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Unbalanced balancing -- Why are some champs nerfed any time they become "good"?

woodvsmurph··2 votes·983 views

The gameplay and balance team seems to be ok with certain champions always being "op" while others are constantly nerfed or have their kit completely changed if they ever reach the same "op" level and the team decides they don't want such and such a champ joining the "op" crowd. For a claim at wanting to balance champs, their focus is really poor and seems targeted to deny some champs their power, keep others eternally at the top, and neglect others all together. With that, I will give some examples in the large body of text to follow -- focused primarily on some of my favorite champs. While the fact that I have an attachment to some champs more than others could play a role in my feelings as to how "op" or not a champ is (as well as skill level), I will try to be as objective as possible.

I have watched Youtube videos as well as having personal experience (and reading patch notes) that back up the fact that kayle is one of, if not the most, nerfed champ in league -- in terms of number of nerfs and changes to her kit. Many know the kayle famous for killing anyone in about 3 hits when she got late game -- if you don't try searching Alex Ich kayle and watch her destroy zed. The percent bonus damage on that kayle's q has been removed. Rage (can't remember if that is correct name) was once a summoner spell option which was removed and is available through guinsoo's rageblade only. This spell was good on many champs, but few if any used it better than kayle. Seriously a few years back you could practically 1v2 the enemy support and adc at lvl 1 by using it. Now they nerf kayle's ad "only by 5" because she is one of the "op" sated devourer junglers. Other nerfs have happened; however, I do not wish to mention every one. These few will serve as a good example of how unbalanced the "balance and gameplay" is in league and how it is stacked against certain champs -- not just (but including) kayle.

First -- the 3 hit and you are dead kayle. Was that a bit too op? Yes. Is kayle the only champ who could delete anyone other than a super tank in the span of her ult without dying at the time? No. Zed was a feared assassin who had a safer laning phase and was generally capable of being just as deadly -- except, he could start deleting people that fast shortly after level 6. Syndra -- gets to stun you under your tower without drawing agro, then ult and ignite you to death before stun wears off. People complained about lux doing this, so riot nerfed lux range and increased mana cost to add counter play, but syndra got no such nerfs. Syndra also had a safer laning phase than kayle. You could possibly add other champs, but the point is that when kayle joined some of these other champs in the elite "op" ranks, kayle got nearly instantly nerfed while others who had been there longer got no nerfs or very minor ones. If you are going to nerf her for her late game scaling, try nerfing the scaling -- not the base stats. Her stats early game were already weak enough for others to exploit fairly easily -- especially if they have a decent jungler on their team. The way I always understood it was -- power curves. Kayle is strong enough early to not get completely bullied out of lane, but not strong enough to force out lane bullies. Mid game, she is good if she gets peel, but easily punished if cc chained. The payoff with her, and some other champs like vayne for an example, is that late game you get to wreck face and punish everyone who tried to make your life hell in early game. Since kayle is not usually a duo lane champ, you should not nerf her to the point where she can't survive top or mid alone against a lane bully if she plays smart. Obviously, if you make bad calls with your champ, you should be punishable -- and she was just that in the early/mid game -- before any nerfs from her "late game 3 hit you to death" form. So nerfing many of her base stats and base scaling turned her into a sub-par laning champ while also making her late game no greater than the typical late game champ. She was no longer in the elite of the late game. Who would play such a champ unless they just really love playing her? Not many.

Sated devourer: Udyr, shyvana, warwick, xin zhao, master yi, kayle. These are all considered "op" with sated meta. If you look at them, kayle is the squishiest, takes longer to come online as effective for ganks and teamfights than (at least some of) the others in the list. She is by far more punishable early and mid game. Even late game, a strong cc team can destroy a sated kayle more easily than -- or as easily as -- any other champ on this list. So again, I don't see nerfs to udyr, shyvana, warwick, master yi, or xin zhao to keep them honest. I may be wrong on the shyvana -- she got a slight nerf recently, but I don't recall if it was due to sated or from just before sated meta. Point being that once again when kayle joins the elite "op" for a meta, she gets nerfed while others don't. So let's think about this. Xin gets to stack to be more relevant mid and late game while still being an early game ganking terror. Warwick and shyvana get to be tankier while putting out close to the same amount of damage as kayle. Udyr is known as godyr for a reason when built right. Any comp that stops him by using cc chaining and high damage plus shields works just as well vs a kayle engaging on them if not better against kayle. Yi gets to be yi. Dive in 3v5 and delete your squishies while being invulnerable close to half the time his ult is up -- no joke. Alpha strike is like a built in kayle ult on yourself that deals damage, gap closes, and let's you dodge skill shots that could stun anyone else. Add in a heal that let's you tank the rest of enemy team's damage when they finally get you low, and you again are nearly invulnerable. "Just burst him when he uses meditation" you say -- except you blew all your burst to get him that low to begin with, and your sustain damage dealers were killed by him while you were getting him low. Can yi be beat? Sure. Any of these junglers can be beat. The point as with the previous example is that kayle is by no means head and shoulders above these other champs and yet she is singled out for a nerf while the others are not. Moreover, once again, it is a nerf to her even early game when she is in much need of help compared to the others -- not a nerf.

Outside of jungle. I will be honest. I play kayle top. Why? No one expects adc kayle build from a top lane kayle. You can reach a power comparable to an ad assassin AFTER A FEW ITEMS. You need to play safe early and can do no better than trade even with enemies such as fiora, riven, darius, or vlad unless your opponent is of much lower skill and/or experience than you. If you ever make a mistake and their jungler punishes you for it, life will consist of farming nearly under tower for a long while. Subtract 5 ad from your early game pressure just because someone decides sated kayle needs a nerf and life gets really bad vs that fiora or darius. Buff darius and... you get the point. Again, kayle is just a champ where they keep nerfing her whenever she gets to be considered good at a role. Shoving a champ out of a role anytime she/he becomes a top tier (or even just good) pick often makes a champ weak, useless, and lack any identity. I am not saying kayle lacks any identity, but I am saying that she is nearing the point of not being viable top -- as a guy who really knows how to play kayle top even when camped by enemy jungle from level 4 on and never gets help from his team. Play her mid -- where she belongs -- you might be saying. Kayle is among the strongest mid or late game mids anymore, and she has way too many bad matchups in the early game where she can be punished and fall irreparably behind as a mid. If you play her adc, it can work in some situations, but you need to know enemy comp first, or you will be strongly punished. Play her support? She takes longer to come online than most supports, so her laning phase is easily punished -- especially if "that guy" (you've all played with people like him before) plays adc and cannot do his job halfways decently. Play jungle? Again, there are just too many junglers who are much better picks all around than kayle. SO DON'T PLAY KAYLE! -- is what you may be thinking at this point. At which point I would ask why a champion I like is being nerfed into uselessness when so many other champs are in much greater need of rebalancing and/or nerfing.

Other examples of champs to consider rebalancing and/or nerfing: quinn --- not just me who feels this way (try Youtube and see for yourself), if teemo is the devil of top lane, quinn is whoever is the devil's less forgiving big sister vlad -- tank top builds full mr, hp, hp regen; gets chunked out by vlad at level 9 and above despite fully itemizing to negate vlad damage while vlad sits and farms. Gank him! Because it is no trouble at all to kill a guy who gets to pool to block any damage and cc while also slowing and healing off anyone who stays in range of pool? Uhm... I don't think so. Tahm -- why are you buffing him? He needs nerfs more than buffs. He gets ranged harass like thresh while being a "melee" champ. He gets temporary shields comparable to nautilus support. He gets easy 3 auto and click stuns. He can negate so many good hooks and bindings that you might as well just farm lane because you can't kill their adc w/o a gank unless their adc or sup is really, really bad. Basically, he combines the strong points of morgana, thresh, leona, and nautilus without having any of their weaknesses (at least not to the same extent of the other champs). Naut and leona have to commit to engage to land their cc while tahm and thresh do not. Tahm gets free hp shield and basically bonus hp regen (his passive after a trade) which works better than leona's w early game. He can eat an ally to save them after the cc lands -- like a morg black shield, but you don't even have to be fast enough to place it before the cc. Basically, he has some of the best skills of other supports that combine to make a frustrating package that more easily outperforms the combination of abilities other supports have. Does he outperform every other support at all points in the game? No. He is more like the victor of supports -- great blind pick, stand toe-to-toe with opponent and/or beat them at all points of game unless you just really mess up. There are others that could be considered too -- I know a number of highly skilled players who stream or play pro have said gank plank is getting to the point of must-pick-or-ban. With all these champs out there that are much easier to carry on, harder to punish, and more popular to play; why are we nerfing someone like kayle .... again?

5 Comments

Stiv12341 votes

Well, right now it is understandable... They need to buff Lee & Co. for dem ##LC$BIGPLAYZ

TehNACHO1 votes

You have to understand that some champions are simply toxic for the game. Kayle's ult for example waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay screws with her power budget. There really should not be a question about Poppy. Tryndamere is Tryndamere. etc. etc.

Some are more questionable than others, but at the end of the day, there are very clear examples of who Rito really doesn't like, and we can build our analyses from there.

woodvsmurph2 votes

How often do you see a kayle run in to 3-5 enemies by herself and wreck the whole group? Almost never. How often do you see someone like yi or udyr do it? Not every day, but way more than kayle. So because kayle has the potential to do what other champs already have been doing for a longer time, she deserves a nerf? Casters and analysts have even said that kayle's ult is less valuable these days due to sustained damage. You wanna talk about toxic, play vs a quinn top when your jungle refuses to gank your lane. Play a squishy or a pure tank vs a buffed darius. Way easier to snowball with plenty of other champs than it is to snowball kayle. If you are going to nerf her, nerf her intelligently -- her scaling only because her early game is actually fairly weak against any aggressive champ with cc. Furthermore, if you nerf her for her bully potential with her ult and late game, you should be nerfing other champs who are more easily snowbally too -- instead of ignoring or buffing them. Double standard. There is a difference between making a good late game champ have a weaker and punishable early game and making her useless. If you don't believe me, check out the history of eve -- she was insane when she first came out, got seriously nerfed to where who mained eve had a hard time winning and often got reported just for picking her. Took a long time before she became an acceptable champ to pick again and to actually have some damage. I'm not saying kayle has been nerfed to that point yet, but they are heading that way with her if you look at what her kit used to be. You think kayle is toxic? Azir is basically kayle with more range, safer laning, and instead of protecting 1 person for 2 sec, you can protect your entire back line if you use it correctly. Of course if you use your skills well, you can be oppressive. You can do that with almost any champ. Case in point: naut ult is usually considered kinda weak due to long travel time. If you have ever played against a naut, yasuo combo though, you might think again. How about fed ww diving your adc and ulting him/her to death, then surviving focus from rest of your team while his team deletes you one at a time? How about ap shaco deleting your support with 2 spells despite support being tanky (for a support)? Those are not toxic? Uhm... ok, i think otherwise. If you are going to try to keep champs from being too overpowered, do that for all of them -- not just certain ones.

TehNACHO1 votes

Before you read the rest of this post, please remember:

My original statement is that some champions are designed in a way that makes it difficult for Riot to balance. Please do not put words in my mouth if it doesn't relate exactly to that, like trying to suggest I don't think Darius or Warwick are also not considered toxic.

{quoted}

How often do you see a kayle run in to 3-5 enemies by herself and wreck the whole group? Almost never. How often do you see someone like yi or udyr do it? Not every day, but way more than kayle.

Actually, I'd say I usually see about proportionally equal amounts.

Yolo Q is usually defined by who's the most fed after all.

{quoted}

So because kayle has the potential to do what other champs already have been doing for a longer time, she deserves a nerf?

Actually, Kayle was one of the original 40 champions. To rephrase, other champions tend to be built and balanced around things Kayle already had been doing for a long time and much more.

{quoted}

Casters and analysts have even said that kayle's ult is less valuable these days due to sustained damage.

This is a meta shift, and has a lot less to do with who's imbalanced because of abusive mechanics but rather who the current environment favors.

You know those nerfs targeted towards Zed and Leblanc even though we were sitting in a tank meta? That. Zed and Leblanc were less valuable these days due to the average hp of a team being way higher and the amount of CC being far more consistent, but there were still things that could and frankly should have been done to help make the duo less toxic for their otherwise extremely safe dives.

{quoted}

You wanna talk about toxic, play vs a quinn top when your jungle refuses to gank your lane.

Actually you're right there. Consider why Quinn is never buffed, then think about how this could apply to Kayle.

{quoted}

Play a squishy or a pure tank vs a buffed darius.

Also the case. I actually wrote about some of the problems with Darius before too actually.

{quoted}

Way easier to snowball with plenty of other champs than it is to snowball kayle.

And this wraps back to the meta argument with the caster analysis and such.

{quoted}

If you are going to nerf her, nerf her intelligently -- her scaling only because her early game is actually fairly weak against any aggressive champ with cc.

Personally I'd define where Kayle is supposed to stand on the Damage Triangle - DPS, Tank, or Burst. Kayle's kit is extremely auto attack based so I would think that any nerfs targeted at her should be focused on removing her excess Tankiness/Burst (Ult and Heal/front loaded damage on Q respectively) in order to help emphasize her strengths as a threat over time (Auto Attack/E damage, maybe rework her heal to a heal over time, put more emphasis on the interaction between her Q and passive).

{quoted}

Furthermore, if you nerf her for her bully potential with her ult and late game, you should be nerfing other champs who are more easily snowbally too -- instead of ignoring or buffing them. Double standard.

The only one that comes to mind that also shares Kayle's balancing problem is Tryndamere. Every other champion that snowballs harder than Kayle don't tend to come with invincibility, at least not longer than a fraction of a second or so MasterYi.

{quoted}

There is a difference between making a good late game champ have a weaker and punishable early game and making her useless.

Actually I think Riot has stated multiple times before, at least on the old forums, that they don't want champions to be defined by how long the game is going.

{quoted}

If you don't believe me, check out the history of eve -- she was insane when she first came out, got seriously nerfed to where who mained eve had a hard time winning and often got reported just for picking her. Took a long time before she became an acceptable champ to pick again and to actually have some damage.

Not entirely sure what this has to do with the topic at hand.

Actually I do. Old Eve was one of the problem champions that Riot couldn't buff, and even current Eve gives Riot a hard time.

{quoted}

I'm not saying kayle has been nerfed to that point yet, but they are heading that way with her if you look at what her kit used to be. You think kayle is toxic? Azir is basically kayle with more range, safer laning, and instead of protecting 1 person for 2 sec, you can protect your entire back line if you use it correctly.

Azir also lacks invulnerability, and patch by patch is having more weaknesses introduced to him that emphasizes the use of Assassins that can burst him down before he can properly react.

Something a certain point and click invulnerability skill could probably fix, no?

{quoted}

Of course if you use your skills well, you can be oppressive. You can do that with almost any champ.

Well of course.

Then again, this was never the argument I tried to make. I'm arguing that some kits are designed in a way that's exceedingly difficult for Riot to balance, I'm not sure what individual player skill has to do with that statement.

{quoted}

Case in point: naut ult is usually considered kinda weak due to long travel time. If you have ever played against a naut, yasuo combo though, you might think again.

Naut ult is usually considered weak?

I really don't know what rock you live under but that hasn't been the case for a long time now.

{quoted}

How about fed ww diving your adc and ulting him/her to death, then surviving focus from rest of your team while his team deletes you one at a time?

Actually WW is on the table for champions that Riot has difficulty balancing with. On the old forums and these new boards, there has been a Rioter talking about a possible rework for WW from time to time.

Also, CC WW for your ADC please. There's a reason why WW is more popular in Yolo Q than in ranked 5s.

{quoted}

How about ap shaco deleting your support with 2 spells despite support being tanky (for a support)?

Actually, Shaco is also on the table for Riot's balancing team.

woodvsmurph1 votes

First off, I will say I'm impressed someone actually read my post. So, thank you. Secondly, I think neither of us is seeing exactly what the other is meaning at certain key points, but we both agree that certain champs are more oppressive than they should be -- with an understanding that this occurs for different reasons: champ kit, meta, buffs, reworks, etc. By and large, from your reply, we stand on the same side for most things. As for your claim here "The only one that comes to mind that also shares Kayle's balancing problem is Tryndamere. Every other champion that snowballs harder than Kayle don't tend to come with invincibility, at least not longer than a fraction of a second or so ." That is really not accurate. I love how you put the master yi pic with it. Do you know how long alpha strike lasts? Do you know how many times he gets to use it during his ult? Combo that time -- where he is immune to damage -- with the healing he gets from lifesteal and the huge free tank stats he gets when he uses meditate and you actually get something akin to a trynd ult or worse -- depending on how much burst your team has and how much was required to force yi to use meditate. If you put it all together, yi basically gets more invulnerability time than kayle or trynd via alpha strikes and (potentially) having exhausted all of your burst and meditating through your dps once he gets low. If you let yi still take damage from dps and burst when he was using alpha strike and if he were targetable, the story changes and he is much more balanced.

Lastly, my point is not that kayle should never be nerfed or buffed or changed. The point is that there are champs who are/have been equally or more oppressive than her who have been at their oppressive state for a longer time and have still not been given any attention. Meanwhile, kayle is changed almost immediately any time she reaches an "oppressive" state. This is where the I laugh at the lies that they try to make the game balanced. They change it up to keep things interesting -- a good thing. But there is something to say when certain champs get to stay in their overpowered status seemingly forever while other champs reach it for one patch (or less) and get instantly sent back to sub-par or average. So you see, my issue is the lack of consistency in trying to "balance" champions. If a parent ignores one of his kids for all but one day a month while spending every other day of the week with his/her other child, the parent cannot honestly say that he/she cares about them equally. Not if they both have equal needs for attention and care anyways. All I'm asking is that the balance team love all their children equally if they are going to claim to do so.

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