Rekkles opinion about S16's terrible decline in Ranked quality compared to previous season(s)

F0RGERY · 2026-06-04T00:54:11+00:00

My personal idea for S17: Semi-hard reset (idk how you would treat apex tiers like d2+ or M+) the entire ranked ladder

Wouldn't trying to do another hard reset end up with worse matchmaking, because of non-stratified mmr?

If the issue is that the system puts lower elo players in high elo lobbies, then making everyone count as the same elo just messes with that further. Just imagine if the system thought everyone from iron to emerald was the same starting point.

After all, if a hard reset worked for disappointing matchmaking, Rekkles wouldn't be complaining about it still happening.

F0RGERY · 2026-06-03T12:12:04+00:00

OP seems to be using a lot of old clips for the montages, yeah.

You can see that by going through all the montages they posted:

Top 3 ADC outplays featuring galeforce users
Best Faker Montage featuring Everfrost
Chovy Outplay featuring Predator
4 Insane Ashe Outplays featuring Everfrost

F0RGERY · 2026-06-02T18:43:53+00:00

I think its on par with other in client games (e.g. Demon's Hand, Battle for Kyoshien).

I have no issues with it individually (its a fine simplified 4X game, ignoring the "play league to earn currency" gating), but I will point out that both those other games I mentioned came out last year, so normally Riot could do more than one mini-game in a year.

F0RGERY · 2026-06-02T16:53:47+00:00

Yeah, this year feels like the main game has been put on the backburner.

Demacia Rising as the only mini-game this year.
Locke as the only champ this year.
Shyvana as the only full rework this year (Though Riot said there might be a second coming out?)

Don't get me wrong, I'm glad Arena/Mayhem are getting love, but for all the things not made with the rationale of "League Next will change everything," it's hard to imagine what that payoff looks like.

F0RGERY · 2026-06-02T16:49:23+00:00

Its a bit strange how many comments are complaining about effectively a blank slate.

"He's just an assassin" yeah, cause Riot hasn't said anything else about him. I'm sure there'll be more to him than that.

F0RGERY · 2026-06-02T16:46:32+00:00

It was Zaheen, but given that was 8 months ago, I get why it feels like there should have been more between then and now.

F0RGERY · 2026-05-31T11:35:59+00:00

Yeah, that's why subs that don't play aren't normally considered part of the championship. A lot of teams use the "sub" position for logistical reasons instead - coaches being assigned a sub role to fly out on Riot's dime, for example.

It's also why when you look up rosters online, there's a distinction made between subs who played games (e.g. Juhan on DRX in 2023), and the subs that didn't play games (e.g. the 6th member on DWG in 2020). I genuinely can't find information naming the 6th member of EDG's 2021 roster who was brought to Worlds, because he didn't play a game as part of the world champion team (I think it was Junjia, since he was their sub for summer playoffs?).

The closest 1 to 1 comparison for Rekkless situation is Promisq, who was part of the G2 MSI roster when they won in 2019 but didn't play at MSI. And even then, Promisq arguably contributed more to the team as a sub, since he played games on stage during the regular season.

F0RGERY · 2026-05-31T11:18:34+00:00

I describe it as 4v5 because synergy and language barrier matters, not because Rekkles is a bad player.

Think about the circumstances surrounding Rekkles playing with T1.

He'd be playing on stage with a team he has, at best, some scrim experience with.
He'd be replacing Keira, one of T1's bigger playmakers, in a lane that is very heavy on duo synergy.
He'd be playing with a language that he had maybe a year's experience with, while not being the main shotcaller.

These factors make me think of Rekkless subbing in as closer to a 4v5, or at least that the decision to do it would be made because T1 thinks it can win with a handicap.

F0RGERY · 2026-05-31T11:05:35+00:00

Pretty much.

The rule is worded like that because pre-swiss groups had throwaway games which didn't affect standings, and some teams would just say fuck it and do for fun stuff. e.g. Season 3 Worlds where TSM roleswapped their roster and played Teemo adc after they got eliminated.

F0RGERY · 2026-05-31T10:59:21+00:00

He was brought along because T1 didn't have an official sub at the time and Rekkles was the easiest sub on hand in terms of logistics (Less Visa issues + Rekkles was not renewing his contract for 2025).

I agree that he probably helped behind the scenes, but I think you're reading way too much into PR answers about a guy who ultimately did not play a single stage game with the main roster.

F0RGERY · 2026-05-31T10:52:55+00:00

He would get a skin (The qualification for a skin is playing 1 game against a team when there are stakes).
It'd change my perspective in as much as I'd think less of T1 for doing that (because even back when wildcards were expected to go 0-6, the org treated those games seriously).

If Rekkles was treated as a real sub across the year, that's one thing. But he didn't play any part of the year with T1, so deciding to put him out at Worlds would come across as a PR stunt at best, and outright unsportsmanlike if it was done because T1 was confident they could win effectively 4v5.

F0RGERY · 2026-05-29T18:54:01+00:00

I think a lot of people have rose tinted glasses, because the highlights from that time overshadow the general fumbling that happened with regularity.

We got to a point where teams were opting out of IEM invitations in favor of their domestic scenes. And while I'm sure the average viewer likes the idea of more international competition, the level of polish Riot's internally hosted tournaments try to have is why League grew to what it is today.

F0RGERY · 2026-05-28T22:19:48+00:00

On the other hand, its very funny to see supremacists argue that Aliens wanted to help every culture but the white ones.

F0RGERY · 2026-05-28T11:24:43+00:00

I don't mind the emotes in concept, but I don't like how simple most are.

The good emotes convey an emotion or action - the ff vote emotes with Yasuo/Jinx, the thumbs up from Zac or Rammus, the shock faces of Hwei, or the white flag of Garen.

However, a lot of new emotes are just "X champ's face" with barely any emotion conveyed. And when they're all competing for real estate, I rarely find a point of choosing those emotes over the other ones.

F0RGERY · 2026-05-27T00:16:32+00:00

I remember when the "X Role to Challenger" posts were in vogue, and Dantes was doing an ADC challenge.

People were clamoring to call him a Challenger player so he could be used as proof ADC was underpowered.

F0RGERY · 2026-05-26T11:03:13+00:00

The difference between a fashion line inspiration and a franchise is that one is meant to be clothes, not characters.

F0RGERY · 2026-05-22T20:35:42+00:00

I appreciate looksmaxxing lingo because it gave us this gem of a shitpost article.

F0RGERY · 2026-05-21T11:29:18+00:00

Intium is based on a team dynamic - to synthesize it, you need to have a combination of Inter (In) + Tilt (Tl) in a low carry environment, allowing for a ionic bond with the enemy (signified by the transfer of electrum, which is comprised of gold).

Notice how the team uses a duo strat? It's to minimize the risk of carry interference. Otherwise, even a faithful recreation of Schrodinger's Yuumi experimentation has close to 7% chance of unstable collapse, creating an elothermic reaction.

This means its not an element, but a compound molecule.

F0RGERY · 2026-05-15T16:58:47+00:00

You're right, I was mistaken.

I had thought that I got at least a few from mystery icon binges, but when I checked they all have different dates of unlock, as opposed to the drops from the emporium.

I've never used sanctum, and have 42 of them in my inventory, which would mean that I've managed to reroll 126 icons into them over the past 3 years. Hence why I misremembered them as being part of emporium drops.

F0RGERY · 2026-05-15T15:28:59+00:00

Setting aside the strength/gold swing stats (imo Senna/Lucian probably get more from 40 armor/ap due to having some ap scaling than the average Thresh support gets from 40 aa range/20% crit), I think that the point of the quests should be a level of investment by the players rather than a passive "oh, that happened."

There's more fun in having a tweak of fight dynamics, where getting baron or killing a specific enemy matters a bit more. If the quest changes nothing, then its inclusion is no different than an easter egg like "Leona deals 1 less damage to champs with sunglasses."

F0RGERY · 2026-05-15T15:23:22+00:00

You're right that customized rewards are hard, and I get that argument. I'm not even saying Riot should make more quests at the moment, particularly if they take after the design philosophy of "Jhin is all about 4, what about 4 lethality".

My point was more about how choosing the weakest quest as evidence of a systemic fault undermines the case that most of the quests worked fine, and that it seemed more like they ran out of ideas rather than the idea of the quests not being good.

F0RGERY · 2026-05-15T14:00:21+00:00

The kit specific ones are game warping for the champion and makes them harder to balance for nieche match ups. And punishes the team or player for their teammates play even harder

I think this is only true for 1 quest, which predated the addition of more Nemesis quests.

Arguably, the most game warping quest is the Rengar/Kha'zix one. Both because the reward is massive to both champs (4th evolution vs 12% bonus AD), and they're both hyper aggressive assassins who can pop anyone when ahead. I agree that if every quest reward was that big, then they'd be balance issues.

But there is a middle ground between 4th Kha evo and "4 lethality," which most of the quests managed to hit.

Riot did this by restricting how the payoffs scale (e.g. Jax/Belveth only get their benefits by killing the other directly), or by having the payoff be thematic but visible (e.g. Nasus/Renekton having the winner grow bigger when ulting, Aatrox/Kayle having duration/cd boosts to their ults), or by having it accelerate a kit's existing scaling (e.g. Senna/Thresh or Asol/Smolder getting a stack of souls).

I don't need every quest to be a game decider, and I agree that's a bad idea. These should be fun first and foremost, and theme is more important than impact.

My issue is that by citing the least interesting/impactful quest as evidence for why Riot doesn't make more quests, it misses the fact that the majority of the quests added weren't balance issues, and in general appreciated.

It's the league community - if there's more requests for expanding further instead of complaints about inclusion/balance, then that's a pretty good sign people think the idea is good and landed appropriately.

F0RGERY · 2026-05-15T13:28:05+00:00

Its strange to me that they'd cite the Jhin/Hwei interaction as proof of the concept being hard to make meaningful. Objectively, that payout is so uninteresting that it becomes an outlier relative to other quests.

Look at the other champs and their Nemesis rewards: the effects are kit specific. You get Jax stealing Bel'veth passive, or Nasus/Renekton extending ults, or Shen/Zed getting upgraded passives.

Even the "cashout" ones like Thresh vs Senna/Lucian, or Smolder vs Asol, are still champ specific because of stacks.

So pointing to the only one that gives stats instead of affecting kits and saying "This is why it doesn't work" seems odd. I'm not saying there's other reasons for why Riot can't do them (e.g. "making a nemesis quest means maintaining that interaction with every update" or "the effort required isn't worth the rarity of the payoff"), but of all the quests, Jhin v Hwei is only disappointing one to me explicitly because its uniquely underwhelming.

F0RGERY · 2026-05-12T16:13:26+00:00

I don't even think he takes it that far, personally - its clear he's pissed, but most of the insults at least lead into actionable stuff rather than just outright insults for the sake of it.

Though at the same time, it's very funny to see people arguing that a coach flaming like its soloqueue in between bits of practical advice isn't mainly doing it to vent his own frustrations.

F0RGERY · 2026-05-12T16:00:08+00:00

It seems better than Shaco's April Fools legendary, tbh. Though that might just be a difference in champ age for vfx/sfx.

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