There And Back Again, A Summoner’s Tale – 10 More Old Mechanics From League Of Legends
Due to the huge response of my first look back at some older League of Legends mechanics, I figured I would do it again. Also, the guys over at LoLPod recapped my original post. So check that out if you get a chance too. 
This time around I included; a bunch of suggestions that the reddit community gave, a few mechanics that weren't quite obvious that they were broken, and a bunch of artwork / screenshots from LoL's beta and launch.Just to give you a frame of reference, I started playing LoL right before the Poppy patch and I have been a silver level player for most of season 1 and 2. So, basically... I am not an expert, I get things wrong, and I consider myself to be an average player. Feel free to comment on any mistakes I made, or make suggestions as how to better the content.
- 10
Aegis Of The Legion
Aegis of the Legion has been, and continues to be, a solid choice in items to help you beef up your team's resistances. But, there once was a time where it helped more than just the champions on your team. Prior to season 2, Aegis' aura also affected minions. Imagine pushing a tower with about 10 minions with +12 AD, +35 Armor, and +40 MR. Pretty scary right? Well, now imagine the opposing bot lane support was able to rush an Aegis at the 10-15 min mark. How do you win a lane where the creeps are as tanky as you? You don't, thus the Aegis nerfs. - 9
Zhonya's Ring
It was early on in LoL and the AP stat still lived in a strange place. We didn't have all the fancy AP items that we do today. In fact, you really didn't have too many options while building AP. You either started with your Doran's stacking, or RoA, then built Zhonya's. The fact that it was pretty much necessary to build this every game on every AP, eventually lead Riot to splitting the item into it's two current iterations. *Please note the error on the graphic - It should read 'Zhonya's Ring', not 'Zhonya's Hourglass'. - I will fix the error when I get home from work - Thanks to Egnatio on Reddit for pointing that out* - It's fixed now... thanks to Egnatio :) - 8
It's AP Mother Effing Ryze... Deal With It
AP Ryze, real terror. Before the Ryze remake, he was virtually identical to every other caster. His abilities scaled off of AP (other than his Q, which scaled off of mana + AP.) His ultimate increased your AP instead of the current increase in spell vamp and mana (Both old and new ultimates make Ryze's spells AOE). And, even before that, Ryze's ultimate was what is now his E... but that was before my time. For more information on "old Ryze" you can check out this thread I found. - 7
Nidalee Traps Dem Wards
Once upon a time a Nidalee trap would reveal a ward. When you laid down bushwack and the trap happened to be on top of a ward, it would activate and reveal the ward. Pink wards ain't $#!^ when you got Nidalee. This was one of the most subtle broken mechanics in LoL.
- 6
Jungle Creep Score
Who needs CV when you know almost exactly where the jungler is for the first 5 minutes of the game? For a large period in LoL's past, you could see the junglers creep score without actually seeing the jungler. What this meant was that if you knew where the jungler started, you could track his progress during his first pass and sometimes second pass through the jungle. For example: If a jungler started at blue (not many people started wolves at this point in the games history), you could watch when he had 3 CS (Blue down), 6 CS (Wolves down), 10 CS (Wraiths down), 12 CS (Golems down), and finally 15 CS (Red down). Just in case you are wondering... that pic makes no sense, it is half a__ edited. - 5
D-D-Dodge (and RNG as a whole)
RNG (Random number generation) once played a much larger roll in League of Legends. Dodge and critical strikes were the two RNG stats that had the largest impact in LoL. However, dodge was a rare stat that only lived on a few champions, 2-3 items, a few runes, and a mastery. Dodge also was deemed one of those "unfun" mechanics by Riot. Dodge was eventually removed from the game due to the sheer randomness of the stat. It was very frustrating to burst your opponent to near death, only to have your next two auto attacks miss due to your opponent running +4% dodge in their masteries. You think that would sound near impossible... but it happened way more often than anyone wanted. Just to give you an idea of how hard it would be to dodge two back to back attacks with 4% dodge... It should happen once out of 625 times. So, long story short... why should you be punished for doing everything right and your opponent rewarded because of RNG? - 4
Old Summoner Spells
Promote, Fortify, Rally, Observer, Stifle? Do those summoner spells sound familiar? Maybe not, if you are relatively new to LoL. First let's start with the obvious, Promote. Promote was removed shortly after launch, only to make a triumphant return when Dominion was released. The original Promote was quickly discovered to be VERY broken. A 5 Promote team could push down all the mid towers before the 20min mark. You can check out the pure stupidity of a 5 Promote team below:
Rally is OP! Or completely useless... to each their own. Check out the video below for a fun little Rally exploit. Stifle... WTF is Stifle!? Stifle silences a target enemy champion for 3 seconds, and removes their beneficial buffs. This spell was later removed and replaced with Exhaust. And finally, we have Observer. This summoner was basically a dev only spell that was used to remove fog of war while shout casting tournaments. The current shout casting mode wasn't available until the season 1 finale at Dreamhack. - 3
Spell Vamp
Unique passives are for b*^@#$! Well, atleast that was Jax, Katarina, Mordekaiser, Rumble, Vlad, and Akali's philosophy on the subject. I think you can see where this is going... at one time Hextech Gunblade and Hextech Revolver could stack. Not only with each other (like they do now), but with themselves. Needless to say, this stacking spell vamp was quite effective on certain characters. Just to give you an idea on how hard it has been for Riot to balance spell vamp, check out their adjustments to the spell vamp stat on the revolver and gunblade below. (the time frame is V1.0.0.86 - V1.0.0.134 / June 1st 2010 - February 14th 2012.) Hextech Revolver: 10% -> 15% -> 20% -> Unique passive -> 15% -> 12%
Hextech Gunblade: 12% -> 13% -> 15% -> 20% -> 25% -> 20% + Unique passive - 2
Wriggle's Lantern
OK, so that is a lot of random stats to sort through in that graphic... But if you look closely, you can see that the Wriggle's proc used to result in a massive little chunk of lifesteal. So basically, old Wriggle's would proc and instantly you would get +70hp. Then it procs 3 more times as you push out a wave, that's 280 hp in lifesteal from one minion wave. If I remember correctly, this was one of the first sustain nerfs. Riot hated the fact that the jungler virtually never had to back, and they did not care for ranged AD's having perma-sustain. - 1
Just For Fun... Some Old Art
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