All the assassins considered "weak" have winrates that climb relative to experience

Divewing·Jan 10, 2017·4 votes·640 views

Talon, Zed, and Akali all have >50% winrates approaching 100+ games. The reason you all think they are weak is because you are part of the vast majority who simply haven't played them enough to ACTUALLY LEARN THE CHAMPIONS.

Stop crying that Talon, Zed, and/or Akali are crap because you picked them once and fed your ass off.

The number of games I've lost with Talon since rework I could count on 1 hand. I've so far got at least 1 triple kill in every season 7 game with him I've played. These champions ARE NOT WEAK. Just accept that they aren't the same champions the used to be, learn the differences, and just fucking practice. If you're not willing to put in at least that then don't make endless threads about how weak they are based off observations.

20 Comments

AstôlfoJan 10, 20175 votes

All those winrate data numbers are skewed and invalid. Dismissed.

Critmaster GarenJan 10, 20175 votes

50% winrate when you mastered a champion is pathetic.

balanced champions usually have around 54% to 55% winrate for their mains. its just logical, since someone who knows the ins and outs of his champion, his powerspikes and his matchups should be more successful than all the meta slaves skipping from one champion to the next.

it starts with the fact that their mains are more likely to pick these champions into favourable matchups and win those matchups more reliably, while not picking them into very unfavourable matchups which should already put the winrates of those champions above 50% for their mains.

its always been this way. its also why many champions with very low play rates usually maintain decently high winrates. look at the winrates for urgot and kayle right now. its because the few people who play these champions are usually their mains, and know which matchups they can pick these champions into with a decently high chance of winning.

when people are winning only 50% of the games on a champion they really main, then something is severely wrong with that champion.

ph1234kJan 10, 20171 votes

54-55%??

So you consider balanced to be having a greater chance of winning the game? That is completely illogical.

For every win there is an equal loss. So for a champ to end up with a 54% winrate means others are losing. There is absolutely no semblance of balance in that idea. You could have a 45% winrate champ.

Wins do not come from nothing.

Let's do a little math experiment. You made a game with 10 champions. You got in 1,000,000 games with each of them. These games are 5v5 so there is still 1,000,000 in total. For the sake of argument we can assume the exact same person played the same champ each game so they have considerable experience. A mastery beyond any League player.

So if these champs need to have a 54% win rate to be balanced that means all of them must win 540,000 games each. Yet for all of them to win that much there would need to be 1,080,000 games in total which is 80,000 more than were actually played which is not possible. Okay, so there is no way to give them all 54% so what if just someone has 54%? Well that means the other has 46% win rate just to maintain the first one's 54% win rate. This is obviously not balance. Balance means the chances are equal. That no champion has a higher chance of winning than any other.

For there to be a higher chance of winning there has to be other factors such as imbalance, or playing against weaker players etc.

Now that we covered how that math of a 54-55% "balance" is entirely flawed let's move on to one final point. Win rate isn't actually an indicator of champion balance. There are far too many other factors that have nothing to do with the champs that affect win rates. They could help see balance within certain states/demographic but by themselves the win rate is circumstantial.

Meep ManJan 10, 20174 votes

54-55%??

So you consider balanced to be having a greater chance of winning the game? That is completely illogical.

I don't find Mastering a champion giving you a higher win rate to be illogical at all. Otherwise, what's the damn point?

ph1234kJan 10, 20171 votes

That isn't the illogical part, the illogical part is calling a clearly imbalanced number balanced. Refer to the math if you have questions.

Of course mastering a champion usually gives you personally a higher win rate on that champs (assuming you are against a weaker player, you will climb as a result putting you against better players and evetually lowering your win rate though). However we are talking about balance, which means champs overall average performance. Not 1 person's performance. A comparison of thousands of games of league played by all types of players (who have put in the time to master the champ). Not 200 games played by 1 person who mains a champ.

Critmaster GarenJan 10, 20172 votes

{quoted}

54-55%??

So you consider balanced to be having a greater chance of winning the game? That is completely illogical.

its not illogical. i just listed a couple of reasons how those 54% and 55% winrates happen when people main a particular champion.

you just skipped them. it makes sense in the context of a lot of people in this game being meta slaves, and jumping ship from one fotm to the next.

a lot of people will just pick a particular champion into their opponent because its listed as a counter on a third party site, while not being as good on that champion as the player theyre trying to counter.

the few 1 tricks or mains for a particular champion will outperform those meta slaves more often than not. in addition to knowing how not to lose against bad matchups while reliably winning against good matchups.

if you followed the statistics over the last couple years, you could see that champions that have exceptionally low playrates have always been sitting at the highest winrates. because the few times theyre actually picked, theyre picked by their mains into winning matchups.

champions with players for 125+ games usually get around 55% winrate, when that champion is overall balanced, simply because theyre not playing against people who are equally experienced on their champions every single time.

so yes. when the mains of a particular champion arent capable of breaking 50% winrate, then that champion is weak.

ph1234kJan 10, 20171 votes

I think you are misunderstanding a champs winrate vs a player's winrate.

If we are talking about a player, yes their winrate increases if they increase their mastery of a champion temporarily. This increase is immeasurable without specific examples as one player may have a 55% winrate and another have an 80% winrate on the same champion with the same mastery of that champion. These winrates have nothing to do with champion strength, these are products of the player's current skill vs their opponents current skill. When your winrate as a player falls to 50% it likely also has little to do with your champion, it is just the effect of your climb. Being in higher rated matches and playing against better players. Assuming this is not a slump and you didn't begin underperforming then this just means that you are now in your correct MMR, not that the champ you played is weak.

As far as champ winrate, there are multiple ways people describe it with the majority of them being completely useless. For this it is useless to talk about low elo players as well as players who are not experienced. Both of those groups of players are lowering their winrates for other reasons beyond the champion. The most useful games to analyze are of the highest tier players. It is here that we can get our most accurate (though still fairly inaccurate) picture of a champ because it is here that the highest limits of champs are found and the best performances of the champs. Weak champs have no defining criteria other than players found something stronger. Also, since these are high level games, people are not moving around as much in MMR which means their personal winrates are less fluid. They will stay more consistent. As I mentioned before winrate cannot really give a view of the balance of a champion but this specific demographic being analyzed for winrate can give some idea. The point however is that here in normalized calculation land you still can't call 55% balance as that 55% cannot come from nowhere. For any champ at this level to be above 50%, another has to be below 50%. If someone is at 55% then someone else is either at 45% OR more likely, many other champs are just below 50% even though they are mastered and being played by the highest tier players. E.g. if only 4 champions existed there could exist a 55%, a 50% and 2 47.5% champs but there could never exist 4 55% in this situation. That means that over 1000 games for instance, this "balanced" champ will win 150 more games than the lower performers. E.g. ~460 wins vs ~610 wins for this "balanced" situation.

DivewingJan 10, 20171 votes

Talons winrate spikes upwards to +60%. I said >50%, not =50%.

Azir right now is weak. The assassins, or at least Talon, aren't.

DynikusJan 10, 20174 votes

The same people complaining about assassins being weak are probably the same ones that complain about every new champion being weak, or every rework being a failure. Then a month later after people have figured out how the champion works, these same people bitch about how op they are.

Zero Skill TankJan 10, 20171 votes

I guess people complain about assassins being weak are the same people who said Zed is "weak" or at best "fair" in first half of season six.

Like, you know, all assassin players.

ChaddyFantomeJan 10, 20172 votes

Agreed. S3 Talon main here. To all the kids that think he is weak because they can't just run at someone and press all their buttons on them mindlessly, Gitgud. Live and Die by the blade, mofos. Talon

SlythionJan 10, 20172 votes

I didn't check all of them, but just a bit of a fyi:

Zed in specific shows that he climbs in winrate with experience, but you'll notice that that graph's data is based on 2014-2015 data (aka, pre-changes) and that even with the 125+ experience parameter, there are about 14% of maybe 2k games so that's only about a 280 game sample size which is very low to form an accurate statistical representation of a champion's winrate by experience.

It's always important to know where your data is coming from instead of just reading the numbers as fact. If you already knew this, then my apologies for wasting your time by making you read this. So I guess I'll just keep rambling because I can and the damage is already done :^)

Akali is SO HOTJan 10, 20172 votes

If people who've mastered a champion can barely break even at 50% then there's a problem. Why should I invest a ton of time into a champion and only end up winning half of my games with them when I can just play a different champion that gives me better results with much fewer games? I good winrate for a balanced champion is around a 50% total winrate and between a 54% - 56% winrate for people who have mastered the champion.

ph1234kJan 10, 20171 votes

Well, it isn't necessarily a problem but there is a CAUSE if that is what you mean. That cause btw is you being in the proper elo. To climb beyond that 50% winrate you have to get better at the game at that point, not just the champ. There is an entire map to master, composition to understand and at a certain point strategy to optimize or even change completely (such as what is happened when high level bot laners found out how to optimize the lane performance even more by using APCs instead of ADCs, particularly Ziggs).

Understanding your champs is only a small piece of the LoL puzzle.

I won't go over the math again though on that statement of balance, I don't think I can handle multiple people in a day not being able to count to 100.

ph1234kJan 10, 20171 votes

I disagree and you left out some.

I don't pick them and fed, rather I gutterstomp them in lane because they require experience and skill to use (some more than others) and as such when you get put against one it is a free lane.

I don't think anyone truly believes that there are significantly weak champs though, unless those players are just really low elo.

Critmaster GarenJan 10, 20171 votes

{quoted} I don't think anyone truly believes that there are significantly weak champs though, unless those players are just really low elo.

good luck on your journey to challenger with garen.

the champion isnt as bad as most people make him to be, and id say hes at least decent into diamond. but you will cap out with him before you even reach masters.

he hasnt even been played at that rating for most of the previous season. because hes simply not a strong champion at that rating.

or maybe you want to climb up there by becoming an urgot or galio 1 trick.

"significantly weak champion" depends at what rating youre playing. and since riot actually nerfed certain champions into inviability in the past, because there were severe issues with their kits, you can bet your ass that there are severely weak champions.

ph1234kJan 10, 20172 votes

There are so many strawmen that is is hard to know what your point even is.

I should have added in the qualifier for high elo, the reason I didn't is because there are not very many high elo players. But yes as you approach these higher skills and mastery of the game the actual differences in champions becomes more significant, it is mostly in high elo that champs are actually imbalanced. In low elo, people don't play at a high enough level to even figure out balance issues. In low elo, it is a lack of knowledge that usually leads to the illusion that something is OP/UP.

Riot has nerfed champions into inviability in top tier games due to mistakes they made in balance that they are still figuring out such as Azir/Kalista whose kits are so loaded that they are easy to accidentally boost hard in the win direction in top tier elo.

I will note though since you mention Galio, he has an average win rate of 51% which approaches 62% with mastery of around 100 games. That is even higher than your balance post suggested.

I don't have too much opinion on Garen in particular, I find his kit boring. Too much like playing Diablo for me. However you can have fun 1 tricking him to level 11 and eventually challenger. (Why are you using a level 10 account though? I have never seen someone need a smurf for the boards assuming that account is a smurf)

Critmaster GarenJan 10, 20171 votes

{quoted}

There are so many strawmen that is is hard to know what your point even is.

there is no strawman argument. its a fact that certain champions are weak. some of them intentionally held weak, some of them because of less versatile kits and undertuned numbers.

I don't think anyone truly believes that there are significantly weak champs though, unless those players are just really low elo.

this is what you said.

you claimed that no one at higher ranks would think any champion is truly weak. well, i just proved you otherwise. i gave you direct examples of some of those champions.

i wonder if you even still know what youre trying to say.

ph1234kJan 10, 20171 votes

Well, perhaps you could read my previous reply as I have already covered this.

I will point out the strawmen though if it helps makes it easier. It is irrelevant though again as I covered your concern:

good luck on your journey to challenger with garen.
or maybe you want to climb up there by becoming an urgot or galio 1 trick.

Edge of DaybreakJan 10, 20171 votes

For how low the sample size is those winrates are very poor. There are so few players with higher than 50% winrates with Talon, Akali, and Zed you could put them all in the same place. Riot's already stated the lethality building assassins are doing poorly the only people who think they are good are the lower elo players on boards who don't play these champions at all or only play them against other low elo players which riot doesnt even consider valid data for balance.