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How to balance League of Legends Season 9

The Aggressor·12/5/2018, 11:16:21 AM·10 votes·6,430 views

Here is the information Riot, this is all you need to do to get your game one step closer to being on the right track. Will Riot actually listen or consider anything I have to say in this post? Pfft, obviously not, but let's do it anyways.

Fixing your mistakes

_Change _#1: Starting stats When Patch 7.22 launched last year, starting off preseason 8, there were tons of balance changes released. Riot released way too much for one patch, if I was to copy and past everything from 7.22 balance changes into this post, itd take up so much room. Look at the page for yourself, and see all the changes Riot has made for one patch. Link: http://www.surrenderat20.net/p/722-pbe.html. You have runes changing entirely, you have every single champion getting nerfed/buffed stat wise (when they were already mostly balanced to begin with), and you have changed 20 items. There is no way Riot had time to test this to see if it was balanced for the game. All these new runes, all these new champion stats, and all the item changes, someone would have to test them out one by one. That's what we are still doing to this day.

Why Riot made all these changes? To compensate for no stat runes of course. But this makes no sense, because now instead of people starting with 18.1 starting AD from old runes and masteries (at most), they're now getting anywhere from 25-28 starting ad (Ghost Poro +3, Absolute Focus +3, Normal rune stats +12, and stat changes to their champion which can range from 7-10 depending on the champion). People are literally starting the game level 1 with a first blood amount of damage compared to last season. Making this game way more snowbally than it needs to be. Some AD champions going to lane with 86+ starting AD (if they take all starting AD), and AP champions going to lane with 50 AP. Back in season 7 and before, AD champions would go to lane with about 70-80ish AD at most (depending on if they're melee or not), AP champions would go to lane with 20-35 AP level 1 at most. See the difference in this?

Here's a list of stat buffs thats just completely crazy how they made it to live servers.

  • Irelia - Base AD increased from 61.544 to 70 - Base armor increased from 25.3 to 34

  • Graves - Base AD increased from 60.83 to 69 - Base armor increased from 24.376 to 33 - End of the Line (Q) - Initial damage increased from - 40/55/70/85/100 to 45/60/75/90/105 - Detonation damage increased from 80/110/140/170/200 to 85/115/145/175/205

  • Zed - Base AD increased from 54.712 to 63 - Base armor increased from 26.88 to 32 - HP growth increased from 80 to 85 - Base HP increased from 579.4 to 584 - Razor Shuriken (Q) damage increased from 70/105/140/175/210 to 80/115/150/185/220 secondary damage increased from 42/63/84/105/126 to 45/66/87/108/129 - Shadow Slash (E) damage increased from 65/90/115/140/165 to 70/95/120/145/170

The list just goes on and on about how stupid stuff was buffed in that patch. Seriously, go check it out and see how many changes they made. I could go on this whole post explaining how bad all those changes were for the game. To keep it shorter, Riot made the game's damage entirely more insane just by making all these changes. They made compensation buffs on things that some people wouldn't even take originally. Them giving more lethality and magic penetration to compensate those who took penetration runes. But for those who didn't originally take penetration runes, got even more buffs to their kit. I think thats a long enough rant to get my point across for this balance change. If you see anything questionable, leave a comment, and i'll try to answer it.

TLDR: Nerf starting damage stats.

Change #2: New champions and their kits Every single time a new champion that has gotten release or reworked for the past year, has been beyond broken on release. Lets look at the ones who were brought out Season 8-Now.

Champions Reworked/Released - Akali Nunu Aatrox Pyke Kaisa Ezreal Irelia Swain

How many of these champions listed above, were broken this season? Which champions have lots of mobility? Which of these champions have some time of CC? Which of these champions deal huge damage? Almost all the champions, have these. The only one that doesn't is Ezreal, who didn't really receive that much of a rework anyways except for his W. The problem with these champions, is they deal insane damage and have too much abilities to outplay compared to other champions. They can get out of danger super easily (except nunu and maybe swain), they can deal CC to and enemy while being able to deal 1k damage in 2 seconds or less, and they can engage as fast as they want. So in short, they in danger? They hop out. They fed? They hop in. They behind? They can still 1v1 you because they have CC (except for Ezreal), and will kill you before cc ends.

The solution: Stop overloading champions kits. Ezreal, Swain, and Nunu aren't that much of a problem right now. But thats the thing with these champions, theyre either going to be stupid broken, or stupid bad. You need to change some of their abilities to make their kits more balanced so we wont be seeing stuff like this https://imgur.com/OM8ioJ2 https://imgur.com/nb2Q9uc https://imgur.com/8xPr7z4

TLDR: Stop overloading kits, change new/reworked champions abilities so they wont be banned every game. These champions that are overloaded with their kit, are either bad or good. There is no balancing them.

Change #3: Gold income Riot claimed they wanted "Games to have more comeback capabilities, and for people who are ahead to end the game quicker." In more depth, they're wanting the winning team to end easier, losing team to come back easier. Their idea for doing this... more gold! I honestly don't know what Riot was thinking here. This just added more to the coin flip aspect of the game than anything else they've done. The whole problem of Season 8, was damage. Why was this a problem? Because it allowed everyone to do insane damage to people. This made it to where it's not even uncommon to see people die 7-10 times during the first 15 minutes of the game. Back in any season before season 8, if you were dying 7-10 times before 15 minutes, people would either suspect that youre intentionally feeding, or youre facing a smurf. But this is happening almost every single game in Season 8 and Pre-Season 9. Which like I said, adds to the coin flip aspect of the game. So you're winning your lane right? Then the autofilled whatever, is playing a role he doesn't know, a champion he doesnt know, doesnt know warding path for his lane, doesnt know the champion hes playing against, and is dying at level 3 100-0 because he made a small mistake. This is happening every game. Your impact on the game rarely matters anymore unless you are playing a champion like Irelia and can 1v9. So now that people are dying 7-10 times laning phase, not only do they give the enemy over fifteen hundred gold worth of kills, he also gives another 1200 gold for tower.

Now lets look at this from the person winning lane. He just killed his opponent 8 times, took first blood tower, and is now worth 1k bounty gold. He also has 2 team mates that have a thousand bounty gold. They decide to group mid to close the game, and end up losing one team fight. Now the enemy team has just gotten more than 2 barons worth of gold. 3k gold from just the bounties alone, another 600 gold from two more kills, and possibly a tower or two along with the drake or baron. Once again, adding more to the RNG aspect of the game. Gold in this game is too easy to get now, which is what ill address a little more in my last point.

TLDR: Get rid of tower plating per plate, make it to where you get 160 gold for getting the tower to half health, dont make bounties above 500 gold.

Change #4: Minions My last change I want to get across is the minions. Farming back before Season 8 used to be a skill that took hours of dedication to be good at. Today, I am going in normals seeing a lot people get 9-10 cs per/m. I'd expect to see that amount in Diamond+ elo, but in normals? I normally would see players in normals getting at most 6 cs/m before season 8. CS is too easy to get, once again due to damage stats being too high. People are farming cs with a first blood worth amount of gold level 1. Back then, if you wanted to master CSing, youd play someone and have no damage on them. This way you could be good at farming when minion's health were about 15%. Today you can farm cs when they're at 20ish% health, making it a lot more easier and less of a skill.

Another thing tho, is that CS doesnt even feel like its essential anymore. I am seeing people that were plat 5 a week ago, rank up to plat 2 while getting on average 4-6 cs/m a game. More players in higher elo skip right over cs, and just aim to get the cannon minions. So players are skipping right over cs, to go for harassment/all-ins instead. This is once again because Riot added a change to the game that never needed to be changed. Honestly I think this might be one of the bigger problems with the game is this.

A post made by RiotRepertoir addressing these changes on the boards: https://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/developer-corner/INOiKBhg-cannon-minion-changes-targeted-for-87

Cannon Minions Base Gold Value :: 45 >>> 60 Gold Value Growth per 90 seconds (3 waves) :: 0.35 >>> 3 Base Health :: 828 >>> 900 Health Growth per 90 seconds (3 waves) :: 23 >>> 50 Health Growth per 90 seconds (3 waves) beginning at wave 16 :: 32 >>> 60 Health bar size visually increased

Super Base Gold Value :: 45 >>> 60 Gold Value Growth per 90 seconds (3 waves) :: 0.35 >>> 3

Melee Base Gold Value :: 20 >>> 21 Gold Value Growth per 90 seconds (3 waves) :: 0.125 >>> 0

Caster Base Gold Value :: 17 >>> 14 Gold Value Growth per 90 seconds (3 waves) :: 0.125 >>> 0

They nerfed gold value of Caster by 3, buffed Cannon by 15 (0 clue why), and buffed melee by 1. I really cant understand the reasoning behind this change, unless Riot was aiming for the game to be more of a snowballing less skill involved type of game.

TLDR: Revert these minion changes, 0 reasoning for them to change something that was already fine to begin with., Feels like riot is just messing with stuff thats already balanced so they can make the game feel "fresh".

Anyways, let me know what you think. Don't be toxic, give feedback that is actually supportive and not just "youre delusional" type of comments. Tell me what you agree with, dont agree with, and tell me why you dont agree with it. Really hope Riot fixes this game, otherwise its gonna be another season of me questioning myself as to why I play this game once it starts. Highly doubt a Rioter would respond to this, nevertheless even bother reading it to give their feedback, but Im sure its part of their agenda to make these games end quicker for the Asian players who enjoy these types of games.

8 Comments

XeroKimo12/5/2018, 2:47:40 PM2 votes

Actually Riot's track record for releasing new OP champs and reworks is much lower compared to season 4 and below, pretty much every single god damn champ was broken beyond relief... though they were also releasing more champions back then so of course there'd be more broken champs on release back then, that being said...

About 3 of the champs you've listed weren't broken on day 1, it was the hot fix buffs that they accumulated shortly after was what broke them.

For base stats, I've only researched the topic on adcs so far, but, when the stat adjustment first happened, adc's had an average of 5 ad more than before they got compensated, this is accounting for runes, and current rune bonuses, by that I mean, say lucian, with old runes and dorans, he'd start of with 74 ad, when runes reforged came out, with the same starting items he'd start with 79, now he's back to 75 since mid season, this doesn't account for stuff like absolute focus, or eyeball collection as they are either A, not permanent buffs, B needs to stack it over the course of the game, so it wouldn't make sense to compare them with it.

In short, as far as adcs go, they don't have more AD than old runes/masteries early game. I can't say the same for others, but just from adcs, for AD, I'd assume that champions on average have 4-5 more AD with starting items

Ultrys12/5/2018, 3:28:26 PM2 votes

I agree with a lot of your points OP.

but I think I can address the minion gold value changes.

Why would they make those changes? I think because the melee minions are more accessible in an oppressive lane or tough matchup or lane you are behind with less risk, allowing you to still get gold income easier.

With cannon minion, you can probably use an ability to get that one with priority or even wait until it nears tower. Again, you can focus on certain CS that is a bit easier to focus on in a tough lane without getting smothered.

Also if you're getting stomped, especially if the waves are headed to turret and you are an AP champ, the ranged minions are tough to get. Less impact for being behind and missing them.

I've recently plays a ziggs vs mass in lane where I first picked ziggs and also a ziggs vs talon same deal.

In those games, it was all I could do to farm from maximum double bounce bomb range. I didnt fall behind or get killed or "lose lane." Too hard because I kept my distance and farmed safely. In both games I got no help but was dove several times. Those minion gold changes directly benefited me and allowed me to be useful in team fights. Also it kept my oppressive midlaner from snowballing too hard on me.

PiggyTheAstro12/5/2018, 2:25:17 PM1 votes
  1. True tbh

2)Nunu, Pyke, Ez and Swain weren't broken (except before ez rework, he was OP), Nunu, Aatrox, Kaisa, Ez and Swain don't have huge mobility, Nunu, Aatrox, Pyke, Ez and swain don't deal huge dmg

  1. Agree

4)Cs IS crucial, if u wanna prove otherwise, play a game as any role without support item and cs, then play a game with perfect cs (don't think you or I can do it tbh) and you'll see the difference.

Frog goes moo12/5/2018, 5:01:43 PM1 votes

Agree with most of what you said but ezreal and nunu aren't as problematic as the others. Especially nunu. He feels more like a for fun champion than anything.

ModAcademy Kayn12/5/2018, 5:51:05 PM1 votes

Ezreal? Overloaded? What?