Tahm Kench Nerf
TLDR: Stop nerfing Early Game champions, giving them late game compensation, and calling it an adjustment - It's a nerf. You wouldn't buff an early game champion, make their late game weaker, and call that an adjustment - You call that a hard buff.
If it's strong, nerf it slightly in the early game and give no compensation, instead of hard nerfing it's early game and giving a better late game.
Full Disclosure: I am a Tahm Main, so this will get personal when it comes to Tahm.
So recently, some buffs/nerfs have been slightly unjustified, according to both the win rates of the champions and their pick rates. This is the most notably the case for the nerfs to Sejuani, buffs to Darius, nerfs to Tahm Kench, and complete lack of nerfs for Taliyah.
Recently on PBE, a change was proposed to nerf Tahm's base health at Lv1 from 610 to 540, but also buff Darius's damage on his W and armor penetration on his E.
Now, I want to point out the inconsistency in this logic - Both Tahm and Darius are Early/Mid Game champions that slightly fall off late game due to their tendency to be kited late game.
Tahm is Tier 5, with a 49% win rate and a 1% play rate, that means the data is heavily skewed and impacted by us Tahm Mains, who actually play the champion consistently.
Darius is Tier 1, with a 50% win rate and a 10% play rate, which means the data is more evenly spread out and outliers are less influential on the final results, hinting that Darius is currently very balanced.
And yet, one, a Tier 5 Champ (which means it's garbage), is getting nerfed further, while the other is getting buffed. And I do play Darius from time to time - he's in a very good/balanced spot right now. This lack of consistency just shows how the balance hasn't conversed or interacted with the playerbase before arbitrarily throwing out numbers. 70 less health is a 12% decrease in base health at Lv1. What other champion would that be okay on? No one, so why is Tahm Kench getting his with such a ridiculous nerf without even testing the impacts of 20/30/40/50 health decrease first.
What this is going to do to Tahm - 70 less health at Lv1 means Tahm will have less health than 4 ADCs, as a Juggernaut. 50 more health at Lv18 is a huge slap to the face since we all know that late game health doesn't mean as much, especially when Tahm's late game is already terrible Understand that this would be the equivalent of nerfing Pantheon's early game and trying to make his late game stronger is just a straight nerf since everyone's grouped up and there's little to no room to even use that damage.
I would be okay with a 30 health loss at Lv1, but 70 basically means Tahm does not equalize his health until Lv8, which is stupid since he's primarily an early/mid game champion. It also means he'd be able to take 2 less AAs at Lv1, which is idiotic when Champions like Tryndamere, who isn't even a Juggernaut or a Tank, can have 626 at Lv1.
My suggestion: If you want to make Tahm more vulnerable, further lower the heal from his E's passive and strengthen the shield, which increases the reliability on timing your shield properly, while also rewarding people for poking, not this "change" because it's just a straight nerf.
This is inconsistency also exists for Sejuani vs Taliyah, where Sejuani got nerfed (again) and currently sits on 44% win rate, while Taliyah can 2 shot Gromp with 212 AP.
first