@Riot can we learn from the positive response to this patch?

Abyssphere··28 votes·1,146 views

Last patch note night was the most violently negative night I'd seen on Boards in a long time and for the past while it's been a lot of negativity. This patch rolls around and it's a storm of "good job Rito", "best patch in ages", "first patch I've liked in a while" etc. 5.5 has:

  • a ton of buffs to people who aren't currently making the grade, especially tanks who have been feeling bad for a while
  • buffs for champs that you hit way too hard, rather than just leaving them in the gutter which has been done historically (Elise, Twitch, Gragas until recently, etc)
  • actual changes to make the jungle better, increasing income slightly and making gromp and raptors less terrifying
  • REASONABLE nerfs to strong champions, without a single one of the random guttings we've been seeing over the last few patches
  • cool new champ
  • cool new skins
  • cool new item for hurting mages
  • great texture updates

etc

It's been lots of positive stuff. Can we make this a pattern for the future? If you stop the random guttings and actually buff weak champions rather than focusing entirely on nerfs then people actually have a reason to feel good about patches. Because frankly, "ha, this champ I hate got gutted!" isn't a positive enough thing to enjoy a patch and I think people much prefer "yay my main got buffed, now I can try playing them more :)".

I've enjoyed seeing the Boards actually be happy tonight. Can we take something from this and make more patches like 5.5? I'm sure there will be some complaints about it eventually, likely some overtuned tanks, but even if there is some overtuning I think it'll be looked on as the best patch in a long time.

10 Comments

The Red Warden6 votes

There is a few exception for this though, mainly LeeSin, Nidalee, or Zed nerfs would receive huge amounts of celebration.

Economicz5 votes

[{quoted}](name=The Red Warden,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=vdr2uOAq,comment-id=0000,timestamp=2015-03-12T01:47:45.521+0000)

There is a few exception for this though, mainly LeeSin, Nidalee, or Zed nerfs would receive huge amounts of celebration.

Nidalee was nerfed last patch

The Red Warden2 votes

People hate Nidalee so much that they won't rest until she is gutted.

MrBuffington2 votes

I doubt it. There will always be those people who complain about certain champions, sure, but you go back before she got the jungle buffs and you'll see people talking about how the Nidalee rework was such a success (and, consequently, how terrible the Cassiopeia rework was in comparison). Most of the complaints now are just snowballing complaints about her rise in jungle, and as Riot continues to make progressive changes that reduce her early advantages in jungle, she'll see less and less play and the complaints will start to die down (especially if they fix that invisible spear bug too). Of course, since the community tends to lag like two weeks behind the meta, it'll be a while before all the stragglers find something else to complain about, but with each nerf she's gotten in the past two patches, we've seen her play and win rates drop, as well as the number of complaint threads (again, there are still some stragglers; her ban rate has only reached this high after she already got two rounds of nerfs, lol)

Sooko2 votes

Mother Teresa is right!

Read this thread Rito!

Chaotic Reks1 votes

great texture updates

except, you know Ryze's

Abyssphere1 votes

[{quoted}](name=NyX Reks,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=vdr2uOAq,comment-id=0001,timestamp=2015-03-12T17:21:52.751+0000)

except, you know Ryze's

That's PBE, not live patch :) Also they have said they are gonna tweak his update due to the negative feedback so it should hopefully come out OK.

GundayMonday1 votes

"Overtuned Tanks" to "Overtuned tank item" please. No more tank jungler nerfs Riot!

TotalJerk1 votes

People keep saying that tanks are worthless now, but stats show that Team winrates strongly correlate with the presence of a tank in their comp. You can't even say the sample size is too small because we're counting ALL tanks. Even if you cut the list to jungle tanks there's still a correlation.

Partholonian1 votes

{quoted}

Can we make this a pattern for the future?

They really can't. Giving the nerfbat a vacation makes people happy, but it's not an approach to champion design that can work in the long term. Some nerfs are a necessary part of design, even though people complain about them.

They didn't intend to overnerf Kass or Veigar, any more than they intended to overbuff Warwick when they introduced Feral Flare, but some buffs and nerfs work out different than intended.

And the nerfs they did have in previous patches weren't "random" at all; Veigar was deliberately undertuned for ages because of his toxic instastun, which had to go before they could balance him for real (which they are still working on, and probably will be for several more patches). Probably something similar will happen when they redesign Poppy and remove her current ult (I'm hoping they can keep the passive, but who knows).

P.S. People are actually already complaining about the new champion too, although perhaps not quite as much as Kalista. Yet.

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