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[UXLZ]

The most enjoyable thing to do if you're playing with people a fair bit less skilled than you is to do janky, weird builds, like AD Malzahar or AP Corki. Not sure how long those will be an option, given Riot's tendency of going "Badwrongfun!" and making alternate builds unviable.

[Jopax]

TBH some of those were entirely deserved as they made the gameplay kinda sucky. However fun for the guy playing AP Yi it might've been he kinda screwed up the game for up to five other people depending on wether he got rolling or not. That kind of feast/famine isn't really fun imho and I'm glad they're trying to tone it down, even if it means removing certain builds.

[UXLZ]

Yeah, certain ones it's certainly understandable, other times... Not so much.

[Sharp]

Most of the time I've played with one person dramatically lower/higher level then the rest of the people in the queue, there's usually one person on the other team that is dramatically lower/higher level too and everyone else is the sameish level as the rest of the team instead of it averaging out the levels. For example, four level 30s and a level 20 would usually be matched up against four level 30s and a level 20 instead of being against five level 28 players. If they're not matched up against each other in lane, this leads to one lane/role[God help them if the good/poor players are jungle] on each team having a large advantage over their opponents, but it goes both ways too. It doesn't ALWAYS work that way, but that's been my general experience with it.

I can't say for most of the time, however the times when I feel like I have been matched with completely idiotic team mates I have found that I have some Gold 2s premade and i'm facing a team of Plat 1s who aren't premade. But I don't normally check for all matches, just the mind boggling ones so statistically you might be correct that most games are matched as you have stated, but I do feel I have had games where it looks like based on rankings it would take a miracle to beat the other team before the match has started.

[frostshotgg]

I can't think of any instances of fun alternate builds that Riot has removed. As some rioter said when Kat lost her AD ratios, "We don't mind alternate playstyles that have a different play pattern and aren't abusive, but we won't support alternate playstyles that are just numerically different or toxic". AD Malzahar has a drastically different playstyle than AP, and it's not toxic as all fuck so it's likely to be kept in some form if Malz ever gets reworked. AP Yi was an example of the latter where he was just abusive as all fuck.

[Putnam]

what does toxic even MEAN in that context

this is a completely different context than the community meaning, it's basically a buzzword meaning "we don't like it and we want to make that sound objective"

[frostshotgg]

Toxic = unhealthy for the game. It means the same thing in both contexts. A toxic community is unhealthy for the game because it makes interaction bad, and toxic gameplay is unhealthy for the game because it makes the game not fun. Toxic was used to describe champions like Shaco before it was used for the community.

[UXLZ]

Kat's AD build was neither of those things. Trist and Yi were ridiculous, but you know what those had in common? Resests. Also, Yi's heal was fucking stupid but that's all on Riot for giving it an absurdly high AP ratio.

[Jopax]

Pretty much, once they got rolling there wasn't much you could do to stop them, especially in pubs. And if they didn't get rolling you'd be playing a 5v4 for all the good they did for their team. One trick ponies don't make for healthy gameplay.

[UXLZ]

Right, I agree with AP Yi and Trist being removed. Not AD Kat. It also removed the option of hybrid Kat.

[penguinofhonor]

AD Kat falls under "simply numerically different". The difference between it and the AP build was largely which of two numbers you made go up when you bought items. I don't know why some people seem more attached to that than how her abilities affect the game. Hybrid Kat could make two numbers go up at once, which is an advantage she had over most calculators, but I don't think she did a ton else besides being able to use Hextech Gunblade when it was OP.

[UXLZ]

Right, let's just ignore the fact that it shifted her strengths around and thus the playstyle she used. Bad! Wrong fun!

That's not to say that either one were all that good in comparison to pure AP, but there was no actual reason to remove them aside from "We don't like it."

[frostshotgg]

That's the thing though. AD Kat played exactly the same way as AP Kat. It was a matter of whether or not Shunpo did damage. AP wound up being straight up numerically better, so when Riot reworked her they axed the AD ratios because they were meaningless.

[Flying Dice]

Honestly I'd rather have seen a rework that brought the two builds into better balance, making her a bit closer to Ezreal's balance where any of the various builds is at least workable, if not particularly outstanding. In particular I think there would have been potential for an anti-tank hybrid bruiser Katarina as an off-meta pick. Alas.

[UXLZ]

Alsa indeed, badwrongfun.

@Frost: Er, no, it didn't. They had different strengths and weaknesses. AP Kat was overall better (that is, she was useful in a few more situations.) but that doesn't mean AD Kat had no advantages to it.

Kat's probably the most egregious case, though. In cases of things like full-AP/Mid lane Amumu they just nerfed it to terribleness. Kat just had her alternate build flat-out removed.