Doing A Math: Balance Changes & Damage Creep

Doing A Math: Balance Changes & Damage Creep

(Data tables and conclusions near the bottom, if you just want the tl:dr, and not the how/why.)

The purpose of this data collection is to see the trends the balance team tends to take with the purpose of seeing what direction these changes take during champion balance updates during patches 8.1-8.4. “Is there damage creep?” “Do champions get nerfed, or is it all buffs?” I’ll separate them into 5 categories. If something crosses into multiple categories, I will count all the relevant categories.

Damage: “This thing does more damage/less damage to champions”. (Damage to only minions/monsters I’ll fit under Utility) Defense: “This Champion is more survivable/less survivable”. Cost: “This thing costs more/has less cost.” Utility: Crowd Control, as well as Misc stuff (such as Barrel Duration being lowered, range changes, or buff duration increasing). Cooldown: “This thing is up more often/less often.”

Extra Data: Berf: The amount of times the same aspect of a champion’s kit is simultaneously buffed and nerfed (ex: Kalista getting lower BAD, and higher AS. Ornn W getting higher Rank 1 W damage, and lower rank 5 W damage, talon getting MR when losing Armor). O: Offensive Ability D: Defensive Ability U: Ultimate ability

Notes about data collection: I’ll only be recording changes to champions here, as changes to runes, the ecosystem, or items are often harder to quantify. Further, I’ll be regarding each change a champion gets to each ability in the same patch separately. Ex: Darius gets a buff to E Armor Pen, and a buff to W damage, is two ticks in “Damage”, ornn gets a damage buff and a damage nerf, is a tick in each. Renekton Q damage buff and empowered Q damage buff, counts as ‘one’ because it’s the same ability, and the difference is the empower which is functionally a % increase.

I’m not going to differentiate how ‘hard’ each individual nerf or buff is. Whether something cripples a Champion or is a slap on the wrist is mostly subjective, and most nerfs/buffs wind up being relatively equal-ish. That’s a ton more work, and the purpose is to see what kinds of changes Riot makes, not the severity.

Finally, I won’t be counting bugfixes. Technically, fixing the Jax E (insert Riiiight through the counterstrike! meme here) is something like a minor defensive or utility buff, but I’m looking for intended balance changes to champions, not ‘fixing what should have been there’ already.

https://imgur.com/mGMHqf1.jpg?noredirect https://imgur.com/8pvepLp.jpg?noredirect https://imgur.com/7kR6cto.jpg?noredirect

Conclusions: We can see that over the last 4 months, changes have been largely around offense. Damage counts for 55 ticks, and every other category combined counts for 59 ticks. When the balance team wants to change something, it is most often the damage. When a champions damage is reduced, 36% of the time the damage of the same ability/their autoattacks are buffed.

Defenses, whether they’re active defenses like shields/heals, or passive defenses like base stats, barely get touched, either to be increased or decreased.

Utility tends to be increased (if you ignore the zoe part), and costs tend to be lowered. Ultimate Cooldowns show a slight trend downward, while non-ultimate cooldowns show a slight trend upward.