Nerf vs. Buff

Green Bomb·11/5/2014, 6:02:58 PM·1 votes·516 views

I noticed the Lucian nerf in this 4.19 patch and Tristana in a past patch, and I was wondering what would be more healthy for League of Legends... To nerf the "good" marksmen or buff the "underpowered" marksmen? It's not like we are seeing Lucian being picked into other lanes because he is that great of a champ, he is picked because he does well against other marksmen. But, what if Riot was able to make more marksmen do well in lane? I'm not talking about bot lane becoming a blood bath (or am I?), but it's pretty boring when there are only two specific marksmen picked almost every ranked game when they aren't banned. But back to the real question: nerf or buff?

9 Comments

ValyrianBlade11/5/2014, 6:20:20 PM1 votes

I agree, the problem with tristana started because of an item change (+300g to BT while reducing it's attack damage) which effectively nerfed all adcs who started with that item. Logically you would buff them to compensate, but instead the adcs who weren't hit with that nerf were nerfed directly. This results in nerfing the whole class, making it a less useful and less desirable role overall (proof in point, popularity of mid and top). The idea of nerfing champions consistently to balance rather than buffing just as frequently would logically eventually lead to a less exciting game...

EndlessSorcerer11/5/2014, 6:27:52 PM1 votes

The main issue with buffing underpowered marksmen is that it may make marksmen collectively stronger than other roles, where nerfing the strong outliers brings them closer in line with the standard without affecting other roles as heavily. Plus, nerfing means changing one champion where buffing others in the role means changing multiple champions, which has more room for error.