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People get Win Rates confused with Power Level way too often...

HalcyonDweller··14 votes·6,798 views

It seems like every few days I see comments about this champion or that champion having a high or low win rate and that that makes them overpowered or underpowered. And it's almost always paired with claiming that Riot should do this or_that_ to change the characters.

But there are a lot of other factors besides strength that could lead to a high win-rate. So having a high win-rate could actually be due to any number of other reasons besides strength.

Comparing win-rate to strength level alone is like having a basket full of various fruits and veggies and saying that anything you pull out of the basket that is red is an apple, because guess what? It could also be a bell pepper, or a tomato, or even a plum or a raspberry!

Examples: Ahri and Janna - The reason that both of these champions have inflated win-rates is the safety they provide. A champion that has lots of mobility or 2 disengage and a shield is going to be naturally harder to snowball against. Games are often won by snowballing, so a character that is (or that makes their team) harder to snowball against will naturally win more games simply because they make it harder for opponents to snowball. But by no means does that actually mean that the characters are OP.

Can we please stop this? There are perfectly valid reasons to complain about characters without lying about the correlation between win-rate and strength level.

32 Comments

dunder kill12 votes

Examples: Ahri and Janna - The reason that both of these champions have inflated win-rates is the safety they provide.

Those are example of characteristics of a champion that should have be factored into their power budget. Being safe is a strength. Being easy to use is a strength. Those dont disqualify a champ from being too strong.

Janna is at a 54% win rate with a 20% pick rate. She is both the highest winrate support and the most picked. There is no denying shes too strong. Factor in that Janna has remained viable since beta through every meta

Talking about Ahri's stats is kinda pointless rn because shes getting some big changes soon

HalcyonDweller3 votes

{quoted}

Those are example of characteristics of a champion that should have be factored into their power budget. Being safe is a strength. Being easy to use is a strength. Those dont disqualify a champ from being too strong.

And I wholeheartedly agree, however the posts I'm disparaging are not making use of the valid reasoning you are referring to. They only quote win-rate and then bitch and moan about how OP the champions are.

Janna is at a 54% win rate with a 20% pick rate. She is both the highest winrate support and the most picked. There is no denying shes too strong. Factor in that Janna has remained viable since beta through every meta

She's picked often because she's safe and easy to use and at 1350 IP she's not too expensive to pick up as a go-to for people who need something to fill support. If she's too strong it's because of other reasons, not because of those. Maybe her shield is too strong, or maybe the AD it gives the target is too much, or maybe her ult heals too much. My point is, win-rate is an indicator for deeper investigation, it's not a jumping off point to immediately cry "OP" without putting any effort or thought into it.

Talking about Ahri's stats is kinda pointless rn because shes getting some big changes soon

Yeah I'm with you on that.

Poske1 votes

if you grade champions from bronze to challenger janna has never been below master Always top tier support and ussualy the best one

**54% winrate means that she is winning 8% more games then losing ** that is not OK

redniwediS5 votes

Alright, so let's answer the next question in this line of thinking; why is she winning 8% more games than she is losing?

People don't ask this question. They assume it's because of the individual power of the champion and nothing else. It could be items, it could be she works well with an actually overpowered ADC, it could be that she's designed to be the queen of disengage and we have an engage heavy meta.

You can say it's not okay, but what you're saying doesn't really have any meaning if you don't actually know what is causing this increase in win rate.

ProfDrDeath1 votes

we have an engage heavy meta.

Actually, every meta in solo queue is an engage-heavy meta. That's why Janna always seems so strong - because she plays really well against solo queue's usual strategies ("find closest target and start slugging" and "pile on the enemy ADC and hope we kill him before their team kills ours").

HalcyonDweller1 votes

Gosh I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that she's harder to snowball against... :O /s

Dude, it's because she's harder to snowball against. She just creates more opportunities to last through early game and to survive long enough to reach late-game without the game snowballing against your team. It gives OTHER lanes more breathing room because the enemy bot lane is less likely to snowball and then roam to fuck them up.

But she's also harder to snowball with. which I think makes it fair that she's not as easy to snowball against.

Battalion2 votes

Janna most certainly has not remained viable in every season since Beta. Janna also is an extremely telegraphed champion, you know exactly what's going to happen with her. A 4% win rate deviance from 50/50 does not mean that a champion is over-tuned. Janna has very obvious strengths and weaknesses. I doubt that she is played into every encounter with a 50%+ chance to win. When a champion has a very obvious disadvantage in a match-up and a low skill floor (means that there's no gray zone, you know when Janna is going to be a bad pick), the is ample reason to believe that players simply do not play Janna into unfavorable match-ups, thus boosting their win to loss ratios. People get so bent out of shape over 1-4% winrate. I have rarely felt that Janna as a champion has been too powerful simply support items that were too powerful across the board. In this meta of assassins and dive-centric comps, of course a support with the best disengage-heal available is going to show improved win-rates. That doesn't mean you should nerf the champion to the ground so that they no longer preform their original function against assassins and heavy engage teams.

JRobin314 votes

{quoted}

Can we please stop this? There are perfectly valid reasons to complain about characters without lying about the correlation between win-rate and strength level.

I don't know what you mean by 'strength'. What is the objective measure of a champion's strength?

HalcyonDweller1 votes

Arguably I would say their ability to oppress opponents, and to execute on successful strategies and plays in order to move closer to winning the game.

JRobin311 votes

Okay, so how do we measure that? Do we just sort of have a bunch of people give opinions on who is strong (an inter-subjective measure)? Or is there a clear objective way to measure a champion's 'strength'? Won't there always be subjective disagreements about the 'strength' of champions? And how does a champions 'strength' differ from how 'fun' they are to play / play against?

HalcyonDweller1 votes

It's a mix of things that I don't really have the time to discuss today. The main point of my post is that people should stop using win-rate as the sole justification for demanding a champion be buffed or nerfed. OR for complaining about a champion being buffed or nerfed.

JRobin311 votes

Fair enough, but win-rate is the main factor, (if not the only factor) isn't it?

HalcyonDweller1 votes

It's the combination of statistics and anecdotes, along with deeper analysis and critical thinking that grant a claim it's validity.

Win rate is only one statistic, and in order to draw meaning from it you must use good reasoning as well as other statistics and data in order to properly explore it's causes. Win rate is one outcome from all the actual factors involved.

OP-ness is another outcome from factors. But just because they come from similar factors does not mean they will always occur in concert. You have to perform the analysis required to connect the factors to being OP, it doesn't work to just claim "OP because win-rate!"

It's like this:

multitude of factors -> Win-rate multitude of factors -> being OP

Win-rate -X- being OP

they can correlate but they aren't 100% related

LazyW0lf4 votes

Win Rates should never be looked at within a vacuum, which many players present it as when they try to claim a champion is busted. A prime example of this support Rek Sai currently. (Taken from champion.gg) 58.4% win rate with 0.17% play rate. It's not like support Rek Sai is busted, it's that there's a few one trick players who are messing with the statistics. This happened awhile back when Aurelion Sol had the highest win rate (~60%) as a jungler but ~0.05% play rate.

hhaavviikk3 votes

if winrate meant everything we should be buffing ryzelooks at pro play oh...

Little Padawan3 votes

Done. Found the Janna Main.

You sir, are comming with me

HalcyonDweller1 votes

I haven't played support in probably more than a year, and I hate Janna.

I hate liars and cheats more though. You sir, are cheating at arguing.

Little Padawan1 votes

No I'm just a natural memer

HalcyonDweller1 votes

You made an ad-hominem attack to imply I'm biased and to discredit me as a person.

Memes are supposed to be funny, that wasn't.

Little Padawan1 votes

What I meant is, if you're actually that blind to not recognize Janna as a broken champion right now, you could only be a Janna main.

She has the highest support win rate and on top of that she's one of the most played, that's not confusing at all to me. So the only thing I discredit here is your point and this topic. You need way stronger arguments than "she provides safety". Also comparing janna and ahri made no sense, quite a mess u did there zzz...

HalcyonDweller1 votes

{quoted}

What I meant is, if you're actually that blind to not recognize Janna as a broken champion right now, you could only be a Janna main.

K.

She has the highest support win rate and on top of that she's one of the most played, that's not confusing at all to me.

So the only thing I discredit here is your point and this topic.

Claiming I'm a janna main blindly defending my champion is essentially asserting that I'm biased towards Janna (which I'm not, by the way). By calling me biased and insisting that I'm just blindly defending her you are making a person attack against me instead of my argument.

I literally don't play bottom lane at all anymore. And I've never "mained" Janna.

You need way stronger arguments than "she provides safety".

It makes perfect sense, when talking about snowball and how that correlates to win-rate. If you would rather sling insults than attempt to understand that then I can't help you.

Also comparing janna and ahri made no sense, quite a mess u did there zzz...

Wow you're really missing the point. This thread wasn't about Janna. Or Ahri.

It was about people who cite win-rate in any discussion as the sole justification for buffs or nerfs, or as the sole disqualifying factor when bitching about a buff or a nerf that Riot has already made.

5050BS1 votes

When my bot lane combined over the last 50 games has a win rate of 38% guess what.

My team is going to lose.

Elohaven1 votes

I think the issue with this post is that it suggests people are complaining about Ahri when they're not and it implies that Janna is not strong - when she is. Janna, even if she's an easy champion, clearly has an advantage in most games. She has been meta for a couple of seasons and with support gold creep, she has simply been too good in multiple scenarios.

And if easy champions should have a high winrate, then why not Pantheon or Annie.

HalcyonDweller1 votes

I've encountered people complaining about Ahri, I would know I made a post about her ongoing rework just a week or so ago and someone posted the most idiotic vitriol in a comment under my post than I've seen in months. If you need proof I can go find you the comment.

And I'm not saying that Janna is not strong, I'm saying that people who argue that her win-rate is all the justification needed to nerf her are stupid. If she's strong? Great! Nerf her. That's fine with me. But don't put up with people who post citing her win-rate and nothing else, and don't upvote posts that for-go using actual analysis and reasoning to support their argument.

Elohaven1 votes

But don't put up with people who post citing her win-rate and nothing else, and don't upvote posts that for-go using actual analysis and reasoning to support their argument.

My friend, you are in the League Of Legends Boards - a forum on the internet.

HalcyonDweller1 votes

I can dream, leave me to it.

Meteor Driz1 votes

{quoted}

It seems like every few days I see comments about this champion or that champion having a high or low win rate and that that makes them overpowered or underpowered. And it's almost always paired with claiming that Riot should do this or_that_ to change the characters.

But there are a lot of other factors besides strength that could lead to a high win-rate. So having a high win-rate could actually be due to any number of other reasons besides strength.

Comparing win-rate to strength level alone is like having a basket full of various fruits and veggies and saying that anything you pull out of the basket that is red is an apple, because guess what? It could also be a bell pepper, or a tomato, or even a plum or a raspberry!

Examples: Ahri and Janna - The reason that both of these champions have inflated win-rates is the safety they provide. A champion that has lots of mobility or 2 disengage and a shield is going to be naturally harder to snowball against. Games are often won by snowballing, so a character that is (or that makes their team) harder to snowball against will naturally win more games simply because they make it harder for opponents to snowball. But by no means does that actually mean that the characters are OP.

Can we please stop this? There are perfectly valid reasons to complain about characters without lying about the correlation between win-rate and strength level.

Winning is the entire point of the game, everything else is a means to that end.

Thus, its fully justified as an end result representation of a character's power. Because winning is the point of power.

HalcyonDweller1 votes

Actually, the whole point of the game is to have fun. That's why it's a "game."

If people are having fun then I see no issue. If those characters are hurting peoples' ability to have fun then sure I'm down to see those characters get changed.

My post is specifically only disparaging the people who use win-rate as the sole basis for arguing for buffs or nerfs for characters.

Rico Nasty1 votes

You literally just contradicted yourself tho?? The fact of the matter is that Janna is hands-down THE STRONGEST SUPPORT in the game right now. In fact, I would call her OP. She has a long ass knockup that deals damage that she also has full control over, movement speed buff that she just needs to exist to activate, a click-point nuke and slow, a hefty shield, AND A FUCKING AOE KNOCKBACK HEAL that can turn the tide of any game. No champion should have all that loaded in their kit. She absolutely needs some power taken out of there.

HalcyonDweller1 votes

I'm not here to argue about Janna. This thread is about people who cite win-rate as the sole justification for demanding buffs or nerfs for characters.

But I do have to point out... You literally just listed all of her strengths with the most biased wording you could use to make it sound way worse than it is. Lulu is way more overloaded than Janna.

I'm too lazy to go digging through months old forum posts to find it but somebody made a great point a while back about how you could make literally any champion sound OP if you just list their strengths like that.

Malix Farwin1 votes

You are a bit confused i think OP when some people(not all) bring up Wiin Rate. Its really based on the context in which win rate is mention(which even riot themselves mention and look at win rate when they explain balance changes).

For example: A high win rate on a new champion/high skill champion usually means they are problematic. a 52% WR Annie may not be a problem but a 52 WR Syndra may need to be looked at.

Then you also you to look at what is causing that spike in WR as well as elo. Is the issue with an item and is that item spiking that champion individually or is it affecting every champion that is building that item similarly.

I think the worst thing you can do is look at WR and say its not important and the second worst thing you can do is only mention WR.

HalcyonDweller1 votes

I'm not saying win rate isn't important. I'm saying that people who use only win rate as the basis for their arguments are usually wrong. My post was a half-rant that was spurred by seeing a multitude of garbage posts from a particular user who loves to ignore reason and blast their opinion from the rooftops and pretend their opinion is fact.

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