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I don't like to think Riot has biases, but...

Hellioning··3 votes·1,027 views

I get that Sej needs nerfs. I knew she would need nerfs a soon as I saw Cinderhulk; she was already pretty strong beforehand, this just put her over the top.

But I'm genuinely confused as to why she's getting nerfed immediately when several champions, such as Katarina and Blitzcrank, have similar winrates and pickrates, and yet there's not a single balance change for them on the PBE. Sion is actually higher winrate in the jungle, though he's at a lower pickrate and is getting a minor nerf on the PBE right now.

My major complaint with balance (since I'm fairly certain Veigar and Zilean's changes were a different team entirely) is how inconsistent they are. Is winrate the end-all be-all of balance, or isn't it? I've heard both. Is mobility creep a problem? I've heard Riot say that, but the next champion release was Kalista. I just genuinely have not idea what their plans and ideas for the game is besides 'diversity' and Riot themselves know how badly they're doing at that.

(Source on win/pick rates: Champion.gg)

19 Comments

Zahz3 votes

I like how lee, zed, and kat have been a problem for literally over a yaer and barely got a slap on the wrist. Sej has one week of being top tier and they come out swinging the nerf bat at her

LordCrazyGlue1 votes

same thing happened to WW after new jungler items got introduced! Lee Players freaked out. Rito comes in with a giant nerf bat. Now Sej has a safer kit than lee and can engage from range and Lee players are having a kitten over it. Similar to how LB used to ROFL Stomp Zed when she had a silence. Zed couldn't do his jukes for #lcsbigplays and bye bye silence

Phife1 votes

Shes been warrenting a small nerf for a bit, but its easy to narrow down the problem with someone like sejuani's kit.

She has a slow / stun / knock up / %max hp dmg. You can easily tune one of these down and observe her power levels. Whereas if you nerfs kats E or W or Q a bit its the whole champion that gets put at risk of not being played.

Riots intention is to put every champ on a somewhat even playing field. Simply put, its easier with some champs than it is for others.

Hellioning1 votes

True enough (though I question if her Q really counts a knockup and not a ministun, but that's DotA terminology so meh).

If that's the case (and I'm not sure if Kat is really someone hanging on that razor's edge) than shouldn't Kat get a rework? But I haven't heard anything about that.

Phife1 votes

They almost reworked her into having more AD ratios and making her E reset auto attacks... But shes of questionable characteristics.

Sona Ping1 votes

{quoted}

when several champions...have similar winrates and pickrates,

Because those statistics are meaningless to how the champion functions. #LeeSin #Skarner

Hellioning1 votes

Then how would you balance, if not by winrate and pickrate? KDA?

I'm genuinely curious. I've seen a lot of 'winrate means nothing' and I can understand that, but I don't know how else you can balance something; 'X wins more than Y' tends to imply that X is stronger than Y.

Sona Ping1 votes

KDA? Oh god, no. Tanks would alternately get super-buffed and nerfed every other patch. XD

You would have to balance through pretty deep understanding of the champions kit, their kit, a whole bunch of numbers, their gameplay, their interactions with enemy champions, teammates, team comps, and whole bunch of other stuff.

For the other question: Win rates and pick rates don't mean anything because "Correlation is not causation."; a statistic is just a number, there has to be direct links found through research first to show that the number is even relevant. "As height increases, so does vocabulary" is a completely true correlation but it doesn't imply that learning words makes you taller, there's an outside factor there. There are who knows how many other factors there are that go into those rates other than a champion's individual strength so it can't be said that a champion's rates indicate a direct relationship to their strength.

This can be demonstrated fairly well. For example, I remember sometime a couple years ago Thresh's rates went down significantly, dropping multiple percentage points. A person who believes that stats like win rate or champ synergy have a direct link to how strong a champion is would say "Oh, that must mean Thresh got nerfed severely and is now a much weaker champion", and he would have to be weaker if win rate signified champion strength. But he didn't get nerfed. The reason Thresh's statistics went down was because he became the single most banned champion in League of Legends.

There are plenty of other examples that demonstrate that statistics compiled by different sites like op.gg and the like don't mean anything, like Lee-sin and Skarner who I mentioned.

Hellioning1 votes

Correlation does not imply causation, but it doesn't mean that correlation has nothing to do with causation. As the old joke goes; 'I thought correlation implied causation; then I took a statistics class. Now I don't.'

And I'm not saying that winrate alone is a good measure of success. Under my views, I believe that your example with Thresh is entirely what I would expect. His banrate went up, which means that people did not more experience playing him, which means that when he went unbanned, no one knew how to play him (and were probably pressured into playing him because he's 'OP')

What are you trying to use Lee Sin and Skarner as examples for? I'm guess Lee Sin is 'some champions are stronger than their stats suggest'; are you using Skarner as another example for that?

Sona Ping1 votes

Yes, you are right about Thresh and of course champion strength has something to do with the result, 4.20 Warwick demonstrated that. But what you said about Thresh along with who knows what else in that time period demonstrates the point. Thresh's statistic were changed and went down due to factors that had absolutely nothing to do with Thresh's intrinsic strength as a champion.

To demonstrate something logically and with scientific testing, variables have to be isolated and controlled for the results of the test to matter. If they aren't, the results are meaningless because we would not know what the results are actually indicative of. Win rates, pick rates, and everything else are results in which nothing has been controlled and it can not be reliably said what the results reflect, especially not numbers in a champion's kit.

Lee-sin and Skarner are two champions which most who follow these things know about, hence why I used them.

Lee-sin is famous, and famous two things if nothing else. 1: Lee-sin is blind. Many, many repetitive jokes are made about this. 2. Lee-sin is one of the best junglers. Period. He has been for years. Lee-sin and Jarvan are frequently named to be the perennial top two junglers. Everyone knows that Lee-sin is powerful, even too powerful. Riot acknowledges frequently that Lee-sin has been too powerful for far too long. And then there is Morello's now famous "Lee-sin just shits on people" quote. However, despite how strong he is, Lee-sin's win rates remain relatively low. He is people's one-word reminder about win-rates.

Skarner is a jungler who is on the other side of the spectrum to Lee-sin. He is not one of the few in the champion pool of viable junglers like Lee-sin is. Skarner's not really viable, not even really competitive. A champion among the lowest pick rates in the game, lower than Urgot, even lower than Galio. Skarner has long had problems and Riot has for a long time side basically said "We don't know how to make him work" even through all their reworks and retooling and the only way they have ever figured out to would have to be buff him to such a ridiculous extent he would have to be OP. Funny enough though, today's win rate for Skarner is 54.6%. His combined all region win rate has only dropped below 50% once in the past two weeks. Who knows why that is.

LordCrazyGlue1 votes

Sudden spike or decline in winrate/pickrate is indicator of a needed nerf/buff. We the players actually do tell riot who needs small changes just not on the boards.

Hellioning1 votes

So if someone slightly crawls up in winrate/pickrate it means...what? Do they not need nerfs?

GaleWinUnleashed1 votes

For the most part, if winrate is within the 47-53% range, you can't use it to judge power without more supporting evidence. Winrates have far too many variables involved to just use those numbers without factoring in other things as well.

Hellioning1 votes

Blitz, Kat, and Sion are all rocking 55% winrates according to lolking; if you use champion.gg's numbers, which is only plat+, they're all higher. They're also all relatively popular champions; the lowest is 8.3% pickrate, which is Sion.

AHeroNamedHawke1 votes

Kat is getting nerfed tho

Hellioning1 votes

That's like saying Lee Sin was nerfed a couple of patches ago. True, but -2 armor and -2 health regen per 5 isn't gonna break anything. Likewise, I'm not sure a minor hp regen nerf and a health nerf is gonna matter much.

But yes, that's true. I should have been more careful.

lojician1 votes

People always underestimate how important base stats are for laning.

AHeroNamedHawke2 votes

{quoted}

That's like saying Lee Sin was nerfed a couple of patches ago. True, but -2 armor and -2 health regen per 5 isn't gonna break anything. Likewise, I'm not sure a minor hp regen nerf and a health nerf is gonna matter much.

But yes, that's true. I should have been more careful.

50 hp early game isnt minor m8

Its what killed Yasuo

Abyssphere1 votes

I'll never understand how they balance supports. Constant Janna and Sona nerfs and yet you get Leona and Blitz with similar win rates and much higher pick rates and they're left alone. No chance in hell they're balanced, the kill lane supports are ridiculous right now.

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