So to balance, you need something to balance to. A base level. What is the base level that Riot is balancing to? Win rate? If it had to be a champ, what base-level champ would you choose?
What if everything was OP? It'd all be balanced, just equally OP.
What if everything was equally weak?
Bonipherus3 votesOverpowered is a relative term so yes you need to have a baseline to run a comparison but riot doesn't grade based on just one or two factors. However, they aren't as clear as they need to be about this subject as they claim to have different data but haven't told us about anything other than that they have it.
FatTaco2 votesWhen talking about balance this video comes to mind https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ai6oMY4U0Yw
Chaos Milk Tea1 votesWell, there's winrates but there's also low elo and high elo winrates, and each has different implications.
Then there's just champions that are generally frustrating and bad for the game who tend to get reworked even if they are at an average or below average winrate.
SpookyNeedle1 votesWhich question(s) do these comments apply to?
Chaos Milk Tea1 votesIt's not so much an answer to your specific questions as to an explanation as to why it's complicated to even give an answer.
For the most part champions are pushed to be around a 49-51% winrate. If a character is winning half of their games on average, surely they are balanced no?
But if a character has a 56% winrate in bronze and a 45% winrate in diamond and above, it is no longer a matter of just how effective they are but HOW they are effective and why.
And that's why it's complicated. There's different winrates in different places for different reasons. It could be elo, team composition, or just the general meta. Nautilus recently hit 54% winrate with zero buffs, just because he is strong against everyone else who is strong at the moment.
cmd011 votesGreat question. I don't have a clear answer but here are my 2 cents. Riot has stated that they tend to balance champions based on their performance at high levels of play. Riot has also stated that they want all champs to be healthy with plenty of depth and counter play. If a champion is unbalanced or unhealthy there are three options.
The first and most preferred option is to change the numbers a bit and hope for the best.
The second and most effective option is a rework. Riot is much better at building champions now than when the game was first released. Poppy is an example of how great a rework can be. Fiora is an example of the risks of expending resources on a champion who is fundamentally flawed. Bulding a champion like Fiora (Tenatious tank melter unkillable in small skirmishes) without fundamentally changing her identity is a daunting task. Mistakes are bound to be made. Because Riot values balance and plenty of people play Fiora they could only do their best to keep her viable without being too op.
When a champion is fundamentally broken and a rework cannot be justified the only option remaining is to nerf them. This reduces the number of people playing the broken champion and hopefully still allows dedicated mains to play them without dominating.
Aside from direct balance issues they also need to keep in check the viability of roles, builds, runes, and masteries. A great way to prevent one role from ruling them all are balance triangles. Think ADC > Tank > Assassin > ADC. By balancing these, no matter what people play there is always something that can beat it. You can actually find these triangles everywhere from champs to objective priority and even your macro and micro game. By keeping these triangles in check then game balance can never fall apart too much.
The more i write the more i ramble. TLDR: Riot has a long term balance plan, however things don't always work out as intended. Be patient and stay calm. They will get it right eventually. Even if they don't the game won't fall apart unless they seriously screw up.
The Yetii Rider1 votesI always think of Nocturne as the baseline for balance. Nocturne's passive is useful and easy to understand, but it also interacts with his kit because he lowers cooldowns with autos and gets AS off his W. So nothing complicated like Ekko or Illaoi but nothing brain dead like Nasus or Morgana.
Nocturne's Q, W and E each have direct benefits that makes each of them worth ranking up. He needs to build damage to deal damage, he needs to build tanky to be tanky, and his kit is both very unique (vision denial, global pressure) and thematic (darknesssss).
Nocturne is, in my opinion, a perfectly designed and balanced champion. And he's never played because of the cycle of OP never stops.
