Let’s talk about what it actually means to be overpowered and why Winrate doesn’t necessarily fit

When we discuss champion balance, the two most oft-discussed data points are winrate and pickrate. And why wouldn’t you reference these points? They’re readily available and generally they tend to all be similar depending on where you go. And intuitively speaking, it’s easy to say “a champion is winning more games than they lose at a disproportionate rate (or vice versa, therefore overpowered (or underpowered).” But this is actually rather misleading and incomplete in terms of data. There are actually several tests you’d have to run in addition to winrate if you wanted to actually statistically prove a champion is over- or underpowered. And even then, it depends on how you define it. Let’s talk about that next..

What is the actual definition of being overpowered? Here is how I’d define it:

•A champion winning more games than they lose by a large margin (this does not necessarily indicate overpowered) •They exceed the capacity of their expected effectiveness •Their weaknesses are unexploitable due to their overbearing strengths •They picked at a disproportionately high rate

Are you already seeing the problem with this? So much of this is subjective and without access to riots entire stat database, any measurement you make is an estimation at best. This assumes you’re standardizing scores based on performance relative to a champions counterpart; in other words, you cannot simply say champion X has a Y% winrate and use this alone. It has to be relative to the performance of other champions in this role - so for example, a champion with Y% winrate in mid lane compared to other mid laners. But that alone isn’t enough. You’re comparing different champions, so this variance in kits and capacity of their kits (individual differences) has to be accounted for and standardized relative to everyone else. So even then, a winrate by itself does not tell you very much outside of a rather intuitive, but potentially misleading, observation. It signals that there might be something worth looking into, but it doesn’t tell you anything on its own. And I’m going to go out on a limb and assume nobody actually does this!

Also, even if the above was not true and winrate alone told you everything: this is still faulty logic. You are assuming a champions individual power is entirely responsible for their performance when that simply cannot be true. Many things factor into a champions performance: strong items and synergy with said champion, other popular champion picks and synergy with them and performance against these champions, the meta and what it currently dictates (teamfight meta; split push meta; pick comp meta etc). I think it is absolutely safe to say very few people on boards factor these things into their posts when rushing to judgment on a champion.

So, does this mean you can’t use winrate as an argument point? Absolutely not, but you shouldn’t cite it alone. I, nor should anyone, expect you to run an in-depth factorial analysis (one of many statistical tests you could run) on these champions - I honestly doubt Riot even does it. That’s because even then, that still doesn’t explain the subjective nature of the game and sometimes, the weight of “the eye-test” is just as sufficient as a statistical analysis. That being said, I still value stats over “the eye test,” but truthfully a combination of the two is best.

Since you don’t have access to Riot’s actual stats and nobody is expecting you to run some pretty advanced stat tests, I will tell you this: do not be absolutist. It is fine to say “my interpretation of champion X’s winrate, pickrate and general performance from my observations alone is that they are too strong (or too weak) and adjustments should be made). I would start by adjusting Z.” The problem is, nobody does this. They simply present stats isolation without discussing in depth how other things could be effecting a champions balance. And that’s why the quality of discussion on this board is so low.

I don’t think anyone expects perfection but if you want to have a productive and stimulating discussion about the game, keeping the above in-mind is a great place to start.