[csydas]

I don't know that either is particularly gentle with its burden of knowledge; you say SCII is very clear, but truthfully I can't really tell what's going on in most pro games except for Cheese games with commentaries (I think there's a youtube channel called When Cheese Fails which I watched a few episodes of). As someone who grew up with Warcraft and Diablo eating up most of his time, I never played Star Craft and honestly the strategies used in pro-matches are so far removed from what I would do as a kid in the few games I played that it was a new game altogether.

I do agree that League is a downright mess in team fights, but at the same time, it's pretty true for SCII as well; when the armies, regardless of what stage of gameplay they're at, collide, I'm usually pretty lost as to why one is just eating the other or why this match up is a scenario that requires a retreat.

League has put a lot of effort into spectator clarity, with many of the status effects now having pretty clear symbols, the team-fight view with relative "power bars" that just give you a generic look at which side is faring better, and the commentators are usually fairly good at their fight recaps. A completely uninitiated is still going to miss the majority of nuances in matchups, trades, rotations, and all other such meta-game aspects, but Riot has done a pretty decent job of adding a simple interface for seeing what's going on in a match at any given time, and very simple meter for who is ahead in a team fight.

(It's still a mess to figure out sometimes, eve if you played for several years like I did. Sometimes I can't pick out what's happening until the casters walk us through it on the instant replay)