What does "Balance" mean to you?

MrBuffington·Feb 17, 2015·15 votes·3,986 views

It's a word we hear and use a lot on Boards, but I'm sure not everyone agrees on what this means. My inner pessimist is quick to say that most people on here think "It means every champion other than my main are nerfed to oblivion", but I honestly think (or at least hope) that (at least some of you) are smarter than that.

A few days ago I made a post asking what champions people thought were healthy to play against; I got a whole range of answers, from the typical "whichever champion I can facestomp" to more surprising answers of champions often complained about on these Boards for being toxic.

I want to hold off on offering too much of my own opinion here (if you've seen me around at all you probably know I have a lot of them, lol), but I want to offer a couple terms at least just to give the conversation a little guidance, since the question is pretty vacuous and unfocused (I'll edit the list with other terms that people come up with as well):

Power Budget
Counterplay
Meaningful strengths/weaknesses
Niche/strategic role
Rewarding play/interaction
Opportunity Cost [thanks Minrog]

Thanks

EDIT: We've gotten a lot of great responses below, thanks everyone for commenting and continuing the conversation!

125 Comments

YOU BEEN WARNEDFeb 17, 20157 votes

Balanced means not strong, not weak and definitely not OP/UP or broken.

Shen Ashe Shyvana are good examples of balanced champions:

They don't beat over 25% of the roster.
They do specific things, not jacks of all trades.
They have a stage in the game where they are weak.
They have glaring weaknesses enemies can work around.
They have a good amount of predictability and require some sustained damage, ie they don't WEQ in a split second then go in to kill you if the skillshot hits .

MrBuffingtonFeb 17, 20152 votes

You seem to focus a lot on champion's weaknesses; what do you think about their strengths?

YOU BEEN WARNEDFeb 18, 201510 votes

Zed "Balance is weakness" Zed

A champion's balance is based off their weakness. It doesn't matter that Karthus ultimate is OP, what matters is that he is rather abusable in laning phase and his mana pool etc.

Limitation and restraint is the defining characteristic, if gravity didn't exist then we could be anywhere. You see what I mean ? Raw numbers are important, but it's the "gating" ( mana, cooldown, other abilities and stats ) that matters.

MrBuffingtonFeb 18, 20154 votes

Haha I love how you took that quote out of context; it works perfectly. You make a good point though, Karthus has one of the highest damage potentials of mages (up there with Azir or Cassiopeia, maybe more), but he has good weaknesses to compliment that

Seth LightheartFeb 17, 20155 votes

This is what balance means to me:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e31OSVZF77w

i.e. learning and loving a new champ every few months.

AMYS GRAVEFeb 17, 20154 votes

imo a balanced champion is one that

is fun to play against, ie has meaningful weaknesses which can be measured by having not high ban rates.
is fun to play as, ie has meaningful strengths which can be measured by having reasonably high pick rates.
isn't stupidly overtuned/undertuned, ie has nearly a 50% winrate.

TehNACHOFeb 17, 20153 votes

Everybody has a niche to play in.

I come from a TCG background so unfortunately, I have a lot of experience with play styles that straight up overrule each other. Especially if the game is big and developed enough, I guarantee you that there are multiple decks that exist in the game that have their role in the game done flat out better by another deck in the game. This is largely due to how limited the mechanics of a TCG tend to be, but the point is still there. Some decks are straight up better than other decks at the jobs they are supposed to be specialized in. This can cause old decks to fade away by potential power creep, new decks to die on the vine if old decks do their job better, and very limited "competitive" deck types compared to the vast majority of "possible" deck types. This is imbalance to me, and always will be. There's no reason to play certain decks if there are other decks that are straight up better at doing their jobs, one is clearly better than the other, no debate.

I like League's balance system, honestly. Ignoring jack of all trades champs LeeSin or champs that questionably ignore the weaknesses of their niche Zed , almost every champion in League has some specific job that they are good at that nobody else shares, and their job has a specific or generalized weakness that some champion in the League of Legends or a play style that players can use that beats the niche. That's balance in my mind. Yes it can be badly tuned and yes some niches may "appear" stronger than others, but the fact remains that there is a home for every well designed champion that you can not possibly take away without making a straight up badly designed champion. That is balance in my mind.

MrBuffingtonFeb 17, 20151 votes

Thanks for sharing!

To go into more detail, what are your thoughts about counterplay within a game? I kind of want to just leave it at that to avoid asking a (more) leading question :P, but I can clarify if that was too vague

TehNACHOFeb 17, 20151 votes

I think Counterplay is a necessary system in a game if you want to host certain mechanics.

One of the card games I used to play has no counter play system involved for the enemy destroying your cards. There's a counter play system if you want to defend from their attacks, there's a counter play system for if they rush and have too many cards active at once, but there's no counter play system to fight against abilities that automatically destroy your cards.

To put things into context, there's a Counter Play system for every strategy in that game except for abilities that automatically destroy cards. Conveniently, the top performing competitive decks in that game all had their play styles revolve around abilities that automatically destroy cards. Coincidence?

Well implemented counter play is always good for the game. I have way more than my own share of empirical evidence to prove that no counter play tends to be really, really bad.

MrBuffingtonFeb 17, 20151 votes

haha, that game sounds pretty rough. Can you go into more detail about what you see as well implemented counterplay, maybe in the context of LoL as well, though you can certainly draw from your TCG experience

TehNACHOFeb 17, 20154 votes

Earlier I mentioned something about generalized and specialized Counterplay.

To give examples to those, Zed is a champion with a butt ton of specialized weaknesses but relatively few generalized weaknesses. Everybody knows you can buy Zhonyas to specifically counter his ultimate, and very certain anti assassin kits like Lissandra's can just shut him down outright. But these are not one size fit all solutions to fighting against him. What about ADCs who straight up can't survive the burst at all even without the Death Mark exploding? What about everyone who doesn't have an anti assassin kit? Yes there are very specific, very specialized things you can do to stop him, but the generalized counter play is generally not there.

Related note, the comment earlier I made

champs that questionably ignore the weaknesses of their niche

Is part of the problem. Zed's generalized weakness should be his energy pool: Energy as a concept is supposed to put a hard cap on your burst potential. Zed however, being AD and having an itemization route that gives him a questionable amount of Attack Speed, and having extremely low every costs, is not capped by his energy pool at all. The generalized weakness that all champions can abuse when it comes to energy champions - work around the hard cap of their energy reserve - does not apply to Zed.

So to answer your question, I think well implemented counter play is generalized Counterplay. When I was describing that card game, I mentioned that there were counter play systems. Counter play was not deck specific in that game, in fact counter play was (in a sense) written into the very rules of the game. Excluding the fiasco that is the lack of counter play against card destroying effects, everything in that game had a generalized weakness that if you were a smart player, you could work around. Good counter play in my opinion is this, generalized weaknesses that everyone can play around if they are smart about it.

ScurvyNaveFeb 17, 20153 votes

For me balance is the ability to have an equal chance of succeeding with whatever champion you choose. The moment picking one champion makes you more likely to succeed than picking the others all balance concepts can be thrown out the window.

Balance in League is like the Butterfly effect. One tiny tweak to a champion, item or hell even an objective disrupts balance issues that hardy have anything to do with it.

For example: Mana regeneration was nerfed now Lissandra is considered overpowered and very strong. (Coincidence? She gets free spells with her passive?). And assassins like zed or junglers like Reksai and Lee Sin who don't require mana are strong and viewed as overpowered.

Back to the main point though balance can never be achieved in League because new things keep being introduced before the old material itself is balanced. It's like trying to sort out rocks from a pile of gravel. You'll never get the job done if more types of rocks and gravel keep getting added to the pile.

Balance in League is like happiness in life: It can be pursued but hardly obtained.

MasterPranksterFeb 17, 20153 votes

I honestly think everyone is balanced with a few exceptions such as Ahri or someone who has just been shoved out of the PBE reworked. Balanced to me means that there is a way to beat them if you are equal skill level.

Of course counter-play is a huge strategy when it comes to countering in champ select or just knowing how to beat their weaknesses.

I think LeeSin has a bit too high base damage but I think he's fine but that's just a side note. Don't play him too much anymore since the new jungle doesn't attract me as much as the old one, but I know that his gapclosers with a Ward and W we're a bit lacking counterplay. I think you should be rewarded for dodging his Q and if you can't dodge his Q then RIP in peace.

Well burn me now i'm a Zed main and have been for a very long time, when he became FOTM people learned every way to complain about him. OMG waveclear, OmG he can kill me, OMG infinite harass. I think there's a different place to defend him and that the bronze v's will find a different target when the meta shifts but it's hard going into matches without being ridiculed for playing Zed. Hahahaha i'm going to be downvoted to hell for this but...

Balance is weakness

Akali nerfs were justified besides maybe the removing the E proc which was a big part of Akali's combo (If I recall correctly, only have played her a few times)

Fizz nerfs idk, all I know is people build AD on him now which is weird but w.e works lol.

Overall I think Riot knows EXACTLY what they are doing, and I have full faith in the direction they are taking this game, whether I like the initial changes or not.

I hate the Azir nerfs though. last minute thought.

Teridax68Feb 18, 20153 votes

You could literally have an individual thread for each of the sub-topics you listed. This is a pretty big subject. Here's my opinion:

Overall, I think balance is about having champions be strong at stuff they're meant to be strong at, not so strong at what they're meant to be weak at, and have as few abuse cases as possible. Stuff like counterplay, meaningful strengths/weaknesses, niche/strategic role, and rewarding play/interaction tends more towards design than balance, though, even if it's heavily influenced by it. Power budget, on the other hand, is influenced by design, but is mainly a balance thing.
Power budget is, I think, what a champion gets to do, and how good they get to be at it. If a champion gets to do lots of things, then all of those effects have to be less strong individually, and the more restrictions and gates on those effects, the more powerful they can be allowed to become. and are good examples of extremely diluted and well-distributed power budgets, respectively: Elise has on-demand access to all of her 6/7 abilities, which she can use pretty much at the same time and in any situation, and since those abilities give her pretty much every mechanic out there (burst, DPS, mobility, hard CC, sustain, poke and vision), she can't really be strong at any of them without one-upping anyone more specialized than her, which is why she's been nerfed to such a bad state. Rek'Sai, on the other hand, has pretty much all of those same effects, but is gated in such a way that she can't use them at the same time (she loses her poke, sustain and mobility when fighting, and is denied vision and DPS when out of combat), which is why she gets to be strong at everything she's got, while also having a clear strength on top of that (map dominance through mobility).
Counterplay is mostly a design thing, but can be affected by balance. I think it refers to the potential to outplay an opponent or react to their plays in a way that's fair for both parties. The more counterplay something has, the more powerful it can be, which is generally why point-and-click nukes or hard CC generally can't be made very strong, even (especially?) on champions like and whose kits are mostly point-and-click. It's basically a sliding scale of power versus reliability, where going too far in one end or the other can create kits that are really difficult to balance or turn into something both satisfying and not overly binary: is one of many bruisers who is way too reliable (he does just one thing, and that's mash his abilities all at the same time and autoattack without really worrying about their timing), and so who can't really be given more interesting kinds of power, and is a good example of a champion who's too unreliable, since he can mess up his initiations way too easily due to slight changes in the enemy team's positioning.
Meaningfull strengths/weaknesses sort of feed into counterplay, as well as power budget: clear weaknesses means there's an immediately visible way of dealing with a champion, no matter how fed they are, and achieving a level of success, and clear strengths means there's a set of tactics or strategies a player can use to make the most out of their champion. Ideally, a champion should be well-defined enough in their strengths and weaknesses so that they get to feel special in their own right, but shouldn't be min-maxed in such a way that they're useless in most situations and completely overpowered in the others. is a champion with no really well-defined strengths or weaknesses, which is why his design feels unfair despite him being balanced around a jack-of-all-trades kit ("Lee has X and Y, why does this champion have to trade one off for the other?"), and is a champion with such steep strengths (ridiculous damage) and weaknesses (extreme kiteability) that he tends to auto-win or lose fights based purely on those.
Niche/strategic role ties into meaningful strengths/weaknesses and goes back to power budget: the fewer things your champion gets to be good at, the better they can be at those, and ideally every champion should be niche enough to fit comps in a way that is unique to them (i.e. no champion is better at X than this champion), but broad enough to fit in more than just a couple of situations. is one of many junglers who fits practically any comp, and so who's a bit too versatile (it's one of the reasons why he's banned so often right now), and is a champion with a unique niche (CC playmaker marksman), but whose abilities are so skewed with respect to mobility (she destroys non-gapcloser champions and loses hard to dive comps) that she can only fully function in very specific comps, and against very specific teams.
Rewarding interaction goes back to counterplay, and I think defines how good an ability should feel when used properly. Kits can create issues when a mechanic has too high a payoff for its use ( 's snare, for example, which lasts for an extremely long time despite being a fairly average skillshot), or too low a cost to its misuse ( sort of feels this way in lane, especially in comparison to most mages who lost a lot of mana sustain overall). On the flipside, an ability that costs too much to use or that doesn't provide enough of a reward can feel weak and unsatisfying to the player, despite having counterplay ( , for example, has extremely steep mana costs to her E, which is a fairly average nuke in lane, and 's abilities don't feel particularly spectacular even if you used them properly, and in the right order).

I think a lot of stuff that gets thrown around in the forums are design problems, and not balance problems. Lee Sin is a champion a lot of people love to hate, due to his lack of defined weaknesses, and there's always at least one thread at the top calling for a nerf, but he's actually balanced around the kit he has, to the point where he's actually not that successful. In order for him to not be a problem anymore, he'd need more in-depth changes to his kit.

MrBuffingtonFeb 18, 20152 votes

This is a great post, thanks for taking the time to write this! I don't really know what else to add, ahaha, you pretty much covered it all; I think more people should read this

Teridax68Feb 18, 20152 votes

Thank you! The discussion you opened is the kind of thread I'd like to see more often on the boards, especially at the top. There are a lot of threads here criticizing certain features of balance or design on champions, but very few of them manage to set a mature and constructive discussion, nor do they arrive at any specific conclusion as to what's precisely causing issues or how it needs to be fixed. If everyone at least took the time to read the OP here, we'd all be able to talk about champion balance in a much more productive manner. I'd much rather, say, have a discussion on how to rebalance Lee Sin around a specific weakness, or talk about what specialized role Mordekaiser should be numero 1 at, than just have yet another bunch of threads calling for flat-out nerfs or buffs and venting at their design.

MrBuffingtonFeb 18, 20152 votes

should be numero 1

huehuehue

Thanks :P. I agree with you though; I think it's hard to say a vague thread like this really will be too productive in the grand scheme of things: nitty-gritty balance issues require a lot more insight I think, but I hope this thread at least helps people commenting and reading the comments establish some common ground or baseline talking points to focus a discussion when talking about balance. I know Riot can always come in and talk about what they think of balance, as they have in dev blogs and such, but I think it's important to try and gauge where the community (or at least the subset that reads this) thinks about balance, since a lot of times I see those Red posts downvoted because people think Riot is trying to impose their opinion on everyone or something, and if it was trying to lead to a discussion, it isn't too productive at that point, lol.

There was this amazing satirical thread a while ago, not sure if you saw it and for the life of me I can't find it, but the poster went through and "QQ'ed" about literally every champion in the game (at the time).

vIbvdOwbkoFeb 18, 20152 votes

balance won't exist in league. there are 100+ champions in this game.

there will always be some champions that will have a considerable edge of power over others. some just happen to be in that state of being powerful more often than others, due to having dumb kit designs.

Civil DawnFeb 18, 20152 votes

You're balanced when it takes the roughly same amount of effort to beat someone else as it takes them to beat you, while still having "counters" to only slightly skew the odds.

Nobody likes one-sided games... I mean really, when was the last time you queued up for 5v5 thinking "I want to be useless all game because of X champion"

If people are having legitimate trouble vs a certain champion, using a wide variety of champs vs them, then that means their counterplay must be really low if 80%+ of the roster can't beat them regularly.

So in summary, if most champs struggle vs them, and most people don't have fun playing VS them (especially if they have a high pickrate Katarina ) then why would you even want to let them continue to monopolize certain roles/lanes???

good examples of balanced champions:

They don't beat over 25% of the roster.

They do specific things, not jacks of all trades.

They have a stage in the game where they are weak.

They have a good amount of predictability and require some sustained damage, ie they don't WEQ in a split second then go in to kill you if the skillshot hits

MrBuffingtonFeb 18, 20152 votes

while still having "counters" to only slightly skew the odds.

I like that you mention this; it seems like a common trap to think that every champion should be perfectly equal. Thanks!

Civil DawnFeb 18, 20152 votes

PentaJumpFeb 18, 20152 votes

To me, balance is largely a matter of win rate. However, I think rock paper scissors is really poor design. So, a balanced champion, in my opinion, would be one that has a "true win rate" of 50%, without much deviation based on lane matchup. In my opinion, champions like Kassadin, Taric, Malphite, and Galio, who are designed to counter a specific type of damage, are inherently unbalanced. They are bound to either crush their opponents or get crushed by them, based on if they counterpicked successfully or not.

"True win rate" is impossible to find, since it is based off of if the champ is being played by the general populace or a dedicated playerbase. You could get a better idea if their win rate by comparing them to champs that are played at a similar rate though. A champ who is played less should be expected to have a lower "true win rate" than is actually witnessed. A champ who is played a lot should be expected to have a higher "true win rate" than is actually witnessed.

In terms of toxic gameplay and such, I think that is outside of balance. The only way that the actual gameplay is unbalanced (rather than improperly tuned) is if the champion wins much more in certain lane matchups or against certain teamcomps than against others.

KING OF MASKSFeb 18, 20152 votes

To me balance is synonymous with diversity. The more balanced the game is, the greater number of viable picks there are, thus the more champions you'll see at every level of play. As a result a more interesting and fun meta is achieved.

MrBuffingtonFeb 18, 20152 votes

That's definitely a nice part; it sucks to feel like you're just funneled into some very narrow champion pool or something

A Tall JokeFeb 18, 20152 votes

I think everything revolves around the Power Budget. Everything else is pretty much a subset of that. Excepting Rewarding play/interaction which is, in my opinion, a separate design goal from balance itself.

Power budget is important to me. If the power budget it capped at some finite value (let's call it 100 units) and spent according to that budget, then everyone would be within that realm of "power." Naturally it means that if you spend some of those units on a strength, that creates a weakness. And that weakness leaves space for counterplay.

For example, if I spend 40 units on mobility, I'll have a very mobile character. Spend an additional 50 units on damage. Now I have mobile burst. Then spend 10 units on safety (so I have a conditional, limited safety skill). This is, naturally, an assassin. You'll note wave clear isn't on the list; safety is a very limited portion of that budget meaning their escape skills should also be fairly weak as opposed to a kiting champion. So i have very clear weaknesses: I can't wave clear so you can push me out and if I commit to a kill, I'm making a high risk play. Also, I'm fragile as all hell. Items permit me to either compensate for those weaknesses (Hydra, Guardian Angel, Randuin's) or bolster my strengths (Hydra, Black Cleaver, Last Whisper) but either way the character itself has a set of weaknesses and compensating for 1 thing means losing some strength in another section (excepting Hydra but I'm still melee at that point).

For a more concrete example, Riven gets 4 mobility skills, a shield, an AD steroid, an AoE execute, a pseudo-sheen, an AoE knock up, and a stun. All of this on low cooldown, resourceless skills. As one of the most mobile champions in the game, I'd say she should have like 50 units on mobility. An AD steroid gives her consistent damage as do her low cooldown resourceless skills. Another 40 units. 2 forms of crowd control leave her with another 30-40 units. Her pseudo-sheen and AoE Execute also give her burst. 30 units. Wave clear. 20 units. This is at least 170 units. It's ridiculous.

Contrast Ashe . She's ranged so we'll say that's like... 10 units (because ranged characters have lower other things). She has a lot of CC (permanent slow, AoE slows, AoE slow + global stun). So we'll say that's like 50 units. Then, her passive gives her a minor burst and her E gives her the ability to farm additional gold and utility vision. Minor burst, 10 units. Vision utility, 20 units. Gold boost, 10 units (it's not very big, after all). At this point, she has 100 units. She fills a specific niche catering to her strengths (kiting) and does less damage than most AD Carries but can also initiate (globally) as a result.

A jack of all trades should have like... a 20/20/20/20/20 split and be very mediocre in most things. The problem is when characters have more of a 35/40/30/ 0/20 split (probably so jack-of-all-trades feel rewarding). At this point, they become ridiculous and the specialists with a 50+ point investment in a single field are almost matched by a 40 point investment but these characters also have other massive investments.

MrBuffingtonFeb 18, 20151 votes

I like the concrete example you provide; I'd say it's a little more complex and nuanced in the grand scheme but you have a pretty good analogy for representing your general position :)

A Tall JokeFeb 18, 20151 votes

I can't deny it's an oversimplification haha but I think so long as champions have a capped power budget and it's spent correctly, balance will follow.

MrBuffingtonFeb 18, 20151 votes

haha, I have to admit it's interesting at least to see how Riot tries to bend around the capped power budget; probably hard to balance but it's interesting to see how they try to bend the rules a bit.

A Tall JokeFeb 18, 20151 votes

Yeah, I think a lot of the problems come when that power budget is over cap and they try to balance around that by reducing numbers and it ends up with champions that are either incredibly overbearing or incredibly unrewarding and it's not something that can be balanced solely around a numbers game.

MrBuffingtonFeb 18, 20151 votes

yea it definitely makes the job more difficult :) Thanks for all the great input!

GiovarcoFeb 18, 20151 votes

Nice line of reasoning.

However, as I'm an Urgot main, I can stomp Riven very easily from level 1 and make her useless for the entire duration of the match.

SlaaneshineFeb 18, 20151 votes

To me, simple balance in this game, with 126 different champions to choose from, is not feeling like I've lost in champion select.

MrBuffingtonFeb 18, 20152 votes

Haha, that's definitely an important feeling I think; I think the games you can play in champ select are pretty cool sometimes (like the UoL vs TSM game where they pulled the switcharoo TF jungle on Bjergsen), but it shouldn't be game-deciding.

SalidfingersFeb 18, 20151 votes

Rock paper scissors.

No matter what there will always be a better champion. Goal is to have champions that can defeat better champion.

MrBuffingtonFeb 18, 20151 votes

How do you feel about counterplay within a match up?

SalidfingersFeb 19, 20151 votes

If i understand your question correctly.

This is why we have certain items and build paths, because no build path should always be absolute every game vs certain match up's

Example: Zed

Most mages are forced to build hour glass first vs zed. This makes a lot of people unhappy. I don't see why. If zed was weaker wouldn't you still want to build it first anyways to make him even more worthless.

No we don't we just want to build the same items over and over every game.

MrBuffingtonFeb 19, 20151 votes

I think that's part of it. I was also referring to how kits interacted with each other. For example, Caitlyn vs Sivir. Both have ways of beating the other, Caitlyn has range advantage, where Sivir can harrass back with ricochet, Sivir can block most of Caitlyn's abilities since they're pretty telegraphed, but Caitlyn can also bait out the spell shield to use a stronger spell, and so on. The match up is more decided by who plays better, not what champion they picked

Yandere CarryFeb 18, 20151 votes

balance to me: every champ other than mine is nerfed to oblivion

heh heh, challenger here i come!

MrBuffingtonFeb 18, 20152 votes

[{quoted}](name=Tang Bohu,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=FrQ1vO3x,comment-id=0017,timestamp=2015-02-18T09:11:49.296+0000)

balance to me: every champ other than mine is nerfed to oblivion

heh heh, challenjour here i come!

ftfy :P

Knight SoIaire Feb 18, 20151 votes

to me ballance in lol sohuld make all champions equal in the amount of power they compete into games this means that picking a compositions of champions who work well together is more rewarding than just picking random champions while players skill is still a deciding factor you have 2 teams each made for diferent playstyle both of them are quite equal in power so the winner is the one who executes his play better

league is a game about using champions, so i think that it should be a choice to pick a champion good for the situation, atm riots ballance is about some champions who are good in generall

junglerboy16Feb 18, 20151 votes

Balance is the cycle of strength when it comes to champions and items. Ideally, all champions would have a handful of other champs they hard counter, most that are about equal, and then a handful that hard counter them everything has to have a Pro and a con, which is why generalist champions are so bad for this game; when they are weak, there is always someone who can do their job, but better, and when they are strong, there is no reason to ever pick anyone else. The game will never reach a state of actual balance where everything is just as viable as everything else, because that leads to one dimensional and boring gameplay. Riot uses a system of balanced imbalance, which is indirectly based of off the older concept of classes countering each other (like Mage>Warrior>Ranger>Mage etc.) since they are constantly adding new material, the state of balance fluctuates (everything has good counterplay>balance sucks>balance is good etc.) Riot's job is to make sure that the fluctuation between "perfectly imbalanced" and "brokenly imbalanced" is as minimal as possible.

MrBuffingtonFeb 18, 20151 votes

I'm kind of hesitant to agree with the statement about hard-countering; this is a bit of an exaggeration but the more focus there is on hard counters, the more the game feels like an RPS match, and the game largely becomes centered around champion select instead of actually playing the game well. While I agree that every champion being equal in a sense is pretty bland, and having counters is interesting and good for the game, I think it's pretty cool to have counterplay within a match up instead of just being countered outright at champ select. I think there's a good medium there; despite mistakes that may pop up from time to time, I think Riot is generally in agreement with this

junglerboy16Feb 19, 20151 votes

Fair enough, maybe rather than hard counter, more like, "this champion fares especially well against this archetype (i.e. poke mage>melee, ADC>tank, Assassin>ADC)" is more along the lines of what I was thinking.

For example, in an ideal situation, Zed would hard counter ADCs because he can burst them extremely efficiently, but he would be very weak to being poked or if the enemy team didn't have an ADC for him to burst anyway.

Another example would be someone like Ashe. Ideally, she and other ADCs would be perfectly suited to fighting a tank via constant DPS, but should be very weak to burst damage from assassins or burst mages.

My point isn't that the game should be won or lost in champion select (which is indeed almost more bland then having all champs be the same), it is that every champion has to have a select few way where they can be shut down just hard enough (not necessarily within a lane matchup) to make counter picking still useful. I was attempting to reduce an extremely complex concept (balance) down to a single paragraph, so it isn't quite 100% correct, but it is pretty close. MOBA games are inherently linked to the idea of one class outdoing another class in some way, and while we often think of hard countering only within the context of a 1v1 or 2v2 lane, classes as a whole are still specially designed for different roles, often the exclusive task of shutting down another class. Ranged ADCs will usually have the upper hand on Tanks, Tanks will usually have the upper hand on Mages/Assassins, and Mages/Assassins will usually have an easy time vs ADCs. Of course there are champions that slightly warp the basic concept of some sort of "balance triangle", such as AD assassins, or Mage/fighter hybrids, and those are all really cool, unique niches that deserve exploration just as much as every "normal" archetype. Only if they take all the pros of two classes for only a few of the cons, or vice-versa, that is when balance falls apart. Look at Urgot, he was disgustingly strong before he got gutted, because he had too many pros of being a tank and an ADC, with not enough cons of either. He had range, damage, poke, engage, and durability. He couldn't be assassinated like an ADC, and bullied out any ADC that attempted to DPS him to death. After the nerfs, he has minuscule AA range, is moderately tanky, has ok engage, and thats about it (leaving him insufficiently useful as a tank, and lacking in the damage required of most ADCs).

MrBuffingtonFeb 19, 20151 votes

Haha yea, I had a feeling you were just generalizing for the sake of brevity, but I just wanted to push you a little more to pick your brain a bit. This thread for me has kind of become this catalog of various community member's thoughts on balance. Thanks for your response!

GiovarcoFeb 18, 20151 votes

I find a champion balanced when he has clear strengths and weaknesses. If so, he has also counterplay because I can capitalize on his weaknesses. This means indirectly that a champion should fit primarily just one role. However, for example, think about Ezreal : he can be both a mage and an ADC in an healthy way.

Some example: Nunu is balanced because he can control objectives very easily. His ganks are meh and in teamfight he brings few to his team. LeeSin isn't balanced because can fit every role ( well, except melee-adc like Gangplank ) and has no rival in early game as damage. It's harder to play late game, but he can be still significant if well played. Blitzcrank is balanced because if he fails his grab, you can all-in him very easily. Zed isn't balanced because he doesn't know what "all-in" means. He can ult and hope to kill you. If he doesn't, he goes back. Teemo is balanced because he's useless in late game. Orianna isn't balanced because she (it?) is very supportive while being super safe. IMO, Riot should patch her kit to a mage or a support, not both, if you know what I mean. Nautilus is balanced because he has tons of CC and no damage (however, we should touch upon his jungle clears).

However, if a champion is balanced or not, It depends also on other factors, for example items like DFG, which made AP assassins more bursty than they was. Another example could be the S5 mana regen changes (for example no one used to give a shit about Lissandra in S4 and now she's considered suddenly OP...), which made a lot of mages (especially those who had high CDs and mana costs) less viable. Note that "viable" doesn't mean "balanced". It means that you can play him, but there's another champion who does his job better, for this viable champions are considered garbage in competitive plays. Well, I play for fun unlike the sheeps who copy pro-players, and for this I like playing underplayed champions.

MrBuffingtonFeb 18, 20152 votes

I think you have some good ideas here, though I would argue your comments on particular champions are a little over-generalized. Thanks for the comment!

Hinagiku33Feb 19, 20151 votes

I think the simplest way for me to explain my idea of balance would be: "Everything has a purpose"

Not every champ needs to be playable in literally every situation. If everyone always has an equal chance of winning then nobody is special.
Every champ needs a reason to be picked. It's not okay for some champs to be "like X but better".
Every champ has strengths and those strengths are massive. I mean like late-game farmed-up Nasus Q massive.
This should be balanced by weaknesses. Nasus has amazing potential damage but is weak to kiting.
Every champ needs counter-play but this shouldn't be limited to just "dodge". A champ that has fewer options if they miss a skillshot is good. A champ that has NO options after missing a skillshot is terrible.
Every champ should have flexibility in their item buys. Counter-building is a legit means of countering an opponent's strategy, and champs shouldn't feel like they can't because they are absolutely locked into a build that doesn't include that counter. "They came back to lane with a chain vest and I cried a little" should be a perfectly valid laning option for everyone.
There should be multiple ways that champs become more powerful and dangerous. Some champs should need to focus on levels as their power comes more from their kit. Some champs should rely more on items for key power spikes. There should be items to offer different options depending on how the game is going. As much as the Runic Bulwark meta kinda sucked, having the option to stack items that help your team a bit if you fall behind is a decent fallback strategy.
It should be okay for there to be champs that don't get picked a lot since they offer something that isn't always needed, as long as they are allowed to excel at the thing that they do offer when you need them.
It should also be okay for some champs to get picked a lot because they are easy and pretty good at stuff that's usually needed, as long as they don't push out dedicated specialists.
There shouldn't be anything wrong with a hard champ having a low win rate because they are difficult to play properly, likewise a hard-counter/specialist can have lower win-rates because of players picking them at bad times. On the flip side, easy champs having and generalists having a high win-rate shouldn't be seen as automatically needing nerfs since there are just more situations where they offer something useful. Having everyone at 50% win-rate just says to me "it doesn't matter who you pick, everyone is basically the same".

MrBuffingtonFeb 19, 20151 votes

You make some really great points here, thanks for your insight!

Athenes LuluFeb 19, 20151 votes

How I define "balance":

When champs have equal amounts of defined strengths and weaknesses (I have lots of poking and zoning control, but has lack of sustain unless I buy tons of potions)
equal numbers of champs he/she counters and is countered by
a few champs don't outclass the majority of others (like "why pick anyone else over x?")
as enemies, there IS a way to work around them. That doesn't mean everything has to be skillshots, it can be as simple as getting a pair of

MrBuffingtonFeb 19, 20151 votes

Thanks! You have good ideas here, but I think there is a lot more detail, still very good summary, I think a lot of others on here would agree with you