I will no longer be using the PBE to test changes

Lucifer·Feb 24, 2015·200 votes·7,182 views

Because it's obvious you just shove 99.99% of them live without listening to any of our input. Why are we even testing stuff there? Is it only to check for bugs? You might as well just ship all your balance changes directly to live if you don't care at all what the community has to say about it.

Veigar is unplayable after this patch. He was bad before, but you seem to want to kick him when he's down. Bravo, Riot. Do you know the last time I heard someone complain about Veigar being "unfair" to play against? Like season 1. Meanwhile apparently Zed is healthy and Le Blanc is totally not problematic. J4 is getting a love tap (despite being used in LCS and solo q almost exclusively) and Lee Sin is again being left alone. So frustrated that I literally won't give the PBE another minute of my time.

101 Comments

SmokingPuffinFeb 24, 201543 votes

Why are we even testing stuff there? Is it only to check for bugs?

Well, it's not only bugs, but the PBE is almost never for balance testing. To do balance work, they need high elo game data, and neither the PBE population nor the PBE matchmaking is up to the task of getting you much on that topic.

They have an internal team of high elo players for balance testing, and I would imagine those folks have much more informed opinions than the average PBEer.

lojicianFeb 24, 201510 votes

If they balanced on the basis of high elo fighters wouldn't be trash. They balance plenty of shit for the non-kiting masses.

SmokingPuffinFeb 25, 201524 votes

Fighters aren't trash in competitive play. They're pretty well represented in the meta. Per gamepedia, there are 20 champions picked or banned in 20+% of LCK games this season. Here's how they break down:

Fighter 5 LeeSin Gnar RekSai Rumble Jayce Mage 5 Lissandra Morgana Xerath Azir Annie Support 4 Janna Lulu Thresh Nami Marksman 3 Corki Sivir Tristana Assassin 3 Kassadin Leblanc Rengar Tank 1 JarvanIV ... and you can easily argue he should be classed as a fighter. Tanks need buffs.

Of course, particular fighters are trash. Quite a few of them, in fact. You can say the same thing about every class, though, so it's not such a great argument for the class being weak.

One thing I will mention is that Riot has been pretty aggressive about culling the "ball of stats" fighters from competitive play. You look at this list of fighters, and they've all got skillshots and outplay potential. Stuff like Shyvana XinZhao Jax is nowhere to be seen.

They balance plenty of shit for the non-kiting masses.

I think they ensure that stuff isn't OP for low elo. If it would be OP for low elo, they opt to not have it be viable in competitive play. I think their first look on balance is high elo, though; they're pretty willing to have pubstompers like Heimerdinger and Malzahar be strong for low elo play.

lojicianFeb 25, 20154 votes

I was obviously talking about lane fighters. And then you bring up gnar, jayce, and rumble? When people say "fighter" they don't mean "anyone who is occasionally melee". Those three have gameplay patterns nothing like standard fighters with either a ranged auto attack that they use the majority of the time in lane or doing the majority of their damage through ranged harass skills. Trying to tell someone rumble is good when they say fighters are bad is completely dodging the point and playing games with semantics instead of addressing the claim. The only real "fighter" you could bring up that does ok in this meta is irelia.

And you didn't play top if you think those champions had no potential to outplay or be outplayed.

SmokingPuffinFeb 25, 20159 votes

I was obviously talking about lane fighters.

That wasn't obvious to me. Perhaps I'm dense.

And then you bring up gnar, jayce, and rumble? When people say "fighter" they don't mean "anyone who is occasionally melee".

In order to remain neutral in the inevitable conflict about who is and isn't a fighter, I simply took Riot's "primary: fighter" class designation.

The only real "fighter" you could bring up that does ok in this meta is irelia.

Even if I accept your terms, and limit myself to "real fighters" that play in top lane, I still think we have pretty good options. For example, nerfplz lists the following top laners as "Gods":

Irelia JarvanIV MonkeyKing Sion

...and these as "strong choices":

Tryndamere Fiora Renekton Nasus Riven RekSai

Not all of these are commonly seen in competitive play, but there is pretty good variety available here.

lojicianFeb 25, 20152 votes

Stop trying to hid behind riot's half assed "definitions" that everyone on this forum knows are inaccurate. You claim it's for neutrality but all it serves to do is muddy clear meaning. You're completely ignoring how language actually works so you can deflect meaningful criticism and throw up a strawman. Yeah "riot fighters" are ok. Fighters are not.

Who is this guy and why are you citing someone that claims j4 and wukong are god tier tops and gnar and lulu are in the third tier? Yeah I guess there is "pretty good variety" if you take random lists that don't correlate with high level play. Do you even play any of those champions?

When you're done being intellectually dishonest maybe you can go look at top lane use rates in actual pro games since you're making claims about riot balancing for high level play.

SmokingPuffinFeb 25, 20152 votes

Stop trying to hid behind riot's half assed "definitions" that everyone on this forum knows are inaccurate. You claim it's for neutrality but all it serves to do is muddy clear meaning.

Nobody agrees on the definitions. I could use my personal opinion, like you do, and spend all my time arguing semantics. I choose not to do so, doesn't seem productive.

Where is the clear meaning you speak of? Certainly not here:

Yeah "riot fighters" are ok. Fighters are not.

I honestly have no idea what you mean. Can you explain what you're trying to say?

When you're done being intellectually dishonest maybe you can go look at top lane use rates in actual pro games since you're making claims about riot balancing for high level play.

nerfplz is a pretty popular source. You can always complain about opinions, nobody will ever be 100% right, but it's as good a source as I know for solo queue tiering.

I already covered the pro scene. You complained about that coverage, so I offered another source. You complained about that one, too. How about you pick a source and do some legwork this time?

lojicianFeb 25, 20151 votes

Fighters as defined by riot tags are competitively viable. Fighters defined as champions whose main interactions are closing to melee range and beating you to death from melee range (not the same as a tank who tries to cc people so others can kill them), ie the definition people actually use when they're not trying to play games with it, are vastly inferior to mages and ranged champions. This was obvious and I'm pretty sure you could have figured it out if you were attempting to communicate instead of playing word games to justify incorrect beliefs.

I complained about your definition not your source. You conveniently decided to switch sources to a new completely inferior one once the initial real source no longer agreed with your claim because you had to stop playing games with definitions. Don't pin that on me.

So use pro pick rates in conjunction with the commonly understood definition of "fighter" and tell me how good fighters are at top lane.

SmokingPuffinFeb 25, 20153 votes

{quoted}

Fighters as defined by riot tags are competitively viable. Fighters defined as champions whose main interactions are closing to melee range and beating you to death from melee range (not the same as a tank who tries to cc people so others can kill them), ie the definition people actually use when they're not trying to play games with it, are vastly inferior to mages and ranged champions. This was obvious and I'm pretty sure you could have figured it out if you were attempting to communicate instead of playing word games to justify incorrect beliefs.

The bolded doesn't strike me as obvious. When I compare Jarvan and Ahri (to pick two strong meta picks I understand pretty well), I see champions with very different strengths and weaknesses. I don't think "Jarvan has no chance of competing with Ahri". Generally speaking, I would expect Ahri to win a mid lane, Jarvan would win a top lane, and both have very different but still compelling roles in teamfights.

Also, I don't agree that your definition of fighter is commonly accepted. I've tried using that as the baseline and the only thing I accomplish is that I get a different set of people angry at me over my choice of definition.

I complained about your definition not your source. You conveniently decided to switch sources to a new completely inferior one once the initial real source no longer agreed with your claim because you had to stop playing games with definitions. Don't pin that on me.

Since you said "the meta", and not something specific to LCK or the Korean pro scene, I thought you might be interested in a more broad assessment of the meta. The pro pick rates are as I quoted them, and I provided a link should you wish to verify them. I have no intent to deceive.

So use pro pick rates in conjunction with the commonly understood definition of "fighter" and tell me how good fighters are at top lane.

Can do, with some caveats.

I do not have a statistical breakdown of what is seeing picks in top lane, so I will go by my personal recollection of which champions from the 20 are being seen there. Therefore I will not attempt to break this down by relative popularity or win rates.

Also, I caution you that this analysis doesn't speak to the broad reality of the class. "Melee autoattacking champions are weak in this particular role" is a very different statement than "fighters are weak".

Now the, my estimate is that the following champions from the earlier gamepedia link are seeing regular top lane play: Lissandra Gnar RekSai Rumble Rengar JarvanIV Morgana

Of these, I think that the following are champions "whose main interactions are closing to melee range and beating you to death from melee range": RekSai Rengar JarvanIV

I'm not sure how to place Rumble here. You seem quite certain he's not a fighter, but I don't see any better category for him. He's melee ranged, pretty tanky, and deals sustained damage.

lojicianFeb 25, 20152 votes

Oh please. You know exactly why you decided to switch sources to some guy who thinks wukong top is way better than gnar. If you really wanted to talk about the 'meta' you would bring up actual high elo pick rates. Not that that would perfectly show what was "good" because unlike professionals people play for fun and not purely to win. Hence all the riven.

What region are you looking at where reksai, rengar, and jarvin are seeing regular top lane play? More than say kennen and lulu? Maybe you're confusing top lane and jungle.

Yeah I'm discussing "the class" as an actual meaningful grouping: champions that have some similar playstyle. You're right this does say nothing about "the class" meaning a collection of completely dissimilar champions with playstyles that look nothing alike that riot happened to stick the same tag on. So I don't really care what is broadly true about your definition of 'fighter' given how your definition doesn't actually serve to describe the elements of the set beyond "guy with a melee autoattack (sometimes)".

You don't have to place rumble anywhere. The question is whether champions with a certain playstyle are viable and rumble does not have that playstyle. If he had to be in melee instead of within 600 range to do his damage he would suck. So he's not relevant to the discussion except to note he's a non "fighter" who outclasses "fighters" at top lane.

SmokingPuffinFeb 25, 20152 votes

{quoted}

Oh please. You know exactly why you decided to switch sources to some guy who thinks wukong top is way better than gnar. If you really wanted to talk about the 'meta' you would bring up actual high elo pick rates. Not that that would perfectly show what was "good" because unlike professionals people play for fun and not purely to win. Hence all the riven.

I can only assert that this was not my intent. You seem to be going out of your way to assume malice. I don't get it.

If you wish, we can talk about high elo solo queue pick rates. I think you'll find fighters are doing pretty well statistically there. Again, I don't have any good way of breaking out top lane fighter picks specifically, so I can't do any statistical breakdown for just that lane.

What region are you looking at where reksai, rengar, and jarvin are seeing regular top lane play? More than say kennen and lulu? Maybe you're confusing top lane and jungle.

I watch way more LCK (Korean proleague) than I watch anything else. I think it is more accurate to consider LCK than LCS for discussions of balance, because the best players and teams in the world play there.

Turning to specific champions in LCK meta:

I would say that Rengar is third or fourth in popularity among KR top laners today.
Jarvan I think goes top mostly for the confusion value of being unsure whether he is top or jungle, but he's also pretty common.
Rek'sai was a big thing prior to her recent nerfs, now she's not very common but her top lane pick rate was so high that she's still in the >20% pick rate category.
Kennen is not a thing in Korea. I'm not really familiar with Kennen being a thing anywhere, in fact.
In Korea, Lulu is mostly a mid, sometimes a support, once in a blue moon a top.
Lately we are seeing a ton of Morgana, as she is quite strong in the 1v2 lane.

lojicianFeb 25, 20151 votes

When someone fallaciously dodges legitimate points to prop up a conclusion that evidence completely opposes enough times, you assume it's intentional.

I don't know if you're incredibly confused or what but here is a site where you can look at the lineups that were used in pro korean games.

http://lol.gamepedia.com/2015_LCK_Spring/Scoreboards/Round_Robin/Week_6

Looking at the last full week there were many mages, lots of gnar, three lulu tops, and 0 of the 3 fighters you claimed are common top laners being used in top lane.

Edit: I just looked through every game posted for this season. There is literally one game where someone played rengar top and besides that none of your list of 3 was played top lane. Lulu was an incredibly common top lane pick, probably top 5 along with lissandra, rumble, mao, and gnar. I really don't know what to tell you. I don't know if this is some really weird troll or what but you're just wrong.

SmokingPuffinFeb 25, 20151 votes

When someone fallaciously dodges legitimate discussion to prop up a conclusion that evidence completely opposes enough times you assume it's intentional.

This is a ridiculous claim. I did my level best to understand what you were saying and respond in good faith.

I'm done here. Have a good day.

lojicianFeb 25, 20151 votes

Cool. Before you leave look at that site I linked you and stop making claims that are blatantly false.

Malix FarwinFeb 25, 20153 votes

Forgot Zed JarvanIV Nidalee Graves

SmokingPuffinFeb 25, 20152 votes

I didn't forget these. JarvanIV is listed. Korea is not a big fan of Zed or Graves . Nidalee will eventually make the list, but she was changed too recently to have appeared in enough games yet.

hashinshinFeb 25, 20157 votes

Did you just include rumble and jayce as fighters? If you put them in their proper categories you'd start to see just how absurd the mage/fighter representation is.

SmokingPuffinFeb 25, 201510 votes

In order to remain neutral in the inevitable conflict about who is and isn't a fighter, I simply took Riot's "primary: fighter" class designation.

This means that Jayce, who strikes me as more marksman than fighter, is in the fighter column.

It also means that Jarvan, who strikes me as more fighter than tank, is in the tank column.

I don't think that Rumble makes sense to call a mage, any more than he makes sense to call a fighter.

SlaaneshineFeb 25, 20154 votes

If anything Rumble is a fighter. He goes in basically Melee and dishes it out, albeit with spells mainly.

And even though Jarvan is considered a tank, I never see him played like one or even built like one for that matter. They just all build solid bursty damage until like 25 minutes in.

WelcomeToTheJgFeb 25, 20152 votes

bro Jayce has a more op poke then Xerath

The EcdysiastFeb 25, 20152 votes

So you're saying they have a team of people who MAKE SURE the new champions are broken for a few weeks so players are forced to buy them?

SmokingPuffinFeb 25, 20152 votes

I do think Riot likes to release champs on the strong side.

I wouldn't say they make sure to do so -- Gnar was pretty awful, Azir was broken in the buggy way, Vel'Koz was pretty zzz, and Lissandra took ages to become respected.

DeusVultFeb 25, 201528 votes

Of course Riot listens to the community about stuff on PBE

it just depends on who is getting hit on PBE and who is complaining

Like when they nerfed LeeSin on PBE, and all the pros and high elos who abuse him went ape-shit with their river of tears and riot removed the changes from PBE

but if your play any other pleb champ who doesn't make LC$BIGPLAY$, then Riot gives no fucks about what their changes will do to your champ Cassiopeia Veigar Mordekaiser

Sightless66Feb 25, 20158 votes

Like when they nerfed on PBE, and all the pros and high elos who abuse him went ape-shit with their river of tears and riot removed the changes from PBE

Didn't happen. Lee hasn't actually had a nerf on the PBE that hasn't gone through. There was a rework proposal that they made to the community which didn't go onto the PBE because everyone hated it. It was a terrible design. It tried to make his passive the main focus of his kit. I hate Lee, and I still think that's just stupid as fuck. Who the fuck actually really likes Lee's passive? Nobody, that's who.

Learn 2 SwimFeb 25, 201519 votes

Veigar was being played as support in Korea quite a bit and was a counter to scumbag riots league of mobility plans

Manchester 5mashFeb 25, 20153 votes

only one mage support allowed at a time Annie

Linna ExcelFeb 25, 20151 votes

Three including Lux and Zyra .

Subject 5Feb 25, 20158 votes

On the bright side, they are nerfing Janna. Because i love to see Thresh every game in my ranked games :DDDDDD

Fuck.

Circuit BearFeb 25, 20152 votes

And Leona and Blitz.

mjack33Feb 25, 20156 votes

PBE is basically now a way for the community to preview content in its final stages of bug testing.

The problem with that? ..... I'm not sure. I like seeing stuff early.

AlbireoFeb 25, 20151 votes

It's like they forget about all the game breaking bugs found in the pbe, even in really recent ones, like Zyra invisible E, or like the crashing ones, Sion's Q, Darius W hitting inhib towers, shaco's ult.

Linna ExcelFeb 25, 20156 votes

I have to agree with Sophita. PBE seems mostly for finding bugs and only occasionally checking a community reaction if the devs are unsure. Still if you want to test out new skins, you can.

It also seems very disorganized by riot's part. Champ threads either don't get pinned or stay pinned until a month after a champ is released. Not enough communication with testers. Difficulty finding if riot even knows if there is an issue aside from a bug. No clear disclaimer saying they just want bugs and not other feedback, like feel or if something is broken. No care if there's an issue with art assets that aren't considered a bug, like no care if you are saying "hey riot, if you do this one little thing that skin you are selling will look a lot better and might sell better."

This is why I don't test MMOs anymore. There is so much bloody arrogance or ignorance towards beta testers its sickening.

MasterOfTheOrderFeb 25, 20156 votes

I'm going to have to agree with OP here. I used to very frequently play the PBE to help balance the game and to check for bugs. Recently though, the red posts only care about bug reports. PBE went from a place to test changes and make sure the game stayed healthy… into a bug tester. I'm also partially biased, because I prefer to play less mobile champs. Riot has so far disregarded any negative feedback made about changes to non-mobile champs (I'm talking about the PBE specifically). As of this moment in time, I'm not inclined to help them anymore. If this game goes back to being a strategy game (instead of a reflex/skillshot game, which seems to be Riots new direction), I'll be happy to go back and help in the PBE. It's just not worth it anymore since I feel heavily irrelevant and ignored.

JunkοFeb 25, 20154 votes

PBE is a bug tester? Azir

PurodyuusaaFeb 24, 20155 votes

I wonder if it's only because of my own growing distaste in certain ways Riot is handling things, but it's starting feel pretty George Carlin around here lately and to me, that's a good thing.

KaisadiIIaFeb 25, 20155 votes

To be fair, they removed most of Mordekaiser's changes after negative feedback from the community.

Old Man TeetoFeb 24, 20154 votes

Well.... they didn't ship Mordekaiser's retarded change to his passive at least.

I'm actually SUPER excited to play this Kaiser with magnet W, Wukong Q range, and bonus health when you have the pet if you're forced to use it on a tank/bruiser.

... I'm sorry about Veigar though.... Hopefully they'll do something neat to his W, like make it REALLY large if used inside of his Event Horizon?

AbyssionKnightFeb 24, 201513 votes

Keep in mind they did cut your health regen to almost a third of what it formerly was. So it's not all roses for Morde.

SpecterVonBarenFeb 25, 20159 votes

Well they also reduced the health cost on his abilities too.

Raid Boss MordeFeb 25, 20152 votes

Not on his E, which was the only skill that Mordekaiser spammed.

spavinedFeb 25, 20151 votes

the problem is is that he cannot even itemize to regenerate more health efficiently because things are based upon base health regen (eg rejuvenation beads) all he can do for regen is spell vamp now he cant even efficiently go tanky with items such as spirit visage anymore this is exacerbated by the fact that his spells cost health so the spell vamp is used almost solely to soften the health cost and not to actually restore health.

SpecterVonBarenFeb 25, 20155 votes

Yes, it is a severe nerf to his health regen. It's more of Riot's thing like how Diana has crap base attack speed but has a passive that gives her free attackspeed.

NarogFeb 25, 20153 votes

Regen reworks was shove without any real improvement same goes for Jungle rework and the crab the lazers the shield ,ETC.. , Kassidin was 53% winrate in LCS get destroy even if Leblanc and Zed has much more damage much more safe but better buff Ahri right? . Riot just thinks something and does it with any self-criticism , i mean compare the pre season 4 to the pre season 5 there are day and night difference , something change in riot and is ruining the game , when was the last time i read any real good argument from riot? riot used not only to make arguments but they also teach everyone how balance work . If communication is not an option i guess not playing the game is the only other option , i really hope the community notice that Riot is far from what it used to be .

DremiistFeb 25, 20153 votes

{quoted}

Because it's obvious you just shove 99.99% of them live without listening to any of our input. Why are we even testing stuff there? Is it only to check for bugs? You might as well just ship all your balance changes directly to live if you don't care at all what the community has to say about it.

yeah i feel you

you're literally forced to go at riot and talk with them in person and tell them what you don't feel about the change cuz they won't be listening to us on the forum.

or be a challenger player loved from the community and get 2000 upvote inside 24 hour.

classy

Sightless66Feb 25, 20153 votes

Why are we even testing stuff there? Is it only to check for bugs?

Well... yes. The balance testing on the PBE is pretty minimal, and it's just there to find the largest balance problems. The PBE is pretty shit for getting good balance data. We're mostly there just to make sure everything works.

DeathToEcchiFeb 25, 20153 votes

Lets be honest, player perception is only important to balance in a subscription game. The reason for this is that it's simply wrong most of the time. They use the PBE for data gathering, and then they have to figure in a huge amount of variables. If champ X is doing poorly, is this because they need buffs or because they are consistently faced with champ Y that needs nerfs. Is it player performance? Player perception is a tenuous hold on reality at best.

AnimushFeb 25, 20153 votes

I got PBE access just to test Veigar. I have seen a lot of negative feedback on both, pbe boards and reddit. But Riot just doesn't care, they know best.

So yea I am done with PBE as well, and with this game in general. Only gonna play with friends casually.

TheUltimateSpearFeb 25, 20153 votes

I can see why. Whenever Riot "reworks" a champ they just do what they think should be done and if there's any dissent they'll just pump more or less numbers into them until we hush up Cassiopeia Veigar Kassadin . Mordekaiser is lucky that whoever's working on him cares. But, it's just so frustrating that some champs get special treatment LeeSin . But I'm not talking about just power level here, nope. I'm talking about well-thought out ideas. Take Ahri . Fan favorite, and when Riot even dare touches her, they giver her changes that make sense. Better or worse or more or less fun is debatable, but they definitely gave a lot of thinking into giving her small scale rework changes. Her Q movespeed flows with the idea of a kite-mage, instead of the clearly half-assed bullshit we got for Cassiopeia Veigar because they're not popular . Or just letting some champs they don't care about be nerfed into oblivion Kassadin and slap us in the face with mockery 'buffs' for those who've been there for a while. Evelynn . Take Leblanc . When they buffed her, they gave her more time to return to distortion and increased the stealth on mirror image which makes sense for the character and are cool elements of her kit. Not to mention, she is a popular pick in both solo and competitive play, so of course they'd get it right in her case of course. Just... ugh, so stupid. Now I know I'm not missing anything by not having a PBE account because Riot won't give a shit unless they personally care about a champ.

ByrnesFeb 25, 20152 votes

{quoted}

Is it only to check for bugs? You might as well just ship all your balance changes directly to live if you don't care at all what the community has to say about it.

I've actually been thinking about this recently. What is the point of the PBE? The general consensus is that Riot doesn't take feedback seriously, unless like the entire community is in 100% agreement about what color a new skin's hair should be. Then one would believe it was for game breaking bug fixes. But what patch in the past 2 years hasn't introduced some game breaking bug or mechanic. Hell, every patch hell breaks loose in some way or another and things break all over the place. As someone who doesnt use the PBE, is there in fact a reason it exists?