Season 3 Changes: Personal Thoughts and breaking down Riot's POV

Season 3 of Riot games' brain child, League of Legends looks to bring with it a huge supply of new items shipped onto the shores of Valoran and to be sold by one man. Along with this, the very jungle has evolved and adapted from the harsh champions that roam Summoner's rift. These monster have grown into some tougher skin and are overall much more difficult in the early stages of the game to clear out of their homes. Today I'll be providing you with my own personal thoughts and opinions on the changes, as we make our way into Season 3.

The masteries lay-out for Season 3

General Outlook:

I'm going to be honest with everyone reading this. I unfortunately succumb to human nature, in which I have a hard time accepting changes, especially when you're comfortable with the way things currently are. The same holds true with regards to the changes being implemented in Season 3. What worries me most with all these changes is the prospect of balancing every single thing that is being implemented. Seeing that Riot is implementing a huge chunk of new items, overall toughening up the jungle, and even tweaking the Summoner's Rift map slightly, all these things will culminate into a harder time at balancing everything.

As anyone who plays this game on a routine basis though, I'll look to get my feet wet as soon as possible, so I can look to get back into that big comfy chair I was sitting in before.

New Item changes and additions:

For a look at all the new items, click here.

There are a metric crapload of new items looking to be introduced at the very beginning of Season 3's launch. Without complaining too much about how this may or may not affect balancing, I'll try to provide a level-headed discussion on both the positive, and negative sides of this style of introduction. The new items allows for much more specific tastes to better suit your playstyle, or better suit the champion's playstyle. With a plethora of items providing more specific stats, this allows the balancing of specific classes of champion's to be done.

As an example, if burst mages are having difficulty adapting in Season 3, Riot can look to buff magic pen a bit, or buff a specific item such as the new Deathfire grasp, as these are stats and items that at face value, look to buff the overall raw damage coming out of those type of champion's. The downside of this is that you tread on a very thin line of an item becoming too overpowered, and just being used by every single AP caster in all the categories they can fall into. I still expect to see one or two items to continue to be core items which you'll probably see picked up by everyone based on that role. But the new items also provide the option to better counteract your enemy team's composition.

A look at a bunch of different items

Looking at the brand new supportive items, the amount of tools which can now be provided by a support allows them to build reactively based on what the enemy team's composition would be most effected. You might want to rush an early Mikael's Crucible because your AD carry was fed, and the enemy team has a high amount of focused cc. Now I'm not saying those choices weren't there in Season 2, but it was a lot less complex. Are we taking too much damage? Get Aegis first. Do we need to initiate better? Get shurelia's. I'm extremely excited to watch the pro support players develop adaptive build strategies, and hopefully set the example that cookie-cutter certainly won't be the way to go if you're looking to be a high-level support.

With the introduction of the new items, I expect to see a high amount of reactive item building, instead of the mostly cookie-cutter builds that we see today. However, we'll never truly move on from the 'best' builds due to players always looking to emulate the players seen at the top of the competitive scene. That being said, the difference between the good players from the great players will definitely have some points taken into how well they counter-measure their lane opponent, and the team that they face.

Jingle, Jangle, Jungle:

The jungle just got a lot more scarier heading into Season 3. As the players began to 'zig', Riot decided to 'zag'. As a consequence of this change, supportive junglers are looking to be taken down a notch. Champion's such as Amumu, Maokai and Nautilus with their patented HoG and philo build combo will look to have their jungle times slowed in the early stages. One of the weaknesses of these champion's was that they were heavily prompted to getting early jungle buffs stolen, or invaded a few minutes after that instead. However with the new jungle being implemented, counter jungling will probably reserved to very specific few champion's.

A look at one of the many new items coming in Season 3

I could still see a Mundo or Nunu pulling off a successful early invasion of a jungle camp, but apart from that, the overall health buffs of the neutral camps makes them very adversary opponent's during the early portions of the game. From what I understand, Riot is looking to alleviate pressure from early level ganks, allowing lanes to more effectively 1v1 or 2v2 for a lot longer. This would allow matchups to actually develop how they should and only after 5 or 6 minutes can the jungle step-in to change that.

In regards to that though, I still expect to see early ganks to work on player's most susceptible to them. People who mindlessly push, leaving them in a vulnerable position, can still be taken advantage of. With the current changes in early game items as well, we might see laners take an early ward if they feel threatened by an early gank still. Riot seems to be moving the focus from solely Boots + 3 potions, and allowing much more diversity flourish in choosing a starting item path. With the changes being implemented, it seems that Riot is trying to keep the jungle away from the idea that it's just a mobile 'fourth lane'.

Champions such as Warwick and Fiddlesticks are already showing high hopes and promises, though junglers that use a lot of mana might become more dependant on blue buff. This can be changed with some simple mana compensation buffs, if worse comes to worse.

I'm hopeful that Riot has their best intentions with the new changes to the jungle. Some of my favourite jungle champs were the support-style jungles, and it would pain me to see them removed from the loop of frequently played, good, junglers.

Final thoughts:

After actually writing about this, my mind is a little less frantic about all the changes being put in. I think I can handle the amount of variety being thrown into the scene, and as everyone knows: “Variety is the spice of life”. In terms of community reaction, I feel that it's going to come down to how seamlessly Riot introduces these changes, without any one specific thing being overtly broken beyond belief. With the PBE out now, I expect to see most things spotted and fixed accordingly.

The ramps by wraiths are being changed slightly

The one final change that I can include is the ramp change towards the wraith entrances. This change looks to avoid the heavy choke-point that area once provided, and allow players to see what's up their immediately upon walking up the ramp, rather than being ambushed without the actual use of bushes.

Riot is looking to take their game into a much more diversified level, now if only they had an official replay system too, only then will my soul finally be at rest. I'm waiting on your Riot, make my dreams come true!