What win rate is too much for you?

usul1202·Jan 27, 2019·1 votes·782 views

Seen a lot of "x winrate and y playrate, nerf plz" threads over time, and was wondering what everyone's threshold for that is. For me personally, anything over a 55% rate is almost always too much regardless of playrate (unless it's so low the sample size is useless) and if a high playrate champion is pushing 53% then that's usually a good indicator of op.

(poll doesn't allow for advanced options or multiple polls, so it's just about win rate but comment about the influence of play rate if that's important to you!)

16 Comments

MordepoolJan 27, 20192 votes

Winrate spikes don't matter much.

Consistently high winrate over several patches is troubling. I begin research once a champ has been above 54% for an extended period.

usul1202Jan 27, 20191 votes

I can see that, tho if a change brought someone from 48% to 55% overnight i'd probably ban them for a week until things settled.

There are definitely a lot of factors that go into it. I don't see skarner as OP for example, but he does break my 55% win rate line (55.3% according to league of graphs), so there's definitely wiggle room on that. I do agree that extended duration is needed to complete an idea of being op.

BeersteinJan 27, 20191 votes

I don't think win rate should be taken into account with balancing, just champ popularity. Make champions less appealing or more appealing to play based on visuals, kit, and power. If you keep balancing based on popularity til all champs are played evenly power will have balanced itself out as regardless of WHY a champion is appealing, power is still the large underlying one. This is league and people are very competitive.

Simply put, rebalance the most and least played champions to make them more or less appealing by power, kit changes, even more visually appealing. At first it may seem counter-productive to the current "this is too powerful, this is too weak" but again, at the end of the day I pretty much guarantee there will be a better balance. Certainly, people will at minimum be happier with the diversity of the game and the "appeal level" of what they play.

IMO power is still the large underlying drive for why people play them, but as a whole, the community is one step ahead of Rito which is why you have some champs super popular, and some super unpopular. If they feel it's based off something other than power, they can focus on something else (like visuals).

The reality is, at the end of the day, they want top champs to stay top as most the player base plays them, and they're afraid of running them off.

usul1202Jan 27, 20191 votes

hmm, okay. Imma edit the poll to leave an option for that, made it off of a random thought and didn't think through completely I guess.

Do you mean that older (uglier) champs with less satisfying kits should be stronger so their playrate matches newer, flashier champs?

Edit edit: Apparently you can't edit a poll. Well, darn. @rito pls

BeersteinJan 27, 20191 votes

{quoted}

hmm, okay. Imma edit the poll to leave an option for that, made it off of a random thought and didn't think through completely I guess.

Do you mean that older (uglier) champs with less satisfying kits should be stronger so their playrate matches newer, flashier champs?

I think Riot should try to assess WHY they're the least popular champs, be it kit, power, or visuals, and update that aspect to balance them into the mix. So if there's 100 champions, they should start by focusing on the least popular champion, and start tweaking until it has near 1% play rate. Keep doing this until everyone is within a margin of error, or close. Also, if they focus on bottom instead of the top, they prevent running half the population off the game by nerfing their only champ (Yasuo).

If they're wrong about why it's unpopular, hit it again. But at minimum, it should no longer be the least popular, and they move up to the next, and eventually get back to that one again to have another go. Current mentality mostly seems "No one plays these, their skins don't generate money, they're not worth any attention"

The fact that with 143 champions, we can go into jungle for example, and see champs with .15% pick rate and .01% ban rate, while the other end of the spectrum is 14.21% and 1.57% is insanity.

usul1202Jan 27, 20191 votes

I don't know if i see that working out. I think for a respectable number of people, winning is their core of fun. And if you make Nautilus strong enough to balance out his clunkiness and whatnot, people will flock to him. Then he gets nerfed, and repeat. I think the idea is cool behind everyone having perfectly balanced playrates, but I don't think execution is possible just because of how varied the league community is. (like, wukong is popular in china as a character. In NA, he's popular because 'lol, where'd my adc go?'. That would be rough to balance this way)

BeersteinJan 27, 20191 votes

{quoted}

I don't know if i see that working out. I think for a respectable number of people, winning is their core of fun. And if you make Nautilus strong enough to balance out his clunkiness and whatnot, people will flock to him. Then he gets nerfed, and repeat. I think the idea is cool behind everyone having perfectly balanced playrates, but I don't think execution is possible just because of how varied the league community is. (like, wukong is popular in china as a character. In NA, he's popular because 'lol, where'd my adc go?'. That would be rough to balance this way)

It may be a bit rough, but it's a start, especially if we're pulling the absolute lowest popularity champions. By the time you work through 10, even if its minor changes you'll start to see a shift as you continue working through them. In this regard, I think Riot needs a team that focuses solely on these champions bringing them back into the fold.

The extreme differences in popularity says a lot IMO. It's always going to happen to a degree, but it shouldn't be to this degree, especially not with some of the same champs through 10 seasons...

Also, a big reason I think it'd work better is that win rates will vary a lot based on how hard a champ is to learn. Harder ones will have lower win rates with less games played, and higher with more. etc. With popularity, it mostly inherently accounts for that IMO.

let's say Rumble in the jungle has 60% win rate, but only 20 people play him in the jungle. Run an in-game marketing campaign that kinda points this out.

usul1202Jan 27, 20191 votes

How much do you want to account for off-meta roles? Karth jungle went from not a thing to dominating pro play, right now im banning him most games due to that threat. Teemo supp hit it big in korea this year, even reaching a playrate that he shows up under supp champions list, despite that being non-existent in other regions.

(realized that this comes off as more aggressive than intended, I genuinely want to know your thoughts on this since i've never really seen someone present your balancing philosophy before).

BeersteinJan 27, 20191 votes

{quoted}

How much do you want to account for off-meta roles? Karth jungle went from not a thing to dominating pro play, right now im banning him most games due to that threat. Teemo supp hit it big in korea this year, even reaching a playrate that he shows up under supp champions list, despite that being non-existent in other regions.

(realized that this comes off as more aggressive than intended, I genuinely want to know your thoughts on this since i've never really seen someone present your balancing philosophy before).

Global spotlights on what's going on via the in-game home screen, more active communication from Riot that essentially points these things out, and promotes differences between regions to normalize play more across them.

usul1202Jan 27, 20191 votes

Pointing them out is nice (they did that for brand jungle a long time ago) but when it's meta-centric like teemo im not sure it'll normalize much.

GreenKnightJan 27, 20191 votes

I don't care about winrate. I care about what i can see with my own eyes.

usul1202Jan 27, 20191 votes

Yea, i really wish I had added that to my poll, can't edit polls post-submission.

Do you prefer to look at how often they win against you, how much they control the game when in it, or how fun they are to play against?

GreenKnightJan 27, 20191 votes

{quoted}

Yea, i really wish I had added that to my poll, can't edit polls post-submission.

Do you prefer to look at how often they win against you, how much they control the game when in it, or how fun they are to play against?

A bit of everything actually. The only way to truly understand what makes a champion strong, is to play with, against and as this characters. While watching how pros use them is the way to go if you want to learn some tactics or combos, you have to encounter at least some of those behaviors in game, if you want to learn how to put your knowledge into practice.

usul1202Jan 27, 20191 votes

I get that. Win rate definitely doesn't account for fun, and soloq isn't going to accurately represent the pain that is malph + j4 + mf ults as a combo vs alone. I do think it's a good marker for when to start looking at things though. Some of it's garbage (scarner at 55.3%) but some of it is stuff like riven with a 54% win rate and a 16% play rate in plat +. I personally feel that is a bit too high for a champ who seems to be designed around having the ability to outplay most champs, but requires the skill to do it. As someone who doesn't enjoy top lane though, I don't interact with her much (and thus, wouldn't be worth much on 'constructive ideas for change', but if i see my top laner picking something weaker, i would consider banning her.

Moody PJan 27, 20191 votes

win rate Doesn't really matter

usul1202Jan 27, 20191 votes

Doesn't matter regardless of context seems a little ambitious, if someone were to hit 60% or higher with a decent play rate, I think that would be pretty much guaranteed op.

Edit: Phrasing upon rereading my comment and realizing it wasn't exactly what i meant.