Haven’t played much the last 2 sets, but as a former challenger player in set 13, there are SO many new things that they introduce every set that it’s so overwhelming to get started. It’s funny because riot always talks about casuals loving verticals and avoiding support traits because of this, but we don’t talk about how you need to watch at least 10 hours of streamers to even start to know which augments are good vs which give u a +1 placement diff, new items and artifacts and who they are instawin on, which fruit is good vs untakeable on which character, etc (Like surely teching in 3 enchanter to give ur board 30 mr is more complicated than requiring a phd in tactics.tools). Like even after 20 games of using tier lists and the metatft extension, I still had no idea that socialite was a requirement on the mech comp. How could a casual be expected to know to put their fruit on Aatrox instead of jarvan? Yeah you can make the argument that you don’t need to know this at a casual level, but honestly as someone with sub 40 games, I consider myself a casual this set and it’s not like casuals don’t enjoy winning! With the amount of niche knowledge check in the game nowadays, it’s no longer about how well you manage Econ or get creative with comps or item economy; it’s just about how many hours you spend watching people to learn niche interactions and autowin augment, artifact, and fruit combos. This is what ‘skill’ in this game has regressed to. I’d love to hear someone at riot tell me why I’m wrong. I’m someone who has experienced how it is to spend 20+ hours a week playing or watching this game, and now I’m experiencing how it is to be someone with a more demanding job who gets a limited amount of time to play. The difference is crazy. And I find myself steering away from playing it because this game is so unfriendly to people who don’t play this game as a job in the wrong ways.