A quick catch-up understanding for those who wanna know why jungle mains are so mad:

Shinjusuke··113 votes·7,504 views

Riot: "We want to see more diversity in Jungle champion picks and playstyles"

Junglers: "Like what?"

Riot: "More champion picks, and distinct tradeoffs between ganking power, farm-focus/clear speed, counter-jungling, sustain, and objective control"

Junglers: "Okay, then the first, and perhaps only thing you have to do is nerf or rework Lee Sin, Jarvan, and Vi, because they're strong-at-minimum at all of those things compared to lower-tier jungle picks"

Riot: "Oh, okay, so add in this Feral Flare thing so you can ignore the game for 30 minutes"

Junglers: "Wait, no, you guys aren't listening, that's not--"

Riot: "Yeah FF broke, we heard you. Now we're gonna remove the champions who can solo dragon early"

Junglers: "Hold up, that's not what we're--"

Riot: "Nevermid, dat shit broke too lol. Forget that."

Junglers: "Well I mean it was a step in the right direction but a bit misguided. If you just--"

Riot: "Okay, we don't have a fucking clue what we're doing. What should we do, junglers?"

Junglers: "Honestly, if you just nerf Lee Sin, Jarvan and Vi, you'll see a lot more--"

Riot: "Right, okay, so nerf Jarvan and Vi a little bit in a single area. Got it"

Junglers: "But you forgot Lee--"

Riot: "Yeah we heard you, add Nidalee as a competitive jungler"

Junglers: "Holy shit wait no don't--"

Riot: "Here's a tanky jungler item"

Junglers: "Oh hey! That might help a little bit, but you still have to--"

Riot: "Damn, Sejuani's stronger than Lee Sin. That shit needs a nerf pronto"

Junglers: "flips table and walks out"

Disclaimer: I don't play Sejuani, kinda hate the champion to be honest. The point still stands.

105 Comments

Zmuecat106 votes

I'm going to have to call you out here, because you sound stupid.

Riot doesn't have tables anymore, they were destroyed either in The Great Retcon or Operation Mana Smana.

Shinjusuke8 votes

shit you're right, how could I forget they got rid of tables to flip? :/

hobomann23 votes

get some demolition equipment and flip there HQ

Zero Suit Senpai20 votes

But lolking told me that Lee Sin is underpowered.

Shinjusuke21 votes

Been talking to Phreak have you? lol

Don't worry, 4x play rate is only because he's 4x "more fun to play" than any other jungler and not indicative of a balance issue whatsoever. We're all just crazy. :P

Maybe after some more "systematic jungle changes" his kit will magically stop being an answer to any problem and good at every jungler trait... somehow.. After all, 4th-time-changing-the-entire-jungle-without-touching-the-champion's the charm, right?

Narasimha7 votes

You'd think for a champion supposedly good at everything, he'd atleast have a respectable winrate. Has he even broken 50% recently?

Shinjusuke31 votes

Lee's low winrate can easily be explained by the fact that I promise for every good Lee Sin player using him to his max potential, there's 2-3 terrible ones that actually think "pulling an inSec" is some magical, high-skill "outplay". There's a boatload of shitty Lee Sin players because the champion is flashy and Riot has a circlejerk going that reinforces the mindset of "every time I find my QWER buttons I'm 'outplaying' you", reinforced by Riot having the same mindset (and shown by Lee Sin being literally almost every "big plays spotlight" before they realized that was a bad idea).

You don't have a champion get played literally 3-4x more than any other jungler in the game and not get a disproportional amount of terrible users of that champion costing games.

Obviously Sejuani is overpowered, nobody can debate that. The issue is that the instant she is, she sees a nerf, yet Lee Sin has historically been allowed to go months or even years being top-or-near-the-top of the jungler pool and yet Riot will completely ignore him because he has more players. And he has broken well over 50% many times in past, and frequently in the upper 50s, and saw no nerfs because Riot wanted to "wait out" changes to him. The problem with that is they insist they wanna see diversity and that junglers should have significant strengths and weaknesses specific to jungler playstyles, yet adamantly refuse to do something about the fact that Lee Sin has no jungler weaknesses, and few if any champion weaknesses. Every other jungler in the game is apparently this horrendous blight on jungler diversity if they're OP for a week (disclaimer: Sejuani has been "probably too strong" for much longer than a week, just not "obviously overpowered"), yet Lee Sin can single-handedly crowd out a vast amount of jungle picks simply from his sheer versatility and overloaded kit, yet Riot ignores it to prevent pissing off his players.

You know how I know? Guess which champion is the only one to ever have their rework cancelled because enough of the champion's players whined to Riot about it. They've told every other reworked champion's players "too bad, this is happening", yet Lee Sin is special. That is the exactly what favoritism is.

Zach xD10 votes

Using the argument that there are bad players on a champion to disprove credibility of his win rate is fallacious.

It's easy to say that when Lee Sin loses a game, that his statistic doesn't count because he was just "a bad Lee Sin player."

Which losses count, and which ones don't?

My thought is that if Lee Sin were strong enough to be pushing 55-60% win rate consistently, he would be. You know, because people would be picking him up and winning with him instead of Vi or J4.

Shinjusuke20 votes

The point isn't "oh, every Lee Sin loss is a bad Lee Sin", the point is that when a champion has the highest play rate in that role by a massive margin (with the exception of the huge surge of Sejuani the last 2 patches or so, similar to 4.2 Warwicks play surge), and its a consistent surge, you're going to have a skill discrepancy because of players who play the champion expecting better results than they will net, simply because they suck at the champion.

Given that the overwhelming majority of players do not make it past silver, this would make sense. Lee Sin's success and general usefulness goes up the higher up in Leagues you go. Furthermore, the same issue persists regardless of rank: He's still the most popular jungler, and nearly the most popular champion, throughout all Leagues with the exception of, again massive surges of people abusing the super OP thing at the time (in recent history that has only been taken by 420Warwick, and 5.5Sejuani), which means that there's still going to be a pretty heavy skill split.

On top of this, the Jungle, with very few exceptions, is not a hypercarry role: A snowballing Lee Sin doesn't guarantee a won game. Ultimately a jungler's impact on the game, with a few exceptions, is significantly lessened the longer the game goes on. This doesn't mean, however, that Lee Sin is okay. With regards to jungling, and within that role and environment, he's ridiculously overloaded and outclasses all but the most overpowered thing at the time as an option. There's literally no team where picking Lee Sin is a bad pick, because Lee Sin has no weaknesses as a jungler, and has several very profound strengths (ganking power and invasion, being the most prominent) despite having no weaknesses. As I'm sure anyone can tell you, you can do very well within the scope of your role and still not win the game (as some roles have more "winning power" than others), which is not only why all win rates stick very close to the 50% mark but also why saying "durrr low win rate equals balanced champion duh" is an incredibly ignorant argument, as the amount of variables that factor into it is vastly more extensive. The only defense for Lee Sin people seem to have is "well his win rate is low", when, if you factor in any other information available, it implies a significant design issue and only gets more likely to be an indicator of a problem the more information you add in. Win rate in a vacuum is the only case where Lee Sin's kit is in an okay spot.

If you view win rate in a vacuum, that means Urgot was the most OP champion in League for a long time recently, as he frequently was up in the 80% range for a while. Which sounds pretty stupid right? Except when it comes to Lee Sin, nearly every single Lee Sin defender refuses to ever do anything but point to his win rate and call him balanced. I'm pretty sure I don't need to explain why that's both hypocritical and moronic.

Another common defense of Lee Sin is "well his kit is overloaded, not overpowered", which is, in the history of balance discussion, the dumbest defense to ever be typed into a forum. What exactly is the argument? "He's not OP because his kit has too much shit in it"? Okay, so he can do literally every single thing you want in the jungle role. He does all of it well, and lining up his numbers to any other jungler shows a superiority in stats alone. Not to mention, time and time again, he has shown to be a dominating force in the hands of any professional jungler who picks him up, regardless of how the game pans out. He might lose the game, but he almost never loses the jungle. So what happens if you streamline his "overloaded" kit, but keep the same power level? My guess would be you'd end up with an insanely overpowered kit, as he's already got above-average values across the board, which means if you equally transfer that power into a more refined playstyle (let's say you remove his sustain and dueling and transfer that power into focusing him more on assassination and clear speed) you'll end up with an obscenely strong champion in those regards, because his overall power level is too high, that's part of having an overloaded kit. There isn't a distinction in his case: He's not bad at anything, which means his power level across all the aspects he possesses would have to be high enough to be impactful (it is, line up any of his kit with another champion "defined" by that kit aspect and see for yourself), which means transferring power from any aspect of his kit to a different aspect would result in that aspect being very much overpowered.

Basically: A) Nearly everyone agrees his kit is overloaded B) Pretending an overloaded kit isn't going to result in an overpowered kit as a jungler is either outright denial or simple ignorance of what either term means or how the role functions. C) The only time when Lee Sin's low win rate would indicate his balance as resolutely as his defenders would have you believe is when you view it in a vacuum, as every bit of information you add to the decision pushes him further toward being poorly designed.

DemiluniS1 votes

Caitlyn and vayne got constantly high pick rate in ranked, must be hella broken and limit the marksmen diversity

Pryotra5 votes

Using the argument that there are bad players on a champion to disprove credibility of his win rate is fallacious.

It's easy to say that when Lee Sin loses a game, that his statistic doesn't count because he was just "a bad Lee Sin player."

That isn't what he said at all. His argument was:

Lee's low winrate can easily be explained by the fact that I promise for every good Lee Sin player using him to his max potential, there's 2-3 terrible ones that actually think "pulling an inSec" is some magical, high-skill "outplay". There's a boatload of shitty Lee Sin players because the champion is flashy and Riot has a circlejerk going that reinforces the mindset of "every time I find my QWER buttons I'm 'outplaying' you", reinforced by Riot having the same mindset (and shown by Lee Sin being literally almost every "big plays spotlight" before they realized that was a bad idea).

That means that the winrate as a stat is unreliable. Not because every loss is discounted, but rather because there are a large quantity of people spamming the same champion, regardless of actual skill level with said champion.

#Personal Opinion

I personally believe that Lee isn't OP persay, but his kit single handedly warps the jungle and through that the entire game. That is the definition of an unhealthy kit, and as such you see people in the competitive tiers basing their jungle picks off of how well they perform vs Lee Sin. Laners have to form their strategy based off of how to deal with a lee sin gank, including ward locations as well as planned escape routes. The mobility meta is a derivitive of Lee Sin, as champions with great mobility have the tools to escape Lee Sin or at least correct his displacement.

If that isn't unhealthy for the game, I don't know what is. For the sake of the game, he needs a rework, and until he gets it he needs to be neutered so that the game may thrive.

bunies2 votes

{quoted}

Using the argument that there are bad players on a champion to disprove credibility of his win rate is fallacious.

It's easy to say that when Lee Sin loses a game, that his statistic doesn't count because he was just "a bad Lee Sin player."

Which losses count, and which ones don't?

My thought is that if Lee Sin were strong enough to be pushing 55-60% win rate consistently, he would be. You know, because people would be picking him up and winning with him instead of Vi or J4.

here is a better question, why is lee sin a top pick in every single tournament since his release ?

Hakavay2 votes

Truth. Lee Sin is up there with Riven, Nid, LeB, Zed, etc. where in the right hand they are too good and in the wrongs hands they could die to minions. It just happens to be everything things they are the "right hands" even when they are not.

Sej on the contrary has a strong kit and MUCH lower skill cap therefore a respectable win rate. The higher skill cap champs with the flashy moves have always been and will probably always remain the favorites of Riot.

Bears Dont Care16 votes

No one complained about vi or jarvan until s5 hit and hurt champion diversiry. The chief complaint was always lee sin.

AbodyHUN6662 votes

Yeah, but they always were top tier. Back in S4 when I felt a bit tired but wanted another ranked game I just picked Vi for how easy and stong she is.

Keevalroy14 votes

This season reminds me of Game of Thrones. Right when you see something good happen, you have to quickly remember that this is Game of Thrones, and you should expect something horrible to follow so it's less painful when it does.

Tentacle Love6 votes

{quoted}

This season reminds me of Game of Thrones. Right when you see something good happen, you have to quickly remember that this is Game of Thrones, and you should expect something horrible to follow so it's less painful when it does.

In the game of thrones, you either Sin or you Die.

Rinky Dinky11 votes

Really don't understand how people can legit say sej does not need nerfs.

Like, I understand Lee Sin's favoritism is really stupid, but the nerfs arent even that bad...

Shinjusuke9 votes

Nobody is saying Sejuani doesn't need nerfs.

The reading comprehension of the community seems to be lackluster at best, sometimes..

AetherKingdom8 votes

Except Sejuani has been stronger than Lee for a long time. You shitfucks just say "oh lee can 1v1 sej level 1 gg lee op" without looking at other shit.

IcyPepper64 votes

You shitfucks just say

If there was a book titled "How to Share Your Opinion Without Insulting Others or Being An Asshole", I'd recommend it to you.

Zero Suit Senpai12 votes

{quoted}

Except Sejuani has been stronger than Lee for a long time.

For 1 patch.

AetherKingdom9 votes

For multiple patches at this point.

The5lacker3 votes

Did 5.6 drop already?

AetherKingdom6 votes

Actually, Sej has been great since her max health damage was moved to w and her e cd was lowered heavily. so since 4.21

The5lacker2 votes

She's been in a decent spot since then. This isn't a binary thing. There isn't a switch on every champion with "OP" and "UP" printed on it. Sej was strong in the past and Cinderhulk pushed her a bit over. And if that happened in a complete vacuum, I wouldn't be against it.

The problem is there are a number of champs that are routinely far more popular and far more problematic than Sej who are allowed to run free, but the moment some "Strategic Diversity" actually shows up with a tank jungler basically existing on-par with swiss army knives like Lee Sin, J4, and Vi, Riot has to shut it down, which is why the community is in an outrage. We aren't saying she's perfectly balanced: We're asking "Where was this enthusiasm for balance a month ago?"

AetherKingdom2 votes

The thing is, Sejuani is no where near on par with those champions. She's way above them.

The5lacker1 votes

...And your support for this argument is?

And if you say Win Rate I swear to got I'm gonna have a conniption. Win Rate, by itself, is a useless statistic.

AetherKingdom1 votes

The thing is, not liking a champion doesn't make them OP. A champion having a toxic kit doesn't make them OP. And vice versa, a champion being OP doesn't necessarily mean they have a toxic or cancerous kit. They can simply be too strong. An example of this is me and Irelia. I want to see Irelia nerfed to like a 20% win rate. Is irelia OP? Probably not. Am I incredibly frustrated when vs. her? Yes. Sejuani may not have the most annoying of kits that draws anger from people but that doesn't change the fact that she wins nearly 3/5 of her games.

The5lacker2 votes

What part of "Win Rate by itself is a useless statistic" is hard to grasp? It's not even a week into 5.5. Sejuani is strong at the moment, that's not the debate. The debate is why the knee-jerk nerf for Sej when there are plenty of hyper-mobile champs who dominate both low-rank and compeditive play for years?

AetherKingdom1 votes

And how is it a useless statistic? And mobility is not the only source of power in this game. the nerf only hurts her tank shredding potential anyways, so stop fucking crying

Ardond1 votes

because by the logic of win rate, Swain is in the top 10 of most "op" champs and LEE F*CKING SIN is in the top 10 worst champions.

AetherKingdom1 votes

swain is actually broken as fuck rofl

Ardond3 votes

Broken? he has tons of counter play, CAN"T burst anyone (which is not a bad thing), is immobile, and is countered by the mobility that riot has fostered. he is about as broken as Veigar, the difference is he can hit cc.

The5lacker2 votes

Your reading comprehension continues to be staggeringly sub-par. My problem isn't that Sej is being nerfed. My problem is that Sej is being nerfed a week into a patch and with no consideration to any of the long running problems the game has.

AetherKingdom4 votes

And did ahri not receive instant nerfs? Did warwick not receive instant nerfs? When a champion is broken to fucking hell they get nerfed instantly. This is not a new thing. Maybe the long running problems need more consideration and have less fucking priority.

captainkaiger3 votes

Where the hell are you getting this information? And furthermore, you better be trolling or smurfing with that lever 14 account because otherwise, you don't know jack about this game yet.

And I'm just gonna breakdown THE REAL difference between Sej and Vi for instance, both of whom I love playing, and how Vi isn't as OP as people say she is.

First off: Sej and Vi were designed around different principles. Sejauni was about group CC/slows, and Vi is about single target lockdown, and moving people out to get to that person. They both scale well into lategame, and both are in a decent spot.

Secondly Part the First: Vi isn't OP, it's ADC mains getting ganked by Vi who are complaining. If Vi is ulting you, you're either really lucky, or your support is really good because otherwise she's there to make sure you don't get out. That's how her kit was designed, it's how people play her. And she's going to seem like she does a lot more damage to you than you do her because she'll have built-in defense and will be building tanky, AND YOU WON'T.

Secondly Part the Second: Vi doesn't have a disengage. She doesn't have an "OH SHIT GET OUT!" button outside of flash. She isn't like Lee Sin who gets to hop to wards just outside of turret range. She can ONLY go in. Use that to your advantage.

Hakavay2 votes

{quoted}

Secondly Part the Second: Vi doesn't have a disengage. She doesn't have an "OH SHIT GET OUT!" button outside of flash. She isn't like Lee Sin who gets to hop to wards just outside of turret range. She can ONLY go in. Use that to your advantage.

I'm confused, did you just say Vi doesn't have a disengage? If Vi doesn't have one, who exactly does in your book?

supes the lost4 votes

The cooldown on Vi's dash makes it either an engage or a disengage, she chooses one or the other, there is no both. Unlike lee sin who can both engage and disengage with his q and ward hop.

captainkaiger1 votes

This man knows.

9kPluzZ1 votes

{quoted}

Where the hell are you getting this information? And furthermore, you better be trolling or smurfing with that lever 14 account because otherwise, you don't know jack about this game yet.

And I'm just gonna breakdown THE REAL difference between Sej and Vi for instance, both of whom I love playing, and how Vi isn't as OP as people say she is.

First off: Sej and Vi were designed around different principles. Sejauni was about group CC/slows, and Vi is about single target lockdown, and moving people out to get to that person. They both scale well into lategame, and both are in a decent spot.

Secondly Part the First: Vi isn't OP, it's ADC mains getting ganked by Vi who are complaining. If Vi is ulting you, you're either really lucky, or your support is really good because otherwise she's there to make sure you don't get out. That's how her kit was designed, it's how people play her. And she's going to seem like she does a lot more damage to you than you do her because she'll have built-in defense and will be building tanky, AND YOU WON'T.

Secondly Part the Second: Vi doesn't have a disengage. She doesn't have an "OH SHIT GET OUT!" button outside of flash. She isn't like Lee Sin who gets to hop to wards just outside of turret range. She can ONLY go in. Use that to your advantage.

Vi is still more op than lee sin tho, you gotta admit

captainkaiger1 votes

What did I write down? Is her ult both an execute/disengage? Can she hop to wards? Does she have energy?

mvargus5 votes

No. I've only played for 2 months and was using Sejuani as pretty much my only jungler since I hit level 20. She doesn't have great ganks pre-6 and she is vulnerable to being counter-jungled early as her first clear is slow, but other than that she always scaled into mid and late game far better than Lee Sin, who really doesn't dominate once the laning phase starts to break down.

I even agree to the nerfs overall. They won't really kill Sejuani's camp clearing, and she'll still be a very solid tank once she gets her items. They just nerfed her initial W damage and reduced the second chance slow on her ult that she got when she missed. Neither ruins her concept or her overall power.

LoLKiru5 votes

To be fair, Lee has a 48% win rate or so, its not that much of an accomplishment to have a higher win rate than him.

That said I don't think this issue is ever really possible to balance, one form of jungler will ALWAYS be dominant over the other. Lee is still pretty stupid though.

Given that I haven't actually seen her since 5.5 rolled out, and I rarely saw her before then, exactly what made Sejuani a problem anyway?

(and no I don't mean Cinderhulk, im sure the 25% bonus health helped her, but something would've had to have been wrong with her kit to begin with for her to be a problem for reasons outside being slightly tankier)

Shinjusuke10 votes

Sejuani has been a sleeper OP for a long time, for similar reasons to why Lee Sin is OP (no real, distinct weaknesses as a jungler, not necessarily as a champion: Jungling is vastly different than laning), Cinderhulk just took the one thing you might be able to point to as a balancing weakness (clear speed and itemization options) and thrown it out the window.

The difference is, Lee Sin has all the same problems (does not trade weakness in any jungling area for having noteworthy strength in all of them, even top-of-the-pool power in some of them) just plain built into his kit because it's so horrendously outdated and overloaded with shit it shouldn't have and doesn't need. Hell, it took years for them to get rid of that stupid attackspeed slow on his Cripple.

Sejuani has been "really strong" for a long time, just played by a small pool of players. Cinderhulk just pushed her into the "outright overpowered" territory and thus into the spotlight.

Lee Sin's winrate largely has to do with the fact that there's a shitload of Lee Sin players, and not nearly the majority of them are actually good junglers or good Lee Sin players. It doesn't change the fact that when there is someone using the champion to his maximum potential, he has no flaws, which is why you see in him in professional games all the fucking time and why nearly every single professional jungler in the entirety of LoL can list Lee Sin as one of their junglers.

JJI7444 votes

I am legitimately curious. Do jungle mains really think the 45% winrate Lee Sin needs to be nerfed, or are they just nursing old-hatreds?

I mean, if you want to argue he is frustrating to play against, I am with you.

If you want to argue he forces immobile champions out of the Meta, I can sorta agree with you.

But how can you possibly think a champ in the bottom 10% winrate needs to be nerfed?

The Whamboozler6 votes

{quoted}

I am legitimately curious. Do jungle mains really think the 45% winrate Lee Sin needs to be nerfed, or are they just nursing old-hatreds?

I mean, if you want to argue he is frustrating to play against, I am with you.

If you want to argue he forces immobile champions out of the Meta, I can sorta agree with you.

But how can you possibly think a champ in the bottom 10% winrate needs to be nerfed?

They're not asking for a nerf, man. At least, not the smart ones. Lee Sin needs a REWORK. His kit is so strong and full of utility, mobility and buffs/debuffs that he'll always be better than most of his peers in the jungle unless they are VERY decidedly stronger than him in raw stats. He has no real weaknesses and he had an answer for every situation. He can exploit the weakness of every jungler who has one. Do they have a weak clear? He's great at invades and counter-jungling. Are they slow? He's ganked three lanes before they've managed to hit one. Are they good at invading? He's a powerful duelist who can escape the few situations he's outmatched in. He can be strong on every team, vs every other jungler, in every situation.

Unless they nerf his numbers into the GROUND, he will always be a better pick than other junglers who can do one or two of the things he can do, but lack his options and utility. The main thing keeping his winrate low is that he's spammed by a lot of people who are frankly... rather bad with him. He's one of the most popular champs in the game, after all... and has a pretty high skillcap. Nerfing him into uselessness numerically would just make him abandoned by everyone. The solution is to rework him and remove some of the things that make him good in EVERY situation, perhaps while giving him a stronger focus in one or two areas to compensate. But they've been avoiding doing that due to his popularity. Instead, they're making more and more and more champs designed AROUND people like Lee Sin and his insane mobility and utility. They seem to have decided the answer is just to overload every champ with crazy kits like his. But as we all know....

Freljordan3 votes

upvote just for incredibles reference lol

Vallant2 votes

I'll worry when Shyvana and Mundo take over the jungle again, then someone will have either got something marvelous right or hideously wrong.

Shinjusuke4 votes

Here's the thing though, at least they (meaning Shyvana and Mundo) had distinct reasons to be picked. It wasn't perfect, but at least you picked champions to accomplish specific jungler goals back then. Shyvana, for example, was the clear speed jungler, but she traded less-than-stellar ganks (even post-6) to be so. Mundo was very safe in his own jungle and had strong "relentless" ganking power, but less-than-stellar clear speed and was pretty vulnerable to counter-ganks.

Lee Sin (and Sejuani at the moment) has no such "distinct strengths and weaknesses". You can pick Lee Sin into any team and for any reason, and he'll perform admirably as a jungler. I don't much like either of them, but I'd welcome going back to the Shyvana/Mundo days where the jungle had champions with specific draws and drawbacks rather than stick around where most of the junglers have significant strengths and weaknesses but 2-4 are good at everything a jungler needs and invalidate most of the other options.

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