Riot Games had a successful year in terms of organizing the tournament, but in terms of game balance, they made too big mistakes.
Riot Balance
Removed Aatrox’s Revival mechanism
The time when Aatrox lost its ability to revive was in version 9.14, which is when this name Darkin is considered the strongest champion in LoL as well as single jungle and also completely possible.
Aatrox’s strength lies in the fact that the champion has too much healing in the entire skillset to the pearl table that he uses. A strong champion combined with Conqueror turned Aatrox into a true monster.
And what is Riot Games’ decision? They removed the champion’s revive ability, even granting Aatrox more healing. While what they need to do is the opposite of keeping Revival but reducing Aatrox’s healing, he is still weak before he can do it again. It is the ability to heal so large that Aatrox is so powerful, but Riot Games did not recognize and made the wrong decision to deprive revive of Aatrox in Patch 9.14.
Heal ability is still rampant
The ability to heal before was a trademark of some champions like Soraka, Dr Mundo, and Vladimir for example when that champion was designed based on this ability to survive. However, when there are new champions we suddenly realize that too many champions in many positions have the ability to heal.
Healing skills always force champions to pay a certain price to get, be it the HP, Mana or at least have to hit the enemy often to be healed. However, with the runes system, they are free and you do not have to spend any resources to own this ability.
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Heal is even stronger with very few countermeasures at the moment, only a few items reduce healing. They are even a situational item, while healing is showing signs of abuse. Riot Games has tried to overcome such as adding effects to Kled, but that is still not enough.
Continuing to create a “overload kit” champion
Overload kit is the term for one thing that has too many in use at the same time. The creation of supporting champions, item, and runes possessing so many things at once is not a mistake in 2019 that Riot Games has been suffering from for a long time. From 2015 with the Juggernaut to remakes such as Irelia, Aatrox, Akali of 2018 still have this problem.
And in 2019, things are no different, they still create “almighty” champions like Sylas that can steal ultimate, surf and stunning in the same move and even heal! Senna has all sorts of buffs from shield to blood while still dealing good damage, so is Yuumi, Qiyana is the most perfect assassin today.
Thankfully, Riot Games has gradually realized its mistake when the last two new champions, Aphelios and Sett, have a clear set of skills and strengths.
Does not solve the problem of Conquerors
If the above is mostly about the champions, the Conqueror is the embodiment of all the mistakes that Riot Games has encountered. They tried to redo the Conqueror in version 9.4 when the old effect was a bit weak and immediately, this runes has become too strong.
It has so much to do with both adaptive damage, standard damage and healing, which is great for many champions. And in season 9, Riot struggled to nerf this rune that it is still popular.
Conqueror is the biggest reason why Juggernaut dominated the top meta and pushed the tankers into oblivion last year. However, when it came to pre-season 2020, Riot even made not the only Juggernaut but all champions can deal damage using this rune.
The League of Conqueror was born and Riot Games continues to have to balance this runes. The cycle of buff – nerf – rework of Conqueror will continue.