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The Power Creep is Real (Bonus shout out to mobility creep)

AmazingGoat·9/8/2015, 5:18:57 PM·2 votes·835 views

Here are the recently released new champions:

Tahm Kench Ekko Bard Rek'sai Kalista Azir Gnar Braum Vel'koz Yasuo

Starting with new champion releases, of these, two are supports who have cool mechanics but have a high skill cap and seem slightly underpowered for competitive play: Bard and Tahm Kench.

One is an immobile mage who almost never sees play and has had barely any balance changes: Vel'koz.

The rest have been highly contested picks in competitive play and many have seen multiple rounds of nerfs. The LEAST successful of this group is probably Ekko, who still saw a lot of play as tank Ekko out of the jungle until his base damages were nerfed. Rek'sai, Kalista, Azir, Gnar, and Braum are all competitive picks at the moment, and Azir and Kalista remain best in class despite repeated nerfs. Braum is back as best in class after a recent nerf reversion. Yasuo is back as a strong pick despite his past nerfs.

This post isn't trying to denounce this as a bad thing; instead, it's just serving to point out the obvious power creep effect going on. New champions simply outclass older champions in many respects. This makes sense, as newer champions are for the most part designed with an understanding of the meta in mind (except for poor Vel'koz), but it does tend to leave many older champions out in the cold.

Power creep has permeated recent reworks too. GP is not only a highly contested pick everywhere, but has an absurd win rate in high level competitive play recently. Fiora is a contested pick. Darius was picked in the LPL on patch 5.16 BEFORE his buffs in 5.17. Skarner had a 65% win rate in solo queue before he was toned down and has seen competitive play. Garen and Morde are pick/ban in solo queue. Even Ashe is a contested pick in competitive play.

3 Comments

Ghiefelstein9/8/2015, 5:24:27 PM1 votes

Luckily there are also plenty of older champions who are contested picks in competitive play. Just pointing out that some of the newer champions are popular does not prove that powercreep is a big problem, if you don't compare them to the rest of the roster.

Lugg9/8/2015, 5:30:30 PM1 votes

I disagree that Bard is underpowered in competitive play. If anything, he is OP. He synchronizes so well with a team that understands his kit. There is a reason Aphromoo of CLG has had Bard banned against him. Tahm is interesting in that he is underpowered in lane, but OP as a support. If you have ever played against a good TK, you can pretty much never kill the ADC. If they ever get in trouble, he just eats them and runs back to tower. I had one game where he saved a Corki from death ELEVEN times!

Vel'Koz is the measure they should use for balancing purposes. He is viable at all levels of play without being toxic. As you have pointed out, the power creep is definitely real.