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If you look at the boards, you see balance team hate...

PaffWasTaken··44 votes·13,690 views

If you look at Reddit, you see balance team hate...

If you look In Game, you see balance team hate...

Wherever you look, almost NOBODY enjoys what the balance team has been doing for the past months (even years for some people). Several problems has been taking its roots over the fact that numerous faulty aspects of the game never got patched or nerfed while getting more and more problematic. The ever increasing number of damage and instant burst has been growing ever since Pre-Season 6, yet almost nothing big enough has been done to stop this. A vast majority of the community dosen't like the direction in which the game is constantly being pushed nowadays, the old players don't want to get a fast paced arcady game with unbalanced aspects to be forced down their throat to replace the steady-paced strategic game that made them start to play long ago. The game has been normalised like professional baseball: few people actually play it, yet a lot of people are watching it. Riot has been focusing their efforts almost entirely to make the game more flashy and interesting to watch for people who don't understand whats going on since they don't play; they like fast games with "outplays" being someone one shotting someone else, yet those people aren't what compose the community of the game.

The finest example is Reddit's fanbase; they are always VERY VERY VERY hyped about LCS and they just go nuts when worlds are coming. Yet, when you go to their front page, several posts are made about how it got boring to see pros not making trades anymore, team fights lasting mere seconds, and one on one fights being only "who bursts the other one faster wins". No more strategy, no more long-lasting games, just gameplay that you would normally see from a mobile game. The actual community dosen't like whats happening to the game, yet there's seemingly no end to what the balance team can do to make it even less enjoyable. Even worse, what the players have been saying for months has been ignored just like dust in the wind! Champions like Graves ,Irelia, MasterYi ,Garen ,Zed Jax and some others are allowed to go ruin the game for a lot of people for months straight without impactful changes while some others are also getting some buffs only for those LC$ flashy plays that nobody likes anymore, just like with the recent Pyke buff drama.

Everyone was like "don't worry, it's normal for the game to be this unbalanced, it'll get fixed soon" when the pre-season was live almost a year ago, and yet not a single thing has really changed, past problems are either still there, worse, or just changed into another form. THIS PRESEASON Riot, you'd better get some serious work done, or else this graph will get EVEN WORSE in 2019: https://i.imgur.com/2b77iyJ.png[/img]

62 Comments

BLIGHTBRINGER27 votes

To be honest it will be their own fault for their own downfall which is innevatable. As much as I like the game, the balance team is ruining it more than they are fixing it.

I'm surprised that after this amount of hate for this long that there's nothing being done. Such as being more careful who they buff and nerf, or even having other Rioters question the balance teams choices.

Everyone used to blame Ghostcrawler for these things but he wasn't the one who came up with the balance changes, he just decided what went through live servers.

Even when he left to work for a different department, we still see poor decisions in balance making as proof of it all not being Ghostcrawlers fault.

Z3Sleeper5 votes

Ghostcrawler Patch Notes:

Games we thought he ruined: 2 => 1

What a buff

Saianna1 votes

Everyone used to blame Ghostcrawler for these things but he wasn't the one who came up with the balance changes, he just decided what went through live servers.

Actually as lead game designer he was the main person to choose the way the game will evolve. He decided on the course of what what we have now.

If you look what has he done to WoW, you'd see very similar pattern. Make more action. deadlier. MORE DAMAGE MORE SPEED MORE FLASHY and so on.

So you could say his..... ghost... will see the game off to grave. Unless someone in Rito HQ will wake up from their little dream of "we know everything better" and will simply revert the living hell out of game returning to how it was 4~seasons ago. And that will never happen as the game would be far too slow paced for most of younger audience, so we are in a ship on a crashing course without steering wheel.

I mean, game is still fixable, but the amount of brainfarts you'd have to fire would definitely raise a forest of red flags for tencent (main shareholder of Rito. they hold them by the balls with rusty gauntlet with spikes on it)... So.. That also is a nope.. ;P

Now when I think of it, Tencent tries to "koreanize" the game to fit asian tastes more. How one would do that? speed the living shit out of game so asian internet-cafee players (majority of korean audience) can play more games/hour. And nothing does that better than damage powercreep

haaaaaaalp17 votes

This is why I don't get the hate towards LCS on the boards. The game balance sucks because the balance team sucks. Most of the changes which are bad for solo queue were just as bad for pro play. Not sure who the changes are aimed at but they sure as hell do not make pro games more enjoyable to watch. The problem is that pro play is just an easy scapegoat that riot turns to to diffuse some of the blame.

Infernape15 votes

Because Riot's balancing when it comes to competitive play results in champions like Ornn, Sejuani, Galio, Ryze and Azir. Champions that are kept shit for 99.9% of the playerbase because 0.1% can use them to their fullest abilities while in a game with comms.

On the flipside, Riot will buff already strong champions like Lucian just to see them played in competitive.

Just the Lip8 votes

{quoted}

On the flipside, Riot will buff already strong champions like Lucian just to see them played in competitive.

Gotta sell the new skins...

[zombie-brand-facepalm]

Disulfiram14 votes

What they fail to realize is that players who already left the game aren't going to buy skins.

haaaaaaalp3 votes

{quoted}

Because Riot's balancing when it comes to competitive play results in champions like Ornn, Sejuani, Galio, Ryze and Azir. Champions that are kept shit for 99.9% of the playerbase because 0.1% can use them to their fullest abilities while in a game with comms.

You do realize that not everyone plays solo q right? There are a ton of non-pro players who play league with their friends on comms who can make those champions work for the games they play.

Also, who cares if a few champions are underpowered? As long as they aren't overpowered, they aren't ruining anyone's games.

On the flipside, Riot will buff already strong champions like Lucian just to see them played in competitive.

That is just an excuse the balance team to shift the blame away from themselves. From a competitive standpoint, Lucian doesn't need buffs, overpowered champions just need nerfs.

Sire Hippington1 votes

Though that's not entierly the balance teams fault, it's just as much if not more the design of those champs that creates a massive inherent discrepancy between low and high elo play, so the balance team has to choose between haveing them on a must ban status for high elo or dumpstered for low elo, and if i'm honest, i prefer them focusing on high elo in that case. The reason for that is easy, if the champ is strong enough, but people fail to actually use it, all they have to do to do well with the champ is getting good on it. If you like for example orn by design, you can put some effort in it and get rewarded. Even if those champs statistically do bad and causually playing some games with them will suck, they are still viable to be mained, they still can do well if you put effort into it.

Now, if you look at the other side, a pup stomper won't do well in high elo, no matter how much effort you put into it, as the the maximum potential always stays below the rest. And a high elo orn main if he was balanced for low elo would never be able to play orn because he would be near 100% ban

h5LYF41Lam8 votes

This season was just a season of nothingness,the new rune-mastery system brought nothing new to the table. 9 Months in the season we got 1 good gamemode to play after almost a year of a rotation of garbage 5 year old gamemodes. No changes whatsoever in ranked

Śhunpo1 votes

The new runes did bring something new to the table, more damage creep and general power creep. We went from having what was a nice clean rune and mastery system to this abomination which forces us to go the same rune page every single game for each individual champ, with no way of providing ourselves we defensive stats.

Nea1045 votes

{quoted}

Everyone was like "don't worry, it's normal for the game to be this unbalanced, it'll get fixed soon" when the pre-season was live almost a year ago, and yet not a single thing has really changed, past problems are either still there, worse, or just changed into another form. THIS PRESEASON Riot, you'd better get some serious work done, or else this graph will get EVEN WORSE in 2019 ...

"Don't worry, it's just pre-Season" :D Actually, these guys have succeeded in the hard task to make their own game even worse than how it used to be in pre-season.

Those people have already proved themselves, no hope for Season 9 if they don't kick many of them and get new (competent) guys. Which is very unlikely.

AirKingNeo4 votes

How is Garen, Zed, and/or Jax a problem right now?

None see play in highest level of play.

Jinzo Torrance3 votes

Jax 25%+ banrate in Diamond, Master and Challenger = Not a problem.

saltran1 votes

This, but unironically.

DuskDaUmbreon2 votes

Implying that banrate alone means a champion is OP.

Cite the fucking winrate, or your statistics mean literally nothing.

AirKingNeo1 votes

and pickrate

DuskDaUmbreon1 votes

Pickrate isn't as necessary to cite as winrate.

Pickrate and Banrate alone tell you nothing.

AirKingNeo1 votes

Pickrate is actually way more accurate than winrate. Kayle has a 52% winrate, yet isn't broken in the slightest. Only mains pick her.

DuskDaUmbreon1 votes

Okay, but pickrate by itself is irrelevant.

Kayle has a 0.92% pickrate. That tells you absolutely nothing by itself, other than that she's not popular.

AirKingNeo1 votes

Champions who are stronger are picked more because people are self interested with the desire to win in a high ranked ladder.

DuskDaUmbreon1 votes

Okay. That's true...

...Except for the numerous examples there are of champions that always have a high pickrate regardless of their winrate. Yasuo, Zed, Ahri, Lee...They'll always have a huge pickrate regardless of their winrate. They could be 40% winrate and they'd still have at least a 10% pickrate each. We know this from Yasuo actually having only a 42% winrate this season and still having a huge pickrate.

So nerfing based solely on pickrate would render those four champions all but unplayable.

Pickrate means nothing by itself. Banrate means nothing by itself. Only winrate means anything by itself. Pickrate is important to consider, but only citing pickrate is completely irrelevant, just as only citing banrate is completely irrelevant.

(Note: Pickrate and banrate are only irrelevant by themselves in terms of balance. They're great ways to measure other things, such as overall frustration with the champion or who would sell a new skin the best, but in terms of balance itself they don't mean much.)

AirKingNeo1 votes

which is why I'm talking about high elo, where champion popularity standards in silver are pointless.

PaffWasTaken8 votes

Garen is at 52-53% winrate in Diamond+

Zed is at 57% (!!!) in Master and 55% in Challenger

Jax is at 56% in Master and 60%(!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) in challenger

All of these also has 51%+ winrate in almost every single other elos. If this isn't "played in highest level of play", then nothing else really is...

AirKingNeo1 votes

https://lolalytics.com/ranked/worldwide/diamond/plus/champion/Garen/ 50.08% winrate. 5.47% winrate. No competitive play.

https://lolalytics.com/ranked/worldwide/diamond/plus/champion/Zed/ 51.47% winrate. 8.73% winrate. No competitive play.

https://lolalytics.com/ranked/worldwide/diamond/plus/champion/Jax/ He's good in solo queue but sees no competitive play.

So, even you want to call Jax a 'problem' despite having no competitive play, Garen isn't strong (average at best) and Zed is simply above average.

Chalizard1 votes

They are op in solo que, I guess that should be enough to nerf them. Correct me if I am wrong.

AirKingNeo1 votes

I literally just proved Garen and Zed aren't even OP in solo queue. If you aren't above 10% pickrate, you most likely aren't OP.

Chalizard1 votes

How 53% win rate with 18% pick rate and 51,5% win rate, 8,7% pick rate on a champion, that is considered as very hard, is something not op for you? He has less than 10% maybe because he is banned in almost half of the games?

Pika Fox2 votes

What do all of them have in common? No one on the boards or reddit know the first thing abput balance, and will QQ about anything.

AirKingNeo5 votes

I'd say they know something about balance, such as overpowered champions, like Kai'sa, should be nerfed.

DuskDaUmbreon2 votes

And there's the core example right there:

Statistically, Kai'sa isn't OP. Nowhere, at any rank, does she have even a 50% winrate, except for LCS and LCS alone.

At all ranks, mains of her are only seeing up to 53% winrate. She's not OP in skilled hands, she's not OP for everyone else.

Kai'sa isn't OP, period.

AirKingNeo6 votes

https://lolalytics.com/ranked/worldwide/diamond/plus/champion/Kaisa/

She's at 50.50% winrate in global Diamond+ (aka, the tier the game should be balanced around), and has a MASSIVE 34.00% pick rate. Seriously, how are you not taking pickrate into account? I don't care about main's winrates, but, since you mentioned it, her mains have a 58.26% winrate from this same site.

HaIlMonitor3 votes

(aka, the tier the game should be balanced around)

Why though? If riots first priority is more players (which means more money), why would they balance around a group of people that 99% of the player base wont ever even reach or relate to.

Basically what I am saying is if like Garen is op only bronze through gold, then it will effect the playerbase WAY more then if Kaisa has a massive pick/ban in Diamond, but not as good in the lower tears.

AirKingNeo2 votes

Because balancing around high tier gives the most accurate balance and most competitive landscape (aka, gives them the best possible product). This is why balancing for every game is based around high tier, because people prefer a better product.

If you balanced around low tier, you'd have a shitty product that appeals to more people. There's no sense of pride in that; you aren't making the game the best it can possibly be.

HaIlMonitor2 votes

you'd have a shitty product that appeals to more people

That is the point. They aren't making a hardwood table out of mahogany for their dinning room/a single costumer, they are making plastic tables and chairs to sell to sell to the other 99. Both function the same, just one apeals to more.

I am not disagreeing with the sentiment that high elo players abuse stuff properly so the game could be balanced around them, what I am saying though if riot wants to make money there game needs to be fun to the masses. We dont live in a sc1 age anymore. And I dont fully understand the concept of "balance around the 1%" anymore. I personally just want to play any champion in soloque with out inherent disadvantages.

AirKingNeo2 votes

except people don't need to pay extra for better balance, so there's no reason low elo players need a less competitive game.

And I dont fully understand the concept of "balance around the 1%" anymore.

because they are the best at the game. Bad players shouldn't be compensated for being bad with things like nerfing Yorick because that's unfair to players who are better. The best players can't improve past Yorick being bad, while bad players can improve past Yorick.

DuskDaUmbreon1 votes

Interesting. It says, for today, her winrate is sub-50. 49.76%. Again, using this, at no rank today or yesterday was she even at 50%.

So why are you giving me statistics that contradict your statement?

AirKingNeo2 votes

??????????????? Literally click the link. Same stats as I just said beyond that link.

DuskDaUmbreon1 votes

I did click on the link.

AirKingNeo1 votes

Then you should see this: http://prntscr.com/ky9ig5

Pika Fox2 votes

ADCs have a higher pick rate than other roles, so saying "OMG massive 34% pick rate" isnt much an argument. People play fun champs, kaisa is a fun adc and meta.

AirKingNeo1 votes

well they do have half the champion pool of most roles, so for pickrate I cut their number in half for comparison.

So basically, 30% pickrate ADC is a 15% pickrate top laner. Both are going to be just about as broken, and 15% pickrate for a top/jung/mid/support(?, I don't know much on the support comparison) laner is really massive.

Pika Fox1 votes

Its also a much more volatile pick than most other roles, as is support. Your ADC pick is dependent on your support pick, which is dependent on what the enemy is currently picking. ADC meta revolves pretty much entirely around what supports are good at the moment, barring drastic changes such as crit nerfs.

This is why ezreal often has a high pick rate; he works well with most any support and works well against any enemy support pick.

PaffWasTaken2 votes

So, you are saying that people playing the game for years should just keep quiet if their game experience turns to shit? They are the ones playing the game, if some people are enjoying an unbalanced game in their favor, their opinion dosen't matter: if a majority of the community says the game is unbalanced, it is unbalanced. For example, if a majority of players complain for months about whatever champ you enjoy to play, you can't just say "you don't understand anything about balance, X champ is completely fine and should be kept at its incredibly strong state", you should just eat the pill and realise that even if you enjoy something, a lot of people don't so this aspect must be changed for the greater good

Pika Fox1 votes

If they no longer enjoy the game, thats one thing. Theyre clearly blinded by nostalgia to see the massive improvements, especially if we're talking balance. League Beta was an unbalanced shithole, and release Xin and Leblanc were the two most OP releases in the history of all of league. Balance has gotten infinitely better, not worse.

Also, my primary is Leona, who is in a pretty meh state, all things considered, and true full tanks lack proper support itemization for selfish stats. But given im a support main, support is in a much better spot than support has ever been.

League is a better game now than before, the people that say otherwise would quit the moment they were given their "season 4", after realizing how god awful it was in comparison.

SwiftKitten881 votes

i will say that 8.16 was overall the best patch riot has made in year, in terms of they didn't break anything and they fixed a shit ton of stuff. (which honestly is a pretty low bar for a "patch" system) but.. there u go

then they completely go back to their normal state of breaking everything they touch in 8.17 but, we had one patch... at least where they did thier job.

so they are at least capable to it, at least once every 3 years

PaffWasTaken1 votes

8.16 was a patch where they probably said "lets just listen to what the community says" and just went with the flow. Everyother patches are just them putting random numbers on random champions without caring about it, and that's where I think the problem is

Plat HardstuckXD1 votes

Maybe the balance team is purposely making the game bad out of spite since everyone hates them

KindredAndWolf1 votes

The best decision I ever made was uninstalling this game. The creators respect nothing that was sacred about this game. I quit after a rework I didn’t enjoy and vowed to never spend a dime on them ever again. New runes came out and I “moped” right out of there. There are other non Chinese games out there guys. After you get over your addictions to lol (took me a couple months after I went cold turkey) you start to appreciate the people ACTUALLY trying to make a balanced game. I got into overwatch and it’s really great. The balance team at blizzard DOES NOT PLAY. They listen to the community and they don’t let something stay broken when they KNOW it’s broken and they always take their time with their nerfs. Blizzard is the company riot wants to be.

Shobek1 votes

League of Legends is basically a brand new game.

They've reworked so many champions and changed so many systems that anyone coming back will need to re learn things basically from the ground up.

League is not going to flourish with their old playerbase. They've already ruined the game for most of them. They're doing heavy marketing right now but I think that the game is alot less enjoyable for new players to play. They've made champions all so much less reliable. There isnt much of an appeal to players who like straight forward gameplay anymore.

Its amazing but after my 2 champions were reworked to new identities i've lost all connection to the game. I enjoy watching it far more than playing it. It used to be the reverse.

Watching it used to be so boring and it just made me want to play the game.

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