When Bard gets buffed enough and learned enough to get picked in LCS, everyone cheers. It's an underdog story. People play him a bit on release, stop playing him when he sucks, and have fun learning his ins-and-outs without feeling like he's a crutch. It's not as good as a perfect balance situation (
) but it's not awful.
Meanwhile, Ekko.
I'm copying what I typed from another thread that was similar. :)
It's actually incredibly beneficial for balance purposes and for publicity's sake to release champions that are stronger than they should be. Releasing a champion that is too strong isn't a very bad thing, but releasing a champion that is too weak can be an incredibly bad thing. The bad that comes from releasing an underpowered champion is greater than the bad of a champion that is perceived as strong on release, and here's why.
When a champion is first released, nobody knows how to play him, and nobody knows how to play against him. This means that there is hardly any useful data for the balance team; without stable, consistent data, making balance changes is tricky. In order to know what to balance, people need to learn how to play the champion. What champions do people try to learn to play? The ones that are powerful. After people learn how to play these champions, they can use the statistics and truly say, "Okay, now that we have data from people who are actually learning this champion, we can tune him back a bit and make him balanced."
In short, Rito gets balance data faster if they're OP, because people will learn the champion, and the balance team will be able to know not just that the champion needs a nerf, but WHERE to nerf the champion. In the case of Ekko, is his shield really the problem, or is it his ultimate damage? Or could it even be his passive? Right now, the numbers are all over the place because he was just released. After a while, they'll know what's consistently strong and be able to fix it.
Releasing a champion that's underpowered on release is a nightmare for balance purposes. People play the champion, realise he's weak, and then stop playing the champion altogether. This is very very bad for balance purposes, because now the needed data is non-existent. The balance team can kind of guess what the problem is in an underpowered champion and try to buff it, but it may not even be the right thing to buff. Furthermore, it often leads to overcompensation - an underpowered champion gets buffed to the point where he's now OVERpowered.
Of course, it won't SEEM overpowered, because since people refused to learn the champ on release, now nobody knows the potential of the champion, and the data once again becomes scattered as players begin learning the champion for what we can consider the first time. Now we're essentially back to square one, and the balance team has to wait even longer so they can get more useful data to know what to change to balance the champion out.
Did you read Harry Potter? What made you want to read the second book? Obviously, the first book was good. What if people told you the second book wasn't quite as good as the first book? Would you still read the second? Of course you would, because the first was so good, you'll at least give the second a chance. You'll know it's not quite there, but you're already into the series now.
Imagine if Harry Potter's first book was incredibly dull and boring. You hated it. Then somebody came up and told you that the second book was better than the first. Would you believe them? Would you really want to try that second volume after thinking the first book was terrible? Even if the second book was better, you'd hesitate to try to read it until it appeared on the NY Time's Best Seller list.
Champions work in similar ways. If a champion is really weak on release, you'd get a bad taste in your mouth for that champion. Even if a buff came around for that champion, would you look at yourself thinking, "Boy, I'm super excited to try him now!" Probably not. Not until LCS picked him up, at least. He'd always seem weak in your eyes until somebody else showed you the buffs were okay.
However, if you nerf a champion that was strong on release, people will have already learned the champion and will be sitting, reading the patch notes, thinking, "Okay, so Ekko's ult ratio is now 0.9 instead of 1.3. That's not so bad. He'll be fine. I still enjoy the champion and I'll still play him."
And that's precisely why I do not mind having a champion on the strong side on release. While frustrating sometimes, and maybe not as "exciting" or having the underdog mindset, it ultimately is a rather smart thing to do from a big picture perspective.
Honestly, I think it's just because Bard's such a lovable guy.
Look at that face. Instant fan favorite! Do you remember anyone cheering for yasuo picks when he was buffed after release?
Why are you trying to compare these two? Bard has already been changed in 2 different patches, Ekko has been out for 4 days.
I agree. I'd rather champs come out underpowered and then be slowly buffed until they're relevant rather than the other way around.
the fact that hes only been out for 4 days and everybody and their mom is already complaining about him is a good indicator that he IS overpowered, not only is his kit overloaded, if you look at his playstyle hes clearly meant to be a tricky/jukey clutch play kind of character like zed or shaco but his not so straightfoward spells have the upfront in your face damage thats more akin to your typical straightfoward APC not completely mind you, but more here than there, and to clarify, when/if he ends up feeding he ends the game doing AVERAGE not BAD but AVERAGE even if he goes 0/6 in 10, to me that says something.
he has great mobility, he has good damage, he has a massive heal, he can can get out of some of the worst positioning, he has slows, he has a stun, like what more could you ask for? and while i agree that its easier for a team to dodge his ult, not so much for a single person, because if you ever decide to fight him head on, you got a massive slow and a stun bubble right on top of you waiting to pop so he can ignite into ult right on top of you, oh and...his ult is FREE...like what? 130% apd plus base, plus heal, plus reposition, for FREE.....
No? I played Bard twice on his release and then haven't touched him since...I'd rather have a champion be fun and playable than NOT fun and playable...
If you aren't terrible Ekko is really pretty mediocre. You NEED to land both your ult and w to even compete with other champions, since without those your damage and utility are both incredibly bad. His poke does support-tier damage if the second half doesn't hit, his w has a huge cooldown and delay and the shield only lasts for 2 seconds making its size largely irrelevant, the e is on a significant cooldown for a dash and has awful damage and scaling, and the ult is massively underpowered if the damage doesn't land. Ekko's ability to burst people down is entirely dependent on them standing where he was standing 4 seconds ago, and his utility is heavily dependent on fairly precisely predicting where both his opponents will be and he can be in 3 seconds. If you're in Bronze where the average player is slightly less intelligent than a bot he's stupidly good, but when you don't just stand still while fighting him he brings almost nothing to fights.
What..? Vel wasn't weak on release. The only champions to date that have ever been deemed horrible on release are Rengar, Syndra, and Bard.
