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Math Doesn't Lie - Your Emotions Do

FarRockBF·1/29/2015, 7:11:20 PM·16 votes·1,905 views

You all get so emotional about Lee Sin, Zed, etc. First look at my match history. I never play either of them, OK?

Now I posted this on my Lee thread but will post it here again: Win Rate is EVERYTHING. Math says so.

Let's take an extreme example, OK?

100 vitamins. Each has bad and good elements. A BALANCED vitamin will make you neither super strong nor super weak - you will be perfectly normal.

If you take 10 random pills and feel a bit weak there is definitely at least 1 pill in the 10 that is more bad than good, correct? (There could be some that are more good than bad but to get below the middle line you need at least 1 pill to be more bad then good.

But there are other elements involved! Maybe you went drinking last night? Maybe you were already sick? OK no problem. We label our pills 1-100 and give 10 random of these pills to ONE MILLION PEOPLE.

If we notice that 90% of people who had pill #44 in their lot got weak, what does that tell you? That there is a damn good chance that pill #44 makes people weaker.

BACK TO LEAGUE.

Champion X. Amazing stats. Starts will 2000HP. 200 AD. Seemingly ridiculously OP. But... out of 1,000,000 games with him, his team lost 800,000. You see, despite having stats that everyone agrees is OP Champ X is weak as far as the GAME is concerned. Balance should not be about champions; it should be how they affect the outcome of the game. After all, LP is based off of WINS not damage dealt.

The only logical counterargument I have ever heard amongst all the whining here is this: MOST of the player pool don't know how to play most champions well, so it is not fair to count them. This is especially true if the champion is fun to play.

I partially agree here, so to even the score look at win rates amongst pro players only. As a side point these players are probably not very good at other champs either. Additionally, they probably don't play Champ X very often (or they WOULD be better with him) so they probably aren't contributing THAT much to his game count.

With the exception of the above argument all of your emotional whining cause you lost to a pro Leblanc, Lee, Zed, whatever. If the win rates across the board say that player LOSES more games then wins, then math is math - that champ is weak as a GAME champ and you should have won.

/Rant

28 Comments

Jubbinaut1/29/2015, 8:03:33 PM12 votes

There's quite a few factors that looking only at win rate doesn't account for. Among those is pick rate. Take the following examples:

  • A low-picked champion with a high win-rate has an arbitrarily high win-rate, as it's likely those picks come primarily from players who focus on that champ. This makes the win-rate less valuable as a determining statistic.
  • A highly-picked champion with a low win-rate has an arbitrarily low win-rate, as it's likely to've fallen into the FotM pit, with abnormally high picks from abnormally unskilled players (on that champion). This makes the win-rate less valuable as a determining statistic.
ResponsibleDad1/29/2015, 7:16:38 PM6 votes

Jesus finally someone speaks the truth.

Auz the Ripper1/29/2015, 11:51:36 PM5 votes

"There are three kinds of lies in this world: lies, damned lies, and statistics" -Mark twain

Ask any statistician, you can't trust statistics. They're too easily skewed by bias and context.

SciencePrime1/29/2015, 7:28:43 PM4 votes

THIS MAN SPEAKS THE TRUTH.

Narasimha1/29/2015, 8:36:06 PM4 votes

Close, but not always true. Old Leblanc is a testament to that. Low pickrate, and low winrate. And yet, she was still hit with some heavy nerfs. Why? Because playing against her was extremely anti-fun. But her win rate was still low. Because Leblanc fell off, and didn't carry games. Did that make her any less toxic to play against? Not really. By your logic, she wouldn't have been a problem, because clearly her numbers didn't indicate as such. And you know what? At the end of the day, sometimes, emotions > hard math. Because this is a game. MOST people play it to have fun. If they're not having that fun for a particular and constant reason, then that means something is off.

Sammystorm1/29/2015, 11:11:01 PM3 votes

Although I agree that zed and lee are fine your argument is not accurate. You are looking at math in isolation. You can't look at math in isolation. The numbers do not make sense with out context. For example: Cass for the last month has had a 53.1% win rate and by your logic she must be over powered. However that isn't the whole story. If you delve deeper and look at how popular she is. Only 4.5% pick rate and a non existent ban rate. So a legitimate conclusion we could make is that cass is being played more effectively then average by a small pool of people. So we can logically say that cass is probably not op but instead only people that are good at her have been playing her.

Now in comparison lets look at Blitz. He has a 53.1 win rate. The exact same win rate as cass. Now lets look at his popularity; 19.9% popularity and drawing some bans. So blitz is played in 1 out of every 5 games and has an above average win rate. So we know he is seen alot and picked alot and is successful. He would be a case to look closer at to see if he is op.

Now you are correct that math doesn't lie but how you analysis math can lie. You misinterpret the stats whenever you look at win rate or any variable in a isolated scenario. So make sure you remember the context and look at all the variables because other wise you will have a very poor understanding of what the stats are telling you.

Tsunday1/29/2015, 9:09:15 PM3 votes

Winrate is a bad statistic to go off of. When you're looking at statistics you want a dependent variable, and independent variable, and everything else to be a constant. WInrate depends on your team, the enemy team, trolls, dcs, lag, counters, individual decision making, etc.

If 1,000 people main Fiora for example, and in 70% of those games someone picks Pantheon into Fiora and after they all play dozens of games Fiora has a 34% winrate it doesn't mean that Fiora is underpowered. Especially not if her losing can be contributed to her counter being FotM or just her being countered in the first place.

If Taric is a champion used to troll when somebody gets stuck as Support and 20% of the Taric games in ranked end up being games played by 'full AS Taric' you can't say havin a 42% winrate makes him underpowered.

If there are only 500 Urgot mains on a server and the 500 people who play Urgot only play Urgot and they play him very well, you can't say that a 60% winrate means he's overpowered.

You can't claim a champion like Kogmaw who needs a specialized teamcomp is under/overpowered because of his winrate without thinking about what the meta is. If the meta is favoring carry jungles and assassin mids Kogmaw isn't going to have the peel to do well late game, it doesn't make him underpowered even if his winrate is low. Same could be said for a reverse meta where Koggles would get plenty of peel. He didn't become OP because he has a good winrate, he just consistently got put in teams where he was their main source of damage because of the meta.

Champions who carry early game like Graves and LeBlanc stand a better chance in a 4v5 when they can wipe the early laning and teamfights and then push before everyone is level 18 and approaching full build (aka when statistically a team of 4 doesn't have the damage or the tank to win a teamfight).

We could also talk about low Elo pubstoms like Malphite and Amumu and how individual decision making and individual skill level is the reason they're so strong, not the champions themselves.

I absolutely love math, I've taken classes in statistics, but with something like winrates it's a really easy variable to become confounded.

junglerboy161/29/2015, 10:42:27 PM3 votes

You are taking this much much to objectively, to the point of making it no longer about a game, but about a science. Nobody wants Lee nerfed because he is OP (because really he isn't), people want him nerfed because he is atrocious to play against when even moderately strong, like he is now. I don't give a damn if I have a 10% higher chance of winning vs a Lee than vs somebody like J4, because this is a GAME. I don't play because I must win everything I set eyes on, I play because I want to have some fun playing a game. Lee makes this game not fun, in the same way that Teemo makes it not fun. Teemo has been subpar for AGES, but I still never want to play against one, nor do I want to play against a Lee, regardless of whether or not it means I get a free win.

You, Sir, have fallen for an obvious fallacy that because Lee isn't super OP by win rate (which he isn't) he doesn't need changes, because your glorious math and statistics tell you that he won't win as often as most champs. Life and math, while inherently linked and intrinsically intertwined throughout our existence, are not the same thing. Maybe you should consider the fact that people want Lee changed exactly BECAUSE they feel so negatively about him.

TL;DR: NOBODY cares if they win more than they lose against him, he still feels like crap to play against, is super broken (NOT super OP, big difference), and needs changes for those reasons, not because he wins too much.

EDIT: Just in case you were wondering, I haven't lost to a Lee because of him as a champion in months. They are always behind, underfed, and nearly useless by the time the match ends, so I'm not some butt-hurt crybaby who wants more free wins. The fact that he can even get to the point of being that useless late game is in itself another reason to rework him.

Nucleophilic atk1/29/2015, 7:12:36 PM2 votes

Stop trolling now. Thanks.

Nucleophilic atk1/29/2015, 9:15:00 PM1 votes

Right, because Zilean is clearly one of the worst champs in the game. That is why he wasn't permabanned in LCS.

Centuros1/29/2015, 11:16:09 PM1 votes

Win rates tend to normalize towards 50% regardless of how strong a champion is, if that champion is really popular. If EVERY team in Blind Pick has said champ, it will have a perfect 50% win rate in Blind Pick, no matter what.

agbudar1/29/2015, 11:23:39 PM1 votes

yea i don't get the "NERF LEE" as much as i do Zed nerf's i play against plenty of lee sin's who dont know how to play him right and fail miserably. and this has remained to be consistent over the year of 2014 zed on the other hand 90% of the playerbase that mains him is good with him wins a lot and infuriates everyone.

warpenguin5551/29/2015, 9:12:07 PM1 votes

so wait, why dont people think win rates matter? if a champion always wins lane but never wins a game, i dont see how thats OP