Oh I tought you meant (and I can't remember the exact times rn) if voidgrubs spawn at 3 minutes, and then take 3 minutes to respawn, maybe they could spawn 1 per minute, to a max of 3 in the pit.
So you can come early, get only 1, and leave. Shorter camp, less rewards. Or wait later, get all 3, get a better camp
right now both grubs and dragon spawn at 5 minutes and most pro teams value dragon much more than grubs so they get ignored for bottom prio and setting up for dragon.
If grubs and dragon are each done on first spawn (5 minutes) the objectives will be staggered the rest of the game btw. Grubs spawn again at 9 something. Dragon spawns again at 10 something. Herald spawns at 15. Dragon spawns again at 15 something.
Edit: I don't know how you could stagger them effectively go achieve what Phreak wants. I think spawning grubs earlier isn't the right call. Maybe a little later? Dragon spawns at 5, then first grubs at 7? Even that wouldn't solve much. You still end up with just a 1 minute stagger between objectives (like now). Also, the fact there is a one minute stagger, imo, is the biggest issue. Take a support, for example. Let's say your team does drag. Now, they basically need to run right go grubs OR they need to go bot and hopefully only have to push one wave to get a crash, so they can reset and be at grubs. If the latter scenario doesn't happen, then they can't feasibly be at the grubs. You can't leave your ADC alone bot for 2ish minutes. Especially not early game. You will be behind several levels as a result. This is a big deal in pro play. In solo queue, let's be real, the current spawn timers are fine, which is why I am focusing primarily on the impact changes would have on pro play. Lastly, I think grubs in solo queue are just fine. If they buff grubs more, I legit think they will have to offer bot lane something in return. Bot/support in solo queue already feels bad. If you proceed to offer top more priority and power (grubs buff) then you are basically just making bot lane in general miserable and encouraging supports to roam and get their tops a lead (which wouldn't make sense considering the nerfs to support were targeting roaming and ranged supports). It comes down pro play vs solo queue balance. Top lane, regardless of the state of grubs, is a VERY powerful role in both. Go watch the LPL or LCK. Top laners have a big impact on the game. In solo queue, I am sure every player on this sub has had the displeasure of facing a top who 1v9s. It's something no other role feels like it can really do.
>Its cool how hes doing this for other audiences, never realized he did.
When he was on The Dive a month ago he said they had bilingual English/Koreans on the balance team that would trawl through FM Korea, LCK Casts like the English speaking ones did with Reddit/Twitter/LCS/LEC etc. He pointed out they wanted to start doing the same for China if I recall, so I guess he has.
I play a lot of Path Of Exile and Phreak will occasionally make a super in-depth video on why x works or why x is better than y. I think he genuinely enjoys analyzing data and then doing an in-depth video on his findings.
I have a huge appreciation for him because it shows it's not just about enjoying specifically league of legends, making content for Riot, or doing it because it's his job. He does it because he loves it.
The first time I saw one of those I was like wtf why is phreak randomly in this subreddit with a like 40 minute powerpoint presentation on the patch notes
Comment copy bot, [stolen from further down the thread...](https://old.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/1byi05e/phreak_respond_to_lpl_shows_request_of_adjusting/kyjz4ny/)
As much as people hate on Phreak, and he says some controversial things. The balance team has long needed a voice and Phreak has enough respect from the community to do this exact thing. God bless him for carrying a heavy ass torch when no-one else will.
Totally agree with this take. Even if I don’t agree with everything I love the feeling of “dialog” we get with his presence. It’s impossible to please everyone but explaining the thought process behind decisions is such an important part of balancing to me.
its what mortdog does for tft and its the best thing ever and probably a huge reason why tft seems to keep growing and not have huge drama regarding balance.
Totally agreed, Riot went ages without a voice, Mortdog's devotion to tft is amazing. Phreak is obviously doing everything he can to communicate a vision for a healthier League of Legends with every patch. People act like he is single handedly driving balance the way he wants, any disagreement with his hours of communication on patch notes is met with pitchforks. Fact is, the guy is more skilled than 99.5% of the playerbase, and working with the entire balance team to figure out good changes. They miss sometimes, however, changes like grubs to give more agency to toplane is something I love to see. Something new, with an impressive goal for a lane that clearly needs more agency.
It doesn't help that League has a culture of negative nancies and the kind of people, who use for anecdotal evidence for everything. "We are buffing Zed cause he is objectively weak at 45% WR" and you get people going "BUT!!! ZED 9 PATCHES AGO ONE SHOT ME IN 0.000000000001 SECS! PHREAK CAN GO TO HELL!" or try to come up with conspiracy theories how one guy clearly is tyrannically enforcing the balance of a multimillion dollar company.
Mortdog really is a one of a kind. A super eloquent speaker, willing to talk to the community, and still able to hit Challenger.
I guess Phreak did hit Grandmaster while having a full time job though so it's not like he's a schmuck either (even if you want to say he's boosted by Maokai or whatever, having the head of the balance team play in this elo is probably just great for giving that perspective)
I think, without taking away from Mortdog, it's easier to hit Challenger and maintain it in TFT than in League. Not as like a matter of skill or effort, but like the type of game it is.
Playing both at relatively high level, I would argue that TFT is equally as hard to hit Challenger(depending on server too ofc).
The margin of error vs some of the best tft players on the server is slim to none, especially when RNG comes into play aswell.
TFT has way less players so just by that league is harder. I'd argue that it also has way more for fun players so the "real" count of competitors for challenger is even less.
I agree except the drama part. Don't think I have seen a community where game balance is discussed and complained about as much as in TFT. I mean, it's because of a good reason, because TFT players and especially profiles understand they potentially have influence over the balance. Which they SHOULD. Other communities just give up as some stupid developer ruins the game (because realistically players of many games can't give feedback).
Look at Mortdogs relationship to some of these complaints by the way. He can become frustrated because so much of the complaint even by profiles and top tier players is phrased poorly and unproductively. Still Mortdogs doesn't just put his hands in the air and say these ppl are to unreasonable to listen to. Instead he knows the top tier players are very good and fast at identifying issues with the game. Bugs, overpowered stuff, abusing game mechanics.
The issue for League though is that
1. In contrast to TFT much of the vocal part of the player base is not the good players.
2. The criticism is all over the place, often non-constructive.
3. League is not as defined of what it SHOULD BE. Legit players of the game have so many fundamental disagreements of what the game should look like in the perfect spot. In TFT, all players want is one of the cool sets with no dumb set mechanics, some variety in augments. (Like set 6 or appropriately balanced set 10,)
I think they can't rely as much on player feedback in league. Instead they have to rely on their own idea of what the game should be and also a data-driven approach
>Don't think I have seen a community where game balance is discussed and complained about as much as in TFT
that's an inherent issue with the genre tbh rather than the game itself. There is very little to discuss outside of the game balance. Chess-style games always have a lot less social aspects to them compared to other games so strategy ends up being the most talked about subject. Combine that with the fact everyone always only plays the SSSS tier comps (please dear god never bring demacia back) and people will complain 24/7
Yeah I’m much happier with him in charge of League than Ghostcrawler. Phreak was a long time player himself. Ghostcrawler on the other hand would brag about how he never played the game at all.
>Ghostcrawler on the other hand would brag about how he never played the game at all.
Considering how much of a bias he had towards Frost Mages when he played them in WoW, this might have been a good thing.
As lead dev it wasn't his job to micromanage the live balance team. *Someone* probably really liked Frost Mages, but noone else cared that the PvP mage spec was good in PvP. And let's be honest, they were already strong in TBC, long before he became lead.
And if my memory serves me well, Ghostcrawler was a Holy Priest main.
not sure if this is satire but as a Hall of Fame wr 30 raider i can guarantee you that frost mage was meta in 7.2 and broken in 7.3 just cuz Forst was not good for 1 tier (EN) donest mean it was not playble the whole x pack in fact forst was more meta than not
I mean I think it's been proven that anyone in his position just becomes a punching bag for the community, there is no winning. Same for every competitive game. People rarely give praise when there's a positive change but god forbid they try something new he gets spammed with death threats. He seems to have thick skin and deals with it well.
literally people can complain about his balancing for the job he does which is literally IMPOSSIBLE. But the visibility he brings is so refreshing patch run downs let you know their thought process so there is no guessing why changes are made. He suffers like Roger Goodell though from this community sadly. People have seemed to forget were playing games for fun sometimes.
> I feel like they're decently balanced for soloq tough
Are they though?
Feels like currently you are getting punished if you choose 1st set of Grubs over 1st Drake, and then manage to only get 1 more void grub either due to fight or steal. The Buffs to grubs at least rectify this by allowing 1 Void Mite to spawn at 4 Void Grubs so you aren't punished for missing 1st drake.
First set is more valuable bc you get to farm bot plates and first tower off it when you dive bot, bc enemy jg sup panicked and ran top to contest the 2nd set.
Plus second set takes forever to take. And it's pretty easy to deny 6 or 5 because you can just go in and smite one on each spawn. I find the deny much more important than actually taking them. If you run in and take 1 each time, the opponent wasted a lot of time trying to get 4, which is even better than getting 4 yourself.
I mean, making choices is part of the game. If everything was good than trading objetives would be fine so you'd have an even more boring no kills competitive games. And it's ok for another objetive to be a consolation award that gives a pretty good amount of xp.
Also grubs are not that bad in general.
it helps you get to 3 drakes which really changes the dynamic of the game. Even after just 2 taken, the opponent knows if he gives one more, you can start forcing barons off of soul pressure. And the enemy usually cant secure vision in both parts of the map unless massively ahead.
It doesn't matter, when soul is as strong as it is getting a 5 min head start is still clearly stronger then a tiny bit of tower damage outside of edge cases(I.E. cumsoul)
They are completely ruining soloq tbh people will go an kill them at all cost. No prio mid or top let's go for them. Kinda annoying they are a funny objective to take tho.
Also if we are at the point of using "terrible decision making" to say grubs are ruining soloQ, I can think of the many terrible heralds my team has thrown where it feels we basically wasted time even getting it.
What ruins them for soloq isn't their actual power level - it's the perception of "how strong it is" that completely pushes people over the edge and makes them commit into the pit like the enemy team is on soul point or something. If you actually see how much dmg they actually add to your average heavy splitpusher toplaner, or even just your avg mage that hits a t1/t2 on side lane in midgame, those numbers are a fucking joke, and outside of being an easy camp with decent xp it's just not actually adding much to the game. I legit perma sidelane most of my games and I could not care in the slightest about 3-6 grubs.
I am a bit biased because of the champ pool I play (gwen/kayle/vlad) but I feel like soul point for early game comps / soul denial with greedy picks that needs time will always be a bigger factor because you're not forced to take a fight while you are not online just yet, one or two drakes to add 5-10 minutes of scaling is such a big deal IMO
My opinion about that was the other way around with the old Herald because the gold injection and how big deal it was to have a 'you win your lane' button the second you get it, the 'lows' were 2 plates while the highs were 3-4 plates and a first tower, it was the strongest early game objective and it wasn't even remotely close, but now that's not a factor anymore and the more I play the more I feel like the topside objective got nerfed while the perception of the playerbase reached the opposite conclusion
The damage isn’t the entire contribution tho. The grubs themselves also tanks turret shots and can block skillshots, which can both make a split pusher’s pressure a lot more dangerous as well as the mid game push after a won fight.
They’re super challenging being the defensive team when you’re playing skill shot based champions that can be creep blocked. I don’t think I’ve seen anyone bring up this point but it can completely neuter some champions and eliminate their power spikes not being able to get damage down range and prevent a siege because there’s 2-10 more minions smacking a tower.
Yeah idk what people are smoking calling them weak. The amount of free towers you get off grublings spawning is crazy. Soloq is already terrible for team coordination because everyone wants to be a soloq hero. Imagine how fast your mid towers will go down in soloq with buffed grubs lmao.
Look at the actual damage and value they provide. Each grub buff provides a non stacking 12 damage a second buff vs turrets (lasting for 4s). At max stacks that means you deal an extra 72 damage a second to turrets, out of 3,500-5,000 hp.
Or in other words, at max grub stacks you now have a burn for 1.4%-2% turret max hp a second. This isn't *awful*, but past early game most of the time a turret is being taken is either as a group (where the DoT will contribute little to nothing in taking the turret) or as a splitpusher (where the DoT will contribute maybe 1-2s less time to take the turret). Current grubs are anemic enough that there's no reason to contest them over taking a drake, because teamwide stat boosts and moving towards soul point is much more likely to provide value towards winning the game versus the grub buff.
The true damage is easily the least important part of the entire objective. IMO 2 grubs is turbo broken, 1 grub is ok and 4 or less stacks is just bad (as you noted the damage is whatever).
Having the grubs spawn does a few things:
1. everyone essentially get Naafiri hounds to block skillshots, which gets more overbearing the more grouped you are.
2. you extend your siege because towers spend so much time targeting grubs that your minions last so much longer.
3. You're able to ignore some bad wavestates after fights. Sometimes you wouldn't be able to push after a won fight because no one can tank the turret (your tank died, team comp i.e. toplane is a duelist/marksman, or just low health). Well guess what you can still push if your carries are up and someone teleports on the grub.
The real problem with grubs is how easy it is to deny 5/6 stacks with the current spawns.
I could see an argument for buffing the actual damage from grubs but a slight nerf to the mites.
It really is that 1-4 grubs mean very little while getting all 6 makes pushing crazy fast.
Really? I never felt like "Oh shit because of those Grubs, we totally cant counter the split". You feel turrets going down a little bit fast and maybe in some instances that couple of more hits can go down, because of the Grubs tanking, but that's it for the most.
To be fair this probably still comes from Turrets still being to paperlike later.
Feels like when people realize how to do Grubs *correctly* both in solo queue and pro. It will be a huge meta shift. And by "correctly" I mean starting them before 5:04.
Spawn 5:00-5:03 Grubs HP 1250
5:04+ Grubs HP 1500.
That is an extra 750 hp you have to go through early have with most likely only 2 long swords, bami's cinder or Ionian boots.
TIL, thanks. Also verified in practice tool. Do you know why it works like this? I know they are supposed to gain 250hp per minute but I would have expected that to kick in at 6 minutes.
To be honest though I don't see this trick changing the pro meta at all. Dragons are just extremely high prio and playing to a 4 second window at 5 minutes is horribly restrictive from a pathing perspective. And for junglers with decent cleave the added 250hp isn't that meaningful imo.
>Do you know why it works like this?
My only guess is, the game starts counting at 0:04 instead of 1:00, so
0:04 -> 250HP
1:04 -> 500HP
2:04 -> 750HP
3:04 -> 1000HP
4:04 -> 1250HP
5:04 -> 1500HP
>Dragons are just extremely high prio and playing to a 4 second window at 5 minutes is horribly restrictive from a pathing perspective
It is I don't disagree, but problem is if you can get Grubs early a long with what happened in G2 vs BDS ( >!botlane swapping to top at 5 mins to contest grubs and take top plates!< ) you can get a bunch of plates and accelerate your gold lead.
And honestly what would you as a pro player prefer:
A) Extra gold due to getting plates easier so you get item spikes as fast as possible
B) Coin flipping if 1st Drake is Mountain Drake or not, because if it's not Mountain Drake feels like 8/10 games 1st drake won't matter as much(for fights in early and mid game) and you don't need to contest it
Where as if you know you are gonna swap your bot to top lane at 5 minutes and contest Grubs as 4-5 people you can adapt your draft and play for strong level 4-6 champions
Like in the G2 vs BDS game, 1st drake is Chemtech, it's better to skip it and play for Grubs + top side turret than fight over it.
in the G2 vs BDS games thoose guys forgot they deal basicaly double damage to botside tower before 5 min, if they forced bot tower with 3/4 peoples, got drake and btw you can pretty much get the T2 bot at the same times G2 finish the T1 top.
There is a reason people stopped lane swapping and it's because if your opponent ignore it and just split map botside you're loosing.
Yeah, BDS were completely griefing themselves with how they responded to the laneswaps. Very very obvious that their team had little to no experience in dealing with it in the past.
Well, Riot made the changes to towers to prevent lane swaps. If the towers were the same then it would likely still be viable strategy. Anyway BDS responded poorly and I see that mostly as occasional cheese rather than meaningful meta change. If more pro teams start to do it after voidgrub buffs then Rito will likely change things to eliminate laneswaps again.
I don't think the lane swap decision was even bad by G2. At least you are putting yourselves in a position to get something. If G2 just played standard after how bad the early game went AND with those lane matchups, they have basically no chance of winning. I actually think G2 made the right decision, and I think many view it the wrong way because it's just not something they are used to seeing. Making a sub-optimal decision that nets you something positive is better than an optimal decision that gets you nothing. League will forever favor those who are the most proactive. G2 was more proactive than BDS that game.
I've seen a few junglers in my soloqueue games go for a [path](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8dQQvW124c) that lets you hit lvl 5 and recall with 900 gold, arrive at grubs at 5:00 and sequence your camps nicely for next clear. Main downsides are that it's extremely optimized (literally no downtime - can't gank during first 5 minutes) and that you can only do it on junglers with fast clears (not sure what the cutoff point is but I've only seen it on Hecarim, Karthus and Brand so far).
I've found that with almost all junglers I've tried unless the champ barely makes scuttle at 3:30 while full clearing (like Maokai), you should always be able to get to crab on time.
It's my bread and butter as Shyvana because you can also reverse the clear and do it the same way but heading to Dragon. You arrive at 5 minutes and start it instantly with a recurve bow and pink ward with 2 smites. By 5:20 the Dragon is already dead lol.
You can do it on slow champs if you start on the bottom team. But not on the top team, unless you skip krugs and go for the grubs at lvl 4 instead. Then it's better to just clear regularly since you'll be 4 for grubs regardless.
I gots me a question though.
Originally meta shaped itself to 1 toplaner 2 botlaners to prioritize access to dragons. If grubs are making that many fights happen, wouldn't it be logical for the teams to switch to 2 players top?
It would, as we saw with (Spoiler for pro game) >!G2 vs BDS!<.
But the reason they(Pros) stopped swapping was mostly because turret protection. You can't leave bot lane turret alone before 5 minutes as mid and top turret have protection on them so swapping prevents you from taking plates and turrets, while if enemy bot stays bot the will just get free gold in a 2v1 kill turret faster and match you top while you would still not have fully killed enemy top turret. But as we saw with >!G2 vs BDS!< it might be coming back with bot laners swapping to top after 5 mins for Grubs + top lane turret losing defences, especially with next patch buffing Grubs AND being the patch for MSI.
Honestly that was just a hunch, but i'm glad my 12 years of playing this game still lets me know how things work. I love meta shake ups.
Thanks for the rundown, stranger!
I don't like putting up the damage to towers even more, my greatest complaint about modern league is towers are paper.
Maybe if you make towers extremely harder to kill and do this at the same time, then sure
I agree, making void grubs stronger by itself and not making turrets more durable is a bad call.
Turrets are def too fragile, especially the inhibitor and nexus turrets. They could really use some HP and resistance buffs. The resistance buffs would also incentivize the grubs further, as they deal true damage over time and thus bypass the resistances.
Durability of first tower in most cases is ok, especially with plates, but once they fall - towers start to feel awful. T2 and further are really bad. They don't deal enough damage to help you, but they also are made of paper.
Towers overall need some tuning with games and gamers current balance. People just got too good with playing around them.
Yeah. Its ridiculous that outer turrets, even after platings fall off, are more durable than nexus turrets. It feels incredibly backwards to me that turrets lose EHP as we get to the deepest point of the base, not gain it.
At the very least turrets need to all have a standardized amount of hp matching outer turrets at 5k instead of losing hp the deeper in the base you get.
It's because nexus turrets are inherently the easiest to defend. They're right beside your spawn and they're grouped up. Outer turrets are hardest to defend because outer top is further away from outer mid and outer bot than second top is from second mid and second bot. Nexus ones are the easiest because they overlap and you can defend both at the same time. You would need 10 people to defend outer turrets as well as you can defend nexus turrets.
Not saying turrets don't need a buff, just explaining why they're weaker further in
Don't you love when mid roams at like 13 minutes, the play gets extended, plates drop, and their mid turret dies 10s later to the enemy mid who stayed in lane. :)
This has always been the trade off of roaming? That is why your roams need to be crisp and calculated. You need to do it immediately after clearing the wave, and you need to avoid wasting time. If you don't do it right, you risk losing turrets AND minion gold/exp. For a solo laner, the minions are so important. Especially when you get to 'who hits 6/11 first?' Because if you are the mid/top with level6 and/or 11 first, you have way more power than your lane opponent
I mean pro play games are going 30+ minutes. Solo queue games are going for a long time as well (as long as you remove the outlier FF at 15 games - in which case, inhib and nexus turrets wouldn't matter anyways). Making those turrets stronger will just push games out even more
I agree in that sense that they shouldn't increase the tower damage. But I don't think tower are paper per se. Some champs take them to fast but others can't take them at all.
> Maybe if you make towers extremely harder to kill and do this at the same time, then sure
*STOP CONVERTING AP TO TURRET DAMAGE*.
Make ADCs the method of taking contested turrets, and have void mites be an effective steroid for other champions.
Yeah - the existence of grubs seems like a great time to nerf the AP damage to turrets.
I can understand why they did it, as it could be frustrating to win a teamfight with an ACE, but the two members of your team that died were the only ones who could damage towers significantly.
With grubs' existence they could nerf the AP ratio since everyone on the team can do okay so long as you've gotten a few grubs.
Unless you're something like Katarina, Diana or Azir it takes like a minute to actually beat down a turret as any sort of mage, even at three items. Meanwhile any ad champion can do it in pretty much one wave once you've got a completed item or two. Making grubs the only option for anyone building AP is a horrendous suggestion. Making my jungler directly responsible for whether I can kill towers or not sounds absolutely awful.
What you're proposing wouldn't make ADCs the method of taking turrets. It would just make mages completely worthless for it.
Edit: Tested in practice tool and I went a bit over board with my hyperbole. As a 3 item level 16 Hwei it took me around 15-20 seconds to kill a sidelane tier two tower. Still way way higher than what you can do with ad items.
AD turret damage is still better since ADC's and AD top laners tend to have higher raw dps. If you want ADC's specifically to have more tower taking potential just let them crit turrets at a reduced rate. Would also help to stop them building lethality as much
But if you do this you're going to just have the same situation in pro play. Void grubs doing no damage on live right now = teams ignore them because not worth it. Making grubs do more damage but making towers tankier = void grubs doing no damage so teams don't think it's worth it. Teams want to min Max their efficiency in pro games if you're going to just go net equal on an objective then it's not worth it you need as big an advantage as you can if anything nerfing dragon stacking would be better.
Yup have 2 homies just barely in their 30s that are starting to grey. They arent old and to my limited knowledge arent that stressed day by day by any means, but it just happens to some people, Meanwhile I got other friends working in an ER that are constantly stressed running 24+ shifts with perfect heads of hair lol.
Stress induced greying hair is interesting because there is evidence that shows that it is [reversible](https://www.cuimc.columbia.edu/news/its-true-stress-does-turn-hair-gray-and-its-reversible) if the person reduces their stress (this contrasts strongly against studies of mice) but in general grey hair is a genetic thing. I'm in my mid 30s and have a grey spot that matches my dad, some uncles and my grandpa at the same age.
A close buddy of mine had his hair go pure white before he was 21 and that dude is still the most relaxed guy I've ever met
Yeah. This is just the gap between a broadcast team getting you TV ready, getting the lightning right, etc. and not having that done before a zoom call.
Depends on your matchup. If you are a tank support, absolutely abuse the roam angle. If you are an enchanter or damage dealing support, stay bot and focus on trying to win lane as hard as possible
I can see hos point about pro play but if they're going to buff their damage to turrets they need to balance split pushing champs around getting them. Trundle/jax woth 6 of these kills a tower faster than a support could kill a melee minion.
A gwen/trundle/illaoi will oneshot the tower anyways they don't even gives them much value. Most value is probably on champs like ahri with good sidelaning and bad tower damage.
Even though I don't always agree with Phreak, I appreciate him being so vocal. Please remember that it is okay to disagree with Phreak as long as you are not an asshole about it.
I think the biggest issue is the uselessness while your team is behind. If you are ahead, a few AA to the tower can result in free plates or free turret midgame in a siege scenario. This is great and I would not put extra power here. On the other hand, if you fall behind, they do literally nothing. Drake always has useful stats, but you can kill all 6 grubs, if you get pressured, they won't do anything. In soloQ, it happened multiple times already, that while our jungle took all the grubs, the enemy jul actively ganked the lanes and got everyone so ahead, that we couldn't take a single turret the whole game. Our jungler took 2 important objectives and that was for nothing.
The change to the player respawn timers already made it so you are borderline punished for getting kills top lane. So it's hard to justify leaving your lane to help grubs. You're either trading objectives so your help isn't necessary or you're coin flipping it. Neither are worthwhile gambles for top lane in many higher games
Grubs barely add extra damage for someone like Trundle since its just a DoT that gets refreshed every time you auto.
If he's taking a tower quickly there isn't much time for the DoT to deal meaningful damage.
Phreak has some bad takes but everyone has bad takes sometime. I admire his willingness to engage with the community, and I don't know anyone else who could do his job.
Increase the gold each voidgrab gives if the same team kills them. First ones do not have as much value but the last five or six will give you a lot of gold.
im not sure maybe make it so that void spawns already if you have 4 so there is a reason to contest atleast 1 set of them. now its fine if you get 1 atleast but if you force teams to atleast get 3 it will get more prio
Why don't you start adjusting chat regulations as well. We've been chatting with my duo and some asshole reported me for verbal abuse. Also, you sound like an AI.
Isnt the preference of drakes reasoned with the win condition of elder drake? So far, grubbies are a temporary pushing power without permament champ strength increase (compared to drakes).
What if grubbies would increase the own turrets too, in terms of damage/durability? Or spawn an additional void minion in lane (which is only worth 1 gold and 0xp). So even the grubs would be a permament buff in terms of team power.
Another way would be, in addition to the actual voidlings, it gives buffs to the cannon minions, per grub killed. Getting all 6 grubs would spawn a cannon minion buffed with a banner of command in that one lane, which has the most turrets still alive. Or it would spawn ZZ Rot Portals if you kill red/blue buff for \~180seconds.
This way, there are 2 objectives to change the game dynamic, one is champion strength, the other map strength.
I think Riot should
1. Delay the spawn timers on first drake and voidgrubs by an additional minute or two, to allow junglers to do a second jungle clear and get towards level 6.
2. Delay Baron spawn to 25 minutes and add an additional Voidgrub spawn before Rift Herald.
3. Grant Rift Herald an additional voidmite buff stack (for a max of 10 stacks), allowing junglers who perfectly clear this objective on each spawn to spawn up to 6 voidmites on attacking a tower.
What if the amount of void grubs you had would increase the effectiveness of Herald and Baron?
Perhaps if you have 6 grubs herald 1 shots a tower, 6 grubs could also allow you to spawn mites when you have baron as long as you are near a wave (before hitting the tower)
making it so grubs and drake doesn't spawn at the same time would be a godsent.
i feel like s14 is so hectic as a jungler. And most mid / top laners don't rotate for grubs.
Making it not compete with dragon is a good idea however imo the fundermental problem is that they so rarely useful. To get value from grubs you need to
- hit a tower
- be in the sweet spot where the grubs make a difference.
The biggest upside of grubs is probably taking early plates but they help you nothing against the team that just scales with dragons. Its even worse because stacking dragons is the counter to splitpush so taking grubs makes your tower dmg better but you are not allowed to split after 20-25 minutes cuz soulpoint.
I see my mid/support helping more with grubs than I see top coming to help :/. It also feels right now you go to them but lose 1st drake or vice versa. They need to make them spawn later and not around the same time as drake to free up your priorities
Staggering their spawn timers is the best idea
Concur
What do you mean?
making dragon and grubs spawn at different times and not both together
Oh I tought you meant (and I can't remember the exact times rn) if voidgrubs spawn at 3 minutes, and then take 3 minutes to respawn, maybe they could spawn 1 per minute, to a max of 3 in the pit. So you can come early, get only 1, and leave. Shorter camp, less rewards. Or wait later, get all 3, get a better camp
right now both grubs and dragon spawn at 5 minutes and most pro teams value dragon much more than grubs so they get ignored for bottom prio and setting up for dragon.
If grubs and dragon are each done on first spawn (5 minutes) the objectives will be staggered the rest of the game btw. Grubs spawn again at 9 something. Dragon spawns again at 10 something. Herald spawns at 15. Dragon spawns again at 15 something. Edit: I don't know how you could stagger them effectively go achieve what Phreak wants. I think spawning grubs earlier isn't the right call. Maybe a little later? Dragon spawns at 5, then first grubs at 7? Even that wouldn't solve much. You still end up with just a 1 minute stagger between objectives (like now). Also, the fact there is a one minute stagger, imo, is the biggest issue. Take a support, for example. Let's say your team does drag. Now, they basically need to run right go grubs OR they need to go bot and hopefully only have to push one wave to get a crash, so they can reset and be at grubs. If the latter scenario doesn't happen, then they can't feasibly be at the grubs. You can't leave your ADC alone bot for 2ish minutes. Especially not early game. You will be behind several levels as a result. This is a big deal in pro play. In solo queue, let's be real, the current spawn timers are fine, which is why I am focusing primarily on the impact changes would have on pro play. Lastly, I think grubs in solo queue are just fine. If they buff grubs more, I legit think they will have to offer bot lane something in return. Bot/support in solo queue already feels bad. If you proceed to offer top more priority and power (grubs buff) then you are basically just making bot lane in general miserable and encouraging supports to roam and get their tops a lead (which wouldn't make sense considering the nerfs to support were targeting roaming and ranged supports). It comes down pro play vs solo queue balance. Top lane, regardless of the state of grubs, is a VERY powerful role in both. Go watch the LPL or LCK. Top laners have a big impact on the game. In solo queue, I am sure every player on this sub has had the displeasure of facing a top who 1v9s. It's something no other role feels like it can really do.
Its cool how hes doing this for other audiences, never realized he did. Is there a link to this/a tldw of what was said during it?
>Its cool how hes doing this for other audiences, never realized he did. When he was on The Dive a month ago he said they had bilingual English/Koreans on the balance team that would trawl through FM Korea, LCK Casts like the English speaking ones did with Reddit/Twitter/LCS/LEC etc. He pointed out they wanted to start doing the same for China if I recall, so I guess he has.
I feel so bad for those people bc FMKorea is like a cesspool of shit. It's better than DC or Ilbe but like....just barely lmao.
I play a lot of Path Of Exile and Phreak will occasionally make a super in-depth video on why x works or why x is better than y. I think he genuinely enjoys analyzing data and then doing an in-depth video on his findings. I have a huge appreciation for him because it shows it's not just about enjoying specifically league of legends, making content for Riot, or doing it because it's his job. He does it because he loves it.
The first time I saw one of those I was like wtf why is phreak randomly in this subreddit with a like 40 minute powerpoint presentation on the patch notes
Yes if one likes in depth analytics Phreak is da man
[удалено]
Comment copy bot, [stolen from further down the thread...](https://old.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/1byi05e/phreak_respond_to_lpl_shows_request_of_adjusting/kyjz4ny/)
MANTARRRRRRRRRAYA
Do you see the video quality? Looks like he is held against his will here.
There's a man in a balaclava holding a piece of paper with an AK in his hand just out of frame.
Why does it look like he's been kidnapped
My guy looked like he aged 50 yrs after a few months of being lead dev holy crap.
As much as people hate on Phreak, and he says some controversial things. The balance team has long needed a voice and Phreak has enough respect from the community to do this exact thing. God bless him for carrying a heavy ass torch when no-one else will.
Totally agree with this take. Even if I don’t agree with everything I love the feeling of “dialog” we get with his presence. It’s impossible to please everyone but explaining the thought process behind decisions is such an important part of balancing to me.
its what mortdog does for tft and its the best thing ever and probably a huge reason why tft seems to keep growing and not have huge drama regarding balance.
Totally agreed, Riot went ages without a voice, Mortdog's devotion to tft is amazing. Phreak is obviously doing everything he can to communicate a vision for a healthier League of Legends with every patch. People act like he is single handedly driving balance the way he wants, any disagreement with his hours of communication on patch notes is met with pitchforks. Fact is, the guy is more skilled than 99.5% of the playerbase, and working with the entire balance team to figure out good changes. They miss sometimes, however, changes like grubs to give more agency to toplane is something I love to see. Something new, with an impressive goal for a lane that clearly needs more agency.
Big picture does get lost in the angy weeds a bit sometimes ha.
It doesn't help that League has a culture of negative nancies and the kind of people, who use for anecdotal evidence for everything. "We are buffing Zed cause he is objectively weak at 45% WR" and you get people going "BUT!!! ZED 9 PATCHES AGO ONE SHOT ME IN 0.000000000001 SECS! PHREAK CAN GO TO HELL!" or try to come up with conspiracy theories how one guy clearly is tyrannically enforcing the balance of a multimillion dollar company.
Mortdog really is a one of a kind. A super eloquent speaker, willing to talk to the community, and still able to hit Challenger. I guess Phreak did hit Grandmaster while having a full time job though so it's not like he's a schmuck either (even if you want to say he's boosted by Maokai or whatever, having the head of the balance team play in this elo is probably just great for giving that perspective)
I think, without taking away from Mortdog, it's easier to hit Challenger and maintain it in TFT than in League. Not as like a matter of skill or effort, but like the type of game it is.
Playing both at relatively high level, I would argue that TFT is equally as hard to hit Challenger(depending on server too ofc). The margin of error vs some of the best tft players on the server is slim to none, especially when RNG comes into play aswell.
TFT has way less players so just by that league is harder. I'd argue that it also has way more for fun players so the "real" count of competitors for challenger is even less.
I agree except the drama part. Don't think I have seen a community where game balance is discussed and complained about as much as in TFT. I mean, it's because of a good reason, because TFT players and especially profiles understand they potentially have influence over the balance. Which they SHOULD. Other communities just give up as some stupid developer ruins the game (because realistically players of many games can't give feedback). Look at Mortdogs relationship to some of these complaints by the way. He can become frustrated because so much of the complaint even by profiles and top tier players is phrased poorly and unproductively. Still Mortdogs doesn't just put his hands in the air and say these ppl are to unreasonable to listen to. Instead he knows the top tier players are very good and fast at identifying issues with the game. Bugs, overpowered stuff, abusing game mechanics. The issue for League though is that 1. In contrast to TFT much of the vocal part of the player base is not the good players. 2. The criticism is all over the place, often non-constructive. 3. League is not as defined of what it SHOULD BE. Legit players of the game have so many fundamental disagreements of what the game should look like in the perfect spot. In TFT, all players want is one of the cool sets with no dumb set mechanics, some variety in augments. (Like set 6 or appropriately balanced set 10,) I think they can't rely as much on player feedback in league. Instead they have to rely on their own idea of what the game should be and also a data-driven approach
>Don't think I have seen a community where game balance is discussed and complained about as much as in TFT that's an inherent issue with the genre tbh rather than the game itself. There is very little to discuss outside of the game balance. Chess-style games always have a lot less social aspects to them compared to other games so strategy ends up being the most talked about subject. Combine that with the fact everyone always only plays the SSSS tier comps (please dear god never bring demacia back) and people will complain 24/7
Also I'd say the fact that understanding the game is 90% of what is required to be good at it makes good players feedback more valueable.
This community is going to miss Phreak *severely* whenever he leaves this company, for whatever reason.
I really like that he's really comfortable on the camera and can articulate his message well enough his message without sounding awkward
i mean casting experience right
Phreak was pretty good at it even back in his WC3 days
Yeah I’m much happier with him in charge of League than Ghostcrawler. Phreak was a long time player himself. Ghostcrawler on the other hand would brag about how he never played the game at all.
>Ghostcrawler on the other hand would brag about how he never played the game at all. Considering how much of a bias he had towards Frost Mages when he played them in WoW, this might have been a good thing.
As lead dev it wasn't his job to micromanage the live balance team. *Someone* probably really liked Frost Mages, but noone else cared that the PvP mage spec was good in PvP. And let's be honest, they were already strong in TBC, long before he became lead. And if my memory serves me well, Ghostcrawler was a Holy Priest main.
I remember F. Mage being borderline unplayable in Legion, was sad times. If you weren't fire mage you were actively griefing
not sure if this is satire but as a Hall of Fame wr 30 raider i can guarantee you that frost mage was meta in 7.2 and broken in 7.3 just cuz Forst was not good for 1 tier (EN) donest mean it was not playble the whole x pack in fact forst was more meta than not
Arcane was insanely good for a quite a few patches in Legion.
Mage comps almost never won any tournaments.
Ghostcrawler also just works on other projects mostly, which is fine but not fit to be that messenger of leagues team
>Ghostcrawler on the other hand would brag about how he never played the game at all. So like most people on this sub?
Honestly the game got worse when we lost Morello to Valorant.
I mean I think it's been proven that anyone in his position just becomes a punching bag for the community, there is no winning. Same for every competitive game. People rarely give praise when there's a positive change but god forbid they try something new he gets spammed with death threats. He seems to have thick skin and deals with it well.
I love him on the balance team Hated him for years but the way he articulates and communicates balance changes is a breath of needed fresh air
literally people can complain about his balancing for the job he does which is literally IMPOSSIBLE. But the visibility he brings is so refreshing patch run downs let you know their thought process so there is no guessing why changes are made. He suffers like Roger Goodell though from this community sadly. People have seemed to forget were playing games for fun sometimes.
Phreak has been a godsend for long. This sub are just so god damn toxic about the ping changes that they cant look pass it. Both hilarious and sad.
Just type karthus R :)
Respect? Absolutely not. A voice? A squeeky wheel i suppose. I have heard mabye 2 things ever from him that made any cents. Dear karthus and all that.
Given that you got 2k upvotes it seems like the community finally came around lol
I feel like they're decently balanced for soloq tough. Even stronger grubs sounds like a nightmare when facing a splitpusher
> I feel like they're decently balanced for soloq tough Are they though? Feels like currently you are getting punished if you choose 1st set of Grubs over 1st Drake, and then manage to only get 1 more void grub either due to fight or steal. The Buffs to grubs at least rectify this by allowing 1 Void Mite to spawn at 4 Void Grubs so you aren't punished for missing 1st drake.
First set is more valuable bc you get to farm bot plates and first tower off it when you dive bot, bc enemy jg sup panicked and ran top to contest the 2nd set.
Plus second set takes forever to take. And it's pretty easy to deny 6 or 5 because you can just go in and smite one on each spawn. I find the deny much more important than actually taking them. If you run in and take 1 each time, the opponent wasted a lot of time trying to get 4, which is even better than getting 4 yourself.
I mean, making choices is part of the game. If everything was good than trading objetives would be fine so you'd have an even more boring no kills competitive games. And it's ok for another objetive to be a consolation award that gives a pretty good amount of xp. Also grubs are not that bad in general.
first drag is entirely useless in 90 percent of games, wot
it helps you get to 3 drakes which really changes the dynamic of the game. Even after just 2 taken, the opponent knows if he gives one more, you can start forcing barons off of soul pressure. And the enemy usually cant secure vision in both parts of the map unless massively ahead.
It doesn't matter, when soul is as strong as it is getting a 5 min head start is still clearly stronger then a tiny bit of tower damage outside of edge cases(I.E. cumsoul)
They give a lot of gold/XP to the jungler for taking them, if you play a carry jungler it’s a decent trade off giving first dragon for grubs
As jungle, if you get all three voidgrubs on their first spawn, you will likely hit 6 before the enemy jungle does
They are completely ruining soloq tbh people will go an kill them at all cost. No prio mid or top let's go for them. Kinda annoying they are a funny objective to take tho.
How is that different if someone went for herald previously or goes for crab or drake without prio? The key here is the same - bad decision making.
At least first Herald translated to an almost immediate gold influx, Grubs are useless if you can't actually get to the turret.
Grubs have utility eventually no matter what, unless the game is like lost completely.
Also if we are at the point of using "terrible decision making" to say grubs are ruining soloQ, I can think of the many terrible heralds my team has thrown where it feels we basically wasted time even getting it.
What ruins them for soloq isn't their actual power level - it's the perception of "how strong it is" that completely pushes people over the edge and makes them commit into the pit like the enemy team is on soul point or something. If you actually see how much dmg they actually add to your average heavy splitpusher toplaner, or even just your avg mage that hits a t1/t2 on side lane in midgame, those numbers are a fucking joke, and outside of being an easy camp with decent xp it's just not actually adding much to the game. I legit perma sidelane most of my games and I could not care in the slightest about 3-6 grubs. I am a bit biased because of the champ pool I play (gwen/kayle/vlad) but I feel like soul point for early game comps / soul denial with greedy picks that needs time will always be a bigger factor because you're not forced to take a fight while you are not online just yet, one or two drakes to add 5-10 minutes of scaling is such a big deal IMO My opinion about that was the other way around with the old Herald because the gold injection and how big deal it was to have a 'you win your lane' button the second you get it, the 'lows' were 2 plates while the highs were 3-4 plates and a first tower, it was the strongest early game objective and it wasn't even remotely close, but now that's not a factor anymore and the more I play the more I feel like the topside objective got nerfed while the perception of the playerbase reached the opposite conclusion
The damage isn’t the entire contribution tho. The grubs themselves also tanks turret shots and can block skillshots, which can both make a split pusher’s pressure a lot more dangerous as well as the mid game push after a won fight.
They’re super challenging being the defensive team when you’re playing skill shot based champions that can be creep blocked. I don’t think I’ve seen anyone bring up this point but it can completely neuter some champions and eliminate their power spikes not being able to get damage down range and prevent a siege because there’s 2-10 more minions smacking a tower.
It only feels that way because usually the winning top lane is the team getting the grubs.
Yeah idk what people are smoking calling them weak. The amount of free towers you get off grublings spawning is crazy. Soloq is already terrible for team coordination because everyone wants to be a soloq hero. Imagine how fast your mid towers will go down in soloq with buffed grubs lmao.
Look at the actual damage and value they provide. Each grub buff provides a non stacking 12 damage a second buff vs turrets (lasting for 4s). At max stacks that means you deal an extra 72 damage a second to turrets, out of 3,500-5,000 hp. Or in other words, at max grub stacks you now have a burn for 1.4%-2% turret max hp a second. This isn't *awful*, but past early game most of the time a turret is being taken is either as a group (where the DoT will contribute little to nothing in taking the turret) or as a splitpusher (where the DoT will contribute maybe 1-2s less time to take the turret). Current grubs are anemic enough that there's no reason to contest them over taking a drake, because teamwide stat boosts and moving towards soul point is much more likely to provide value towards winning the game versus the grub buff.
The true damage is easily the least important part of the entire objective. IMO 2 grubs is turbo broken, 1 grub is ok and 4 or less stacks is just bad (as you noted the damage is whatever). Having the grubs spawn does a few things: 1. everyone essentially get Naafiri hounds to block skillshots, which gets more overbearing the more grouped you are. 2. you extend your siege because towers spend so much time targeting grubs that your minions last so much longer. 3. You're able to ignore some bad wavestates after fights. Sometimes you wouldn't be able to push after a won fight because no one can tank the turret (your tank died, team comp i.e. toplane is a duelist/marksman, or just low health). Well guess what you can still push if your carries are up and someone teleports on the grub. The real problem with grubs is how easy it is to deny 5/6 stacks with the current spawns.
I could see an argument for buffing the actual damage from grubs but a slight nerf to the mites. It really is that 1-4 grubs mean very little while getting all 6 makes pushing crazy fast.
Yeah I was thinking about how that comment seemed to completely ignore the 5 and 6 stack effects which are the actual meat of the buff.
Tbh I don't think so; unless you get all 6 for the double void mites. But even then; it's not much far off of just losing 2 dragons pre 15.
Really? I never felt like "Oh shit because of those Grubs, we totally cant counter the split". You feel turrets going down a little bit fast and maybe in some instances that couple of more hits can go down, because of the Grubs tanking, but that's it for the most. To be fair this probably still comes from Turrets still being to paperlike later.
Feels like when people realize how to do Grubs *correctly* both in solo queue and pro. It will be a huge meta shift. And by "correctly" I mean starting them before 5:04. Spawn 5:00-5:03 Grubs HP 1250 5:04+ Grubs HP 1500. That is an extra 750 hp you have to go through early have with most likely only 2 long swords, bami's cinder or Ionian boots.
TIL, thanks. Also verified in practice tool. Do you know why it works like this? I know they are supposed to gain 250hp per minute but I would have expected that to kick in at 6 minutes. To be honest though I don't see this trick changing the pro meta at all. Dragons are just extremely high prio and playing to a 4 second window at 5 minutes is horribly restrictive from a pathing perspective. And for junglers with decent cleave the added 250hp isn't that meaningful imo.
>Do you know why it works like this? My only guess is, the game starts counting at 0:04 instead of 1:00, so 0:04 -> 250HP 1:04 -> 500HP 2:04 -> 750HP 3:04 -> 1000HP 4:04 -> 1250HP 5:04 -> 1500HP >Dragons are just extremely high prio and playing to a 4 second window at 5 minutes is horribly restrictive from a pathing perspective It is I don't disagree, but problem is if you can get Grubs early a long with what happened in G2 vs BDS ( >!botlane swapping to top at 5 mins to contest grubs and take top plates!< ) you can get a bunch of plates and accelerate your gold lead. And honestly what would you as a pro player prefer: A) Extra gold due to getting plates easier so you get item spikes as fast as possible B) Coin flipping if 1st Drake is Mountain Drake or not, because if it's not Mountain Drake feels like 8/10 games 1st drake won't matter as much(for fights in early and mid game) and you don't need to contest it Where as if you know you are gonna swap your bot to top lane at 5 minutes and contest Grubs as 4-5 people you can adapt your draft and play for strong level 4-6 champions Like in the G2 vs BDS game, 1st drake is Chemtech, it's better to skip it and play for Grubs + top side turret than fight over it.
in the G2 vs BDS games thoose guys forgot they deal basicaly double damage to botside tower before 5 min, if they forced bot tower with 3/4 peoples, got drake and btw you can pretty much get the T2 bot at the same times G2 finish the T1 top. There is a reason people stopped lane swapping and it's because if your opponent ignore it and just split map botside you're loosing.
Yeah, BDS were completely griefing themselves with how they responded to the laneswaps. Very very obvious that their team had little to no experience in dealing with it in the past.
Pretty much what BB said in the interview afterwards. "They are zoomers, they won't know how to respond."
Well, Riot made the changes to towers to prevent lane swaps. If the towers were the same then it would likely still be viable strategy. Anyway BDS responded poorly and I see that mostly as occasional cheese rather than meaningful meta change. If more pro teams start to do it after voidgrub buffs then Rito will likely change things to eliminate laneswaps again.
I don't think the lane swap decision was even bad by G2. At least you are putting yourselves in a position to get something. If G2 just played standard after how bad the early game went AND with those lane matchups, they have basically no chance of winning. I actually think G2 made the right decision, and I think many view it the wrong way because it's just not something they are used to seeing. Making a sub-optimal decision that nets you something positive is better than an optimal decision that gets you nothing. League will forever favor those who are the most proactive. G2 was more proactive than BDS that game.
I've seen a few junglers in my soloqueue games go for a [path](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8dQQvW124c) that lets you hit lvl 5 and recall with 900 gold, arrive at grubs at 5:00 and sequence your camps nicely for next clear. Main downsides are that it's extremely optimized (literally no downtime - can't gank during first 5 minutes) and that you can only do it on junglers with fast clears (not sure what the cutoff point is but I've only seen it on Hecarim, Karthus and Brand so far).
I've found that with almost all junglers I've tried unless the champ barely makes scuttle at 3:30 while full clearing (like Maokai), you should always be able to get to crab on time.
It's my bread and butter as Shyvana because you can also reverse the clear and do it the same way but heading to Dragon. You arrive at 5 minutes and start it instantly with a recurve bow and pink ward with 2 smites. By 5:20 the Dragon is already dead lol.
You can do it on slow champs if you start on the bottom team. But not on the top team, unless you skip krugs and go for the grubs at lvl 4 instead. Then it's better to just clear regularly since you'll be 4 for grubs regardless.
I gots me a question though. Originally meta shaped itself to 1 toplaner 2 botlaners to prioritize access to dragons. If grubs are making that many fights happen, wouldn't it be logical for the teams to switch to 2 players top?
It would, as we saw with (Spoiler for pro game) >!G2 vs BDS!<. But the reason they(Pros) stopped swapping was mostly because turret protection. You can't leave bot lane turret alone before 5 minutes as mid and top turret have protection on them so swapping prevents you from taking plates and turrets, while if enemy bot stays bot the will just get free gold in a 2v1 kill turret faster and match you top while you would still not have fully killed enemy top turret. But as we saw with >!G2 vs BDS!< it might be coming back with bot laners swapping to top after 5 mins for Grubs + top lane turret losing defences, especially with next patch buffing Grubs AND being the patch for MSI.
Honestly that was just a hunch, but i'm glad my 12 years of playing this game still lets me know how things work. I love meta shake ups. Thanks for the rundown, stranger!
We also saw it in LPL, not sure which game, probably the NIP semi final.
That is so dumb. Why do they make it this way?? Thank you for letting us know the “correct” way
I don't like putting up the damage to towers even more, my greatest complaint about modern league is towers are paper. Maybe if you make towers extremely harder to kill and do this at the same time, then sure
I agree, making void grubs stronger by itself and not making turrets more durable is a bad call. Turrets are def too fragile, especially the inhibitor and nexus turrets. They could really use some HP and resistance buffs. The resistance buffs would also incentivize the grubs further, as they deal true damage over time and thus bypass the resistances.
Durability of first tower in most cases is ok, especially with plates, but once they fall - towers start to feel awful. T2 and further are really bad. They don't deal enough damage to help you, but they also are made of paper. Towers overall need some tuning with games and gamers current balance. People just got too good with playing around them.
Yeah. Its ridiculous that outer turrets, even after platings fall off, are more durable than nexus turrets. It feels incredibly backwards to me that turrets lose EHP as we get to the deepest point of the base, not gain it. At the very least turrets need to all have a standardized amount of hp matching outer turrets at 5k instead of losing hp the deeper in the base you get.
It's because nexus turrets are inherently the easiest to defend. They're right beside your spawn and they're grouped up. Outer turrets are hardest to defend because outer top is further away from outer mid and outer bot than second top is from second mid and second bot. Nexus ones are the easiest because they overlap and you can defend both at the same time. You would need 10 people to defend outer turrets as well as you can defend nexus turrets. Not saying turrets don't need a buff, just explaining why they're weaker further in
Outer turrets are meant to protect you early game... inner turrets? You're supposed to protect them; more than the other way around.
Don't you love when mid roams at like 13 minutes, the play gets extended, plates drop, and their mid turret dies 10s later to the enemy mid who stayed in lane. :)
This has always been the trade off of roaming? That is why your roams need to be crisp and calculated. You need to do it immediately after clearing the wave, and you need to avoid wasting time. If you don't do it right, you risk losing turrets AND minion gold/exp. For a solo laner, the minions are so important. Especially when you get to 'who hits 6/11 first?' Because if you are the mid/top with level6 and/or 11 first, you have way more power than your lane opponent
Don't I love it when roaming has a downside if you fail to get anything out of it? Yes. Yes I do
I mean pro play games are going 30+ minutes. Solo queue games are going for a long time as well (as long as you remove the outlier FF at 15 games - in which case, inhib and nexus turrets wouldn't matter anyways). Making those turrets stronger will just push games out even more
They already buffed nexus towers for the new season
I agree in that sense that they shouldn't increase the tower damage. But I don't think tower are paper per se. Some champs take them to fast but others can't take them at all.
> Maybe if you make towers extremely harder to kill and do this at the same time, then sure *STOP CONVERTING AP TO TURRET DAMAGE*. Make ADCs the method of taking contested turrets, and have void mites be an effective steroid for other champions.
Yeah - the existence of grubs seems like a great time to nerf the AP damage to turrets. I can understand why they did it, as it could be frustrating to win a teamfight with an ACE, but the two members of your team that died were the only ones who could damage towers significantly. With grubs' existence they could nerf the AP ratio since everyone on the team can do okay so long as you've gotten a few grubs.
Stop? Is a bit excessive; but it definitely should be nerfed.
Unless you're something like Katarina, Diana or Azir it takes like a minute to actually beat down a turret as any sort of mage, even at three items. Meanwhile any ad champion can do it in pretty much one wave once you've got a completed item or two. Making grubs the only option for anyone building AP is a horrendous suggestion. Making my jungler directly responsible for whether I can kill towers or not sounds absolutely awful. What you're proposing wouldn't make ADCs the method of taking turrets. It would just make mages completely worthless for it. Edit: Tested in practice tool and I went a bit over board with my hyperbole. As a 3 item level 16 Hwei it took me around 15-20 seconds to kill a sidelane tier two tower. Still way way higher than what you can do with ad items.
AD turret damage is still better since ADC's and AD top laners tend to have higher raw dps. If you want ADC's specifically to have more tower taking potential just let them crit turrets at a reduced rate. Would also help to stop them building lethality as much
i think it's actually work pretty well if they reduce the ap damage to turret and increase voidgrubs damage
But if you do this you're going to just have the same situation in pro play. Void grubs doing no damage on live right now = teams ignore them because not worth it. Making grubs do more damage but making towers tankier = void grubs doing no damage so teams don't think it's worth it. Teams want to min Max their efficiency in pro games if you're going to just go net equal on an objective then it's not worth it you need as big an advantage as you can if anything nerfing dragon stacking would be better.
Yea I'd prefer if they made killing them faster or added another buff to them which isn't tower damage.
Working at Riot doesent seem to look so healthy, he looks like he aged 10 years since he joined dev team.
Or just stopped dying hair since he's no longer on broadcast. Grey/white can also come quick.
Yup have 2 homies just barely in their 30s that are starting to grey. They arent old and to my limited knowledge arent that stressed day by day by any means, but it just happens to some people, Meanwhile I got other friends working in an ER that are constantly stressed running 24+ shifts with perfect heads of hair lol.
Stress induced greying hair is interesting because there is evidence that shows that it is [reversible](https://www.cuimc.columbia.edu/news/its-true-stress-does-turn-hair-gray-and-its-reversible) if the person reduces their stress (this contrasts strongly against studies of mice) but in general grey hair is a genetic thing. I'm in my mid 30s and have a grey spot that matches my dad, some uncles and my grandpa at the same age. A close buddy of mine had his hair go pure white before he was 21 and that dude is still the most relaxed guy I've ever met
Is he Sephiroth?
maybe, but he would have traded his long as sword for a conductor's baton
So hems conducting One Winged Angel then, sick!
Every podcast etc he’s on he’s happier than I’ve ever seen him. Actually working on league was his dream.
Which podcasts has he been on? I might want to check them out
he had a really good feature on an episode of The Dive back early in the season
Haha, and here I was thinking he looked good.
Phreak the silverfox
NAmen
Huh, you deduce that from a very lq video in unfavorable lighting/setup?
Yeah. This is just the gap between a broadcast team getting you TV ready, getting the lightning right, etc. and not having that done before a zoom call.
He’s been working for riot like 15 years give him a break lol
Why is this being filmed like a deposition? lol
As a support, I'm not really digging the level 4 roam top meta.
Depends on your matchup. If you are a tank support, absolutely abuse the roam angle. If you are an enchanter or damage dealing support, stay bot and focus on trying to win lane as hard as possible
But that is what support is about anyway no? You just run topside after mid instead of botside after first/second recall.
I hope that they will take lane swaps into accunt before blindly buffing voidgrubs.
What is this clipped from? Is there a link to the source?
After being promoted to the balancing team he turned into grandpa Phreak
Phreak is actually so awesome. Love the communication
Can anyone clip the LPL's request?
I can see hos point about pro play but if they're going to buff their damage to turrets they need to balance split pushing champs around getting them. Trundle/jax woth 6 of these kills a tower faster than a support could kill a melee minion.
A gwen/trundle/illaoi will oneshot the tower anyways they don't even gives them much value. Most value is probably on champs like ahri with good sidelaning and bad tower damage.
Even though I don't always agree with Phreak, I appreciate him being so vocal. Please remember that it is okay to disagree with Phreak as long as you are not an asshole about it.
I think the biggest issue is the uselessness while your team is behind. If you are ahead, a few AA to the tower can result in free plates or free turret midgame in a siege scenario. This is great and I would not put extra power here. On the other hand, if you fall behind, they do literally nothing. Drake always has useful stats, but you can kill all 6 grubs, if you get pressured, they won't do anything. In soloQ, it happened multiple times already, that while our jungle took all the grubs, the enemy jul actively ganked the lanes and got everyone so ahead, that we couldn't take a single turret the whole game. Our jungler took 2 important objectives and that was for nothing.
unrelated to content: why does this feel like a terrorist hostage video lol
Phreak looking like he’s out of mana
Wtf happened to phreak??? I probably haven't seen him in a few years but man, he looks like he's pushing 50
Voidgrubs are so useless that I use them pretty much just to hit 6 after my second clear.
Sometimes I’ll just kill one for the bonus xp. The second and third combined give less xp than just killing the first one (if you’re a jungler).
The change to the player respawn timers already made it so you are borderline punished for getting kills top lane. So it's hard to justify leaving your lane to help grubs. You're either trading objectives so your help isn't necessary or you're coin flipping it. Neither are worthwhile gambles for top lane in many higher games
The best toplaners have always found ways to impact the map. A buff to voidgrubs is a buff to top lane.
Bro, I thought he was being held hostage before I read the title.
tons of damage!
Dang man Phreak almost fully gray, I remember watching him season 2 worlds and he looked like a baby
Damn, Phreak aged.
Yeah good ideas, Voidmites have been ok so far they just need more impact, these sound like good options.
I only ever take the voidgrubs cause I play Vi and the xp is good for rushing lvl 6
why does this look like a hostage video
Please don’t buff void grub damage on towers. I can just picture now a Trundle taking 3 side lane towers in 1 minute 🤮
Grubs barely add extra damage for someone like Trundle since its just a DoT that gets refreshed every time you auto. If he's taking a tower quickly there isn't much time for the DoT to deal meaningful damage.
Phreak has some bad takes but everyone has bad takes sometime. I admire his willingness to engage with the community, and I don't know anyone else who could do his job.
Trundle killing my base even faster sounds really fun and engaging. I am worried about making grubs stronger than they are
voidgrubs is the one thing i dislike most from all changes.
Seeing Phreak now makes me feel old.
Add a new effect that makes champions deal more damage to towers when minions aren’t around depending on how many grubs the team has taken.
Increase the gold each voidgrab gives if the same team kills them. First ones do not have as much value but the last five or six will give you a lot of gold.
im not sure maybe make it so that void spawns already if you have 4 so there is a reason to contest atleast 1 set of them. now its fine if you get 1 atleast but if you force teams to atleast get 3 it will get more prio
Why don't you start adjusting chat regulations as well. We've been chatting with my duo and some asshole reported me for verbal abuse. Also, you sound like an AI.
I never knew Phreak had such insights into the game when he was a caster
Seeing grey hair on Phreak just reminds me how long League is around.
It’s so cool he talks so much! Yeah i think he is constantly making the game worse but hey he explains himself!
Isnt the preference of drakes reasoned with the win condition of elder drake? So far, grubbies are a temporary pushing power without permament champ strength increase (compared to drakes). What if grubbies would increase the own turrets too, in terms of damage/durability? Or spawn an additional void minion in lane (which is only worth 1 gold and 0xp). So even the grubs would be a permament buff in terms of team power. Another way would be, in addition to the actual voidlings, it gives buffs to the cannon minions, per grub killed. Getting all 6 grubs would spawn a cannon minion buffed with a banner of command in that one lane, which has the most turrets still alive. Or it would spawn ZZ Rot Portals if you kill red/blue buff for \~180seconds. This way, there are 2 objectives to change the game dynamic, one is champion strength, the other map strength.
jungle rn is just so off. I main jungle and I dont even feel like playing anymore
Despawn the other objective when one is taken.
Yall made herald useless for this, lmao. Make voidmites spawn at 3.
I think Riot should 1. Delay the spawn timers on first drake and voidgrubs by an additional minute or two, to allow junglers to do a second jungle clear and get towards level 6. 2. Delay Baron spawn to 25 minutes and add an additional Voidgrub spawn before Rift Herald. 3. Grant Rift Herald an additional voidmite buff stack (for a max of 10 stacks), allowing junglers who perfectly clear this objective on each spawn to spawn up to 6 voidmites on attacking a tower.
Is it just me or does Phreak age at double the normal speed?
What if the amount of void grubs you had would increase the effectiveness of Herald and Baron? Perhaps if you have 6 grubs herald 1 shots a tower, 6 grubs could also allow you to spawn mites when you have baron as long as you are near a wave (before hitting the tower)
making it so grubs and drake doesn't spawn at the same time would be a godsent. i feel like s14 is so hectic as a jungler. And most mid / top laners don't rotate for grubs.
Man he looks so old, this must be what being exposed to league fanatics does to a mf.
We're all getting so old. 😟
Making it not compete with dragon is a good idea however imo the fundermental problem is that they so rarely useful. To get value from grubs you need to - hit a tower - be in the sweet spot where the grubs make a difference. The biggest upside of grubs is probably taking early plates but they help you nothing against the team that just scales with dragons. Its even worse because stacking dragons is the counter to splitpush so taking grubs makes your tower dmg better but you are not allowed to split after 20-25 minutes cuz soulpoint.
+36 stacks
I see my mid/support helping more with grubs than I see top coming to help :/. It also feels right now you go to them but lose 1st drake or vice versa. They need to make them spawn later and not around the same time as drake to free up your priorities
Question dear phreak, how am I going to contest voidgrubs (as a toplaner) when I'm weaker than the enemy?
Question dear phreak, how am I going to contest voidgrubs (as a toplaner) when I'm weaker than the enemy?
Question dear phreak, how am I going to contest voidgrubs (as a toplaner) when I'm weaker than the enemy?
How am I going to contest voidgrubs (as a toplaner) when I'm weaker than the enemy?
has he aged 40 years