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How about we replace nerfing/buffing as the default response for a champion becoming popular...

VOlCE·3/27/2015, 3:40:07 AM·18 votes·2,284 views

... and instead start enforcing the importance of learning to counter/sustain yourself against champions that are appearing often?

I think it would be neat as all get out if we could have something like "Dark Horses" that teaches players in-depth how to counter the main "problem champions." Instead of Riot hearing complaints and indulging with a nerf (which makes people have to relearn how to use/counter a champion, and may actually unbalance them MORE), they could host a spotlight breaking down the champ's kit and the best way to engage/avoid/counter said champion. Spread knowledge, not hate?~ Maybe?~

I've noticed that most League players' first response to getting their butt handed to them in a lane is to scream for the champion they lost to to get a nerf, or for their own champion to get a buff. How is this a solution to balancing gameplay, ever? Champions are popular not because of some op kit that wrecks the map WITHOUT ANY SKILL - but because a few people take the time to learn them - and their opponent - well enough to be confident with their kit and perfectly passive-aggressive (which is what everyone should learn to do, and we wouldn't have anyone asking for champ nerfs/buffs).

Nine times out of ten if you lose a lane it's due to their skill level > your skill level. It's not the fact that they have an op champ that nothing can be done against. That's not to say I'm here to insult the skill level of everyone complaining - that other time you lost the lane is probably because their champion counters the one you played as... but instead of playing safe you charged in and wondered what happened.

Regardless - when you are facing a champion that counters you, or you suddenly discover OH SUGAR, HE JUST MELTED ME/SHUT ME DOWN HARD, why is the default to REPEAT THE EXACT SAME ENGAGE PATTERN THE ENTIRE GAME UNTIL YOU'RE 0/8 AND SCREAMING "THAT CHAMP IS BROKEN BETTER NERF." If you facesmacked Annie with her stun up and died a miserable, 2 second death, why would you then facesmack her later and expect a different turnout?

Instead of being like oh goodness, maybe I should pay closer attention to the enemies abilities/how they combo/their farm pattern/their movement pattern/gods, SOMETHING TO HELP YOU LEARN, you cry because the match is suddenly impossible. The champ is too op. There's no way to win against them. Better nerf.

Having a hard time in your lane? The answer isn't to nerf your opponent. I promise you can win a game with a Katarina, or an Irelia, or heavens forbid BOTH, just by learning to deny them kills and counter them, instead of attempting to charge them down and wondering what happened. (I can shut them both down with my main, despite the fact that yes, Kat shreds through my mr and yes, Irelia counters me hard. This isn't me being some sort of god or playing as one of your "op" champions, this is me knowing how and when to engage them, and when to say flip no and leave them be.)

-Ask for a gank or secure your lane and roam if you're a carry. ** Alert your teammates** of whats going on in the lane. -Play safe by being goalie of your turret until you can do other things; farm and save some gold - sometimes the** right item** may help you get the upper hand. -Learn from watching them. Figure out how to counter them better later on. What abilities should you wait until they've exhausted to engage? What abilities should you avoid/interrupt? What champion could better** counter their kit** next game? -Wait for them to be sloppy in their waveclear or engages, and punish them while they're weaker than normal. It is possible to win trades against your counter in this manner. -Look at their item build. Adjust YOUR item build to counter your lane enemy. -Focus on other goals in the game, such as securing dragon, taking turrets, or getting rid of wards. -Have good map awareness, so you can watch out for the problem opponent eating your mates/having their mates appear to help eat you. -Play safe. -Play safe. -Freaking play safe. -Be aware of the fact that you don't have to repeatedly kill your lane enemy to help your team win, you just have to NOT FEED THEM. Sometimes a matchup is impossible to win,** but that doesn't ever mean you have to lose.**

I cannot stress the last one enough.

Learn the kits of ALL the champions, like, master them as if you were going to play them, and watch your opponent, always. You can learn to hold your lane in any game, against any matchup, and eventually, learn to shred them as well. If the champion was balanced in beta, with real people testing them, logic dictates they are EXACTLY the same upon release - people just spaz and don't learn them enough to counter them. Counter-play takes away the need for any nerfs or buffs, I promise.

Or is this too much to ask of players, (or of the game company) and is it the standard to continually make the game easier for those that don't wish to be challenged?

<3...

78 Comments

KaisadiIIa3/27/2015, 3:27:00 PM7 votes

You forgot to mention about playing safe.

One of the problems is that everybody expects to get fed in 10 minutes no matter the matchup. People see LeBlanc at mid, they pick Zyra because "it's their main" and play aggressive and get rekt by that LeBlanc (wow, we never expected that). Then, when LeBlanc is 5/0 and they have 20 minions at min 10, they "try" to play passive, under turret. They get killed by LeBlanc again and complain she is op and there is nothing you can do against her... YOU GAVE HER 5 KILLS IN 10 MINUTES, NOW IT'S TOO LATE TO "PLAY DEFENSIVE".

Long time ago (when nobody played Graves), I was playing Graves (nobody except me, I meant) against a Vayne. Vayne played too aggressive and, of course, it was a free kill for me due to my high burst. That Vayne complained once and another that Graves was an OP noobchamp blablabla... If you play Vayne, who has a weak early game, against a bursty ADC with a strong laning phase, WHAT DO YOU EXPECT?

tl;dr: If you want to roflstomp early game in every game, just pick something too aggressive early game like Lee Sin, LeBlanc or Riven. Don't expect to win your lane easily with a champion designed to be weak early game.

Leti the Yeti3/27/2015, 7:48:15 AM5 votes

I believe you forgot to mention how people ought to play safe can't believe you forgot something as important as that

on another note, I think there is a difference between some champs that... kinda are busted and champs that are only busted becuz people are ignorant

Slamurai Jack3/27/2015, 3:07:15 PM5 votes

On the topic of Jinx , you can't honestly tell me that a champion with a 31% pick rate and a 54% win rate isn't at least a little overtuned. Yeah, Jinx has weaknesses that can be exploited, but that doesn't mean the strengths she has aren't overbearing much of the time. That's been true of literally every champ that's been OP ever. 4.20 Warwick had a 60%+ winrate and still had weaknesses. 56% win rate Runaans Hurricane Kayle still had weaknesses. Patch 4.2 Yasuo still had weaknesses. And yet, all of those champion got nerfed, and nerfed hard. Not because they had no weaknesses, but because their strengths were strong enough that it made their weaknesses irrelevant in many games.

For me personally, this is how I figure out of a champion is OP or overtuned: Imagine making specific changes to a champion, by either removing mechanics or slightly changing numbers, and then figure out of that champ would still be a good pick even with those changes. In the case of Jinx, there are several areas we can target. The first is the passive, we could lower the %, we could lower the duration, or we could make it only trigger on kills and not assists. The second is her Q, specifically her rocket form; we could take away the 10% bonus damage it for some reason has, we could reduce the range, we could increase the mana cost, or we could take away the ability for the aoe damage to crit. Thirdly, we could target the E, perhaps by raising its low mana cost, or by lowering the duration of the snare. And finally, we reach the ult. We could increase the cooldown of it. We could decrease the blast radius. We could weaken execute portion of the damage so it doesn't kill me from 50% health.

You could literally make any of those changes, perhaps even a couple of them, and Jinx would still remain a very strong pick. Yes, she's immobile, and that is a serious weakness, but the strengths that she gets to compensate for that immobility so far outclass all of the other immobile adcs that there's almost no reason to pick them over Jinx ever if your goal is to win. Even if Jinx has weaknesses, it doesn't change the fact that she is still the best adc in the game by a noticeable margin, and a 31% pick rate and 54% win rate are all the proof you need of that.

RetroRage963/27/2015, 3:45:45 AM4 votes

tl;dr JK, I like this idea. Good post, upvoted. Thank you for a nice display of ideas and opinions, even if it were kinda long.

ChargeItDownMid3/27/2015, 8:00:51 AM4 votes

You are getting correlation and causation mixed up. There is a correlation between nerfing and popularity. However, champions are not nerfed because they are popular. Instead, champions are nerfed because they are overpowered and overpowered champions naturally become popular.

Kitten of Evil3/27/2015, 6:11:25 AM3 votes

There's some truth to this, but of course, there are also times when a champion's kit is too strong (this is common on release, but changes to itemization can make it happen too -- Skirmisher's Warwick, for example?)... and there are times when a champion's kit is frankly toxic, even if that champion is not overpowered and doesn't need a nerf -- Poppy is a great example of this.

AshenFox3/27/2015, 7:53:45 PM3 votes

There is a difference between 'popular' and 'omgwtfritonerfpls'. It's just that a good portion of the player base doesn't actually see the difference. 'Popular' means that it sees a lot of play. 'omgwtfritonerfpls' champs have something fundamentally wrong in their kit that makes them crowd 90-99% of other champions for that role.

This, however, does mean that champions with 'omgwtf' issues tend to rise to the top however, which in turn makes them popular. Which in turn means that they get some nerfs to balance things out.

Want an example? Nidalee

She has some inordinate power in her kit. Spears that can be hard for some people to dodge, which follows up with a free gap closer and 2 ap scaling nukes. So, in effect, when 1 spear lands, at mid to max range, you can get nuked 3 times. 2 of which cost nothing and are on low CD. The community has been crying about her needing some kind of adjustment since she was able to mark neutral monsters, mainly because it transformed a champ that needed a lane to function, into a hyper mobile jungler that hits you with a spear from where you cant see while you're in lane, then leaps from the fog of war to nuke you AGAIN. And when you try to chase her, she runs into a bush and spams leap to run away.

Did Riot cave to community pressure and nerf her? Nope. Are they keeping an eye on her because they're worried she might be crowding out other champs or might have some toxic play elements? Yes. But they do that for EVERY champion in the game. From Aatrox to Zyra every chap gets watched to make sure that no patch, or buff, pushes them into such a dominate position that there is NO COUNTER.

Remember, League isn't about Perfect Balance, but by that same argument there can't be a champ that counters EVERYTHING that it goes up against in it's role. If that champion exists, it needs to be changed. That's just a fact of the game.

disregardable3/27/2015, 3:59:16 AM2 votes

I'm going to disagree as a whole through a specific example.Jinx I've mained her since November. She has one of the stronger laning phases of any ADC. With an AOE-700 range auto-attack, she is the safest ADC in the game once laning is over and teamfights begin. If she goes into teamfights fed, the game is almost over for you.

What you said about waiting for her to exhaust abilities is untrue, because she doesn't need them to kill you with her inherent attack speed steroid and huge range. It's very unlikely she's going to be sloppy because of her high range-1 shot waveclear.

Most importantly, if all you do is sit under your tower, she is going to leave lane a heavily farmed goddess. She will wreck your teamfights, and she will eventually kill you. When she isn't directly countered, she is Rito's gift to marksmen mains.

DarksideEric3/28/2015, 1:27:50 AM2 votes

What I hate most about the community's opinion on balancing is that they often times demand variety and viability, but then scream for nerfs when a Champion that is shown in a new position on the map and is doing fairly or really well against previous dominators becomes prominent.

We go from...

"ALL WE SEE IS SHYVANA, RENEKTON AND DR. MUNDO TOP! WE WANT MORE THAN 3 PICKS!"

So people find out Ryze is a very good choice in the Top Lane, particularly against some of those above mentioned Champions.

What do we get after Ryze moves Top?

"RYZE BEATS MELEE BRUISERS! OP! NERF!"

What players don't realize (or do know and just don't give a shit) is that you're never going to get variety in this game (I stress THIS game) if you're constantly only wanting one particular class of Champion in one particular area of the map. If you think only Melee Bruisers / Tanks should be Top Lane, then of course all you're going to see every game is the three best ones.

If you want actual variety, then start learning to play the game and building your team to make the required effort to counter something that needs countering.

Ryze beating up your Melee Bruiser? Take Brand or Syndra Top to beat the crap out of Ryze. "But Brand is too easily ganked in such a long lane with no mobility!" Then take that into account with how you play. Pick a Jungler who can easily make pit stops Top to help Ryze if he needs it. Invest more into Wards. But at least make the attempt to actually evolve with how the game is going rather than just constantly bleating for nerfs because you can't play Mundo anymore without a 100% success rate.

Not only that... if you took a Mage Top that can smash Ryze, a frail non-mobile Brand for instance, and then your opponent picked a deadly Melee Bruiser that can slice Brand in two if he even looks at him... you just made another Champion viable.

"Variety" in this game (again, stressing THIS game) is not achieved by everyone being "viable" in the sense that every Champion is balanced as evenly as possible, variety is achieved by utilizing the large Champion pool at your fingertips instead of just complaining that you can't play Mundo anymore because Ryze beats him, so therefore Ryze deserves nerfs.