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Stop using a flat numbers when commenting on changes to minimize how much of an impact they are

Verxint·5/3/2019, 12:42:22 AM·18 votes·5,894 views

Currently Riven has a change on the PBE:

Valor (E) cooldown increased from 10/9/8/7/6 to 14/13/12/11/10

I see people saying "lol four more seconds on her shield like that matters". In this case it actually does. That's not four more seconds. That's a 66% longer cooldown. That means no matter how much CDR she builds, her shield is available nearly half as often. This means she goes from about an effective 36 + 17% bonus AD of shield every second when spammed on CD to 22 + 10% bonus AD. That's a substantial reduction in how much shield she has available.

When you comment on a change like this, it has to be compared to before and after properly, not just the difference in the patch notes

Here's another example: Darius was recently buffed to get 15% missing HP healed per target hit with his Q blade instead of 12%. By Boards logic, that's "lol useless 3% increase". Except going from 12 to 15 is a 25% increase - this change means Darius is healing for 25% more than he used to every time he lands a Q blade. That doesn't seem so insignificant anymore.

A flat number with no context is really meaningless. If a spell is given 10 more damage, without knowing anything else about the spell, there's no way to know how big of a change it is. If it's a 600 damage spell with a two minute cooldown, that change is irrelevant. If it's a 50 damage spell with a two second cooldown, that change is massive.

Does this mean there's never been a time when Riot has made flat number adjustments that were borderline worthless? Of course not - the 0.25 sec CD increase to Zoe's Q comes to mind - that was a 3% decrease in the spell's availability. That's hardly anything, and this isn't the only example by far. But when you only look at raw numerical value of the change and not the proportional value compared to before the change, you will never get the full picture of the impact.

Edit: Just to add some clarity, I'm not trying to say that percentage differences are the end-all be-all of analyzing changes. I'm just saying the difference in the path notes doesn't really mean anything, you have to consider how strong the ability is before the change to properly assess how impactful the change is

37 Comments

Terozu5/3/2019, 2:13:30 AM6 votes

She now requires full cdr to achieve her previous 0 cdr cooldown.

nelogis5/3/2019, 6:09:50 AM6 votes

this doesn't make any sense

So when you have a spell that deals 1 damage and increase it to 3 damage then that is a 300% increase OMG WHAT A HUUUUUUGE BUFF

No it isn't, a measly 2 damage got added to the spell which is damn insignificant

Same can be said about low cooldowns, when a spell has a 0.1 second cooldown and it gets increased to 0.3 seconds then that is a 300% nerf. Doesn't mean it's a big one.

When discussing something you need to use the flat numbers, percentages are completely useless since they can be misleading.

Edit:

Like that Darius change "WHOA 25% MORE HEALING" That is 3% more in flat amount, 3% of MISSING health.

Let's put this into perspective, let's say he has 2000 HP Let's say he is at 40% HP so he is missing 1200HP 3% from 1200 is 36

He now heals for 180 instead of 144 pre-buff Doesn't seem like a lot anymore does it?

hhaavviikk5/3/2019, 5:48:01 AM5 votes

I love people using percentages to make numbers seem big, that's like having 0.05 cents, being given 0.15 cents and then say ''look how great I am, I gave him so much money he now has 300% more money woa!

Salron5/3/2019, 5:51:54 AM4 votes

Ignorant people on this board also don't know anything about Riven, her E is crucial to some animation cancels that begin with E, so E being down more often means she has less access to those combos in addition to not having the shield as often

Saianna5/3/2019, 4:59:51 AM4 votes

Rivens shield CD nerf is nothing more than making Riven angage/dive 4 seconds later than usual.

Woo-hoo.

What a change.

Here's another example: Darius was recently buffed to get 15% missing HP healed per target hit with his Q blade instead of 12%. By Boards logic, that's "lol useless 3% increase". Except going from 12 to 15 is a 25% increase - this change means Darius is healing for 25% more than he used to every time he lands a Q blade. That doesn't seem so insignificant anymore.

Imo you are, although right, only adding to the misleading. You try to make those number tweaks as if they were world-changers.

That doesn't seem so insignificant anymore.

Exactly this. You only want to make it sound significant, even though it isn't.

DuskDaUmbreon5/3/2019, 2:05:28 AM3 votes

Also, changes are rarely equal. Continuing off of the Riven changes:

She's getting reduced CD per rank on Q as compensation. However, her Q is only some damage and some CC every 3rd cast, while her E is a stronger overall dash and a shield, said shield she needs to survive in fights and having that less often means she will die much faster.

Riven's E is also a key part of almost every animation cancel and combo she has, the only ones I can think of that don't use E are fast Q, involve Flash, or are Tiamat+W, and none of those are her strongest combos (Fast Q is pretty much just a lane trading combo, Tiamat isn't really an item on her anymore iirc and I'm pretty sure that Tiamat only cancels W animation anyways. Or maybe it's W canceling Tiamat...), and Flash is a 5 minute cooldown and still not as effective as E). E CD nerfs are huge because it effectively increases the CD of every combo she has.

Nea1045/3/2019, 5:36:39 AM1 votes

You're right, flat numbers don't mean much. But you don't get the full picture anyway, even looking at %s and proportions.

Point is, in a complex system you need tons of data and calculations. Only Riot could do that, but they aren't able AND don't want to. That's why this game is incredibly unbalanced, and perma-stays in this awful state.

If they were actually fixing their own game, you should actually see very little changes like the 0.25 sec thing, but in a consistent way, and not as a meme. It would be a "tuning" process, not just random thumb-rule style changes. You should basically never see integer numbers either. And, of course, you would never have something like doubling a whatsoever factor. (like Nasus' stacks now, or Tham's CD or Brand's passive last season :D )

SanKakU5/3/2019, 6:37:31 PM1 votes

Not everyone likes doing math when they read patch notes, but making patch notes is hard enough without trying to make them easier for the lazy to understand. There are lots of times changes go live without them getting into the patch notes...don't make it harder for them than it already is.

5050BS5/3/2019, 7:50:33 PM1 votes

And all the down time of her shield is offset by the up time of her Q CC that was Buffed not even counting the extra damage.

kuzzy475/3/2019, 9:58:16 PM1 votes

Nice mathematics thats a 40 % increase.

VoraciousX5/3/2019, 10:08:33 PM1 votes

Riven's E at full CDR is 3 seconds. Riven's E with this change will be 6 seconds, double her original. Add to this that her Q cooldown will not be felt as much, as she uses Q much less, usually only to engage with third Q, and restart her Q again, and then she uses E much more to actually survive once she's gone in, and the fact that her combos use E a lot in them. They should have removed Spear of Shojin. It's never felt like a healthy item, it's made Riven pretty powerful(now she'll probably run this 100% of the time to negate this change), and made auto attacks not stack conqueror(this would nerf Riven's stacking on Conqueror, another change that would nerf her, since I don't think her kit was the problem, it was the introduction of these two changes which tipped her over the edge).