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Lee Sin will never be meaningfully nerfed by Riot or reworked.

Shenron·7/14/2014, 11:04:11 PM·71 votes·13,300 views

Thank you riot for giving me back the thread! It means a lot!

First we can take their responses from this thread: http://forums.na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=4686014

And then we can take into account what has been said on Morello's twitter about not nerfing him because of public outcry in defense of him.

What does that leave us with? It leaves us with knowing that Riot is scared of altering Lee Sin in any meaningful way that will take him out of the #1 Jungler spot in the game. Riot doesn't know what would happen if they nerfed the one champion holding back 80% of jungle champions from excelling in their game and so they refuse to touch him. They must figure that Lee Sin keeping all those champions out of the competitive scene must make for a pretty easy to balance competitive scene because Riot then just has to cycle the other top junglers to the Lee Sin bar and then back below the Lee Sin bar to make it look like they are actually working on the problem as a whole. We've seen this before with FotM jungle champions. Nasus, Voli, Kha'zix, Rengar, Nocturne, Pantheon, etc. Every champion that has been able to hold a candle to Lee Sin in the competitive scene has been nerfed and are back into being unusable. Riot will NEVER nerf him into being weaker than any other jungler.

He will always be the mobility king, the smite stealing king, the invasion king, and an expert in towerdiving and relocating enemy champions. He has everything a jungler and indeed a bruiser wants with ZERO downsides. The only thing that he doesn't have that would make him stronger, is ranged auto attacks. There was a post in the aforementioned thread that I linked by Ghostcrawler stating that energy costs could be increased to make him weaker. This is the wrong way to go down. Energy costs do not fix the problem that is Lee Sin's kit. His problem is that there is absolutely no counterplay to anything he does.

The rework that Riot had slated for the PBE for him many months ago fixed this problem. It gave him clear weaknesses but many people complained because while it gave him more weaknesses it didn't give him any "compensation buffs" which in my opinion are the dumbest things I've ever head of and should ONLY be implemented if you are taking a slightly stronger than normal champion and changing it to a slightly weaker than normal champion, then compensation buffs are a good way to balance that out. Riot will forever continue to have Lee Sin be the jungler bar because he "feels good to play and make plays on" while they ignore the fact that while yes, he can be used in high elo for some pretty epic plays, he is also absurdly safe and easy to pick up on. The champion has an absurdly low skill floor, if it was any lower we would have to dig underneath the Garen foundation to find it. He simply has no drawbacks and Riot refuses to rework him into having any because of peer pressure.

I know this post is rambling and I'm sorry, but Riot needs to fix this problem. Don't just stick it on the "Soon(TM)" back burner and use the competitive scene and Worlds as your reasoning. Man up and start working on him. Xelnath, good man imo but wrong, stated that nerfing or reworking Lee Sin this close to Worlds would be the equivalent to the Trinity Force changes before S3 Worlds. This is completely incorrect. Trinity Force changes impacted the game FAR harder than any single champion change or rework ever could because it is an item, and anyone can build an item. Worse yet, it was a staple item on many champions. So do not compare Lee Sin changes to Trinity Force changes. It will not impact the meta, it will free up a large selection of champion picks, and it will just free up a ban if nothing else. He is a champion, not an item. If he's not picked or banned in the game, he won't impact the game. Stop using this logic Xelnath, I know you are smarter than this, I've read and absorbed your other threads, please stop trying to make this comparison work.

In short, Riot won't nerf Lee Sin because he will free up champion picks in the competitive scene and Riot will then be forced to attempt to balance them and they will be forced to deal with people crying about losing their blind monk. Riot continues to back up this reasoning with logic such as "Lee Sin has no weaknesses that we can use to make him weaker and we don't like to just invent weaknesses" and "Lee Sin being changed so close to Worlds would invalidate months of practice and expertise, much like the Trinity Force changes before S3 Worlds did" Riot's logic never ceases to infuriate me.

91 Comments

RiotPWYFF7/15/2014, 12:15:43 AM26 votes

That's an insane rabbit hole of a discussion so I won't hop into that thing, but one thing about Lee Sin is that he's a game of balancing pros and cons and what they mean for the health of the game.

Honestly speaking, Morello's statement re: Lee Sin being an "untouchable" champion due to public perception is a bit binary, so I'll re-examine it:

When we say we have difficulties approaching a champion due to perception problems, it's partially public outcry but it's also due to the fact that perception is so inherent to the game. Given that League is based on a player's preferences and capabilities, it's obvious that champion tiers will also be tailored to the common thread. Only in a 'solved' competitive game can objective truths (ie: character power) can come forth. In chess there might be a dozen openings that lead to a meaningful game, whereas the rest have been hashed out so much that they're inconsequential. Fighting games are another example of this, where a champion tier list is completely based on public perception, and one player's performance at an international event (Isai's Jigglypuff in SSB64, GamerBee's Adon in SF4, etc) can completely warp what's considered to be objectively the best.

In this regard, League is such a strong online community that group-think is virtually inevitable and only the stubborn players end up breaking the mold. At S3 worlds when Zed / Ahri / Fizz / Gragas / Orianna were the staples, Faker picked a Riven into Zed and ended up drawing a ban as a result of it. There are tons of cases where solo queue heroes would pubstomp a pro player with a unique champion, ultimately resulting in that champion becoming the hot new fad in competitive play. What happens after that? Every aspiring competitive player picks up on that champion, and suddenly we have solo lane Soraka beating the crap out of top / mid lane.

This is a super long way of saying that yes, we're dedicated to preserving game health above all else, but because perception is so closely tied to game health and group-think is so dominant, we find ways to navigate that space through constant communication paired with nuanced design changes to nudge the game in certain ways.

In terms of actual tangible work: we're looking at Lee Sin because we agree he's distorting the early game jungle. But it's not just him. It's early aggro junglers like Elise and Evelynn. We took a step back for a patch because we wanted to take a moment to consider how the tank jungle changes had fallen out. I have a very strong suspicion that those will have a larger impact than most believe (we're already seeing a shift in solo queue play, but competitive is actually quite slow on the uptake) but making gut calls is often when we get punched in the face (ie: we did think Trist needed buffs on top of item changes, but looks like that went a little too far). Game design and balance is an art more than a science, and it's tough to consider the layers - how does this affect objective game health? How does this affect perceived game health? How quickly will teams adapt? Are there any competitive teams willing to experiment?

For me, the question that comes after is there seems to be a strong opinion (in this passionate thread) that players would much rather us completely thrash Lee Sin so that he's out of the way, rather than creating a sustainable design decision that creates weaknesses but doesn't just cram him into D-tier. Is Lee Sin healthier for the game when he doesn't exist at B, A, or S tier? If Lee Sin gets nerfed, do we get Elise, Evelynn, Rengar, and Jarvan IV in all games? Does that point to a systemic problem with aggro-junglers focused on early game? Is the game objectively better to play and watch when Volibear is jungling, or Lee Sin? I'm unsure if there are solid answers here and going for a democratic voice results in the loudest voice, maybe not the best one for game health.

Nyrone7/14/2014, 11:26:33 PM8 votes

Skarner gets to have some fun for a patch

Suddenly gets his shit kicked in.

Meanwhile Lee Sin...

deadlychuck7/15/2014, 3:39:09 AM4 votes

I feel like this whole thing spawns more from the mobility creep in the game. So many champions are starting to fall into lower teirs, because they were designed in a way which doesn't allow viable gameplay against a champion who can always stick to them. I mean some of the top junglers are the ones who have the most mobility in their kits. Eve is the exception to this rule due to her stealth.