Only roughly 50 / 141 champions are viable if you want to climb to/above Diamond

Yenn·Aug 10, 2018·72 votes·17,907 views

Playing any of the other 91 champions is basically shooting yourself in the foot and tying a weight around your ankle.

You might still climb if you consistently play well, but it's only because statistics are working in your favor, and it's going to take hundreds of games if you didn't place into high MMR.

Can we strive for actual balance in the next season? I honestly don't think the difference between top tier champions and the rest of the roster has ever been as bad as it is right now.

102 Comments

5050BSAug 10, 201841 votes

Its less then 50 but more then 25 But yes Ranked is a joke

JAYCCCCCCCCCCCCEAug 10, 20182 votes

Talon Taliyah Shaco Quinn Nidalee Fizz Evelynn Ahri Draven Alistar Aatrox Jayce Trundle Ekko Rakan Jax Rengar Zoe Nami Zed Lucian Kaisa Pantheon Camille TwistedFate Jhin Graves Garen Xayah MonkeyKing

Are all the best champs in league at the moment. So 30

Last BreàthAug 12, 20181 votes

MonkeyKing Tryndamere Renekton ( Fiora and Yasuo if you're experienced with them)

JAYCCCCCCCCCCCCEAug 12, 20181 votes

Wukong can be killed pretty easily if you build 1 tank armor item, item 3110 is what i like to use for full lethality champs. Trynd is pretty easy as well, just get a bork, tabis, 1 tank armor, and health damage items (Steraks, Black Cleaver, Edge, etc). Ive only seen rene 3 times this season so idk about him. So out of the 3 id mark wukong as a good champ and will add him to the list, mainly because he can one shot anybody if they dont build armor.

Fiora and Yas can be said about anyone tho. If youre experienced with anyone you can rank up.

KrullyAug 10, 201833 votes

doesnt feel like 50 tbh thought it would be less

charge attackAug 10, 20181 votes

I think 50 is right because not being S tier doesn’t mean shooting yourself in the foot. Hell, I’m having a lot of success with Taric even though he’s considered “C tier”. Just fits my playstyle.

The problem rn is that playing a lot of champs is borderline trolling.

GayFluffyUnicornAug 10, 20187 votes

That's because the average powerlevel of supports is insane. A c tier support is hell of a lot better than a c tier toplaner.

BobaFlautistAug 10, 201824 votes

Last I checked, only one champion in the game had a sub 50% winrate after 50 games, and it just goes up from there.

What champions are good in a given meta is dynamic and ever-changing. What champion you're good at can be as consistent as you want it to be.

I think people are actually much more likely to handicap themselves by flitting around, constantly trying to learn whatever champion they're convinced is currently op from scratch than handicap themselves by being too dedicated to a champion that's genuinely holding them back.

EasternBladeStarAug 10, 20184 votes

This is true. But picks really do start to matter when you're hurling close to diamond. Especially in a meta such as this.

Cast windups, skill animations, cooldowns, resources, wave management properties-- there are a dozen of these factors that make champion good, sometimes more so for a certain player. However, in a meta where Talon (who has little to no windups in his abilities btw) can oneshot you in 0.2 seconds, the champions with more defined weaknesses and strengths tend to suffer.

Most assassin-divers these days are all-arounders - they can work with everything and do everything quite well. Can they be punished? For sure, yes. But it's more about the player playing them making a mistake than the other player actually exploiting a defined weak point.

This is the difference and perceived reason for current low risk-high reward assassin/bruiser (diver) meta game, and the reason mages cannot go mid, and tanks unable to lane top.

VG CrowsAug 10, 201814 votes

Can't agree more. Champion diversity has never been so low,and Riot's favouritism towards certain champions made whole thing even worse. By the way some of those <50 champs consist of the most BS cancer in the game. But I guess that's what you can describe season 8 as a whole so...

ŚhunpoAug 10, 20183 votes

[{quoted}](name=TrueMortal v2,realm=EUW,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=GX9QEfKr,comment-id=0004,timestamp=2018-08-10T10:37:40.649+0000)

Can't agree more. Champion diversity has never been so low,and Riot's favouritism towards certain champions made whole thing even worse. By the way some of those <50 champs consist of the most BS cancer in the game. But I guess that's what you can describe season 8 as a whole so...

DID YOU SAY....BUFF YASUO????!!! Yasuo item 3046 item 3031 item 3022

Arcane Blue BoiAug 10, 201811 votes

top: MonkeyKing Yasuo Aatrox Darius Quinn Garen jung: LeeSin Camille Graves Kindred Trundle Nocturne
mid Yasuo Ahri Zed Talon Zoe bot: Swain Yasuo Heimerdinger Jhin MissFortune Ezreal Draven supp: Pyke

this is all i see :shrugs:

EDIT: added yasuo bot; just noticed 18 are ad and 7 are ap. I didnt think that ''ad is more powerfull than ap'' trend was true, but its looking like it

EDIT2: removed ahri and zyra. While they apear frequently, they're nowere near the frequency of the other champions listed

BisaknospAug 10, 20182 votes

{quoted}

top: jung: mid bot: supp:

this is all i see :shrugs:

you forgot yasuo in bot

BestealAug 11, 20181 votes

If someone is playing Wukong top they aren't thinking straight lol. That champ loses to 95% of top lancers.

La BelloAug 10, 201810 votes

Right now I feel every champion is playable but not every champ is on the same tier as others. the gap between "is okay" and "can 1v9 S++tier" is so pretty blatant and I really think champions need more direction sharpening.

In other words Its not that a lot of champions are bad. its just that a select few champions can "do it all" and makes other champions bad in comparison to them.

a clear niche Corki Ashe Sivir Amumu often is no match for just high generalist power Caitlyn Tristana Ornn Zoe Yasuo Khazix Taliyah Camille Pyke

I think rather than just powercreeping 90 underplayed champions Riot needs to straighten up and tone down the current "never bad" picks in League while also further strengthening identities and creating unique niches. IE: "This champion deals high burst" is not a very unique niche BUT This champion halts healing/lifesteal effects with a debuff" IS a strong niche.

by this point league has 140+ champions or something crazy and we REALLY dont need more generic champions polluting the pool. Its gonna sound crazy but by this point in time I hope the design team starts prioritizing strategical niche over "the gameplay is fun" when it comes to designing new releases because in a round-a-bout way I think just dumping a lot of "fun" but meaningless champs will detract from the game overall. One need only look back at season2 releases to get a taste of how this turns out in the long run and you know what? Im tired of having these champions all step on each others toes.

If absurdly high true-damage duelist was Fiora's Niche why does Camille do it too? If being a walking DELETE button was Veigars niche why does Syndra do it? If being a powerful poke mage was Xeraths niche why does Zoe poke 5times harder? If being a short range duelist with stealth was Vaynes niche WHY does Kai'Sa also do the same thing? If setting up kills with a hook was Blitz/Thresh niche WHY add Pyke who does the exact same thing ultimately but just in a slightly different flavor(instead of being a tank he is a slippery assassin)?

its frustrating how half the cast gets moved to the garbage bin because Riot is so callous about their older champs only focusing on the shiny and new.
I don't care that sometimes the champs operate in different lanes or use different items or have different STYLES of play when their end goal IS THE EXACT SAME AS ONE ANOTHER. /rant

Moon MomAug 10, 20189 votes

That is such a stretch and you know it. Anything works up until challenger, even Soraka top lane (there's a diamond 2 Korean that mains it). I main a champ that's generally considered bad and made it into diamond on 2 accounts in under 100 games from low plat on this account and gold on my alt. All you have to do is review your mistakes and develop a better understanding of the game. There are champions that will arguably be more effective than your pick, but you can play to the strengths of your champ to get around it - so much so that even hard counters mean nothing. Diamond is all about solidifying what mechanical knowledge you have and expanding your macro play. If you understand rotations and working with your teammates for the most efficient objectives you'll take the win more often than not.

GayFluffyUnicornAug 10, 20185 votes

Well you prove what he says. Taking 150 games from low plat do dia is huuuuge. You basically grinded.

Moon MomAug 10, 20182 votes

I've made it in under 100 on my alt from gold 1.

Point is the game is a grind no matter what you do. If you're a high level player you will climb. An example of this being an inconsistent master / challenger player (S diana 2) climbing from unranked to diamond 2 in under 130 games as Diana.

My Waifu VanillaAug 10, 20183 votes

And challenger players make it to challenger in a week. The point is if you are actually where you belong and you progress naturally then 150 is not a stretch.

Andrey0345Aug 10, 20183 votes

{quoted}

Well you prove what he says. Taking 150 games from low plat do dia is huuuuge. You basically grinded.

Is it really that huge? Moving all the way from plat to dia is no easy task, it's not like you're dealing with silvers/golds. I agree that's a lot of games but that's not like grinding for entire season, more like couple of months.

Arcane Blue BoiAug 10, 20184 votes

If 1 guy makes it work, it doesnt become viable...

Eternal TormentAug 10, 20188 votes

to be honest, that pool is way lower. I only see 25, give or take 5, work out well for higher elo. I agree with your general message, but I disagree with the numbers because I think you are being optimistic >_> not that it's bad, but...

maybe i'm just taking it too negatively, but I don't see any champs other than Garen Fizz Ezreal Graves Irelia Janna Katarina LeeSin MasterYi Ornn Pantheon Pyke Quinn Talon Zed Zoe Yasuo Taric and occasionally i see Darius Annie Kaisa Rengar Sona Taliyah Syndra

this is it. for 2 months the only person i have seen play any champ other than those 26 was myself, because I am a rebel when it comes to retarded limitations.

Cloud273Aug 10, 20187 votes

{quoted}

Playing any of the other 91 champions is basically shooting yourself in the foot and tying a weight around your ankle.

You might still climb if you consistently play well, but it's only because statistics are working in your favor, and it's going to take hundreds of games if you didn't place into high MMR.

Can we strive for actual balance in the next season? I honestly don't think the difference between top tier champions and the rest of the roster has ever been as bad as it is right now.

Give us a list of these champions. I'm honestly curious who you think is "top tier".

Brown Man DariusAug 10, 20187 votes

Well i climbed to D5 this season by playing Darius Chogath Nasus Zed Yasuo Talon They are all pretty viable....well....except Chogath I Agree with your statement tho

[slayer-pantheon-thumbs]

murderessAug 10, 201811 votes

Uh. They are all pretty damn good aside from maybe Nasus and Zed/Yasuo at times.

Cho'Gath does really well in Diamond..

HibekiAug 10, 20182 votes

zed/yasuo

not good

omegalul

murderessAug 11, 20181 votes

at times.

Yep. Both have dropped down to 45%/46% at some point/several times this season. However, I do acknowledge that both have also been strong at other points.

HibekiAug 11, 20181 votes

The fact that they arent that winrate at all times shows they are bullshit.

45% is BALANCED for those champions.

murderessAug 11, 20181 votes

45% is BALANCED for those champions.

No. Good argument, eh?

HibekiAug 12, 20181 votes

When they are supposedly high skill floor champions and 90% of the community is below gold then yea, they should be supporting that winrate in a balanced state. Anything higher than that they are seriously overtuned

murderessAug 12, 20181 votes

{quoted}

When they are supposedly high skill floor champions and 90% of the community is below gold then yea, they should be supporting that winrate in a balanced state. Anything higher than that they are seriously overtuned

Zed doesn't have a high skill floor (just high ceiling) and the Yasuo playerbase is one of the most experienced playerbases of all midlane champions. The average Lux player has half the games of the average Yasuo player and yet a 4% higher winrate - if you don't see how that can't be right then I don't know what to tell you.

KlydeFrogAug 11, 20182 votes

Well yah . play nasus this way. Archangel staff and build iceborn frozen heart abyssal helm. Winning.

ModKnightsKemplarAug 10, 20185 votes

Translation of title: 35.46% of champions are viable when competing within the top 1.78% of accounts

Considering smurfs, we're probably talking more like 1.25-1.5% of actual players.

In all seriousness, what do you think those numbers should be in a balanced game? When you're talking about diamond rank, you are talking about the best players in the game, all competing to stomp each other as convincingly as possible.

I get that people think balancing this game is easy, but that is a meme. Every game that has ever existed has high-level strategy that is different from low-level strategy. In a game with 141 playable characters, this divide is not surprising. In fact, when I translated your title into actual numbers, my knee-jerk reaction was "Damn, Riot, that's even better than I expected you to be doing."

And that's on top of your own admission that every champ in the game has been played in diamond successfully by someone. Some champs are niche picks. Some champs are low play rate at that elo for a reason, but they still contribute to the strategy of the game just by existing. That's okay. That's also part of high-level strategy in games.

LakegaAug 10, 20181 votes

[deleted]

ModKnightsKemplarAug 10, 20184 votes

If it was easy to make a game like this, Riot would have been beat already. People easily forget how much competition League has squashed.

DotA, HoN, Dawngate, HotS... pretty sure there are others I'm forgetting.

Pretty sure Riot aren't mentally challenged. They've been able to beat out that competition with a superior product. Balance is part of that. Really easy to be an armchair designer; much harder to actually do it.

LakegaAug 10, 20183 votes

{quoted}

If it was easy to make a game like this, Riot would have been beat already. People easily forget how much competition League has squashed.

DotA, HoN, Dawngate, HotS... pretty sure there are others I'm forgetting.

Pretty sure Riot aren't mentally challenged. They've been able to beat out that competition with a superior product. Balance is part of that. Really easy to be an armchair designer; much harder to actually do it.

Mostly because League was in a strong place at the time, and wasn't a complete joke, or becoming a joke.

I'll bet if they popped up right now, they would of become more popular.

THe only thing league has going for it, is the smoothest controls in any moba, and the great characters and art.. that's it. Mechanically and gameplay is trash.

tempname130583Aug 10, 20181 votes

pretending league has squashed dota. lomao

ModKnightsKemplarAug 10, 20182 votes

Not squashed, but out-competing by several metrics.

Even if you don't agree, DotA2 hasn't squashed League, either, so they are both doing something right. I'm not a DotA2 hater; was actually thinking about picking it up to play with some irl friends who don't play league.

tempname130583Aug 11, 20181 votes

there ya go

Dorans PantsAug 11, 20181 votes

{quoted}

If it was easy to make a game like this, Riot would have been beat already. People easily forget how much competition League has squashed.

DotA, HoN, Dawngate, HotS... pretty sure there are others I'm forgetting.

Pretty sure Riot aren't mentally challenged. They've been able to beat out that competition with a superior product. Balance is part of that. Really easy to be an armchair designer; much harder to actually do it.

idk it seems more like they were at the right place at the right time with the right product and now that everyone has invested so much into the game and or is simply addicted, they can do whatever the fuck they want and still maintain most of their player base. And since everyone is familiar with this game and no one wants to leave it becomes hard for similar games to challenge it regardless of how good they are. I would call it the WoW phenomenon.

I personally like the core game, but disagree with like 90% of the decisions the dev team makes. And even though I hate it, I still force myself through those changes and try to forget what I once had. It´s like they are continuously lowering the bar and I suck it up. And that´s not them being great at their work, it´s just me being addicted. And It´s not just creative decisions. Sometimes I can´t believe that riot is making as much money as they do since there are so many technical errors in this game/client most of them will never be fixed. it just doesn´t look polished at all.

you would think as time progresses game quality would go up and not down, but I fear with every patch that they take something I liked and just fuck it up or replace it for no reason.

Also EA, nearly everything they produced in the past years was god awful and often just disrespectful on so many levels (Battlefront is a great example) and still hasn´t gone bankrupt and never will. So just because you made a lot of money and people are easy to manipulate and exploit does not mean you offered a good product.

ModKnightsKemplarAug 11, 20181 votes

There's an alternate explanation for all those phenomena, though: the community just simply doesn't understand how to make a game both fun and profitable.

People nitpick at Riot for a LOT of decisions, and the vast majority of them end up working out pretty well. They make mistakes from time to time, but if 90% of their decisions actually sucked, I swear to you no one would play this game.

There have been games that tested this theory. Games die. I remember a big hoopla about Payday 2 in the past few years that nearly killed that game, for instance. People do get invested in games on an individual level, but especially in free to play environments, the majority of players will leave if they aren't having fun.

And some have left League this season for exactly that reason. But Riot is taking notice and addressing the problems; you may think it's too late, and I won't fight you on that, tbh.

But the OP is specifically about champion balance. On that front, they are doing pretty freakin' well imo.

TeCoolMageAug 10, 20185 votes

Having just come from a thread saying that only 6~ champions (12~ if you include champions that have been played but haven't won a game) haven't been played in competitive this year makes it hard for me to agree

Seviel VoroseAug 10, 20184 votes

I got to Diamond IV by playing my main Syndra while she was considered shit tier. I think it depends more on the roles and the impact you provide in a game rather than the champion itself.

MOOODDYAug 10, 20183 votes

in jungle it's even worse , like what's viable rn ? Lee , Graves , Nocturne and ?

ΗuaweiAug 10, 20183 votes

{quoted}

in jungle it's even worse , like what's viable rn ? Lee , Graves , Nocturne and ?

Wukong, Kindred

theChibiTinaAug 10, 20181 votes

Don't forget Kayn in the right hands.

My Waifu VanillaAug 10, 20182 votes

Trundle, Eve, and Panth. Wowie wow we are already up to like 10 champions.

Arcane Blue BoiAug 10, 20182 votes

Let me show you a magic trick poof every mage is now gone from midlane

Zed Yasuo Fizz Ahri Zoe Talon Leblanc

Pika FoxAug 10, 20183 votes

People have made it into master tier with every champion mained. Hell, there was even a master tier support katarina at one point. The game is balanced fine.

EasternBladeStarAug 10, 20182 votes

Katarina is one of the most popular smurf champions for a reason. There's nothing spectacular about seeing someone reach high elo with her, especially in a meta like this.