The cooldown reduction stat has always been incredibly powerful, as being able to cast spells more frequently naturally increases your damage without needing too much Attack Damage or Ability Power. Understanding the dominance of this stat, Riot Games has typically limited it to a few special items and specific champions. If you want cooldown reduction, you have to trade off many things like damage and energy…
However, after a series of minor updates to various items, cooldown reduction has now become more commonplace than ever. Previously, achieving 40% cooldown reduction could only be done at the end of the game with full items, but now with just 1-2 items, you can easily achieve this. This has inadvertently pushed the pace of League of Legends too high due to the significant, continuous damage from champions coming in too early. Furthermore, those items also provide an excessive amount of pure damage, making them incredibly “perfect.”
The two classes that benefit the most from these “perfect” items provided by Riot Games are Fighters and Mages. Not only do they have strong champion qualities and powerful early game damage, but these two classes only need one item to gain 20% cooldown reduction, and the other stats from items like Luden’s Tempest and Black Cleaver are highly compatible with these classes. You can either choose to buy one of these two items depending on your champion type or suffer a disadvantage in the match.
The most unreasonable item to mention here is Luden’s Tempest; this item is almost the “go-to” item for every mid-lane Mage because it simply provides ALL the things that this class needs. Want damage? Luden’s Tempest gives you up to 90 Ability Power. Need energy? Even the small item named Lost Chapter has that covered. Of course, this item provides you with 20% cooldown reduction as well.
As a result, for many years now, Mages and Fighters have dominated League of Legends, possessing too much power early on and overshadowing all other positions. The Marksmen are perhaps the biggest victims of this situation, and the reason is quite simple: the majority of items that Marksmen use do not provide cooldown reduction. The only exception might be the Soul Reaver, but not every champion fits well with this item.
And then the meta without Marksmen gradually emerged, with team compositions like Sona – Tahm Kench, Sona – Taric, and the non-farming Senna style appearing and shaking the position of Marksmen dramatically. You no longer need a super Marksman to carry the team when you can finish the game at minute 25 with a strong Aatrox or Irelia.
In summary, Riot Games is allowing what should be unique to certain champions and items to spread widely, creating too many omnipotent characters in League of Legends. Riot has previously announced that they will have a significant update for the shop and items in the preseason of 2021. Perhaps the creators of League of Legends need to prioritize balance and reduce the number of items with cooldown reduction stats because it is gradually becoming uncontrollable and widespread across all servers and ranks.
