General criticism to the balancing team and some thoughts on ADC and Kai'Sa Patch
Hey guys,
I've been talking to some people the past weeks, mainly Discord/Twitch Communities but also on a Reddit post as well as on Twitter about why I am not happy with the way Riot is currently trying to balance the ADC role and why people, especially AD Carries themselves, never really feel satisfied with their role.
Before I dive into the topic, some Disclaimers;
-> I am not intending to insult or flame anyone working at riot or anyone playing the game. I am doing this to give those people deciding about the balance changes some feedback (mainly criticism) and opening up a discussion about this topic to hopefully get more input from others
-> I for myself am a Diamond 4 ADC main since Season 7 and I'm from EUW (people always like to know this fact so here you go)
-> I hope that we can all stay friendly and respectful. League is a complex game and no-one will ever know everything about it, so let's make this a learning experience. Everyone can be wrong at times, which means that you can feel free to tell me my wrongs with this post etc.
In past posts and talks I mainly have been focusing on the AD Carry part, but while doing some "research" for that I actually found a general thing that kinda annoys me about the balancing.
It's nothing special and really basic: lack of reasoning.
So - what do I mean by that? Well, everyone of us (should) have reasons for their actions and decisions. And I am very sure about the fact that so does Riot, especially the balancing team. Now, if I read the Patch Notes I often can see texts like this one:
Galio's been underperforming for the last few patches so we're helping him out to keep him competitive against other choices.
This is really frustrating to read because it leaves me with the thought that whoever made that change might have had no Idea about how he/she had to approach that champion, in this case Galio.
Because if I'd generalize and simplify this text I'd go with something like this:
Champion X has been bad for some time so we're are upping some of the numbers of that Champions spells and hope he'll be good again.
Why is that important? Let me give you an example everyone should be able to understand:
Why are counterpicks often not very effective in lower elo (Iron-Gold)? -> Because most people in that Elo-Range have no Idea about what is making a certain champion good against another one. So they just go to website X, see that Champion Xs Winrate is high against Champion Y so they pick it, without actually knowing how to make use of the advantage he's gotten for himself.
It makes me think that Riot sees that a certain Champion is too weak (Finding a Counterpick online) but does not know how to help that Champion out (make use of that finding).
This is not the case for every single change Riot is doing which leads me to my second topic.
Looking back at the 8.11 Patch notes, Riot stated clear goals for their changes to AD Carries and gave it their best to try and explain why they're doing what. Even now, when I read that text again, I think that it all makes sense and that the intention is a good one. That the initial result wasn't as intended, is something we all know today, judging by the fact that Riot put in a great preamble in 9.3 revisiting their approach to AD Carries.
These are two good examples for good explanation of changes.
BUT: Looking past 9.3, Riot actually started patching exactly against what they intended to do back in 8.11 AND 9.3.
I've made texts about this very often already, so sorry if this one lacks a bit of explanation, but I'll try my best:
[...] This patch, we're revisiting marksman items with the following goals:
- Crit users are excited about their core build again
- Crit builds are generally more satisfying in normal play (fix the problems mentioned above) without becoming problematic in pro play
- Crit users can fit defense into their core builds if they need it [...]
This is what Riot said in 9.3. They also said that they'll stop adjusting Items post 9.3 and instead want to focus on buffing the weak champs individually.
And this is where I think Riot is doing a huge mistake.
Why?
Well, if we look at the patches 9.3 - 9.18 we mainly see base-stat boosts all across the board. To keep this a bit shorter, I'll focus on Caitlyn.
So what has been changed for Caitlyn past 8.11, up until now?
- More Scaling on Passive Headshots
- More Base DMG on R
- More Base DMG on W Headshots
- +4 Base AD
Why do I think this is bad? If we look back at 8.11, we can see Riot having clear goals and reasons (which I explained above is a good thing) for AD Carry changes. They removed Armor from everyone and gave them more HP, to help out early bullies (Lucian, Draven - which helped). They also removed 4 Base AD from everyone, to help out early aggressive supports so they won't get traded down too hard early (Leona, Brand - helped a bit).
If we now look back to the Caitlyn changes let's think if goals are actually achieved:
More Scaling on Passive -> Yes, since it doesn't affect the early game. More Base DMG on R -> No, since it gives her more strengths at all R-Levels, not even scaling-related **More Base DMG on W Headshots **-> No, same as above plus that it helps her out on lane much more than the R buff **+4 Base AD **-> I don't think I actually have to explain why this isn't really a good or helpful change lol (hint: it's just a revert of 8.11)
These changes to caitlyn are - at most of the points - not hitting or changing her they way Riot reasoned it in a very good way back in 8.11. They give her the strength back she lost in 8.11 on laning, except for the armor, giving her even more scaling (which could only make up the fact that Items are worse late-game now compared to pre-8.11).
Riot NEEDS to re-think the system of ADC Items if they actually want to achieve a broader range of marksman and supporters on the bottom lane. Make the early game of non-crit champions strong enough, to come out on top of crit users while giving them a significant better late game.
If I pick Lucian, I want to have the opportunity to shut down every Crit ADC that is on the same level as me, while getting in HUGE danger if I am not able to close out the game before that dude is hitting his time to shine.
What we can see happening at the moment is the following:
Ezreal/Kai'Sa got picked because they weren't relying on those bad crit items while still having a good early game and that strong scaling. Lucian got picked up because he finally was able to shine again. Lucian left and Xayah (+ others) came back since ER was a thing again and they were able to utilize it + they had better AD scalings so the IE + Zeal + ER Item build was really strong (Caitlyn builds the same atm btw).
We keep playing ping pong with metas because we just look at who is showing up at the moment and tweaking numbers instead of actually thinking WHY someone is NOT showing up.
As last feedback, I wanted to address the latest Kai'Sa changes. I will legit only copy+paste my tweets in here since Riot Twitter Support told me to create a post AFTER asking me for feedback (on twitter). wtf?
"I thought about this when I read the patch notes so let me add into this; Kai'Sa's current strength is the fact that she is fairly safe in lane while offering a strong powerspike and solid scaling to late game (good early wave clear with Q, AS buff is good for early trades, 1/x"
"3 item triple evolve is way too obnoxious, etc etc) The way i think this is fixable is not by randomly attacking her late-game AS gain through e, hell that might not even be effective at all (have to see how it feels ingame) - instead, patch at where the problem lies 2/x"
"which would be a) early strenght -> give her the same treatment as xayah, less armor. Maybe a bit less health (like -10 or 15 or smth, b) powerspike -> this is so simple to fix: make her W need 150 instead of 100 AP - boom, you now need another AP item for the W evolve. 3/4"
"this would be A LOT more effective and actually HIT HER at where she is "too strong" (i hate this phrase since adc in general are in a weird spot and balancing team is unable to see the issues). Hope you are able to give some of this info through ~~"
Thank you all for reading this (if you did) and I hope we can hold a nice and friendly discussion about this topic. Also, I hope that some Rioters will read this and at this point: PLEASE just give some sort of feedback to this since legit no one has every responded to anything about all this. Neither to me or to others. I'd really just like to hear the why's about everything.
Have a nice day,
