How can anyone on the balance team see champions with 70-90% ban rate and think 'this is fine?'

Yenn·Jun 14, 2018·33 votes·11,459 views

As is evident by the continued state of champions like Irelia and Yasuo, who are at 8X% and 7X% respectively.

This is really sad.

58 Comments

Nea104Jun 14, 201810 votes

"It's only pre-Season", 6 MONTHS ago.

Wonder why this game is losing so many players :D

Baron of BreadJun 14, 20181 votes

It is currently mid season, you know, the other time of the year where Riot piles on changes to shake things up.

Nea104Jun 14, 20182 votes

[{quoted}](name=Baron of Bread,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=7f3hHab2,comment-id=00070000,timestamp=2018-06-14T18:39:38.211+0000)

It is currently mid season, you know, the other time of the year where Riot piles on changes to shake things up.

I was hoping that in 6 months they could fix something, or at least that they didn't add more and more broken stuff :P

TheSingularityJun 14, 20184 votes

Wonder why this game is losing so many players :D

While there's no direct evidence of this, if you need some wait for when riot does a MASSIVE! revert of something they've been working on for a while. We lost a f*ck tonne of players during the dynamic queue nightmare, but how do I know? Riot flushed an entire year worth of work, hours and most importantly $$$$$$$$$$$$$ down the toilet (by re implementing solo queue). Why would a company do this? Because doing so is more profitable than keeping the existing feature around.

Enough players left that it threatened riot's income, and their investors (ello tencent). And so they chose the best of bad choices financially. When riot pulls something like this again, that'll be the proof that a crap load of people have jumped ship

Cowgirl EdJun 14, 20187 votes

Maybe "open mid" attitudes are the issues?

Yets4240Jun 14, 20181 votes

[zombie-brand-clap]

NankyokuJun 14, 20187 votes

Because the balance team probably aren't even playing the game right now. Or they are but they have orders from the managers above to do EVERYTHING to keep the game in a snowball, shorter duration fest. More viewers, more money. So you get champions like Irelia, Zoe and Yi to remain unfixed. I've been playing since 2010 and the game has got so downhill, I believe that they're either trolling us on purpose or that they're simply following orders.

NevrankroatonJun 14, 20182 votes

I read conspiracy post with extreme view a lot here but god damn this one was a strong one.

FOR JUSTICEJun 14, 20186 votes

banrate means people just don't like the champion in general. for the same reason master yi, and zed are pretty much permabanned in general.

AyzevJun 14, 201815 votes

If that many people hate playing against them, that's also a problem, balance isn't the only thing to be concerned about.

Bobloser3555Jun 14, 20181 votes

xactly, I usually ban YI or Illoi

ModKnightsKemplarJun 14, 20183 votes

Riot has consistently agreed with this view, but if they aren't particularly strong, it means they need something more than a simple nerf. And extra work takes extra time.

So it isn't that they think it's ok. It's that they need time to figure out how to respond to a situation that isn't fun, but also not horribly unbalanced.

Glory97Jun 14, 20182 votes

Banrate also depends on popularity (popularity is not OP). I think zed as a champion is very well designed. But he is still worth being banned because of how many players play a lot of zed and are very fearsome opponents on this champion.

KarunamonJun 14, 20181 votes

That's actually a new phenomenon. Yi banrate was in the 20% range around season start. He's on 64.2% now.

Zed has his spikes but he's stayed in the 50-60 range for ages.

KlydeFrogJun 14, 20185 votes

Doesnt mean someone is op just annoying. Hell i ban brand and morg every gsmr

HügöJun 14, 20182 votes

But when a champion has a extremly high ban rate while not being fundamentaly broken maybe his kit is recognized as unhealthy by the majority of the players?

The EcdysiastJun 14, 20182 votes

Well you're confusing "broken" for "overpowered". They're not the same. A broken champion is either extremely prone to bugs or breaks the rules of fair play with some aspect of their kit. Hence, their kit is unhealthy to the game. Whereas an overpowered champion is simply one that performs too well even in situations where they shouldn't-- or there actually aren't situations where they're weak.

Yasuo would be an example of a broken champion. His doubled crit and wind wall are the main culprits, as no matter what state the game is in, crit isn't designed around a single champion who can double it, and his wind wall will always be one of, if not the most unfairly powerful defensive abilities in the entire game. He is fundamentally broken.

Now, there was a time when he was both broken and overpowered, back many years ago. And that's usually got to do mainly with damage and cooldown numbers. An overpowered champion can be tuned down. A broken champion must have abilities reworked.

HügöJun 15, 20181 votes

Ok I wouldn't use the words as how you describe it but I get the point.

HyquiemJun 14, 20184 votes

No you people just fall to realize when it’s time to end a game and when it’s time to hide under a tower

NankyokuJun 14, 20188 votes

As if towers server any defensive purpose XD

KhristophorosJun 14, 20183 votes

Finally a Yenn post I can agree with.

Pika FoxJun 14, 20183 votes

Because people bandwagon more than anything.

Also theyre popular 1 tricks. Easy blind target bans.

Giga BaboonJun 15, 20183 votes

Your first mistake was assuming they think

AirKingNeoJun 14, 20182 votes

https://www.leagueofgraphs.com/champions/stats/yasuo/diamond

58.6% banrate, but oddly 32% in NA (the region you play in)

https://www.leagueofgraphs.com/champions/stats/irelia/diamond

70% banrate, not 80%.

KarunamonJun 14, 20182 votes

Yas has a 72% banrate globally across all elos. Diamond counts for not even 2% of the playerbase and shouldn't be used to determine larger trends.

Irelia is at 48.5% same.

AirKingNeoJun 14, 20181 votes

Global Diamond is perfectly accurate. Diamond ELO is also more accurate because it's more competitive.

You wouldn't balance the game around anything that isn't high rank because that defeats the purpose of having a ranked ladder. Its survival of the fittest, so if you lose to a strategy that a player that is, by definition, better than you, then it's up to you as a player to improve (as higher ranked people don't see a problem with it).

KarunamonJun 15, 20182 votes

Which leads to absurd situations where a champion sucks outside of high elo and gets a gutting nerf that makes a niche champion completely non-viable for 98% (no exaggeration) of the player base.

AirKingNeoJun 15, 20181 votes

No, it doesn't, nor should champions be overbearingly broken in high ladder because low ladder doesn't know how to properly play it.

KarunamonJun 15, 20181 votes

What do you mean "no it doesn't"? What are you taking issue with, the fact that raising the skill floor too high makes champs unviable for 98% of the player base, or the fact that 98% of the player base is sub-Diamond?

AirKingNeoJun 15, 20181 votes

Most champions, if not all champions, aren't having their skill floor changed, so I'm not even sure what you're arguing.

YennJun 15, 20181 votes

{quoted}

No, it doesn't, nor should champions be overbearingly broken in high ladder because low ladder doesn't know how to properly play it.

? ? ?

You have a simple solution to dealing with champions who are broken when everyone in the game is a monkey: get good at the game.

Those of us who are actually good have no solution against things that are broken in the hands of skilled players, short of Riot nerfing the champion.

ninjaroxasJun 15, 20182 votes

League is a game above all else, games are meant to be fun. If you make the game fun for 2% of the people playing it and not for the other 98%. You won't have a game very long.

Also with your logic the game should solely be balanced around pro play then

AirKingNeoJun 15, 20181 votes

You're right, League should be a fun game, but you still need to follow the law of competition because the game should be a competition.

There's obviously another conflicting law, which is "if you want to allow unhealthy designs to be balanced", for example, letting Malzahar be viable right now, without being a top pick, but he still is unhealthy because he has his ult. Does anyone in any elo find being pressed R into death fun?

No, no one does, so clearly we can not let Malz be viable because his kit isn't fun. Plus, the game is less competitive if you allow uninteractive kits (like Kennen).

Not Pro play, just very high ladder, just so you also cover the random solo queue problems that arise, but I guess osme exceptions are probably made to change pro incase something like lane swap meta.

ninjaroxasJun 15, 20181 votes

But as you say it's survival of the fittest, the pros are the "fittest". Even if you wanted to to keep it to solo que then you should balance around Challenger

AirKingNeoJun 15, 20181 votes

Exactly, but obviously Challenger and Master, even at a global level, is small, so mid diamond and above would be most accurate.

mack9112Jun 14, 20182 votes

I think people are just nervous to fight them bot lane so there ban rate is being inflated let the dust settle as the new meta unfolds.

GodlyBaneJun 14, 20182 votes

Bronze and silver cant deal with yas for shit so they ban him even though yas is respectively the worst mid laner rn, and irelia.. well

You guys have seen those Irelia plays before and I would say shes unbalanced

zecastarJun 14, 20182 votes

sometimes, we have to admit that a champ can have a high ban rate without being OP

this was often the case for Zed

VekknaJun 14, 20181 votes

That's not exactly true. Zed's problem is that he is objectively OP in terms of damage and target access during lane phase. So much so that his opponents are mostly forced out of building essential items to rush Zhonya's just to have a chance at surviving him. As a mage, you can literally rush a Frozen Heart and still go 100-0 when Zed hits his lvl 6 + one item power spike. If "be invulnerable" is the only reliable way to not have your ass farmed by an enemy, it's because they're OP....at least during that stage of the game.

In a macro sense, he isn't a champ who is great at winning games, but win rate and power level are two different things. I win a majority of my games against Zed, but it never changes the math on the matchup. I am always at a very high risk of dying to him, and he is always at a very low risk of being killed. If I win the lane, it's because Zed fucked up (eg Death Marking a Malz shield, diving a Lissandra when he's at 30% hp, etc). If the Zed doesn't fuck up, he wins the stat check.

Daddy AntsJun 14, 20182 votes

Meddler has already said that Irelia will be getting nerfed in 8.13.

The severity of the nerfs depends on how hard the Sterak's changes have hit her.

Light of MadnessJun 15, 20182 votes

The problem is... THEIR KIT IS CANCER! People who plays with it do not think, they don't know the game, they just go and ATK ATK ATK , IT IS STUPID AND TOXIC. Just make toxic players, I don't want this shits on my team or on the enemy team... I simple don't want to play this game until they fix the kit of the cancers.

I used to ban yasuo 100 % ( I did not care if someone pre select on my team), now I just got tired and quit. I can't use my ban to think in strategy I had to use to fix riot shits... so I stopped playing.

DuskDaUmbreonJun 15, 20182 votes

Ban rate doesn't mean they need nerfs.

Otherwise Riot would still be buffing Mordekaiser and Yasuo would be at a sub-30 winrate.

AbiwonKenabiJun 14, 20181 votes

Banrate is not the most ideal way to gauge Champion power; its more a way to gauge perception of a Champion by the playerbase. I could go on the game right now and start banning Teemo every game, and get thousands of other people to do so, raising his banrate, but that doesn't make him OP. That just tells Riot that people don't like playing against Teemo, or feel bad playing against him, or just THINK he's strong.

For example, in the support role or bot lane, I'll often ban Thresh, not because I think he's OP or I can't play against him, but because he's annoying to play against and I know he's quite popular even for non-support mains. Thresh is not OP just because he is banned.

Half the time I think its better to ban popular Champs, or flavor of the month just because that's what people are used to playing and getting them off a comfort pick is more valuable (to me at least) than banning an actual OP Champion.

ChargeItDownMidJun 14, 20181 votes

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AbiwonKenabiJun 15, 20181 votes

I disagree that banrates are the "best gauge of champion power". If anything winrate is a better gauge, as a win or a loss aren't decided by personal preference, more often decided by the actual power of the Champion. And of course winrate has its own problems as well. You just can't decide something in a vacuum.

I'm sure Pyke's banrate is pretty high, but I'm not sure nerfing him would be appropriate right now.

ChargeItDownMidJun 15, 20181 votes

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AbiwonKenabiJun 16, 20181 votes

I don't know how you can claim "historically", as if I am factually incorrect, when you haven't presented any evidence. I guess I haven either but again, that doesn't make me wrong. Ban rate can also be affected by player perception. An individual player could think that a Champion is OP, and even if they aren't actually that strong, if enough people agree, the ban rate will increase. This becomes a larger problem when you look at different ELOs: something that's strong in Diamond and is pick/ban might not have skilled enough players in Bronze to warrant the ban. Conversely, something that's stomping in Silver might not be worth the ban in Plat.

I guess the main thing to take away from this is no one stat on its own is good enough to assess champion power. Ban rate alone is not a reason to nerf a Champion.

HyquiemJun 16, 20181 votes

Let’s be honest the stats themselves in the game are not equalized AD does more dmg then AP.

Electrocute is just too strong in terms of power play. Where as it gives no counter play and destroys.

Any mage can’t scale since assasins in midlane dominate.

Things can only be baned but riot cannot look at them if they littlery see their favorite mages like lux being deleted by akali. Srs assasins are overlooked and overloaded, not to mention ireila can pretty much also be one. You can’t ban the most played mid lane class champs. Then again riot wont nerf them ether. Woe league woe league indeed.