Riven's whole kit was the League devs saying "fuck it, it's fun" and she was a balancing nightmare for years before she got kneecapped over and over again + damage and mobility creep didn't help either.
Yeah, I started playing League when it first came out; loved doing AP mid with various heroes....sorry, "Champions." Karthus, Veigar, Viktor, etc. Whenever I did AD Carry, I tried going Urgot or Draven just because their gameplay was gimmicky. If I was ever Support, I would frustrate some online players by doing something unconventional like picking Viktor but augmenting his Gravity Field. I remember making a lot of people angry when I didn't pick a tried and true "support" character like Nami or Sona, but I didn't care, I like to push boundaries and experiment.
In fact, stopped playing because I had a tendency to shit-talk my teammates for their fuckups. I wasn't ever banned, but eventually most of my friends stopped playing and I just up and quit one day after a horrendous online match. In hindsight, it was a silly thing for me to get upset about because it
is a video game, but nowadays I just excuse it as a passion for winning at something I was good at.
The tricks you learn in League were pretty limited compared to stuff like you saw in Dota 2. Heroes like Meepo requiring your ability to multi-task controlling multiple characters on the map all at once. Heroes like Invoker requiring your ability to combo up to 16 different spells. Heroes like Techies requiring tactful placement of mines and explosives. I remember first playing and thinking a lot of the abilities were just dirt cheap, like Bloodseeker's ulti or Axe's spin to win. Then you look at Dota 2's meta game and everything changes. The sky is the limit...unless it's
Fountain Hooks, then that's a no-no.
In the end, admittedly, I never got really good at the game, but I was better than I was when I first started. And, at the very least, I figured out how all the heroes worked. I can't remember the last time I played, but it was probably well over a year ago. They've changed a whole lot since I stopped, but from its first iteration which was 2013 the game is
vastly different now.
EDIT: I just rewatched the clip above. It never quite occured to me that the reason Na'vi won he match was due their
lateral thinking. TongFu, meanwhile, are fucking Chinese doofuses who were way too focused on "tried and true" methods and
that is why they lost. They had no way of knowing Dendi would pull that shit and even when they saw it, they didn't even adapt to it. Fucking chinks, man. Look at what your government has done to you!
