[Patch 3.11] General Discussion - Page 85

You may recall that in past I predicted farming junglers would become viable. In fact, I made this prediction twice. The first time I thought the ubiquitous vision from Sightstones and the apparent farm-centric focus of the new jungle would be prohibitive for ganking. The second time Riot increased the jungle's value, enough that I thought it would be the final push to make farming junglers competitive. When Riot changed the jungle in a way which might have benefited farming junglers again, I kept my mouth shut.

There were two basic problems I overlooked when I made my errant predictions. First, the threat of a jungler's gank is extremely valuable. The worth of a gank can't be readily measured in gold, but simply the threat of it has a huge impact on the game. Second, Riot cannot make jungle camps unclearable by laners without making them unclearable by junglers. Unless every jungle camp becomes as difficult as Dragon/Baron, laners can and will take them for themselves. My predictions failed because simple gold changes will never allow farming to match or supersede ganking so long as laners can take camps themselves (at least not without causing other, larger balance issues).

That's not a problem Riot can solve without tearing the jungle apart and flipping it inside out, and it's arguably not even the root cause. It's ironic that Morello talks about problems vs symptoms, because that's exactly the case here. Riot wants to increase jungler/support income because they can't afford cool items, but being unable to afford something is as much a function of price as it is income. The actual problem is that junglers and supports can't buy cool items because they're too expensive. So my conclusion is the same as TheYango's. If Riot wants to make junglers and supports feel richer, they need cheap, slot-inefficient items with cool powers. Shurelia's/Shard/Ohmwrecker et al. need to have prices similar to a Sightstone.

Before I begin, I'm focused primarily on gap closers/creators. Movement speed boosts are a form of mobility, but are generally far, far less problematic due to the mechanics of slows.

I don't really like Morello's perspective on the issue, for a few reasons.

First, I don't think he appreciates how mobility changes the game. He cites True Damage and %HP Damage as sister mechanics which require Riot to make sure "some cost is paid", but because you can itemize around them True Damage and %HP Damage don't dramatically alter the viability of champions. Mobility does, and numerous champions have suffered at one time or another due to mobility creep.

As a result, mobility creep leads to power creep. The more mobility becomes the norm, the more you have to give a champion who lacks it. Kog'maw has been MIA for practically all of Season 3 because he lacks both mobility and anything special to make up for it. Draven and Twitch (post-remake) became popular due to the sheer damage they were given in compensation for their lack of mobility.

In short, there's a reason that 9 out of the last 10 champions had mobility, with the sole excludee being a support.

Second, Morello glosses over the issues with mobility. When LoL launched only 14 out of the original 40 champions had gap closers. Today roughly 56 champions have gap closers, an increase from 32% of champions to 49%. Even if the ratio had remained the same, having a greater and greater available pool of gap-closing champions alters the landscape, especially when most of those champions are bruisers/assassins/initiators.

I don't think Morello is out and out wrong, but I'm disappointed because it sounds like we won't be reversing the current trends. Look forward to 70%+ of all new champions having gap closers.