Why does Riot constantly nerf items instead of the extreme outlier champions?

WoonStruck·Feb 12, 2016·3 votes·473 views

Only a few specific champions are abusing juggernaut itemization to the point of being game-breaking.

Why are we nerfing those items so that only those game-breaking champions can make use of them instead of nerfing the champions? Deadman's Plate was the only truly warranted nerf.

Most of the champs considered too strong right now have ridiculous defensive steroids, ridiculous offensive steroids, high mobility, high base damage, above average stats, great scaling, and good pick potential...They excel at everything, so why are they not getting more attention?

Why are we nerfing the items when they, as champions, are blatantly over-tuned? Especially when melee-only fixes the large majority of juggernaut itemization.

You're only making it worse for every champion that isn't among the top 20 champions in League.

8 Comments

MisterHealYoGirlFeb 12, 20161 votes

Because that's how champions get Sejuani'ed. And nobody wants that.

TroiannFeb 12, 20164 votes

Sej had a 50.3% winrate long after the juggernaut nerfs.

The fuck are you talking about?

Actual heavy nerfs are like evelynn, or urgot, or olaf. Fucking sejuani was fine after the nerfs. Just because she didn't ahve 57% winrate didn't mean she was worthless.

MisterHealYoGirlFeb 12, 20161 votes

She's at a 50.3% win rate, yeah, but that's with a SPECTACULARLY low pick rate across all divisions: .5%, sitting pretty in 112th place. Low pick rate tends to drive up win rate, since the people who DO pick her tend to really know what they're doing, so her actual power in terms of win rate is probably lower.

TroiannFeb 12, 20162 votes

Pick rate has no affect on winrate. What affects winrate is number of games played. And for sejuani, that average number is 40.

People who play sejuani average 40 games with her this season. These are not "dedicated mains." Champions like yasuo are already nearing 100 games for the average player.

Low pick rate with high # of games played per champ drives up winrate because it implies there is a small dedicated playerbase for a champion.

Low pickrate with low # of games played does not drive up winrate. If anything it just means she's boring as hell, which she is. The only reason she was ever played was because she was broken as fuck.

Sejuani is completely fine at the moment.

MisterHealYoGirlFeb 12, 20161 votes

Well, for what it's worth, unless I'm gravely mistaken, those numbers are from champion.gg, which only looks at the top 10% of games (Platinum V and up). As I'm interpreting it, in higher divisions, champions like Sejuani aren't picked much because they're fairly weak, and even when they are (either by players who are unusually good at them or in/against team compositions that are optimal for them), they don't do very well, even though you'd expect those circumstances (only being picked into ideal situations) to drive their win rate up above 50%.

Honestly, though, all of these variables influence each other; strong champions are picked more, champions being picked more means that there's a flood of less experienced players on the champion, and so on. I wish Riot would just make their own website where they just dumped all the data that they use internally to make these decisions; I feel like it would make these things a lot easier.

WoonStruckFeb 12, 20162 votes

{quoted}

Because that's how champions get Sejuani'ed. And nobody wants that.

When an item in general is too strong, it warrants nerfs. When one or two champions make far too beneficial use of it, its the champion that deserves nerfs.

There should be no reason Riot has to do both without reverting the other if they decided to go through with the alternate.

The problem is that Riot doesn't like to admit mistakes unless its such a horrid change that the entire community ends up in an uproar and they're forced to revert.

The easy way to balance items that are essentially a stat-sticks, like juggernaut/ADC itemization, is to nerf stats relevant to that item on the champion, as that's likely what's pushing them too far unless its a specific skill that's being scaled too hard or just too powerful in general.

MisterHealYoGirlFeb 12, 20161 votes

But the issue is that not all future balance problems shake out immediately. You didn't give any examples in the original post, so I'm just going to talk about Sejuani and Cinderhulk.

When Cinderhulk was released (or when any item/champion combo shows up, to generalize), it was immediately clear that a few champions (Sejuani and Sion) were too strong with it, so they were nerfed. Eventually, it was realized that the problem was with the item in general, and so it was nerfed further, hurting Sion and Sejuani again. I'm assuming you know this, but still.

Moving on to a more recent example, Graves and Sterak's Gage. Jungle Graves is still something that's being worked out, and which items are best with it are still up for debate. If it turns out that Sterak's is too strong on a whole bunch of champions that it just hasn't been tried on much (Quinn or Jayce, maybe?), and Graves was just the forerunner of the problem, he would end up getting the double-nerf bat, which sucks.

Nerfing items tends to be a safer route, since it doesn't adjust champions' power relative to each OTHER, just as a whole.

WoonStruckFeb 12, 20161 votes

Graves deserves to be hit with a double-nerf bat, for one.

Two, all of the champions you listed have ranged components. Easy fix, only let melee use certain aspects of Sterak's, as they're the ones who actually require defensive itemization to function properly. Ranged champions already have range as a defensive component of their play. Melee do not get that luxury, so only they should be able to make use of the shield passive. At the very least, ranged champions should get less effect from the item. This would make it so melee gnar/jayce could still make use of it well, which would make sense considering gameplay. But if they're sitting back poking/kiting while ranged, they don't get a free shield for getting engaged on.

Seems like a reasonable fix to me and ruins any attempts at ranged cheese champions getting defensive/offensive itemization that essentially makes immobile melees useless and ruins any attempt at ever catching up.