Hi,
So I was wondering if someone from riot could explain how Power Budgets work? Like are some attributes worth more? Does it differ by lane or champion type? Is it a numerical or just opinion based? how DO Riot balance?
Not a dig, I'm sincerely interested.
Cheers,
-- Loki --
Okay so I'm not from Riot, and they probably do things differently, but I'm going to stop by to drop my two cents.
What I doubt Riot does is literally have a numerical power budget. Its too difficult to gauge a specific number value for Akali's heal for instance. You can get a general idea in your head (her heal is decently strong but pretty conditional).
Despite that, I think there is value in pretending Power Budget is a numerical thing when trying to understanding. Imagine every champion is allowed 10 dollars for their Power Budget. The designers have to spread these 10 dollars among the kit. Maybe a targeted nuke costs a few dollars, but a skill shot nuke costs only one dollar.
Now this works out but a number of problems can appear. First, there may be too much of the power budget into just one ability. Blitzcrank suffers from this. His Q by its nature holds a significant portion of his power budget. So what happens often is either Blitzcrank hits you with a normal skill shot with devastating effect, or he misses and loses a large portion of his kit's power. So Blitzcrank can be balanced (fair) but have an abnormal amount of his power budget forwarded to his Q.
The other issue I've seen recently here is that sometimes the power budget is spread too thin. What I mean is that the design has too many features, that you can only put less than a dollar of your power budget into each feature. And this often creates either unnoticeable or unappreciated invisible power. In a sense Janna's passive is like this. Because it is always active, the movement speed bonus cannot be very potent. As a result its power is deceptively strong whilst feeling relatively unimpactful for her team.
Champion's with their power budget spread poorly can totally be balanced, but it can mess with how it feels to play as them and against them.
Finally if you want to get a good idea of numbers or values for a champion, looking at similar abilities and champions is a good way to test it.
