Stop nerfing champions based purely on winrate.

HumanPerfect·11/11/2014, 10:48:17 PM·4 votes·879 views

You're not doing anyone any favors by just "going through the list" and nerfing every high winrate champion like what's on PBE right now. If they were not played in competitive then there is probably a good reason; they have heavily exploitable weaknesses.

You're not letting players learn how to exploit the weaknesses or get better. Let's say the Rammus and Warwick nerfs do go through and they go to the middle-ground of winrate. I predict one of two things to happen; either they're going to fall back to the middle-ground of winrate and people will catch on to deep wards + minion block to exploit Rammus early game ganks and buy Mikael's / Merc Treads to combat WW + Rammus late game and then their winrate will plummet to a pitiful level to combine with the nerfs OR the nerfs will be so sever that their winrate and popularity will plummet to a pitiful level based on the nerfs alone and the general population will still not know how to play against them when Riot, somewhere down the lines, decides to bring the two back up to a playable level.

Same thing goes for Katarina, Sona, and Amumu (and I'm pretty sure Fiora is next up on the chopping block). There are very good reasons these champions are not seen in competitive play or dominating in popularity at Diamond elo+. Let people learn.

I'm going to be honest here, I'm still bitter about the Yasuo nerf. He was in the bottom 20 champion pool of the lowest winrates in the game (around 46-47% winrate IIRC) when his last set of nerfs came in. That dropped him down to the lowest winrate in the game and Riot all patted themselves on the back like they'd done something great for the competitive players, despite him having already fallen off into "situational pick" in the competitive scene.

Fair enough, but now we're just nerfing champs based on players being too lazy to "L2P" (excuse my crude language).

7 Comments

Killer X 1211/11/2014, 10:54:45 PM2 votes

Well these champs have high win rates because most of the counterplay involved with them happens in champ select. Since that is the case their is in game nerfs to compensate for the ability to pick these champions late denying the enemy their only real way of counter play. Also they've been talking about changing fiora for ages. She isn't going to get nerfed because she isn't op and you don't need to pick certain champs to combat her. You build thornmail. Thats it.

Knight SoIaire 11/11/2014, 11:01:07 PM1 votes

you prolly mean mainly katarina

katarina is not nerfed cause she has a high winrate

katarina gets a nerf because other ppl got nerfed and she easily outpowers them even if she gets cc'ed, which leads to a high winrate

rammus has a high winrate becasue just like amumu he deals insane dmg for a tank, lcs didnt pick em so riot wouldnt nerf but i think that new jungle might cause problems (rammus could become a counter jungler when he would smite gromp and taunt, mumu could become a tank with fastest clear ever, not to mention that the new jungle passive will make them heal better when not dealing high dmg so they get nerfed as a compensation)

first i wrote the post then i did read the pbe notes

the nerfs are meant to reduce their opness in the new jungle

Matthevv11/11/2014, 11:03:26 PM1 votes

Riot does not balance champions based solely on winrate. In fact Riot has an insane amount of data they can use compared to what is publicly available for us to see. Even the champion win rates on fan sites are not actually the real win rates.

ShenpaiPlsNotice11/12/2014, 12:34:32 AM1 votes

If champions got nerfed based on win rate, Amumu, Janna and Rammus would be nerfed every patch.

EffectFX11/12/2014, 12:41:32 AM1 votes

They don't.

Local Zoo Keeper12/11/2016, 12:45:30 PM1 votes

riot said they nerf Yasuo because of his high win rate, but you can't really nerf someone just because of his win rate. in champion.gg the chat said that Yasuo player that played 1 to 5 gamres only have 40% winrate and player that played over 100 games have a bit over 50% winrate.

bad arcade kitty12/11/2016, 12:50:43 PM1 votes

they don't

ahri and malz are like the most winning miders currently (ahri is the most afaik) and they are not even in the pbe notes for 7.1