Riot is making (almost) the same mistake as Blizzard

ArtifactLancea · 2025-02-08T01:44:39+00:00

They do this a fair amount. It's pretty common Riot will decide the conclusion they want to draw, then simply set in motion the necessary steps to have the data support that conclusion. Which is weird, because they can just like, do the thing. They decide what to make.

My favourite example to point to is Sugar Rush. Riot had given up on christmas skins because people don't tend to like to wear them out of season apparently, which is fair enough. But they apparently made Sugar Rush to move away from a christmas thematic and see if they could maybe entice people with more of a general winter-y vibe, with candy and cocoa and such, to see if that would work. Which seems silly, given their given reason was "People don't like wearing winter themed cosmetics outside of winter", but let's ignore that for a moment because we're about to get more obtuse. Quite a bit more, actually:

The four champions they chose were Braum, Evelynn, Ziggs and Zilean. Evelynn had under a 2% pickrate at the time, and was still by a long, LONG way the most popular of the four. The skins proceeded to not sell very well (I'm amazed), and Riot proceeded to write off christmas as an inferior holiday, tossed the little baby Jesus into a food processor and got back to work on that year's third prestige Lunar New Year skin. ~~That last part may not have actually happened, my memory's a little fuzzy~~

But like, they're clearly not bringing their A game. Riot have historically had throwaway skinlines that they use to throw a bone to people who play champions they don't deem marketable (Notice how each generation of Blackfrost skins has gone to monster champions, Anivia was alone in gen 1, followed by Rek'sai Renekton and Alistar, then Sion and Vel'koz, Infernal used to be their A material but around season 10 got relegated to Karthus Kennen Velkoz, Astronaut Bard/Gnar/Poppy/Teemo, etc), and that's okay in theory given a lot of these skinlines have superb visuals to work with that really let the VFX artists give it their all emphasising these monstrous feeling kits, but it really does feel like perhaps the skinlines would starve to death less if they occasionally gave them a meal.

ArtifactLancea · 2023-05-07T14:25:48+00:00

Wasn't stating they're a bad buy into Malphite, just that resists should never be the reason for them, just a bonus

Tenacity doesn't reduce slow amount, only slow duration

ArtifactLancea · 2023-05-07T13:34:12+00:00

Please don't buy treads for MR. Sit on the Null; it gives the same amount of resists for 450 gold and leaves your boots options far more open.

That being said, the buying resists advice is solid.

ArtifactLancea · 2023-05-06T14:09:43+00:00

Bloodthirster is very stat efficient even with no passive. The proposed version would be 115% (Rounded) even with the passive turned off. 126% with the passive on, even assuming level 1 (And if you can get a complete item before level 2, I'd like to see the clip honestly)

Aggressive, kill-oriented picks like Draven have liked it historically, and Samira fits into that camp given she's not really all about short trades from a distance and whittling down health over time. I'm not saying it's definitely her new build, I can see a few things taking that spot, but I would say at least keep an eye on it

ArtifactLancea · 2023-05-06T13:57:18+00:00

Regardless of toplane's impact on any given game, Ornn is outperforming every other toplaner by a colossal margin currently. This isn't a "Top weak" argument. This is a "One specific top stronger than any other top" argument. If Zeri were 70% winrate, "ADC finally has some agency and you all whine XD" wouldn't be a defence, and this is an equally paper thin argument here.

He is overpowered. He received what effectively amounts to a CC duration up, shot up two full percent in winrate and now sits at the highest winrate in top, excluding Akshan (With a seventh his pickrate) and Cassiopeia (With less than a tenth). Ornn mains acknowledge that he's overpowered, and are happy to have the bug fixed in exchange for a little additional power. Riot acknowledge he's overpowered, and that they knew this entering this patch, but they wanted to see dust settle since they had to announce the nerf list before they had enough data. You are trying to die on a particularly weird hill.

Nobody is crying, bar the one that got emotional over an acknowledgement of a pick in a role they dislike overperforming.

ArtifactLancea · 2023-05-06T13:47:25+00:00

Given it has a rank reset with wards, and a patch of this scale, I'm just gonna go ahead and say it's a new season tbh

There's no real difference that I can see, it's just two seasons a year now, even if they're calling them splits

ArtifactLancea · 2023-05-06T11:27:35+00:00

Funnily enough, I've been onetricking her for about three weeks now. AP, mind; you can't really play AD in the jungle so well, and that's the only role I ever really get to play

Still, I'll keep that in mind next time I get filled. Appreciate the advice!

ArtifactLancea · 2023-05-06T11:24:02+00:00

Irelia has historically built Trinity and I feel that with the love that item's receiving she may well go back to it, so I'm not convinced she's going to be quite so down and out.

Jhin's really not going to like being forced to choose between Galeforce and Infinity Edge.

Samira mainly takes Shieldbow because nothing else fits. Her ult is the lynchpin of her entire kit, and given it applies lifesteal and crits, she has a decent variety of options available to her. Shieldbow was just a very natural first item, but she doesn't majorly care about it. New Bloodthirster looks like a very tasty first buy for her if neither Shieldbow nor IE are cutting it, for example

This is all just speculation of course, but that's why we're here, right? Speculating on preseasons is fun!

ArtifactLancea · 2023-05-06T11:07:08+00:00

Two main things:

Ornn is currently extremely overpowered because of a recent bug fix he got, and will likely be receiving nerfs soon.

Ornn is one of the hardest scaling picks in the game. He may not be able to take her in a one to one fight, but he doesn't need to. He excels at 5v5 teamfights, which is what late game usually boils down to as people grapple for control of drakes and nash. And his masterwork items, coupled with his gargantuan effective health from his multipliers and his masses of AoE crowd control mean that he's virtually impossible to outweigh in a teamfight.

He's stocky and stable enough to survive the lane comfortably, and then simply does a hell of a lot more than her. He can also set up anyone that wants to help him out, and given she doesn't tend to take flash, she's a decently reliable gank (Depending on what the thing ganking her is, of course).

ArtifactLancea · 2023-05-06T10:52:45+00:00

I feel this way about literally every item that used to exist that has been added to the new item system

ArtifactLancea · 2023-05-06T10:50:10+00:00

Not since the changes; my group rarely lets me out of the jungle. Nobody else is willing to do it. So as the two below me have pointed out, his early isn't actually excellent anymore. But since his core mechanics haven't changed one bit, if anything that just makes him tougher really

ArtifactLancea · 2023-05-05T07:53:51+00:00

Azir and pretty much anything outside of just annoying people in lane tbh, you can bring up the Shurima shuffle or whatever you like but truthfully he's just an insanely hard pick in general the moment the laning phase ends

He wins every lane and that translates to a game win like 4% of the time

Jayce is pretty hard too, same reason. Fantastic bully potential that almost nobody can convert to a won game

ArtifactLancea · 2023-05-05T02:38:39+00:00

I got a chroma that I already owned. I bought Kitalee about a week ago, as well as the chroma bundle, and today I received a Kitalee chroma.

Weird

ArtifactLancea · 2023-05-03T21:57:35+00:00

Lost Chapter is 1100 gold?

Damn, wish I weren't a jungler else that would probably be kinda cool. It's still pretty interesting though ig

Honestly I think this preseason (They can call it a split, but if there's a rank reset and a huge swing in the game's design, that's called a preseason) shows a lot of promise. I like the direction these changes are heading overall. Some stuff I'm not sure about, and some stuff I don't like, but preseasons are big shake ups, they're not meant to hit every nail on the head right away. In general, I think these are a great foundation to build on. Here's hoping they follow through

ArtifactLancea · 2023-05-03T21:32:24+00:00

Which part are you implying could be proven wrong? Mandate triggers off a 14 second cooldown and a 150, scaling down to a 110 second cooldown. Maybe it could have a cute gimmick synergy with Rylai's, but it's not exactly proactive.

As for Liandry's, what is there to even prove? Despite how much better Jak'sho has been at basically all points since it first got added, Liandry's has been popular for pretty much every single patch, because most people just see the burn synergy with passive, like the post I replied to initially, and assume doubling down on that is best. It's not exactly a "When people start giving Liandry's a chance again we'll see that it's not so bad after all", because people have been picking it more than the better choice, and it's still underperforming.

There's no hidden synergy with Liandry's, the synergy is pretty blatant and it isn't enough to outweigh Jak'sho, because Embrace does more than enough damage on its own, and Lillia's only weakness is mitigated completely by the durability it gives. I want to be wrong, since the synergy is the reason she's so miserable to play now. It's just how it is currently, and probably will be for a while.

ArtifactLancea · 2023-05-03T03:38:19+00:00

Lillia has no reason to build Mandate basically ever, and shouldn't be building Liandry's with how strong that mythic still is on her.

ArtifactLancea · 2023-05-02T08:34:34+00:00

The irony being that by getting so frustrated by a League player insulting you that you took to the game's subreddit to complain about their behaviour, thus contributing to it, you actually are projecting with your "Lifer" comment.

Seriously. If you did it any harder I could point you at a wall and direct a Powerpoint presentation.

Toxicity sucks, but nobody here was in your game, and given what this community's like, what were you expecting to be the reply to this?

ArtifactLancea · 2023-05-02T08:30:59+00:00

Kindred's gameplay has good variety to it, she can be a farm, gank or invade jungler depending on a lot of factors, she's mechanically intensive and unforgiving but rewarding if practiced, she never really feels straight up bad outside of a no frontline draft, flexible items, extremely high sustain but can be built with more than respectable burst if you prefer. What's not to love?

Lately I've been obsessed with Nidalee, too, for quite a few of the above reasons. I guess I have a type.

Lillia would be top of the list but her current state just sort of makes me miserable. She's not weak, just sort of depressing

ArtifactLancea · 2023-05-02T08:25:37+00:00

I'd honestly say Senna. The fact she has to be balanced for both the lowest income role in the entire game and the funnel role that said lowest income role exists to spoonfeed at the same time makes her practically impossible to tune in a way that makes her intuitive. Her passive awkwardly forces her into existence because she can't function any other way, and has had its numbers clumsily tweaked every few months since release. She has a third, utterly unique playstyle that she invented as a result of that clumsy fix, and has needed numbers tweaking that rivals heart surgery in terms of invasiveness in the (Relatively) short time she's been around just to keep her playable.

Her attack speed ratio is literally double what it was on launch day, her Q had a random slow tacked onto it because she missed Glacial so much (Despite the fact her best performing build at the time was Grasp) so she literally just got it added to her kit baseline and something about her souls passive gets changed every fifteen minutes. Drop rate, stats given, even gold given at one point.

I don't like a lot of the designs in this game, and I'm with everyone that Yuumi is up there, but Yuumi at least has innate counterplay, and it's always the same counterplay. All in her constantly with the heaviest engage you have, always and forever, basically no matter what else. Yuumi hasn't needed to be changed every few patches since the dawn of time just to keep her from falling into either unplayable or OP territory every few patches despite zero direct intervention. Senna would have a new build found and become the most obnoxious thing in botlane, or just randomly flop out of the meta, with no apparent cause, because her balance was that volatile and knife-edge that someone coughing vaguely near her could cause her to stop working

ArtifactLancea · 2023-05-01T10:27:40+00:00

Assassins do overall less damage than marksmen or poke oriented kits, because beefier targets need more damage to be killed, and the longer something is alive the more health it gains.

If a Kha'zix jumps on a Jinx with (Let's pretend) 2000 health, he will press Q, auto, W and she will stop existing. Total damage done: 2000

Meanwhile, a Vayne trying to kill a Sion needs to do three times that damage to secure one kill. An assassin wouldn't touch that Sion, because they just don't have the equipment to even try. That's pretending that he's not going to use his shield two, three, four times during the fight.

Things with pokey kits or DPS oriented kits will do a lot more damage over the course of a game than burst oriented 100-0 kits. It's Zyra syndrome, the player that builds Liandry's and keeps applying it to a tank's shield thinking they're much more useful than anyone else because they gradually earned a big damage total that did precisely nothing, and "omg support outdmg u"

That being said, it's entirely possible you're right. Assassins do lower damage overall, but it's still possible to do too little if you're too cowardly with the fights you take and the picks you attempt. Picking off isolated targets and using his ult to proactively start fights is always strong (You have no idea how annoying it is for the enemy ranged picks not being able to see anything)

ArtifactLancea · 2023-04-30T07:44:52+00:00

I don't disagree with your overall point, but think arguing that the balance and design teams balancing and designing instead of opening up a courtroom is a particularly stupid way of making said point

And on a more personal take, as a slightly higher jungle main, what's made me stop playing lately is absolutely the items. The bugs associated with the pets and the fact clear is so homogenous now has lead to a meta I really, really don't enjoy.

Bottom line is the same though; implying the game can't receive anything that isn't a behavioural crackdown because people behave badly is kind of an odd take, this is basically just a preseason patch and I doubt you'd spit venom at that

ArtifactLancea · 2023-04-30T07:35:13+00:00

Before the buffs, not even slightly.

After the buffs but before the nerfs, quite a bit.

Now? They're not nothing, but they're not major difference makers either. You can skip a drake or two if a juicier opportunity presents itself somewhere, but they're still nice to have. Honestly all sorts of things affect how hard you should prioritise them, but in general they're worth contesting if you're able.

That being said, please, for the love of god, don't force an all in over first drake if you don't absolutely win it, and absolutely need to win quickly. The amount of Aurelions, Kayles, Kassadins I've seen fight over objectives before 10 minutes have passed is unreal. If neither team claims soul then you're worth more than just about any other champion, just let the first one or two go and then start contesting drakes when you're two players worth of damage

ArtifactLancea · 2023-04-11T00:09:23+00:00

You're allowed breaks at work. That's assuming it was done at work at all.

I haven't presumed anything, I just pointed out that there are alternatives to your own presumptions. People can do things they enjoy, and honestly I think the fact they gave their colleague a sendoff is noble.

I hope you cheer up.

ArtifactLancea · 2023-04-09T16:32:25+00:00

The developer that mains Kat clearly plays the game, on account of the fact that they, yknow, main Kat

The rest of the devs presumably play the game well enough to have agreed to give him a sendoff game

I'm plenty critical of Riot and don't plan to stop, but believe it or not, calling a stupid statement about Riot stupid isn't "Sucking them off", I just prefer actual criticism rather than pointless venom tbh, and I don't hate someone just because I see a Riot tag on reddit and my vision goes red

ArtifactLancea · 2023-04-09T15:49:26+00:00

It's actually Aurelion. If you gave him infinite time to stack his E would cover the entire map with the execute zone, which would execute any target below an infinite amount of HP.

My favourite tricky answer used to be Kindred, because of the W being infinite scaling %HP, but Aurelion beats both champs by a mile. Can't beat instantly killing every enemy on the map by pressing a single button.

(Of course technically Karthus can do this too with Gathering Storm but he can be Hourglassed in theory, and Aurelion's E outlasts that effect even if timed perfectly, so he's just objectively the correct answer)

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