Riot kicks back at LoL players after claims meta has returned to its old self

League of Legends is in a constant cycle of buffing up champions, items, and keystones, and then tuning the numbers down after they become overpowered. But, slowly, the damage creeps in and before we know it, we’re looking at a meta where champs are easily one-shotting each other. Riot Games doesn’t think this is the case and the game’s in a decent state damage-wise.

One player slammed Riot with criticism in a post on League’s subreddit from Aug. 16, saying Riot’s approach to balancing is just by increasing or decreasing damage output and that each patch “we are getting a net gain on the amount of DPS in any given match.”

This is quite obvious when you look at the patch notes. For example, Patch 13.16, wanted to give some love to Lulu and instead of looking for other ways to buff her, Riot only increased the damage on her Q and E abilities.

Riot, naturally, responded to this post, announcing there will be an update on the state of the game—durability, snowballing, and game time in particular. 

But, overall, the devs agree the game is in a decent state and we’re far from its previous state, before the Durability Patch. 

“But for now, the high-level thoughts on durability here are that we’re not close to being back to pre-durability, but natural patch balance, item changes, new content, etc. do contribute to pulling it back some,” said Riot Phroxzon.

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Riot Phroxzon also added that you can’t only balance the game by nerfing champions and sometimes you have to buff champions in a way that “aligns with champion’s fantasy” like increasing Nidalee’s movement speed. 

In the end, it all boils down to “push and pull” and Riot is keeping track of all buffs and nerfs the devs do in a single patch.

If you ask me, the game is well on its way to returning to its pre-durability state, if it hasn’t reached it already, where you can one-shot pretty much anyone and it’s only a matter who has quicker reflexes and better mechanics. League used to be a fully-fledged strategy game, but today, it’s far from that. AD carries are deleting the enemy team with a press of a single button, assassins are nuking those same AD carries with only half of their rotation, and bruisers are indestructible raid bosses.

More updates on the game will come soon as Riot Phroxzon and I’m quite curious to learn more about what Riot has to say about this.