When winrate matters, and when it doesn't.

Been seeing conflicting opinions on this, so let me clear this up for you guys.

Winrate is the result of many factors, including the power of a champion but not only that. It's an average of everyone playing the champion, so you could say it reflects how the average player performs with the champion.

Before I continue let me make sure you understand what skill floor and skill cap are. Skill floor is how much reward you get for the minimal mastery level, as in you don't really have much experience or knowledge about the champion. This is how easy/hard it is to pick up. Skill cap, or skill ceiling, is how far you can take it. It's the maximum potential. It's how good the champion is in the hands of a master.

The average player doesn't necessarily have much experience with the champion, so the skill floor is a large factor (imo the largest) that contributes to the winrate. If you think about it, most players aren't experts with the champion. For any given champion, only a small portion of the playerbase is experienced with the champion. This is why skill floor is such a huge factor.

When looking at winrates you have to be aware of the champion's skill floor. The skill floor has a few factors itself. There's the mechanical difficulty (how difficult it is to do things with the champion), there's tactical difficulty (how many choices you have to consider in the heat of the moment), and strategic difficulty (how many choices you have to consider with item builds, runes, masteries, skill order, and your role in the game). The lowest skill floor is when all 3 of those things are easy. So to put it simply, the champion is easy to play AND easy to understand. Such champions generally have high average winrates because average players don't fuck them up very badly.

When Riot changes a champion, there are different reasons a winrate may change, but two really come to mind.

1. The mechanics have been changed. The champion plays differently and players must adapt to the new playstyle. The power of the champion isn't known by the playerbase until players experiment. Therefore, we cannot be sure if the change in winrate reflects the overall change in the power of the champion.

2. Numbers have been changed. The champion plays the same but now is either stronger or weaker. The power of the champion is generally known by the playerbase because they know everything that synergizes, they know all the matchups, etc... When this happens you can be sure that the change in winrate is a good indicator of how much the power of the champion has changed from the patch.

So in my opinion,

• When a winrate changes drastically after a balance change, it matters a lot. Nothing has changed about players' understanding of the champion. The only real change has been the overall power level, so when the winrate changes we can be pretty confident that it reflects the change in power level.
• When a winrate changes after a remake, we can't really tell how much is the power level changing and how much is players needing to adapt to the remake. After players adapt the winrate will probably recover, but at this point we don't really know if the final winrate is a good indicator of power level because the skill floor is different than pre-rework.
• When a winrate is below average or above average for a long period of time, it doesn't matter all that much. We don't have enough information to determine how much of that is the champion's power level and how much is the skill floor.