u/Many-Translator-8512

I just had a weird stretch of games and it made me question how much luck actually affects climbing.

I went on a 15 game win streak, then in the next 15 games I lost 12 of them. My own play did not feel drastically different between the two runs, but the results were completely different. That made me wonder how much of League is actually skill, and how much is just being on the right or wrong side of matchmaking for a short period of time.

I know the usual response is that if you are good enough, you will climb no matter what. But in small sample sizes, luck can absolutely decide whether a streak turns into a climb or gets erased by a bad run of teammates, lobbies, or game quality.

That is what I want to ask jungle players: how much do you think luck really matters in matchmaking? And do you think win streaks can sometimes push you into harder games that then cause the swing back down?

And before people answer with "AP Shaco scales" or "AP Shaco is more setup/control focused than AD," I already understand that. I know the champion isn't supposed to have the same early game impact as AD Shaco. I know AP Shaco is way more thematic than AD Shaco and plays far more around tempo control, traps, objectives, pathing manipulation, vision control, and teamfight disruption instead of just raw early game pressure.

What I'm trying to understand is what actually separates good AP Shaco players from bad ones.

Because whenever I play AP Shaco, it feels like the early game impact is insanely low unless enemies massively misplay and walk into boxes. Ganking feels much less reliable than AD Shaco unless the lane state is perfect, and until I hit 2 items, usually Blackfire + Liandry, the champion doesn't really feel like it comes online for me.

And yeah, once I do get those items, the champ starts feeling genuinely strong around objectives and teamfights. But before that point, it sometimes feels like I'm just farming and hoping the game stays stable long enough for me to become useful.

So what exactly are good AP Shaco players doing differently that makes the champion work consistently?

Especially from people who play a lot of AP Shaco, what are the biggest differences you notice between good AP Shaco players and lower elo AP Shaco players?

Because I feel like I understand what the champion is supposed to be conceptually, but I don't think I fully understand how the champion is actually meant to function game-to-game.

Coming back to League after a few years away and I am trying to understand something that feels very different now.

I used to play about five years ago, quit, and I have just come back to the game and started jungling again. For now I am mainly playing Talon and trying to get back to master. One thing I have noticed is that gold and XP leads do not seem to matter anywhere near as much as they used to.

There are games where I am up two or even three levels, and sometimes a full item or more, and still certain champions can fight me way closer than they should, or even beat me outright in a 1v1. I am not talking about obvious hard counters like an assassin into a tank. I mean situations where, in the past, that kind of lead should have meant the fight was heavily in my favor.

What changed over the last few years? Is it just modern champion design, base stats, item spikes, damage creep, defensive stats, or something else entirely?

I am genuinely trying to understand whether this is just how the game works now, or if I am missing something important.

I used to play long sessions and just queue game after game. Lately I have started taking bigger gaps between games, and it has made a noticeable difference.

What I have noticed from tracking my own games over the last six months is this: after a really bad loss, especially one that felt messy or unfair, my next two games are far more likely to go badly if I instantly queue again. Even when I do not feel tilted in the moment, the loss still seems to affect me more than I realise.

That is the main point I want to make. A bad loss does not have to show up as obvious tilt for it to affect your play. Sometimes you are not angry, not flaming, not visibly frustrated, but the loss still sticks in the background and quietly damages your next games.

Because of that, I think taking a 10 to 15 minute break after a bad loss is a very good habit. Do something that has nothing to do with League. Get away from the screen for a bit, reset, and come back with a clearer head.

Even if you think the loss did not bother you, it is still probably worth stepping away. You do not always notice how much a bad game affected you until you already queue into the next one and it is too late.

Historically, every role and class in League had something they were good at, and also something they had to give up. That tradeoff mattered. Riot never seemed interested in every class becoming a “do everything” champion.

Over the last several years, and especially since the durability update, I think class identity has blurred badly. My biggest issue right now is bruisers/fighters.

The problem is simple: bruisers get to stack damage, health, and resistances all at once, while also getting easier access to target reach than they used to. Historically, one of their biggest weaknesses was getting onto a target in the first place. That weakness has been softened a lot over time by reworks, item changes, and kits that now come packed with dashes, sticks, gap closers, or enough mobility to make access much less of a real weakness.

So now they are no longer paying the old price for their strengths.

At the same time, their damage has crept up so much that in a lot of cases they are getting uncomfortably close to the output of actual damage classes. That is part of the problem. It is not just that they can survive. It is that they can survive while also threatening damage that overlaps too much with ADCs, mages, and assassins in the early and mid game.

And that makes picking a pure damage class feel bad. Why should I pick an ADC or mage when, in many games, the bruiser is going to match or beat my damage while also being harder to kill and harder to punish? That does not feel like healthy class distinction. It feels like identity collapse.

This is not me saying bruisers should be useless. It is me saying their damage should be trimmed so that their power actually has a cost again. If a class gets durability, sustain, mobility, and reliable access, then its damage should not also be near the top of the chart. That is exactly how you end up with champions that feel frustrating, overloaded, and too efficient at everything.

Riot has already acknowledged that damage has crept back up over time, and they have also talked before about fighter item overlap and subclasses blending together instead of staying distinct. That is why this discussion matters. It is not some random complaint. It is a real class-identity problem.

This line of thinking was also sparked by a recent Riot Endstep Q&A, which is why I am bringing it up now.

If you are going to reply, read the post carefully and address the actual point. Do not nitpick one sentence, miss the overall argument, and act like that is a counterargument. If you reply without understanding the post, I will call that out bluntly.

~(Master 238lp AP Shaco Main)

I am mostly talking about AD assassins here, not AP assassins, because I do not play AP assassins and I am not trying to speak for that side of the class.

Before the usual replies come in, I am not arguing that assassins should kill tanks, frontline, or any random target they touch. That is not the point. Riot has always framed assassins as a high-risk, high-reward class, and fighters are meant to be more target-agnostic, which is one of the things that separates them from assassins. My point is much narrower: assassins are supposed to be the class that kills vulnerable targets efficiently, and that job has been blurred so hard that a lot of bruisers now match or come close to assassin burst while also bringing more durability and more forgiveness.

That is why I stopped playing assassins two years ago, after mythic items were removed. I gave up on AD assassins because there has been a long-running bias against them, and it feels like Riot keeps treating their damage profile as something that must be tightly controlled, while other classes are allowed to creep into the same burst space.

The game I want to use as an example was Talon into Lee Sin. He hit one item while I was around one and a half, which is already expected because my items are cheaper. The issue is what happened next. He landed Q, then E, then autos, then ultimate, and the damage was enough to take my entire health bar. Then he still had enough to follow with Flash and finish the kill with a second Q. I am not saying an assassin should always one-rotation someone. I am saying a bruiser should not be able to come that close to assassin burst while also having the rest of a bruiser kit.

That is the overlap I am talking about. If a bruiser can threaten the same kind of burst window as an assassin, then the assassin loses the thing that is supposed to make the class distinct. Lee Sin is not the only example. This pattern shows up across a lot of bruisers. They are able to do too much damage too fast, and that makes the assassin identity much less exclusive than it used to be.

At that point, the only thing that still feels unique to assassins is movement. Even that is not enough anymore. Talon is one of the few assassins with truly game-warping mobility. Most assassins do not have that. And mobility is not exclusive to assassins anyway, because Riot keeps giving new champions and reworks more and more movement tools. So once burst is shared and mobility is shared, what is actually left that makes assassins distinct?

That is the part that feels wrong to me. The class is still playable. I am not saying assassins are unplayable, and I am not saying good assassin players cannot climb. They absolutely can. The problem is that if you want to play an assassin, you often have to put in far more effort than a bruiser just to get a fraction of the same result.

That is not a healthy identity for the class.

I used to think mid was better for Aurelion Sol because you did not have to depend on your support’s synergy.

After more games this season, I have changed my mind. Bot has felt better for me in almost every bracket. The lane is easier to play freely, the enemy ADC usually has less utility than the support, and once you factor in Aurelion Sol’s range with Q and E, it becomes much harder for bot lane to meaningfully punish you. Even though mid can look cleaner in theory, Aurelion Sol is a scaling champion, and bot seems to let that scaling convert into wins more consistently.

I also think bot lane is less reliant on your jungler bailing you out. Mid matchups tend to punish you harder and earlier, while bot lane often gives you more room to farm, poke, and stack safely. For me, that has made bot lane feel better across all elos, not just lower ranks.

For builds, I am mostly seeing the standard Comet setup or new ~ (DFT) with Rylai’s into Liandry’s (Lowkey I prefer Liandry first idk why) , then damage or defensive follow ups depending on the game.

I want to hear what other people think. Why do you think Aurelion Sol is better mid or better bot, and what runes and item order are you running this season?

Edit:
Small thing I have also noticed. Early stacking is not as important as it looks. There are plenty of games where I sit on around 70 to 90 stacks at 15 minutes, which looks bad on paper. But by 25 minutes I am suddenly at 280 or more.

Once mid game fights start, stacking accelerates hard. A few decent fights where people stay inside your E and you get full Q uptime will rapidly catch you up and often push you past the usual stacks per minute benchmarks. Because of that, I do not think early stack numbers should be overvalued as long as you are reaching fights and playing for scaling.