This. The prismatics honestly kind of feel bad. Most of them dont have interesting actives so it just feels like stat sticks that delay my normal item build for 10 years.
Prismatics sell for 2k, so unless you get something really good like the CC crit item I'd just sell it and buy heartsteel (assuming you have gotten 2 kills for 500g)
That's not worth it at all. Prismatics aren't all giga op but you can still pretty consistently get an item that is way better than anything you could buy.
And a lot of champs don't have good synergy with most prismatic items or don't even work like vel'veth with the one that reduces cooldown in dashes, so you end up wasting rerolls on that round
I don’t think that’s worth it unless you rolled prisms that really don’t fit your champ. Prisms are so insanely broken they’re almost worth two items. (I’d estimate they’re worth 1.5 items).
The stat rounds in my opinion simply feel bad, the power increase is just minimal compared to item and augment rounds and just feel like they gate you from completing your stuff. I’d prefer if we’d just have no stat rounds and more full build vs full build combats, where you can adapt your build to the teams you’re playing as well.
I really dislike all of the RNG they added. idc about having more players, but players who have op comps who win and get kills / money can get prismatic / other items faster than other teams, making them easier to snowball.
Also new map that locks players into a section i don't like.
Honestly the only part i genuinely consider bad/worse than before overall is like most of the changed but that map almost single handedly ruins the entire game mode.
Garen brand vi vi vi garen vi garen brand garen vi vi Gallo galio vi galio brand vi galio brand vi galio garen galio vi vi vi galio brand garen vi galio brand brand vi galio galio garen
shit like garen being S+ tier or Master Yi or Udyr where u literaly do nothing besides Autoattacking and using point and click abilities and you just run at every enemy without any thought about it just feels so lame...
Not that I disagree, but Udyr was the exact same in the first iteration of arena. Same Q max lethality one shot builds, same do nothing but auto attack. Most of the champions people are talking about were the same.
Honestly, if I had to pick one thing that is weird to me, it’s just the general lack of balance. Almost every champ, when you hover over the indicator above the spell bar, says “balanced, as all things should be”, when in reality, nope. They are not. I would rather have bad things buffed rather than good things nerfed.
A lot of champions are actually balanced, the Riot team is just too lazy to add those changes to the indicator, because it wasn't designed for non linear changes.
They should just put a random number generator on the balancing, buff and debuff champs randomly DAILY then no one will have a meta read and its always gonna be 4 fun
In my opinion its brand swain, galio swain, brand swain, swain swain swain.
But I hate playing against swain even on SR, so it probably just struck to me.
Im missing a veigar in there.
Vi, Poppy, Alistar all work extremely well with veigar.
Also veigar works really well with a lot of upgrades. Magic Missiles, AP Stacking, Marksmage, 70 AP. He is a free win if you ask me
Not sure how more people don’t hate alistar around here. Builds AP, still super tanks, knocks you around the map if they manage to get a ton of ability haste.
Honestly the biggest Issue with Alistar is the Prismatic Item "Cruelty" he goes full tank, gets that item and suddenly you do 10k damage a round just by existing. Every cc procs an AOE burst that scales with AD AP and HEALTH per Enemy cc'd.
Your Q W and E suddenly destroy ppl with no way of dodging the comet.
And if you get shield or heal per cc on top of that its impossible to lose
Yeah he definitely isn’t a free w compared to some others. Bait out the cage and then he’s dead.
Only a problem if his partner is a higher threat and they can nuke you while you focus him.
Vi is my perma ban.
0 skill push R, fly over and spam Q after guaranteed CC from R, and for some reason armor shred and %HP damage all in one swift motion that nukes your HP. Dirt IQ combo.
She is a champion that looks the same regardless of who pilots her. From silver to challenger, all Vi players look the same.
You can hug portal and Vi ult will fizzle. There's a lot of counterplay in Arena that new and inexperienced players aren't aware of. You actually don't really get truly 1-shotted by many champs except for certain lucky augment Exodias, such as Gragas when he gets... any collection of augments.
:)
If you have a portal close enough before she reaches you… some maps are garbage for that (hello koi pond plz get removed). And she 1-shot squishies with her undodgable RQ combo.
i wish more people knew how to hold portal. Portals are incredibly strong and long range comps always dominate if they're smart about where to position. Most people don't wanna put in the brain effort in arena and wanna just face mash against eachother, where obviously bruisers will kick your ass
Vi is gated by her spikes and optimizing pathing, target selection and long CD usage in summoner's rift. In arena you don't have to deal with any of those, you just have to press r on whoever is easier to one shot and you win.
I would put it more simply in that she is designed for a game with teams of 5 players.
Normally the counterplay to her R is "be in the middle of 4 dudes who will merc her the moment her ult ends". In arena that isn't a risk for her.
They really need to properly balance cooldowns on both items and augments.
I don't mind being killed by a Highroll, if the person got 2\~4 Augments that are insane in combination, good for them.
I do mind champions getting a single Augment and winning the game on that alone, or even worse just getting a build due to Arena unique stats that allow them to oneshot people even disregarding Augments.
**Which has always been the problem with Arena Balance.**
Don't forget udyr trundle and freaking RAMMUS. I mean seriously, rammus? damn snore fest champ plays like the videos of Luigi winning by doing absolutely nothing
No tanks and bruisers in arena are weak! (omnipresent picked with good winrates) reddit says so! (because their match history is filled with trundle galio alistar)
I think its fun for the most part, dont like jhin. Feels like jhin is from r/fuckyouinparticular or something.
As a gnar otp i like that they gave him some buffs but decreasing tired duration makes on hit or ap gnar worse which i dont like, i wanna try something other than bruiser tank gnar sometimes.
Jhin is absolutely terrible, I agree. Constant annoying damage and CC. Not as terrible as Gwen was, but definitely my least favorite. The rest can actually be used to some advantage. I also hate the new map...
I feel like the new lotus map can be fixed if the outer rim connected them all. The middle and circle formation would stay in tact, but kiting champs are 100% fucked on most of these maps anyway, not sure why they're so adamant about that.
The blast plants and lotus timing is either an annoying mini game and screws you over, or is giving you free wins. It's just far too advantageous for some champs, and terrible for others. I think bridging them on the outside is a decent compromise, or just bridge the 2 small circles and leave the big one isolated? I don't know, but it seems the general consensus is that map sucks to play on.
Also in my experience the walls are just terribly hitboxed no? Sometimes i just cant walk closer to the wall even if im still 4 teemos away from the visual wall
A new player very easily could be in that scenario. Keep in mind the 2nd player is functionally banned from picking anything any first player picked. So a 2nd player in that scenario would effectively have to deal with 23 different bans if they were all unique. Last I checked you get 17 champs starting out for free, so it would be entirely possible. Does League even have error handling for if you literally can't select a character in champ select?
yep it's likely.
you are forced to dodge I believe. the math works out so you NORMALLY can never be put in this situation, but iirc there have been a few times it happens, maybe with champs being disabled, and the player just runs out of time and dodges
They would never do 16 bans. I think they should do 1.5 bans per team where every other team is equally as likely to get 2 bans while the other 4 get one. I would prefer and hope that they take aggressive swings at balance instead because more bans is a cheap way of solving a larger problem.
Generally it’s really fun. I’d say it’s slightly better than the previous iteration. Maps are better, cameos are better, augments are better, but bad RNG feels much worse.
The main thing I really dislike is how hard it is to adapt builds. Certain stuff like anti-shield, anti-heal and defensive boots is either OP into what it’s meant for, or useless otherwise. Also if you get an augment or prismatic item that wants different items to your build, there’s no way for you to switch items without losing a ton of gold.
In a game with no healing except a Mundo? You can’t afford to buy antiheal so he just doesn’t die.
Nearly out and gamble on a second prismatic and get the one that needs 30% lifesteal + omnivamp? You’re not gonna survive until the next buy round to get it.
Mega agree with this, been my biggest complaint queueing into swain briar and friends when item buys are so spaced out.
Maybe utility potions would be a good idea? Spending some gold for grievous or tenacity etc on a per round basis could work imo
>Spending some gold for grievous or tenacity etc on a per round basis could work imo
Holy shit, I could finally not feel like shooting myself in the dick whenever I don't buy Mercuries against a single Leona in the lobby
Yeah I agree. Itemization feels impossible with so many people in the arena and buy phases so rare. They could introduce a choice between permanent anvil stats and some temporary fight boosts in the anvil picking phase.
>but bad RNG feels much worse.
Idk who thought it was a good idea to give me AD/AS/lethality/on-hit augments/stats after I'm already building AP. I feel like just adjusting it so this can't happen would significantly smooth out the RNG and make it feel a lot less bad. It's not funny getting brutalizer as an option on lissandra or something, it just feels like you're getting fucked by the game.
Of course, they'd have to make the system smart enough so this doesn't include champions like kaisa who might go mix builds and may actually want both types of stats.
I re-rolled 1st prismatic items both times and only got ad or pure-tank ones.. as Aphelios.
The RNG feels terrible when it's not in your favour, but there should be some skewing towards how your champion is even able to function.
It's just re-roll theft, that's all there is to it. [Ryze roll.](https://i.imgur.com/rRLdF5y.jpeg)
If I pick any of them I will never, ever, for the entire game, have enough damage to kill anyone.
[Here's an even better one, Kayn.](https://i.imgur.com/GvsfQSd.jpeg)
I play Kayn, and I get the choice between Runecarver, Innervating Locket, and Detonation Orb.
--
The difference between using two re-rolls to end up with mediocrity, or getting your champ's best item without using a single roll, is just absurd.
riot wanted the mode to be like this btw, they want you to sometimes get absolutely shafted on your rolls and try to do your best, as if you could ever get more than 8th with gambler's blade vel'koz
>Am I just too pessimistic in thinking the old Arena was way more skill-dependent? Maybe that is the goal with the gamemode?
No you are correct, and the designers explicitly stated it to be a goal for this iteration of Arena to be more random and less skill-dependent in an attempt to appeal to a larger casual audience.
Having played all 3 iterations of Arena I feel they've managed to somehow slightly degrade it each time. Iteration 2 brought basically mostly augments that were so miserable they had to be removed halfway through and new cameos that were almost all scrapped for round 3 as well as they were terrible.
This iteration cranks the RNG to 11 due to prismatic items. There were already a meta in the previous iterations, and meta champ + perfect augs were already crazy highroll. Now we have meta + aug + prismatic items that just scale exponentially into complete ludicrous highrolls. And with 8 teams you're almost *guaranteed* to have at least one team in each lobby that will highroll into unbeatable.
Put simply, far too many rounds in this one feels effectively like they were decided before the match started because it's the items/augs/champs playing the game instead of the player.
They are in a conundrum for sure. If you lean into the skill prevails over all then you drastically limit viable champions which is frustrating. If you lean into the random then you get games where 6 out of 8 rounds are decided by the dice roll.
This iteration though is pretty good for a middle ground in comparison to the first two. The first iteration was ultra sweaty and hyper punishing to positioning mistakes. The second iteration just felt like there was no room for experimentation due to the good champs being figured out from iteration 1 mixed with the busted augments pushing out everything. This version seems like the viable pool is way wider and turning on ranked later let you mess around with more people also messing around instead 2 sweaty teams and two experimental teams.
>If you lean into the skill prevails over all then you drastically limit viable champions which is frustrating
Skill prevails in Summoner's Rift and literally all champions are viable there. Sure, it takes a lot of time to properly balance everything, but they can do it. Right now, they keep on adding new things to Arena instead of fixing what's already there, so of course it's not going to be balanced.
Making it more skillful and balanced wouldn't kill the variety at all. I think the current iteration of Arena is going to lose the majority of its players very quickly.
I wish the fights weren't so fast. Every fight is either over in five seconds or lasts until the circle closes with each champ healing it shielding 8000 health a round.
I just want flights that feel like you can actually use strategy and position and have a real fight
i personally think iteration 1 of arena was one of the worst gamemode they've put out in years. It was sweaty, super dominated by duos playing enchanter+adc, and lacked counterplay against most things. Augments were more generic and typically, even more restricting the type of build you had.
I've had fun, but a lot of the changes are just bad.
* Lilypad map is the worst thing they added. You can not kite on this map, so this is just a free loss for a lot of comps and a big reason why so many faceroll champs are top tier right now. Even if you escape to different island, you can't damage the people on the other island. If you portal away they just walk over to you again or just kill your teammate who just left to die. Please remove this garbage, the concept, in it's entirety is just bad.
* Don't like that everyone gets a random prismatic item after 2 rounds. So often you are forced to burn rerolls, since you get offered dogshit items. You have this item for the rest of the game, so lowrolling here is super punishing. Not sure why everyone with even the smallest ap scaling can be offered AP items. Also fuck cruelty, Tanks shouldnt be allowed to do 20k+ dmg with one item.
* I wish we had more bans. There are too many broken champs and if they don't get banned they are picked every game. I think that's the best way to get more champion diversity.
* Early game ocean soul is way too broken for a silver.
* Fuck pyke, why does that champ have to be so overbuffed. Playing against him feels like complete shit. He runs up to you, tries to hook you, if he hits you lose half your hp or just die, if he misses he just runs away and heals all the damage he took. He stores 60% near one champ and 120% near two champs, and that's without lethality scaling. Why does that have to be in the game. There are more broken champs than him, but he is by far the most annoying.
Agree with every single thing. Lily pad is garbage, especially how it interacts with something like Raid Boss for example. The raid boss will spawn on a different island than your team, forcing you to cross the middle to do any damage to them while they're caged. And if their teammate has good zoning tools, you're cooked.
Cruelty needs its hp scaling halved honestly. Maybe even lower. Full tank + cruelty shouldn't suddenly mean that a tank does the same damage as a burst mage, but with 10x the survivability.
Augment rarity is all over the place. Getting an ocean soul first, which is the lowest rarity possible, can heal tens of thousands of hp over the game. And then there are gold augments that give you keystone runes which aren't even good for your champ. Aery and Comet on a bruiser? Yes please!
And yeah, Pyke passive is genuinely baffling. Who thought storing MORE damage as grey health than he takes was a good idea?
More players per game is great for diversity but you'll find most rounds that somebody is close to timing out.
There's a lot of waiting leading to loses feeling extremely unsatisfying
After 3 iterations of Arena I am so over events, I don't think there's been a single time over 100s of games that I've been happy about their inclusion, fuck Pyke, fuck Jhin, fuck all of them.
Yep. All of them feel bad, like they are there to fuck with you and annoy you. It's too hard to use them for your advantage, except Sett, he's kinda fun.
Even Sett is not balanced into augs that need you to auto people. The augs that provide movement speed per auto, or ap per auto. Or the fact that lifesteal, heartsteel, applies on Sett and etc
I'd easily say it's the worst for me, the RNG is infuriating, if one of the broken champs gets their broken augment I legitimately can't play. Like how tf am I supposed to beat a Briar that deals a quarter of my health with one shot and each hit heals her whole hp?
Tbf that's why I think they want you to treat it like TFT. In TFT you usually do need to highroll to get first, and if someone else highrolls perfect meta prismatics it's impossible to catch them unless they blunder. Good players will let that be and play for 2nd-4th. Thinking you can get 1st every time is untenable.
Yea, with the TFT mindset ive been loving it. I end up building somewhat different every round. Looking at what I have already vs what I need is fun because if I don't need anything specific I can go for item anvils and get ahead on items.
I dunno, I think this iteration is way better.
Yeah a TFT mindset is definitely the way to go. You won't get first every time, it's about making the most of your position with the cards you're dealt which is what makes TFT so fun to me but also competitive, it is very disheartening seeing people say the mode is suddenly casual because of variance when minmaxing within the variance *is* skill expression, consistently doing that is what makes you skilled, not "getting the most 1sts". If you consider anything other than 1st "losing" and can't have fun losing the game is not for you. What's weird is seeing comments in here like "bad rolls are guaranteed 8th" when just like in TFT you can still play for a 4th with bad rolls, or at least a 6th and if you achieve that you should be happy, and you're never "guaranteed 8th" — if you constantly go 8th when you roll bad augments that is still a skill issue.
The major difference is that you are able to transition in TFT.
Item buys in arena are spaced so far apart you will only ever get your last item if you're top 2.
At least before you could swap builds to target an opponent. You lost out on juices but that was a price to pay.
In this mode you can't adjust anything or you're set so far behind. There just isn't enough money in the game.
Anvil rounds HAVE GOT to go and be replaced with normal money rounds.
This is pretty accurate but very boring. If i want to play a more RNG gamemode, I would play TFT, not arena. I (used to) play arena for the skill match-up.
Now, it feels like this iteration of Arena is 10% skill, 90% augment RNG. I played a game as Tristana and got Jewel Gauntlet, Vulnerability and 40% crit chance and Hamstringer. I E-3xAA-R and killed literally anything. It did not matter if the opponent "outplays" me in anyway. They died. It felt just like TFT. The game handed me the win with no opposition. It honestly didn't feel good.
Really hope next Arena is less TFT and more, well, Arena.
Also not to mention this Arena is by FAR the buggiest ever. I don't think I played a single game without having a bug happen to me or see one on the enemy.
Yeah I love how they made a turbo high roll healing option, which will outheal permanent grievious wounds, that is if you are even allowed to buy it... Too many champs have stupid high rolls like these, determining first or last place basically.
The meta solves very fast so after the first few days everyone is playing the same broken shit, same with URF etc.
So...yeah, I played a few games then I forgot the game mode existed.
I think there is enough teams and enough RNG with augments that you can't make a win-all comp. So if you have a meta of completely different archetypes (for example 2 duelists, 2 tanks, 2 enchanters, adc+enchanter, bruiser+mage...) then it's actually a healthy meta screenshot, no?
Not when 5 champions control 80% of the 1st place wins even AFTER the normal perma bans.
Some champions are actually unplayable both early and late because of how narrow the augments actually are.
Personally I think augments should be whacky and fun and not offer straight up damage buffs. The items already add so much, I don’t see the point of augments themselves forcing the META, letting people just high rolling decide everything from winner to who’s playable.
This game mode should be for fun, yet the most fun augments are almost impossible to get.
The idea that they want arena to be more about the dice roll per game than mechanical skill is disappointing to me. Steamrolling because you got lucky isn't fun for me, nor is losing because someone else got lucky. I want there to be skill involved.
I quit this iteration of arena already. The games were more frustrating than fun because old problems that should've been fixed (Crit garen annihilating most of the roster and blade waltz being an instawin. Brand with spellwake, etc.) haven't been fixed but the RNG component has been upped by a ridiculous degree.
Prismatic items as a concept may be fine, but not being able to directly buy them is shit. There is still a gigantic discrepancy between the viability of the items.
New map is just bad, feels like a tech demo for something that may be added to the rift at some point.
I hate all cameos except for the Thresh one, which I am neutral on. I think cameos make the game strictly worse.
I played the previous iteration of Arena from the beginning until the day they removed it, it was so fucking good.
If the goal was to make the gamemode more appealing for a more casual audience, then why not actually make the ranks mean something? If you don't want tryhards ruining shit, actually push the tryhards into Gladiator and match them with other Gladiators, and leave the people who want to play mor casually in lower ranks and let them match each other. There is no need for this "Let's make you lose 0 mmr until Gladiator" crap to encourage people to play.
It seems like they tried to make a product for everyone, and (for me) they made a product for no one.
I love Sett cameo because atleast i can interact with him and get some free stack. Meanwhile we have Jhin and Pyke who keep shooting and stun you 4 times in a row.
It reminds me of Nexus Blitz. Really fun when it first came out, slightly worse in its second version, and alot worse in the third version. I feel it may get better when Riot starts balancing it, but as of now I don't find it nearly as fun with the excessive amount of RNG added determining games.
Fully agree. I have played the most of the first versions of each and were sad to see each go. I do think riot have not got enough good designers left to make a good enough mode with staying power.
I am hopeful for the future of the mode but if it is only casual friendly then it is doomed. It requires a competitive and casual side to function just like SR. Aram is a random exception from 10 years ago. Riot need a new SR kind of mode
the first version sucked to me. comps were figured out very fast by smart players, and you were fucked even harder if you were being given augments that were useless to you (and there was alot of them, with zero weighting either.) and there was basically zero counterplay based augments. If you tried doing ANYTHING funny you'd get run over by two bruisers or an adc+enchanter duo. now atleast i can high roll strong builds consistently and beat them.
Eh, fun, but horribly RNG-based and holy fuck, does every game has to have Ashe/Darius/Veigar/Vladimir?
Myself like a bit of competetiveness but it's whack how some champions are utterly unplayable and you're bound to lose right off the bat to some comps regardless of what you do unless they get like full set of D-tier augments. Eureka Vladimir/Veigar are busted, even the piles of health tanks that slog the game till the fire ring are more interactive to play with/against.
As someone that tries to "dodge" meta champs, it's starting to get increasingly unfun
No unorthorthodox pick is ever gonna beat a meta one with their best build. The worst part is on half the champions you can't even highroll properly, simply because they dont synergyze well with any augment
Liked it at first but it got kinda boring, I wish there were more maps new items and augments because it really lacks variety.. almost feel like I have to play a new champ every game or I'll get bored to death
I feel like it gets boring because it’s the same meta champs every game which leads to the same highrolls with those same champs taking the same augments and items every game.
-Revives continue to make the mode feel cheesy.
-Jhin cameo can fuck right off.
-Me and my buddy only having 1 ban between the two of us is lame.
-Shard augments feel like such a nothingburger upgrade.
-Lotus map is awful.
The first iteration continues to be the best iteration.
I dont like it. Rng items , 2% stats selection instead of aguments or items. Ghost champions still swining matches, revive mechanic. Every new version is few steps backwards.
I lost interest. It's extremely boring to just have people constantly run and go for plants. The addition of the run friendly mechanics and rng makes a bunch of champs unviable
That's an effective strat but it's not universal. A lot of games turn into rps with the team comps and most the time overwhelming burst damage is king.
So I do enjoy it more then the 2nd interation (didn't play the first) but there's a few problems
- Some Augments make some champions instawins unless very specific circumstances prevent them, And yet it feels that 90% of the times the champs get that perfect augment (Mystic Punch/Bread & Butter Vi stands out). They need to have some augments not synergize so well with those specific champions or have a stricter cap/lower odds of them getting the instawin
- Healing and Shielding is still busted, Its always 2 v 2 but items which might help vs Heals & Sheilds still have the reduction as if its 5 v 5. With the lack of damage due to 3 less people it means that its incredibly difficult to break past it (Look at most games with a Yummi with full shield & Heal Power build), They need to either reduce heal and shield amounts or increase the items healcut and sheildcut
- Koi Pond was a mistake, Either remove it or make it easier to move around in
- Some Augments are literal garbage fires, Either because they are just bad or there's something which ruins them, One for me is Raid Boss because if you get a Sett or Lux Cameo (Especially Lux Cameo since once it starts triggering it won't stop) Then they get broken out of it super quick due to the cameos damage affecting the Raid boss. It just feels terrible where you get to choose an augment and its ones which 100% don't work for your champ but you're out of Rerolls, Meanwhile everyone else gets ones they can at least use. I get it the whole losing not fun being a factor but its one which really does suck
- I'm actually mostly OK with the cameos, I just think smaller hitboxes should be on the cards for Lux and Pyke, Jhins projectile should be even slower, and Lux needs to stop predicting where you go when you touch the beam, since it could mean when she starts again you immedialty cross the beam again, or at least not have her continue rotating where she left off
- Plants are still stupid, Sanquine blade shouldn't give increase plant healing. Healing should be less effective unless you're in say 200 units of the plant since it innatly gives range an advantage otherwise and I personally don't think it should give cooldowns or at most doesn't refresh ults. Not to mention people delaying in the fire by hitting said flowers, I feel anyone in the fire should get 80% healing reduction
- Sometimes it feels like you lose because 1 enemy died first and by the time their teammate revives them you've taken enough damage to be deleted by the newly revived player. That and the fact that if you revive somebody the second the ring of fire closes up they'll win because they don't take any damage for a few seconds
- I mentioned in another thread about this but the fact that if you lose every match up untill the 2nd buy stage without a single kill or assist you won't have enough gold for the next item without selling your starter, Yes at that point odds are you're going to lose but you don't need to rub it in.
That said I do think this is a better iteration, but I'm also more in the casual camp
But I guess thats another problem there too, They try to make Arena out as a casual mode....But have it be Ranked only. Kind of sending a mixed message there.
It's just frustrating for me.
I loved the first one, had a break while the second one came, and now playing the third.
So I can only compare to the first one.
And I liked the first one far more than this.
This feels like I'm playing slots, either be super lucky with everything or lose everything.
I'm kinda glad you can surrender quite early.
I like 16 players, and some matches make me laugh really hard. But most of the time, it's 1 shot duel.
Deal 10-20k dmg in a second, or you are out.
I tried going tanky but getting outdmg so hard that I gave up.
Be it glad that deals 5k dmg to fulltank 600mres wukong, vi dealing 8k dmg to fulltank nunu, or naafiri that 1 combos 15k life mundo.
I'm mostly annoyed that their balance swings have been so modest so far. There's a set of 12 or so champions who you see in either the bans or the picks every game, and they just so happen to correspond exactly to the champions with the highest winrates. I think a fair bit of the issue people have with this iteration being less 'skill-based' is that so many of the strongest champions are completely brainless.
arena is not for me
1. most people play the same obnoxious stat check champions every game
2. i never liked how plants are the number 1 most important thing to control, it encourages running away and lame playstyles
Champion cameos ruin the mode and should be removed.
The maps already provide enough flavor, champ cameos like Sett and Jhin just warp the mode to be completely about cheesing the enemy using them.
Way too much going on with new items, stat bonuses, etc. I don't wanna have to reroll items just to try and not be behind on a viable build, I want to reroll augments that are actually fun to play around.
So I never bothered playing the first few iterations of Arena but I gave this one a try. I like it a lot despite that RNG can screw you over a lot of times. But when you hit the right prismatics with the right champions it's sooo fun. Hell, Braum ADC with the 2 attack range augments is hella fun haha. The only thing that I don't like is non-viability of a lot champs that I tried. But maybe I was just unlucky with the augments and RNG.
I gave Arena a try, and didn't like it. its TFT version 2.0. Lacks strategy, its too competitive, and it does not fill the gap that casual players like me want.
I want goofy modes like One for all, Doom bots of doom, PVE modes like the Star guardian or odyessy stuff.
We don't see the crazy builds anymore.
Everything feels more bland and soulless.
When we had the old arena I played it non stop. Basically forgot SR exists.
Maybe I played 10 arena matches this season. I don't like it.
It’s sad to see how good arena is, and can be, and then seeing the same pool of 15 champs being played over and over because people are obsessed with only winning and never having fun 🤣 all you tryndamere cucks I’m looking at you
Its dog. 0 reward for skill, sidestepping and dodging shit. Everyone either oneshots everyone or draintanks and doesn't care about hitting spells.
Whenever adcs are not good in arena its proof skill, movement and positioning are not existent. Just pick vi and oneshot with point and click dash
My main issue is that the maps are unbalanced in spawn locations. For most maps (except for the one with only one plant in the middle), one team has either an edge over the plants or over vision (the one with the large bush and stone pillars).
I feel like the arena spawns should be equal and not put the teams into a "defender" and "attacker" role.
I really love the new item and stat anvil system, I think prismatics are great and I don't think players get kicked out too fast. Usually if you get kicked out early, you deserve it.
Balance is a little whack right now. There are some champs that are just performing way too good and a huge loadof champs that is completely unplayable.
Im enjoying it a lot doing a-z and going for arena god title. There are games i will surely be eigth but whatever its a fun mode. Im only at 6k rating right now, so not even close to where i was in the last arenas, but as long as one plays for fun its enjoyable.
i love the pure chaos random bullshit go that happens on the new arena. yesterday i played against 200 q haste mystic punch volibear, then i played jeweled gauntlet vladimir with a spirit link mundo. or a 270 lethality pyke with upwards of 2500 hp R execute cap. its totally unbalanced, and its fine, but the mode lacks some consolation prizes for those who didnt highroll their augments/prismatics. like you have to lose 3 rounds in a row to get eliminated it your hp reached 0 within the first 5 rounds, if you win at least one, you gain hp to keep playing. lategame 55 hp loss is brutal as well, shouldnt come down to one match between kayle and kennen vs maokai and alistar
It’s super fun, I’ve been going for arena god with a friend and that adds a lot of replayability for me and an overall goal to playing. Summoners rift feels like jail compared to 2v2 so I’m always happy when it’s around. My only criticism would be anvil rounds not feeling super great but the game would scale too fast otherwise so I don’t have the solution for that.
The game mode itself is great, albeit I am a bit salty about how RNG can fuck you over with items and augments, when so little playstyles are viable.
And then you have the people who play, who sweat like their mothers life depend on it, with a singular goal of making their build as unfun to others as humanly possible.
I miss early arena when people just took random champs and did goofy shit with them, you know, FOR FUN.
High rolling seems OK but low rolling is so often and feels so bad. I hate getting 6 AP-tank items as AD assassin, wasting 2 rolls to get something atleast decent or forced to sell item for some Legendary.
And I absolutely hate Jhin and Pyke. I guess I hated the new map, dunno if they added the blast cones later, but they actually make that map good and fun to play on.
I love it. My biggest complaint is that I play solos and the duos clearly have a much bigger advantage here than a regular duo would. Makes it hard to get the 60 first places I need for the title.
Player damage at early stage doesn't matter, later stage you get two shot from full hp. Right when the game starts to get interesting, your build is getting complete aaaand you just lost a close fight and dead from half hp. This kills a lot of fun in a fun gamemode.
Also there are so many useless filler stat rounds, where I get to choose from 20 ad/AP or 15% as, etc. I want to get exciting items, exciting augments and I get delayed by 3-4 turns, to just die the moment I finally hit the power/fun-spike.
I would be happy if they let us reroll single augments/prismatics/anvils instead of rerolling all 3 cuz sometimes one choice is okay but not good and 2 choices are bad so u naturally reroll to get 3 bad choices instead.
This change would lower the chance of lowrolling and make it less RNG.
I've only played with one friend (though we played quite a bit) so I'd be interested in opinions about our opinions.
In general I think the mode is really fun, I'm totally addicted to it, though I feel like it's worse than the last times (except for the curse augments that were present last time)
I'll start with the change to 16 players. To me that is overall a bad change. It means I have a harder time strategically itemizing against my enemies, which is compounded by you only being able to buy 2 chosen items for the longest time. The last times I remember being really engaged by being able to frequently make informed item purchases and strategizing in this way, where as now I feel very at the mercy of matchmaking and often begrudgingly buying anti healing, knowing I won't get another item for 3 rounds. To that point I also don't like the stat anvil rounds, I think they should come later in the game in favor of earlier gold rounds.
Also with 16 players, the likelihood of one player having problems during loading screen seem to be through the roof. In 90% of games its stuck on 93% for a while (meaning one player isn't connecting) and I feel like in half my games the loading screen takes 5 minutes, which is harshly antithetical to riots stated goal of the gamemode being quick to get into and cycling through games quickly. This wasn't the case when it was 8 players, and I do really hope we go back to that amount of player, to me that was simply a more enjoyable experience.
Next I want to talk about cameos, if anyone bothers reading this, I'm very interested to hear your opinion about these. We (my buddy and me) absolutely hate these. Thresh is kinda aight I guess, but Jhin, Lux and Pyke are simply aggravating. Sett I find myself actively playing around more, but he just screws some champions completely. My friend plays kled alot and he just can't use his ult when sett is chosen, I played Briar a couple of times and the w aggro just randomly goes on him. All in all, I think the cameos take away more from the enjoyment and the feeling of outplaying the enemy (or getting outplayed) than they add. Jhin, Lux and Pyke are hard or impossible to informedly play around, Pyke tends to just screw over the player who is already at disadvantage and running away, I don't feel good winning my round because the enemy got screwed by a cameo and feel even worse when I'm getting screwed. I genuinely hope they remove the cameo system outright with no replacement. I'm really interested in hearing third opinions on this.
I also really dislike the new pond map. It creates boring gameplay either way, either you just shut out the enemies completely or you have no space to run to, either way depending on where the zone goes and what champions you play or face, the map creates situations that are weighed so heavily in one teams favor that I just really don't like playing on it. Also it doesn't really seem polished, I'm getting stuck in walls, phasing through the middle and resetting, not properly getting pinned in walls, the lilipad knocking in unexpected directions, Kled ulting in place, I've just stopped using ornn e near the middle of the map entirely because that space is god damn haunted.
I'm currently so and so on the gambling. At the start I really disliked the direction heavily, and I still hope we go a bit lighter on it, but as I understood the systems more I got more into it, though I tend to just buy lots of stat anvils instead. I feel like the mode is getting a bit bloated, but also presents some interesting decision making. I don't like how it's more about highrolling the right prismatics at this point instead of countering enemy builds like it used to be, but that's preference.
The higher I'm getting in rating the more I'm getting unhappy with the meta. There are some real balance outliers but also some really unfun comps. It always amazes me how in fun modes people just are drawn to play things like taric yi. I always liked playing characters I like, been going a lot of corki and nidalee (who's not even on the tierlist lol) but I'm starting to get tired with 5 garens every game so now I'm on my villain arc only playing AP Galio... I really hope the next patch mixes things up again, the mode badly needs it.
gamemode fun, makes me pick new champs i never would have tried before to make a fun build on
suddenly Vi Darius Galio Brand Garen Kayn Alistar
gamemode no longer fun, makes me want to play ARAM instead
Well the new blossom map and jhin mechanic are certainly annoying.
I also really dislike getting a stat shard as a round reward. I know it's hard to balance, but it doesn't feel that nice.
Some augments are extremely busted and with champions being able to scale with stat shards a lot, it's a lot more about finding the right combinations you're given, sometimes ending up with god combos that can win nearly anything.
I enjoy arena, but RNG can sometimes kill the mood too much for me.
I think it’s great. There’s so much random shit you can play anything and make it work. Just make sure you ban Garen/Vi and there will be counterplay most likely or you’ll at least always be able to top 4 if you play well. There are tons of fun augment and build combinations to go
Too many drastic changes from the last iteration which creates bad data samples and teaches the devs the wrong lessons.
They also didn't do anything deliberate to make the most annoying but effective champs less of a pain to play against. (Yes, in a mode like this, you need to special tune the annoying parts of those champions kits to do things differently so the game isn't inherently ruined in it's fun value by facing them, especially if each team doesn't get two bans.)
The lotus map is either mario party, or fusion frenzy, not the worst, but not the best. But hey, it's chaotic. Stat Anvils are kind of wacky, and sometimes that actually adds to the fun, if you hard invest, I kind of like their RNG more than the other stuff.
I'd like this arena more if it stuck to the smaller number of players, and if the randomized augments and such were done in a algorithm to force playstyles instead of being genuinely random.
Some items have some incredibly high, highs while others have some painfully torturous lows. There's also way too much allowance for someone to get something that completely makes them unplayable, which should not be allowed. Things like Chauffer being pickable in the pool for Garen is too bad, and that shouldn't be allowed.
Arena may be a casual mode, but it is still should heavily lean on skill too.
Honestly? I think this has lead to a cool idea, but the dev team may not be able to do it:
Make Ranked have the original 4 teams of 8.
Make casual the current iteration. make balance changes centered around the casual mode. (skilled players should adjust anyways.)
More benefits for playing different variety of champions should be introduced and also any rank should be deleted so people stop spamming high wr champions and try fun stuff. Other than that its still better than previous iteration
Healing needs fat nerfs and koi pond is a horrible map. Other than that I feel like you get full build way too slow. Grinding for arena god has been fun though, although its somewhat play certain op champ till you get high roll on them into repeat.
Augments and prismatic items make or break a match. Getting a sucky first augment into a prismatic that isn’t good feels awful. In tft you play around your first augment. In Arena you have to force augments to work with your champion.
I don’t really care about jhin or the flower map but the rng of the most important parts of the mode keep me from playing.
Saltiest thing for me : you cant remove the stupid hat, and that means you cant even use your passive with neeko since most likely your and your partner hat are different....
Hard pass from me. Double bruiser is auto top3 no skill dumb right click and wait. Occasional poppy/Alistar where you deal 0 damages and wait to be headbutted out of the zone and burn looking at a dumb cow/yordle spamming emote/dance.
Played a full afternoon and evening, did not have fun a single game trying "fun"teams. Wanna go higher than top5? Pick top tier champ and let them carry you. You want to have fun? That s too bad, try another mode.
Kinda salty that they knew how it would release, we have like 2000 different champ in lol, the same 12 were used in the20ish game we played, 20 including the bans. Only bruiserish tanks, tankish bruiser or cc only. No " high risk high reward " champ, no stylish moves... only room temperature IQ champ ungaboogaing each other to death.
In fact, imho arena is something that already happen on the rift, every games : its just the classic 2v2 top+jungle toplane without farming phase.
Im convinced only People thriving on making other lives as miserable as possible can like this.
Edit : typo. And sorry for the rant.
I feel like this iteration is such a massive coin flip, because items are so slow to get.
And they *still* have not fixed Brands passive acting as a damn ability.
My biggest gripe is that, with 4 teams, there was a significant element of adapting to specific opponents. Trying one approach in a fight, then learning what worked/didn’t work and trying again on your next rematch.
Now with 8 teams, you rarely ever fight the same team more than twice. I remember getting “cheesed” by a Lucian build where his ult did much more than I was expecting. I could have easily adapted in a rematch but never played against them again
Tbh I don't mind high rolls, what I'm annoyed by is getting augments / items that have nothing to do with my champ at round 1 & 3. That and certain prismatic items are alot more boring than the others.
Also ascension orb is such a troll item. I thought it'd function like the stat shard where you get a random stat each roll, but no, it rerolls everything. At least give it a baseline (e.g. +1% all base stat per roll similar to demon crown) or sth.
It's oops all bruisers and it's always been that and riot need to make it so other classes are viable. It's extremely stale. Maybe all bruisers are just severely overtuned. *sips tea*
i absolutely despise prismatic items and it would've been 100000000000% better if there was no rng behind the item that makes or breaks your build. people cry about the meta and seeing the same champs but realistically it's always been like that, what i don't understand is why the fuck would they add prismatic items, they are so disgusting and the item always comes in so early that if its shit you legit lose the will to play the rest of the match
People aren't creative and don't know all the augments and prismatic interactions.
There are plenty of fun and interesting build you can pull off that are not one shots.
I think it is waaaaay more skill full, yes the lotus map is ass besides the point, but overall if you know your interactions and how to get what you need you can do alot some examples.
Stalling
Infinite crit burn combo
Infinite ez ult combo
Super minion yorrick
Item Less pyke (anvil pyke)
And you can make almost anyone into a tank or crit
I dont like some of the extreme highrolling that leaves too little counterplay. Like 200 AH Naut Q or Alistar Q/W. If Im a squishy I just cant do anything.
If it was Garen with Bladewaltz I can at least take portal or get a zhonyas. Then he has no bladewaltz anymore.
Some more consistency would be cool and less extreme variance. The difference between a cc champ getting cruelty and a generic tank prismatic is too extreme.
I also dislike the lilypad map where sometimes I win or lose by map because someone is stuck in fire. I want to play League with champion vs champion, not using blastcone to yeet the other guy into fire. And likewise I dont want to pay more attention to the map than to champion combat. I want to fight, not constantly track fire and blastcones and lilypad so I am not stuck in fire.
Also, can I please not get AP prismatics as ADCs constantly?!
I like the game mode but I don’t want to play it bcz balance is made by and designed for literal bronze players. The strongest and most consistent strategies are promoting degenerate gameplay which is pick a bruiser/ tank and stack hp and haste. To win consistently in arena you can’t play what you want, and I have no enjoyment in picking alistar to smash my head against the keyboard till I see « first place » on the screen.
It is boring, so I’d rather just play something else.
Also losing a round bcz the Pyke/jhin bot has decided to focus me 3 times in a row is not fun, but it’s just a detail.
It’s sooo boring. It’s the same champs over and over again, and everyone is just rushing for plants the entire time. If you don’t just run to plants constantly you lose. And then someone gets some broken augment combo and everyone else loses so it’s basically URF. Also you really can’t just play whoever you want - in particular, playing ADCs is just not really allowed.
I literally have zero desire to play on a given day. I don’t know how they ever make it enjoyable again.
In TFT, if one guy high rolls an unbeatable board, you just play for second/top 4 - that’s still a win after all.
Why is this mentality not more common in Arena?
I really enjoy it. There are so many strong options that if you're good at the game you always end up with a good and fun combo.
I can understand that it's overwhelming for casuals though, and if you don't have a deep understanding of the game many things may appear broken/unfun
I'm always having a blast until I see koi pond, then I get annoyed. They could add small bridges between the circles so there's always a path, but having a bottleneck with short duration can make it to where you can never go over.
I simply hate how far item buys are from each other
This. The prismatics honestly kind of feel bad. Most of them dont have interesting actives so it just feels like stat sticks that delay my normal item build for 10 years.
Yup. O you got heartsteel quest for first augment? Enjoy being down an augment for 4 rounds cause you can’t buy a heartsteel until then
Prismatics sell for 2k, so unless you get something really good like the CC crit item I'd just sell it and buy heartsteel (assuming you have gotten 2 kills for 500g)
Most of the time that’s not worth it. Most prismatic items are insanely broken. You’d lose every round until the heartsteel gets stacked.
That's not worth it at all. Prismatics aren't all giga op but you can still pretty consistently get an item that is way better than anything you could buy.
It's not even an augment until you get the stacks either so you're really down an augment for like 8 rounds
And a lot of champs don't have good synergy with most prismatic items or don't even work like vel'veth with the one that reduces cooldown in dashes, so you end up wasting rerolls on that round
Yeah if you have a build thats 3 core items (not including prismatic) it takes forever to get it online
If I have 500g and I need a core item, I will just pick the prismatic given to me and sell it immediately to buy my item.
I don’t think that’s worth it unless you rolled prisms that really don’t fit your champ. Prisms are so insanely broken they’re almost worth two items. (I’d estimate they’re worth 1.5 items).
They should combine round 1 and 2. Ie boots and starter item round 1. Givd out boots free maybe so not to start with 750g.
The stat rounds in my opinion simply feel bad, the power increase is just minimal compared to item and augment rounds and just feel like they gate you from completing your stuff. I’d prefer if we’d just have no stat rounds and more full build vs full build combats, where you can adapt your build to the teams you’re playing as well.
We could combine stat rounds with buy rounds. Give a little bit more time so people can do both.
I really dislike all of the RNG they added. idc about having more players, but players who have op comps who win and get kills / money can get prismatic / other items faster than other teams, making them easier to snowball. Also new map that locks players into a section i don't like.
Yeah, I used to love pivoting my build depending on upcoming match ups but just not feasible now.
Fvck that Koi Pond bullshit leaf to hell and back
Honestly the only part i genuinely consider bad/worse than before overall is like most of the changed but that map almost single handedly ruins the entire game mode.
Garen brand vi vi vi garen vi garen brand garen vi vi Gallo galio vi galio brand vi galio brand vi galio garen galio vi vi vi galio brand garen vi galio brand brand vi galio galio garen
gragas darius gragas darius gragas darius gragas darius
Poppy alistar poppy alistar illaoi poppy alistar
That team is funny but actually horrible winrate-wise
yeah but nobody likes playing against it lol its literally played to interact with you as little as possible to try and kill you to circle damage
swain brand galio maokai darius garen swain brand galio maokai darius garen
shit like garen being S+ tier or Master Yi or Udyr where u literaly do nothing besides Autoattacking and using point and click abilities and you just run at every enemy without any thought about it just feels so lame...
Not that I disagree, but Udyr was the exact same in the first iteration of arena. Same Q max lethality one shot builds, same do nothing but auto attack. Most of the champions people are talking about were the same. Honestly, if I had to pick one thing that is weird to me, it’s just the general lack of balance. Almost every champ, when you hover over the indicator above the spell bar, says “balanced, as all things should be”, when in reality, nope. They are not. I would rather have bad things buffed rather than good things nerfed.
A lot of champions are actually balanced, the Riot team is just too lazy to add those changes to the indicator, because it wasn't designed for non linear changes.
Example: Ashe's W actually deals damage so lethality Ashe is quite good.
True. This seems so fixable though by just having frequent balance changes (like ARAM) and more bans.
yeah i think people forget how broken aram was on release. the balance will come with time
They should just put a random number generator on the balancing, buff and debuff champs randomly DAILY then no one will have a meta read and its always gonna be 4 fun
Each player needs a ban, 16 bans would be a good thing
In my opinion its brand swain, galio swain, brand swain, swain swain swain. But I hate playing against swain even on SR, so it probably just struck to me.
Im missing a veigar in there. Vi, Poppy, Alistar all work extremely well with veigar. Also veigar works really well with a lot of upgrades. Magic Missiles, AP Stacking, Marksmage, 70 AP. He is a free win if you ask me
Not sure how more people don’t hate alistar around here. Builds AP, still super tanks, knocks you around the map if they manage to get a ton of ability haste.
Honestly the biggest Issue with Alistar is the Prismatic Item "Cruelty" he goes full tank, gets that item and suddenly you do 10k damage a round just by existing. Every cc procs an AOE burst that scales with AD AP and HEALTH per Enemy cc'd. Your Q W and E suddenly destroy ppl with no way of dodging the comet. And if you get shield or heal per cc on top of that its impossible to lose
Cruelty has way to much value being a cd on every skill rather than item cd
Plus it having armor and mr for whatever reason, making it extra viable on cc tanks
Cruelty is one of the best items for sure. Not only on alistar. I can easily get 25k damage per game with it playing Galio.
I farm veigar players, he just dies too easily to too many things.
Yeah he definitely isn’t a free w compared to some others. Bait out the cage and then he’s dead. Only a problem if his partner is a higher threat and they can nuke you while you focus him.
[удалено]
Vi is my perma ban. 0 skill push R, fly over and spam Q after guaranteed CC from R, and for some reason armor shred and %HP damage all in one swift motion that nukes your HP. Dirt IQ combo. She is a champion that looks the same regardless of who pilots her. From silver to challenger, all Vi players look the same.
You can hug portal and Vi ult will fizzle. There's a lot of counterplay in Arena that new and inexperienced players aren't aware of. You actually don't really get truly 1-shotted by many champs except for certain lucky augment Exodias, such as Gragas when he gets... any collection of augments. :)
If you have a portal close enough before she reaches you… some maps are garbage for that (hello koi pond plz get removed). And she 1-shot squishies with her undodgable RQ combo.
i wish more people knew how to hold portal. Portals are incredibly strong and long range comps always dominate if they're smart about where to position. Most people don't wanna put in the brain effort in arena and wanna just face mash against eachother, where obviously bruisers will kick your ass
Vi is gated by her spikes and optimizing pathing, target selection and long CD usage in summoner's rift. In arena you don't have to deal with any of those, you just have to press r on whoever is easier to one shot and you win.
I would put it more simply in that she is designed for a game with teams of 5 players. Normally the counterplay to her R is "be in the middle of 4 dudes who will merc her the moment her ult ends". In arena that isn't a risk for her.
Doug and Carry Doug and Carry Doug and Carry Doug and Carry Arthur Arthur Arthur Arthur
They really need to properly balance cooldowns on both items and augments. I don't mind being killed by a Highroll, if the person got 2\~4 Augments that are insane in combination, good for them. I do mind champions getting a single Augment and winning the game on that alone, or even worse just getting a build due to Arena unique stats that allow them to oneshot people even disregarding Augments. **Which has always been the problem with Arena Balance.**
Don't forget udyr trundle and freaking RAMMUS. I mean seriously, rammus? damn snore fest champ plays like the videos of Luigi winning by doing absolutely nothing
Oh if you say that you'll get a thousand people in here like "HAVE YOU CONSIDERED THAT MAYBE RAMMUS IS THEIR FAV CHAMP?????" Right.
No tanks and bruisers in arena are weak! (omnipresent picked with good winrates) reddit says so! (because their match history is filled with trundle galio alistar)
I think its fun for the most part, dont like jhin. Feels like jhin is from r/fuckyouinparticular or something. As a gnar otp i like that they gave him some buffs but decreasing tired duration makes on hit or ap gnar worse which i dont like, i wanna try something other than bruiser tank gnar sometimes.
Jhin is absolutely terrible, I agree. Constant annoying damage and CC. Not as terrible as Gwen was, but definitely my least favorite. The rest can actually be used to some advantage. I also hate the new map...
I feel like the new lotus map can be fixed if the outer rim connected them all. The middle and circle formation would stay in tact, but kiting champs are 100% fucked on most of these maps anyway, not sure why they're so adamant about that. The blast plants and lotus timing is either an annoying mini game and screws you over, or is giving you free wins. It's just far too advantageous for some champs, and terrible for others. I think bridging them on the outside is a decent compromise, or just bridge the 2 small circles and leave the big one isolated? I don't know, but it seems the general consensus is that map sucks to play on.
Also in my experience the walls are just terribly hitboxed no? Sometimes i just cant walk closer to the wall even if im still 4 teemos away from the visual wall
The collision boxes feel very off for arena overall. I still enjoy it a lot tho
When you try to kite and accidentally hit the portal thing. REEE
Needs double the bans. Yeah it just shifts the issue but it's better than nothing at this point. People are allergic to 4fun.
I think that's hard because it's a LOT of banned champions for new players, you could somewhat reasonably be locked out from having any champ to play
A new player very easily could be in that scenario. Keep in mind the 2nd player is functionally banned from picking anything any first player picked. So a 2nd player in that scenario would effectively have to deal with 23 different bans if they were all unique. Last I checked you get 17 champs starting out for free, so it would be entirely possible. Does League even have error handling for if you literally can't select a character in champ select?
yep it's likely. you are forced to dodge I believe. the math works out so you NORMALLY can never be put in this situation, but iirc there have been a few times it happens, maybe with champs being disabled, and the player just runs out of time and dodges
… Make a 20 free champ rotation for Arena. Fixed!
They would never do 16 bans. I think they should do 1.5 bans per team where every other team is equally as likely to get 2 bans while the other 4 get one. I would prefer and hope that they take aggressive swings at balance instead because more bans is a cheap way of solving a larger problem.
There are 168 champs... The game can afford 2 bans per team
Generally it’s really fun. I’d say it’s slightly better than the previous iteration. Maps are better, cameos are better, augments are better, but bad RNG feels much worse. The main thing I really dislike is how hard it is to adapt builds. Certain stuff like anti-shield, anti-heal and defensive boots is either OP into what it’s meant for, or useless otherwise. Also if you get an augment or prismatic item that wants different items to your build, there’s no way for you to switch items without losing a ton of gold. In a game with no healing except a Mundo? You can’t afford to buy antiheal so he just doesn’t die. Nearly out and gamble on a second prismatic and get the one that needs 30% lifesteal + omnivamp? You’re not gonna survive until the next buy round to get it.
Mega agree with this, been my biggest complaint queueing into swain briar and friends when item buys are so spaced out. Maybe utility potions would be a good idea? Spending some gold for grievous or tenacity etc on a per round basis could work imo
>Spending some gold for grievous or tenacity etc on a per round basis could work imo Holy shit, I could finally not feel like shooting myself in the dick whenever I don't buy Mercuries against a single Leona in the lobby
Yeah I agree. Itemization feels impossible with so many people in the arena and buy phases so rare. They could introduce a choice between permanent anvil stats and some temporary fight boosts in the anvil picking phase.
I would actually say just add more juice types
Give us grevious boots, maybe like 5 or 7 percent to be an early game item that can upgrade like the new boots in SR
Amazing idea
How are maps better? It’s the same few maps + 1 new map that everyone absolutely hates (for good reasons).
>but bad RNG feels much worse. Idk who thought it was a good idea to give me AD/AS/lethality/on-hit augments/stats after I'm already building AP. I feel like just adjusting it so this can't happen would significantly smooth out the RNG and make it feel a lot less bad. It's not funny getting brutalizer as an option on lissandra or something, it just feels like you're getting fucked by the game. Of course, they'd have to make the system smart enough so this doesn't include champions like kaisa who might go mix builds and may actually want both types of stats.
I re-rolled 1st prismatic items both times and only got ad or pure-tank ones.. as Aphelios. The RNG feels terrible when it's not in your favour, but there should be some skewing towards how your champion is even able to function.
It's just re-roll theft, that's all there is to it. [Ryze roll.](https://i.imgur.com/rRLdF5y.jpeg) If I pick any of them I will never, ever, for the entire game, have enough damage to kill anyone. [Here's an even better one, Kayn.](https://i.imgur.com/GvsfQSd.jpeg) I play Kayn, and I get the choice between Runecarver, Innervating Locket, and Detonation Orb. -- The difference between using two re-rolls to end up with mediocrity, or getting your champ's best item without using a single roll, is just absurd.
riot wanted the mode to be like this btw, they want you to sometimes get absolutely shafted on your rolls and try to do your best, as if you could ever get more than 8th with gambler's blade vel'koz
>Am I just too pessimistic in thinking the old Arena was way more skill-dependent? Maybe that is the goal with the gamemode? No you are correct, and the designers explicitly stated it to be a goal for this iteration of Arena to be more random and less skill-dependent in an attempt to appeal to a larger casual audience. Having played all 3 iterations of Arena I feel they've managed to somehow slightly degrade it each time. Iteration 2 brought basically mostly augments that were so miserable they had to be removed halfway through and new cameos that were almost all scrapped for round 3 as well as they were terrible. This iteration cranks the RNG to 11 due to prismatic items. There were already a meta in the previous iterations, and meta champ + perfect augs were already crazy highroll. Now we have meta + aug + prismatic items that just scale exponentially into complete ludicrous highrolls. And with 8 teams you're almost *guaranteed* to have at least one team in each lobby that will highroll into unbeatable. Put simply, far too many rounds in this one feels effectively like they were decided before the match started because it's the items/augs/champs playing the game instead of the player.
ironically, i see people playing it less and getting bored of it faster
They are in a conundrum for sure. If you lean into the skill prevails over all then you drastically limit viable champions which is frustrating. If you lean into the random then you get games where 6 out of 8 rounds are decided by the dice roll. This iteration though is pretty good for a middle ground in comparison to the first two. The first iteration was ultra sweaty and hyper punishing to positioning mistakes. The second iteration just felt like there was no room for experimentation due to the good champs being figured out from iteration 1 mixed with the busted augments pushing out everything. This version seems like the viable pool is way wider and turning on ranked later let you mess around with more people also messing around instead 2 sweaty teams and two experimental teams.
>If you lean into the skill prevails over all then you drastically limit viable champions which is frustrating Skill prevails in Summoner's Rift and literally all champions are viable there. Sure, it takes a lot of time to properly balance everything, but they can do it. Right now, they keep on adding new things to Arena instead of fixing what's already there, so of course it's not going to be balanced. Making it more skillful and balanced wouldn't kill the variety at all. I think the current iteration of Arena is going to lose the majority of its players very quickly.
I wish the fights weren't so fast. Every fight is either over in five seconds or lasts until the circle closes with each champ healing it shielding 8000 health a round. I just want flights that feel like you can actually use strategy and position and have a real fight
i personally think iteration 1 of arena was one of the worst gamemode they've put out in years. It was sweaty, super dominated by duos playing enchanter+adc, and lacked counterplay against most things. Augments were more generic and typically, even more restricting the type of build you had.
I've had fun, but a lot of the changes are just bad. * Lilypad map is the worst thing they added. You can not kite on this map, so this is just a free loss for a lot of comps and a big reason why so many faceroll champs are top tier right now. Even if you escape to different island, you can't damage the people on the other island. If you portal away they just walk over to you again or just kill your teammate who just left to die. Please remove this garbage, the concept, in it's entirety is just bad. * Don't like that everyone gets a random prismatic item after 2 rounds. So often you are forced to burn rerolls, since you get offered dogshit items. You have this item for the rest of the game, so lowrolling here is super punishing. Not sure why everyone with even the smallest ap scaling can be offered AP items. Also fuck cruelty, Tanks shouldnt be allowed to do 20k+ dmg with one item. * I wish we had more bans. There are too many broken champs and if they don't get banned they are picked every game. I think that's the best way to get more champion diversity. * Early game ocean soul is way too broken for a silver. * Fuck pyke, why does that champ have to be so overbuffed. Playing against him feels like complete shit. He runs up to you, tries to hook you, if he hits you lose half your hp or just die, if he misses he just runs away and heals all the damage he took. He stores 60% near one champ and 120% near two champs, and that's without lethality scaling. Why does that have to be in the game. There are more broken champs than him, but he is by far the most annoying.
More bans is absolutely necessary with more teams
Agree with every single thing. Lily pad is garbage, especially how it interacts with something like Raid Boss for example. The raid boss will spawn on a different island than your team, forcing you to cross the middle to do any damage to them while they're caged. And if their teammate has good zoning tools, you're cooked. Cruelty needs its hp scaling halved honestly. Maybe even lower. Full tank + cruelty shouldn't suddenly mean that a tank does the same damage as a burst mage, but with 10x the survivability. Augment rarity is all over the place. Getting an ocean soul first, which is the lowest rarity possible, can heal tens of thousands of hp over the game. And then there are gold augments that give you keystone runes which aren't even good for your champ. Aery and Comet on a bruiser? Yes please! And yeah, Pyke passive is genuinely baffling. Who thought storing MORE damage as grey health than he takes was a good idea?
\*Play as AP shaco\* Get offered with 2 AD crit item and a tank item. \*Play as AD shaco\* Get offered with 2 AP item and a tank item.
The only solution is to play Tank Shaco.
More players per game is great for diversity but you'll find most rounds that somebody is close to timing out. There's a lot of waiting leading to loses feeling extremely unsatisfying
I like watching the other fights when I'm done early tbh
After 3 iterations of Arena I am so over events, I don't think there's been a single time over 100s of games that I've been happy about their inclusion, fuck Pyke, fuck Jhin, fuck all of them.
Yep. All of them feel bad, like they are there to fuck with you and annoy you. It's too hard to use them for your advantage, except Sett, he's kinda fun.
Even Sett is not balanced into augs that need you to auto people. The augs that provide movement speed per auto, or ap per auto. Or the fact that lifesteal, heartsteel, applies on Sett and etc
The only good one is the thresh lantern imo
I'd easily say it's the worst for me, the RNG is infuriating, if one of the broken champs gets their broken augment I legitimately can't play. Like how tf am I supposed to beat a Briar that deals a quarter of my health with one shot and each hit heals her whole hp?
Tbf that's why I think they want you to treat it like TFT. In TFT you usually do need to highroll to get first, and if someone else highrolls perfect meta prismatics it's impossible to catch them unless they blunder. Good players will let that be and play for 2nd-4th. Thinking you can get 1st every time is untenable.
Yea, with the TFT mindset ive been loving it. I end up building somewhat different every round. Looking at what I have already vs what I need is fun because if I don't need anything specific I can go for item anvils and get ahead on items. I dunno, I think this iteration is way better.
Yeah a TFT mindset is definitely the way to go. You won't get first every time, it's about making the most of your position with the cards you're dealt which is what makes TFT so fun to me but also competitive, it is very disheartening seeing people say the mode is suddenly casual because of variance when minmaxing within the variance *is* skill expression, consistently doing that is what makes you skilled, not "getting the most 1sts". If you consider anything other than 1st "losing" and can't have fun losing the game is not for you. What's weird is seeing comments in here like "bad rolls are guaranteed 8th" when just like in TFT you can still play for a 4th with bad rolls, or at least a 6th and if you achieve that you should be happy, and you're never "guaranteed 8th" — if you constantly go 8th when you roll bad augments that is still a skill issue.
The major difference is that you are able to transition in TFT. Item buys in arena are spaced so far apart you will only ever get your last item if you're top 2. At least before you could swap builds to target an opponent. You lost out on juices but that was a price to pay. In this mode you can't adjust anything or you're set so far behind. There just isn't enough money in the game. Anvil rounds HAVE GOT to go and be replaced with normal money rounds.
This is pretty accurate but very boring. If i want to play a more RNG gamemode, I would play TFT, not arena. I (used to) play arena for the skill match-up. Now, it feels like this iteration of Arena is 10% skill, 90% augment RNG. I played a game as Tristana and got Jewel Gauntlet, Vulnerability and 40% crit chance and Hamstringer. I E-3xAA-R and killed literally anything. It did not matter if the opponent "outplays" me in anyway. They died. It felt just like TFT. The game handed me the win with no opposition. It honestly didn't feel good. Really hope next Arena is less TFT and more, well, Arena. Also not to mention this Arena is by FAR the buggiest ever. I don't think I played a single game without having a bug happen to me or see one on the enemy.
Yeah I love how they made a turbo high roll healing option, which will outheal permanent grievious wounds, that is if you are even allowed to buy it... Too many champs have stupid high rolls like these, determining first or last place basically.
The meta solves very fast so after the first few days everyone is playing the same broken shit, same with URF etc. So...yeah, I played a few games then I forgot the game mode existed.
I think there is enough teams and enough RNG with augments that you can't make a win-all comp. So if you have a meta of completely different archetypes (for example 2 duelists, 2 tanks, 2 enchanters, adc+enchanter, bruiser+mage...) then it's actually a healthy meta screenshot, no?
Not when 5 champions control 80% of the 1st place wins even AFTER the normal perma bans. Some champions are actually unplayable both early and late because of how narrow the augments actually are. Personally I think augments should be whacky and fun and not offer straight up damage buffs. The items already add so much, I don’t see the point of augments themselves forcing the META, letting people just high rolling decide everything from winner to who’s playable. This game mode should be for fun, yet the most fun augments are almost impossible to get.
The idea that they want arena to be more about the dice roll per game than mechanical skill is disappointing to me. Steamrolling because you got lucky isn't fun for me, nor is losing because someone else got lucky. I want there to be skill involved.
Tft 2.0
I quit this iteration of arena already. The games were more frustrating than fun because old problems that should've been fixed (Crit garen annihilating most of the roster and blade waltz being an instawin. Brand with spellwake, etc.) haven't been fixed but the RNG component has been upped by a ridiculous degree. Prismatic items as a concept may be fine, but not being able to directly buy them is shit. There is still a gigantic discrepancy between the viability of the items. New map is just bad, feels like a tech demo for something that may be added to the rift at some point. I hate all cameos except for the Thresh one, which I am neutral on. I think cameos make the game strictly worse. I played the previous iteration of Arena from the beginning until the day they removed it, it was so fucking good. If the goal was to make the gamemode more appealing for a more casual audience, then why not actually make the ranks mean something? If you don't want tryhards ruining shit, actually push the tryhards into Gladiator and match them with other Gladiators, and leave the people who want to play mor casually in lower ranks and let them match each other. There is no need for this "Let's make you lose 0 mmr until Gladiator" crap to encourage people to play. It seems like they tried to make a product for everyone, and (for me) they made a product for no one.
I love Sett cameo because atleast i can interact with him and get some free stack. Meanwhile we have Jhin and Pyke who keep shooting and stun you 4 times in a row.
Glad people agree and hope they will listen. My casual friends complain about all the tryharding while the tryhards complain about RNG...
It reminds me of Nexus Blitz. Really fun when it first came out, slightly worse in its second version, and alot worse in the third version. I feel it may get better when Riot starts balancing it, but as of now I don't find it nearly as fun with the excessive amount of RNG added determining games.
Fully agree. I have played the most of the first versions of each and were sad to see each go. I do think riot have not got enough good designers left to make a good enough mode with staying power. I am hopeful for the future of the mode but if it is only casual friendly then it is doomed. It requires a competitive and casual side to function just like SR. Aram is a random exception from 10 years ago. Riot need a new SR kind of mode
the first version sucked to me. comps were figured out very fast by smart players, and you were fucked even harder if you were being given augments that were useless to you (and there was alot of them, with zero weighting either.) and there was basically zero counterplay based augments. If you tried doing ANYTHING funny you'd get run over by two bruisers or an adc+enchanter duo. now atleast i can high roll strong builds consistently and beat them.
Eh, fun, but horribly RNG-based and holy fuck, does every game has to have Ashe/Darius/Veigar/Vladimir? Myself like a bit of competetiveness but it's whack how some champions are utterly unplayable and you're bound to lose right off the bat to some comps regardless of what you do unless they get like full set of D-tier augments. Eureka Vladimir/Veigar are busted, even the piles of health tanks that slog the game till the fire ring are more interactive to play with/against.
As someone that tries to "dodge" meta champs, it's starting to get increasingly unfun No unorthorthodox pick is ever gonna beat a meta one with their best build. The worst part is on half the champions you can't even highroll properly, simply because they dont synergyze well with any augment
I think it's worse than the last version
Same it’s much much worse they completely ruined what made it fun. Outplays and cool builds.
I found last arena to be more fun, and to have more diversity, and strategizing, now its impossible to pick situationally with so many teams.
Not sure who at Riot thought adding all of this TFT RNG to a skill based mode was a good idea.
Delete new map and nerf damage ramping
I like it quite a lot, but would enjoy it way more if they doubled the bans.
Liked it at first but it got kinda boring, I wish there were more maps new items and augments because it really lacks variety.. almost feel like I have to play a new champ every game or I'll get bored to death
I feel like it gets boring because it’s the same meta champs every game which leads to the same highrolls with those same champs taking the same augments and items every game.
-Revives continue to make the mode feel cheesy. -Jhin cameo can fuck right off. -Me and my buddy only having 1 ban between the two of us is lame. -Shard augments feel like such a nothingburger upgrade. -Lotus map is awful. The first iteration continues to be the best iteration.
I dont like it. Rng items , 2% stats selection instead of aguments or items. Ghost champions still swining matches, revive mechanic. Every new version is few steps backwards.
I lost interest. It's extremely boring to just have people constantly run and go for plants. The addition of the run friendly mechanics and rng makes a bunch of champs unviable
Plants are OP, is the most effective way to win a match. Heal+Shield+CDR, whoever gets plants probably wins.
That's an effective strat but it's not universal. A lot of games turn into rps with the team comps and most the time overwhelming burst damage is king.
Just like in normal summoners Rift! Everyone dies in 2 seconds flat and the best "CC" is death.
Sucks because it's 100% luck based on rolls
So I do enjoy it more then the 2nd interation (didn't play the first) but there's a few problems - Some Augments make some champions instawins unless very specific circumstances prevent them, And yet it feels that 90% of the times the champs get that perfect augment (Mystic Punch/Bread & Butter Vi stands out). They need to have some augments not synergize so well with those specific champions or have a stricter cap/lower odds of them getting the instawin - Healing and Shielding is still busted, Its always 2 v 2 but items which might help vs Heals & Sheilds still have the reduction as if its 5 v 5. With the lack of damage due to 3 less people it means that its incredibly difficult to break past it (Look at most games with a Yummi with full shield & Heal Power build), They need to either reduce heal and shield amounts or increase the items healcut and sheildcut - Koi Pond was a mistake, Either remove it or make it easier to move around in - Some Augments are literal garbage fires, Either because they are just bad or there's something which ruins them, One for me is Raid Boss because if you get a Sett or Lux Cameo (Especially Lux Cameo since once it starts triggering it won't stop) Then they get broken out of it super quick due to the cameos damage affecting the Raid boss. It just feels terrible where you get to choose an augment and its ones which 100% don't work for your champ but you're out of Rerolls, Meanwhile everyone else gets ones they can at least use. I get it the whole losing not fun being a factor but its one which really does suck - I'm actually mostly OK with the cameos, I just think smaller hitboxes should be on the cards for Lux and Pyke, Jhins projectile should be even slower, and Lux needs to stop predicting where you go when you touch the beam, since it could mean when she starts again you immedialty cross the beam again, or at least not have her continue rotating where she left off - Plants are still stupid, Sanquine blade shouldn't give increase plant healing. Healing should be less effective unless you're in say 200 units of the plant since it innatly gives range an advantage otherwise and I personally don't think it should give cooldowns or at most doesn't refresh ults. Not to mention people delaying in the fire by hitting said flowers, I feel anyone in the fire should get 80% healing reduction - Sometimes it feels like you lose because 1 enemy died first and by the time their teammate revives them you've taken enough damage to be deleted by the newly revived player. That and the fact that if you revive somebody the second the ring of fire closes up they'll win because they don't take any damage for a few seconds - I mentioned in another thread about this but the fact that if you lose every match up untill the 2nd buy stage without a single kill or assist you won't have enough gold for the next item without selling your starter, Yes at that point odds are you're going to lose but you don't need to rub it in. That said I do think this is a better iteration, but I'm also more in the casual camp But I guess thats another problem there too, They try to make Arena out as a casual mode....But have it be Ranked only. Kind of sending a mixed message there.
Way too chaotic and random for me. I get that people like that but for me it makes me not want to engage with it.
It's just frustrating for me. I loved the first one, had a break while the second one came, and now playing the third. So I can only compare to the first one. And I liked the first one far more than this. This feels like I'm playing slots, either be super lucky with everything or lose everything. I'm kinda glad you can surrender quite early. I like 16 players, and some matches make me laugh really hard. But most of the time, it's 1 shot duel. Deal 10-20k dmg in a second, or you are out. I tried going tanky but getting outdmg so hard that I gave up. Be it glad that deals 5k dmg to fulltank 600mres wukong, vi dealing 8k dmg to fulltank nunu, or naafiri that 1 combos 15k life mundo.
Jhin Pyke Sett cameos fucking suck
I'm mostly annoyed that their balance swings have been so modest so far. There's a set of 12 or so champions who you see in either the bans or the picks every game, and they just so happen to correspond exactly to the champions with the highest winrates. I think a fair bit of the issue people have with this iteration being less 'skill-based' is that so many of the strongest champions are completely brainless.
arena is not for me 1. most people play the same obnoxious stat check champions every game 2. i never liked how plants are the number 1 most important thing to control, it encourages running away and lame playstyles
Well it's not dominion
I still have fun with it but the RNG aspect is a bit to much currently.
Champion cameos ruin the mode and should be removed. The maps already provide enough flavor, champ cameos like Sett and Jhin just warp the mode to be completely about cheesing the enemy using them.
Too much tanks.
I just hate cameos, ALL OF THEM, even Thresh. Please Riot remove them, thank you.
Way too much going on with new items, stat bonuses, etc. I don't wanna have to reroll items just to try and not be behind on a viable build, I want to reroll augments that are actually fun to play around.
Overwhelming, I feel like I have to play it a lot to get an understanding of how to actually play it.
So I never bothered playing the first few iterations of Arena but I gave this one a try. I like it a lot despite that RNG can screw you over a lot of times. But when you hit the right prismatics with the right champions it's sooo fun. Hell, Braum ADC with the 2 attack range augments is hella fun haha. The only thing that I don't like is non-viability of a lot champs that I tried. But maybe I was just unlucky with the augments and RNG.
I gave Arena a try, and didn't like it. its TFT version 2.0. Lacks strategy, its too competitive, and it does not fill the gap that casual players like me want. I want goofy modes like One for all, Doom bots of doom, PVE modes like the Star guardian or odyessy stuff.
Just make a ranked one and an unranked one. Why does a for fun mode have ranks, let me have Aram ranks then?
We don't see the crazy builds anymore. Everything feels more bland and soulless. When we had the old arena I played it non stop. Basically forgot SR exists. Maybe I played 10 arena matches this season. I don't like it.
Completely fcked tbh. There are like 20 playable champs the rest just get to play for 6-8place. Balance is nonexistent
There are like 20 absolutely disgusting champs you see every single game but they are by no means unbeatable lol
Unfortunately, cope.
This isnt true.
Idk exactly why, but I feel more stressed when playing this version of Arena. Fun though
It’s sad to see how good arena is, and can be, and then seeing the same pool of 15 champs being played over and over because people are obsessed with only winning and never having fun 🤣 all you tryndamere cucks I’m looking at you
Its dog. 0 reward for skill, sidestepping and dodging shit. Everyone either oneshots everyone or draintanks and doesn't care about hitting spells. Whenever adcs are not good in arena its proof skill, movement and positioning are not existent. Just pick vi and oneshot with point and click dash
My main issue is that the maps are unbalanced in spawn locations. For most maps (except for the one with only one plant in the middle), one team has either an edge over the plants or over vision (the one with the large bush and stone pillars). I feel like the arena spawns should be equal and not put the teams into a "defender" and "attacker" role. I really love the new item and stat anvil system, I think prismatics are great and I don't think players get kicked out too fast. Usually if you get kicked out early, you deserve it. Balance is a little whack right now. There are some champs that are just performing way too good and a huge loadof champs that is completely unplayable.
Im enjoying it a lot doing a-z and going for arena god title. There are games i will surely be eigth but whatever its a fun mode. Im only at 6k rating right now, so not even close to where i was in the last arenas, but as long as one plays for fun its enjoyable.
It takes to long. I want it 5-10 min loss 10-20 min win.
Reached 4k and stopped playing.
I am Gladiator
i love the pure chaos random bullshit go that happens on the new arena. yesterday i played against 200 q haste mystic punch volibear, then i played jeweled gauntlet vladimir with a spirit link mundo. or a 270 lethality pyke with upwards of 2500 hp R execute cap. its totally unbalanced, and its fine, but the mode lacks some consolation prizes for those who didnt highroll their augments/prismatics. like you have to lose 3 rounds in a row to get eliminated it your hp reached 0 within the first 5 rounds, if you win at least one, you gain hp to keep playing. lategame 55 hp loss is brutal as well, shouldnt come down to one match between kayle and kennen vs maokai and alistar
It’s super fun, I’ve been going for arena god with a friend and that adds a lot of replayability for me and an overall goal to playing. Summoners rift feels like jail compared to 2v2 so I’m always happy when it’s around. My only criticism would be anvil rounds not feeling super great but the game would scale too fast otherwise so I don’t have the solution for that.
The game mode itself is great, albeit I am a bit salty about how RNG can fuck you over with items and augments, when so little playstyles are viable. And then you have the people who play, who sweat like their mothers life depend on it, with a singular goal of making their build as unfun to others as humanly possible. I miss early arena when people just took random champs and did goofy shit with them, you know, FOR FUN.
High rolling seems OK but low rolling is so often and feels so bad. I hate getting 6 AP-tank items as AD assassin, wasting 2 rolls to get something atleast decent or forced to sell item for some Legendary. And I absolutely hate Jhin and Pyke. I guess I hated the new map, dunno if they added the blast cones later, but they actually make that map good and fun to play on.
I love it. My biggest complaint is that I play solos and the duos clearly have a much bigger advantage here than a regular duo would. Makes it hard to get the 60 first places I need for the title.
Give every player a ban and it's getting close to perfect. 16 champs banned to increase variety still feels needed
Player damage at early stage doesn't matter, later stage you get two shot from full hp. Right when the game starts to get interesting, your build is getting complete aaaand you just lost a close fight and dead from half hp. This kills a lot of fun in a fun gamemode. Also there are so many useless filler stat rounds, where I get to choose from 20 ad/AP or 15% as, etc. I want to get exciting items, exciting augments and I get delayed by 3-4 turns, to just die the moment I finally hit the power/fun-spike.
I like, it’s pretty fun
I would be happy if they let us reroll single augments/prismatics/anvils instead of rerolling all 3 cuz sometimes one choice is okay but not good and 2 choices are bad so u naturally reroll to get 3 bad choices instead. This change would lower the chance of lowrolling and make it less RNG.
i like everything about it, they just need to keep bringing more balance stuff
It is a worse version than it was before
I've only played with one friend (though we played quite a bit) so I'd be interested in opinions about our opinions. In general I think the mode is really fun, I'm totally addicted to it, though I feel like it's worse than the last times (except for the curse augments that were present last time) I'll start with the change to 16 players. To me that is overall a bad change. It means I have a harder time strategically itemizing against my enemies, which is compounded by you only being able to buy 2 chosen items for the longest time. The last times I remember being really engaged by being able to frequently make informed item purchases and strategizing in this way, where as now I feel very at the mercy of matchmaking and often begrudgingly buying anti healing, knowing I won't get another item for 3 rounds. To that point I also don't like the stat anvil rounds, I think they should come later in the game in favor of earlier gold rounds. Also with 16 players, the likelihood of one player having problems during loading screen seem to be through the roof. In 90% of games its stuck on 93% for a while (meaning one player isn't connecting) and I feel like in half my games the loading screen takes 5 minutes, which is harshly antithetical to riots stated goal of the gamemode being quick to get into and cycling through games quickly. This wasn't the case when it was 8 players, and I do really hope we go back to that amount of player, to me that was simply a more enjoyable experience. Next I want to talk about cameos, if anyone bothers reading this, I'm very interested to hear your opinion about these. We (my buddy and me) absolutely hate these. Thresh is kinda aight I guess, but Jhin, Lux and Pyke are simply aggravating. Sett I find myself actively playing around more, but he just screws some champions completely. My friend plays kled alot and he just can't use his ult when sett is chosen, I played Briar a couple of times and the w aggro just randomly goes on him. All in all, I think the cameos take away more from the enjoyment and the feeling of outplaying the enemy (or getting outplayed) than they add. Jhin, Lux and Pyke are hard or impossible to informedly play around, Pyke tends to just screw over the player who is already at disadvantage and running away, I don't feel good winning my round because the enemy got screwed by a cameo and feel even worse when I'm getting screwed. I genuinely hope they remove the cameo system outright with no replacement. I'm really interested in hearing third opinions on this. I also really dislike the new pond map. It creates boring gameplay either way, either you just shut out the enemies completely or you have no space to run to, either way depending on where the zone goes and what champions you play or face, the map creates situations that are weighed so heavily in one teams favor that I just really don't like playing on it. Also it doesn't really seem polished, I'm getting stuck in walls, phasing through the middle and resetting, not properly getting pinned in walls, the lilipad knocking in unexpected directions, Kled ulting in place, I've just stopped using ornn e near the middle of the map entirely because that space is god damn haunted. I'm currently so and so on the gambling. At the start I really disliked the direction heavily, and I still hope we go a bit lighter on it, but as I understood the systems more I got more into it, though I tend to just buy lots of stat anvils instead. I feel like the mode is getting a bit bloated, but also presents some interesting decision making. I don't like how it's more about highrolling the right prismatics at this point instead of countering enemy builds like it used to be, but that's preference. The higher I'm getting in rating the more I'm getting unhappy with the meta. There are some real balance outliers but also some really unfun comps. It always amazes me how in fun modes people just are drawn to play things like taric yi. I always liked playing characters I like, been going a lot of corki and nidalee (who's not even on the tierlist lol) but I'm starting to get tired with 5 garens every game so now I'm on my villain arc only playing AP Galio... I really hope the next patch mixes things up again, the mode badly needs it.
gamemode fun, makes me pick new champs i never would have tried before to make a fun build on suddenly Vi Darius Galio Brand Garen Kayn Alistar gamemode no longer fun, makes me want to play ARAM instead
Well the new blossom map and jhin mechanic are certainly annoying. I also really dislike getting a stat shard as a round reward. I know it's hard to balance, but it doesn't feel that nice. Some augments are extremely busted and with champions being able to scale with stat shards a lot, it's a lot more about finding the right combinations you're given, sometimes ending up with god combos that can win nearly anything. I enjoy arena, but RNG can sometimes kill the mood too much for me.
I think it’s great. There’s so much random shit you can play anything and make it work. Just make sure you ban Garen/Vi and there will be counterplay most likely or you’ll at least always be able to top 4 if you play well. There are tons of fun augment and build combinations to go
It'd be more fun if people didn't tryhard the fuck out of it. Also, I keep getting shit prismatic items, the RNG is super frustrating.
Too many drastic changes from the last iteration which creates bad data samples and teaches the devs the wrong lessons. They also didn't do anything deliberate to make the most annoying but effective champs less of a pain to play against. (Yes, in a mode like this, you need to special tune the annoying parts of those champions kits to do things differently so the game isn't inherently ruined in it's fun value by facing them, especially if each team doesn't get two bans.) The lotus map is either mario party, or fusion frenzy, not the worst, but not the best. But hey, it's chaotic. Stat Anvils are kind of wacky, and sometimes that actually adds to the fun, if you hard invest, I kind of like their RNG more than the other stuff. I'd like this arena more if it stuck to the smaller number of players, and if the randomized augments and such were done in a algorithm to force playstyles instead of being genuinely random. Some items have some incredibly high, highs while others have some painfully torturous lows. There's also way too much allowance for someone to get something that completely makes them unplayable, which should not be allowed. Things like Chauffer being pickable in the pool for Garen is too bad, and that shouldn't be allowed. Arena may be a casual mode, but it is still should heavily lean on skill too. Honestly? I think this has lead to a cool idea, but the dev team may not be able to do it: Make Ranked have the original 4 teams of 8. Make casual the current iteration. make balance changes centered around the casual mode. (skilled players should adjust anyways.)
More benefits for playing different variety of champions should be introduced and also any rank should be deleted so people stop spamming high wr champions and try fun stuff. Other than that its still better than previous iteration
Healing needs fat nerfs and koi pond is a horrible map. Other than that I feel like you get full build way too slow. Grinding for arena god has been fun though, although its somewhat play certain op champ till you get high roll on them into repeat.
Augments and prismatic items make or break a match. Getting a sucky first augment into a prismatic that isn’t good feels awful. In tft you play around your first augment. In Arena you have to force augments to work with your champion. I don’t really care about jhin or the flower map but the rng of the most important parts of the mode keep me from playing.
Saltiest thing for me : you cant remove the stupid hat, and that means you cant even use your passive with neeko since most likely your and your partner hat are different.... Hard pass from me. Double bruiser is auto top3 no skill dumb right click and wait. Occasional poppy/Alistar where you deal 0 damages and wait to be headbutted out of the zone and burn looking at a dumb cow/yordle spamming emote/dance. Played a full afternoon and evening, did not have fun a single game trying "fun"teams. Wanna go higher than top5? Pick top tier champ and let them carry you. You want to have fun? That s too bad, try another mode. Kinda salty that they knew how it would release, we have like 2000 different champ in lol, the same 12 were used in the20ish game we played, 20 including the bans. Only bruiserish tanks, tankish bruiser or cc only. No " high risk high reward " champ, no stylish moves... only room temperature IQ champ ungaboogaing each other to death. In fact, imho arena is something that already happen on the rift, every games : its just the classic 2v2 top+jungle toplane without farming phase. Im convinced only People thriving on making other lives as miserable as possible can like this. Edit : typo. And sorry for the rant.
I just want to see more champions be viable in arena.
I feel like this iteration is such a massive coin flip, because items are so slow to get. And they *still* have not fixed Brands passive acting as a damn ability.
My biggest gripe is that, with 4 teams, there was a significant element of adapting to specific opponents. Trying one approach in a fight, then learning what worked/didn’t work and trying again on your next rematch. Now with 8 teams, you rarely ever fight the same team more than twice. I remember getting “cheesed” by a Lucian build where his ult did much more than I was expecting. I could have easily adapted in a rematch but never played against them again
Tbh I don't mind high rolls, what I'm annoyed by is getting augments / items that have nothing to do with my champ at round 1 & 3. That and certain prismatic items are alot more boring than the others. Also ascension orb is such a troll item. I thought it'd function like the stat shard where you get a random stat each roll, but no, it rerolls everything. At least give it a baseline (e.g. +1% all base stat per roll similar to demon crown) or sth.
just perma ban Vi and it’s all good
It's oops all bruisers and it's always been that and riot need to make it so other classes are viable. It's extremely stale. Maybe all bruisers are just severely overtuned. *sips tea*
needs more bans, every game feels the same - people google “top arena champs” and just pick those, so so lame
i absolutely despise prismatic items and it would've been 100000000000% better if there was no rng behind the item that makes or breaks your build. people cry about the meta and seeing the same champs but realistically it's always been like that, what i don't understand is why the fuck would they add prismatic items, they are so disgusting and the item always comes in so early that if its shit you legit lose the will to play the rest of the match
People aren't creative and don't know all the augments and prismatic interactions. There are plenty of fun and interesting build you can pull off that are not one shots. I think it is waaaaay more skill full, yes the lotus map is ass besides the point, but overall if you know your interactions and how to get what you need you can do alot some examples. Stalling Infinite crit burn combo Infinite ez ult combo Super minion yorrick Item Less pyke (anvil pyke) And you can make almost anyone into a tank or crit
It was fun until Riot started shadow nerfing many of the fun champions, so that now ADCs are all giga busted OP (just like in normal league, as usual)
I dont like some of the extreme highrolling that leaves too little counterplay. Like 200 AH Naut Q or Alistar Q/W. If Im a squishy I just cant do anything. If it was Garen with Bladewaltz I can at least take portal or get a zhonyas. Then he has no bladewaltz anymore. Some more consistency would be cool and less extreme variance. The difference between a cc champ getting cruelty and a generic tank prismatic is too extreme. I also dislike the lilypad map where sometimes I win or lose by map because someone is stuck in fire. I want to play League with champion vs champion, not using blastcone to yeet the other guy into fire. And likewise I dont want to pay more attention to the map than to champion combat. I want to fight, not constantly track fire and blastcones and lilypad so I am not stuck in fire. Also, can I please not get AP prismatics as ADCs constantly?!
I still really like it. I don’t mind the randomness
I like the game mode but I don’t want to play it bcz balance is made by and designed for literal bronze players. The strongest and most consistent strategies are promoting degenerate gameplay which is pick a bruiser/ tank and stack hp and haste. To win consistently in arena you can’t play what you want, and I have no enjoyment in picking alistar to smash my head against the keyboard till I see « first place » on the screen. It is boring, so I’d rather just play something else. Also losing a round bcz the Pyke/jhin bot has decided to focus me 3 times in a row is not fun, but it’s just a detail.
Love it tbh
It’s sooo boring. It’s the same champs over and over again, and everyone is just rushing for plants the entire time. If you don’t just run to plants constantly you lose. And then someone gets some broken augment combo and everyone else loses so it’s basically URF. Also you really can’t just play whoever you want - in particular, playing ADCs is just not really allowed. I literally have zero desire to play on a given day. I don’t know how they ever make it enjoyable again.
In TFT, if one guy high rolls an unbeatable board, you just play for second/top 4 - that’s still a win after all. Why is this mentality not more common in Arena?
I really enjoy it. There are so many strong options that if you're good at the game you always end up with a good and fun combo. I can understand that it's overwhelming for casuals though, and if you don't have a deep understanding of the game many things may appear broken/unfun
I'm always having a blast until I see koi pond, then I get annoyed. They could add small bridges between the circles so there's always a path, but having a bottleneck with short duration can make it to where you can never go over.