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Is it just me, or is the champion pool a lot smaller than it seems?

KillerPenguins·11/22/2014, 12:02:19 AM·4 votes·910 views

The status quo seems to be that the ~40 most popular champions get nerfed and buffed only with respect to each other, with no regard for the other 80, because they're the ones who impact the big numbers the most. What I mean is that a .2% change in vayne's power changes the outcome of more games than a 10% change in urgot's power so of course riot plans their changes with that in mind. The problem with this philosophy, in my opinion, is that it means the less-picked champions just don't seem to matter at all. The game is entirely balanced around the most popular champions which means there's no need or reason to try a less popular champion as a counter. Just itemize appropriately and the champion you're playing hardly matters at all. Yeah, I'm effectively saying the game is balanced too well. Why should I pick poppy as a counter for zed when I can just stick with kat, rush a zhonyas, and not have to worry about getting raged at for being unconventional? I'm not sure if I'm just imagining it because I tend to play the less-picked champions, or if this is what's actually happening, but I feel as though the vast majority of the 122 champions i own are completely irrelevant to the game as a whole. Does this bother anyone else? Am I an insane rambling penguin? I don't know, but I thought I'd put this out there and try to see what people think.

TL;DR - The game is balanced so any champion can counter any champion, which makes getting good at one champion matter more than having a large pool. Discuss.

16 Comments

DWT1234511/22/2014, 12:05:13 AM1 votes

i dont understand... they keep on trying to make less picked champions more viable in the jungle, but to do it, they change the jungle and make all these new items... when they could just... you know.... buff the less picked champs?

AtheosisX11/22/2014, 12:07:12 AM1 votes

How do you define "irrelevant"? Not being optimal in organized pro level play doesn't mean a champ is "irrelevant".

SmokingPuffin11/22/2014, 12:19:20 AM1 votes

Generally speaking, you're right that about 40 champions form the core of competitive play at any given time.

The thing is, which 40 they are changes quite frequently.

Let me take you back to the start of the year. Here's the most popular champions in each role:

Top: Shyvana DrMundo Renekton Mid: Leblanc Yasuo Kassadin Jungle: Elise LeeSin ADC: Lucian Sivir Jinx Support: Annie Leona Thresh

Now, some of these are familiar faces, but rather a lot of them have dropped out of the meta. Overall, about 100 champions are in the meta rotation, and the other 20 are deemed unhealthy and left intentionally undertuned so as to let Riot not consider them for competitive balance purposes.

Miku Lv9911/22/2014, 1:06:44 AM1 votes

I think that, as crazy as it sounds, the other 80 pretty much must be almost completely irrelevant in order for it to be even remotely balanced. Let's face it, there are a lot of champions that are only good on, or against, very specific teams. As such, they need to be bad with or against almost every team in order to not end up being OP where they are already usable. So I don't think it's really even possible to have more than about 40 or so champions that are actually good any decent amount of the time.

AtheosisX11/22/2014, 4:47:54 AM1 votes

That's the thing that amuses me about all these balance QQ threads. For pretty much all the people who play this game, especially if they play in solo queue, most of the champs in this game are relatively balanced. I'm not saying that there aren't tiers as seen in all the tier lists out there or that there aren't some real stinkers (like Urgot). I'm not saying that the game is perfectly balanced or even close to it. At the same time compared to the vast majority of competitive games out there League of Legends is one of the most balanced games you'll find. I mean go play multiplayer FPS's (pretty much any of them) and tell me the guns aren't vastly more unbalanced than LoL's champs.

It basically boils down to the fact that the balance is not perfect and therefore pro play is dominated by certain champs and team comps, which is absurd seeing as 99.999999% of players are not on that level and can not replicate their team strats. Constantly whining about pro-level balance when you are not a pro is just dumb.