It’s nearly Christmas! People are preparing to celebrate, wrapping up gifts, decorating trees, and sharing in love, friendship and joy. It seems peace and tranquility is overwhelming everywhere you look…except in League of Legends, where the winter celebrations are defined by whacking your arch-enemy into the icy depths of the Howling Abyss.
Yes, the Snowdown Showdown is here, and along the three new wintery skins for Sivir, Lulu and Singed, we’re also getting a new game mode. Or rather, two new game modes. I’m talking about the highly anticipated 1vs1 and 2vs2 modes. The new modes are already live and will be available for a limited time, and they give you the opportunity to finally solve your “omg 1vs1 me you noob” issues.
Queue times are exceedingly fast (you don’t have to wait for as many players), and you’ll find yourself in a grudge match soon enough. The champion selection screen greets you with the familiar 3 champion banning phase, after which you’re up for picks. Now, I immediately had two issues with this system. First, I really fail to see the point in banning champions honestly. I mean, there are over a hundred champions to choose from, and you’re not going to run an elaborate team strategy, so I really don’t get why Riot insisted on keeping the banning phase. It might make some sense in the 2vs2 mode, but for 1vs1, it simply seems like a waste of time.
The other major issue I had with this phase is that one of the two players will inevitably be at a disadvantage. I mean, the normal 1-2-2-2-2-1 works perfectly for 5vs5 games, but here, who ever gets to picks first will most likely get severely counter picked. I didn’t do much reading up on the new game modes prior to testing them out live, and as I had to choose my champion first, I went for a safe-ish pick with Trundle, figuring I’ll have some sustain and mid-game potential. I ended up dueling a Caitlyn. The next change I noticed pleasantly surprised me – the loading screen has a nice touch to it, and instills a Mortal Kombat/Street Fighter feel to the game. It’s a minor detail, but I really loved it.
The match began, I shopped, ignored the hints (after a long time of playing League of Legends, you can’t really blame me), and proceeded to the middle of the map. The laning phase began, with Caitlyn harassing me as much as she could. I had to return to base to heal, and got out-leveled a bit. Nothing to worry about, I told myself. She won’t even scratch me once I stack up some armor. After some further harassment, she leveled up to 6 and got her ultimate. I was already fairly low, hugging my tower, and with nobody to nobly soak up the damage for me, I took the bullet in between my teeth, dying in the process.
And this is where I was surprised to see the “Defeat” message pop up right after the “First blood” exclamation. It seems the game ends when one player kills the other player. There’s no Nexus to take out, and no late-game. Sure, there are additional ways to win as well, by getting to 100 creeps killed first or by taking down a tower first. Still, those seem to happen rarely, as games usually end under 5 minutes.
And this is what I really don’t like about the new mode. It’s not that it’s not skill-based, but rather than it clearly advantages champions with a high range, poke potential or burst damage. The entire thought process in calculating strategies to focus on sacrificing an early game but winning later on becomes obsolete. Your only concern is to get someone insanely strong at lower levels. It really favors players of certain champions, and I find this to be quite a turn-off.
IP gains are obviously low, as games are extremely short. Often it takes more to find a game and go through the champion selection process and the loading screen than the duration of the game itself. My average IP gain was around 5-6 points per match. Of course, it’s also a great way to get your hands on the “win of the day” bonus if you’re in a hurry – assuming that you win, of course. The bonus is capped at a minimum of 150, so don’t worry about doubling 5 IP points.
I’m not bashing the mode in every sense. It did provide for some fun duels at times. But most of the times, it comes down to getting lucky in the champion select screen and picking someone strong early on. My following games I’ve played as Pantheon, and won most of my match-ups, not because I’m a Diamond 1 player, but because of obvious advantages such champions have. I sincerely doubt the mode can be properly balanced under these circumstances, and the only way I’d see it viable for long-time play would be to keep the normal rules of the Howling Abyss map for it (as in destroying the Nexus as the objective).
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How do you feel about the new game mode?