PSA: Nerfs are to improve balance, not to remove identity

dunkeroni··4 votes·424 views

Every time a nerf comes to PBE I see people complain that "Rito is nerfing the wrong abilities". recent arguments revolve around: "Fiora should just not do true damage" (when that is the sole purpose of her kit)

Nerfs are applied to reduce a champion's strengths, not to remove their kit. In most cases, instead of directly reducing the power of the prime aspect of a kit, Riot instead wants players to either put more risk in to playing with that kit or make the choices related to such abilities more important. These complaints from players who are annoyed by a specific aspect of a champion, and instead of learning to play around it they simply yell about how OP it is. When the champion as a whole gets nerfed, they still complain because they don't see a direct numbers decrease on that one ability they hate, and they neglect to see the opportunities for counterplay afforded by specific ability decreases.

TL;DR: Children need to stop complaining about bad nerfs when the fact is that champion as a whole loses power.

9 Comments

Hayaishi22 votes

And when identities can't be balanced they should be removed until it gets a rework. (I don't mean Fiora btw)

xl Kirito lx2 votes

The main problem I have with Riots nerfing system is two fold.

  • They refuse to nerf the problem area. Fiora's kit allows her to build bruiser, and still have strong damage output through her passive, and utility through her parry and ult. They're nerfing her sticking potential, instead of nerfing her passive. It could easily be changed to a flat amount of true damage, it could be made physical + %bonus armor pen, or just remove the heal, or the MS buff, or the uptime on the ability.

  • They refuse to revert changes made.
    Kog'maws W got changed, now he's a T1 pick. Instead of reverting the W change, and finding other ways to buff, they're keeping the buff and nerfing the champion. Xin Zhao's the same way. Buffed his healing and damage, and now is losing attack speed on his W, instead of just removing the crit, or the AD ratio. Those are recent. I remember AD nidalee after the rework, Kassadin, and so on.

warpenguin5551 votes

[{quoted}](name=xl Kirito lx,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=KZ2Lw16A,comment-id=0002,timestamp=2016-02-22T22:51:16.883+0000)

The main problem I have with Riots nerfing system is two fold.

  • They refuse to nerf the problem area. Fiora's kit allows her to build bruiser, and still have strong damage output through her passive, and utility through her parry and ult. They're nerfing her sticking potential, instead of nerfing her passive. It could easily be changed to a flat amount of true damage, it could be made physical + %bonus armor pen, or just remove the heal, or the MS buff, or the uptime on the ability.

  • They refuse to revert changes made.
    Kog'maws W got changed, now he's a T1 pick. Instead of reverting the W change, and finding other ways to buff, they're keeping the buff and nerfing the champion. Xin Zhao's the same way. Buffed his healing and damage, and now is losing attack speed on his W, instead of just removing the crit, or the AD ratio. Those are recent. I remember AD nidalee after the rework, Kassadin, and so on.

its like they cant admit they fucked up.

Weiner the Pooh1 votes

[{quoted}](name=xl Kirito lx,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=KZ2Lw16A,comment-id=0002,timestamp=2016-02-22T22:51:16.883+0000)

The main problem I have with Riots nerfing system is two fold.

  • They refuse to nerf the problem area. Fiora's kit allows her to build bruiser, and still have strong damage output through her passive, and utility through her parry and ult. They're nerfing her sticking potential, instead of nerfing her passive. It could easily be changed to a flat amount of true damage, it could be made physical + %bonus armor pen, or just remove the heal, or the MS buff, or the uptime on the ability.

  • They refuse to revert changes made.
    Kog'maws W got changed, now he's a T1 pick. Instead of reverting the W change, and finding other ways to buff, they're keeping the buff and nerfing the champion. Xin Zhao's the same way. Buffed his healing and damage, and now is losing attack speed on his W, instead of just removing the crit, or the AD ratio. Those are recent. I remember AD nidalee after the rework, Kassadin, and so on.

It's not Fiora's kit that allows her to build bruiser and have a ton of damage, its all of the item changes, the tank items Fiora uses are used on other supposed to be squishies like Master Yi as well.

WolfChases2 votes

Dunkeroni you are right but the problem is that Riot doesn't always nerf like that...I mean " Just to balance and not to remove identity of a champion"....

Look at Kha'Zix for example. He had identity and a damage, they nerfed his damage and changed the range of his Isolation so his identity is erased from history because his identity can't work without his damage and if his isolation range is fucked up.

That is the main problem with unique champions such are:

Elise If they nerf her damage she'll be just a cocoon stun bot, and than you realize that cocoon is just a single target stun and that it's not easy to stun someone you want in the middle of a team fight because someone else or a minion can block it making you a sitting duck.

Khazix If he doesn't have enough damage and isolation that actually means ISOLATION he isn't able to pull off that damage and assassinate his target. Why leaving an assassin with such a great utility he can't use at full potential because he can't isolate his target for max damage? I mean....he can achieve that isolation but ONLY if squish is dumb enough to stay 600 miles away from his team mates.

Rengar What is the point of being a stealth predator like hunter with burst damage if your enemies can SEE YOUUUU like they are Saurons from LOTR. Do you know what's the problem with Rengar? Not his damage nor his Stealth but his overall wrong identity. Dont get me wrong, he has identity, good enough but completely wrong for that type of kit. Rengar should be a fighter who can be able to 1v1 any squish but not in 0.28 sec. Only 2 things in Rengars kit are special for him, his passive and his ultimate, everything else can be reworked into something fighter like and believe me, with unchanged passive and ultimate Rengar would not lose his identity but will be much more healthier and not just "Go in and die" or "Go in and erase someone and die".

Zed What if they nerf his damage? It's not all about damage, he is an assassin and he should be able to assassinate you quickly but if they nerf his damage, his kit simply won't work for him and he will lose his identity. Problem with Zed is his Passive that for whatever reason works against minions and unlimited range on the second part of his ultimate, nothing else but no, Riot will gut his damage because it's a lot easier to do instead of slightly changing his kit but leaving his identity intact. How can PantheonNocturne and TwistedFate have range scaling with ability level on their ultimates but Zed cannot? By adding some range on the second part of Zed's ultimate (ofc a lot shorter than Nocturnes, Pantheons and TF's) Zed's abiluty to switch back will be there but he could be punished for a bad play because well...if he ults that Xerath under his turret realizes he has made a mistake, by switching back to his R shadow he could be hit by Xerath and probably killed and punished...but why if I can let Xerath to push than press my R than he flashes, than I use my W and than I flash and jump across the whole mid lane under his turet, fail and than press R again and POOF I AM UNDER MY TURRET LAUGHING AT PANICKING XERATH!

See the problem? Nerf Rengars Damage and his identity will remain intact only in Lore but I dare you to press R and ult that "Squishy Vayne" who will chunk you down to half HP with a single Q and item 3094 passive proc with a single 1st AA...huh. The point is that you should kill her before she kills you which would be impossible if assassin doesn't have damage :)

Down vote me as much as you want, but as a guy who plays League for straight 5 years I saw many champions losing their identities simply by Riot nerfing their damage because they could not do what they were supposed to do.

warpenguin5551 votes

Good thing her building tank and losing no damage for it is not her identity. So we can get rid of that soon. Who the fuck said Fiora shouldn't o true damage? is just dumb as hell she can have 4000 health and kill everything she wants to with very few weaknesses

Nagoh Shan1 votes

Good thing she can't build tank and lose no damage already.

Sneakyy XD1 votes

{quoted}

Nerfs are applied to reduce a champion's strengths, not to remove their kit.

I can go with that. However, in the case of Fiora, she shouldn't be doing true damage based off of % health, regardless of what that means to her identity.

blfUvZ8Ybu1 votes

Protect op champions.

More from Gameplay

More by dunkeroni