Now days they ask if they are even playable, period.
Rito, plz stop overbalancing champions and reworking their kits to feel terrible.
Learn how to nerf scaling instead of making a champion feel clunky by hitting one of their primary assets instead of just fixing what is - 99% of the time - a damage issue.
Meep Man11 votesAll champions are playable these days. I have yet to find a champion that I can't play as to some success.
Mira Arya Enthe3 votes[{quoted}](name=Inept Maverick,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=vNkWA2zU,comment-id=0000,timestamp=2015-05-20T17:53:14.187+0000)
All champions are playable these days. I have yet to find a champion that I can't play as to some success.
"Playable" is subjective. When a champion takes a change that instead of fixing a simple problem, like damage, makes the champion just feel bad to play, they are unplayable. I'm not talking about justified nerfs. I'm talking about Riot doing what GoW2 did and changing the entire dynamics of the gameplay every two or three patches for the champion.
For example, Syndra was God-Tier because her ult was too easy to use late game. But instead of nerfing ult damage, they made her early game miserable.
Kass was a problem because of one shotting people. So instead they ruined silence and base damages making laning miserable.
MetalGearTeemu4 votes[{quoted}](name=Inept Maverick,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=vNkWA2zU,comment-id=0000,timestamp=2015-05-20T17:53:14.187+0000)
All champions are playable these days. I have yet to find a champion that I can't play as to some success.
Lets rephrase the statement then.
"can this champion be played in ranked without my team dodging during selection 5 times and flaming because they're not "meta" enough. "
Critmaster Garen3 votesLets rephrase the statement then.
"can this champion be played in ranked without my team dodging during selection 5 times and flaming because they're not "meta" enough. "
this has been a problem in this game from day 1.
Linna Excel6 votesThere are some champs who can be played in ranked, but only with the right team or conditions. For instance there's about 4-5 adcs who can jungle but most people would dodge if your jungler pulled that. For some champs like Shyv, you can only pick them if your team has CC or coordination. Soraka can't be picked if you don't have a frontline because she's such an easy target to a lot of people.
ProfDrDeath5 votes^This.
It is called "situational picks". Not every champion is strong in every comp or against every comp.
Mira Arya Enthe1 votes^This.
It is called "situational picks". Not every champion is strong in every comp or against every comp.
Agreed, which is why they shouldn't be gutted the second they are strong/underused, tweaked and balanced perhaps. But not betraying their entire design because of the current meta. Meta changes.
Zyorhist3 votesEvery champ is viable. They aren't ALWAYS viable. but they are viable.
Linna Excel2 votesThis is part of the problem for some people, I think. I also think that part of the problem with reworks is champs who can go into several lanes get tuned more for one than the other.
Shyv: used to go top, now she's overtuned for jungling and weak top
Soraka: used to go solo, not viable alone now
Lulu: used to be a support then went top and now... I think she's a little bit more tuned for top as I've heard her nerfs hurt support lulu more.
Eve: used to be a mid/top as well, now I think she's only a jungle.
Vi: created to be a top laner, now completely tuned for jungling.
As for this nerfing alternate lanes issue, I kind of see a complaint there. Even Ghostwhatsit mentioned that riot is terrible at over nerfing champs that leave their lanes. Riot's also not great at making sure champs that should/used to go in that lane still can. Case in point: elise can't go into any lane right now as the last nerf to her hurt her too hard.
Duke Anax1 votesI's actually disagree here, Riot doesn't necessarily remove altermnate positions, they mere remove problematic positions. But often when you take a different appöroach to the changed champion you find different alternatives.
Soraka for example. She will never again be used as an APC and that is a good thing. But she is viable now as a solo lane Support. With her self heal she can easily hold her own against a lot of melee and is even effective against most Assassins with Equinox. And when she comes out of laning with the gold to buy decend AP and defenses she and her term get increasingly difficult to kill.
In the right matchup it's actually more effective than ADC Support, where she barely gets enough gold through global assists.
Linna Excel2 votesShe will never again be used as an APC and that is a good thing. But she is viable now as a solo lane Support.
IMO that's a terrible thing as she was fine mid until riot screwed her up with her season 4 support rework.
Quite frankly no one wants a solo lane support on their team. No one wants to trade in a high damage mid for one that does no damage, gets no kill, doesn't carry the team like a LB or Katarina, and only gets assists. If someone took a soraka into a solo lane in ranked, just about everyone would dodge that.
Duke Anax1 votesYeah Soraka mid is a highly situational pick, only works against certain assassins, when you have a damage jungler and maybe damage support bot. But she works quite well as a Sustain Tank toplane.
And it's not as if she would do no damage, she actually has a strong poke and can even duel quite some champs early. Equinox even works as an execute. I have secured quite a few fleeing kills with it.
qetzel2 votesThat isn't a problem with Riot's balancing. That is a problem with community perception.
Critmaster Garen4 votesmore often than not, changing scalings isnt enough. theyve done that for years and just ran in circles with a lot of champions.
especially champions that just jump between broken op top tier or trash tier depending on scalings. some champions like jinx for example just have overloaded and ridiculously versatile kits and cant be properly balanced by numbers.
you either nerf their numbers so far, that they are irrelevant for the moment, or you can remove some of the needless extra parts in their kits, that are slapped onto them because reasons.
look at lee sin. they fiddled around with his scalings for 3 years. they even started to remove parts of his kit and he was still king of the jungle. no scaling nerf alone can balance him properly.
its the same for certain 1 trick pony champs like annie or veigar. they either have high enough scalings to 1 combo a squishy, or they dont and are irrelevant.
how are you going to actually balance leblanc without giving her a total rework? she jumps between op, when she can quickly delete the opposing ad carry in one ability chain and useless, when she cant. you can keep nerfing her scalings, but the only thing that does is probably neuter her and make her useless. thats not balance either.
Mira Arya Enthe1 votes[{quoted}](name=Critmaster Garen,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=vNkWA2zU,comment-id=0001,timestamp=2015-05-20T18:33:53.409+0000)
more often than not, changing scalings isnt enough. theyve done that for years and just ran in circles with a lot of champions.
especially champions that just jump between broken op top tier or trash tier depending on scalings. some champions like jinx for example just have overloaded and ridiculously versatile kits and cant be properly balanced by numbers.
you either nerf their numbers so far, that they are irrelevant for the moment, or you can remove some of the needless extra parts in their kits, that are slapped onto them because reasons.
look at lee sin. they fiddled around with his scalings for 3 years. they even started to remove parts of his kit and he was still king of the jungle. no scaling nerf alone can balance him properly.
its the same for certain 1 trick pony champs like annie or veigar. they either have high enough scalings to 1 combo a squishy, or they dont and are irrelevant.
how are you going to actually balance leblanc without giving her a total rework? she jumps between op, when she can quickly delete the opposing ad carry in one ability chain and useless, when she cant. you can keep nerfing her scalings, but the only thing that does is probably neuter her and make her useless. thats not balance either.
Gonna have to agree to disagree. Utility and functionality also make a champion good. Even if they had nerf Kass scalings to fix him, his silence, slow and teleport would have kept him viable and fun. Instead everyone hates him now, and he still has the problem of deleting champions if he makes it to late game.
Just played Syndra, she is not balanced. I wrecked with her, she is still too powerful because her ult just does too much damage. But she was still miserable to play because of the damage to her early game.
Keira Helsh2 votes[{quoted}](name=Critmaster Garen,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=vNkWA2zU,comment-id=0001,timestamp=2015-05-20T18:33:53.409+0000)
more often than not, changing scalings isnt enough. theyve done that for years and just ran in circles with a lot of champions.
especially champions that just jump between broken op top tier or trash tier depending on scalings. some champions like jinx for example just have overloaded and ridiculously versatile kits and cant be properly balanced by numbers.
you either nerf their numbers so far, that they are irrelevant for the moment, or you can remove some of the needless extra parts in their kits, that are slapped onto them because reasons.
look at lee sin. they fiddled around with his scalings for 3 years. they even started to remove parts of his kit and he was still king of the jungle. no scaling nerf alone can balance him properly.
its the same for certain 1 trick pony champs like annie or veigar. they either have high enough scalings to 1 combo a squishy, or they dont and are irrelevant.
how are you going to actually balance leblanc without giving her a total rework? she jumps between op, when she can quickly delete the opposing ad carry in one ability chain and useless, when she cant. you can keep nerfing her scalings, but the only thing that does is probably neuter her and make her useless. thats not balance either.
It's not a blanket statement for every single situation. But, from a game design standpoint, it makes sense for an assassin being able to instagib someone, /or/ being able to escape. Many assassins, such as Leblanc and Zed are capable of both. However, the biggest part of those champions /are/ their ability to escape, so they shouldn't ruin their kits.
The other side of the coin, Katarina is an assassin that is supposed to jump in and murder people, but not escape. But, she ends up being unfun to fight because on top of being able to instagib you, she then immediately jumps out of harms way, or proceeds to wreck your whole team based on the same mechanic.
The champion I'm most familiar with is Kassadin, who they completely butchered his identity because 'you can't react to him'.
So they ruined his identity, but didn't touch his damage, so people were still 'unable to react to him' because he's isntagibbing them. So after already removing his silence, they reduced the base damage on his Q even further... Then, 'unable to react to him'. So they finally cut his legs out from under him and nerfed Riftwalk's range. Guess what? people STILL cannot react to me when I go for an assassin build, because his AP ratios are too damn high for riftwalks utility.
So, what Riot did in Kassadin's example, and other cases such as Xerath, and many other changes, such as small bits of under the hood changes to Syndra, have done is... Ruin the fun of these champions, and not fix the problem.
Mira Arya Enthe3 votesI think I should say. Nerfing a champion hurts their win rates. Gutting and reworking them, is a destruction of loyalty to their playerbase.
Many people played Kassadin for his silence. Without it he is trash to them, they may even quit playing. Where as a simple damage/cd/stat nerf may make him less played, but won't betray his design.
Take Xerath, they got huge community uproar from reworking him, and now he is just a brand-ish standard mage with nothing unique. Want absolute balance? Play pong, but absolute balance is boring, because it requires nothing unique, special, different and in fact, no options at all. To make the game balanced the map would have to have perfect symmetry and everyone would have to play the exact same champion with the exact same build. There is another balance you cannot forget, the balance between fun and fairness. Technically no choices would be most fair, but boring. Riot is selling us a product. They rely on champion loyalty for skin sales, they ruin our loyalty to our champion when they gut their kit and change them into something entirely new. Which makes no sense anyway. Why make a champion's appearance, playstyle, purpose and lore different, and just keep the name? Might as well just release a new champion or delete the name too.
I understand tweaking, or desperate reworks. But if reworks are done, they should be like Yi, where he held onto what he is but could have problems in his base design fixed.
Nameless Voice1 votesI thought people played Kassadin for his mobility, and incidentally that is the reason why he has historically been so hard to balance.
Xerath was an extremely unsatisfying mage to play before his rework. He was strong, but his entire power budget was in his ult; either he had it and he could kill anyone with little chance to react, or he didn't, and he didn't do much except die. Now he has a place as a long-ranged siege mage. He's far more like Lux or Ziggs than Brand.
AvatarRoku222 voteswhat exactly are you even complaining about? Everyone cant have the same damage patterns. the game would be horribly boring.
AquariusGine1 votesCompletely destroyed ;
But understandable.
VoXoV1 votes[{quoted}](name=Mira Arya Enthe,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=vNkWA2zU,comment-id=,timestamp=2015-05-20T17:48:07.827+0000)
Now days they ask if they are even playable, period.
Rito, plz stop overbalancing champions and reworking their kits to feel terrible.
Learn how to nerf scaling instead of making a champion feel clunky by hitting one of their primary assets instead of just fixing what is - 99% of the time - a damage issue.
I stopped playing for about a year. I come back and I see the champs I played (which I only played a few) are almost completely different from how they use to be. I hated it when they did it to AP Yi and now I guess I can hate what they've done to Ryze, Morde, and Fiora too. Heck the only two champs I like to play aren't probably even viable anymore cuz they were nerfed into oblivion, even before I stopped playing a year ago, but they are at least still fun to play (Vlad and Fid).
I started playing this game about 5 years ago and have played it off and on since, but I gotta say I am really not liking what they've done this last year. Adjusting stats or ratios is one thing, but reworking champs to make it feel like it's not even the same champ just shouldn't happen with such frequency.