Imbalances are cool!

RSCurious·Feb 16, 2015·13 votes·2,010 views

Recently, when playing the game itself and patrolling the forums looking for interesting news, I've noticed a trend. Not an unexpected trend as it's created by the mechanic they're utilizing, but a trend that unfairly lashes out on the devs for something they're doing well. That trend is to haphazardly say that a champion is op or unbalanced, that a nerf was too much or that they shouldn't have changed a champion. Usually this happens at the discretion of the people who play them or play against them the most without stopping to consider why it was done.

A quick disclaimer for posterity's sake, I'm not a developer or an expert on the subject, I'm just someone who takes it from a different standpoint. I play league more for the aspects of fun that it grants rather than the elements of competitiveness, hence playing for over a year and still remaining unranked, although I was thinking about playing this season. So, when examining aspects of the game I like to examine for why they are fun rather than why they're not. Which has lead me into the train of thought that are imbalances are cool.

The video I linked summarizes it up pretty nicely, and it's made by people who actually are developers, so people who know a lot more about the topic and intricacies than I do, but to summarize; -Imbalances are cool. They are done intentionally with the intent of changing the meta of the game. -No imbalance is imperfect, or broken. Meaning that no one champion is blatantly overpowered to any other champion. -Imbalances are necessary to keep the game interesting. It's an evolving game, if everything was perfectly balanced, then nothing new would ever be added, and nothing would be changed, making it stagnate. -Imbalances are fair. It prevents the "top tier" of players from establishing strategies and dominating with them based on efficiency, as well as allowing everyone the opportunity to create new strategies. -Imbalances are interesting. They keep you on your toes, force you to play new champions and create new metas, not drastically, but enough to be fun.

If you didn't think the game was fun, you wouldn't play. If every little thing riot changed didn't keep you on the edge of your seat, you wouldn't play. In this case, the irritation comes from your established routines being messed up by the meta, and from the perspective of someone who purely plays for fun rather than to win, it's this changing meta that makes it interesting. And it's interesting to watch the people I am playing against change their play styles to match the new meta as well.

So before calling a champion out on how op or bad they are after a patch, consider why they were made that way, and who they are good against rather than just calling names haphazardly. No champion is bad, they each just have their strengths and weaknesses. A working example would be that on a regular basis I hear blitzcrank get called OP, but morgana counters him very well, and that doesn't make either of them stronger just good against their counterparts. As someone who mains supports, I've had lots of experience with that.

(Cheesy signoff because I'm not sure what to close this with) See you on the rift!

While all of what he said may hold some weight, the thing is it doesn't apply to league like he claimed it did.

Over the course of several seasons, The jungle has been dominated by Lee Sin. Quote your statistics as you like, he has consistently had one of the highest playrates for years at all levels of play. While some champions can indeed counter him, no one champion counters him well enough to change the minds of pro players. As a result, we see a static element in what is supposed to be a dynamic environment. When the static element remains for a long enough period of time, and gets balanced around, and as a result warps the balance of the environment around it to support it.

This flies in the face of "cyclical imbalance," as by now the players should have come up with something to counter him, whether it be a strategy or champion strength. Instead, we see laners adapting picks and playstyle to survive/escape his ganks. Instead, we see jungle picks based on who can compete/survive against Lee Sin. We don't see anything really dominating lee sin, and frankly this interupts the "perfect imbalance" as since no tool in the game can beat Lee Sin, the tools are measured against Lee Sin. How does this help me if Lee sin comes at me? How does Lee Sin react to that? This warps balance, and as a result we have seen a sharp increase in mobility since his release. The immobile champions tend to fall by the wayside, as they struggle to face Lee Sin regardless of their balance, while more mobile champions are judged for whether or not their numbers can compete. While people dedicating their time to certain champions or "gameplay elements", they naturally find ways to deal with the static element with that tool. That said, this does not make these tools "counters".

For example, lets take a recent Immobile Mage, and measure them against Lee. I'll pick Vel'Koz. Vel is pretty cool, and pretty much everyone agrees he is balanced. However, he generally seems to rest around 4% playrate. Sure, Pro's picking him and him being free can make him spike, but he seems to always trend back to around 4%. This supports the idea that most tend not to use the immobile champions, as they have issues against Lee Sin. Now lets compare a recent champion with lots of mobility. For this, I'll use Yasuo. At this point, I realize his playerate has evened out, and the nerfs have settled in. He still sits at a whopping 21-22% average. Again, this is after repeated strikes of the ban hammer. Like him or not, his winrate trends below 50% at this point. Yet he still recieves consistant play. Probably because he has the tools and mobility to compete vs a Lee Sin. Generally, this trend continues, with the most played champs having good mobility and decent tools to fend off Lee Sin and the least played with the least mobility and the least successful tools when dealing with Lee Sin.

This does not create balanced gameplay, nor does it create perfect imbalance. If the game did resemble one of the two, it would most likely resemble a balanced game, not perfect imbalance, as at this point there has been alot of strategies, and the core strategy is what everyone balances their own personal play around, and games are decided by who can react best to Lee Sin. This is unhealthy for the games future, as stated in that video. If the game is to continue, Lee will need to become a dynamic element. And even then, there is no telling what that will do to the ecosystem, as frankly the game has been balanced around Lee Sin for so long that without him it will be difficult to predict what could happen.

Personal Opinion

It's my belief that if Lee sin were to be rebalanced, the mobility creep is so set in stone that League's version of the "jedi curve" will need to be re-evaluated. Clearly mobility is power, otherwise lee wouldn't have warped play the way he did. That said, some of the other tools are clearly capable of handling him. This will all need to be weighed, to see where the strengths of those champions are that have allowed them to remain competitive, and balance the game accordingly.

For example, Immobile mages that still can handle lee sin tend to include those with wide AoE damage and CC, indicating that both may be key factors to dealing with mobility in general. Remember, outside Lee, the game still has a little cyclical gameplay where the champions that compare to Lee are cycled as certain picks become dominant and people seek to deal with those other forces on the field. The fact that the immobile ones tend to have AoE and CC in their kits shows that those elements are key in dealing not only with lee sin, but the game around lee sin as well.

Imbalances are cool!

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While all of what he said may hold some weight, the thing is it doesn't apply to league like he claimed it did.

Personal Opinion

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