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Runes and items =/= Champions

The Ecdysiast··2 votes·691 views

It seems a lot of people, including employees at Riot, can't understand the fact that a particular rune or item being overpowered on everyone who can use it doesn't make champions who run it overpowered.

And as a result, certain champions have gotten heavy nerfs in response to rune/mastery/item changes, only to be left unreasonably weakened after Riot nerfs the true culprit.

It happened to Sejuani when Cinderhulk was released. It happened to Poppy when Courage of the Colossus was released. It happened to Ryze when Stopwatch was released. And the list goes on.

Maybe the people in charge of balancing champions aren't the same people who balance runes and items? It sure seems that way, the way some things are introduced with little thought put into how they'll effect their intended class.

Champions who fall like this should have their nerfs reverted or at least somewhat lessened when the actual issue is addressed, not left weaker than their contemporaries.

4 Comments

Solicitude2 votes

The passive of Sej, along with Cinderhulk, was making her unkillable for a few seconds at the start of a fight and they wanted to bring down some of that power. Poppy gets passively bonus resistances with her W and she is one of the best scaling tanks in the game. Courage was giving her immense stats when she was in the middle of the enemy, more so than other champions, thus they nerfed some of those stast. The reason Ryze+stopwatch/zhonyas was extremely OP was because with his ulty plus one of these he had a free ticket out of everything. It was almost impossible to kill him unless you could perma cc him before you could just press 2 buttons.

Cinderhulk, Courage, Zhonyas/stopwatch are all strong items on everyone who buys them on their respective role, the problem was that these items were way more stronger on some champions than others.

The Ecdysiast1 votes

First, I said Cinderhulk's introduction, not Sejuani's rework. What was nerfed was her W.

Second, you've completely missed the point.

It was not the fault of the those three things were rightfully nerfed because they were too strong on everyone. The champions who stood out should have had their nerfs reverted afterwards since they no longer abused the item/rune.

DuskDaUmbreon2 votes

If the item/rune renders them broken, they're broken. The source of it may mean that nerfing the champion doesn't fix the problem, sure, but the champion is also broken.

The Ecdysiast2 votes

The champion does not become broken. It's still the fault of the item/rune.

They nerfed every one of my examples after the fact, but left the champion unfairly weakened.

For a good example of a champion that wasn't unfairly nerfed to compensate for an item that was too strong, look at Runeglaive. Ezreal wasn't nerfed, because it was obvious that the item was the issue.

The fact that the champs may have been overperforming would only justify a nerf if the item were to stay at that power. Since they didn't, the champions who were seen as problems should have had their nerfs reverted.

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