Game Changes, Philosophy, and Alistar

[quote=PAC DIESEL]Hiya folks, hope anyone reading this is doing well. I started playing LoL again for the first time in nearly a decade. I'm one of the older (oldest?) players in the game, having started in the original Beta for LoL and played competitively during the pre-Seasons time and a bit during Season 1. During that time period, I ran tournaments for some of the game's best players as well as competed against many of the top guys. I'm basically starting over fresh, as I stopped playing entirely around 2012-2013(ish?) and had just loosely been playing casually for the last year or two that I played. My account got hacked and stolen in 2018, and I was VERY fortunately able to retrieve it recently, which ignited my desire to play the game again. LoL was always fun for me, though the older toxic environment was a bit too much to handle some days. It seems a bit less brutal now, from what I've seen in the last few weeks, so that's nice. For the gameplay itself, I've noticed some seriously disturbing trends to the champion designs for many of the new characters that I've seen. Years ago, the design philosophy around characters did not even originally have set roles, and jungling was a rarity with really only Warwick being able to handle the very first iteration of jungling. Eventually, the jungle minions had their strength lowered, and more characters were able to handle jungling. Nocturne being released was really the true beginning of the 'assigned roles' for characters, where all designs of characters began centralizing around a specific role that they excelled in, and anti-meta or variant strategies became less and less reasonable. I used to play Alistar in top lane, in jungle, or as a support (before 'Support' was required) with other heavy CC characters, like Blitzcrank, specifically to prevent the bottom (or top, back then it was whatever you wanted to do) lane from being able to function early game. Several characters had several options of roles they could do, within reason, but those older characters have seemingly been locked into specific roles without usually reasonably being able to do different things. Roles, becoming defined as Top, Mid, Jungle, Bot, and Support, really started around the Nocturne release. The reason I bring this up is because of the way champions were designed back then. Flash, as a summoner spell, was easily the best option in the game for consistent gap closing or retreating for the majority of characters. I was fortunate to be friends with a number of people at Riot way back then, which I'm sure are mostly not there anymore, and they swore they would stray away from making design decisions that made newer characters too powerful or game-breaking from a design perspective. Characters that did not rely on Mana, or that had spammable gap-closing options, were not the direction they wanted to go. Katarina, the only character back then who could do all those things, was heavily nerfed and the metagame at that time settled into a spot that went with these philosophies. Fast forward to today. I've seen dozens of characters that specifically break the mold of these philosophies, which I assume is due to newer design teams and the need for new champions to have some appeal to the game. Good examples of characters that can abuse game mechanics are things like Zac, Zed, and Yasuo, characters that can spam abilities without worrying about mana repercussions and can gap close efficiently as needed. The 'assassin' archetype is a dangerous and slippery slope that is very hard to balance, and having these types of characters is not inherently bad, but it does cast a shadow over many of the older characters in the game. As I understand it, older characters have been reworked or rebalanced to be useful in a progressing metagame that allows for much less management of resources and many more characters with the options to simply QWEQWEQWE on repeat. Again, I do not think this is bad, but if the game will be balanced in this direction, then it is unfortunate to see some of the older characters who can't handle this fall behind the proverbial eight ball. My favorite character and main for the majority of my previous tenure in this game was Alistar, an original character who has had two remakes. I was one of the player participants who was selected to help with the rework the very first time, which resulted in Trample becoming a mechanic. This is something I am very proud to have helped with, as Alistar's original iteration of a character was a bit too streamlined and difficult to balance. However, after I stopped playing, he was reworked a second time to have Triumphant Roar become his passive and Trample become his E. This is...well, not great, to say the least. As he currently exists, while I was playing, it felt less and less like he could keep up with all of the new champions and reworks of old champions. I started to dive into why this was as I learned about new characters and the new metagame. I did some research into Alistar and his builds and what could theoretically be viable. What I found was mostly saddening, a very low win rate for him as a Support, which is the role he has been pigeon-holed into in today's game (hence the long explanation leading into this), which makes sense given that his impact on the game has been lowered significantly. His Q, Pulverize, was one of the best CC moves in the game for years, which makes sense, it is an AoE stun that can affect several characters effectively more than once within a teamfight and sway the tide as long as the Alistar positioned himself properly. His W, Headbutt, as a displacement option is still strong enough to utilize properly. In my opinion, where he currently falls short is with his ult, which does not have the impact it once did, and more specifically, with his E, Trample, which I honestly believe is one of the current worst abilities in the entire game. The reason for this thread is really to just dump my ideas onto paper. Alistar, clearly, needs a change, a balancing, a SOMETHING to be relevant again. I don't believe he needs heavy changes, but I've pinpointed some obvious quick fixes to his character that would help considerably. Idea 1: Trample Stun Attack - Currently, Alistar has an activated ability for an E that causes pulses in a small radius to do (basically no) damage to opponent, and if he hits five (!!!) of these pulses, he gets an auto-attack that does additional damage and stuns for a short time. The good part of this ability, obviously, is the stun. The most logical fix that I've been able to come up with for Alistar is to make this more accessible. Compare Alistar, as a weak Support character, to Blitzcrank, one of the clear best supports in the game. They can both displace opponents, though Blitzcrank obviously can do so much more safely with his hook. What else does Blitzcrank have? He pushes E, and his stun is guaranteed and immediate. Alistar, not having a safe measure like hook, doesn't even have this luxury. If Trample's activation made his next available auto-attack do the stun and the pulses were just gravy for damage, then he would not only keep up a bit with supports, but could theoretically go back to being a top-lane bruiser as an anti-meta strategy, which is a role that I feel the character is perfect for. Idea 2: Unbreakable Will Damage - Years ago, Alistar got bonus damage from his ult. The amount of damage he got was obscene, and he shouldn't have it fully reverted, but his ult basically does not really do much in many situations. I love using it and maximize it for what it is, but you're still taking damage and most characters can just ignore you for the duration because once your CC abilities are down, then you are useless. If Alistar is meant to have his E be the worst move in the game, then his ult could be a measure to compensate by giving him some auto-attack damage to do a bit more in fights. Nowadays we have 'support' Senna, that can outrange most supports and out-damage almost all of them, and we have super-slow-attacking Alistar, that does little-to-no damage between his attacks AND his Trample, so maybe his ult getting some bonus damage back would help. Idea 3: Complete New Ability - Trample sucks. I'm just gonna say it. It's the worst version of Alistar and it's depressing. When Triumphant Roar was his E, however, I think he was honestly too strong, so that I understand. Trample though needs to be something else unless it is buffed. I stand by my Idea 1 making the most sense for Alistar to be a viable threat again, but if we're gonna change him to fit the current metagame in a very heavy way, then his Trample needs to go and be replaced by a new ability. Obviously this opens up the options to be anything. It could be a charge attack where he channels for a short time and dashes forward, knocking units sideways. It could be a chain swing, where he does a 360 degree AoE damage attack. It could be a foot stomp, where he knocks a targeted unit in a random direction that is either left, back, or right. Who knows? Sky is the limit. The limit for Trample though is a D-tier Support role. :( Years ago, there were forums on the LoL website, which I assume are gone. Riot employees were very engaging with the community as they worked to improve and expand the game, and it was a golden era for LoL. I don't know who will see this, or if it's even in the right place. I wasn't a 'pro' player, though I squared up against a lot of the older pros, so I'd like to think that I have at least SOME idea of game balance and structure. Nowadays I'm just a casual-playing old head who wants to see his favorite character get the TLC that other characters are getting. I hope designers in present day read the forums still, or that this is even in the right place. Anyway, thanks for reading if you got through the whole thing. Hope to see some of you out on the Rift. - Pete "Dapacman" Old Retired Alistar[/quote]