r/leagueoflegends • u/miltlul • 17h ago
News Phreak is (likely) going back to SR team after Classic ends
On Phreak's latest video about Classic, Phreak briefly mentions that after it ends, it's VERY likely he is still going to work on League of Legends, specifically, on the SR team again, not anything like modes, for example.
Does this comfort you or scare you?
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u/FeelingWrongdoer6696 17h ago
His patch notes are way easier to parse than most balance leads', but whether that comforts you depends on if you agree with the philosophy behind them, which most of the sub doesn't lol
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u/Fabiocean Well, look at you! 17h ago
To be fair most of this sub doesn't agree with any philosophy
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u/PhatYeeter 17h ago
If my favorite champ is nerfed I disagree
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u/Saltiest_Grapefruit 14h ago
As a senna main. Im zen.
I know the nerf will be reverted soon. The soul dropchance is just ebb and flow. Sometimes they drop a lot. Sometimes they drop a little. Sometimes she is an adc. And sometimes she is a support.
Whatever the case is, we can only go with the flow.
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u/Simpuff1 200 years of collective memeing 16h ago
Exactly.
Everyone on this sub has been shitting on balance since I want to say Yasuo’s release, since that’s my earliest memory.
Even if good for game, people of varying skill have varying experiences and will not like wtv the dev team is doing
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u/zvezda_x 13h ago
I know you meant earliest memory in league, but the idea that someone's literal earliest memory was Yasuo release made me giggle.
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u/BlazeX94 13h ago
I started playing when Lissandra was the newest champ, there has never been a moment since then where people weren't complaining about balance. Almost every new champ was considered busted and must ban on release, then you had the old classic "must ban" trio in Bronze of Amumu Malphite Kassadin. At least, that was the case on SEA, idk whether it was the same on other servers.
To be fair, Season 3 Kassadin was legit broken though.
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u/lumpboysupreme 9h ago
The good ol noob exodia bans; ‘surely no one can deal with a team of aoe ults just grouping up and jumping onto your team’.
That was me, I remember thinkig Ionia was screwed from the team comps before guardsman Bob went and got locket banned
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u/XxsteakiixX 15h ago
lol still remember the day yasuo came out and he had the double crit passive hahaha people were freaking the fuck out!
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u/Pluckytoon 14h ago
Well this makes sense: people with complaints are vocal than those without any
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u/TastyChocoWaffle NA - crushing rocks drain gang 16h ago
I’m a one issue voter - What is Phreak’s stance on Garen?
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u/theJirb 12h ago
I never got the feeling "most of the sub" disagreed. In every case, it's just a bunch of vocal people masquerading as a majority complaining.
But the truth is that most people I actually played league with didn't have big complaints. We just read the patch notes, played the game. It didn't matter if it was my Masters/GM Flex group, or my level 50 norm only friends, most people are just enjoying the game.
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u/Agreeable-Return-189 4h ago
Funny part is, two patches after he left everyone was CRYING for Phreak back. I give it a patch preview before the first hate thread.
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u/ElephantJumpy4502 15h ago
I'm not gonna say all changes they do are 100% correct but for the most part they are doing great job and this sub is full of low elo randoms with 0 game design experience so yeah
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u/HiddenoO 16h ago
Part of the "easier to parse" is that his analyses often ignore crucial details that make them easier to formulate and understand but statistically questionable.
To me, it looks like he's way overestimating his own statistical understanding because he's somebody with an above-average statistical understanding interacting almost exclusively with people with zero statistical understanding. For a while, he was trying to do analyses of other games' metas and the videos were genuinely cringe to watch because he was making blatantly ignorant claims in an authoritative manner.
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u/jfbad 16h ago
He's kept one of the most complex games out there relatively balanced for a really long time, sure you can question some of the moves, but let's not act like what he's done isn't impressive, considering league is both for casual and pro players
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u/HiddenoO 14h ago edited 14h ago
What's your point of reference?
There have been plenty of cases where individual champions or even entire archetypes were massively over- or underperforming for prolonged amounts of time, and/or champions were either unplayable in competitive or in casual play.
What makes you think that he performed "impressively" at his job? That would imply be performed significantly better than the average lead balance for other games.
I'm not saying he's done a terrible job overall - nor am I saying the opposite - but I don't see any basis for the massive praise some people are giving him either, neither based on the outcomes of his decisions nor based on the reasoning in his analysis videos.
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u/jfbad 14h ago
The point of reference is the time when he wasn't doing it. I don't think you understand how complex of a game league really is and how difficult balacing it is. Also, it's definitely fine to have a rotation of meta champs/classes/etc, remember you also have to take into account that the game would get stale without these swings, as everyone would be playing the same champs over and over again
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u/HiddenoO 14h ago
The point of reference is the time when he wasn't doing it.
When was that and how was it supposedly worse?
Also, it's definitely fine to have a rotation of meta champs/classes/etc, remember you also have to take into account that the game would get stale without these swings, as everyone would be playing the same champs over and over again
Forced rotations of champions or archetypes are a bandaid when you're incapable of actually balancing the game well. If a game is really well balanced, the meta itself can be diverse, and people won't be "playing the same champs over and over again" because champions actually have disfavorable matchups.
I don't know if it's still the case now, but when I was still somewhat following DotA a few years ago, you actually saw different teams at TI playing completely different comps and strategies and not just everybody try to get the same meta picks every lobby.
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u/TheDesertShark 14h ago
This is a phreak glaze sub, ever since he quit social media, people overcorrected way too hard. He doesn't deserve abuse and death threats, that's logical, it's just a game, but he ain't jesus either. He has intentionally skewed and cherry picked data before to support his claims, and he is often dismissive and condescending to very valid points.
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u/Frodolas 5h ago
Yep. He's not nearly as intelligent as he thinks he is - the reality is he's spent the vast majority of his career surrounded by and interacting with mostly idiots (fans and redditors and twitch commentors), so he regularly overestimates his abilities in actual statistical analysis. I would wager he's bottom quartile IQ among Riot's actual engineers / game designers.
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u/Fellers 16h ago
Yes because he at least explains the reasoning behind changes. Even if I disagree with them, I know where he's coming from and the logic behind it.
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u/Jaime060304 16h ago
100%. At the minute I read the patch notes and I really struggle to get the reasoning behind why a lot of changes are/aren't made.
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u/andre5913 14h ago edited 11h ago
Phreak has been a communicator since early league days and I appreciate those skills to this day. His notes and reasoning are out there and easy to absorb.
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u/Obvious_Peanut_8093 13h ago
Do people not know that Phroxon is explaining the patch every week?
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u/Tormentula 9h ago edited 9h ago
I will never forget him explaining how nasus is ok for many patches in a row, mages bot is fine in their eyes, or how shen/braum are good to have strong to create a 'defensive' meta on two of the most aggro-enablist characters in the game (just invade or engage more when shen is on your team, enemy can't play due to that ult and has to play defensive while you get to play aggressive with it.)
Phreak at least acknowledges things in a sane way of thinking or explains why he wants to do something carefully/differently but phroxzon tends to just ramble or when he explains why he's approaching a problem a certain way he just says 'there is / isn't a problem and here's a change'.
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u/FattyDrake 9h ago
Phreak goes into more detail, whereas Phroxon is much more vague.
Phreak talks while showing spreadsheets with data, numbers, and comparisons and explains why a 0.5% chance higher winrate meant an ability was overtuned and exactly how an adjustment will likely affect play and what the expected pattern is, and what they're looking out for in balance.
He really loves numbers. He used to do Path of Exile rundowns in the same manner explaining what he wanted to play during a release.
Phroxon is more like, "Well, umm, Rumble is a challenging champ, ermm, he's not easy to play.. umm.. so we're nerfing him.. hmm.. he can be strong in the right hands, umm, so we might change him but now, um, we're just going to keep nerfing him." No deep number analysis, just healthy frustration targets.
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u/PlasticAssistance_50 12h ago
Do people not know that Phroxon is explaining the patch every week?
Yes, we do know it.
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u/BloodOnFire 8884844 I agreed 17h ago
Yeah maybe Phreak wasn't that bad at balancing
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u/zezimatigerfaker 14h ago
He wasn't. People didn't like him because he actually shared his opinions and was open about his decisions.
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u/Tormentula 9h ago
I find it fucking hilarious how I was about to write a post that he was really good at his job and it was mostly seraphine propaganda that made him sound bad... and then I scroll and literally see a seraphine flair being the first individual hoping he doesn't come back.
Phreak did fuck up on midscopes/reworks and I get why they're upset with him, seraphine, ksante, etc but I wouldn't isolate 'bad reworks' to just phreak.
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u/Thundermelons GALA Defense Force, returning IG fan 7h ago
I'm definitely not a fan of Seraphine and Yuumi changes (of all things - I actually think removing Yuumi's auto-weaving style was a huge detriment), but I can at least understand the angle behind them. They weren't changed for players like me, they were changed for the players who weren't happy with them and wanted them to be played in a specific or less impactful style.
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u/Tormentula 2h ago edited 2h ago
Yuumi 4sure needs another pass, this is effectively a deleted champion aka troll pick atp, they can't just buff her cause she is rightfully terrible but they shouldn't just abandon it either.
I know phreak has his seraphine / ksante hate but personally I hate what happened to azir / naafiri / asol / neeko / malz / skarner just to name a few a lot more. These champs either had identity stripped from them or just overall feel worse to play due to balance spots they got left in as a result of the changes.
My point being I would trust phreak more or at least just as much as the devs behind those.
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u/ripdeadendedsoon 10h ago
The only stain he's had was the one period Maokai was blatantly unbalanced and he kept ignoring it while playing Maokai and climbing with it. Only after he finished did it get nerfed. Def not a coincidence.
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u/JDogish 9h ago
The only thing is he sometimes would be stuck explaining why something was being hit or not hit, and it felt like sometimes changes were made that weren't in line with his philosophies. Or sometimes he would push back very hard oin the community when they had a point. Vel koz incident and all.
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u/mikki-misery 16h ago
Probably minority opinion but I've always liked Phreak, both as a caster and on the balance team. Most balance changes under him have been good for the game and fair. A few missteps, yes, but that's only human.
In fact, I'd go so far as to say that I think it would better for the game if he had more control over balance and seasonal changes. Presumably too late for that now since the new season is right around the corner and he was working on Classic all this time.
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u/greendino71 14h ago
This classic arc is just downright pathetic
People wanted CLASSIC LEAGUE. not ONE soul asked for some cringe mish mash of 7 different season
nobody asked for 1/3 of the roster with the others being added 2 at a time every month
People wanted ranked
The reason shit like Classic WoW and Runescape were popular is because they reverted the game to exactly how it was.
Riot thought they knew better and thats why it failed
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u/Sleisk 13h ago
Its so weird they didnt have udyr on release, but had like 10+ champs released after him. And then many other champs I wanted to play were missing
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u/2th 12h ago
Udyr us the first champ I fell in love with. I played during the closed beta and no one clicked. Then the game launches with Udyr and I'm just in love. That's all I wanted for Classic. Give me old Udyr. I want to run around bear slapping people and split pushing because no one can catch me.
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u/Upstairs_Option411 GALA 12h ago
dont worry, they made sure you can play brand and have him available in that aram mode.
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u/That_Leetri_Guy 11h ago
Ok, give me one definite patch that every single person agrees is THE "classic" patch.
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u/greendino71 11h ago
Do the end of season 3 before the season 4 stuff was added in preseason
Thats when league was at its peak for a most classic fans
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u/ygmc8413 9h ago
and if they did that plenty of people would be complaining that no one wanted it, they wanted season 1 or 2 or whenever.
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u/That_Leetri_Guy 11h ago
That's not what I'm nostalgic for. I played during season 2, that's what's classic to me.
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u/Smudgecake 10h ago
Just as many people that are screaming about wrong patch now would be screaming wrong patch for this
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u/JokeBright7055 11h ago
S3 was when modernization really took swing, start at the beginning of season 1. WoW Classic didn't start in WotLK for the same reason.
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u/SacoNegr0 3h ago
Few people really wanted classic, the vast majority who "wanted" classic just really wanted the nostalgia of those years.
League is just so much better right now, even if they did release 30 champions in the exact patch before master yi's rework, people would play 3 games at max before getting bored and never playt it again.
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u/Material_Shallot_652 8h ago
Why does it have to be one patch? Why wouldn't they be able to start at some early patch and then every few weeks or so go to a new one?
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u/LCSpartan 5h ago
Im really annoyed with this take and I see it pop up everywhere and its just wrong. The major difference here is 2 things and you are being blatantly obtuse or dumb, maybe both so let's get into it.
First the very obvious difference. The difference in genre, a pvp focused game especially with a community that for the better part of a decade hasn't grown is a group that effectively just keeps sharpening eachother and while the movement is clunkier, give a silver a few hours on practice tool and they will be able to hit like 9-10 cs a min in league classic and transitioning that to games. Like that's something silvers struggled with in season 2 and 3. The genuine skill difference of a silver 5 today and a silver 5 going back 5-10 years is night and day. Circling back to WoW its a primarily pve game where going back the AI is similar, and those that love PVP knew it would come with those things but that was an opt in. Where as league classic 2 things happened people with rose tint glasses on how good they were then substantially for those still playing and 2 part of the fun of the game was those young versions of league werent nearly as solved and part of that is to asymmetry of information from then and now you'd have maybe a few good guides in a mountain of shit on mobafire, a streamer or YouTube content creator and that was it. So if you figured some shit out, it was broken for a while.
The other point is the community had a consensus as to what classic was, it wasn't like some said classic was vanilla, some said tbc, and some said wotlk. The general consensus was around patch 1.12.1 and then its a sequencial jumping off pointthat's extremely different from league no one played season 1 (largely) so most people fight as it being seasons 2-5 some say pre yasuo(even though hes late season 3) so you have VASTLY different versions with VASTLY different things in them. No matter which season they picked alot of people were going to be unhappy
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u/Ejeffers1239 Hammer Time 10h ago
I'm actually contrarian on this that most of the decisions made on classic were entirely reasonable given the resources available and that it was more of a case of being doomed to fail solely because Riot can't monetize it well. Same as numerous other cases of enshittification.
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u/Trophaeum 5h ago
People keep pointing out whats wrong with the release but what would even be the long term plan for classic? It just doesnt seem like it was a sustainable idea to begin with.
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u/poopernickel69 16h ago
I bet that Phreak wouldn't have let the ridiculous Morde R buff that was instantly walked back the next patch through along with various other senseless goofy changes that we've received after he swapped off.
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u/LucyLilium92 16h ago
The morde R buff was only as bad as it was because of the double max HP dip bug
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u/Mike_BEASTon 14h ago
Anyone that plays the game with a decent understanding knows how difficult it already is to fight Morde ult, even without knowing the exact mechanisms that cause it, and would know that buffing the total output by 30% would be absurd.
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u/Pluckytoon 14h ago
OOTL: what happened ?
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u/poopernickel69 14h ago
Well, a little while back they decided to buff Morde's R from stealing 10% stats to stealing 13% stats, so that when he presses a button instead of being incredibly super disadvantaged you're incredibly super duper disadvantaged, but this made him (shocker) very annoying and even more of an unfun stat checker than he was before.
Furthermore, there was a bug where it would apply doubly to hp in some sense - I think that it would reduce your max hp first and then your current hp, so if you were low you lost 13% current hp but if you were full you'd lose 13% of your max and then another 13% of your now remaining 87% hp. This bug had already been in the game for a long time afaik.
Anyway, the very next patch they admitted that this was a bad change, blaming the bug but even though they fixed it they did still walked back the change and then buffed something else to compensate.
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u/MorbidTales1984 W Enthusiast, Botlane Purist 16h ago
This is quite nice news being honest for someone who never played classic mode anyway. I was one of those people that enjoyed Phreaks balance tenure, thought he was always real open and honest about things
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u/XXLepic 7h ago
Super excited and have missed him
You might not agree with every opinion. But his transparency, in depth patch videos, and crazy passion for the game are greatly appreciated.
I don’t need to agree with everything he does. I just am happy someone has as much passion for the game as me and is willing to always give his takes.
Other gaming communities would kill to have someone transparent & give patch breakdowns like phreak.
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u/Inevitable-Second334 16h ago
I love his patch rundowns, but almost every time he midscopes a champ they somehow become less fun to play than they were before (looking at you rammus, rek'sai, swain..) so I'm kinda scared he'll ruin even more of my mains
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u/theJirb 12h ago
Maybe for you, but most of those landed pretty well.
I think a midscope will always be unpopular with people who liked a champ in their original forms...because the reason they liked playing the champ was because of how they were in their original forms. I mean, if you like a champ so much you're willing to like, 1 or 2 trick it even in your normal games, it's not surprising in the least if even one small change makes you feel shitty, but I think those generally landed well in terms of how the general population felt about them.
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u/Inevitable-Second334 12h ago
they might have been successful statistically, but they’ve really compromised the identity and fantasy of said champs. annie and swain had their most iconic ability gutted (ult), rammus can barely kill adcs anymore, seraphine has negative ap ratios, rek’sai had her E true damage removed, and it took an entire season of backlash before they finally brought it back
honestly the only rework I can think of that actually succeeded was corki, and even that was just a revert to a previous iteration rather than anything new lol
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u/BlendedBaconSyrup Supporting T1 Since 2016 7h ago
People will always be upset.
Changes are almost always made with everyone in mind, not just the one tricks and mains.
If you make a change and all the mains/onetricks are happy while the general playerbase isn't, then it's probably a terrible change.
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u/Unlucky_Success2984 2h ago
I thought the RekSai changes were kinda decent. The sustain in the top lane thing was kind ass but I like that she’s played more as a bruiser than a cc tank
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u/AutomaticTune6352 2h ago
As an old swain player, I do like the mew one more except for the R. And Rammus with the new R is also more fun and aside from that he is mostly the same, so I would argue more fun.
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u/xHealz 16h ago
If I was a shareholder, I would be demanding that Riot does a full review on what went wrong with Classic.
It can't be that Riot keeps reassigning their middle-management employees from one project to another as their touch repeatedly turns gold into shit.
It sucks for the players, and it sucks for the rank-and-file employees.
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u/elitist_user 16h ago
Every large company moves their beloved employees from project to project internally. Also I don't believe phreak was the problem with classic.
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u/xHealz 16h ago
Yes that is typical. What I am trying to say is that something needs to change. Riot has too many misses these days, and something is clearly broken at some process. So much dev time goes into projects that only some people are asking for, in a way that is completely against the spirit of what they are asking.
The only real success this year was ARAM Mayhem. Other than that everything else they did will probably fade into obscurity within the next 2 years as they continue having to reinvent flawed systems and mechanics for the 20th time.
EDIT: Honorary mention to the "sucess" that was Shyvana rework. Would've made me feel good about Riot if it hadn't taken years of delays.
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u/McDonaldsSoap 15h ago
From what I've read their expectations for 2xko were just unrealistic. It seems their projects are so expensive no game other than league or valorant are worth their effort
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u/SkyDezessete 15h ago
If I was a shareholder, same, but I think an investigation on this wouldnt show anything that interesting to the plaayerbase
people like to talk about how it wasnt actually classic, it lacked champions and whatever, but imo classic just wasnt that engaging of an idea to most people.
The point of classic was to appeal to an older playerbase that stopped playing League. Riot is struggling to create a new playerbase, so they have to try and get returning players. It could exactly be Season 2 again, but this older playerbase just doesnt have the same time to dedicate to League anymore. Its nostalgic and fun for a couple of days, but nostalgia is not enough to create a whole playerbase.
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u/fersbery 15h ago
Why people complain so much about Classic? It is just a game.mode. Like urf. It will probably be playable again from time to time.
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u/BeyondlegendZ 13h ago
League classic was destine to fail the fact riot think it could work is them drinkinh their own nostalgic koolaid.
The problem with classic is simply because contrary what those classic idiot says league has improve as a game over the years. The changes riot has made has improve the overall playability and balance. the reason people stop playing is because is a toxic mess and fustration and that's literally the core of the game. returining to league back to classic was never going yo fix that issue
Also I think riot attempt to balance league classic did them no favours. Honestly they should just let nostalgic morons experiance getting shit on by old assassins likr fizz kassadin talon and silence leblanc, ot the era of tank assassins, or broken shit like release xin zhao pre nerfef yorick, sniper nidalee and all the countless broken bullshit they changed over the years
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u/Upstairs_Option411 GALA 12h ago
old school runescape is reaching all time highs. What they put out was not old school league, it was some new machination.
Just because they put the word classic on it, doesnt mean that it was that classic experience.
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u/Lower_Athlete3260 9h ago
I really urge you to go back and look at osrs at its release. I would also suggest you look at the player numbers of osrs directly after launch, I think you would be shocked.
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u/Creative_Magazine816 6h ago
The game started as a single patch though, and they added content over time. People liked OSRS on release, it just started dying without content updates like any live service game will.
League Classic immediately did not feel like league classic. Like at all. It felt like some weird third thing that nobody really asked for. They shoulda picked a patch and then tweaked it over time, and maybe rolled out seasons like WoW does with expansions
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u/Euphoric_Leave1248 13h ago
League classic wasn’t league classic. I’ve played this game since S1 and what they released what some fucked up hybrid of modern and classic.
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u/BeyondlegendZ 13h ago
That's because league classic is literally impossible to make except dumping a giant unbalance mess to your face. Honestly riot mistake was evem trying to balance it they should shoved the unbalanced mess down people throat and let people realise why we have modern league instead
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u/gasmanrunfast 13h ago
It would have worked 20x better for them if they just picked a date and gave us a snapshot of that date all the creative liberties they took were total failures.
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u/Glum-Drummer-6302 15h ago
They’ve spent a decade improving the game.
Unsurprisingly removing a decade of improvements makes the game shittier. Seemed like a cool idea for a few people wanting to feel nostalgic. No clue how anyone thought it would have a sustained player base.
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u/ExceedingChunk Low master piggy 13h ago edited 13h ago
If I was a shareholder, I would be demanding that Riot does a full review on what went wrong with Classic.
This sort of mindset is what makes companies fail.
If you need to do a grand assessment every time something fails, you build a culture of people not trying stuff at all, because why take a risk and potentially fail if you can just take no risk at all and sit in your safe little boat instead.
Well, that works fine and all until your competitor now have a brand new speed boat, that is faster, cheaper and more reliable. That leaves your little, safe rowboat in the dirt.
Aram Mayhem was a pet project. TFT was a pet project. Classic was probably also just a pet project with slightly higher initial ambitions than those other modes. Mayhem was a massive success, and TFT is one of the biggest strategy games in the entire world. The risk of building that pet project in a couple of months was definitely worth it. You could probably throw thousands of pet projects like that and still be in the positive from TFT alone.
Keeping your devs motivated, allowing them to test ideas and build their skills outside as well as testing different game modes, games etc... is what builds good culture and competent devs.
Admitting something wasn't as good or as popular as you had thought and then killing it off is way more important than trying to make 0 mistakes or throwing 0 things away.
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u/Rants_til_poo 16h ago
LoL is not WoW. I played Classic LoL and loved it (but real life is killing me) and I'd play it more, but it's not something that was going to create an alternate player base. It's a fun throwback. It's cool to go back and experience your old champions, but for a game that 90% of the player base plays in a competitive fashion it's erroneous and that's that.
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u/AutomaticTune6352 14h ago
The review is simple. There was never enough demand. You split the people already by defining what is classic and then most versions are worse versions of current league, especially for support. Without a special event to pull people in you dont have the demand.
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u/MaxBonerstorm 16h ago
Nothing to evaluate.
The community thought they wanted it, played it, realized the game is much better in the current state and left.
Sometimes the WoW Classic thing doesn't work.
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u/CookyKindred 16h ago
Why do you people keep saying this while intentionally ignoring it isn’t old league? There IS a shitload to analyze because a shitload of basic common sense things were ignored.
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u/UNOvven 14h ago
Because its the truth. And I reckon their internal evaluation came to the same conclusion. If it was as simple as just restoring an old patch, they could do that. It'd be way easier than what they did end up going for. But it would've failed as well.
And sure there were issues. But the truth is the issues clearly at nest accelerated the demise. If the lack of characters was the issue, then each batch of releases should have brought players back in, especially the one per clamoured for. It didn't. Each patch had way fewer players than the last.
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u/Tuuktuu 16h ago
Because you are just coping. Was it perfect? No. Could the release have been done better? Yes. But if you truly preferred old league you would play this. I and many others are actually playing. Meanwhile you people pretend that this is unplayable because there are trinkets or whatever. Thats just cope.
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u/CookyKindred 16h ago
For someone accusing others of coping you sure do cope.
Nothing you said was remotely correct. And I doubt you played it or else you wouldn’t cry about trinkets.
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u/Tuuktuu 16h ago
I only started playing like 3 weeks ago and uave like 80 games. How many do you have?
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u/YoungKite 15h ago
What is old league for you? I feel like this question is likely the reason classic failed. I personally never played since I started league from S12 and classic just looks like nostalgia downgrade. However, it seems that the people who expected to enjoy it suffer from having differing opinions on what classic league means.
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u/WinterMage42 12h ago
They needed to capture the huge modern playerbase who have never interacted with “classic” league of legends, not the rose tinted glasses people who just wanted an objectively worse version of league. Every QoL change put in Classic was to try and appease the people they actually needed to play the game mode, and it just didn’t work. Despite what you want to believe, the true amount of people who wanted a snapshot of an old season is incredibly small.
They did analyse, if you bothered to read Riot responses and other threads you might know that. One of the biggest things they took away from the game mode is that old champion kits were actually very well received by both Classic and modern players. I haven’t seen anything speaking about game state, but I’m gonna go out on a very sturdy limb and say most people (veteran players included) realised old league is incredibly boring.
It’s time to accept you’re in the minority and likely wont see a “classic” version of league for a long time, and that’s okay. Stop trying to force them to make something people don’t really want.
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u/CookyKindred 12h ago
You people are obsessed with stretching the truth and trying to shit on others.
No your baseless speculation doesn’t work when they literally didn’t add these characters people wanted till later, once people had already given up.
It’s crazy how many of you refuse to engage honestly in the conversation and act like classic league shot your dog.
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u/andre5913 14h ago
Phreak was not part of the problem for classic, he was simply brought in for balancing. Which is what he was doing in regular league. With classic ending, hes most likely going back to his previous role.
But youre right that the Classic leads/decision making does need a review.
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u/kon4m 16h ago
Players realized the game wasn't better in season 3, simple as that
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u/greendino71 14h ago
Classic isn't season 3 lmaoo
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u/bluesound3 8h ago
So when tf is classic then? Notice how none if these classic players can give a unanimous answer, compared to wow where everyone says classic is from WoW to WoTLK(and starting from WoW is fine)
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u/SuperKalkorat 5h ago
Obviously start with a carbon copy of the closed beta and 40 original champions. All those people complaining about champions missing then have no reason to complain and some can trickle in slowly over the years.
/s
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u/HEVIKARJALA 13h ago
Fact is the kpi’s were not met and most likely they will have lessons learned with the whole classic team.
Sad thing is that big public companies only job is to do what the board asks. 9/10 times board wants to make money and grow every quarter. There is no point to keep game mode alive, if it looses money. Afterall devs are expensive . . .
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u/White_C4 Problem Eliminator 13h ago
Figuring out why Classic went wrong is not really rocket science, to be honest.
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u/darklypure52 16h ago
Yes it comforts me because changes actually explained. Which is so extraordinary rare for balance team in any game to go line by line explaining why they did this.
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u/xiaopow0310 16h ago
Very excited to see how Phreak guides Shopify Rebellion to their first worlds finals
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u/Zeisix 16h ago
I will never forgive phreak for the time where he left maokai giga busted for multiple patches just to one trick him and bragg on twitter how he hit masters
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u/MazrimReddit ADCs are the support's damage item 14h ago
it is completely consistent to think a champion is on the strong side and not need nerfs, and to play it
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u/Zeisix 14h ago
Pure coincidence it got nerfed as soon as he got to masters
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u/Z61 14h ago
Wasn't his playrate abysmal and the team explicitly said they weren't nerfing things unless they were actually being played?
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u/OverkillOrange 13h ago
This is literally the only "evidence" they have of the balance team being biased, so let them have their little "phreak didn't nerf maokai so he could abuse it" nonsense, it's all they have.
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u/MazrimReddit ADCs are the support's damage item 13h ago
Are you going to go check if anyone on the balance team has dared played jinx in the last 2 months
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u/Right_Map8151 17h ago
So i gotta follow what phreak plays so i know that those champs won’t be nerfed lmao.
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u/Mango027 16h ago
I liked having Phreak leading balance. He has a pretty good understanding of how league should feel and play.
I don't agree with his "training wheels" philosophy for new champions, but his patch to patch tweaks are more good than bad.
I also like that he'll actually explain his thought process on why choices are being made
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u/ankha9000 12h ago
League has been the most fun it has in ages ever since he left the Sr team. The moment he comes back shit will happen
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u/Sycherthrou gib enchant 16h ago
Sadly s14 and s15 were collectively the league dark ages with possibly the least snowballing, and also least dopamine. Like s16 is not great but nothing is worse than early s14 where every single champion was less powerful than before.
But, I do really like his individual item and champ balancing. Just keep him away from systems, neither his ideas on how to spice up the game, nor his ideas on which metas should be prevalent, nor his ideas on game speed and average champion strength should ever grace summoner's rift again.
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u/Training_Read_7706 11h ago
While S14 was obviously an unbalanced mess with marksmen in 4/5 roles, I'd argue I'd still take it over what we currently have. Phroxzon's league is so... boring. Riven and Syndra / victor have been running the streets forever with no end in sight. Really no motivation to queue up.
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u/ExceedingChunk Low master piggy 13h ago
I completely disagree and think those were two of the best, most well-balanced seasons league have ever had
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u/Raanth 8h ago
S13-14 were fine overall, not as much fun as s11-12 despite its madness, but overall they were fine.
S15-16 systems and reworks are where I cannot agree phreak hit the mark on, and it shows, both in the product released and the way he tries to justify the changes: too focused on numerical excel spreadsheet buffs/nerfs, not enough swings at the real issues plaguing the champ/item/game. This creates staleness, which leads to people like Midbeast saying the game is too balanced, when in reality it’s not, it’s just boring to play the same overtuned arcane champs over and over.
Call me a pissed off Yorick player based on my post history if you want; go look at that last game with mvk vs kc and tell me how he isn’t the most piss useless champ in the game post midscope. Even vs champs he’s supposed to beat, he just falls over and tickles everything in return.
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u/ThisIsElron 8h ago
It really feels like the community isnt on the same page on how they think SR should be in the future, which probably makes it hard to balance everything bc you cant make everyone happy.
I personally love the faster SR we got this season, and is the most fun I’ve had on SR since 2022.
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u/Sycherthrou gib enchant 10h ago
Yep, it was more balanced. No power in items, atakhan flip neutralizing laning advantages, all winrates tend towards 50 and everyone feels balanced. It's not really a game at that point though, you're kind of just pushing buttons, at least relatively to how league was for 13 years before that. But you can still experience that in mayhem.
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u/EternalSett 9h ago
What are you even saying bro.. Just read what you’re saying man and think about it for 30 seconds before pressing the post button
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u/TheFeelingWhen 16h ago
He can be a member of the balance team but as the head of the team he lead the game to an age if staleness never seen before. His entire philosophy being based around win rate balancing and not just properly doing his job is another gripe I had with him. I don’t care that -5 base damage in Taliyah Q is a .13% win rate nerf just nerf her properly
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u/TheFeelingWhen 16h ago
I hope they don’t let him be the head of balance again. His entire tenure is marked by favoritism and keeping certain champions strong while others weak. We had basically the the same meta for his whole time as balance head and it was some of the stalest the game ever was
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u/Obvious_Peanut_8093 13h ago
@phreak, how much would it take to make you remove homeguards from the game? Name your price, I'm ready to negotiate to save my sanity.
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u/ElephantJumpy4502 15h ago
Do people expect the direction to change? And I don't mean it in a way that I think balance team without Phreak has been doing something wrong, it's just that they basically share similar vision. It's good that Phreak is coming back but not to introduce some huge changes but to make the team more solid and avoid some of the small mistakes here and there
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u/Round-Claim5420 1h ago
Us old ass players (season 2) just have to hate Phreak a little for all the shit he has done over the years.
BUT (<-- BIG BUT) obviously thats because he has been such a front facing person for Riot for so long. In reality the game would probably be in a worse state if he wasn't there the last decade.
Most people here would have done way worse.
If I was someone in power at Riot I'd throw diamonds at the guy to keep him from leaving.
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u/DuckiesDoBeCute 16h ago
even if i think hes doing a terrible job, at least he plays the game (which is sadly more than i can say about most the devs)
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u/NateHotshot 15k ARAMs 16h ago
maybe he can finally get around to adding an AP ratio to graves ult. he's been struggling for years compared to AP lucian...
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u/DeirdreAnethoel 14h ago
Sucks that they wasted his passion for classic on a botched attempt but I think SR will be lucky to have him again.
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u/LouiseLea 14h ago
I think the game was far better under him than it ever has been under Phroxzon so I'll definitely be happy to see him back on the main game.
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u/Upstairs_Option411 GALA 12h ago
we have seen enough of his vision of the game, let us please move on.
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u/OrangeJuiceLuvr69 15h ago
Dudes one of the worst game leads I've ever seen. They wanted classic to fail when they put him on it lmao
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u/c0nqu3ror 16h ago
Don't like him, never did, hope he doesn't become the lead. He's awful at balancing, he's only good at explaining. Can't wait for another set of midscopes for champs that none asked for while actively killing them in their roles. He should stick as a caster, he was good at it and people liked him.
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u/cedric1234_ 16h ago
Have always felt like phreak does a generally good job (with notable diabolical mistakes, as happens), playing other games reminds me just how good league is balanced. Reasonably balanced at all skill levels with a crazy roster with yearly shakeups is no small feat.
Also really nice to have a single dude to pin mistakes on for the memes