Remember when it used to be a fairly frequent activable item that was used to counter devastating ultimates like Koshka’s, or to avoid being caught in a bad position by Catherine’s A or Yates B? Well, the cooldown of both reflex and aegis are so unreasonably high that celestial shroud ends up being the better item to buy despite not being activable on command. Shroud is meant to stop being cc’d to death as soon as you are on screen by having a poppable anti-cc barrier which needs to be put away first, which will give you some time to either run or avoid being CC chained. But with the insane cooldown of one of the items that should help heroes susceptible to CC somewhat survive the early phases of the game, they might as well just buy Shroud 100% of the time because even though it is easy for your enemies to take it away, at least it’s guaranteed to be back by the time you get into the next team fight. Block items need a cooldown buff, even if it means that cc-chaining will be a little harder to pull off because let’s face it, ever single non-ranged hero that has been recently released has some form of cc. When you have so much cc and so little to counter it, the game doesn’t feel fair at all.
Looking at mobil bing bong, the reason why most if not all meta heroes are meta is because their cc. It’s not fun being able to see the enemy coming and not being able to do ANYTHING against him because you have no way to counter him at all. I think reflex block is revolutionary as it rewards skilled players by allowing them to avoid getting cc’d by having good timing and thinking ahead. In all honesty, when I play Yates and someone casually uses block so I don’t get him, or when I’m about to ult someone as Catherine but then he blocks and runs away, I don’t feel mad at all. I don’t think anyone does. It takes genuine skill and timing to be able to predict your opponent and defend yourself. But when you are only able to defend yourself once every 4 teamfights, you might as well play fairly safe the entire match and use the block as an “out of jail” card rather than a counterattack for a strong CC ability.
I don’t really see how allowing players having ways to fend off ganking through good timing and reflexes, as opposite of always having to have cams near your position to know when to yeet away would hurt the core gameplay. Thoughts on this?
Most teamfights are decided by what team can cc chain more. You get hit by one cc and your chances of surviving are below 0. But hey, let’s nerf RB again, it seems the balance team are frustrated because they can’t use it.
Before anyone tells me “but RB made certain abilities worthless” I will answer that: those abilities are basically free win when they hit. If you hit those abilities, losing the fight should be illegal.
Shin said that celestial shroud didn’t perform as good as they hoped. And the reason why they nerfed RB and Aegis was to give some room to CS and to just nerf it for other reasons.
If they want CS to preform better, I personally think that CS should only pop on CC and not every ability in the game. Things like Heliogenesis shouldn’t activate it.
It just looks to me like they’re trying to copy whatever ML and AoV have to try and find that success formula. Both those games have an inordinate amount of cc and no way to block it…
I believe that the problem is twofold: an overreliance on Reflex Block and far too much CC. Reflex Block is an extremely generous item compared to anything in LoL - it grants barrier, CC immunity, doesn’t impart any negative effects on the player, and does all of this instantly.
For comparison:
-Quicksilver Sash removes any effects currently on the player. Any effects that trigger immediately after are applied in full.
-Zhonya’s Hourglass applies a stasis effect that allows enemies to quickly reposition on top of the player in stasis.
-Cleanse only reduces CC duration after it removes all current effects.
-Edge of Night requires the player to channel for one second before applying a seven second spell shield. Any damage taken breaks the channel.
Reflex Block is far too generous of an item, but crowd control’s impact needs to be reduced to reduce the reliance on Reflex Block and its impact. I’d like to see a mechanic like Tenacity introduced to allow for more ways to reduce the impact of CC without introducing another means to outright avoid it. Only until reasonably good alternatives exist should we start reducing the impact of Reflex Block.
Yeah nerfing reflex was a terrible decision, you heavy cc abilities which are guaranteed death on 50 seconds cd and a block on 120 seconds cd. Really poor and unhealthy design. Reflex block nerf didnt make Cs any more viable, it just made the game more frustrating to play, somethinh semc has become really good at.
Have to agree, some of the changes are really hurting the fun in this game. And I am not even starting to talk about how 3vs3 in it’s peak - for over 9000 time: patch 2.8… the reason why we remember that patch is not only because it was the last before the changes for 5vs5, but because it was really great and we had tons tons of fun, and how all this transitioned to 5vs5 that imho really didn’t preserve the 3vs3 spirit and gameplay.
The game changed and while it mimics to good degree a PC moba for a mobile game (will not even talk about the PC port), it’s just not that fun to play and in all seriousness if we go in that department - LOL is really fun game with a lot of content, depth , big player base, esports, visuals, high quality skins, heroes with really cool combos/abilities and so on… dota 2 is also there if someone wants even deeper moba.
3vs3 was the best balance between super fun, high quality standard, quick matchups and simple enough to be great on mobile device. It was just a balance between hardcore complicated MOBA, but simple enough to be picked up by the players between casual and hardcore (right now only hardcore players are there… and mostly those that plays it for years and spend money, not all of them).
I was after the general problems with VG and RB nerf is just one of those “great” decisions that stacked up next to the bugs, and the smaller and smaller player base.
From there I agree - it was mostly to make celestrial shroud a good buy, it’s not - the idea behind that item is not bad, but the realisation is. It only works in ambush situations (that’s good and all, but not that great), but in team fights it’s supa dupa easy to pop up before the fight = that item CC barrier literally contributes nothing to the fight.
in the first place.
have a 45s cooldown and 
have a 60s cooldown and see how that plays out. Probably not even low enough for 5v5.