The REAL ways to balance League

UltraInventor··15 votes·1,066 views

There are several inequalities, and RIOT is working to try and fix them, but the picture in general is what needs helped. There are a lot of champions, and balancing that many is bound to be hard, even with a large team! I get that, but take a step back, there are many aspects to the champions in question while in game, so slightly modifying a few statistics can even things out a bit, but it is only extra hard right now because of: the high variance in champions, of which there are many; and the low variance to everything that modifies them during the game.

One example, given the right situation (enemy team having little ranged advantage): an Udyr Udyr with these specific items can 1v5 the ENTIRE enemy team -- [ 1 - Frozen Mallet item 3022 , 2 - Guinsoo's Rageblade item 3124 , 3 - Death's Dance item 3812 , 4 - Phantom Dancer item 3046 , 5 - Spirit Visage item 3065 , 6 - Randuin's Omen item 3143 ]. It is ridiculously strong, the enemy team has actually cursed at me so much I muted most of them, just to stop getting annoyed from the chat blowing up. As I said though, that is with an ideal enemy team. Just like a Vayne or Kog'Maw against ideal enemies are unkillable with the right items. Then there is also the issue with Renektons diving through the turret at level 6, with no tank items at all, and then leaving as healthy as before.


First proposal to give balance: turrets are worthless right now. Fix it. Turrets fire a set amount of damage at a super slow attack speed, all game long. A long while ago, the inhibitor turrets fired a continuous beam instead of laser shots. These did well in slowing a siege. First, enemy players had to make sure they knew who got targeted by the turret (ahem, say hello malphiteMalphite , alistar Alistar , and mundo DrMundo ). Second, three waves of minions coming at the same time only took out about half of its health, rather than completely destroy it AND the inhibitor, as they do now. Third, it was much easier for the marksmen at their inhibitor turret to last-hit the minions (if the marksmen are at their own inhibitor, it usually means they are behind, and some minion kill gold is much better than no minion kill gold, particularly for those that are behind). This did remarkable things, and some items found a strong appearance to match -- ohmwrecker item 3056 being the main one. For another, it stopped the backdoor of the bruisers: nasus Nasus , mundo DrMundo , (and more). With the inhibitor tower revert, they can do it again. Ultimately, what I propose is that instead of periodic shots, use a continuous beam for ALL of the turrets. This will fix most of the problems. A continuous beam fixes the minion issue (each melee minions no longer take 6 seconds to be destroyed, taking up 3 shots when they only needed 2.5 -- that is a 1 second difference for every melee minion, if there are 10, that is enough for another group of minions to come, just from the wasted time alone!). A continuous beam deters low level and/or low health diving. A continuous beam quickly comes to the aid of its allies seeking protection within, rather than waiting another two seconds to do anything at all (vayne Vayne can dive and deal a full round of 3 shots BEFORE the turret strikes ONCE). A continuous beam enables pinned ADCs much better farming (last hitting minions) in the beginning of the game (top and mid laners too).


Second proposal to give balance: for there being so much variance in champions, there is a limited number of available items to purchase in the shop (poor doran has few wares to sell). Items really can make the difference in many cases! Against a Jhin Jhin, take a ninja tabi item 3047 and randuin's omen item 3143, he will deal about half as much (or less) damage to you now (add frozen heart if he get Lord Dominik's Regards item 3036, or just to laugh at him trying to actually do something to you). Ultimately, what I propose is to make MORE items, and make them MORE varied than the champions are: currently there are 10 items for attack speed, 4 of them are for critically striking, 3 of them are for basic-attacking MAGIC damage, and then there are two more. That is not very many. Total, there are 90 full items that you can buy, but only 82 can be used in Summoner's rift. I understand we only have 6 slots to put them in, however, what about champion diversity? That means the item needs are ALSO diverse. There are 137 champions in league of legends, with 6 generic categories for them to be in. Almost all of them are parts multiple categories. If each champion is part of only 2 categories OR 1, there are 21 focuses for items to be [6 individual categories, and 15 unique combinations of those 6 categories]. That means there is currently an average of about 4 items for each focus... Or, another way to put it: we can buy: Armor, Health, Health Regeneration, Magic Resistance, Attack Speed, Critical Strike, Damage, Life Steal, Armor Penetration, Cooldown Reduction, Mana, Mana Regeneration, Ability Power, Magic Penetration, and Movement, but we should not forget heals and shields (I will call it HealNShields). That means we have 82 items for Summoner's rift to do combinations (ONLY combinations) of 16 categories. That means there is currently an average of about 1 item for 2 focuses, or, how about I am generous, because a few combinations like armor or magic penetration and support does not really make sense, let's just say 1 item for 1 focus. We need more item diversity, and with more item diversity, the game will naturally start to balance.


Third proposal to give balance: [This should take place AFTER the other options of balance have gone into place, as there is in reality few significant imbalances in this area] Weaken the overly strong champions and strengthen the overly weak champions. There is a balance to making this game as enjoyable as possibly: Diversity, Quantity, Uniqueness, Gameplay Strength, and Change. This last proposal focuses on gameplay strength. If EVERYONE has too much damage capabilities, then there is too much time spent dead on both sides, and league will transform into a game of death timers. If EVERYONE has too little damage capabilities, then the game just remains a long slow practically stalemate game of tickle wars. There needs to be a balance. Ultimately, what I propose is to weaken the overly strong and strengthen the overly weak. When I say overly, I mean a substantial excess (or recess), and fine tuning can come later, if ever (it is often hard to gauge anyways).


I do ask for most of the old items back, changed to fit the current patch, but I want them returned! Some examples are: Zephyr: Attack speed, movement speed, and tenacity. Wriggle's Lantern, another jungle option, with other aspects to it! Avarice blade, starting item for ADCs. Mana potions.


Please upvote this page, answer the pole, and most importantly, tell me what you do and do not like about my proposals.

15 Comments

I Feast Tonight3 votes

I loves these ideas, however, non-support items that give gold without a cap, may be unwise. Everyone would buy it to get full build faster. (Cull has a cap so I'm good with it.) Another thing, when it comes to beginning game items, such as Doran's Blade for example, it would be really nice to have aggressive and passive items. My favorite aspect of your ideas would have to be the items, though I feel the turrets would be immensely important too.

TequilaZombie1 votes

Nobody except GP and sometimes Singed ever bothered with gold giving items when we had those. Give them worse stats and things will balance itself.

VelvetCrotch2 votes

The REAL ways to balance League: get rid of Yasuo Fizz LeeSin and maybe Teemo

UltraInventor1 votes

Personally, I feel that getting rid of things is not only a sorry waste of time, but also that would reduce diversity, which is a necessary component in maintaining any sort of long term interest in a game. That is part of why frequent change is also needed, even if it is already "perfect", which is such a relative term.

And î oop2 votes

i think that its really annoying that there are like 10 champs for each role ( except support ) which are always used and that is just so annoying because they never get nerfed cause when against each other they do fine but when you take someone exceptional he seems a bit weak and some champions are really REALLY suffering because of that, on example check aurelion sol, mid lane mostly played are yasuo, zed, kata, syndra... all of them have advantage over him because syndra outranges him AND cc from stun blocks his W, zed cause he VERY easily gets into his orbit, kata cause of the blink also gets easy in orbit and yasuo can block the stun and also easily get into orbit, ok lets see next, skarner: has a bit boring passive and is almost never played like kayn can easy kill him with his ult being able to dodge everything, rengar murders him quickly... so many champs are to weak/to strong and because always same champions are played ( the strong ones ) game is considered balanced

UltraInventor1 votes

Several champions ARE really weak. I agree with pretty much everything you said about skarner. Ever since the "rework" RIOT did... he has never been the same since. Before the rework I even got sand scourge skarner skin. I was AWSOME with him. Others might not have done well, but I did amazing. After the rework though, I couldn't even take him jungle well anymore because the passive is way to easy to get rid of! Just stand there while he is busy fighting or being cc'd by your tank support. There, problem solved. Recently I have been trying to play him again, see what I can do, as support. It works well! But... he is NO juggernaut, I, who was in the middle of maining skarner when reworked destroyed him, can ONLY make him viable as a support for the team. I never even have to use the passive unless im leashing, helping at drag, or helping at baron. It's pathetically easy to get rid of anyways. Also, I wish they made another champion like the OLD yorick, he was never seen, so nobody knew about him. Nobody knew about him, so nobody played him. I bought him just a couple weeks before his rework to get a head start on new yorick, played old yorick to know what was really going away, and learned old yorick was FUN! AND was super strong!

RizHippoKhan1 votes

can i get a tl;dr for the points? ;-;

Legacy Hydralpha4 votes

TL;DR: Idea 1: Buff towers to be able to stop sieges more efficiently. OP wants all turrets to be laser turrets (AKA old inhibitor turrets) Idea 2: Add more items into the game, adding more item diversity. Idea 3: Nerf the strongest, buff the weakest. Do this after the other proposed changes, and fine tune balance as necessary.

UltraInventor1 votes

I do not necessarily make the turrets to do more damage overall, like the inhibitor turrets did, merely do about the same amount of damage in faster, but smaller increments. The Vladimir Vladimir should not be able to hit e, walk into turret range, basic attack and q, then... w (blood pool) out of any turret retribution at all. If the turret change is accepted, it would have to be done in segments. If they tried the big thing all at once there would be enormous shifts in gameplay, and the magnitude only increases the risk that they over or undershoot the goal.

RizHippoKhan1 votes

holy damn u da best man!

aznDanny1 votes

I just think the items nowadays are too cheesy, like 3 lethiality/armor pen items has caused problems since the beginning, and all laser turrents doesn't sound good, but I miss lasers at inhib towers. Outer turrents and inner turrents definitely need more damage, or at the very least inner towers need a change, they used to give shields which made them stronger than the outer towers but now they're the exact same, which is stupid.

UltraInventor1 votes

It is an intriguing idea for the turret segments having their own unique aspects to it, and that might work! All I am saying is the turrets need some change to better provide the protection they are supposed to provide.

On that idea, maybe the outer turret can offer bonus health regeneration to champions inside (to better enable champions to remain in lane early game), inner turrets increase the damage output of champions inside (to better enable champions to make up the gold difference), inhibitor turrets have a continuous beam which deals a little extra damage (to better hold off the minions and prevent already ahead enemies from diving), and nexus turrets decrease the damage input of champions inside (to better enable champions to make a last stand, especially from those crazy painful super minions). What do you think of those ideas? Also, do you have some ideas of your own about what could work, I am interested in hearing about them.

Kloqdq1 votes

Turrets for sure need some help. League has become so damaged and dodgy that most champions can just flat out ignore the turret and not fear it, where a couple of seasons ago they were STRONG. It also makes champions good at tower taking - Ziggs, Tristana, Jinx, etc. less valuable because everyone takes turrets just as fast and as easily. They aren't threating and that leads to the snowballing that we see a lot of in modern league. I think they need some more hitting power - only against champions because it would fuck up all the minion cs'ing. They also need their defenses back.

I do agree with items needing work and we need more items. The options today feel pretty limited and we often get shoe-horned into just 1-2 items every game that we MUST build to function. I'd like to see more variety.

Although many dislike this patches, I do like Riot buffing and nerfing the strong and weak slightly. It's small work but it does help a lot of champions that may not have seen a buff in ages.

UltraInventor1 votes

I do want the towers to shoot a continuous beam, but not necessarily do more damage over 100 seconds as they do now. The way I have in mind is to have turrets to do something like (but not specifically): new turrets attack 10 times as fast as current turrets, and each hit from new turrets deal one tenth damage as each hit from current turrets. This means they attack faster, but given the same amount of time they deal the same total amount of damage. Additionally, if they do decide they want to increase the damage, but make it easier to last-hit minions inside of the turret range, then two things they could do are: 1: slow the new percent damage increase build-up to match the current percent damage increase build-up speed. 2: Remove the percent damage increase to minions and monsters, but keep the percent damage increase to champions and pets.

MeBuffULongTime1 votes

I just want the damage creep dealt with

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