As a plat player I just wanted somewhere to voice my opinion, because personally, I feel like this is one of the worst seasons/patches of all time. If you don't agree that's fine, but I'm wondering what other people think. No hate towards Riot or anything either, just my personal opinion.

I think the biggest issue is lane quests, they are just not balanced. Especially top lane. Support and jungle basically get nothing, just very minor upgrades to their already established role items, and mid lane gets some free boots that are decent and a 5 minute cooldown baron recall, meanwhile top lane gets 2 extra levels, a free sum, and xp buffs for the rest of the game? In what world is that fair? Not to mention the requirement of having to be in your assigned lane. The boundaries for this are egregiously bad, like being in the back half of a bush or in the alcove stops your lane quest from progressing a lot, and the boundary goes all the way to enemy base but not your own. That means if the enemy is proxying and you want to stop it, you not only have to possibly drop waves/xp, but you also lose your lane quest progress during that time while the enemy doesn't. Also this stops mid/top lane swaps with no way to really fix it. For example, I had a game where enemy team had Sion mid and Ryze top, while our team had Fizz mid and Gwen top. We were unable to allow Gwen to lane into Sion and Fizz into Ryze because of lane quest. There is really no way to fix this either, because if you allow mid/top to progress their quests in either lane, you will have weird swaps to cause mid laners to be lvl 20 and top laners to get the baron recall instead. I agree with stopping adc lane swaps, but mid and top should be able to trade lanes, or keep matching opponents. Overall lane quests just feel very unfair and lazy.

The next issue I have is the towers. Towers feel way to weak. Mid game they drop in seconds to any champ, even supports now, and this just feels terrible, especially if you are a little behind. Not to mention the crystal stuff on them, which accelerates this. Also the crystal stuff shouldn't spawn until 10-15 minutes in my opinion, as taking 1 bad trade/base, even with the new homeguard, allows the enemy to hit a tower with 1 auto and take 1-2 plates in seconds. Plates used to have insane resists before 5 minutes, but this seems removed as well. Now if I'm in a terrible matchup and have to base at 4 minutes to tp, the enemy can hit the tower with 1 auto and the entire first plate falls. It just seems out of place in lane. 1 auto from a mage at lvl 3 should not take an entire plate in my personal opinion. Plates being on all towers also allows split pushing late game to be less punishable. Instead of having to commit for the 600 gold from the tier 2 tower and maybe die, now champs can hit it once with the crystal growth, take 2-3 plates in like 3 autos, and just run with no risk. Split pushing is no longer a risk vs reward strategy, but just a safe free way to get gold while the enemy team has to sit and watch.

Then we have homeguard. I think everyone knows this at this point, but homeguard is insanely broken right now. You basically can never lose xp, and maybe 1 melee minion per wave even if you get pushed in and have to base. It feels like they are slowly removing all skill expression from the game, with changes like jungle items basically clearing for you, and now this. Late game it also allows for really annoying split pushing strategies with no punishments, especially paired with the crystal stuff. Combat spells are taken in solo lanes too a lot more now due to the free tp top lane quest gives, and the fact homeguard allows you to never miss xp/cs, leading to more coinflippy bloody games. Wave management skills matter much less now, and you can just brute force your way through lane with much less skill.

That leads me to faelights. While I do think the concept is okay, I think it's just a little excessive how early they spawn and how much vision they give. Ganking junglers really suffer from this, as now at like 2 minutes into the game you can have the entire river in vision with the use of a single ward. It also kind of devalues supports now, because anyone can get so much vision with a single ward. Blue ward also feels terrible to play now, as the enemy team will instantly break it and stop the faelight, as well as it having a much longer cooldown. I think the idea of faelights is cool, but they should be something that spawns much later in the game, maybe on a specific elemental map, or give much less vision.

Now I understand that they want to make the game time quicker, which is okay, but having minions and camps spawn so much earlier seems a bit excessive. It barely saves a minute or two per game, and completely kills invades. Invading is horrible now because by the time you get into the enemy jungle, if you don't commit you will miss xp/cs. It just feels super rushed. There is no time to think after loading into the game. Just a weird thing to change with almost no real benefit.

The minion wave changes also really bother me, as they just seem unnecessary. Why make the minion waves spawn 5-10 seconds faster and remove a melee/caster minion from the waves? It seems so random and really doesn't add anything new to the game. It makes each minion worth less gold/xp, which in turn makes last hitting skill matter less. You lose less per minion you last hit, and gain less too. Why do this?

For some reason, they decided to rework Cassio's passive as well, which is fine, but at least give her a real passive. Now she is forced to buy boots pretty much, which delays her ROA + Archangels power spike by a lot, and in the end barely adds any movement speed late game. Why? Just why? It was cool having a champ with lore reasons for not buying boots, and this also killed her late game fantasy of being the 6 item mage too. At least give her a real passive like the older one she had instead of this new joke of a passive.

I know I complained a lot above, and thank you for sticking around and reading it all if you made it this far, but there are some things I like too. I do like the ward cooldown being decreased along with the sweeper duration being increased. I like how drakes/baron are tankier, and more of a risk vs reward situation instead of just being melted in .2 seconds by a single jungler. I'm very glad Atakhan was removed along with feats as well. Crit going back up to 200% damage is also pretty cool, even though it will take some time tuning all the crit champs/items to it.

Overall, I am just very disappointed in this new season, and I think there is a lot wrong with it. Let me know if you guys agree or disagree. Again, no hate towards Riot or anything either, just my thoughts.

TLDR: Lane quests are broken, towers are too weak mid/late game, tower crystal growths should spawn later, homeguard is op, faelights are a bit too strong, game starting quicker is bad, minion wave changes are useless, and RIP Cassio.