League of Legends -- far and away the current frontrunner in the multiplayer online battle arena (or MOBA) real-time strategy subgenre -- is one titanic free-to-play game, in terms of both casual and hardcore audiences. In this regular column, IGN writer and longtime League of Legends junkie Ryan Scott discusses and dissects what's new, what's great, and what's wonky on the Fields of Justice.

Happy 2012, everyone! With any luck, you spent a decent portion of your holiday break playing League of Legends (hey, I figure it's either that, or you were glued to Star Wars: The Old Republic). Now that the New Year has kicked off, I'd like to present my short-but-sweet wish list for League of Legends' next twelve months. Sure, the game's pretty awesome as-is -- but I humbly believe that these seven items will make it that much better.Now, as someone who predominantly plays support champions (Janna, Sona, and Soraka are my go-to choices), I might be a bit biased here. But, let's do the math: The champion roster currently stands at 90 strong, and out of that, we have a paltry six pure support options. For the record, I count Alistar, Karma, and Taric, in addition to the three I've already cited. And even when you count some of the hybrid nuker/tank supports or some of the other unconventional pseudo-supports (I'm thinking of champions like Zilean, Kayle, Leona, and Blitzcrank here), the list is still undeniably slim. Compare this to the dozens of carries, mages, and tanks, and the lopsidedness becomes pretty clear. Then again, hey, maybe they're (relatively) unpopular because nobody wants to play support, right? Well, that brings me to my next point...

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The current optimal five-man team arrangement on Summoner's Rift consists of a mid-lane mage, a top-lane tank (or beefy fighter), a jungler, and a bottom-lane support and attack damage-centric carry. Here's the main usability problem: The support champion's job is to avoid killing minions, let the carry soak up all the bonus gold (since he's much more item-dependent), sustain the carry as much as possible, and spend the entire game getting by on cheap defensive items (since you're effectively funneling gold to the carry). The entire support role is a very passive one (certainly at the start of any game), and while I enjoy and excel in this particular role, I can understand why a minority of the game's audience feels the same way. I certainly don't have a solution, but it's a big problem when no one wants to be the guy who's "stuck" playing support.This is a pretty small nitpick in the grand scheme of things, but it would be nice to have a customizable per-champion item list in the shop's recommended items bar, just to save a bit of time when you recall back to base. Personally, I keep a text file with a list of item builds for each champion I play; I'd love to turn that into a semi-automated shopping list, where appropriate.I already covered this one pretty thoroughly a couple of columns ago, but I really feel like Dominion still needs a few careful tweaks to its death timers and scoring rules. Almost all of my close in-game friends have already gone back to Summoner's Rift, which is pretty telling, considering how big of a deal Dominion was hyped up to be.A while back, Riot introduced the Tribunal , a watchdog system designed to allow level-capped players to judge cases of in-game harassment and negativity, and help decide whether their fellow players' behavior necessitates disciplinary action. You can log up to 10 Tribunal cases per day, and -- once enough players judge a given case -- you receive five Influence Points (League of Legends' in-game currency) if your "pardon/punish" vote corresponds with the majority (thus encouraging careful and legitimate reviews of each case). The thing is, if you're putting in, say, two to three minutes per case -- roughly 20-30 minutes per day -- you might get up to 50 IP. From a pure time/reward ratio standpoint, you get more for losing a 20-30 minute game on Summoner's Rift. Now, it's certainly worth it for the satisfaction of helping to clean up the community (and hey, despite my points, the Tribunal has certainly been a success ), but I feel like even more players would participate if the per-day rewards amounted to what a winning game might net you.This one is a can of worms: A while back, Riot discussed a tentative overhaul to League of Legends' stealth mechanics . The problem -- specifically with Evelynn and Twitch, who have very long invisibility timers -- is that stealth is extraordinarily powerful. At the height of his power, Twitch was perhaps the single strongest champion in League of Legends' history, before a battery of nerfs rendered his damage output near-worthless. A similar cycle occurred with Evelynn once players figured out an effective role for her, and both champions have remained at the rock-bottom of most competitive tier lists for a very long time. Twitch and Evelynn's current stealth mechanics don't fit in well with the rest of League of Legends, and every stealth-equipped champion since has had some sort of caveat attached to the mechanic (Shaco, Akali, and Vayne are a few good examples). I don't know if this proposed revision is still on the table -- it sounds kinda cool to me -- but I'd sure love to see these two champions rescued from the trash bin that they're currently languishing in.Assuming that the current champion release pace holds steady, Riot should be trotting out League of Legends' 100th champion in roughly May or June. I don't know what Riot's got in mind, but for me, the answer is clear: Riot needs to introduce recurring April Fool's Day favorite Urf the Manatee into the League -- spatula and all. Who wouldn't want that?Ryan Scott used to be the Executive Editor of IGN's PC-centric sister site, GameSpy.com . These days -- when he's not glued to League of Legends games, that is -- you can listen to his weekly ramblings on various podcasts over at Geekbox.net , or just hit him up in League of Legends via his in-game Summoner name, Rydog. And of course, if you haven't jumped into LoL yet, you really should give it a try