During season five of the video game League of Legends, bulkier champions like Darius and Mordekaiser became stars as several items were created to make champions even harder to kill. Items like Cinderhulk, Sterak’s Gage and even the new Black Cleaver gave the champions a lot of ways to stay alive and do damage at the same time.

Tanks, the front-line champions of the game, dominated competitive play, leaving some thinner, squishier challengers out to dry. With all of these huge, unstoppable brutes lumbering around, the marksmen players were left asking, “What about us?” Well marksmen of the League, season six is your time to shine.

Many new and reworked items provide massive offensive numbers to the Jinxes and Kalistas of the world. Several marksmen are receiving huge buffs to their skills and stats, too. Most notably of these are Corki and Graves.

Making every champion on a level playing field is fair, but does the the field have to be so extreme? Instead of making the unstoppable force an immovable object, why not just keep it as a force difficult to stop and the stalwart object? This feels like a slippery slope.

Once one champion archetype gets a big boost another one has to get one to balance it. Then another archetype gets left out, so they get a boost, but if it’s too big of a boost then they have to re-boost the first one, and on and on.

I’m not sure if I can handle all of this hyper-carrying. It’s supposed to be a team game, but it seems as though every game is going to come down to a marksman or a tank destroying everyone. I can’t deal with being called a “n00b” and getting “rekt” so much by the other team’s Blitzcrank anymore.

While part of me is scared of what Summoner’s Rift could become, part of me is excited for season six. There are more new features involved outside of making marksmen really good. They are reworking ranked play, allowing for larger parties in the ranked queue. Also, the new champion Illaoi looks really interesting. 

Season five saw the introduction of awesome champions like Kalista, Ekko and Tahm Kench to the Rift. It also saw Bard and Kindred. It also saw Rek’Sai, but she doesn’t fit into either one of those other categories; she’s OK. With this in mind, I am excited to see what new champions, besides Illaoi, Riot Games will introduce.

With all of the marksmen support coming soon, it is interesting to see if they will release more support characters to back up their newly overpowered friends.

Every patch will be slightly different, yet I feel as though the Dariuses of the world will still dominate games. It is exciting to see if the marksmen buffs will be enough to overcome the juggernauts of the top lane. One thing is for sure: it will definitely be explosive.

Jacob Ruffo is an opinion writer for The Kent Stater. Contact him at [email protected].