When is a champion win rate so high that it needs nerfs?
When is a champion win rate so low that it needs buffs or a rework?
When is a champion play rate so high that riot needs to look into it?
When is a champion play rate so low that you it might as well not exist?
Pika3102 votesWinrate alone has no direct correlation of any champ's given strength or viability. It's never "too high" or "too low." Rather, it is just the final calculation of numerous separate contributing factors. If it ever leans one way or the other, there is a distinct outlier or combination of that is leading to this end result. Which may or may not include the champ itself, but also just a few other examples being the items they build, player familiarity playing as/with/against that champ, team comps and matchups as well as nth other factors infinitum.
Pick rate is another combination of multiple factors, even though it itself is just a factor in the larger equation of winrate. It includes things such as PERCEIVED strength(not actual strength) and popularity. The first can be directly controlled by Rito, whereas the latter cannot. Players have their own personal tastes in character identity, playstyle and other such things, there's only so much that can be done to sway this.
You've also failed to include ban rate, another popular number players love to use for these types of discussion. This number is a lot easier to read than the former two. Its main contributing factor is perceived strength. Players will ban out what they THINK is strong or they will ban out allied hovers of what they know to be weak. I'm not certain Rito has a tool for reading hovers that get cancelled from allied bans, but it would serve a great function for calculating champion weakness.
Pika3101 votesLet's use Sona as an example for this. Most sheeple will look at her winrate and claim it to be average or slightly above, but her pickrate in yolo queue somewhat low.
Now let's look at outliers in her winrate: Spellblade and Echo. These are passives you'll be hard-pressed to find on ANY support's top-built items EVER. Is this due to synergy with these items? Decidedly NO. Whilst her winrate with either of these are high, they're only ON-AVERAGE or even below-average with these items' personal winrates overall, they don't work any better on her than any other champion and in-fact performs slightly worse. Why are Spellblade and Echo's winrates so high? Because unlike normal AD/AP items that are reliant on your champ's kit and the other items you build, both of them create a false artificial damage source that is not only independent of your champ and items, but create a brand-new false artificial scaling as well. Buying these items is synonymous to adding a 5th or even 6th skill to your kit.
Back on-track, what happens to our example when these 2 factors are removed from the equation? Her winrate falls below 40%. Let's take this one step further and remove the factor of ranks below Diamond and suddenly her winrate is now all the way below 35%. The conclusion we get from these is that this support character is incapable of performing with only typical support items.
Next let's look at pickrate. In yolo queue, there are 13-15 or more supports with higher pickrates than her and only 6 with lower, even being generous. As a character, she's always been very popular amongst League's fanbase mainly for obvious reasons. She's even attracted a number of non-players to the game through exposure to fanart. Since despite of this she still keeps a very low pickrate, this is NOT the outlying factor. Thus the other main factor is likely the outlier, meaning her perceived strength amongst the playerbase is obscenely low to the point where even diehard fans are unwilling to touch her.
Let's delve even deeper into pickrate by taking a direct look at professional play, across ALL regions. Of any champ picked into the support role, including not only champs typically thought of as "supports," but any picked by a team to be played by their support teammate including things such as Kayle and Syndra. Looking as far back as patch 4.13, she is the LEAST-RECENTLY support to EVER be played in a professional game. We can conclude from this level of play that's main objective is perceived strength that our example's strength is more FACTUAL than just perceived.
I hope I didn't go too off-topic for you. Maybe this example helps better understand what I was explaining.
FACE THE WlND1 votesYes.
Lauchmelder1 votesI'm trying to Keep this very short:
High playrate + high winrate = bad, Needs nerfs
Mediocre playrate + ~50% winrate = balanced
Low playrate + high winrate = balanced (mostly mains playing the Champion and they will have a better winrate most of the times)
High playrate + low winrate = balanced (unless winrate is below about 45%)
Low playrate + low winrate = Needs buffs
FACE THE WlND3 votesZed balanced according to this criteria, so was pre-nerf Leblanc, Azir, and Lee Sin always.
Lauchmelder1 votesHe actually is balanced. BUT he is bullshit to play against.
The main problem with Zed is that he both snowballs way too hard off of 1 kill in lane and getting that kill is way too easy due to his poke. On the other hand, if he doesn't get a kill he is pretty much useless. He is kind of like Soraka. Stupid to deal with but not entirely Pre-nerf Kassadin-Level broken.
Quepha1 votesdepends on the champion
depends on the champion
play rate has no relevance
play rate has no relevance
BeeCuz1 votesThis question is identical to asking where on a bell curve of a set of marbles we define the threshold between a normal-sized marble and an unusually large/small marble.
Normal distributions look like this: http://s31.postimg.org/3o8s8vj3v/stddev.png
Syruponrofls1 votesThe whole thing of zed either snowballing or being useless is how he was designed to be...like any assassin.
