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The high skill cap champions are NOT OP, get over yourselves

LaserDeathBlade·2/2/2015, 9:38:33 PM·9 votes·3,962 views

EDIT: Some general mind-set adjustments for Zed:

  1. If you're picking a mage mid, you are not and should not be favored to win lane. You are lose your 1v1 by default. That's how it should be, and how it will be.

  2. Just because Zed has kills doesn't mean he's carrying.

  3. Just because you're facing Zed doesn't mean you have a right to intentionally feed. "oh my god I can't believe team is reporting me for going 0/12 against Zed, that champ is OP"

  4. Mages outscale Zed for any solo queue team that is in any way coordinated.

Zed/Lee/Thresh/Yasuo don't need nerfs, and if the community pressures Riot into nerfing them, the changes will at most be small love taps like Zed's AS nerfs because:

  1. LC$ big plays (OBVIOUSLY). These champions are balanced for a different type of gameplay. If you think even diamond/masters solo queue even comes close to LC$ in terms of TEAM COORDINATION, then I urge you to actually watch a pro game and compare it to a yolo queue game.
  2. They're not even that strong in LC$. The most notable picks have been mostly the Gnar-van combo. Annie/Janna/Jarvan/Corki are in almost every game, and yet we're sitting here complaining about Lee.
  3. THEY'RE NOT OP. They're arguably top-tier LCS picks due to the nature of competitive play, but they're at most 'strong picks' in regular play.

Every statistic we have publicly available indicates that these commonly QQ'd about champs like Zed and Lee are nowhere near overpowered

A quick look on Lolking will show:

  • None of these LC$ champions have a high rate across ANY ELO
  • Thresh and Lee are actually the ONLY champions in the top 10 popularity list with a NEGATIVE WINRATE
  • None of these LC$ champions are popular bans. Zed is the only exception.

And of course accordingly, champion tier lists indicate that none of these commonly QQ'd about LC$ champions are top-tier:

What we WILL notice is what we all all probably know but refuse to acknowledge:

  • The faceroll champions are consistently high-performing across all ELOs
  • The faceroll champions are consistently banned across all ELOs, indicating both strength and frustration to play
  • against
  • God-tier and Tier-1 consist almost exclusively of face-roll champions

But this isn't something that comes as a surprise. Faceroll champions tend to be balls of stats, don't need to make flashy plays, and are hard to screw up. In League, we look for consistent performers.** Making plays every once in a while doesnt mean shyt.**

So that brings to question, why does GD insist on whining about these champions that are not even remotely close to the strongest picks?

  • Is it because we get butt-hurt if we get outplayed?
  • Is it because we really hate getting killed a lot by Zed, and we forget kills don't mean shyt?
  • Is it because we hate not being able to catch Zed/Lee despite 'outplaying' them because we again forget kills don't mean shyt?

TL;DR Quit being butthurt and begging for nerfs. Take a moment to analyze what's actually happening in your games. I guarantee you the 5/0 Zed at 20 minutes isn't carrying nearly as hard as you think he is.

43 Comments

Zmuecat2/2/2015, 9:44:22 PM5 votes

Okay, fine. Let's say they aren't OP, for some magical reason.

Why does the balance team approach them so differently when they are played all the time, versus most other champions?

Why does Zed get a nerf that looks so small but it supposed to take care of his split pushing, but mages as a whole get mana regen nerfs and an item removed with little to no compensation?

Are there different teams at work here? Because Lee Sin has been a force in the jungle for who knows how long, Zed is just annoying, and Thresh could do zero damage and still be a monster.

Killer X 122/2/2015, 10:03:54 PM4 votes

While i agree Zed is not OP, basically calling everyone stupid (even tho it seems people are) doesn't really help.

Ash Lockheart2/2/2015, 10:36:27 PM3 votes

Some one loves there Op champ very much. But sorry. a champ that can tower dive at 6, and just shadow to get away is pretty OP in my book.

insaiyanbacca2/2/2015, 10:07:28 PM3 votes

agreed if they are so op and broken then why are their win-rates not skyrocketing?

Malix Farwin2/2/2015, 10:24:40 PM3 votes

Yasuo doesnt need nerf, he is already free kills. the rest you are completely wrong on

Leti the Yeti2/2/2015, 9:41:33 PM2 votes

that actually confuses me greatly zed and lee sin being OP is like aliens no hard statistical evidence suggest they are but you can get so many many many many fking testaments that they are fking OP and I would agree, I'm surprised this broken champ isnt winning more games

YossarianSensei2/2/2015, 10:31:34 PM2 votes

Nah lets nerf all the junglers until everyone's just spamming Sej/Vi/J4, then GD will be begging to have Pee Sin back.

chide da jungler2/2/2015, 10:33:05 PM2 votes

This is a straw-man argument because there are no high-skill-cap champions. Every champion in this game is easy to play and you will be have them figured out within 10-20 games. Yes some champions require some faster reflexes or mouse-macros (lee sin).

I guess you could define harder champions as those who rely on skillshots, but that also has a lot to do with projectile speed and bit-box size.

Anyway, despite what the haters say, most any champ that continuously holds a winrate in plat+ above 52% for weeks on end is probably over-tuned.

Cale0172/2/2015, 10:25:56 PM1 votes

Zed, yes. Lee, yes, Thresh, no. Yasuo hell no.

See Thresh honestly does take skill. Landing his Q can be pretty iffy if you don't know what you're doing, but once you do you're well rewarded with how hard he can zone the enemy laners and how easily he can lock down someone for your team to eat alive.

Yasuo crumbles under pressure. I'm aware of how annoying he can be to deal with, but he doesn't exactly have a super high winrate.

Zed and Lee Sin both have free poke, high amounts of both AoE and single target damage, CC, and strong escape mechanisms. Lee Sin has even more, with inherent sustain and shielding in his kit along with an execute and really high mixed damage. Zed is probably the more difficult of the two to play, but neither of them take nearly as much skill as they're sold to be. I learned to play Lee Sin in about a day, all of maybe four matches, and quickly decided that no matter how effective he was I wasn't going to play him, partly because I didn't personally enjoy the feel of his kit and partly because I felt that it was too easy to do well for how much he gives when you do. It felt like jungling off Warwick or Yi, like I was just being handed kills and assists out the wazoo without having to put in much more effort than hitting my Q.

Both of these champions DO have really high skill caps. The better the player the more use they're going to get out of them, which is where all those LC$ BIG PLAYZZZ come from. But unfortunately they give entirely too much to lower leveled players, who can still use them to overwhelm opponents even if they can't pull Insec level combos, more Lee Sin than Zed. Zed is too safe, too easy, and Lee Sin is just too overloaded.

All Zed needs is maybe a bit of a damage nerf, since him having a strong escape is pretty good overall. Lee Sin needs some serious damage nerfing, as his ability to make big plays shouldn't be reliant on some of the highest scaling abilities in the game. He should not be able to keep up in damage with people building two or three items while building a Hydra and then straight tank. If it's his ability to make big plays that makes him strong, he shouldn't also need to 100-0 people the way he does. Sure, he falls off in the late game where it isn't a good idea to Q into the enemy team, and he can't pick out individual people during a fight to duel and delete, but at that point he's already gotten his own team fed off kills and assists so him falling off doesn't matter quite as much.

Ellphi2/2/2015, 10:14:04 PM1 votes

GD has no logic.

Akali gets hit hard in the nerf, Zed gets a love tap

"herr muh gurrd Rito so biased, y nerf akali but not Zeedo???? Definitly not becos Akali god-tier mid!"