A Note to Riot: Concept of Reworking for Balance

I have expressed this idea before, and I'm going to do it again. Reworks are not good for game health when they are overdone. I don't know if you guys intentionally try to make a different subset of champions op every 1-2 months, or if you have this longterm goal to make everything viable.

I sincerely hope this longterm goal actually exists. As someone who is generally good with analysis and theory crafting, I'd like to share a bit of info/ideas on how this is reached. (Not to say you guys don't already know, but maybe it's been out of your minds or you haven't thought of it in this way).

You can't balance this game with reworks. And I mean overdone reworks. Seriously, if you guys counted your reworked champions against the nerfs/buffs of non-rework champions this season, you'd probably end up surprised. I feel like you guys are starting a rework trend, when it's not necessarily good to have a trend of reworking for balance. If you want to get to this goal of champion diversity and broad balance, then you'll get there by steadily applying nerfs and buffs. When I say nerfs/buffs, I mean raw number changes only. If a buff or nerf seems to be overshot, it can easily be toned down or reverted. But if you keep changing champions' kits, then we will never get to a point of balance. And that's really too bad.

League of Legends has become huge as a game. It has changed eSports. It has changed how people view video games. If you ask me, it can become bigger than some of the major sports out there. It's already coming close. Champion Balance is crucial for League of Legends to grow and develop in this way. There are two things that factor in to any game (sport or eSport) being fun/entertaining to watch: raw skill and variance in strategy. Football wouldn't be fun to watch, if there were only 5 plays that could be played in any game. Hockey wouldn't be fun to watch, if there was a maximum number of shots that a team could take in one game. League of Legends will not be able to continue to grow and develop, if a competitive scene is limited to a small subset of champions. It doesn't matter if the subset changes, what matters is that it's a subset.

What good balance looks like: Okay, so we've got 131 champions in the game. That's a lot. If you guys think that true balance means a champion is being played in competitive a lot, you've got another thing coming. There might be wide preferences, but balance probably more nearly means that everything CAN be played in competitive. If a champion isn't played very much in competitive, it isn't because they are bad, at least not necessarily. Playing a LOT of different champions at the professional level is very very difficult. A pool of 5 is about what you can expect, with some pro players having some side picks outside of that. With a balanced game, it will come down to preference what those champions are. Some people play Kassadin, some play Jayce, some play Azir, some play Viktor, etc. Game balance will mean that not every professional player has the same pool. In other words, not everyone is playing the same 4-5 champions mid lane because those are the only ones worth playing. Now, if a couple months go by, and a champion hasn't been played professionally even once, then you can probably look to give them a little nudge buff, but it doesn't mean they need to be reworked.

So why am I making this post? If I'm not ranting about some mistake Riot has done or something that needs to be changed, then why am I posting? Simple. I want to give Riot a warning on reworks, so you guys don't get carried away with them and take a big step backwards in the way of balance because of it. I'm high diamond and I've been playing this game since season 1, a lot, and I've always payed attention to competitive. Trust me, the game is in an overall good state. Good here having the meaning that nothing really needs an overhaul of changes. (Besides those few select champions that we haven't seen in years, like Yorick). MESSAGE: Do NOT try to have another major update. Reworks only work for things that truly need them, they don't work as a primary method of balance. Fiora, Poppy, Darius, Malzahar, Swain, Vladimir, and Zyra were all excellent reworks. These were all champions that had no prior chance of seeing the light of day in competitive, and they were borderline troll in solo queue before their changes. Those are cases where a rework is good.

TLDR: If I see an Assassin update, where Leblanc, Fizz, Zed, Kassadin, etc all get significant changes, I'm going to borderline lose faith in the idea that this game will ever have widespread balance. Look at Cassiopeia's patch history, and look at the number of changes between her two reworks. There aren't many. I sincerely ask that you guys try to take these words with a grain of salt and consider getting back into the nerf/buff trend of game balance. Not the rework-->nerf-->nerf-->nerf-->different rework trend.

Disclaimer: I wrote this post late at night. I'll make another post another time, but if something seems a bit random or unclear, that's probably why.