New LIHL rules

[dweiler]

Because of the abuse of clogging and suiciding lately, we have decided to come up with two new rules:

Do not sell more than 200 value during a single level with the intent to push and/or leak more.

Do not save more than 200 gold when sending with the intent to leak more.

We have decided on those rules because excessive selling to leak more/push more and saving gold to leak more are in our opinion clear abuses of the game mechanics. Building dead value, suiciding without selling do not fall under those rules.

Please give us your feedback on how the new rules are working.

[Psyclone]

I think the rule is totally useless since TKer usually doesnt get above 500 value anyway.

[RadiantCrystal]

@Psyclone we are still at our infancy stage. If you have anything to suggest, feel free to share with us

[Jamo]

I mostly agree with Psyc, I don't see that this will have big effect. Typically a suicider has around 500-700 val, selling 200 rarely happens I guess.
Rule #2 only applies for the actual level where the team sends, correct? This might help a bit, but probably also not too much. The 400 more value or so a suicider can add won't help much delaying units.
I think this meta is more a problem of the current map balance, and not of how the rules are.

[dweiler]

Rule #2 only applies for the actual level where the team sends, correct?

Yes with "when sending" we mean the level that the sends are on enemy side. So if it's a race on level 15 you can't hold gold on level 15. You can hold gold on level 14 in that case to leak slower or whatever.

[AvadaKedavra]

What if I have 1 King Claw, and rest aqua for 9, and I want full push for 10, can I then sell lobster and push? It's 225 total value I will sell

[Dong]

What if I have 1 King Claw, and rest aqua for 9, and I want full push for 10, can I then sell lobster and push? It's 225 total value I will sell

just sell the king claw, and make 1 or 2 t1 units(for 25 or more gold), that way it equals out.. i would say haha

[dweiler]

What if I have 1 King Claw, and rest aqua for 9, and I want full push for 10, can I then sell lobster and push? It's 225 total value I will sell

Well if it's above 200 value not. Same with t6 units et cetera. We just don't want too much selling in one level. In this case if you want to do that build a few small crabs and sell them over 2 levels

[TinSoldier]

in my opinion, the only way we can eliminate the issue/benefit of clogging with the current game mechanic is to eliminate suicide as a strategy. The main reason suiciding works is because you leak so many units to the demons, krakkens and sends get left/stuck behind whereas an opposing team that attempts to hold will leak only the sends straight and fast to the king. The advantage the suicide team has is that the one player with 7/8+ sends 4k+ lumber and those mass warlocks etc wins in the end where you see 90 leaks dieing significantly slower than 30 leaks.

Which is why i think the only rule that can avoid the issue must pertain to minimum value. If you can't have x% minimum recommended value then you shouldn't have the option to "suicide" to get 7/10 lj

It takes skill and ability to get a 7/8 or more push after 10 without suiciding. Its easier with towers like EA or aqua ofc, but it still leaves u vulnerable as those tend to be the carry lanes late game and them overpushing to 7/8 can be dangerous. Whereas if you have medium tier towers and an EA on your team you are free to push as you know 11-14 is covered by ea.

just my 2 cents on the issue, i still appreciate that you guys are trying to add some things to deal with it and hopefully we can build on this going forward.

[supersexyy]

The problem is that you should be able to die on other levels, not just certain levels which you can prepare to race and clog.

[Diablo_]

Imo clogging can't properly be fully fixed. No matter what rules we implement they will still allow clogging one way or another or destroy many legit strategies or would simply be a pain in the ass to play with (e.g. leaking xx units = !ff).

What we want to achieve with these 2 new rules is just to get rid off the biggest abuse cases, which are of the sort "build anti 14, if they don't send sell towers at lvl 15 and win the race by leaking 120 creeps". Such cases truly are pure abuses and also can't be predicted by the other team as they have no sign what so ever that the other team will clog until it happens.
On the other hand these rules don't really have any impact on all other cases, people can still sell a reasonable amount of value every level to full suicide/push etc.

I also believe that people should have to deal with/adapt to all other sorts of clogging which are still possible. Usually this can be predicted already at arena or when the other team leaks big lvl 11/12/13 and often times they can die e.g. on level 14 as a result to it if the other team adapts to it. If the other team still wants to race 15 then so be it, take the risk of losing to clog.
Of course it's sometimes annoying to lose vs clogging (but if you think about it, you also often had other options to win the game) but it simply is part of the map and not much can be done about it.

As always we are open for feedback/suggestions.

[n1ll3]

I 100% agree what tin and jamo wrote here. I think we really need a minimum value rule to avoid the clog. The new rules are just a step to the right way but they are not changing the clog meta in any way.

Today i had a game were our team had 3 times 7/7 and one 7/4 hydra with 4500 value 15. Both teams had 2 heals and we had stomp and they had stomp. Lvl. 15 our hydra was ez mid but we lost clearly against clog....
So its allways about who holds 14 better and can clog harder. 3+ heals and one archer =autowin. With this meta skill is really useless and its just boring....

[dweiler]

I think we really need a minimum value rule to avoid the clog. The new rules are just a step to the right way but they are not changing the clog meta in any way.

But the problem is, what kind of minimum value do you need. 1750 value (50%) leaks just as much as 1000 value, + u can still push 7/10 with aqua and EA and all worse rolls are disadvantaged (they will need to stay 7-7 or something for this). To get rid of clog you would need a rule to have everyone about 3000 value at least on 15 to have no clog (or 80% something like that), which I think is a no-go.

So I would also wanna quote Jamo, and say this clogging is just a part of this map. As much as we want to, we can't ban it unless we have some heavy restricting rules, which I don't think is the right way. Especially considering if we ban the clogging which you can't prepare (like selling, keeping gold) there are always ways to avoid the clog race. (Skip 10, send 13/14, send arena, income send 15 etc, plenty of options. People should just adapt and not race and lose to clog unless they are prepared to deal with it.)

[Tom_hardy]

i dont know how hard it would be to implement, but if it is possible: if you leak more then half of your naturally spawning creeps, your summons and creeps get 0 collision in mid? And i mean this being checked and applied for each player and individual creeps. and if thats not enough maybe even add a little speed bonus. That would punish suicides and clogging for sure.

[matdas]

make a maximum number of leaks allowed for two waves in a row with no sends. Example: if your team leaks (to mid, not to king) 50 or more units two waves in a row, you lose. Will prevent a huge amount of suicide from more than one player. 50 is what i think it should be, mods can fine tune it. Instead of restricting how to build, restrict how much a team can leak.