This is an excellent post. I don't think that these problems are that hard to solve, but they do require some new content and a lot of adjustments. They will require us about a month to mostly address, but we can incrementally address them through that time. I have (prior to your post) been spending much of my day, and working late, to shift around priorities and get the appropriate content designed to resolve the metagame issues that have slowly been emerging. Fortunately, this only affects a small portion of players right now -- but the unfortunate part of being a top player in a new game is that you get to discover and abuse the problems, and sometimes those are fun (CryOPhoenix), and sometimes they are stagnant ( 7 minute nashor, the current top tier metagame, etc). So, we feel the pain, and we want to solve it ASAP, and we really appreciate that you guys are leading the charge on competitive play and discovering these issues.

As a note, I think the 5 man gank squads were an improvement over the prior farmfest... So its really about finding the middle ground. In addition to addressing your other tangential opportunities to improve the overall gameplay.





Draft mode is near the top of the priority list after server stability, and will address a lot of that. I am not sure precisely when that will be available, but that isn't likely to be avail in november. However, we are going to do a few things that will mute these problems by allowing you to counter top tier champions inside a game:
1) We are adding items that give you reduced % damage from area-of-effect spells. You can buy these selectively in response to an AE stacked team
2) We are adding a cleanse-o-matic click item that gives you self cleanse for a reasonable price.
3) We continue to address individual champion balance problems. I think we can all agree that the gap between low and top tier is not enormous, even though it is significant. Especially in comparison to the state of the game 4 or 5 months ago. There are a few must-have champions right now, such as Amumu OR Malphite and Morgana, but beyond that, there are a lot you can swap -- for a caster you can play Annie, Anivia or Karthus. For a DPS carry, you can play Ashe, Corki, Jax, Master Yi, and even Tristana. And even soraka is effective now, where she was atrocious 3 patches ago. The requirements to assure a top tier win are generally centered around tank initiators and black shield right now.
4) Morgana, Malphite and Amumu are getting the nerf bat. Morgana is a little later, but we are nerfing the power of malphite and amumu's initiation stuns.





Yes, this is an issue. In our attempts to make the game less painful and remove "wtfganked I couldn't do anything this game sucks" situations, we eased down the ability of players to completely dominate a game. However, we are reversing some decisions where we feel we were overly cautious and can have in the game without making it feel silly like when there is a stacked stealth assassin or something:
1) We are adding click items of significant power. Blink dagger, Dagon equivalent, cleanse-o-matic, scroll of tp, and a weaker version of refresher orb. All of these require significant skill to use effectively, and are slightly OP when used correctly or intelligently.
2) We are making fog falloff faster for champions.
3) We are adding cheap vision wards, which break down the 5 man roving gank squads somewhat, and facilitate a defense against the 5 man gank squad of farming the map and dodging them, thus forcing them to do a 3 and 2 man gank squad, which you can then counter-gank potentially.
4) We are making it so that while you are dead, you gain no ambient gold and no gold from gold per 5 items.
5) We are adding additional minor snowball items that scale as you get champion kills (like mejai's)
6) We are adding additional magic penetration items to facilitate casters being able to become carries in extreme situations.
7) We are attempting to explicitly design more high-skill-requirement champions like Karthus, Anivia, Blitzcrank and Corki. For example, we are trying to make a fragile DPS carry right now with extreme mobility and skillshots -- basically stronger than Ashe if you can play it really well.
8) Aligning incentives such that late game farming pays off vs the risk (which adds a value to risking getting 5 man ganked). This probably takes the form of more minion gold later, and maybe more minion gold early too.

While we do not want to achieve hyper-carry status like DOTA where you can 5v1, we would like to facilitate carries that can 3v1 in extreme cases.





From a theoretical perspective, you cannot expect to beat teams 100% of the time, or even 90% of the time if they are "top teams". That's why tournaments of competitive games are often best of 5. However, I think that some of this has to do with problems like Nashor, as well as the lack of draft mode. I'm of the opinion that adding draft mode will significantly increase skill differentiation as it will expose more psychology games and planning in the champion selection process.





Yes, the counter to this is to make lane farming significantly more lucrative later, or significantly safer. Wards + increased awards should hopefully do this. If they don't, we will try more things.





We are nerfing the regen 35%, and nerfing the damage and AP stats given earlier in games. We are also going to later convert over the damgae buff to a flat +% damage done buff which will avert any possible game timing issues around nashor. Wards also will reduce the amount people get a clean go at this.





I think brush often adds value. We have some difficulty figuring out where to remove it/add it. If there are some specific places you think its a net negative, I'd like to know... Don't say the entire map beacuse I know it adds some value as hiding/ganking/juking mechanics. Painted over jpgs help a lot if you have a moment...

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I agree with most of this. Good read though

I can't believe they consider Corki a high skill carry.

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Agreed...Corki can rape, but he's certainly not overly difficult to use.

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F'ed in the A.