remember when graves was an ADC and not a bruiser assassin

Big Lincoln·Mar 19, 2017·96 votes·4,309 views

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125 Comments

A Vel Koz MainMar 19, 201737 votes

Remember when balanced meant something

MrHaZeYoMar 19, 201714 votes

Lol what?

There has never been balance in League
Balance in League is impossible.

Dusk Mane RengarMar 19, 20178 votes

balance is possible to achieve but balance doesn't make profits for riot.

Sp33d Zer0Mar 19, 20172 votes

no game with a slew of heroes that all have different healths, movements, resources, damage, utility, etc. with a bunch of different items that give different things like defense, offense, utility will ever be truly balanced.

Hell, look at games like Call of Duty, Halo, Starcraft, DOTA, even Pokemon. These games never had perfect balance, and they stretch multiple genres.

Different games have different meta's / power items. Hell, you can't even balance the support role in League because of the variance between tank supports, utility supports, and damage supports. One is always on top of the other 2.

Dusk Mane RengarMar 19, 20172 votes

Perfect balance of course is impossible however, some balance can be achieve. Riot doesn't want a balance League since it's much better for them to have a games that changes each 2 weeks

3TWarriorMar 21, 20172 votes

well, in competitive Pokemon (which there is such a thing now), even the professional events sort out which pokemon can and cannot be used because they are simply too powerful to be allowed in that competition. In fact, some pokemon are banned from all competitions because the players found ways to use them that were never intended to be done and were highly effective.

pokemon might not be balanced, but it is organized and probably one of if not the only games with a playerbase that is as large as Riot's

compared to league...you have random people in a random room shouting at the top of their lungs what each of their viewpoints are

Sp33d Zer0Mar 21, 20171 votes

And at the highest level of league we have 10 bans right now because some pokemon, i mean champions, are too powerful and need to be shut out of the game until they are tuned down. The big difference is that League can be patched for stat changes, pokemon cannot. As a result, the OP pokemon HAVE to be banned because there is no way to rebalance them.

3TWarriorMar 21, 20171 votes

except that in league, stats are not the problem in most cases but generally just the kit of a champion in general

take darius for example, even if the rest of his kit did less damage, what makes him mostly obnoxious is how effectively he can heal damage he receives

riven has 2 forms of hard crowd control and both do damage scaling off of her primary stat

there are many things which require number changes, but it is an invalid comparison in terms of balance when the players and an informed set of officials dictate the balance of Pokemon and not a specific set of paid pros and a system chaotically split between 1000 developers in a company

Sp33d Zer0Mar 21, 20171 votes

Changing the healing on darius to make it less effective is a stat change. Making Riven's W scale with AP instead of AD would be a stat change, or making it do no damage would be a stat change.

Both of these fix the 2 points you brought up, and both are mere stat changes.

3TWarriorMar 23, 20171 votes

alright, but if y ou lower Riven's damage output, is she effective at all?

if darius can't sustain high numbers, would he be picked at all?

until there is a central system for balance, champions will always be imbalanced unless there is a universally agreed balance point.

If we are to look at stats and kits in general, overall, the two most balanced champions are probably Sion and Mordekaiser. Both are reliant upon specific conditions to access a wealth of hidden potential, but at the same time, mordekaiser is no longer mordekaiser and is entirely reliant upon a partner or a team to allow him to proc his damage

GstevenstonMar 19, 20179 votes

What the fuck are you talking about lol

Gregor GysiMar 19, 20177 votes

He isn't quite right but he does have a point.

As a matter of fact many people do not enjoy playing and facing the same champions over and over again. If the game stagnated which would probably happen if it was as close to balance as it could be, then people would get bored.

That's why Riot doesn't immediately buff something that they just overnerfed, and vice versa. They deliberately encourage meta changes to keep people hooked.

But that isn't bad at all, LoL is a product that is supposed to entertain, I am not going to complain about Riot trying to entertain us. This also doesn't mean that they try to make the game more unbalanced, what they are doing rn is basically trying to move all champions closer to each other in terms of strength while always shuffling the strongest champions in the game so that pros play those and people copy them.

SoyUnPrededorMar 20, 20173 votes

There are 130 champions, thats 130x129x128x127x126 possible team comps, or 33550433280 possible team compositions. The game stagnates due to meta, perfect balance would take millions of years to ever play even 1 of every possible team comp.

Gregor GysiMar 20, 20172 votes

Base assumption: all champions would be equally played in a state of perfect balance. Which they won't, people have preferences and some champions will always be more popular even when UP. Also in a perfectly balanced world there is not much incentive to change your habits, because if you start playing a different champion you will struggle initially.

SoyUnPrededorMar 20, 20173 votes

Not even a factor at all actually, I never made any comment about playrate, simply how many possible games there would be if you only ran each team composition once.

That assumption (which isn't even there to begin with and I don't know where you got from anyway) would limit it to only taking 33550433280 games if they had equal play rate, but if each game took only a second that would still take 1063.88 years, or over 100 generations so its not like you'd even be able to have the same people playing, so the assumption isn't really worth commenting on or bringing up.

Oh, and at a more realistic 20 minute estimate, it would take 1,276,656 years. No person literally can ever experience it.

When you further factor in the fact that they can play against 28,143,753,000 (125x124x123x122x121) possible different team comps you actually get 944,235,107,275,299,840,000 different possible match ups in League.

[note, this number is 944 quintillion. As this is a number many times the size of what people actually deal with, and since it is many orders of magnitude larger than can be conceptualized by the human mind, here's something that might help. If you took the weight of the Earth in tons and dived it by 7, you'd get a very similar, albeit slightly smaller number]

So let me say this again. Perfectly balanced league is such a fucking massive game that no one could ever experience more than a tiny portion of it.

The argument that it would stagnate is so beyond ludicrous, that it must stem from people who do not understand probability at all.

Gregor GysiMar 20, 20172 votes

Well that's interesting but how does it help your hypothesis?

E: wrote this before he edited everything

SoyUnPrededorMar 20, 20174 votes

You began with the claim:

If the game stagnated which would probably happen if it was as close to balance as it could be, then people would get bored.

To which I replied:

There are 130 champions, thats 130x129x128x127x126 possible team comps, or 33550433280 possible team compositions. The game stagnates due to meta, perfect balance would take millions of years to ever play even 1 of every possible team comp.

You then brought up an entirely irrelevant point as if it was some assumption the above was based on and in some way a rebuttal to it, then I responded as such.

TL;DR The game being balanced does not lead to stagnation -> boredom. Instead, the game is already so fucking massive that actually balancing the full roster increases diversity, possible team compositions and creates new experiences in such a bafflingly huge manner that it wouldn't be possible for your entire bloodline to play every possible team composition once, let alone play every comp against every comp a single time before the death of the earth.

SoyUnPrededorMar 20, 20172 votes

I mean, if each of the possible team comp vs possible enemy team comp games took a second it would take 29,941,498,835,467.4 motherfucking years to play those all once. 30 trillion years.

The universe has existed for 13.82 billion years, but to play every possible game of league once at a second a game would take 2,166 times as long as the universe itself has existed. Bump that up to 20 minute games and it would take 2.6 million times as long as the universe has existed. Its such an utter fucking joke that any one could claim balanced league would stagnate.

Gregor GysiMar 20, 20171 votes

To which I replied:

Ah so that was what you are getting at.

Instead, the game is already so fucking massive that actually balancing the full roster increases diversity, possible team compositions and creates new experiences in such a bafflingly huge manner that it wouldn't be possible for your entire bloodline to play every possible team composition once, let alone play every comp against every comp a single time before the death of the earth.

Essentially your point is that due to the incredibly high number of possible team compositions League would be incredibly diverse if it was perfectly balanced. This goes with the implication that it is solely meta that prevents all those compositions from being played. It also implicates that those theoretical compositions are relevant.

Now, there are SO many problems with that. Especially the last implication is fatal.

Firstly, most of the "theoretically possible compositions" are impossible. Imagine a world where Riven/Talon/Zed/Renekton/Fiora are perfectly balanced along with all the other champions. Let's also assume that not all champions are identical (which is reasonable). Those 5 would NOT be a viable composition. I could expand on that but I hope you understand it already, if you do not then just consider how a comp that has everything (diverse classes) can be as strong as a comp that has only AD assassins - with all individual champions being balanced.

Secondly, not all these compositions are possible. Not even theoretically. You forgot about mirror matchups being impossible (aside from blind, but we aren't talking about that, right?). It's not a major flaw but I found it quite amusing given your apparent love for numbers.

Thirdly, the point that you immediately dismissed. Just because a champion got picked once in 1mio games that doesn't speak volumes for diversity. That means we should talk more about what actually get's picked frequently in this perfect world rather than what could be picked once. And as a matter of fact, Garen will never be even remotely as popular as Riven assuming that their playstyle remains somewhat the same. Not even in a perfectly balanced world. That means if all champions were balanced rn (although "being balanced" is a more complicated concept than we are currently assuming) we'd still HUGE discrepancies between different champions being played

Fourthly, that leads us to the main issue: your theoretical analysis of what could be played does not at all have any causal contradiction with my practical argument. You really need to think about the connection between your (flawed) number game and reality.

So let me repeat my initial statement that you disagreed with: the game would stagnate without meta changes / in a state of perfect balance. While people would definetely still have certain preferences leading to them playing Riven/Yasuo/Lee all the time many of those would get bored - as many people are unable to play something over and over again. But due to the lack of incentive to change their ways (seeing their favorite pro play it, hearing their friend rambling about how great xxx due to change xxx) they would likely not want to start playing something different. And even those that would do it would experience trouble as all champions are equally strong. Beginning a new balanced champion is much harder, less rewarding and has a higher hurdle than beginning an overpowered champion.

You spend way too much time creating needlessly high numbers to impress people so much that they do not pay attention to you not showing a causal connection to reality.

SoyUnPrededorMar 21, 20171 votes

Secondly, not all these compositions are possible. Not even theoretically. You forgot about mirror matchups being impossible (aside from blind, but we aren't talking about that, right?). It's not a major flaw but I found it quite amusing given your apparent love for numbers.

Look at the numbers, google what a permeation is, and realize I already accounted for that.

Firstly, most of the "theoretically possible compositions" are impossible. Imagine a world where Riven/Talon/Zed/Renekton/Fiora are perfectly balanced along with all the other champions. Let's also assume that not all champions are identical (which is reasonable). Those 5 would NOT be a viable composition. I could expand on that but I hope you understand it already, if you do not then just consider how a comp that has everything (diverse classes) can be as strong as a comp that has only AD assassins - with all individual champions being balanced.

If we say they are "perfectly balanced along with all the other champions," that includes team comp and lane asignment or it wouldn't be 'perfect,' now would it? In fact, there is a name for this, it's called "imperfect."

And as a matter of fact, Garen will never be even remotely as popular as Riven assuming that their playstyle remains somewhat the same. Not even in a perfectly balanced world. That means if all champions were balanced rn (although "being balanced" is a more complicated concept than we are currently assuming) we'd still HUGE discrepancies between different champions being played

You're still stuck on this despite me never making any claims about pick rate literally at all except to directly tell you that I am not making claims about play rate, yet you still. can't. fucking. get. it.

Look, you want to factor in play rate? Great, we now would have to modify every one of those permeations such that it would be weighted, which is calculus probably far beyond you, and which I would need a complete play rate table in this perfectly balanced world to even calculate. But, and here's the really funny part to me, factoring in playrate only increases the number of games required, it doesn't lower them at all.

Glory ln DeathMar 21, 20171 votes

{quoted}

But, and here's the really funny part to me, factoring in playrate only increases the number of games required, it doesn't lower them at all.

So, by that argument, you're saying we actually have a better game now than in your theoretical "perfect" world since, in this world, it will take far more games played to see every possible team composition than in that world.

SoyUnPrededorMar 22, 20171 votes

Only by that logic outside of the context said logic was originally used in. He claimed that playrate variation would lower the number of games, which is simply the opposite of the case, to such a degree I could not help but find it ironic.

Not going to go to heavily into it, but if I was measuring "betterness" between gamestates I would use a modified von Neumann–Morgenstern utility function, which enables one to measures welfare or satisfaction of a consumer as a function of consumption-- in this case, as a function of "consumption" (read play rate) of champions per game on average, when there is a risk (potentially losing the game) to that choice.

Such a function would have the highest utility the closer both the playrates and winrate of each champion is, as each individual when they go into a game would not have to worry as much about the choice they are making, the liklihood of a specific enemy or team comp, or feeling like they are picking an UP champion and would have better results if they, say, played Darius instead of Garen.

LoL is crack yoMar 20, 20172 votes

SoyUnPrededor is right, you are wrong. It takes a whole new kind of idiot to think that the game would be more stagnated and boring if it would be possible to achieve a high win rate with a larger pool of champions. It's exactly the opposite. Balance brings diversity

Gregor GysiMar 20, 20171 votes

Read this post of mine, I do not want to repeat it.

With that aside, I don't really appreciate being called a "whole new kind of idiot". I think I put enough thought behind my arguments to deserve atleast a certain amount of respect, even if you disagree with me.

LoL is crack yoMar 20, 20172 votes

You gave me a link to this thread where all our comments are. That's cool. I'm guessing you're referring to your statement:

"Base assumption: all champions would be equally played in a state of perfect balance. Which they won't, people have preferences and some champions will always be more popular even when UP. Also in a perfectly balanced world there is not much incentive to change your habits, because if you start playing a different champion you will struggle initially."

The first part is not wrong, people do have preferences. BUT when you take out champion power level out of the equation, people would choose their champion based solely on appearance and playstyle preferences. This means their choice of champion becomes MUCH wider, whereas your statement: "If the game stagnated which would probably happen if it was as close to balance as it could be" states the opposite. It's the equivalent of saying that if you put water in a freezer, it would vaporize instead of freeze.

Then you continue saying "Also in a perfectly balanced world there is not much incentive to change your habits, because if you start playing a different champion you will struggle initially."

Maybe novelty would be a reason? You know, to stave off boredom? And again, in a world where champion power level isn't a matter of concern, you would struggle much less learning all the champions than in the state league is now

Gregor GysiMar 20, 20171 votes

Oh sorry, the boards are sadly shit. I sent you a link to a post further down in the conversation (it's quite long) but you need to press "Show more" before accessing it. That's why the link leads nowhere. This post adresses what you say, but I can just paste the relevant part:

LoL is crack yoMar 20, 20172 votes

"Beginning a new balanced champion is much harder, less rewarding and has a higher hurdle than beginning an overpowered champion" While partially true, again this leaves you with less champions to work with, leading to getting bored with the game more quickly. Also, if you acknowledge the fact that you're playing an overpowered champion, doesn't that make winning feel LESS rewarding and losing MORE aggravating?

QuickenedBladeMar 19, 201722 votes

You're talking about the ranged anti-melee tank assassin marksman jungler, right?

5000000000000000Mar 19, 201711 votes

No, we're talking about ranged melee tanky DPS assassin mage tank support jungler..

ZyniXMar 20, 20172 votes

Lee Sin? Eh close enough.

ModAcademy KaynMar 19, 201713 votes

Remember the days where ADC meant Attack Damage Carry, and not Marksmen?

Apparently no one does.

AhristocatsMar 19, 20179 votes

remember when graves was a marksmen?

because i remember

GelmousMar 19, 20173 votes

he is labeled as a marksman

AhristocatsMar 19, 201710 votes

He is

gameplay wise he's a zed with 300 more range and 120 bonus armor/mr

SoryInAdvanceMar 19, 20179 votes

and 1/10th the mobility

also completely different

AhristocatsMar 19, 20178 votes

graves gameplay is not the gameplay of a marksmen, stop fooling yourself LOL

his range is so hilarious lmfao, combined with one of the highest burst damage of league+mobility+right now one of the tankiest champion in the game

his mobility isn't on pair of zed, but that is not the issue the issue is that his gameplay is not the gameplay of a marksmen

5000000000000000Mar 19, 201711 votes

I mean, it's still technically fair to say he doesn't play like Zed. Graves is definitely no longer a marksman, though.

MelledoneusMar 19, 20175 votes

You're right. Zed has to position skillshots, land them, and be slippery to escape.

Graves has to dash in, auto, Q, and if you're still not dead within a second he'll just do it again, ignoring his ult.

SoryInAdvanceMar 19, 20172 votes

His gameplay is not the gameplay of zed either.

AhristocatsMar 19, 20175 votes

i couldn't care less what champion gameplay is like graves

all i cared about is that he isn't a marksmen

Beastyboy387IVCMar 20, 20172 votes

Graves is a hybrid skirmisher. He is supposed to deal a great amount of damage along with a situational defensive ability (W,E). He is also not as mobile as zed or any assassin for that matter. He is not Zed Khazix Talon But more like Jayce Fiora Yasuo

NeokilljoyMar 19, 20179 votes

Well to be fair, Graves was one of the burstier adcs even before his rework.

UnvictusMar 19, 201715 votes

Yea, and he filled that niche very well. But now, he has burst, susatined damage, better use of lifesteal than any other character, and he's tanky on top of that.

AekoMar 19, 20172 votes

Agreed, I don't think there was another champion like graves back then at least on the ADC role. He was a champ designed that if you got close to him, he would burst you for a whole of damage. Granted his kit was pretty straightfoward and I guess riot decided they wanted more intuitive gameplay. So now we have the same graves now with more loaded damage only twice as tanky and builds whatever the hell he wants and makes it work. Great intuitive gameplay when with one death's dance you heal half your hp when autoing...

Kimmy KMar 19, 20178 votes

#RevertGraves

Statikk Succ Mar 19, 20178 votes

Oh boy do I remember. Mained ADC graves until he got reworked into whatever mess he is now.

HeresyHorusMar 19, 20175 votes

he is still an adc tho + tank, bruiser, fighter, slayer, assassin, support, ur mom knows what else ...

he is so fuked up now

fuffychanMar 19, 20174 votes

You mean bruiser assassin mobile ranged melee mage dps support tank

UnvictusMar 19, 20172 votes

I miss old graves! He was always my go-to adc and I could rely on doing well with him. I was really disappointed when they reworked him. And now he's become overloaded and impossible to balance.