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Riot balances about as well as a drunk monkey with a thorn in its foot.

Zero Shingetsu··5 votes·675 views

Just had a game where I was running AP Nasus support with MF. MF was 7/3/2, I was 2/1/8. We were dominating the lane. In fact, ALL our lanes were doing really well. Then along came Jungle Graves, also 7/3/2. We die in only a few hits. And it keeps happening several times over the next three or four minutes.

The next thing you know we've lost. Graves alone won them the game. It was even 4v5 in our favor. He literally destroyed all of us in three hits. Even Jarvan. Even Nasus, after I sold all my AP items for tank items. Three hits. Tops. Many in two.

That's not even anything close to resembling balance. That's extremely lazy design work, is what it is. Just more garbage to pile onto this complacent company's laundry list of game design failures in the past couple of years. If I were leading this team, I'd start winding League down, take a few years off to heavily sharpen the product, then release it five or six years from now as a sequel of a sort. At this point there's so much work on the table to make this game reasonably fun again that it'll be impossible to complete while maintaining a smooth operating state.

Allow me to clarify for those of you who will view this with the narrow assumption that all who post about balance are doing so to pat themselves on the back after a bad game:

It's not me. It's us. We got destroyed by a Graves who, until the time he started stomping, had done nothing particularly substantial aside from farming. Not even by ganks. I'm talking Graves, by himself. I don't care that I had a bad game by the end of it. I have a lot of bad games. Most of my games are bad, in fact. I average like a 4/9/20 with most champs.

But I don't care as long as we win. Heck, I don't even care as long as we have a reasonable chance to win. My goal isn't to be amazing so I can trash everyone else, that's not how we do things in Japan anyway. I'm interested in having fun. Nothing else.

If my team loses to a team with superior teamwork, map awareness and mechanics, I have no problem. But when Graves stands there in the middle of our team, immobile, and point-clicks us all to death in four seconds, something is horribly, horribly wrong with the balance of the game.

16 Comments

CerealBoxOfDoom3 votes

AP nasus is a shitty support once the enemy is able to disengage which explains why you got pooped on midgame by champs, marksmen, who excel at later portions of the game where most supports, especially bad ones, fall off.

That game went exactly according to design, you lost and you deserved to lose.

Zero Shingetsu1 votes

{quoted}

AP nasus is a shitty support once the enemy is able to disengage which explains why you got pooped on midgame by champs, marksmen, who excel at later portions of the game where most supports, especially bad ones, fall off.

That game went exactly according to design, you lost and you deserved to lose.

It wasn't just me. If I were the only one getting smashed and the rest of my team were doing well, I could've just avoided Graves entirely and pushed lanes. The problem wasn't that I was getting stomped, it's that we, every one of us, from the best to the worst, the tankiest to the squishiest, were dying in no more than three hits by 15:00.

Also you don't seem to know what you're talking about. Disengaging is where AP Nasus shines, because he can hit you under your own tower when you think you're safe, and can keep you from ever engaging in the first place by scaring you back. I don't need or even want the opponent to engage, I want them to continually disengage from every fight they start so I can safely drop my E on them.

CerealBoxOfDoom1 votes

{quoted}

It wasn't just me. If I were the only one getting smashed and the rest of my team were doing well, I could've just avoided Graves entirely and pushed lanes. The problem wasn't that I was getting stomped, it's that we, every one of us, from the best to the worst, the tankiest to the squishiest, were dying in no more than three hits by 15:00.

if their support is nasus its probably not too hard to fight them, but in addition to this if you can do well against a few of them that will give graves a chance to deal some serious damage to a bunch of underleveled champs and easily 3 shot them. Graves has always done this since before his rework. There's nothing bad or new about it. You and your team just failed horribly. Not entirely sure what you did wrong but your description suggests you did.

Zero Shingetsu1 votes

{quoted}

if their support is nasus its probably not too hard to fight them, but in addition to this if you can do well against a few of them that will give graves a chance to deal some serious damage to a bunch of underleveled champs and easily 3 shot them. Graves has always done this since before his rework. There's nothing bad or new about it. You and your team just failed horribly. Not entirely sure what you did wrong but your description suggests you did.

I didn't say there was anything new about it. I simply said it shouldn't be. In fact, the fact that his rework didn't change this is more proof to my point: Graves is unbalanced, and a result of poor game design. The kill count between teams was 33 (us) to 43 (them). Graves had 32. There is no situation in any game where a character meant to fill the role of a fragile, mobile DPS should be able to stand in the middle of a fight with a team who's been doing well all game and destroy them without effort.

CerealBoxOfDoom2 votes

{quoted}

I didn't say there was anything new about it. I simply said it shouldn't be. In fact, the fact that his rework didn't change this is more proof to my point: Graves is unbalanced, and a result of poor game design. The kill count between teams was 33 (us) to 43 (them). Graves had 32. There is no situation in any game where a character meant to fill the role of a fragile, mobile DPS should be able to stand in the middle of a fight with a team who's been doing well all game and destroy them without effort.

if graves had 32 kills you weren't doing well

if any adc has 32 kills including your own you aren't doing well

Zero Shingetsu1 votes

{quoted}

if graves had 32 kills you weren't doing well

if any adc has 32 kills including your own you aren't doing well

He had 32 kills by the end of the game. Do you understand that he didn't have any more kills than any of my teammates when he started dipping into lanes and melting us? I'm trying my best to articulate that, but I seem to be failing. When he started melting us our team was ahead on kills overall, and he didn't have considerably more kills at that point than anyone on our team. These weren't dumb kills, either, at least no the ones I saw. He'd straight up tower diver us and just destroy any one of us with one auto and any given abillity.

What I'm trying to say is... I'll lay it out:

My Team

  • 5/1 Jarvan

  • 4/2 Yasuo

  • 7/2 Vayne

  • 7/3 Ashe

  • 2/1/8 Nasus

Their Team

  • 7/3 Graves

  • Everyone else is negative

This is the point when he started destroying us as though he were five levels ahead. No champion should be able to do that when the game looks like this. None. It shouldn't be possible. After the first four kills we started grouping on him. We'd catch him, 3-5 of us, in warded ambushes while he had no help or maybe token backup from his 1/9 Miss Fortune, and he'd destroy us.

CerealBoxOfDoom2 votes

{quoted}

He had 32 kills by the end of the game. Do you understand that he didn't have any more kills than any of my teammates when he started dipping into lanes and melting us? I'm trying my best to articulate that, but I seem to be failing. When he started melting us our team was ahead on kills overall, and he didn't have considerably more kills at that point than anyone on our team. These weren't dumb kills, either, at least no the ones I saw. He'd straight up tower diver us and just destroy any one of us with one auto and any given abillity.

What I'm trying to say is... I'll lay it out:

My Team

  • 5/1 Jarvan

  • 4/2 Yasuo

  • 7/2 Vayne

  • 7/3 Ashe

  • 2/1/8 Nasus

Their Team

  • 7/3 Graves

  • Everyone else is negative

This is the point when he started destroying us as though he were five levels ahead. No champion should be able to do that when the game looks like this. None. It shouldn't be possible. After the first four kills we started grouping on him. We'd catch him, 3-5 of us, in warded ambushes while he had no help or maybe token backup from his 1/9 Miss Fortune, and he'd destroy us.

you had an ashe vayne yasuo and jarvan. Your Nasus was probably useless for the most part but even with just those other four you should be able to kill a graves that is 5 levels ahead. You just did bad.

Zero Shingetsu1 votes

{quoted}

Your Nasus was probably useless for the most part

Wow, you really do have some kind of grudge, don't you...? My goodness. Anyway, my Nasus was actually all the AP we had and the few times we did kill Graves, my Wither slowing his attack speed had a great deal to do with it. On top of that, as I was the only AP we had, my E seemed to be the only thing Graves feared. Stop doubting Support Nasus. I wouldn't keep playing it if it didn't work.

CerealBoxOfDoom1 votes

{quoted}

Wow, you really do have some kind of grudge, don't you...? My goodness. Anyway, my Nasus was actually all the AP we had and the few times we did kill Graves, my Wither slowing his attack speed had a great deal to do with it. On top of that, as I was the only AP we had, my E seemed to be the only thing Graves feared. Stop doubting Support Nasus. I wouldn't keep playing it if it didn't work.

his short range AS slow probably gave graves plenty of time to poop on your team before you could finally get in range only to have him use his fairly generic dash to get away till it wore off. You'd be easy to get rid of since youre underleveled since unfarmed support vs jungle

Next you've got that ridiculous team comp. I'm not at all surprised you lost a 4v5

1374341 votes

Without knowing their full team it is no wonder you guys lost. Mostly situation CC or cc tied to long cool downs (I.e Ashe ult), no full tanks, and all AD except for you, the AP support Nasus, and regular AP Nasus falls off hard late game, nvm on a support budget.

That is a comp you want to win early with. It is no wonder they were stomping you guys by late game.

Gibberwatt3 votes

It's not me. It's us.

See there's your issue. It's not you, or your team that's the issue. It's that graves player. I can almost guarantee that to that player, graves was his baby. He knew every possible fact about grave's gameplay, and could murder anyone he chose to. If that player had instead chosen to main kindred Jng, he would still have come out of the woods 7/3, and you would be here, complaining about how op kindred is (regardless of her recent nerf to the ground). Most of us have THAT champion, that we will win with. Mine is anivia. Brickyorchid8's is syndra. That dudes was graves

All in all, I think riot has done a fairly decent job at balancing. Sure, they have a couple op champs, and slightly more than a couple underplayed champs, but they still are doing pretty good

Gibberwatt1 votes

I did like your thread title, though. Good humor

Zero Shingetsu1 votes

{quoted}

See there's your issue. It's not you, or your team that's the issue. It's that graves player. I can almost guarantee that to that player, graves was his baby. He knew every possible fact about grave's gameplay, and could murder anyone he chose to. If that player had instead chosen to main kindred Jng, he would still have come out of the woods 7/3, and you would be here, complaining about how op kindred is (regardless of her recent nerf to the ground). Most of us have THAT champion, that we will win with. Mine is anivia. Brickyorchid8's is syndra. That dudes was graves

All in all, I think riot has done a fairly decent job at balancing. Sure, they have a couple op champs, and slightly more than a couple underplayed champs, but they still are doing pretty good

That sounded reasonable and in fact empowering, so I looked him up to verify. Looks like his top three in order are Yasuo, Lee Sin and Riven, all at Mastery 6. Those listed as "in progress" are... Riven, Vayne, Zed, Draven, Jinx, Jhin, Rengar and Gnar.

Granted, it's very possible he's just a League of Legends otaku who is very experienced with an obscene number of champions, but as far as the algorithm is concerned, Graves unfortunately isn't listed as one of his most played.

EDIT: Sorry, Yasuo and Lee Sin are Mastery 7.

Gibberwatt1 votes

Welp, there goes my argument.

It could be that he was just having a really good game - I have done that with chogath before, and he isn't even in my top 20 champs

Friendly Ram1 votes

So they're balancing on it's hands?

LongHair Fox1 votes

Its graves, he has a lot of burst in clolse range. On the other hand h has poor continual damage and poor damage at max range. Normally what you would do is hard cc him using any normaly used support and kill him while he is stunned, rooted, silenced, or otherwise not able to close in or use abilities. If yasuo does not windwall, ashe misses arrow and jarvin misses combo you have no cc. I don't see it as a suprise that he can oneshot an adc if he has 7 kills, hell outsustaining support nasus damage is not suprising either.

In all it is not that graves is op you just did not have the tools to deal with him... and that is why the "standard" supports are king

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