Some time ago, I introduced the concept of “slash lines” as a way to measure players’ early game performances. The idea was to move away from creep score difference (CSD) stats, especially for junglers, and begin looking more at gold and experience differences.
Gold and experience diffs have several advantage over CS diffs. They capture the actual value of each CS, instead of treating a siege minion as having the same value as a caster minion. They also handle the rewards from jungle camps in a more consistent way, compared to the challenges that existed with the past approach of counting every jungle monster as 1 CS, or the current approach of counting every camp as 4 CS. Gold and experience also do a better job of normalizing measurement of oddball lanes like the current Spellthief’s Sona, or last year’s Spellthief’s/Klepto Zilean.
There are some problems with the slash lines approach, though, and I’d like to move forward with another step that should help.
What problem are we trying to solve?
First, let’s understand the challenges with using slash lines. The biggest issue is that slash lines are messy to read and write. When I say that Lira has +132/-68 GD10/XPD10, that’s a whole lot of characters on the screen. It can definitely feel pretty cryptic.
Continue reading GXD – A clearer way to communicate player diff stats
You could argue that this goes back to the days of Doran’s Blade, Crystalline Flask, or even Long Sword/Boots + Health Pots, but for the first half of League of Legends’ lifespan the options remained fairly stagnant. It was really the 
introduction of Warlord’s Bloodlust at the start of Season 6 that made people realize just how powerful early game sustain could be. And thus began a cycle: high-level players would 
discover a source of early game sustain, one that was cheap or free, and they would use it to bridge champions’ weak early games, or make their oppressive laning even stronger, by mitigating opponents’ ability to trade against them.