The main focus of this week’s patch wasn’t champions or items or lane balance. This week, Riot wanted to address game pacing. Too many games were dragging out long after they had been decided. Minions got buffed, gaining more damage against turrets, higher resistances, and after 20 minutes, each lane spawns an extra cannon minion. It’s hard to say whether it was the right change because Riot also made a mechanic change that directly conflicts with game time reduction: death timer reduction.
Since Tuesdays patch, champions respawn much faster than they used to. The old system had death timers start at 28 seconds and ramp up to 50 by the time players reached 18. Now it starts at a mere 12 seconds and goes up to 50. In short, the system is terrible. While it does let players actually play the game more often, it also wrecks the game’s pushing mechanics. If the games were too long before, they’re nearly eternal now.
I had a game a few days back in which my team was doing very well. I started off 5-0 as Cho’gath, and most of my teammates had similar farms. We had one of those sprawling teamfights that are so common these days, far past our own minion waves but resulting in 3-4 kills. Before we could bring our creeps up to the turret, their team was back up. At the 20 minute mark we aced our opponents by diving their second lane turret. We killed the turret just as the fight started but still took a bit of damage from it. Again, by the time we had pushed up to and started in on the base turret, a couple of the enemy team were back, able to defend the turret without much trouble. In most games, that would be an inhibitor. Things only get worse with characters like Shen and Rammus. They’re back to turret so quickly and turrets hit so much harder that it’s nearly impossible to push before 30 minutes.
The timers aren’t just bad in teamfights; the timers are bad for the lane as well. It used to be the case that winning a lane fight bought you some time to farm minions and hopefully get some work done on the turret. With a 12-18 second death timer, dying is almost no worse than a simple recall. If you just barely won the fight, that free period in which you could get a few more last hits and do some tower work is all but gone. Lanes last longer, which means the laning phase is much longer, which lengthens a game.
Here again, I like the idea Riot had. It’s boring to spend 30 secs at the base at level 2. That was an important mechanic, though. It taught players not to get careless at early levels and it gave enemies the chance to exploit the advantage they had created. I’m really hoping Riot either reverts this soon or comes up with a way to counteract the effects of champions getting back to lane so quickly. Until then, settle in for some long, frustrating games.
If you’ve seen the latest patch preview or been to the forums lately, you’ve no doubt heard about the upcoming changes to mana regeneration and the mana runes. It’s a controversial subject, and it looks like the drama finally prompted Zileas to step into the forums to try to clear things up.
His post is fairly long, so I’ll leave you to read it at your leisure. As far as mana regen is concerned, the basic issue development is trying to address is the disparity between level 1 and level 30 players. Riot wants the two to be closer, not further apart, which at first seemed kinda weird to me. Why have the leveling system if it won’t make a difference? Isn’t the whole point of tier 1, 2, and 3 runes so that you can see some sort of progression as you level up and (hopefully) improve?
It is, which is probably why they’re only nerfing mana regen runes. Zileas says they feel necessary on some characters, and I totally agree. The whole point of a mana system is to limit your ability to deal burst damage, not necessarily to limit your spellcasting over time. For that reason, I think this is an okay thing. It’s pretty easy to burn through a mana bar right now without any kind of regen runes. The change will shift some of the regen from runes to base character stats, meaning runes will still be good, but every character should be better. That’s not a bad thing.
The other change is to the Doran’s items, which gets a little more complicated. Riot has said in the past that the laning phase is too passive. To address that, this patch will increase the cost of Doran’s items so it’s no longer possible to buy Doran’s and a potion at level 1. Health quints are also getting a nerf. The hope is for a more active lane phase because of less regeneration. I’m not sure that’s actually how it will play out.
For one, players are passive now because jungling makes it very risky to be in lane with less than 50 percent health. With jungling remaining prominent, it seems unlikely that a shift like this will do much to create a more active lane phase. Also, a nerf to regeneration could be an inadvertent buff to strong harass. Think about laning against Caitlyn when you can’t buy some early HP with a potion. There’s a difference between making things active and crippling melee lanes. This is one of those wide-reaching changes, the effects of which we probably won’t totally understand for a couple weeks.
Most of my recent writing has been editorial, looking at sweeping changes to the different games I play and what it means for the development of the title. I love writing that stuff, but I also miss writing stuff like this, so here we are. Today’s pro tip is something simple, but often overlooked, even at higher ELOs.
The other day I was laning with my brother. We always have a good time playing together but something felt different. I was having trouble last-hitting creeps, something I never struggle with, to the point that my friends usually ask me to stop last-hitting so well. The problem wasn’t me. It was him. He was last-hitting like a fiend, building up his creep count and working toward a really nice early game farm.
If you want to immediately improve your game, learn to last hit. Farming is the most important part of your early game, even more so than ganking. If you’ve ever left lane to attempt a gank and returned to find your opponents out-leveling you and crushing your creep count, you know what I’m talking about. If you’ve ever seen a Miss Fortune with Infinity Edge at 14 minutes, you also know what I’m talking about. A successful early farm allows you to leap past your opponents’ gear levels and sets you up for a strong end game.
A strong farm is more than just last hitting creeps, though. You should always be looking for ways to maximize your gold. Jump out of lane to briefly grab jungle creeps while the lane pushes back up. Learn when you need to help your team defend a turret and when you can avoid the stalemate and go farm a side lane. Learn when you need to abandon a tower because the defense is crippling your farm.
Also, don’t be afraid to ask your teammates to let you farm. The other day I was playing Zilean, laning with a Mundo player. That’s a great lane team, right? Well, it was, but Mundo didn’t want to zone our opponent. Instead, he was chucking his cleavers at creeps, often killing them from 30 percent health or more. Not only was it pushing our lane, it was ruining my farm. I asked him to let me farm. He wasn’t interested, so I just started bombing every creep I saw. I know, that’s not a great example, but it illustrates the point that farming is a team effort. If you aren’t cooperating with your lanemate, you better hope you have better farming skills or get out of lane. If you’re lucky, though, you’ll get a teammate who knows how to zone with abilities and last hit with attacks and who will compliment your own skillset.
The last thing I’ll say is don’t sweat it. Creeps take very predictable damage, so you’ll get better. If your opponents are beating you by 5-10 creeps, no big deal. When they go up 30-40, that’s when you need to worry. With a little focus, though, you should be able to push your creep count up, buy high-tier items early in the game, and help carry your team to victory.
This video was featured in the current issue of the Summoner’s Spotlight and I thought it was cute and entertaining. If you want some basic laning tips, check it out.
I’ve played a lot of Miss Fortune since the most recent patch, probably more than any new champion in recent memory. Her playstyle is much more enjoyable than many of the newer folks (I still just don’t get Galio) but as I mentioned in my impressions post, I think that’s because of her relative strength. After playing her some more, I realize her power actually makes her less fun.
The realization came after a game today in which I was racking up kill after kill after kill. I had been dominating the mid lane, but I wasn’t really having much fun. The reasoning is pretty simple – Miss Fortune isn’t difficult, in any way.
I prefer toons with a little bit of complexity to them. The fact that you can land Double Up without even trying for more damage than most skillshots ungeared is completely absurd. It’s also not fun. The joy of skillshot damage is landing that one hit on a guy that was about to get away. There’s also a lot of fun in dodging the hit that was about to kill you. For all the work Riot has done to reduce the RNG for toons like Gangplank, why introduce a toon whose baseline skill is an RNG for the second hit? Add to it the fact that Double Up forces you to either take damage from that big shot, or get harassed while she darts in and out of creep range from her passive. It’s not fun to play against and really, I don’t think it’s all that fun to play. I can almost hear the frustration of the other team.
I hope she gets some serious reworks. My best option is turning off her passive in combat. It’s good enough for getting across the map, it doesn’t need to so severely wreck the laning metagame, too.
