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Grading system cares too much about CS in ARAM/RGMs with duo's

Dr Poro··15 votes·779 views

CS is an extremely part and in the past hugely underestimated metric that leads to success. When you're top, mid, adc or jungle and you don't know why you suck, "CS" is often the answer. But that's on Summoner's Rift, where you have 1 farmer per lane. When you're in an ARAM, hexakill, urf, OFA, nemesis draft, ... and you're sitting with more than 1 person in lane, you shouldn't be graded as much based on your farm because you might be INTENTIONALLY not farming when your lane buddy scales better with gold.

http://matchhistory.euw.leagueoflegends.com/en/#match-details/EUW1/3323339829/36603236?tab=stats

Just had this ARAM game reminding me how harsh it can be. This Syndra in my team was playing as good as perfectly. Only 2 deaths, which were when she was OOM and had a lot of gold. She intentionally didn't wave clear all the time because not only do our 2 ADCs scale better with gold, they also need the creeps to LIFESTEAL on. She only cleared when she had to (adcs being down, their team pushing in, our team ready to siege). When their Super minion clashed into ours, she'd grab it and throw it back away so our wave would hit their turrets healthier. On top of this, she also dealt by far the most damage to enemy champions. All of this on a champion with a mere 44.35% winrate on ARAM in a high ELO ARAM game. She definitely deserved an S as far as I'm concerned... But wait. Her CS... OMG. Only 41 CS in a 21 minute game. Shame! If she can maintain such high damage to champs without dying and without farming all the gold, while protecting the ADCs so they can, I'd say that's a hell of a performance.

I know this is just one anecdote, but I've witnessed many hundreds of these in the past. I love ARAM and RGMs, but I feel like the system fails to recognize what is good performance in these modes that aren't all about farming. Of course, getting that CS is still important. But it's more of a team effort rather than an individual performance. Having everyone trying to get that CS results in more creeps being missed and more abilities/mana being wasted on creeps.

tl;dr The grading system is fine in SR but is poorly adapted to game modes where people share their lane with multiple champions that are 'supposed to' farm.

11 Comments

SSleepless2 votes

Hello there, getting S rank in Aram nearly impossible no matter how good you played or how much you have contributed to win the game. I believe we all have like 25-4-32 kda with 90 Cs and still ended up with A or A+ , I have more than 60 champions highest grade A+ and all of them in aram games, I even send a couple of tickets to Riot Support about "aram grading system is broken". S bar is much higher than summoners rift in Aram, they replied saying; aram has different metrics, It depends on how good people doing with X champion compared to you. Then I created a smurf account in a different server and started playing aram there, there comes how good people are; there are bots in every single Aram game between level 5-25 and people getting absurd kill and asist scores by killing them, most of games has 4-5 bots 2 in blue side 3 on red side etc. So these bots are running down mid, ignoring people and turrets they just die, well you obviously dont enjoy those games but u get S for sure, so 5-25 level people getting 50-10-80 kda on x champion is becoming the S bar for that champion, you have to be that good to get an S on aram but if you are level 30 you wont get those bots in your game so you wont get an S in aram obviously. Banning those bots will not solve this problem; Riot needs to reset the Aram metrics after banning or solving these bots problem which I don't believe they will, they don't believe there is a problem with their Aram metrics in the first place.

tribunalisrigged1 votes

I have several e-mails from riot stating CS plays absolutely no roll in grading.

Dr Poro1 votes

Could you copy pasterino some of those emails? That would be really helpful. I'd like to see it in their own words. Just to check: you're sure it was about these gamemodes, not about supports, right?

AdeBug1 votes

Prolly for supports, like mentioned below. I had games with double the dmg of everyone else, insane kda, smth like 40, most gold ofc and nothing else but "low" cs to justify an A or A plus. A slap in the face :D

tribunalisrigged1 votes

It has to do with the pool of games you have played with X champion if you never have a better game than that one you will never get graded higher. You essentially have to do better than you did the last time you got an S on that champ. Its more of a system to encourage you getting better at that champ specifically. But alas more often then not that first or last S you got was a fluke and you may never have another game that good with them.

Dr Poro1 votes

AFAIK, that's completely untrue. Grades are based on how good other people of similar MMR perform on that champion in that role/map. It doesn't look at your personal history.

Mysticman891 votes

MMR is not a factor.

Since role/mode are a factor though, the cs aspect sortof takes care of itself. Yeah, it's hard to get even 3 cs/min in aram with 4 other champs all competing for it, but since everyone playing your champ in that mode is also competing with 4 others, even poor absolute numbers of cs can still end up being relatively good and getting good grades.

RGMs/ARAM aren't necessarily balanced game modes though, so matches can sometimes be super stompy which make make some of the S grade requirements pretty intense compared to expectations. It's not necessarily your cs being low that is holding someones grade back, buit a variety of other things. For example in ARAM, sometimes people are like 12/0/20 and are confused when they don't get an S, but because they actually did a tiny amount of damage compared to most people on that champ (who died or ideally executed to buy items), they end up with a lower grade.

Dr Poro1 votes

You're right, I completely derped on MMR being a factor.

It hurts me quite hard in ARAM that MMR isn't a factor because it's really hard to get these snowball games in high ELO where you don't have to die at all to win a game and are able to get all the CS, while this happens more often in low ELO games where people get their comfort champ or are playing vs 5 bots.

I'm not complaining about not getting S often enough. I know that the averages for CS are lower. The problem is that you can manipulate the system by going for all the CS for yourself when that's not the best play to win. The grading system should reward you for doing things that win you the game. Sure, on average, players with higher CS will win more games, even on ARAM (especially on low ELO games where many creeps are going lost, not so much on high ELO games). But it's far less of an indicator of your performance than it is on SR.

I think the fact that I mentioned that this Syndra did by far the most damage of the team indicates that I'm aware of the importance. In my opinion, it's not even being considered enough int he grading system (based on my (non-systematical) analysis of many hundreds of games I played throughout the years).

Mysticman891 votes

The non-transparency of the grading system makes it pretty difficult to be sure of what (if anything) is over or under represented. It might be cs related, or maybe it's looking at cc score stuff (i.e. things that are less immediately visible unless you dig into the stats), or even some fancy under-the-hood machine learning magic that we don't even have a clear measurement for, or who knows what, and low (or high in the case of 'undeserved' S grades) cs is just the most visible distinction, even if it's not actually what triggered the grade one way or another.

Finding non-subjective measurements of 'performance' for individual games is certainly difficult, and especially so for modes like ARAM. CS is sometimes wise to give to other champs, a better KDA isn't necessarily a better performance since executing when the opportunity presents itself is sometimes wise, there are no wards, and the only objectives are the towers, where peeling for a carry as they beat on it might be 'better' play than beating on the tower yourself. Tuning down the significance of one thing makes the others relatively higher, so trying to tune away one perceived problem could lead to another.

Where theres no special rewards for S ranks in non-SR modes (other than the potential for a S rank chest if you hadn't gotten one yet), it seems hard to justify riot putting much time into trying to make ARAM (and other RGM mode) grading systems better align with player perception of what a good performance looks like.

tribunalisrigged1 votes

Like i said its based off your pool of games not the whole pool of games with X champion. There are people so good at this game it would make impossible for most people to get a B let alone an S. Its based off your pool and your pool alone.

tribunalisrigged1 votes

common sense people

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