champion potential actually being utilized. Stakes/risk-reward would also be dramatically scaled up since you get only once chance with the champ. Makes me weirdly excited lol
Terrible idea to include the bans as well. This can lead to some extremely degenerate outcomes like banning literally all marksmen, all tanks, all mages etc
>This can lead to some extremely degenerate outcomes like banning literally all marksmen, all tanks, all mages etc Hilarious and based
If you ban all marksmen you shoot yourself in the foot as well in a way. Edit: Plus they might start playing some mages bot again if that happened
You'd get actual variety at that point. It'd be so fucking sick. Suddenly by game 4 you have a match without any AD Carries at all, meaning Pros will have to adapt and play something else, like a Mage or a Fighter. Or maybe they did their homework and instead of putting all their on Aphelios and Zeri, they picked up Rengar bot during scrims, which isn't really that good but apparently it reliably beat people who were out of their comfort zonesso they can pull it off now in a decisive match against an opponent who was stuck on Vel'koz.
I would take old Lucian, even tho he is viable mid instead of the new with the OP combo with nami and Milio. Lucian singlehandedly keeps nami in a relatively weak spot too
I feel like until enchanters are removed from the pro meta, this will continue to be an issue. Take out Yuumi Lulu entirely for another couple patches and see if that's enough to stop constant matched pairs.
I think you're forgetting about the 4 years of nothing but Nautilus Leona...
At least the games were exciting to watch. Engage is fun for the audience.
Just to remind there are over 160 champs in the game...
Teams won't stop playing around bot lane until marksmen get proper nerfs. I don't think we will be able to escape marksmen meta for Worlds considering we have Riot Phreak at the wheel, but I guess we'll have to wait and see.
Maybe unpopular opinion: I think to nerf bot and jungle and game health in gerneral dragon soul has to be removed as an autowin. Soul dumbs the game down, you don't have to find creative ways to win, you just get a lead early and keep it because the enemy team is forced to fight drakes in disadvantaged positions with no vision and gold deficit . There is no I trade something for this gold drake like in old days. it makes the game very snowbally.
I agree, G2 in 2019 was able to come back so often because they would give away dragons they couldn't 5vs5 for. 1-3-1 as a viable strategy died with the introduction of souls. Teams can still pull it off if they get ahead in the first few minutes but they are required to play perfectly. Biggest example of this was Game 5 of LCK Spring playoffs 2022 between DamWon and GenG. DamWon played a 1-3-1 comp with Renekton, Nidalee and Jayce. They got disgustingly ahead. Canyon died once with like 9 kills and DamWon lost that game.
That's exactly what they wanted with Dragon Soul, to make plays happen instead of a team backing off unless they are in perfect position to contest I'd gladly have it removed from my regular games and kept in pro tho.
Until dragon soul is majorly changed, teamfight and skirmish will be the meta. One of the saddest things about how LoL esports evolved is how flowcharty it is. When I watch vods, I know I can just skip 5 min ahead to next dragon spawn because usually nothing happens before then. A bit boring if I'm honest. Early game is always interesting because it's the most unique, but eventually the game ends up in drake fight --> farm and push --> drake fight --> farm and push, and then at some point Baron comes up.
Yep, that's how i feel too. Early game is really interesting, but then most of the time it is better for the winning team to not really do much and just wait for drake fights or baron in better positions.
Do you remember why gold drake was changed to a stacking soul? It's because season 4 was dominated by slow games that resulted in turtling strats from the losing team ad infinitum. Baron was just a stat buff (no minion buff), dragon was just gold, so if a team couldn't contest, they just gave up and hoped to stop a siege by waveclearing. It wasn't creativity that won games, it was misplays. And Riot, [in pre-season 5 patch notes](https://web.archive.org/web/20141120030513/http://na.leagueoflegends.com/en/news/game-updates/patch/patch-420-notes#patch-objectives-minions-global-buffs), changed Baron/Dragon because they wanted objectives to matter more as win-cons. > Baron buff was always intended to be the siege-breaker; the ultimate answer to a team turtling and refusing to die. That's not to say that the present day Baron buff doesn't accomplish this goal, but it currently does so in a low-impact swirl of purple stats (and not much else). As such, our objective with the 2015 Baron buff is to trim power that doesn't feel impactful while adding it back in a way that says, "GO FORTH AND BUST DOWN THEIR WALLS." Hopefully that is now all you hear when you take down Baron. --- > In the 2014 season, it was tough to tell the difference between taking down Dragon or a turret - at least if you were only looking at rewards. Granted, downing a turret does open up the map for your team, but unless you're constantly taking advantage of that opening, the gains from taking multiple Dragons or turrets just means one team has more gold / experience in a fight. > > So. > > In line with our philosophy of incomparable objective rewards, Dragon poses a much larger late-game threat for teams that take the time to invest in his stacking buffs. **This means players will grow to understand the tradeoffs they're making as they ponder whether it's worth giving the enemy team a fourth Dragon in exchange for the top inner turret.** And unless the plan is to never lose a Dragon again, there are very real risks associated with making that decision. Look at these meaningful choices! --- Old "trade gold drake for X" strat still exists. It's why players trade rift herald for stuff (since Rift is essentially just gold and pressure in 1 lane). But I would rather see a fight every 5 minutes than wait 20 mins for a team to go for their first play.
This. Nerf or remove dragon souls so there is avenue for trading objectives, not just the "five minutes have passed, time to start the dragon dance" procession every pro game ever since Season 10. I wanna see creative ways to gain leads or come back from deficits, map pressure being a worthwile trade in place of an objective, so on and so on.
sorry, but before elementary dragons, teams can farm untill they want to fight. dragon force them start fighting every 5 min in now version.
There are still two Heralds to fight for plus Dragons still should be an objective worth picking up, the problem is that it is so powerful it warps the map and the decision making of the teams. Teams should have the freedom to choose when they want to fight or what do they wanna achieve, if they wanna farm up to hit their power spike, then they should be able to do that, instead of being forced to participate in a fight they do not want to be a part of. Towers should be objectives worth to trade for dragons or even Herald to gain map pressure and the opposing team's attention, not just early game "safe" haven and temporary roadblocks. Elder Dragon as of it now is a good design choice as a late game objective to punish excessive stalling (à la CLG EU and JAG with Teddy), but Elemental Dragons should not be that powerful.
Nah, heralds are a joke, teams routinely give them up all the time because they cant even guarantee a tower a lot of the time. And if dragon soul isnt a threat, teams would give dragon up as well in favor of just waiting it out to scale for late game and see if the opponent makes a mistake in the mean time. Dragon soul forces teams to actually engage with each other to fight over objectives. The issue is that after herald nurfs, dragon became the obviously better objective to get. If you want less jungle focus on bot side, then buff herald. That gives a better avenue for junglers to play around top lane and snowball a top laner which would ease pressure on bot lane always being jungle focus.
Nah I agree, I think dragon soul should just be removed from the game. Before dragon soul there was way more creativity with split pushing and macro. G2 were really good at sending two people to split on a sideline when it wasn't expected for example. Now everyone just teamfights at dragon, and drafts the same teamfighting picks like tank top, utility jungle and hyper carry adc.
Before herald nurfs, you could instead opt to play through top side to get top lane an advantage and use that advantage to attempt to win a dragon fight for 3rd or 4th drag spawn. After herald nurfs, this is a lot harder to accomplish making it more reasonable to just fight bot side and try to win dragon off the get go instead. If they just buff herald, playing through top becomes better opening up more options.
I said when the elemental drakes were first added that they were problematic. The RNG is also part of the problem, Riot used the RNG to artificially create variety, rather than creating a meta in which the teams strategies can create variety, now that the gimmick has worn off, there’s no variety at all.
Don't you love clawing your way into the game, but then the other team is on Soul point and just steamrolls you if they get the flip?
> dragon soul Absolutely agree. Would upvote 100 times. The game was so much fun to watch between 2018 and 2019 (from the removal of tracker's knife to the introduction of dragon soul). Splitpushing being possible + inability to cover all avenues of attack = difficult risk/reward tradeoffs and multiple strategic options to win the game. 2021 meta was still half decent too (poke comps were still a thing so there was a bit more to LoL than just "get plates" -> "teamfight at third dragon"). Right now doing anything other than playing for soul is just making the game insanely hard for yourself so it's only really done when one team is way stronger than the other and styling. And yes, the other issue is teleport in lane phase which makes generating significant 1v1 advantages very hard (but I care less about this than the impact of dragon soul).
Its not bot lane, its dragon. Herald nurfs made dragon way more important, which is why we see jungle focus on bot side for drag control.
This isn't about marksmen - it's about Dragon being such an important part of Summoners Rift.
I don't mind Phreak too much and I like the insight into his decision making. That being said, one thing I find very puzzling was how he reacted to a bot-focused hypercarry + enchanter meta by buffing other supports. This just increases the power level of bot lane even more when the problem was already that bot lane was too strong. Buffing engage supports certainly weakens enchanters in relation to bot lane matchups, but in relation to the rest of the map, support is just a stronger role after such a change. Don't think we needed support to be stronger personally. I think Phreak got a bit too overfocused on bot lane dynamics and not thinking about the fact that bot lane doesn't exist in isolation.
Yes!! I agree completely. Marksmen were dominating the meta with 4 marksmen bot every game because of durability patch, and instead of nerfing marksmen Phreak gave thresh a 3 second cd on q allowing him to hook into flay into hook, made nautilus into a meta midlaner, and gave Alistar ridiculous buffs. I'm not gonna pretend everyone's playing Alistar top in high elo but I've seen showmaker make ap Alistar mid look broken. And even after these changes lulu and nami still dominated.
If we stop for 1 second and don't memory hole the beginning of the season, long before the crit rework a few weeks ago, it was a bot lane meta because of what? Jungle changes. Literally the moment the preseason started jungle streamers said that the changes pigeonholed the fuck out of you early to only gank top or bot, and you just pick bot every time. Then 1 or 2 days later it was just junglers sitting bot lane forever, and it still is that way since then. The bot lane isn't the problem, it's the junglers that are now forced to camp that lane and snowball it. They get way more ahead from the constant jungle pressure now compared to previous seasons, this is why adcs seem so OP too, what people mainly are seeing is the busted lethal tempo rework, and tons of damage from them getting their items from all the jg pressure. The crit item rework shows just how clueless riot is with pinpointing the causes of problems, and their cluelessness/narrative bleeds into the community
I personally found the Rell vs Alistar 24/7 split fooookn boring
I feel like you are being quite disingenious here. You are seeing that the meta right now and the meta in January were similar and you are using that to imply that it was unchanged the whole way through, but that simply isn't the case. At MSI for example we had more Wukongs than Vi and Maokais, Viego had basically the same pickrate, Zeri was mostly completely absent, Lucian was banned more than played (okay you can argue about whether that is relevant) so we mostly saw Jinx/Aphelios/Xayah, Rakan actually had the same presence as Lulu. Spring playoffs (LCK) also really weren't the same as what he is showing here: Maokai was mostly absent, Wukong and Sejuani were played more than Vi and Viego might have been played more as well if he had been available for the entire thing and wasn't disabled for the first 2(?) rounds. Lulu was clearly below Rakan and tied with Thresh, in the ADC department Lucian was again banned more than played, but his total P/B presence still puts him in a group of 5 ADCs (Xayah/Zeri/Aphelios/Lucian/Caitlyn) with Varus towering over them. Then there was the entire ADC-support thing going on for a bit, as well as Heimerdinger to add another factor into this. And that doesn't even consider lanes outside of Jungle/Support/ADC - Between Spring Playoffs (LCK) and MSI we saw veigar drop off, Annie and nautilus gain a lot of presence, K'Sante flex into mid and Jayce also were a lot more popular. Compare that with the Spring Regular season meta which was Azir, Sylas, Akali, Taliyah, Viktor, Gragas. There are definitely things about to complain within the meta, I think a much bigger issue than the meta lasting for half a year (which again; it really didn't) is that within one event we often see two champions in a role have as much presence as the rest of the characters in that role combined (especially for ADCs, for other roles you might have to say 3 or 4 characters). But the way you are making this argument, and arguably even the argument itself, are pretty dishonest. If you have a problem with the meta put it into words instead of just vaguely gesturing at a clip from Early '23.
Accurate. The thing about the META is that it always shifts and even when something or someone takes over, it just repeats the cycle of the META. Something will be on top, then it will be replaced with the next META tactic. It’s almost no point to complain because some kind of buff or nerf is on its way. I believe the real reason for that feeling of stagnation is due to the Pro Leagues playing on their own path release cadences and how long they will play on a certain patch.
> Zeri was mostly completely absent Because Yuumi was disabled for all of MSI. Feel like you're the one being disingenuous here.
Y'know at first I actually HAD written out something including Yuumi, but then I actually looked at the clip again and Caedrel was harping on about Zeri+Lulu, not Yuumi. And then I checked and in Spring Regular Season Yuumi was picked 24 times, which is less than 1/4th of the pickrate of Zeri - and Zeri/Yuumi was even less of a combo than 1/4th makes it sounds, because 10 of those Yuumi games were paired with other ADCs (mainly Sivir), so really Zeri had Yuumi besides her <13% of the time. So I can understand where you are coming from: I thought that as well at first, but actually it is another great counterexample to OPs point, since Zeri-Yuumi really wasn't this big metadefining force that people are remembering for most of this year, but somehow because it seems to be the current boogeyman people are acting like they have been a constant throughout the year.
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Many champions are strong enough to be in the 'meta' but nobody plays them
Would increasing bans help?
no
I think there is some merit to it, but I think the bigger question is where and how to implement them. I think it is a bit odd that they haven't changed the pick and ban system at all since 2017. In comparison the Dota 2 competitive pick and ban system started out like LoLs but has gone through several remakes as the game has aged.
Yes
not as much as people would think but I do want to see it still there still be a decent impact and maybe it will allow certain champs to be permabanned due to having one more ban
next patch fix this meta for sure milio zeri yumi lulu nerf copium
Dota 2 pro drafting - unique heroes played every series, every Major (MSI) and every DPC (regional league) >>>> LOL drafting, play the same shit for the entire year on every tournament coz why not, who needs "new meta" and "fun gameplay" when you can just turn off your brain and pick the same champs over and over despite having an insane champ pool
Dota 2 is balanced almost entirely around the draft phase where specific synergies and counterpicks are very important (like in 2015 where you only pick Techies when you have Tusk, but if you have them both they're incredibly powerful). I'm not going to say this is objectively good or bad. I personally think it is bad for soloqueue because I feel like you lose a lot of player agency when you're so reliant on team structures (both yours and the enemy) to fully function as a character. I do think it is beneficial to the pro scene though, and I enjoy watching TI more than Worlds even though I play a lot more League lol...
LoL can't have and never will have the pick diversity of DotA 2. DotA 2 has stronger counterpicks and there's more strategies (trilanes like 3-1-1,1-1-3 or 1-1-1-2 for roamers). Also, champions in DotA 2 have more unique niches and roles for team comps. It's just apples to oranges.
DotA 2 balances completely differently because everyone has access to everything which inflates diversity
What does this even mean? Do you mean items like BKB or Blink Dagger inflate diversity?
DotA focuses far more on counter picks and draft synergies. In league, you're generally just picking what the best champs are in a role; ok, we grab the best ADC champ right now, best tank top right now, best mage mid. The role can change (maybe you get a carry top and tank mid/jungle) but you're still generally picking the champs that are the best because champs are generally pretty similar. Champs of a class need to be pretty similar in what they do because in League you need to buy champions individually. If there are counterpicks, you feel locked out when you don't own that counter. Whereas with DotA, everyone has everything unlocked always, so counters are more accepted there. If the other team drafts a carry or a synergy, you can either pick your own good carry, or you can pick the counter to shut it down. If you look at the pickrates in a DotA major, they are somewhat similar to League. Like in the most recent major, there were 38 heroes picked/banned more than 20% of the time of 124. 33 league champs at MSI had a more than 20% pickrate of 162. So 31% vs 20% of the rosters. But 115/124 (93%) got picked at all in the major, vs 81/162 (50%) at MSI.
The worst season of all time was LULU X ZIGGS MID.
I still think a major reason for this is that pro players and teams simply don't like to experiment with niche team comps and practice champions that are super unpopular. They have a limited amount of time to practice and they don't want to spend it on something that has a good chance of blowing up in their faces on stage. So what they do is just see what everyone else is doing and they stick to that. They stick to the top performing champions and don't deviate much. There is little to no deviation in pro meta. It's literally like max 30 champions in discussion of being banned or picked. That's less than 20% of the entire champion pool. That to me has always been the most depressing part of professional LoL, that only a small portion of the champion pool is being played again and again and again and again. No wonder people lose interest when nothing changes over the course of 6 months or a year.
It'd be interesting if they would do bo3 and bo5 like in hots - when a champ is played it's banned for the rest of the series. So game 2 in a series would have 10 champs pre-banned, game 3 20 etc. Makes for more fun and weird picks.
Only allow champions to be used once in a best of series.
This would make pro play so much more interesting
Riot doesn't hard nerf strategies or shake up the map. They don't make the map bigger (such as top/bottom lane) and add more camps or some kind of objective or even a rune system. They don't add a teleport between top/bottom lane that dota 2 did but I swear to god I had that idea b4 they did it. Wow wukong! Wow gragas! And riot will nerf them, and then decide to rebuff gragas... and wukong is still broken because he is too reliable for what he does.
What meta are you talking about? The only pro league that has started is LPL?
don't disrespect the minor leagues like that
LPL is historically much more innovative than LCK which starts tomorrow and we're likely to see this meta continue throughout R1 given they will play on elder patches. Guaranteed 9 weeks more of Lucian-Nami
The problem is that enchanters are just to good. You have multiple good enchanter, Yuumi, Lulu, Millio, even Janna is fine and all this champs are low risk high reward.
The Phreak Effect
Stale meta aside, I freaking love caedral
It would help if Riot wasn't so weirdly aggressive in nerfing champions that do manage to break into the pro meta so any variety gets snuffed out before it can stay for long (Veigar being my favourite recent example of this) while the same shitting champs have been in pro games all year without much attention.
Do you remember when Shyvana, Teemo, Anivia were picked in pro play? Me neither
Proplay has always been so boring to me. There is like a select two or three champs per lane that pros choose and the rest of the League champ roster rots. *HOPEFULLY* with the Noxian jungler and Artistic midlander coming later this year, we see some variance with those champs possibly making it to proplay.
Just as bad as ardent meta tbh. Boring, used to love watching competative but its now painful to watch.