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I have no problem with RIOT balancing to enforce a meta

Xemeron··25 votes·2,228 views

What bothers me is that they balance to enforce certain champions. Yes I know, its all Worlds and LCS and whatever makes the cash flow, and champions with bigger effects who can make "them plays" are way more entertaining to watch, but hell, right now more than half of the champions pool could be considered a trollpick in any serious game, just because of the difference in power level to the top picks. Most champions have their place, but for most of them its "Yeah, you could do good with Champ F, but you could as well pick champ A and do better with the same effort. I know nothing is going to change, cause RIOT has forced certain champions by balancing around them all the time since they became a big name in Esports, but I just want to blow of some steam here. It just sucks that we have so many great champion concepts in the game, but most of them are just not worth playing. And the power level Distance grows more an more. Now we get Champions with 2 passives, while some older champions still sit there with basicly no passive...

39 Comments

Havenscythe3 votes

I agree with the whole new "two passives" thing. Aatrox; attack speed and free GA, Yasuo; double crit and sheild, Azir; tower and attack speed from cdr. And Riot thinks it's cool to change Cassiopeia just because they want to try something new. Apparently informally nerfing underplayed champions is the new way of balancing the game.

12tales8 votes

Damn that OP as shit Aatrox, crowding out all the old champions.

Havenscythe1 votes

Aatrox an old champion? Lmao gtfo outta here

AnomalousChimera4 votes

He/she means that Aatrox is pushing out old champions by being stronger than them, not that Aatrox is an old champion.

12tales1 votes

This.

Xemeron3 votes

At least Cassio gets some attention. ALot of really nice Champs are just down in the dust... and even after a rework, most champs are still heavily underwhelming (Sion, Soraka just as last examples)

Knight SoIaire 1 votes

sion is more of an owerwhelming champion i dont get why ppl talk about him like its an urgot ?

Orbv9 votes

Soraka is actually in a **relatively **decent place compared to their other changes. The only downside is that 10% of her health is taken, when it should be scaling to 10% while leveling the ability. Her Aoe field actually makes her THE ideal counter when you are facing Fizz, Akali, Cass, Zed and Riven. But it should possibly be even larger. It is entirely possible to walk from 1 end to the other without boots at level 1. It's kind of annoying. But otherwise the changes weren't as bad as one would think.

Cass on the other hand, though receiving attention, it's more of a blog than a conversation. Stashu is just posting what he wants and where he's going, while adding in "It's upsetting to hear the negative feedback" without responding to the feedback.

Rock Rockburgh3 votes

I've actually heard that Soraka is in a REALLY strong place right now. I was watching a streamer the other day (though I can't remember who, unfortunately) who was adamant that she's banworthy unless you have a support picking first. Since the other team banned her for two of the three games I watched, I figure he must have been right.

Magma Lux Mid1 votes

Painlessdeath22 has been maining her in challenger.

Magma Lux Mid2 votes

With the right runes and masteries, you can keep your ADC and yourself full hp all the time.

I agree with the snare, but good placement can snare three people, trap that TF, or used effectively with Jinx's slow. It can also be used to stop Lucian's DPS/anyone's flashes. One game I pre-empted a Le Sin before he could ward jump away, letting the rest of my team to catch up and kill him.

Xemeron1 votes

Oh please, tell me one thing Soraka can do that wouldnt be better with other champs? She can heal, yeah, but she kills herself with it and she has to be nearly in melee range. HEr Snare ois so horrible delayed, an enemy can walk through your whole circle and dont get hit, Your Starfall is only uselfull when you are close range, cause when you place it far away, it has the delay of Veigars meteor, her passive is a joke and they reduced her base Movement speed to 325 for that passive...

Magma Lux Mid1 votes

The silence is more important than the snare, imo. Also, if the snare is useless than I guess I didn't get a three man snare to stop a gank. Seriously, that's like saying Jinx's snare is useless because there is a delay.

Build Soraka right and the enemy will complain they can't get kills.

Fried Noob3 votes

Riot has at least acknowledged this as a problem and will hopefully work to improve the disparity between champions by giving them actual weaknesses cough LeeSin cough

wolfax2 votes

Ugh, so we make the large number of crappy Lee Sin players who think he's a free win even worse? Time to lose even more games because people don't understand they actually have to know what they're doing with him.

Marthian1 votes

Some of us never end up in games with bad Lee Sins.

wolfax1 votes

With an average, constant winrate of around 45% you're telling me every Lee Sin you play with is one of the good ones? I find that hard to believe. People get biased when they play a really good one, but tend to exclude all the times that their Lee Sin failed to make an impact.

Marthian2 votes

Well in comparison, Soraka had a somewhat low win rate if I remember before rework, but that didn't stop me from having 60+% win rate with her.

So yes, it is likely that can happen, especially at higher elos or smurfs. Even some mid elo players are great with Lee.

vscAloha1 votes

And you're telling me that with 55% crit Vayne shouldn't be critting on every attack? Tell her.

You sir, should come play in one of the multitude of games I play where RNG just doesn't like me alive that much.

Xemeron3 votes

Yeah as if... they said "we are looking at Lee Sin" for a year now and al he got were little love taps

AetherKingdom1 votes

Riot has at least acknowledged this as a problem and will hopefully work to improve the disparity between champions by giving them actual weaknesses cough LeeSin cough

Lee Sin has more weaknesses now and really isn't a problem imo

12tales3 votes

"Yeah, you could do good with Champ F, but you could as well pick champ A and do better with the same effort."

I'm struggling to think of a competitive online game where this isn't the case. Just replace 'Champ' with 'Card' or 'Pokemon' and it remains true. There will always be an optimized way of doing things.

vscAloha1 votes

And yet most pokemon have niches that they can be used in in other tiers that aren't OU. (It's the smogon in me talking ._.) Most champions just collect dust. I was a Viktor main up until very recently, when I realized that the rework has no chance against every champion he used to do decently against. It's almost like every other champion is in UU, while like, 17 are in OU/Ubers and crowd out everybody else (as an imprecise analogy, not trying to invalidate my comment about niches).

12tales1 votes

I mean, I played NU exclusively for quite some time, and even there there were a solid couple hundred of mons that were basically nonviable, or just outclassed. Every single subforum on that site has a tier list stickied.

Like, after Jinx and Primeape dropped in 5th gen, literally every scarfer with <95 speed just stopped being a viable pick.

Altho now that I think about it more, what do you think an UU tier would look like in League? It'd be kinda interesting to see LoL where only champs with below 6% pick rate were allowed, or whatever.

vscAloha1 votes

UU champions would be champions like Sivir or Nidalee. Champions like Kog, Karma, and Xerath would all be BL. Now that I think about it, the majority of the champion pool would be BL. Powerful enough, but not top tier because Riot doesn't think they're worth balancing for whatever reason.

Gen V NU was my Space Jam. Loved that tier. When Jynx/Primeape/Scolipede dropped, my teambuilding didn't really change much because I already ran faster teams with more power than most of the other guys did. I hate used top tier picks, at least top pick sets, so I would use stuff like Purugly, Specs Raichu, LO Sawk, Chesto Rest Sp. D. Throh. AV Carracosta has to be my favorite set of this gen though. It hits relatively hard and actually took a grass knot from something (can't remember what) I was hella stoked though. And it gets Aqua jet :D. basically a bulkier Kabutops.

12tales1 votes

What's most interesting to me is that an UU tier in League could reveal a lot about how the playerbase as a whole perceives champion power. Gnar, Irelia, Nidalee, and Kassadin have lower pick rates than Nasus. If we draw the line at 10%, we could end up with a metagame completely dominated by top laners, because four of the best tops in the game (and plausibly the single best champion in the game if Ryze nerfs go through) are inexplicably underplayed, while Riven is basically filling the same role that Electivire did in RU.

Meanwhile, bot lane would be like Rapid Spinners in NU - there are so few good ones, and they're so essential to any team, that it'd be almost inconceivable for a good ADC or Support to actually fall all the way to lower tiers. Imagine how mismatched teams could be - you could have a godly poke core with Rumble, Xerath and Kog'Maw, but you'd be forced to run crap like Maokai jungle and Lulu support because there are no other good options.

Like, you said that Kog'Maw would be borderline. And I agree, that's where he should be. But he's currently being picked less than fuckin' Quinn. He'd be the Dugtrio of League - an OU caliber champion that falls to NU because people don't recognize that he has a niche to fill at the highest level.

Actually, fuck. Now I really, really want to play UU League. I feel like it'd be a really interesting experiment to learn more about how we see the game.

vscAloha1 votes

Let's go start a forum communi- oh... nevermind. But yeah, That sounds pretty good. I'd actually enjoy PokeBattle's point system. Every pkmn got a point value, and you're allowed to have up to a cap depending on what league you want to play in. Starmie is 175/1000 Blaziken is like 450/1000 Sunkern is 30/1000 (because all of its stats are 30 :D GF trolls so hard amirite

FyreNinja1 votes

Now we get Champions with 2 passives, while some older champions still sit there with basicly no passive...

This one has bothered me quite a bit lately. I mean Braum/Velkoz passives are like other champs abilities, with stacking aas and abilities being worth extra dmg (vayne, gnar). Meanwhile, Talon has one of the crappiest passives in the game, and Azir can freaking build turrets!

Padagi1 votes

Pretty much every multiplayer game is this way. The power difference between the champions is pretty minor, especially when you look at the top half of the champions.

You look at win rates, Riot has done a pretty good job of keeping most champs competitive. Their stated goal is to make somewhere between 20 and 30 champions viable at the pro level, which is a pretty admirable number (to make these champs all exactly equivalent in power). In any case, I still believe that at least half of all champions can be played at a high level and win games.

IMO there are probably less than 20 that are drastically underwhelming compared to the average champions.

Direwolfiez1 votes

IMO there are probably less than 20 that are drastically underwhelming compared to the average champions.

I think it's hilarious that Ryze used to be one of those champs xD

Padagi1 votes

Due to meta changes it will fluctuate a lot. I think Ryze has been good for a while but people were too busy playing popular picks at the time.

Another one I was screaming about most of S3 is Ziggs who finally got some competitive play in S4. But in any case, he had no changes made to him when he burst on the scene (at least not that I know of). He's still very strong and there are many others that are strong but ignored because they're not currently popular.

Trojaxx1 votes

In all fairness, Ziggs only become strong because every other mid laner that was stronger than him got nerfed after S3 Worlds. Ahri in particular.

Padagi1 votes

Ziggs has always been strong. There happened to be stronger champs and due to the nature of his kit there probably always be. But he has always been basically the highest damage dealing AoE mage. Others are comparable but with caveats and more strings attached to that damage (like short range or being combo mages).

chumbler3 votes

Pretty much every multiplayer game is this way. The power difference between the champions is pretty minor, especially when you look at the top half of the champions.

You look at win rates, Riot has done a pretty good job of keeping most champs competitive. Their stated goal is to make somewhere between 20 and 30 champions viable at the pro level, which is a pretty admirable number (to make these champs all exactly equivalent in power). In any case, I still believe that at least half of all champions can be played at a high level and win games.

IMO there are probably less than 20 that are drastically underwhelming compared to the average champions.

That stated goal is also shit, hth. It's a complete joke that they don't try to have actual strategic diversity, whether because they can't be bothered or are simply incapable of it. Champion diversity is in the dumpster in this game, and the combination of Riot's favoritism and enforcing a meta is the cause.

Justaco1 votes

The game is balanced around "them plays" because that is fun to watch as well as fun to play. Lets take two extremes.

  1. The game is designed around champions like ryze, taric, yorick, and warwick. Sure you could balance that, having the game have so many targeted and uninteractive abilities could be balanced by just numbers pretty easily. But how boring would that be.
  2. The game is designed around champions like yasuo, fizz, braum, and lucian. Yes they are much more mobile and flashy outplay potential, but that can be balanced too. The whole "this champion is op because of outplay potential" can be balanced by "you don't outplay, you lose. period."

You could balance almost any ridiculous mechanic with just numbers. A champion could literally kill you in one auto and be balanced by having short range and be ridiculously easy to kill himself. It's all a matter if it would be fun to be in the game if it was balanced.

And on the whole 2 passives thing, a lot of older champions have multiple passives, they're just tacked on to other skills. -Pantheon has 2 passives, his shield and his crits to low health targets. -Rengar has 3 passives, ferocity, bush jumps, and the necklace -Garen has 2 passives, out of combat regen, and bonus armor and mr -Master Yi has 3 passives, double strike, his e bonus ad, his ult reset passive -Jax has 2 passives, his attack speed, and his damage every third hit -Diana has 2 passives, bonus attack speed and damage every third hit -Ryze has 3 passives, spells lower spell cooldowns, abilities scale with mana, cdr on q -Sion (old and new) has 2 passives with his health on kill There are more, some of this may vary depending on how strict your definition of a passive is, just how it is presented to us makes us think that just new champions have multiple passives

MrSexyHobo1 votes

"cough" zac "cough"

same basic concept as leona. weaker kit. harder to play well.

The Hexmage1 votes

The current meta is awful because of champions like Zed, Fizz, Akali or Yasuo which have a big kill potential and/or high mobility (Yasuo already is a bit nerfed), while champions Karthus or Vel'Koz that are really strong are not viable because the assassins kills them because they have low mobility. If we look at for Zed for example, people says that he is balanced because it is difficult to use, but the difficulty doesn't should be an excuse to have a big damage; an perfect example of a champion that is balanced is Azir, it is difficult to use, but when someone is good with Azir he doesn't gets a lot of kills per game.

TenSlashTen1 votes

its always been like this. its just more blatantly obvious since ahri and after that champs have gotten so easy to play its disgusting easy to wipe the floor with people

champ does all the work. Player doesnt have to be good.

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