Quick Gameplay Thoughts: March 30

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You basically state the reasons why Warwick needs a nerf in your reasons for why he doesn't. He's too safe and consistent i.e. "He'll never be completely useless even if he messes up". He can be very tanky in the mid game while still dealing tons of damage, and also providing utility. Mid game is the most crucial period of time in League, where a big skirmish can completely change the tides of a game. While he doesn't farm quite as well as maybe a Shyvana or Yi, he still holds his own farming wise versus a lot of other junglers. Also Riot has access to a lot of data that armchair theorists don't, and so will likely make better decisions than the general public. If they believe WW needs nerfs, I'm sure they have good reasons for it.

Additionally, it's extremely hard to balance perfectly for every elo plus coordinated pro play, so Warwick can still need nerfs while not necessarily being viable in pro play. There's no reason to have a champ be overtuned for lower elo (aka the elos most people are in) just so he can have an even win rate among Challenger players, who comprise less than 0.01% of League gamers. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to say the game shouldn't cater to Pro Players and Challengers in some aspects, but Riot isn't obliged to do that 100% of the time at the complete detriment of most of their player base.

Addressing your Grievous Wounds point, completely finishing a Morellonomicon, or getting an Executioner's Calling just for WW can be really inconvenient...and might also be completely useless. Here's why- generally speaking, the champs that buy these items are also the ones that WW tries to ult onto. So in almost every case a QSS would be much more useful than the above mentioned items. Having to buy 2 separate expensive components on an ADC for items they won't finish until much later in the game is unreasonable and will probably cause that team to autolose because the ADC will do no damage.

Obviously I'm just theorizing in a vacuum here, but that's exactly the same thing you're doing. Only you're going against the actual statistics and winrates that show he's had high winrates across multiple elos(for quite a while), while I'm trying to show ways why WW might be strong, which agrees with the numbers.

Also your comments about having a "perfectly balanced game" without "band-aids" is just another way of saying you want a stale game that never changes and just stays the same. That sounds really boring to me. I love the fact that the meta shakes up every once in a while. I appreciate the active effort Riot takes to shake it up. If the game never changes, pro teams would eventually "solve" the game, and play in the most optimal way to win every game since they now have ample time to do so. This optimal path would trickle down from Challenger to Bronze and the game would slowly become much more monotonous, with everyone knowing what they should do, what the enemy should do et cetera, until all the life is sucked from this game.

That's not how balance works. There's no such thing as "overtuned in low ELOs." There's only overtuned or not. If a champion is balanced at high skill play but overperforms at lower rungs, it's not because the champion is overtuned at lower tiers. It's because those players fail to correctly play against him. This is a skill issue and not a champion issue. The champion is the constant in the equation. What isn't is the players. What you're asking for isn't balance; it's literally exemptions from proper balance because a strategy/champion etc. is not something that you or your teammates are competent in dealing with. Thus, you want Riot to step in and nerf that thing.

This is a toxic mentality for long-term game health and detracts from it as an e-sport/competitive game since it actually pushes to move away from the reality of the objective balance state. It's an egoic reaction. It would be as if I got hit by every Ziggs skillshot and thus Riot changed the game for me to compensate for my lack of ability in dodging. Thus, Ziggs' AP ratios would be obliterated by 40% and now I'd be equally matched with a 50% winrate vs my opponent. Meanwhile, the game is ruined for skilled players and a lot of its strategic depth is too since Ziggs is no longer viable once people start playing more correctly. A strategic option was removed and now we've narrowed the viable options to win for someone who dedicates more time to this game and has a higher skill level. The game might be more fun for me now because I feel like I have a fair chance to win vs Ziggs but it objectively turned to shit and once I improve, I will also realize it's shit and that this type of balance mentality is unsustainable/cripples the vast majority of the roster. If you want a good game, don't ask for exceptions. Demand objective balance instead. To have this, a champion needs to be balanced around its strongest exponents, not the average player.

Alternatively, you can have multiple versions of the whole game. One for competitive (perhaps even with a pure solo ladder at the top 1000) and one for casuals (even if ranked). Maybe there can be a version of LoL with a separate ranking system that has this sort of objective balance philosophy and you can move from one to the other kind of like you can switch from Flex to Solo. The other version would be geared more towards appeasing whatever the average player finds most frustrating/is performing worst against etc. Riot is trying REALLY HARD to do both in one game and it's a strategy for failure long-term... as it is beginning to become clear I think even to them. You cannot do both well. You can half-ass it and not please anyone or you can do things well but pick one way/have multiple versions of the ranking system etc. Serious players don't appreciate hand-holding balance fixes and casuals feel that the serious players get too much attention compared to the pros. They think that because they're the majority, they're automatically right (not even a little true) and that the balance should be for them - screwing over those who actually care about the game at a deeper level and want exciting competition with a diverse array of picks & strategies.

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You basically state the reasons why Warwick needs a nerf in your reasons for why he doesn't. He's too safe and consistent i.e. "He'll never be completely useless even if he messes up". He can be very tanky in the mid game while still dealing tons of damage, and also providing utility. Mid game is the most crucial period of time in League, where a big skirmish can completely change the tides of a game. While he doesn't farm quite as well as maybe a Shyvana or Yi, he still holds his own farming wise versus a lot of other junglers. Also Riot has access to a lot of data that armchair theorists don't, and so will likely make better decisions than the general public. If they believe WW needs nerfs, I'm sure they have good reasons for it.

Additionally, it's extremely hard to balance perfectly for every elo plus coordinated pro play, so Warwick can still need nerfs while not necessarily being viable in pro play. There's no reason to have a champ be overtuned for lower elo (aka the elos most people are in) just so he can have an even win rate among Challenger players, who comprise less than 0.01% of League gamers. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to say the game shouldn't cater to Pro Players and Challengers in some aspects, but Riot isn't obliged to do that 100% of the time at the complete detriment of most of their player base.

Addressing your Grievous Wounds point, completely finishing a Morellonomicon, or getting an Executioner's Calling just for WW can be really inconvenient...and might also be completely useless. Here's why- generally speaking, the champs that buy these items are also the ones that WW tries to ult onto. So in almost every case a QSS would be much more useful than the above mentioned items. Having to buy 2 separate expensive components on an ADC for items they won't finish until much later in the game is unreasonable and will probably cause that team to autolose because the ADC will do no damage.

Obviously I'm just theorizing in a vacuum here, but that's exactly the same thing you're doing. Only you're going against the actual statistics and winrates that show he's had high winrates across multiple elos(for quite a while), while I'm trying to show ways why WW might be strong, which agrees with the numbers.

Also your comments about having a "perfectly balanced game" without "band-aids" is just another way of saying you want a stale game that never changes and just stays the same. That sounds really boring to me. I love the fact that the meta shakes up every once in a while. I appreciate the active effort Riot takes to shake it up. If the game never changes, pro teams would eventually "solve" the game, and play in the most optimal way to win every game since they now have ample time to do so. This optimal path would trickle down from Challenger to Bronze and the game would slowly become much more monotonous, with everyone knowing what they should do, what the enemy should do et cetera, until all the life is sucked from this game.

If you had perfect balance, the game wouldn't be stale because you wouldn't be directed towards certain OP champs, strategies and setups. There would be no optimal strategy to trickle down from Challenger since you'd see the whole roster played and many different ways to win. You'd be free to execute any strategy without crippling your chance to win long-term (although even there people would gravitate towards the easiest to execute strategies to achieve that). The "freshness" you talk about is somewhat artificial because what happens is that a stale figured out meta generally just replaces the previous one with time. Change for the sake of change is not a good motto for game design. Essentially, instead of X being the dominant strategy, it just becomes Y. The game doesn't actually become better; it just becomes more novel. You're still pushed in a certain direction by the balance decisions and aren't so free to explore if you care about results.

Perfect balance is almost impossible so it's not like Riot wouldn't change the game anymore and occasionally there would still be large design changes for the direction of the game, items, classes etc. Also, perfect balance could indeed mean that the game is exciting at the highest tiers but more clear cut at low ELOS (which is already true to an extent). For example, let's say Garen was made viable at the highest ELOs but now had a 57% winrate in Silver. This would kind of suck and I wouldn't be surprised if that's how the winrates wound up were Garen to be viable everywhere. Thus, in this case, maybe Garen would be the highest average winrate top at low ELO and so people there would "figure out" that it's the best way to climb, at least for a bit and if you're not particularly skilled at any other champion. However, it would be just the lowest effort and most reliable way of climbing. Someone who figures out let's say Camille could be just as successful but would need to spend more time understanding her. Eventually, the Garen player won't be able to just rely on the ease of the champion to maintain a solid winrate and climb. He'll need to update his game knowledge too and Garen's winrate will drop as he goes to new skill tiers.

This is basically the worst case scenario of objective balance but is it really so terrible to have specific metas at various skill brackets as long as you know that nothing is actually OP? These metas wouldn't be locked or enforced by anyone. Players would understand that the game is balanced around what's actually true and it's their skill level holding them back. They'd realize that blaming balance doesn't make much sense because all those picks are very viable even at higher tiers/competitive. Or at least, that's what should happen but it does require a level of trust when their experiences are different. For example, if you see yourself lose to Yi a lot in Bronze, you might think he's OP even if he never outperforms in competitive. It would take some adjustment of player attitudes.

The higher winrate champions at lower brackets would just reflect what a player there can execute more reliably and successfully. It wouldn't be as if other strategies are actually dwarfed by the dominant meta. The game would thrive at top level with a multitude of strategies and picks (although probably trending to what's more reliable). Thus, if let's say the low ELO meta is all deathball comps. with Garen, Annie, Yi and Jinx, so be it. What players would be annoyed about I suppose is just that "hey, X player got to this ELO easier than I did because of his champion" etc. This would probably lead to jokes about being a Garen main and possibly some devaluing of rank in people's eyes if mid ELO was reached with some champion known to outperform there. I'd rather have this sacrifice than to mess with the integrity of objective balance. The Garen main would be stuck eventually too if he doesn't have sufficient game knowledge. Since people would never feel handicapped by their champions, they can just have fun with whatever they like. It might make the game less serious at lower ranks (which may even make it more fun for the average player) while being FAR better and less stale at higher ranks (D5+). People below Gold are unlikely to even now be handicapped by balance decisions THAT much and nor do they care about that a great deal. Meanwhile, the higher ELO players do care and are directly affected by balance. It can negate a large portion of what they want to play. If Gragas is garbage but you're a great Gragas, you're still going to be able to climb from Bronze to Silver. In neither balance philosophy, are champion picks truly the limiting factor at lower ELOs and improving the situation at lower ELOs won't be as appreciated as higher anyway (lower ELO players have other priorities and don't tend to be as dedicated anyway).

In the objective balance situation, someone playing Tryndamere especially well would still have no trouble climbing with a split-push strategy in low ELO and also wouldn't be handicapped at the highest levels. The difference would just be in comparative effort to learn. However, they'd always have just as much of a chance to climb to the level of their competence with sufficient time. This is not such a bad scenario and far better than now where you actually have to dump champs you like because they're not meta. Try playing Garen in Masters+ or Gragas anywhere but low ELO :p. In the problematic scenario with objective balance, what holds people back is skill but they can do something about that if they want. In the current one, sufficiently skilled players are constrained by the balance decisions themselves and not just their own ability to perform. Balancing for lower tiers warps balance and doesn't give a good foundation for gameplay. It's trying to build something on quick sand because truth and reality weren't at the core.

I'm a bit tired and I'm sure this is super rambling and confusing. Sorry but I hope you get the gist of it. I'm pretty convinced that objective balance is the best way long-term or that the game should be split into two different sets of balance rules for casuals and for serious players but this post is probably not best at explaining exactly why.

BTW: Even if everything is perfectly equitable below Plat 1, just the fact that competitive currently only shows a very limited pool/strategic repertoire is likely to discourage players from going something like Garen or Ziggs. Like you said, the Challenger players do have some influence on what is favored at lower ELOs too even if it might not improve their performance to pick a champion that might be a tad stronger at an objective level. Thus, if you have a healthy meta with a lot of variety at top level, it's also likely to make the game more interesting at lower levels. Although, champions won't appeal equally even if balanced perfectly.

Thanks for your quick quick gameplay thought thoughts [slayer-jinx-wink]

Just ignore comments like this. It's good to know that you're working on staff like that.

Think it's more about a general frustration of the feeling that less popular champions (such as Lissandra) isn't given the resourches/development atention that more popular champions get (such as Ahri) even when the less popular champion is in dire need, while a popular champions gets "just because we can/ why not" touch ups.

Thus making a circle of the less popular champions getting less popular (no dev atention/less skins) and the popular champions getting more popular (more resourches alocated and skins).

It's a quite understandable frustration, that I guess is one of the downsides of the ftp model.

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Pre cast and during the first 0.25s of the Q charge (lag/very slight mispress forgiveness basically). First reason was wanted to ensure it was about calling your shot ahead of time, not about tapping W just before firing off a Q that was charged and looking good. Second was that there are some modified visuals and sound on the Q while it's charging that warn other players it will be an empowered shot, so didn't want people to avoid showing those by just using it right at the end.

Awesome. This is exactly the answer I was hoping for, and the extra 0.25 seconds is a nice bonus. Appreciate the response!

I’d double down on the uptime of his Passive late game at the sacrifice of late-game damage, and I’d prefer the W to have an AoE pulse that inflicts Brittle upon activation rather than the DoT it currently does. Naut is the King of Crowd Control, and his kit should be focused on how much disruption he deals without allowing him to 1v1 well.

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It's not a mechanic that really gets used for its intended purpose though (when did you last see TK use a W CD to rush an ally towards enemies?). Narrowing it as a result likely means it's basically just relevant when running away, it's just less consistent and feels more like a roll of the dice for both teams. Testing just removing it as a result, though that's not a locked change yet.

Out of curiosity, what if it was a speed boost towards a target with one of Tahm Kench's marks on them (or stunned by Tahm Kench)? It might keep it as the "I've landed a slow and we're going in" rather than enabling it's use as an escape tool.

Might be a bit too unwieldy though.

Why is fun not a good argument?