The Problems with How the Community Views Balance

Problem 1: The community seems to be under the impression that you are supposed to have fun losing in lane.

A lot of the community discussion seems to involve things about how it's not fun to get grabbed by . Or how it's not fun when you are kited by . Or it's not fun when you get ganked at level 4 by (or is it we are circlejerking about now?). Or many more things. Generally, the most complained about champions tend to be the ones that are most blatantly "not fun" when they get ahead, but there isn't something inherently wrong with not being fun for your opponent.

Let me be blunt. It's not supposed to be fun. Not a single person on the planet is supposed to eat a stun from or and think "gee, I would like another". Not a single person is supposed to get ulted by and think "well that wasn't so bad". Not a single person is supposed to get killed by a fed ADC or fed APC and think "gee, that wasn't too much damage at all". It's directly unfun for someone who is ahead of you to do something that makes the game harder for you, and this is generally the intended result. No one likes to lose, and I know we are prone to complaining about the things that make us lose as unfair, but this is human psychology most of the time, not the actual champion being broken. Most champions in the game are generally balanced enough to at least not need huge nerfs or buffs, and just because you don't like it when knocks you up into the air doesn't mean that that move is inherently a problem.

Problem 2: The community seems to forget that win rates and ban rates are conflated by the fact that a lot of people playing a champion generally tend to suck with it (or suck at playing against it).

Let us take your friendly neighborhood as an example. Has a win rate in 30s right now. You know why? Because a ton of bad players are playing him and feeding. Not because the champion is bad. The same with most fotm champions. And this can go in the opposite direction as well, especially when Bronze players don't know how to counter something well or something needs good teamwork to counter and their popularity at lower levels can inflate win rates (I'm looking at you ).

Win rate across the board, especially after a major change, needs to be taken with a grain of salt. So do ban rates, and most other statistics one might be inclined to rely on.

Problem 3: There is a misconception that EVERY champ needs to be viable, especially at higher levels of play. This leads to a failure to see the difference between "op" and "good".

Nope. Sorry. Won't ever happen. If you are lucky you get 5 or 6 viable champs per role and that's all. By mathematical definitive FACT, something will always be better. And you asking for it to get nerfed because you are getting tired of seeing it does not make it broken. It just means it's good. Every single patch, a new meta comes out and four or five champs per role end up on top. THIS WILL NEVER CHANGE. Either learn to live with it and stop complaining, or deal with the fact that you are never going to be happy and this honestly is not the game for you.

Yes, there are some things like the up to recent impossibility of tank junglers that are a problem. But most of what people #### about don't manage to reach that level so much as just include a lot of salt.

The same, to a lesser extent, applies to items. I know and annoy a lot of people. But people fail to realize that there is always going to be some item on top (unless we nerf everything into such mediocrity that items don't matter enough to be a remotely relevant balance issue). If you nerf the hell out of last whisper and infinity edge tomorrow, then champs like and some defensive items (or some other offensive items) will be the new item pariahs. This never ends, and it's better to reach a point where we are only complaining about a few all inclusive but not egregious items with random optionally good items on the side and some things like Essence Reaver that are just bad because tbh some items have to be bad.

There are more of these, and I encourage you to post them below, but this is just some of the "balance" problems I have with how the community views balance.