Do you believe Riot knows how to balance their own game?

If nothing new was added yes, I believe anyone could balance this game with enough time.

However they add new stuff all the time. Their goal isn't to balance the game, but to constantly keep the balance of power shifting. Sometimes that means certain champions become monsters, and sometimes others are completely left in the dust, however work is being done to fix both of those outlying situations.

With how things are currently going no, I don't think anyone can balance this game. With that said I also feel it doesn't need to be balanced in order to be playable and fun.

i dont know, but i certainly wouldnt double and triple nerf the same champions in 1 patch.

theyre hitting defensive masteries and hecarim and skarner out of the blue even though they barely even see play. and when they do, their winrates are acceptable with almost exactly 50%

so why do they nerf them now?

why did they buff marksmen, if all we wanted to see for years was the game to be less marksman centric? the kit changes and some new items are one thing, but they havent even taken into consideration how the changes affect other champions.

they even changed general ad items into marksmen specific items and basically told every ad caster who bought essence reaver or maw, to go fuck himself, because those are adc items now.

oh, and by the way. marksmen now dont have to decide if they want to go a caster route or carry route, because they get to be both with 1 item.

now that adc are buffed through the roof and people are picking their hard counters to deal with them, their reaction is to buff some adc even further and nerf their counters instead of balancing out the adc.

its not the imbalance that worries me, rather than the general direction in which these changes are headed. 2 patches in and we dont see nefs to adc items, essence reaver, and their keystone masteries that are way overtuned.

instead theyre nerfing the resolve tree, buffing fucking cait and randomly nerfing bruisers that arent even problematic or played much.

i dont see any changes to tune down the new snowballing mechanics either.

I think that first we need to define some terms. By "Balance" do we mean that every strategy should have an equal chance of success? Or that each champion should have a 50% win rate across all elos? This is inherently impossible. Some champions have higher skill floors and ceilings, and are impossible to balance for both low and high elo (Riven, Azir, Amumu). Some champions are out dated and Riot doesn't WANT them to be good, because they create frustrating gameplay (I am looking at you, Yorick, Poppy, and Taric). Not only that, but they also sometimes want new champions and reworked champions to be really good so that people can play them and play against them a lot to learn their new kit.

Another question is that in an imaginary world where every champion had a 50% win rate across all elos, how do we define skill? If we operate with the thought that every champion has a 50% win rate across all elos, then wouldnt that mean that every time you load into a game, regardless of how good or bad you are at a champion, that you have a 50% chance of winning that game? In that case, what does champion and game mastery even mean? There are many facets of skill in League of Legends, and mechanical in game skill is only one of them. Item builds, masteries, runes, choice of champion (counterpicking the enemy team, picking champions that compliment your team) all also play a role in determining how good or bad a player is. If a player is not required to identify champions and strategies that are strong, and play them, then there is literally no way to determine how skilled a player is outside of mechanics. That's ignoring the fact that in order for this hypothetical game balance situation to be possible that every champion would need to be the exact same.

An example of this is an older board game from the 90s which was 100% balanced and perfectly skillful. The better player would win 100% of the time, unless they lost on purpose. I forget the name of it because it was horribly unpopular. It was so hard for newer players to get into the game because they would lose every game against a better player.

So yeah. I think that Riot is capable and doing a very good job balancing the game. Just that what game balance means and what to look for isn't apparent to the untrained eye.[slayer-jinx-catface]

I think Riot knows how to balance their own game but I think they ignore it out of champion or market bias. I'm sure we'll never see Lee Sin ever leave top 10 champions in most metas because of the Chinese market (they _really _love Lee Sin). I have a hard time believing Warlord's + Crit Optimization on Yasuo was an oversight. It's been about two years since the release of Spellthief in Season 4 ("The Year of Supports") and Riot hasn't made any effort to restore the traditional support role.

I doubt it. They focus too much of their attention on their pet project of esports. By balancing the game primarily based on high-level professional play, the game will probably always be unbalanced for the majority.

In regards to Riot's ability to balance, I've posted in a previous discussion that: "We'll have world peace first!"

And I stand by it, unless they shake things up A LOT!!!

Recent articles have indicated that Champ balance, Item balance, and Arena balance, (minions, towers, jungle) are THREE separate teams!

At any given time only about 20% of the field is considered viable, this is assuming people are going full pro META, and In the 20 months I've played, There has NEVER been a time when 3-5 champs were completely dominating in some way!; Only to be replaced by some other OP builds shortly there after!

That said, I DO believe they could balance the game; BUT they need to bring EVERYONE together to look at EVERYTHING at the same time! Even if it meant shutting down for a week or two and re-launching when it's done!

At the same time, they are a business! They NEED to be making money! NO ONE should ever forget this! If they ever allow the game to become to Black/White strong/weak... They wont' keep players, they wont sell RP, they'll go tits up! :P

So can Riot balance it's own game? as much as they HAVE to is my honest opinion! :)