there is a huge difference in Esport when it comes to the number of picks and bans
so what's the difference? what do they do that league's balance team doesn't?
i played both games for years and i still don't understand, they both nerf and buff unused/overused characters.
Faith Breaker14 votesRiot Balance Team are incompetant assholes.
last time i checked, since the last year they didn't do a bad change
Doctor Jarvis12 votes
"Yes, everything Riot has done in the past year has been great for League"
"We agree!"
KONO RUBICK DA3 votesthe juggernaut happened in 2015 year thought, he said since last year.
Doctor Jarvis5 votesI took that to mean "for a year", but I suppose I was wrong
ACENOX1 votesis malz rework bad?
Faith Breaker1 votesI would not call it "bad"
I would, however, say that it isn't "balanced"
Sahn Uzal1 votesThose are reworks. The Champion Update team changed them, and changed their numbes for the first month untill they were handed to the live balance team.
LatetotheRace1 votes
F you
LICENSED HOOKER2 votesRiot games balance team, generaly hot boxes their work area.
It explains preseason
Faith Breaker1 votesAs a Darius I still feel that he is too powerful, given a patient Darius player can build FULL............TANK and still obliterate your entire time because of his passive.
Dunkrius2g1 votesPeople complained about the unfairness of getting chunked by 20% for a Q and his bleed. So riot changed it and heavily made him a time ticking bomb. Darius used to suck balls late game, and now, Darius is only needs to build 2 damage items max 
and rely on passive for the damage lest you want to get busted by getting kited. If Darius didn't have his steroid, he will be really weak and his passive damage will need major buffs seeing as how it is physical damage. The only way to counter Darius was 
and reset his passive but that is gone. You have to build to survive, otherwise, you will get dunked.
The biggest turn off to his rework was his attack speed being shit low and a cast time for his Q.
Sightless669 votesIt's not really balance that is causing this. Both games tend to be similarly balanced. They have annoyingly OP characters and horribly weak ones, with most picks sitting in a balanced state. The real reason why is the different design philosophies about counterpicking.
League is designed around weak counterpicks. While some champions may be strong or weak against certain enemies, you should ultimately have a fair chance of success in most every matchup. So long as you draft a balanced team comp, you should be able to respond to the enemy's team comp. However, this also means that champions are able to easily replace each other in the meta. If I need a siege mage, I can pick whoever is strongest between Lux and Ziggs and Xerath. If I need a tank, I can pick whichever one is strongest. Because the champions ultimately preform similar roles, I don't have much of a motivation to pick champions that aren't considered top-tier. After all, if Nidalee is a strong jungler and can do everything an assassin jungler could ever want, why pick someone who isn't Nidalee?
Dota instead has a lot of heroes who are very niche, but who absolutely excel in that niche. A good example might be Ancient Apparition. His ult is a global skillshot (with a good AoE) on a 40 second CD that does decent damage, completely prevents healing for 8-10 seconds (17 with aghs), and executes low health enemies for the duration of the debuff. This makes him a stupidly hard counter to healing heroes and heroes that get themselves low on health. Even if he wasn't particularly strong in general, he would probably be worth picking just for that role. That mechanic wouldn't be allowed in League.
There are also more heroes who have strong mechanics that are vulnerable to being counterpicked. A great example is Templar Assassin. One of her abilities gives her a shield that completely negates the next 7 instances of damage. This can let her take huge nukes to the face without taking any damage, but it also means that if she gets hit with a rapid DoT or something else that does many small instances of damage instead of one large blast, then her shield can be completely worthless. She gets a strong mechanic, but that mechanic has a weakness that you can only exploit with picks. If you don't counterpick TA, you're at a major disadvantage, and you'll need to have your teammates counter her or pick something that supplements your pick.
Hinagiku337 votes^ Pretty much this.
Riot has somewhat addressed this over the years, but overall Riot prefers "Generalists" like 
that can do a ton of things and are always at least marginally useful even when behind. They've stated before that they do not want players to ever feel helpless or like they cannot meaningfully contribute if they lose lane. This has led to 2 things: 1) Champion kits being "normalized" like 
where their min damage is raised and their max damage lowered with changes to make them somewhat reliable and suck less when behind, and 2) Champion kits with utility added to make them useful in team fights even if they lose lane phase hard...which can make some champs feel impossible to beat since you literally cannot prevent them from being good in some cases...
, 
, and 
all fill the same role and since they are generalists they pretty much replace one another since they are basically the same. Whichever one has gone longer without nerfs is almost always the one you want if you want a long range siege mage.
Riot's efforts to give reasons to pick champions is great, but ultimately doomed to failure due to their champ design philosophy - the gimmicks are kind of neat, but since most champs are generalists the gimmicks are either too underpowered or situational to really change much or too overpowered and cause them to always be picked.
DOTA 2 balances around most of their Heroes being "Specialists" that have one completely amazing trick and can carry the game or drag a team down depending on if that trick is needed or if the enemy team has countered it through other Heroes or items. Some Heroes are allowed to be bad in like 90% of games because in the other 10% they are God-Tier and exactly what your team needs. There are general "goals" but enough diversity in play styles and abilities that players are intended to gauge the situation and pick the Hero that best suits it, rather than just pick whoever is the generic "strongest" in a given class.
Also, DOTA actually has mechanics like turn rates and attack wind ups and stats like the derived attributes system to balance pretty much whatever they want without having to resort to nuking a kit completely...
ACENOX4 votesbut then, this means that dota has a better design philosophy.
BloodyTompon1 votesNo, not at all. Dota's design philosophy is more niche. Leagues is much better in general. That's part of the reason for the player base discrepancy. Art and historical factors also come into play, but by and large it's the design.
Ahristocats4 votesto me, if it allows more bans, more picks in the dota 2 LCS, it's by far a batter design philosophy, makes the game better to watch less boring and more thrilling in the champ selection. Unlike in lol where "hu i wonder which adc is picked, oh lucian i didn't expect this"
WoonStruck3 votesFalse entirely.
In Dota, picks are made for strategic reasons in the large majority of cases, not because they're the best.
For a strategy game, I don't understand why you think someone being picked essentially just because the game is poorly balanced is a better way to go than someone being picked because they strategically fit what your team needs.
BloodyTompon1 votes? I'm sorry, I don't believe I said anything of the sort. I did not mention balance or strategy.
Faith Breaker1 votesNo but basically no one present agrees with you
Faith Breaker1 votesYour comment is everything I wish an opinion to ever be.
Lady Hammerlock5 votesThe key difference is The dota balance team tends to listen to the community a lot more(usually to much cough invoker cough) and they don't have there hands on as many things,unlike league the dota balance team has way more time to do things and are in no rush to release new heroes A league patch can take around maybe 5 weeks to make and a Dota patch takes like 3-4 months and are normally big League patches tend to be smaller,less time available to make a patch unless its a patch made across several patches/they were working on it while working on other patches i.e marksmen update,mage update
also balance tends to have to be more reactive when it comes to league,the way DOTA is designed makes it so there is always something to counter something which allows room and time before the community goes ape shit,unless the hero was huskar fuck his 100% magic resist 2 patches ago
League however its much easier for any single champion to transform into a monster in a single patch due to less boundaries because league avoids -High cooldowns -ridiculous mana costs but has -scaling,which easily makes league a harder game to balance
also DOTA 2 has zero creative boundaries thanks to how they work there
BloodyTompon1 votesLeague has probably the fastest patch cadence of any game. It's not 5 weeks, it's every 2.
Lady Hammerlock1 votesLeague has probably the fastest patch cadence of any game. It's not 5 weeks, it's every 2.
which is a good thing it means they can be more reactive to OP's and UP's and stuff like that
WoonStruck3 votesYeah, if only they actually were reactive.
They used to send out balance patches faster with more changes that were more in need than the majority of recent stuff Riot's been 'addressing'.
Ahristocats3 votesbut they don't
Faith Breaker2 votesExcept they aren't
Bobloser35554 votesThe Riot team waits a long time before nerfing a champion maybe in Dota they do it faster.
Ahristocats5 votesthis
in dota 2 an overpowered hero gets a nerf in the next patch, maybe not a good nerf but at least he is nerfed
in league, you need to wait at least 2 patch for a champ to be nerfed,
and dota 2 patch touches the 110 heroes of dota 2
Sylverblitz4 votesPerhaps due to Riot insisting on releasing a patch every two weeks with changes that break champions, make others stupidly OP and essentially turn items into a "must buy" from "nice to have". It's then made worse by the fact they take longer to rectify those mistakes with a lot not addressed in the next patch two weeks later. I really do wonder how much healthier the game would be if Riot started releasing a patch every month or even every two months with hotfix patches ready for issues they see might come up.
The pros get the benefit of playing on one patch for ages while everyone else, the majority of the player base, gets stuck with whatever Riot has pushed out recently. I know the pros also do solo queue. The point I am trying to make is that if they can wait a month or more for LCS games to get to a patch then they can take the same amount of time on each patch for everyone.
Rebonack3 votesDota has more diverse bans and picks largely because the heroes in Dota are typically much more specialized than the champs in League are.
Riot's been trying to make champs feel less same-y (see: ADC update) but they have a LONG way to go.
grug2 votes100% sure its because icefrog gives the final approval so its the vision of one guy against riot's whatever playtested pbe consensus from their team of people who I think are vastly conflicted.
I also believe its because L0L has some weird things like manaless/resourceless heroes who i rarely ever see get picked aside from lee/zed/reksai/vlad as well as cooldown reduction.
ACENOX1 votesdota 2 does have cooldown reduction (only 1 item) and one manaless hero (huskar has 2 manaless spells and only has 1 spell that costs mana).
grug1 votesdota 2 does have cooldown reduction (only 1 item) and one manaless hero (huskar has 2 manaless spells and only has 1 spell that costs mana).
if youre talking about refresher orb that is not CDR its a 1 off situational combat item with very poor combat stats so its use is highly selective and if iirc its on like a 3min cooldown. Aghanims on the other hand only affects the ultimate but even then it can't be spammed because most heroes have crap manapools and I believe some heroes do not even get the cdr on it rather some damage modifier instead.
As for Huskar at level 25 he still has less than a 1000 mana, his health cast is actually pretty high and can kill him very fast unless you itemise against it and that's if you can do that and survive all the damage he takes, his only mana ability is a very useful heal that costs somewhere around 170 mana iirc so no he is not a manaless/resourceless hero
KONO RUBICK DA1 votesoctarine core gives 20% cdr, the only item with cdr in the game right now.
As for huskar since he has a spell that costs mana he isn't manaless.
The Sword Saint2 votesDota has a lot of obscure hard counter niche champions which makes it so that almost all champs have a reason to get used at some point based on copunterpicking alone.
BloodyTompon1 votesYou can't see the difference between the two games? The systems in place, the champions, the items, the design decisions even some of the base mechanics are very different.
To answer your question, the difference is they are not the same game.
KONO RUBICK DA9 votesthx cpt obvious, in case you didn't realise i'm talking about THE BALANCE TEAM.
BloodyTompon1 votesOh I realised. What you did not and still have not realised is that you cannot divorce balance from everything surrounding it. You may as well compare the balance of football and basketball. They're both ball games. They are both team games. Does make the comparison valid.
Faith Breaker10 votesHow do you balance Major League Baseball, and how do you balance Minor League Baseball?
Congrats BloodyTompon on winning your strawman argument.
LatetotheRace2 votesHow does one balance sports? I suppose the only way would be to limit drug usage.... stupid extra rules possibly? Maybe the draft system too...? I guess? k
BloodyTompon1 votesI think you're misunderstanding my post. Considering somebody else thought it was a straw man I may not have made myself very clear.
The TL:DR is I'm saying you cannot compare apples and oranges.
The OP is making the assumption that the comparison is valid, I contend that. They are both MOBA's just as apples and oranges are both fruit, but they are really very different. Why do I contest it? Because the balance of any game cannot be segregated from the surrounding eco-system of the game. You'll notice in this thread that there are 2 kinds of posts. The much longer posts that basically boil down to the games are different and non-comparable and Riot is shit posts. I'd go read the longer more rational ones if you wanted to delve deeper.
LatetotheRace2 votesNo, they're pretty damn similar. There are obvious differences like names instead of class types, or the difference in map awareness and visibility. (Dota is unnecessarily dark looking at times.) You could also compare the champions/heros as Riot has balanced numerous champions well, and in DOTA everything's op. (op it keep op in check.) There are plenty of differences I left out, but you get the jist. They're very similar games and game styles, so of course you can compare them.
BloodyTompon1 votesAnd this is where we would disagree.
Faith Breaker1 votesAnd, also, where you'd be wrong
MrPharmD4 votesJust because they are different games doesn't mean you can't compare the balancing efforts of both....
Like, I'm not even sure what you're getting at here? Care to explain how you can't compare the efforts made by a balance team to those made by a balance team of a different game?
BloodyTompon1 votesBalance is dependant on the surround systems, so you cannot separate the balance from the game eco-system. Data and Riot do not have the same eco-system, they have vastly different ones.
MrPharmD1 votesThat does not explain why you cannot compare the efforts made by each balance team. OP is not asking to compare the balance of the games. He is asking to compare the balance team. As in, why does DoTA's balance team seem to be able to keep a large pool of champions viable whereas League has the same exact champions picked/banned every single LCS game.
Maybe your confusion on the matter is thinking OP is asking to compare balance and not the balance team.
BloodyTompon1 votesWhich has to do with the balance of the game
MrPharmD2 votesI have no idea how DoTA is in terms of balance. Haven't played it. But I'm going to make up an example.
In DoTA, champion A is normally ok. Champion A becomes too strong with the most recent patch. They are picked/banned every game. They have excellent synergy with a recently buffed/introduced item A (which is also causing other select champs to be strong). DoTA balance team recognizes that item A is probably the cause of the problems and adjusts it accordingly. Good balance team.
Same example in League. League proceeds to nerf the champion. Rito then nerfs the item that was causing the problems in the first place. Champion A is now extremely weak and rito completely ignores the fact that they were overnerfed, so their playrate is obnoxiously low forever. This move is known as the 
. Shitty balance team.
There, I just compared the balance teams. With complete disregard to the accuracy of the DoTA comparison, it is completely acceptable to compare balance teams.
Make sense?
