u/Nitpicky3

Is a mount?

I hardly see them only adding mounts in Xenoblade 1, in 2 we got Dromarch which visually looks like a mount on Nia but is only visuals. What if they make a blade which is a mount you can unlock in Uraya and which tree progresses similarly to Ursula? (As they are making Merc missions playable in enemy waves with blades)

I can also see the new hero in 3 being an engineer from the City or something you get to know before Maktha Forest, which would also give you access to mounts

I just think the experience is quite miserable. Bloated augment pool, unreadable at a glance tab window (hey look champ has 2 augs on Q, other has 3 augs on different abilities, so on and so forth).

Who greenlighted that part first up?

Next, augments on abilities are just a common template that's shared across all in theory available champions. "When you use your ult, create a copy of yourself that uses it too", on Yorick. Sounds fun right? Ownership belongs to the Yorick Copy, so once he's gone, pathfinding breaks and Maiden Copy is broken and inactive.

And this reddit, x and youtube are sharing more and more bugs.

Gamemode became unreadable, the augment pool being so diluted the highrolls are even worse and you have to play guesswork as to what works and what does not. What has the guarantee to work are just statistical increases, the BANE of any Roguelike game design creativity.

But you know what is readable, expands your kit and is not bugged? Augments. Augments that work depending on your kit. Ethereal Weapon, Infernal Conduit, Outlaw's Grit, Cruelty...

You do not need to clog to no end the augment pool with the most uncreative copy pastes of augs on each and every ability. You just need augs that already worked depending on your kit. You do not see a Trailblazer if you do not have a dash, what this update tries to achieve was already there...

If you want more mayhem, go wilder on that "transforming" front. Go wilder with stuff akin to Trickster Demon in concept. "Histeria: Your Fear effects are turned into Berserk effects", the skillshot split idea but this split applies kitwise at the cost of a damage penalty, "Stuns are turned into Sleep", "Falling asleep has you with Noct's ult effect for a short duration"...

I'm just spitballing, but go wild in that area. You had the good initial spark of making some augs that benefit more certain champs... But this is not the execution, far from it!

Obvious disclaimer that I'm not an all knowing person. Even by writing all that I admit it's just my opinions that other people might not share.

I have wanted to do a breakdown of the new version of Arena we got, but waited to get more accustomed to 3v3 and some of the freshly added Guests of Honor. For the latter, I'll be presenting thoughts on the new ones but yeah... they are just a few days old so that might change over time. Also, I will use the Good/Meh/Not-a-fan format instead, Bad & Ugly is just too negative. 😂

The Good:

• Starter item being only 1 item (in that case boots) is way better. Only having 1 slot occupied, not having to manage shop the first 2 rounds when there are other events happening... Having each round being mostly 1 event really is better. Also, Guardian Horn was just way too strong, being the best pick on the majority of champions even due to its stats and passive.
• New Guests of Honor are a straight up improvement of the original ones. I nearly considered during the tail end of the previous ones that Guests of Honor should just be gone in favor of... something else. The new ones proved me wrong, but alas... there is more to it in another section . . .
• Shardholder: the idea of it spawning its own item is better. It is more readable, be it the stats or that the person means trouble instead of having to check it yourself. There is always a but.
• New Augments are really fun for the most part. Not much to say, they are really fun.
• Augment leveling system is really really fun. Power level is readable at a glance, it alleviates the cognitive load of checking plenty of augments as a whole, helps with focusing on some parts of your build, alleviate some of the RNG by making you strategize around it... Yeah it really is great.
• Choice Round (the one after second GoH) I think is better than the Anvil Round it used to be. It offers multiple avenues to strategize, with clear opportunity costs that you can play around before, during and after that round.
• Bravery and Crowd Favorites are really well balanced.
• 3v3 felt weird at first, but I took some liking in it. It definitely plays a lot differently, but it offers up some cool experience.

The Meh:

• Round 1, sometimes pushing to Round 3 gets to be really rough some times on certain champions. This is partly due to boots being your only option, for better and worse. That option does not allow to specify if you are going after AD/AP. Also I think the opportunity costs on them is pretty uneven due to augments. You got an Auto-Cast Round 1, and half the lobby is heavy auto attacker? You really are not taking Tabis, Ionian's are the solution with the 40 Ability Haste. Some never see play, and when they do, they are sold at the first opportunity (Swiftness, for example).
• New Guests of Honor are better in what they provide, but that applies when you understand them. The readability of GoH in the previous version was hit or miss, but here... Some have really obscure inner workings. To this day, people still do not understand Jarvan IV is a catch up mechanic. Evelynn, if you all dance, people get back to 100 HP but it is avoided like the plague because they think the game gets halved all the time (on top of being flamed for picking her). Yone, a new one, has a nice concept but takes way too long to soak it all in, and even then... Its inner working changes, undescribed before it happens, if all people side on one side. There are too many rules within rules. People have to take into account their augments, their items, those of others, and have to compute the opportunity costs of 3 choices, which can prompt more choices (Tahm, Yone, Kindred), in a short enough vote, which can go right after into another choice selection.
• I hesitated to put this into the next section: Multiple selections get really confusing. It is mostly a Atakhan and to some extent a Kindred/Evelynn issue, but whenever you proc Atakhan on a round with already a choice, it gets really confusing the order they appear in and how they are displayed. This could easily be fixed with different borders whenever it is Atakhan related, but the subsequent choices and figuring what is what, how they do interact. Getting an Atakhan choice on Choice Round with Kindred guest of honor is some of the most confusing stuff.
• New Reroll system is better for consistency with ARAM Mayhem and makes the game with less tacked on rules, but it also makes insane high rolls more likely. Some may like it, some others won't, or it really depends on the occurrence of it. In all honesty I'm getting a bit of fatigue from seeing the most insane stuff always pulled out, as it crunches out creativity and "make up with the few" Arena used to have.
• A bit of a nitpick on 3v3, is that I do not like being forced into either 2v2 or 3v3. I know why it is like that (hello Battlerite, RIP King), but it does not feel good. Also, probably an engine limit... But yeah there is too few teams, you get repeats too often.

The Not-a-Fan:

• Uneven First Rounds' Power Fantasy. I really do get the appeal of leaving the first round to be Augment related, as it brings A LOT of the game to game variance right from the start. First few rounds are at the whims of RNG, you understanding how to manipulate the path the game tries to set out for you... And you or the game messing with it. Boots like said earlier matter but do not matter at the same time, some augments are really stronger than others, which makes the early round awkwardly slow or a no match depending on the game. Good for variance still, but I wish that we could make a choice devoid of RNG that matters at the start.
• Boots feel bad. They are somewhat needed because we are really slow without them, but also they somewhat are an obligatory sell. Why? Why could not we have either a dedicated boot slot with potentially a boots upgrade, or just straight out give the move speed natively and work out starting items? https://www.reddit.com/r/LeagueArena/comments/1tf4wue/upgradeable_starter_item_concept/
• Speaking of first few rounds, we have to talk about Adaptive Force. Champions are natively inclined towards a ratio for runes and items. For augments? It defaults to AD. Make it consistent, one, or the other. Because right now it feels like a rule on a rule, and that is pretty bad. You get Magical Girl, on Prismatic Items you got a really good option for your champ that does neither offer AD/AP/AF, you are stuck with AD until Round 4.
• In the same line, Round 4 is too late for a first Legendary item. 4 Rounds in feels like a stretch to make your first free choice, and you can barely influence the path for 2 augments and a prismatic item (at the very least) before that. It could be alleviated with the starting item from above, but I wish as a bandaid fix that Round 3 and 4 would be reverted to being reversed. That would also mean changing how the rest of the game paces out, which I am not a fan of either, but I think Round 4 legendary feels worse than an inverted gold/aug pace.
• Speaking of pace, Golds without gold generating elements feel really scarce. The current iteration really makes it feel like Augments are the majority of your power level, and items are just neat little pieces that come slowly. I wish some power could be pulled back from augments to put it back on crafting an item build as... it does not matter as much as it should, at least to me.
• Tooltips are of too varying quality. Sometimes you get the full run down of every elements, other time you get "Bobyguard: When you dash, gain a Shield". What value is that Shield? How much does it scale? From what does it scale? I am sorry but this is very amateur-ish. Back in elementary school, you are pressed on justifying your values with its metric, "Increase by 15 what? 15 apples? 15 candies? 15%? 15kg?", the same applies here. Also, things like "Buff Buddies" counts as a Burn on yourself, lvl 2 shares it with allies but allies will not get it as a burn source.
• This is about Balance, but there is too much power disparity between certain augments. Holy Fire or Trail Blazer on champs with more than enough tools to use it accordingly will barely reach acceptable numbers, but Apex Inventor or Firefox can go haywire. True Shot Prodigy still being here and even buffed, outputting damage in the thousands total in the first round alone is testament enough.
• Item disparity between modes. It is expected that some items are tuned balance wise to be stronger/weaker depending on the mode. Echoes of Helia still being its old version is just odd. You should not go between modes and have items being completely different iterations and being expected to take those into account. It's still isolated, but this sets a precedent.
• Quests for Shardholder runs. Just like autocasts appearing more when you have other autocasts or lightning rod/hexbolt, it should be expected that quests, if it stays like that, should be less likely to appear to no items with anvils player, and not appear at all when you got Shardholder. But all in all, this just feels like rules tacked on others, when in my opinion it should just go with the simplest approach with the less rules: let anvil maxxers take quests and complete them again.
• I do not know what happened, but rematches with the team from the previous-previous match happen way too often. Even in 2v2, and it starts to be irritating. It does not feel good because it repeats itself, because if there is power imbalance it is likely to double dip the punishment on the losing team. Please fix that.
• Lastly, despite loving a lot of the Guest of Honors, there are some really nasty bad apples. Morgana feels quite bad on melee-squishies because ranged and tankier carries can just deny you revives and secure an easy win without any mechanical involvement. Taric you just do not play, there is genuinely no strategy and is a turn off from fun or involving the thoughts of the player. Nocturne is in concept somewhat the previous both, but done better, but there is just something off about it that does not make it that interesting. Shaco, that may come as a surprise, makes the game really boring for me: it's an instant pick whenever he's here, and he is so much picked that his wow factor is now... yeah cool augment tier do not exist anymore, cool.

I hope this post was not too... too long. I avoided using AI to summarize stuff because I respect what I write and other people. Hoping y'all who made it this far had a good read, and I welcome with open arms any thing you might have a say on!

I sadly lost the game to provide the example, but Mind Over Matter Pyke is bugged. It really does provide extra hp for Pyke instead of being cancelled by his passive. I do not remember if said hp is still accounted in the and gain though

I have had those ideas for a while, but this patch with the recent changes of the season overall I want to get them out in the wild:

NEW BOOTS

Symbiotic Soles

(yes I know those are Synchronized Souls)

+45 Movement Speed

VOIDBORN: Your Flash is empowered into Teleport. It now resets every round.

NEW SUMMONER SPELL

Teleport

After a 0.5s delay, your champion dashes to the targeted location and gain decaying move speed upon arrival.

The goal of this is making flash augments more competitive and giving a new angle in terms of positioning, playing more around maps and etc. Rush can be used to dash to anywhere inside the current Arena.

NEW AUGMENT (rarity undecided)

Quest: Predator

Quest: Obtain any boots.

Reward: Upon completing this quest, your Boots advance to Tier 3 and gain the Predator active. Using it gives bonus movement speed towards champions and extra adaptive damages (weakest defensive stats) scaling off of AD+AP upon the first hit.

Let's bring one of the last remaining keystone back, on top of adding t3 boots in and making keeping boots worthwhile, all in a same package