I would normally not bother to read a thread on the forums titled, “This game isent [sic] even worth playing anymore.” I obviously disagree. Despite the downfalls and recent design flaws (at least in my opinion), LoL is still a blast of a game, and I have a lot of fun queuing up with you guys and with my real-life friends. The thread in question, though, is now 34 pages long and caught an interesting response from Phreak.

I’ll leave you to read the original post, but the author, MoreCowbell, is basically bemoaning the overwheling presence of an AOE metagame and the limited champion selection that performs well in that metagame. He also decries characters with strong mechanics having no serious weaknesses. He doesn’t back a lot of things up, but he makes some good points (many of which I think I back up on this blog) and makes other interesting points.

I was particularly interested in this:

One of the biggest issues is that in riot’s design philosophy of making all characters equally viable all game, they would need to make all characters have the same power at all times. Characters like MF couldnt exist as they beat most other characters in a lane and late game. The reason that some characters absolutely dominate the lane in dota was because they were trash later.

That’s a spot-on observation and a lot of my problem with recent champion design. I would love to see the metagame shift away from the teamfight focus, but characters need to have different strengths at different stages of the game for that to be a real possibility. When a champion like Miss Fortune can 4-5 shot toons without health quints at almost any stage of the game, that kind of diversity can’t exist.

After 12 pages or so, Phreak dropped by to offer this:

We’re hitting a lot of the conventional “OP” champs this patch.

We will also be massively assessing all our AoE champions to ensure they’re not must-pick champions. As much as you say we’re making new champions which just eclipse old ones, we’re trying really hard to not have these super faceroll AoE ultimates since Sona (also: Sona nerfs this patch. And I’m not talking +10sec cd on the ultimate). While Swain and Lux have AoEs (even ultimates), I think we can all agree they’re much more reasonable than Idol of Durand.

If I read the original post correctly, this is the main complaint yes? That there are ~15 super OP champions that must be played, and everything else is below them?

We will assess them. Stay patient, beloved summoners. We like playing all of our champions as much as you guys do!

I haven’t been so (cautiously) excited about a patch in a long time. I’m hoping when he says “hitting” he means with a battering ram, not the tinkering hammer we see more often than not. I also like that he referenced Swain and Lux, two recently released and very underpowered champions, as having more “reasonable” AoE ults. I couldn’t agree more. I think Swain’s character design is really cool, and Lux could be a very fun toon with that short CD ultimate (and a much-needed damage buff for her base skills), but they just don’t stack up against the massive AoE pwnage in the game.

The simple fact that there are 34 pages of responses speaks to how big an issue the current design direction is to the LoL community. Players are definitely unhappy about the lack of diversity, which shouldn’t be all that shocking considering the underwhelming numbers we see on Twisted Treeline. I’m hopeful this week’s patch will be the start of some changes, but I’m aware it would take a lot of changes for things to be significantly different. We’ll find out on Tuesday.

There has been a lot of talk, and frankly a lot of action on Riot’s part, aimed at fixing the kiting/healing metagame that has become so popular. There are a lot of people, though, who would tell you it isn’t really a problem, just that the game has taken a shift and people haven’t quite figured out how to fight it. In a way, I think those people are right, at least when it comes to arranged team fights, but the kiting metagame is brutal in solo queue, which is why I think we see it so often.

Phreak recently responded to a post about kiting with the following advice:

The average matchmaking game doesn’t have everyone picking A-tier champions, as Janna and co. are. The average matchmaking game doesn’t have “perfect” team comps (tank, ranged dps, mage, support, support). This team relies heavily on Ashe’s ability to carry the game. Certainly Heimer can deal lots of damage, but it’s very inconsistent: Grenade can miss, Rockets may not hit champions, and the same with Turrets. Meanwhile his ultimate actually deals no damage.

Certainly you can make the case that the team comp revolves around Ashe very well: Heimer’s turrets, Janna, Alistar all can babysit her. However, I want to bring up a counter-example:

Amumu, Morgana, Fiddlesticks, Pirate, [insert champion]. Primarily this comp focuses on the first 3. Fiddlesticks + Black Shield is going to be able to easily Crowstorm onto the enemy team, Fear/Silence the Janna, and mop up all the squishies (Heimer, Ashe, Janna). While this is happening, Amumu and Morgana Ults keep everyone in place. The 2.5 seconds on Amumu lets Morgana finish her channel, and everyone’s just been stunned during the entirety of Crowstorm. Certainly all of Heimer’s turrets and Janna are dead at this point. The disables don’t do enough damage to punch through Black Shield, so Janna can’t bounce Fiddlesticks away with her ult. Great success! Pirate adds to the mix of course, etc.

Thing is, the 5man ultimate Press-R-And-Win was flavor all through late 2009. I’m surprised it hasn’t come back, because it seems to me that if you can kill everyone in 5 seconds, you win.

First, he makes some really valid points. When things go as he described, you’ll beat any kite team in basically any game. The problem, of course, is that things never go like that for anyone not in a 5-man premade, and even if you play it perfectly, there’s still the fact that the kite team could also be full of good players, in which case the likelihood of a perfectly timed Fiddle ult drops significantly (wards, CV, general map awareness).

The other point about kite teams is simply that they don’t have to be grouped up to be totally effective. In fact, they’re usually better off when they’re spread out, forcing you to take at least one extra teammate to ensure the kill (remember, kiters are great at escaping). The kiting comps are also made up of the best pushers in the game so when you leave lane to help other folks deal with the early game pain that a lot of kiters have (zoning, general lane control), you’re leaving your lane open to the push.

In the end, it takes crazy coordination to beat most kite comps, and that’s just not something you get in the average game. Hopefully draft mode will help some of this, but for the time being, kite comps are a safe and fairly easy way to guarantee yourself some wins.

I couldn’t sleep last night so I decided to jump into a game of LoL to relax. I’ve been on a bit of a losing streak recently so I took my own advice, working the basics to try to sneak a win. Lo and behold, I was farming well, racking up some assists, and slowly turning my TF into a nuking machine.

And for once, it was a fairly even match. We had myself as TF, Malphite, Alistar, Veigar, and Annie – a little low on the phys dps side of things but we were playing well. The other side was Twitch, Blitzcrank, Katarina, Annie and one other I can’t seem to remember. My team struggled early, but we picked things up around 14 and starting pushing towers. For the most part we were fine – our Malphite and Alistar were coordinating well and DPS was focusing targets. We did have one problem, though: Twitch.

Despite my constant begging, our tanks just would notbuy an elixir. Sure, there was my ultimate, and I was blowing it for every team fight, but Twitch soon got wise, would flash in and invis out. By the end of the game we were all yelling at each other, everyone blamed for not focusing Twitch. Meanwhile, he continued to get double and triple kills and BD every tower we had.

The point of this story is that the late-game is completely dependent on how you play your opponent. By 45 minutes or so, you should be heavily farmed, so it really starts to come down to strategy versus the other team. Make sure you stop to think, “what else could I be doing to help win those team fights?” More often than not, it isn’t about DPS. It’s about controlling abilities – the enemies’ – saving stuns to interrupt ultimates, focusing targets that have big AOE damage, and shutting down the invis players that turn a 3v3 you could normally win into a massacre the other way.