League of Legends

 

Season 3

League of Legends

Season 2 has come and gone.  Many great gaming houses tried to claim the cup and many failed.  In a few cases there were even major upsets.  Rising to the top were Azubu Frost and Taipai Assasins with the latter claiming the cup.

Season 2 had many great things going for it:  a new mastery system, summoner spell rework, and a lot of balancing of champions.  But it also had its share of issues:  tanky initiation became too powerful (and were banned nearly every match), some champs were still unplayable because they were too underwhelming, and summoner spells were still not balanced.

That brings us to Season 3 where many of these aspects have been addressed and fixed.  So let’s dive into the meat and see all of the tweaks, fixes, and even a few major overhauls that Riot has implemented into this new season.

 

Game Mechanics Re-Works

Gold – Gold is dealt out slightly faster passively and minions give slightly less gold.  This change was implemented to help supports continue to have enough gold to buy the items the need.  It also allowed teams that have a poor early game to have a greater chance of come back.

Jungle – Jungle has been reworked to make it harder at early levels, provide more gold (especially scaling to late game), and more health is stacked on the large monsters.  This change was a welcome change for the jungle since it balances it out a lot more.  First off most champions can jungle now not just champs that have AoE damage.  It also forces the jungler to have slower clear times but an ability to gank early or vise versa.  Before certain junglers could have the best of both worlds.  Finally, it’s now worth it to still clear your jungle at the 30 minute mark.  If you’re not constantly ganking you can still scale into the late game by farming jungle with the increased gold from monsters.

Penetration – Magic and Armor penetration now apply percentage penetration before flat amounts.  This allows for greater amounts of penetration at a lower cost.  This was done to reduce the impact of the tanky initiators that dominated Season 2 (Malphite, Rammus, Shen, etc).

 

Item Re-Works

Season 3 brought with it many item balances, re-works, and many new items.  While there are far to many to discuss in this article the change has been like night and day.  In Season 2 summoners would build the same items every single game with 1 defensive item that would vary against their opponents.  With the item changes in Season 3 the item builds vary and there is no “automatic” build.  Another welcome change is the fact that there are no items that become useless in late game.  They all build into a better item that you’ll want to keep.

 

Ranking System Overhaul

The ranking system has been overhauled.  Before you would feel like a speck of sand in an ocean of players; simply player number 10,372,491 sitting at some abstract ELO score that really didn’t amount to much more than a colored boarder at the end of the season.  Although the actual system that LoL uses to match players is the exact same your ranking is broken into tiers, divisions, and leagues.  There are 6 tiers ranging from Bronze to Challenger.  In each tier there are 5 divisions.  And in each division you’ll be compared to 249 other summoners in what’s called a league.  If you do well in your division and reach 100 “League Points” you’ll move up to the next division.  If you reach 100 League Points in the top division of your tier you’ll move up to the lowest division of the next tier.  This gives a clear cut sense of accomplishment as to how good you really are in the game instead of trying to guess where you stood as you would in season 2.

Probably the coolest part of the whole new system is if you get up to the top 32 positions in the Challenger tier (the top tier) with a 5 man team you will be qualified to compete as a pro team mid season and end of season, possibly allowing you to compete in the Championship Series for the cup.  That’s pretty cool.

 

Season 3 Flaws

There are a ton of changes that have had a positive effect on the game.  However, as with any game, there are a few new balance problems that have arisen in the process of these welcome changes.

The first one, and most obvious to addicted players, is health stacking.  Season 3 tried to rebalance resistances since they became too powerful and enabled any tank to be neigh un-killable.  While the concept was awesome (buff penetration and nerf resistances) the result was a little too extreme.  Now every champion stacks health.  It is common to see a team with 4-6 Warmogs late game because of just how valuable health has become.  Even assassins build health in the current meta game.  I have a feeling that soon resistances will be buffed to counter-act this issue.  People will build a mix of resistances and health again and everything will be back to normal and the tanky initiators will be good but not godly.

The second flaw that season 3 has brought with it is % damage champions are really powerful.  This is primarily because of the health stacking that is going on right now but it is more than that too.  Take Elise for example.  Let’s build her with Sorcery Boots, Ralei’s Chrystal Scepter, Rabadon’s Deathcap, Deathfire Grasp, Liandry’s Torment, and Warmog Armor.  She’s going to be really tanky, have CC, have escape and evade, have minions to tank towers and monsters, AND she can do 55% of your health as damage almost instantly NOT including any abilities besides Deathfire Grasp and her Q.  Also remember that in Season 3 people are stacking health more than Season 2.  In Season 2 this would 55% would probably be on a champ with 2500 health amounting to 1375 damage.  In Season 3, while most champs didn’t have their damage buffed, the same combo on a champ with 4000 health (you see it pretty often to be honest) will do 2200 damage.  The result is 825 damage buff for Elise just because of the health stacking meta game that is going on right now.  I foresee again Riot fixing this very soon.

 

Overview

All-in-all, Season 3 looks like it is shaping up to be the best season yet.  Many positive changes and the few issues that it has are simple number tweaks that should be quick and easy to balance.  So if you haven’t played League of Legends in a while dust off your account and give Season 3 a go.  I’m sure you’ll love how the game has evolved.  And if you’re looking for some friendly summoners to play with check out the LL Division on TS, we always have people on looking for teammates to play with.

 

Draconis

Division Commander, LL