ARAM Balance Update Thread

RiotRiot Mortdog·4/4/2019, 11:23:39 PM·1 votes·202,207 views

Here is the current status of ARAM balance adjustments as of 9.12 =============================================================================== NERFS Alistar: +5% damage taken Ashe: -5% damage dealt Brand: -5% damage dealt Dr. Mundo: +10% damage taken Fiddlesticks: -5% damage dealt Heimerdinger: -6% damage dealt & +6% damage taken Janna: +10% damage taken & -8% shielding done Jhin: -8% damage dealt Jinx: -5% damage dealt Karthus: -6% damage dealt Kayle: -6% damage dealt & +6% damage taken Kog’maw: -10% damage dealt Lux: -10% damage dealt & +10% damage taken Malzahar: -8% damage dealt & +8% damage taken Maokai: -12% damage dealt & +12% damage taken Miss Fortune: -8% damage dealt Morgana: -6% damage dealt & +6% damage taken Nasus: -5% damage dealt Nautilus: +5% damage taken Sion: -8% damage dealt +10% damage taken Sivir: -8% damage dealt Sona: -15% damage dealt & -18% healing done & +15% damage taken & -18% shielding done Swain: -5% damage dealt Teemo: -12% damage dealt Trundle: +5% damage taken Veigar: -8% damage dealt & +10% damage taken Vel’Koz: -10% damage dealt Xerath: -5% damage dealt Yorick: -5% damage dealt & +5% damage taken Ziggs: -15% damage dealt & +8% damage taken Zyra: -8% damage dealt & +8% damage taken

BUFFS Akali: +18% damage dealt & -8% damage taken Azir: +5% damage dealt Bard: +8% damage dealt & -10% damage taken Camille: +8% damage dealt & -8% damage taken Corki: +5% damage dealt & -5% damage taken Elise: +5% damage dealt & -5% damage taken Evelynn: +15% damage dealt & -10% damage taken Fizz: +5% damage dealt & -5% damage taken Hecarim: -10% damage taken Irelia: +5% damage dealt & -5% damage taken Jarvan IV: +5% damage dealt & -5% damage taken Kai’Sa: +12% damage dealt Kalista: +5% damage dealt Kassadin: -5% damage taken Katarina: +5% damage dealt & -5% damage taken Kindred: +10% damage dealt Khazix: +8% damage dealt & -10% damage taken Kled: +5% damage dealt & -5% damage taken LeBlanc: +12% damage dealt & -10% damage taken Lee Sin: +8% damage dealt & -10% damage taken Lucian: +5% damage dealt Nidalee: +12% damage dealt Nocturne: +10% damage dealt & -12% damage taken Nunu & Willump: -5% damage taken Pantheon: +5% damage dealt Quinn: +8% damage dealt & -8% damage taken Rek’sai: +12% damage dealt & -10% damage taken Rengar: +5% damage dealt & -10% damage taken Riven: +5% damage dealt & -5% damage taken Ryze: +8% damage dealt & -5% damage taken Sejuani: -8% damage taken Shyvana: +5% damage dealt & -5% damage taken Tahm Kench: -5% damage taken Taliyah: +5% damage dealt Talon: -5% damage taken Tristana: +5% damage dealt Tryndamere: +10% damage dealt & -10% damage taken Udyr: +10% damage dealt & -10% damage taken Vi: +5% damage dealt Warwick: -8% damage taken Xin Zhao: -5% damage taken Zac: +5% damage dealt & -8% damage taken Zed: +5% damage dealt Zoe: +5% damage dealt

Rune Differences ============================================================================== Precision

-Triumph: Restore 6% (down from 12%) of your missing HP and grant 10 (down from 20) gold -Presence of Mind: Restore 10% (down from 20%) of your max mana and 6% (down from 10%) of your ult cooldown.

Domination

-Electrocute: Cooldown 15-10 seconds (down from 25-20 seconds) -Predator: Cooldown 100-80 seconds (down from 150-100 seconds) -Dark Harvest: +2 damage per soul (down from 5) -Taste of Blood: Cooldown 15 seconds (down from 20 seconds) -Zombie Ward: Doesn't work. Gets autoswapped -Ghost Poro: Doesn't work. Gets autoswapped

Sorcery

-Nullifying Orb: Cooldown 30 seconds (down from 60 seconds) -Nimbus Cloak: Cooldown 30 seconds (down from 60 seconds) -Waterwalking: Doesn't work. Gets autoswapped. -Gathering Storm: Increases every 6 (down from 10) minutes

Resolve

-Grasp of the Undying: Permanent health gained is 10 (up from 5) for melee, 6 (up from 3) for ranged. -Demolish: Does 50 + 0.2% of Max HP (down from 100 + 0.35% of Max HP) damage to structures -Conditioning: Activates at 8 minutes (down from 10 minutes) -Overgrowth: Gain 5 health (up from 3) for every 8 monsters absorbed; at 80 monsters (down from 120) gain additional 2.5% HP

Inspiration

-Magical Footwear: Gives at 8 minutes (down from 10 minutes) -Perfect Timing: Activates at 4 minutes (down from 10 minutes) -Minion Dematerializer: Initial cooldown of 2 minutes (down from 4 minutes) ===============================================================================

https://na.leagueoflegends.com/sites/default/files/styles/wide_medium/public/upload/lol_cms_267_tile_01-feature_h00-v50-min.jpg?itok=mTVpBCbV

120 Comments

UndercoverRaptor4/5/2019, 4:52:08 PM28 votes

I'm very afraid that these are more permanent "experiments" than we think. I know the ARAM community is smaller, but I don't want to lose the random gameplay experience I came to love because it's meant to be more balanced for everyone. So here's my two-cents;

  • Items like mariner's revenge change how certain champs will be played, allowing people to just force their way in (unless they have ghostly boots, then they just walk up) and suicide because they can still get a kills with the refresh and invulnerability. The stakes in those dive-engage situations are so much higher and more exciting when there's actually a chance for counter-play. I also think invulnerable, suicide dives are a dangerous and frustrating play-pattern to encourage.

  • I like that I can take skills and techniques I pick up onto SR with me without much difference. It's not a new experience, it's an offshoot with a map the forces fights. Personally, I don't want it to be a like a RGM that feels completely different.

  • Snowball fixed a lot of the problems melee champs had and champs that need to access the backline. Picking the right moment, knowing your limits, and working with your team is much more engaging from a player-perspective than having map-specific items that guarantee you can get there and make an impact.

  • The reason I enjoy this mode so much is that even with a loss you can just say "unlucky" and move on without giving yourself too much grief. It isn't meant to be perfectly balanced. It's lovely chaos you have to adapt to. Against a teemo? Buy an oracles and position accordingly. Against a Xerath? Buy MR and get in his face. Team of 5 tanks? Play safe until 6, get a good fight, spend all that money, be an unkillable squad and roll over the other guys. There's always a way to win, and if it doesn't work out? Unlucky. Next queue.

I hope this doesn't come off as winey or rude, just wanted to give my thoughts! Love, A Skeptical ARAM Main

[sg-soraka]

ModKnightsKemplar4/5/2019, 4:03:49 AM25 votes

By way of feedback, I'm not enjoying keeping track of this list. There's no way to reference it in client, so I have a hard time knowing how good certain champs are compared to the years I've had getting used to them in ARAM.

If I had my way, we'd keep bans and not do ARAM-specific balance changes for champs. The long-range damage nerfs helped a lot with several annoying picks, too, so I don't know that these changes are really helping my experience that much.

Violet Kitsune4/5/2019, 12:11:40 AM18 votes

I dislike the bans system. Honestly I don't see the point in it since the champions are randomized anyways, feels disappointing when you just end up seeing your mains get banned.

Infernape4/4/2019, 11:41:50 PM16 votes

While I am enjoying ARAM more than I ever have done in the past, I personally think Mariner's Vengeance needs a hotfix. I think it's far too strong. Someone like Yi jumps in, dies, gets all their abilities reset then wipes your team because he's invulnerable.

Is getting individual champion mechanic changes off the table? For example reducing the amount of stacks a Veigar can get from hitting champs via his passive or reducing his cage's size etc. etc.

And would making the entire champion ensemble available be possible?

Mistiya4/5/2019, 1:59:28 PM13 votes

I'm not enjoying the structural changes here. Bans on ARAM feels anti-thetical to the purpose of the mode, and the minion changes make it so losing the inhib is a lost game. I personally enjoyed epic ARAM comebacks but they're impossible now. Liked it better before.

Bewitching Senna4/5/2019, 10:36:03 AM12 votes

I don't like balance changes at all. It kills all the fun element in this mode for me. Example: Sona now is not worth playing (especially my fav AP build), AP Ashe does much less dmg cause poke reduction+that ashe dmg nerf, Zyra is basically killed for me. And controversial opinion: EVE WAS ALREADY STRONG. This is coming from 300+k last season Eve player, so i know my champ. She was already good cause she can suffer poke and regen+after some dh stacks and 40% cdr you are just ult machine. Now they buffed her to the skies for no reason and she literally takes zero skill to play. Well done.

Deep Terror Nami4/4/2019, 11:35:00 PM9 votes

I'm enjoying the changes. However, I think the new item "Mariner's Vengeance" can be kind of OP, allowing someone like Master Yi to easily penta your team and cause a quick loss where no other item and most champions have anywhere near that level of impact. This causes you to permaban Yi and champions that will similarly do this, which I don't think is healthy for the system or the players.

TL;DR - Maybe let's remove that item?

Additionally, please unlock all champs. Thank you.

Moonboy654/5/2019, 4:56:56 AM9 votes

the Sona nerf is way to harsh, -25% healing done? That is unacceptable...

SpaghettiLobster6/11/2019, 4:38:51 PM8 votes

Looking at the buffs and nerfs and the % of each, it is clear to me that you did the balancing purely based on statistical numbers. BUT that is totally the wrong way to balance, and even made me doubt the person who did the balancing even play ARAM much? I'm a huge ARAM player (if you just check my match history, >95% of games are ARAM) and also reached diamond in solo rank in season 5 (not in record cause I couldn't play the game for a long time during that summer and my rank decayed before the season end) I'm sure I have enough game knowledge and skill and experience in ARAM to say that some of the balance changes are just bad. One example is teemo, 12% reduced damage is just ridiculous, teemo only has so much damage in each game mainly because of the shrooms. And that's also because people just don't buy oracles to clear it out, or step on it while trying to clear it, or some people walking in front of the person that has the oracle and just stepping on shrooms before it can be cleared. TBH teemo already feels not too powerful to play before these ARAM-only balancing, now it's just a pain to get teemo because teemo is so useless especially if the enemy can clear the shrooms properly. It is simply not justifiable to reduce teemo damage only because of numbers but not think about why the numbers are high.

Another thing is I don't think it is fair to nerf so much damage form the poke champions, it just doesn't make sense. When a poke champion do equal amount of total damage as other champions at the end of the game (and sometimes even less than others), it only means this poke champion is absolutely useless because it is not even better at the things it is supposed to be better at. Literally you only accumulated a nice looking total damage with useless pokes throughout the game. (useless cause it deals mediocre damage, and is largely recovered by natural life regen or healing abilities, but when a huge teamfight broke out, you can't deal enough damage)

Another thing that make the least sense is reduce damage taken for supposedly squishy champions?? If you actually think about how resistance work in the game, a flat 10% received damage reduction is nuts because the correlation between resistance and damage reduction is not linear. Also when a champion is already one of the most squishy champions in the game (sona), please do not make them more squishy by increasing their damage taken you can decrease her damage/healing/shield fine, but don't make her take more damage too. The way to do this that make sense, is only increase/decrease damage dealt for squishy champions and increase/decrease damage taken for tank champions, but definitely not things like increase/decrease damage taken for squishy champion or increase/decrease damage dealt for tank champions.

There are too many more ARAM balancing that are just wrong and only based blindly on numbers. Whoever that is doing the ARAM balancing PLEASE make sure you play tons of ARAM too, otherwise don't balance ARAM please because you are not doing it right. I am very disappointed to see the balancing because it is too obviously based purely on the apparent numbers at the end of the games.

Emoht4/5/2019, 9:59:46 AM8 votes

Stop doing this.

Il Sten lI4/11/2019, 4:33:59 PM7 votes

Please step away from balancing like this - it was one of the reasons for me and friends why nexus blitz felt more and more inconsistent towards the end because it was hard to keep up with the constant changes. "KnightsKemplar" already criticized it.

Also, your approach is clearly determined by statistics. You have competent mathematicians at Riot Games, please consult one when you are doing this. You cannot interpret the data the same way you would do with SR - you are missing that people get assigned (mostly) random champs and experience-/skill-difference with those have a lot more variation. An example where it went horribly wrong: LeBlanc. She was strong before if you were halfway decent at her but now she became an absolute power pick if you are using both hands!

Last but not least you have tried to tackle the dominance of poke champions. But at the same time your changes to minions made (longrange) waveclear a prevalent deciding factor - and guess which class of champions is naturally best suited for this?

Kadexe4/4/2019, 11:58:03 PM7 votes

How wide is the gap now, between the strongest and weakest champions?

Mistiya4/5/2019, 3:15:47 PM7 votes

Irelia feels completely unkillable and Zyra is an active liability to have on your team. Her plants do less damage than a caster minion.

Mr Dalloway4/6/2019, 4:29:00 AM7 votes

The person that chose this buff for Akali: Akali: +18% damage dealt & -8% damage taken

needs to be grabbed by the scruff of the neck, dragged to their office, have all their belongings packed in a box, and tossed into the street. WTF is wrong with you people? If you are bad at Akali these buffs are not going to help much. If you are good at Akali you are going to be one shotting people left and right. All the buffs and nerfs are stupid and pointless but this one is really incredibly dumb.

ÇHEEZE4/13/2019, 5:53:08 AM7 votes

Instead of doing stupid shit like this how about you actually revamp the way champions are selected so we don't get dogshit matchups every fucking game that end in stomps.

MasterHakk4/7/2019, 6:01:38 PM6 votes

The balance changes makes everything feel wrong. We now just have a new set of champs that are annoying to play against. So if the goal was to re-direct the wrath of players towards new champs, GJ that worked.

Elewd4/5/2019, 4:14:08 AM6 votes

I'd drop the balancing of champions for Aram and just keep bans and the long range protection seminerf, its hard to keep up with these balance changes even if they are on the buff for aram.

fight me pussies4/5/2019, 2:43:43 PM6 votes

Brilliant, Irelia is totally broken now. Well done.

Ronin Tamos4/5/2019, 9:23:44 PM6 votes

As a long time aram mostly player the combined champion specific nerfs + poke nerf + bans make me either start going back to SR or drop lol for good.

Im opposed to all of them and don't think that the name all random all mid is correct anymore. Rather it is an insult to this game mode if bans will be kept. Call it SCAM - some champions all mid.

And yes bad players who lack the patience or experience will dislike to hear this but poke vs tank is not impossible, op and whatever bloated negatively tinted word you wanna use. It is Hard yes, and therefore most likely not what you seek in a non competitve mode but manageable.

Neither can most ziggs or sona players single handedly carry a complete game. These champions have valuable Tools to push for an advantage but so has every other champion in aram except ivern. You just have to build accordingly.

In the end it all boils down to a decision.

Do you play to have fun?

You will most likely be ok with the changes.

OR

Do you play to win?

I don't need bans, nerfs and all that stuff because i can adjust and build tank malphite if the team needs it, i can keep a "boring" utility pick and enjoy myself without full poke AP nasus and yes i can Stall 15 minutes in a fun game mode to win against poke comps.

Tl;Dr you want aram to be easy, fun and fast. Well gg thats the Patch you all have waited for.

flyingpeanut2504/7/2019, 7:45:49 AM6 votes

nerf adc/ ap and buff tanks at 5-15% each. Can total 30% effective difference on top of the 15% range. this will lead to tank meta. padding to statistics like w/r rate and damage dealt is wrong. There is more factors to the game than damage and w/r. This is a main reason why supports are considered underrated and ignored. When you balance like this the end result is a bland game where all champs does the same damage.

Some champs are harder to play, some are easier. High skill ceilings champs are statistically more likely to lose due to ceiling and easier ones are vice-versa. Unpopular champs will skew data due to small sample of people who took the time learn to use it and a larger group who don't. There should be disparity. Don't make low ceiling champs harder to win and high ceiling champ easier to win. w/r balancing ignores this eg vayne q/dmg buff & OTP

creep spawn ruins pacing, it was fine before don't need to touch it. GA item- tydramere's ulti on mobile champ. One of the reasons why tydramere is not mobile is due to his ulti. eg ap tydr nerfed

Pilgrimage4/25/2019, 3:00:42 PM5 votes

yeah teemo deals no damages anymore, when a varus can still 3shot you with Q spells, karma deal way much than you whith bigger range.. ok riot, you can't ballance SR why even try in ARAM. GET OUT OF IT FOR THE LOVE OF GOD

Sometimes Fizz4/5/2019, 5:04:23 PM5 votes

The Kai Sai buff was not needed. Even with the damage reduction for range, her W when building AP is crazy strong. Also, Jayce Q damage is still way too high but somehow is untouched? Also Ali and Cho seem out of line when building Tank. So hard to kill.

Wards Bot5/14/2019, 2:45:15 PM4 votes

Nidalee: +15% damage dealt

No. Just, no. Her damage is ridiculous and spears chunk over half your health with traps particularly eating away more than Teemo Shrooms.

Who at Riot thought a poke champion like Nidalee needed buffs in ARAM?

Floppy Dangles7/8/2019, 7:01:06 AM4 votes

Ive been playing arams since before howling abyss was a thing and we had to play custom games with a gentlemen's agreement about the rules. I was even ok with the major change to arams by adding the mark dash summoner spell, but these across the board stat changes simply based on win rate are the worst addition to LoL in its entire history. A lot of my friends simply do not like to play regular games and only play howling abyss and several of them have stopped playing league entirely since these changes went through. Some champions are harder to play and some are easier, there are usually rewards for being able to land a particularly tricky skill shot in the fact that those abilities do more damage or whatnot. Some characters have easier to play kits which in some ways are less impactful but maybe have a strong ult or strong supportive skills or whatever. Not every character is meant to be easy so of course certain players will have different win rates. Sure, every once in awhile its really annoying to have an enemy master yi steamroll your unlucky comp because of a lack of cc determined at champ select but that is literally the purpose of an ALL RANDOM game mode. Have you guys even tried playing some of the characters? Who is going to enjoy playing sona while being one of the squishiest characters in the game and taking ADDITIONAL damage while dealing significantly less damage. You've literally stolen the fun of arams from so many of the people that enjoy them so that its devolved into some kind of cc and tanks running it down mid every game meta. Blanket nerfs/buffs are not good balance they are pure laziness and not a single ARAM player that i know even asked for them to begin with. In an all random game mode who cares what champion win rates are howling abyss is literally meant to be short action packed games where some of us can just practice team fighting and maybe play against some characters we don't see as much in the regular ranked meta.

Honestly if even just the nerfs side of things were to dissapear it would feel so much better, sure Ivern may need some love on the howling abyss but tbh Ivern needs some love on Summoners Rift too so maybe just leave the ARAM players alone and stop taking the fun away of getting that one real fun/strong aram character by random chance once in awhile.

imajinary5/21/2019, 6:34:26 PM3 votes

Mortdog, I'm okay with most of these changes, but have you looked into the Katarina buff? Her winrate spiked TEN PERCENT following the buff (from 45 to 55%). Basically went from bottom 10 champ to top 30... She is WAY too powerful now, pretty much an auto-win for people that actually know how to use her.

TheRealBaz4/5/2019, 7:56:10 AM3 votes

How do these changes interact with true damage?

Khristophoros4/16/2019, 11:26:12 PM3 votes

Please be more clear about the buffs/nerfs when presented in patch notes. When I saw buffs to Maokai and Fiddle I was like WHAT?!! The patch notes should indicate a champion's current status.

Aryá4/18/2019, 4:46:52 PM3 votes

Any plans to add this to anything ingame? Or am I expected to refer to this thread all the time?

Pipu5/21/2019, 12:42:37 AM3 votes

im so tired of fighting against to akali...everyone says akali is overbuffed. plz nerf...

Wahab07/20/2019, 7:17:41 AM3 votes

You should only Nerf damage dealt strength and buff damage taken resistance, other stuff are going over the limit, some champions are being useless and whenever i get them, i don't want to play, they don't deal damage and they cannot get tanky enough, for example Sion and Maokai, we need better adjustments.

P.S: could you edit the list please.

Trilink8/7/2019, 3:45:11 PM3 votes

This needs an update, is there a newer version of this?

OnigiriSuiko12/22/2019, 12:11:40 PM3 votes

Can we just revert every champion to normal? This isn't even a competitive game type. It's literally meant to be played casual and you're trying to balance it in absurd ways. [sg-janna]

LemurMonster8/23/2019, 9:24:43 AM2 votes

Plz undo the buffs to Udyr... You made him far too tanky. He just steam rolls squishy comps. I really think you need to undo all tank buffs in this. They make it impossible to punish them now. Honestly.. get rid of there damage. they dont need it. we have enough of that.

caledemaIt11/24/2019, 10:14:19 PM2 votes

The one who did those changed should be fired and put in jail he clearly never played the game . In what world you nerf trundle in aram and buff zoe at the same time ? Nerf yorick and buff nidalee ? I don't know what the fuck you guys are on but i understand the state the game is in and what is it , who would hire such clowns to balance their games srsly

Wonder Pet2/25/2020, 11:30:23 PM2 votes

ARAM Balance is my biggest disappointment returning to League of Legends after a few months break. When I need a break from Rift games I do ARAM because it is less demanding and I get better at team fights. Individually balancing champions for ARAM different from Rift makes me feel unconfident in how a similar team fight would play out on a Rift game so I have been doing a lot less Rift games. Please remove the ARAM balancing. I don't like it.

ZT Xperimentor4/18/2019, 4:29:48 PM1 votes

And what about the rune changes that are sticking around? Or is that it's own post?