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Riot is so careful about "nerfing " ADCs... meanwhile

Amoline Hastur·10/15/2014, 4:34:01 AM·97 votes·10,390 views

Notice how slow and methodical Riot is when it comes to nerfing ADCS. What are supposed to be nerfs to curb these marksmen who are too strong turn into mere powershifts which do little to address the underlying problems with these champions.

Look at Lucians case. We were fed bullshit about 'hes in the lab' for 2 months, and after their supposed experiments they released a champion who was even more obnoxious than his prenerf state, boasting similar base stats and a better passive than a famous melee carry who was butchered at the start of the year(props to you if you know who)

Tristanas situation was similar, a number of almost irrelevant nerfs, and when the populace cried for more, a simple powershift asking her to rely more on her Q.

Meanwhile...

'Hmm Jax's splitpushing seems to be a problem in competitive... butcher him!' - 'Riven seems to be strong in the meta right now.. destroy her!'

People dont notice Shyvana has been the most nerfed champion this year, for example. No compensations or power shifts, just destruction

I could give so many examples, but i dont want a long post. Just look at the champions with lowest popularity coupled with winrates right now, and youll notice a whole host of Riot 'balance fixes' rejects splattered at the bottom.

Why is Riot so biased towards marksmen?

226 Comments

Dat Poonani10/15/2014, 4:43:01 AM42 votes

when they have a problem with assassins they say it cant be solved with 'number tweaking', and then immediately gut the numbers of the said assassin so they stay weak and useless

see evelynn and diana, and to an extent riven

'I can Valkyrie away from Oriannas combo, I cant valkyrie from Diana's, so we're gutting her.' - Phreak

He actually said this, btw

Daisybelle10/15/2014, 4:40:46 AM30 votes

takes them so damn long to get Tristana and Lucian right ( they still havent fixed them btw)

Didnt take them long to 'fix' Jax and Evelynn though

Their bias is obvious, whats sad is people cant see it.

Desmond Law10/15/2014, 5:31:24 AM17 votes

Urgot item 3070

Hayaishi10/15/2014, 4:35:42 AM16 votes

and mages.

It's not adcs though, it's their popular champions.

DarksideEric10/15/2014, 4:50:46 AM16 votes

You do remember Trist was not played for pretty much an entire Season, correct?

That's pretty much how this game works. Where has Graves been? Varus? Miss Fortune? Draven? Ashe?

Trist had no "underlying problem," she's only a problem now because they pretty much removed all her weaknesses.

You don't seem to be taking into account that the Champion pool for ADC is far smaller than that of Top Lane Melees.

There's 15ish is ADCs, not including the "Marksmen" like Teemo and such.

There's easily double that who are viable to go Top, so of course they're more quickly / easily nerfed due to the pool being larger. Ren / Shyv / Mundo all too strong? Nerf them, Darius, Singed and Lee can easily take their place, as well as many others.

Lucian / Trist / Cait too strong? Nerf them so that Varus / Ashe / Jinx can be on the mountain top... but then if you nerf those three, the pool is small enough you'd have to consider re-buffing people you had nerfed before.

103percent10/15/2014, 12:30:56 PM16 votes

Not all ADCs, Sivir got reworked; and then almost immediately after seeing some competitive play and having an above avg win-rate in soloQ they went through and dumpstered her nerfing every single one of her abilities and her passive. So not all ADCs are treated equally.

Long Dong Wukong10/15/2014, 5:42:10 AM14 votes

Meanwhile Skarner is playable for a week and a half

Better fuck him up real good, we can't have a easily kitable champion with a huge ramp up time on speed and damage be fun to play, can we. He is oozing "counterplay" but we'll just fuck his ass after 2 weeks instead.

NaCl Shaker10/15/2014, 4:47:57 AM13 votes

Jayce dominates entire teams from a long range with AoE damage. Untouched for a while now.

Irelia still dominates with high sustain, innate tenacity, works very well with few resists, and has true damage. Still been strong for most of the season.

Ryze has insanely high damage ratios that scale off of mana (???) while being able to itemize for resists. Untouched, if not buffed.

I'm much more scared of the bruisers and mages that go untouched than I am of ADC, ever.

And yeah it's pretty much down to popularity or "doesn't see play but suddenly does and it's so cool he's seeing play so we don't' want to nerf him"

Ripamon10/15/2014, 4:37:21 AM11 votes

They not done yet

sometimes they supposedly compensate them, like Leblanc or Talon. Curiously, those champions are nowhere to be seen. When Akalis winrate and pickrate tanks too, you will realize she was well nerfed, too

Meanwhile Lucian and Tristana are still the most picked and banned champs in the game after their 'nerfs'

Drukyul10/15/2014, 5:27:43 AM10 votes

Tristanas situation was similar, a number of almost irrelevant nerfs

To be fair, she only got strong because of a number of almost irrelevant buffs.

Arcus Diabolus10/15/2014, 3:28:13 PM7 votes

When I first started playing league, I always figured if ADCs were gonna have a near unstoppable late game, then their early game must be crap, so I must be able to easily kill them with someone who starts good and falls off right?

Nope, they get the same early game stats as everyone else with insane scaling into late game. No reason for that.

Poon Slayher10/15/2014, 4:45:27 AM7 votes

this post wont get the attention it deserves purely because it addresses an unpopular truth

load any teambuilder game right now

more than 50% chance to get

Ryze Lee Sin Ahri Lucian(Tristana) Thresh

Rito balance