Riot's balancing philosophy is inherently flawed

zions eyebrows·5/15/2015, 4:01:31 PM·6 votes·818 views

"We want to tone them down while retaining their strengths and thus identity" When a champion is OP there is a reason they're OP; nerfing a part of them that isn't overpowered and retaining their overpowered quality does nothing but make them feel worse.

There are plenty of examples I can go into but the most recent one is the Jinx nerf on her ulti Why is Jinx OP? There are a few factors but the biggest one is easily the fact that she has 700 range AOE autos that can crit. Her passive could use some tweaking (see: Katarina) but it's not nearly as much of an issue as her long-range aoe crits. So what do you nerf? Her upfront ult damage, making her feel worse to play despite still being overpowered because guess what, she still has 700 range aoe bonus damage crits.

Example 2: Annie's attack range nerf. Annie is OP because she has a ranged instant AOE stun (two if you want to include W). She is not OP because her range was too high.

All I'm trying to get at is that we need to be nerfing OP champions for the reasons they're overpowered, not retaining their overpowered traits and giving them placebo nerfs. I understand the logic behind the design philosophy, but you can still nerf overpowered parts of a champion's kit without ruining their gameplay.

8 Comments

mi ramfan5/15/2015, 4:44:41 PM3 votes

Nerfing the strengths of OP champions leads to a game where every champion becomes less and less unique and more and more homogenized.

It's better to increase a champion's weaknesses than to decrease their strengths.

Mandang05/15/2015, 4:51:49 PM3 votes

There's some value in both approaches - I wish Riot wouldn't commit so fully to one or the other.

You can nerf Kassadin's weaknesses all you want - he's just going to remain incredibly difficult to balance. If a champion's strength makes them unfun to play against, no amount of focus on weaknesses is going to fix matters. (Kass was just an easy example, this also applies in general).

ZeeDrakon5/15/2015, 4:14:27 PM1 votes

but it leaves much more room open to counterplay. and if you cant exploit that, its your fault. riot is not going to make champions useless for you to have free wins. besides Olaf

Ixoziel5/15/2015, 4:49:16 PM1 votes

Zap is also a very powerful tool that is constantly underestimated. If you're ganking someone and you land a max rank zap, they're going to die. A ridiculously long ranged, very powerful slow is quite strong on a carry. Her ult was the weakest part of her kit, and probably the most fun. I don't really get the nerf. If a rocket goes off in your face, it's still going to do heavy amounts of damage... not 30?

I don't really get the annie nerf at all. What do they think her auto attacks have to do with anything? Proccing spellthief in lane maybe lol? She uses her Q to farm anyway, since it's free if it last hits. She doesn't really harass, she just one shots you with her abilities while you're stunned. She's not an ADC, I don't get what this is supposed to accomplish. Teemo gets his shrooms completely destroyed, annie gets an attack range nerf...?