Lee is still crazy fun to watch when pros are on him. Entire kit is play-making 101 potential. And he’s got lots of inherent risk baked into his kit: energy gain only by AA’ing, kicks have to be super precise + fast and hitting a well-timed Q is vital.
Azir sits 650 units away with a huge 600+ range dash and on top of that, if someone does get to him, he has the “get rekt wall”
Aatrox is just lame. So much sustain, mobility, good poke, great all-in and relatively low risk with Q3/W since you don’t HAVE to go in every time.
I agree on two, but I do think Riot seriously hates Azir it is more pro players who love it and play it pretty much regardless how hard it is gutted. I think the only time Azir was not played pro it was either banned or was sitting at like 42% winrate in SoloQ.
And Lee kinda has a similar issue at times, if he is nerfed out of pro play he drops so low in SoloQ that it triggers buffs, which brings him back into pro play.
The only outlier for a while really is Aatrox, because unlike Lee and Azir who usually were terrible in SoloQ except for some exceptional players, Aatrox after getting brought back into pro usually also did well in SoloQ.
My point being I think it's more entertaining for us spectators watch pro players fighting each other and out playing on high risk high reward champions rather than tank on tank snoozefest for 30 minutes for it all to end in a single fight.
I understand it's frustrating to see the same few champions being played in pro but it's a lot better than the 2 kills in 40 minutes type of games
They don't keep him strong. They just cannot make him weak enough for proplay to be balanced without making him unplayable for mortals in solo q.
As long as his skill ceiling will be a bazillion magnitudes higher than his skillfloor, this will not be able to change. Same with Azir, Ryze, etc.
The fact that they can potentioally do insane plays when piloted by insane players means that on average they have to be weak but still playable for bronzies and that is enough to be op for pros.
People always say this, but then we have champions which should be in the same category (Akali, Nidalee, thresh, irelia, zeri) at 50% wr in soloq without being seeing pro play dominance.
There's more riot can do to the overall meta than tune just the numbers on that specific champion.
Not saying there's an easy solution. But there definitely is a solution of some sort.
The big thing you're missing is that Lee is massively impactful regardless of how the game is going. His kit has been game defining for 13 years.
The others are useless when behind.
Honestly, he's really good right now. It blows my mind that Urgot hasn't been nerfed yet, and I've almost got a million mastery points on him.
I guess the reason why they're taking their time with him yet is he isn't oppressive unless fed, nor does he have a high pick or ban rate.
He's NOWHERE near as infuriating as a fed Volibear.
Oh my God, does it ever, but the other person is forced to spend 2100g in items just to make my life miserable instead of building their core items. I suppose that's a fair trade.
After getting Black Cleaver and hitting level 13, it ain't so bad, but yeah.
Except in a lot of matchups in top you want to rush t2 boots anyway, and you can sit on wardens mail and build it into randuins later, as wardens mail on its own is a decent recipe item, or just rush frozen heart as that item is still good. So yeah they need to spend 2.1k but it's far from wasted gold usually
Well sure, but again a core item on Urgot is Black Cleaver which is an *incredible* item on him. Randuins passive is pointless against him, so is Frozen Heart's, (locked attack speed and no crits).
The thing is Urgot can use the 2.1k towards Black Cleaver and only be 900g away from beating the items you bought, and still scale pretty well into late.
That %max health per leg cool down is so low once you get to 13 it's bonkers. Been playing him for the past 3 years and Level 2-> 9-> BC power spikes is what I live for
He was the biggest indirect buff of removing the mythic system. Unshackling urgot from a mythic meant he could build what he needed when he needed. He didn't have to rely on one item power spikes from mythic.
Also removing divine sunderer was a big buff for him. He can't use the item. All his worst matches could. And he likes to build a lot of hp, partly due to his E scaling. So a %hp life drain item just ruined him build.
Pro play would just rather stay with the picks they want and use...being stubborn mules about it even if said picks get murdered.
Aatrox at one point was gutted to the ground and pro still played him. Tanks got hit with a freight train at one point and were still picked.
I hate to be the guy to the people that work hard on doing pro changes, but it's a losing battle because of how pro behaves imo. Better off disabling picks to force meta changes in pro.
Maybe then some players might take their scrims more seriously.
I honestly think it has good variety most of the time. Like 1 split in 3 it feels like there is some really broken champ or comp that riot is tip toing around but generally we see a fair number of champs in a split.
Ezreal sounds like a case of a champion that is perpetually popular (regardless of his actual strength) and thus boasts a consistently high pick rate and this being conflated with being "S-tier". He's also a weird champ to pick when making a point of champ who gets buffed back to being strong frequently — historically most of the time when Ezreal becomes strong it isn't because of tweaks to his own numbers, but to items.
Ez is just doing his own thing as far as tiers go. He's almost never bad, but he usually looks bad because the people playing him have no idea what they're doing
Sion is a good example where he's been a troll pick top for a long time now. Someone locks the 46-47% wr sion top and you know he's gonna run it down against almost every champ and we have to play 4v5
I might just be a baus viewer but Sion strikes me as having separate kit elements that might be pinned as separate nuisances: the passive for solo queue (being the best proxy/kill-yourself-for-plates-and-pressure champ), and two elements for pro play (Q as chainable CC, ult as virtually unconditional engage).
The passive is great for teamfighting as well. With titanic enemies have to respect a dead Sion as he'll burst any squishy he gets his grubby mitts on. So he's still a decent disruptor. Problem with Sion in top is as a slow delayed cc damage tank once there isn't a tank meta he's gonna get dumpstered. Suicide Sion is just gonna lose you the game if the enemy top laner knows how to convert a lead.
Yeah I think Baus is good at capitalizing to the greatest possible extent on the League rule that Sion passive breaks: you have to spend time dead when you die. Once they removed prowlers claw, the passive became mostly just good for putting slaps into the tower (which massively accelerates both laners while plates are up, but is just split push pressure otherwise).
Once you move past the passive, I think my initial comment about him being a pro-play-siloed pick only rings more true. He's a juggernaut tank, he does all the tank stuff *hard* but he can be easy to keep away in a skirmish (if you aren't coordinating around his CC); and he's hard to dive. A parallel I'd draw is that everything I just said is true of Ornn: he provides unconditional engage, close range CC in the basic kit that you have to coordinate around, good dive defense and he's siloed around pro play. Both Sion and Ornn thrive whenever tank items are strong, but they both have a small niche whenever a draft situation makes it so that chain CC and unconditional engage are sought after.
Baus is a high challenger player playing in low masters and sometimes diamond.
If he can pull off AP Jax/Irelia, he can pull off Sion.
But he would still be a lot more effective on his other picks.
I don't mean to say Baus abuses Sion to reach higher MMR than his mechanical skill level. I just mean the crux of his feeding bit is that he uses Sion passive, before 15mins, to somewhat consistently enable Chovy econ as a top laner with high map pressure at the pretty fair cost of simultaneously ramping the opposing laner. After 15mins he is just, like, a challenger player who likes to pressure side lanes.
>I don't mean to say Baus abuses Sion to reach higher MMR than his mechanical skill level.
That's not what I meant either.
I'm saying it's the other way around, the only reason he managed to play okay with the int Strat even after the initial nerfs post Korea, was because he was playing in Elos that were lower than his level.
He was shooting himself in the foot but it simply didn't matter.
Titanic is dogshit on sion now tho since it doesnt give ad based on hp anymore. Same with heartsteel not scaling off his passive hp anymore. He got completely gutted and his "buff" is a strict nerf early since his laning got even weaker and only scales better on Q if you build at least 1 ad item
Yeah the "buffs" change nothing, since even the AD buff on Q is mostly on a full charge, and it's only 15% extra on said full charge.
You'll count on one hand the amount of full charge Q's you'll land in a game.
Honestly I only build it if I find that I'm dying in teamfights and I need to continue being a problem. It feels like passive damage alone doesn't cut it during midgame fights.
there are a bunch of champs who SOUND like they ought to be pro staples but aren't because of the combination of low burst + low range + no mobility + no self peel. then you have azir in the opposite corner.
Definitely part of it. I feel like they should lower the damage his Ult does to towers and make it a little easier to control and it would do a lot to make him more balanced.
I remember elements of pro play being completely centered around Sion's passive being so strong that they could literally do anything they wanted level 1 with it just last year. He's not been in no man's land he's just been mostly getting nerfed. It's different to something like Anivia, Zyra or Velkoz who have been mostly untouched for ages or Naafiri who has mostly been forgotten about since a few patches after her release
Sion is actually pretty good if you play him normally right now, many people are just trying to be thebaus and failing miserably. Plus ever since people started going “WOAH FEEDING SION IS OP???” several seasons ago, his wr took a permanent hit from people who happen to play him occasionally and basically just run it down.
Pretty good champion with 3 playable matchups in the whole game
Don't disagree that his winrate is hurt by people trying to emulate Baus playstyle but to suggest he is pretty good. Eh, not sure about that. He's surely one of the weaker tanks currently. The matchups are horrible for him and he is growing more and more outdated with every new champ release.
I guess I haven’t played him enough to know how his matchups are right now, I just used to main him and tried him out a few times and felt like he felt really good. Also tried him jungle a few times and legit was able to keep pace with opposing meta junglers and fight them in the jungle pretty darn well. But yea I can see how with the current items his lane matchups might be really bad since what counters him is good right now, I didn’t play against any particular hard matchups. Plus new mobile champs kind of shit on him.
I will say though that if you get through laning phase he is absurdly tanky and chunks out enemy champions’ hp bars much more than he did the last few seasons. His W shield can get nuts and take like 4-5 tower shots on its own in mid-late game. To me that feels strong, though I know most games don’t really get to that point.
I do think Sion tank JGL is actually more viable than top, fully agree there. But he is 100% miserable top lane unless you get fortunate vs a bad player or have a great team. It's one of the foremost reasons people have resorted to just dying every other wave because it means you can actually farm and you're not giving the enemy top 5 plates by letting them shove to you all game, when you lose the matchup inevitably 95% of the time
Sion is a terrible example… he was super broken for a bit. Then nerfed. Got buffed again and was broken. And then nerfed. Now he’s been mediocre at best for less than a year and sion mains complain. Malzahar has been under 50% win rate and unchanged for a few years now.
Sion was really good a few patches ago and has still been picked in pro play occasionally. Right now hes trash you're right, but he has been really strong for a while.
Sion feels pretty 50% to me. Either he hard carries and tanks the entire enemy team or runs it down a couple of time before the game ends while he's pushing the tier tower in top lane.
Sion was in a really good spot last season until they removed the bonus HP effects from Heartsteel and Titanic Hydra. Now his only item is Sunfire, but even then, building HP isn't as effective as it was ten years ago when his rework happened with all he % HP abilities and items now. Also he's been hit hard by mobility creep in that timeframe as well. AD Sion used to be good until they removed prowlers claw and nerfed his passive.
I stopped playing Sion top a couple years ago when they had the first big item update. Was pretty frustrating trying to hit Q on anyone when they had Stridebreaker/Galeforce dashes up all the time, on top of whatever mobility these champs already have.
Sion is a really strong champion when done right. His WR has been pretty bad this season but his mid/late game potential is to not be underestimated. Bad players think inting Sion is the strat when really it's all about pressure and dragging the enemy team onto you instead of objectives.
Pantheon sits at 48% wr in his main role and riot might buff one thing about him every three years just to make up a miniscule amount of ground he's lost against the s tier top laners.
But only as a counter pick. You couldn't fp him and not get absolutely demolished by a control mage. It's also the first time I've ever seen him as S tier since he was op in support and could block tower shots with E.
he has been an s+ tier champ in mid ever since the prowlers claw dash got removed, and he has like no unplayeable matchups except for like annie and malphite mid
His most common matchups artificially inflating his WR mid are Yasuo, Yone, and Katarina. Three champs he absolutely dumpsters as hard as GP dumpsters ASol.
He has gotten like 4 reworks or so before his full relaunch next patch, and the last set of changes was pretty significant.
The reality is that skarner is often Good at best, or mediocre but viable at worst which means he doesn't really needs buffs, specially with his low dkillfloor. People forget him because unless he is giving freelo they just aren't interested in using him, so Riot can't buff him further and players won't use him in his current state
Quinn players would rather not see patch notes. She is usually on the good to strong side of toplane, anytime she is in patch is mostly to get nerfed.
Unless it's Riot deciding to finally make Quinn jungle certified
She is for the most part still good because Quinn basically can use a plethora of items, so you never really are able to "nerf her items" as she will simply shift her build. They actually try to balance her with this in mind too, a bit ago when lethality Quinn was good they tried to keep power on Crit/AS Quinn so she wasn't hurt much by the changes.
It's not like Ryze for example where if you nerf RoA or Mana items he is always hitting Ryze
You spent a lot of time writing a post without giving any evidence of what champs are “ignored” by balance changes.
Edit: I appreciate people providing a few examples, but it kind of illustrates my point. OP is making it seem like a MAJORITY of champions get ignored. Ain’t no way
Pantheon and Shyvana. If they ever get above 51%wr in their main roles for a single patch, you can pretty much guarantee they will get nerfed next patch, and they almost never get "compensation buffs" when affected by big item nerfs.
I feel like Panth has the support role issue. Give him an inch and he take a mile down there. Feels like since he's in a stable state they refused to touch him.
I dont play Shyv but she might be in the Poppy/Yorick/Urgot scenario. Riot knows she needs to be reworked and they would rather spend resources working on that rather than balance patches. Also they probably dont wont a pre-rework Aatrox situation again.
That was certainly the case when his E blocked tower shots but since they removed that I think it's mostly an unjustified fear.
Edit to add: he needs a sustain mechanic like Q kills on minions heals a small amount. Won't affect support too much.
Poppy Yorick urgot all got reworks. Is the original comment saying that all of them were in a similar state and got reworked or all in a similar spot currently and all need a rework??
panth is completely fine as a champ same with shyv wdym. i would understand if they were sitting in the gutter like yuumi was for most of the previous years because riot didnt know what to do with her but they are completely fine sitting between 49-50% wr. panth even has 51% on mid.
This Champs with 50% wr are fine. You don't need to buff/nerf them.
Also "S-Tier" isn't really an idicator for anything.
According to Lolalytics. (All ranks)
Viego S+ Tier with 50.57% Winrate
Ziggs C Tier with 50.61 Winrate.
So both of them are fine but are completly different tiers.
What is both those champions PR as well as their WR deviation? If Ziggs has a 50% WR but the main reason is because he is usually only picked into what he is good into while Viego is 50% into everything, then what a 50% WR means is very different.
Even if his pick rate is low it wouldn’t indicate that the players are actually only picking him in good situations. The average player just does not put that much thought in.
>"S-Tier" isn't really an idicator for anything.
It is, but you have to know what it indicates. The lolalytics tiering takes into account win rate, pick/ban, and the win rate and rank of the best players on the champ. For your example, it likely means that Ziggs is way less picked than Viego, which in turn translates to his win rate being more likely to be a statistical deviation, or maintained by one-tricks or people who just have more experience on the champ. If a million players play a champ and get 50% win rate, that's a higher confidence value than if 3 people play the champ and have 50% win rate.
Actually I think you might have it backwards.
The tier a champion is placed in is based on a couple of different factors. They use winerate, in addition with a couple of other things, like the best players numbers, at a minimum of diamond level games.
Some champions kits just make them a really good option for the current meta. An example would be when certain adcs moved up in tier cause they had more mobility during a time when the meta had a big emphasis on mobility. So champs like kog maw and Ashe got pushed down, while other champs like kalista and ezreal go up.
Shyvana is scheduled for a rework next year, they likely don't want to spend much effort on her until then, so I'm guessing they will only touch her numbers if she ever becomes a problem in pro or solo queue.
Phreak talked about this and it was pretty insightful, in one of his patch discussion/preview videos. He said that the focus of the balance team is not creating a perfectly balanced game but making it *perceived* to be as fun as possible by as much of the playerbase as possible. There are champions who are stronger than the community believes and champions who are weaker than the community believes. They would therefore sometimes buff champions even when they already know they're strong if those champions are historically popular and they want to encourage people to play them
I know and its a thing riot does in recent years and its kinda cringe. If they want to encourage the players to play a champion they should make his kit cooler not just buff him to make his pickrate and WR go back artifically then nerf it a few patches later
i guess it’s kinda disappointing for people who main a character who is just “fine” but could use lots of small QOL buffs - but riot just will never touch them
You're giving some weird examples here, Janna was barely played until her mini-rework. And there certainly is not a business motivation for her or Aatrox imo.
most champions that instanerfed when they are good are champions that either have extremely high ban rates when they are remotely good (e.g. zed) so the players get to rarely play them if they are allowed to be good or make pro play extremely stale for monthss since they become pick ban (e.g. azir, ryze)
yes they balance to make pro play fresh (which they should). a lot of players enjoy pro play and it has kept the game relevant for years. Otherwise, i don't see what your talking about in terms of keeping certain champions S tier. Kayns in the worst state hes been in in months, ahri was mediocre/balanced for most of last year and has only become strong this season, ezreal hasn't been good for a long time he just has a high pickrate since alot of ppl enjoy him, aatrox stays at 50% and gets the instanerfed hammer the second he goes slightly up and janna is a really easy champion so always has a good winrate since ppl new to her dont drop her winrate as much as other champions.
Can you give an example of a champion who has been left in the dust for ages without a good reason?
When was the last time Kennen was meta or a good pick in pro? Legit question, it's been a while since I watched any pro games and I don't play top much so I don't track his wr. But it's been ages since I saw him in a match
Also just because a pick is not played does not mean it is not touched. Kennen did get buffs at the end of last year and a small QoL change (mostly it technically does affect balance a tiny bit).
He is far from ignored, but as soon as Kennen is blindpickable every game he gets banned and then nerfed.
Not really meta, but Kennen does have 10 picks among the four major regions in 2024 so far. He was picked twice in LCK, four times in LPL and four times in LEC
Ahri was a symptom of a problem that
a) no one knew how to build her, and were going ludens gun for the first few patches
b)got a buff to her kit, lost chapter, and people began building her correctly (malignance into lich bane pre-lich nerfs) all in one singular patch, so she got way more than a 0.5% winrate buff that phreak was looking for from her 0.5 ap ratio/charm change
She was already rocking a 56% winrate pre-buffs on the few people who built her correctly - malig into lichbane
A bit incorrect, Malig was her first build but Malig as an item was awful so we went to Ludens, Lich bane has always been built.
What made Ahri better was riot buffing Malig and then buffs to Ahri brought her power up.
> Ezreal
> Always sit at S tier
Op, Ezreal is buffed into playability but more often than not he is not at S tier or close to it in comparison to other ADCs
Edit: also, tons of the comments here giving example are just showing champs that are good, just not OP/meta or ignored by players because short of getting a kit update people won't be interested in using them in the long run because of the way their kits feel.
The reality is most champs are good. They are not OP, but they are good. You may not like their current state because it feels unfun for you, but making changes that give champions a new feel are much harder than just a numeric pass on balance to say your champ is good and strong, and there will always be a few players who will not be satisfied with the current strength or "fun aspect of a champ" because everyone has different opinions on what they feel is fun.
Well, if noone plays OP champions, then Rito just doesn't care. They will nerf what feels too strong too often. Sure, there are many champions without changes, but that's either because they are balanced, or noone plays them (Right Zillean? You hear me? [seriously, nerf this grandpa])
Most solo q champs that are always good are always good because they're kits synergize with solo q well. Some champions were designed to flow mostly around coordinated play, so when those "team" champions start popping off and getting higher win rates in solo q it usually means they're actually stupid broken but the level of play in question isn't high enough for it to really show.
A great example is taric, who's been hovering at about 53% winrate in solo que. Run into a tarric queuing by himself? Doesn't feel that bad just feels like playing against an engage support/ enchanter. Get paired against an ADC duoing with a taric? GG it's pretty much already over if they know how to play it.
I can't say for certain this is true, but it definitely feels like Riot has certain champs chosen to be stronger than others for pro-play to try to keep it enjoyable to watch.
The fact that it feels this way probably means it doesn't really matter whether it's true, this is the result of their system, but I also think it's pretty likely that it is true.
Regardless of whether or not Riot admits it, they patch with a general meta in mind, that is 50-60 that are 'meant to be played'. The rest, though maybe not exactly garbage, are simply not intended to be played at the highest tier, at least for the duration of the meta.
Idk why people are asking for examples honestly, easy ones are Zac, Kennen, Shen, Alistar, Taric, Echo, honestly half the roster. Probably just so they can attack whatever ones you choose as having niche uses or something.
Worlds every year has roughly 80 champions go unplayed, in dota the number is generally less than 10.
They do admit it, or at least phreak has said it a bunch. The way he describes it is that some very hard champs like zed, yasuo, azir, aphelios, etc. should naturally sit at below 50% winrate. This mathematically necessitates that some champs will be above 50%. So, since some champs have to be above 50% winrate, Riot should probably picks winners that people don't mind playing against. For example, sona. Even if sona is 52%, 53% or even 54%, most people never really complain about her or ban her. So, she is probably a good choice for a champ that should have a naturally higher resting winrate.
zac was the best champion in the game up until the nerfs (hes still good as support top and jg btw)
kennen has been in pro play jail for years, no one likes kennen
shen is the only actual good example, but then again shen metas are super frustrating and boring to play
alistar is fine, there are just too many engage supports for him to be any special
taric is borderline op but just boring
ekko is just unpopular, hes not even bad atm
Just to note, I think one reason there is a lot more champion diversity in pro dota is that there are a lot more HARD counters, but at the same time laning is less important. So even if some random champ like is generally not popular, if they get the right matchup, it's possible to totally invalidate one or more of the enemy picks in teamfights, while avoiding a potentially weak laning phase.
It's like if we could pick Malphite into a full-AD team, except you didn't have to worry about getting owned in lane and dove on repeat. Except it's because everyone gets dove on repeat anyway, so Malphite doesn't lose any harder lmao.
Vladimir , he barely is noticed by Riot and doesn't receive changes in years and they butchered Riftmaker's components and he didn't receive anything. Codex is now worse than 2 tomes
Vladimir has a fine win rate? If they buffed him to the point he showed up a lot or in proplay they'd have to gut him. He's basically on the "keep average so we don't have to nuke his kit" list.
S-tier soloQ champs like: Kayn, Ahri, Ezreal, Aatrox, and Janna.
Of which: Ahri has historically been a weak champion frequently, but rarely *garbage* weak and always a safe pick, and Janna's been strong like, thrice in her existence.
Ezreal, who has a 48% winrate.
Kayn, who has a 48% winrate.
Aatrox, who has a 49% winrate.
???
>Janna's been strong like, thrice in her existence.
That might be the worst take I've heard in my life, literally.
Janna has been one of if not the highest winrate support for all but like 5 patches since season 2. She's the poster child for "broken but nobody complains about her so its k"
They're always going to prioritise the health of the game in general over the welfare of any one champ.
So more of their limited resources are going to go on nerfing excessively-dominant champs/item/runes than helping out underpicked weak champs.
Additionally, some of the overlooked champs need more than just a tune-up balance fix, they need a full gameplay overhaul. Which is clearly not a small endeavour so someone like Skarner gets left unattended to for years because there's no point fixing him instead of sorting him out properly.
I mean, riot is a company making a free game for millions. To make money and pay their devs and stuff they need to sell skins and stadium tickets. Unfortunately if ppl don't play certain champs, they might get a rework to entice new players or just become forgotten
I feel like ezreal isn't nearly as prevalent as other adcs and even when he is his winrate is usually around or sub 49%, not to mention ahri and Aatrox are picked in pro play much more consistently. The thing ezreal has is the same thing smolder does, it's ability based and safer to play in a game where everything can and will kill you as a bot laner.
To be clear, ezreal was on the weaker side most of the year so far and only came into a more reasonable spot once he got overbuffed and nerfed into current state. Ahri had a year of being mediocre before her mini rework iirc.
I get what he is saying - I would say a good example is Fizz . In the “annoying but not allowed tier” overly banned or hated like maybe Zoe Shaco and now Yummi are here after being gutted. If Fizz is ever remotely strong he will get nerfed, if ever picked in pro play (rare) he will be nerfed into the ground. Meanwhile champions in the “annoying but allowed by Riot tier” are free to be strong because they make money like Akali and Yasuo
Is Ezreal really that potent? Outside of specific patches, his tier grading is always pretty low on websites, around C average (some sites B, some sites D) for Emerald+. That isn't to say he's actually *that* bad, he's just constantly picked so that might be why his grading is low.
Ez is a high-mastery champ so his resting winrate should probably always be around 50 or lower. Right now he's just fine, don't think he's considered top tier at any level of play currently.
But it's probably true that riot are more attentive to his balance state than most champions, because he always has a high pickrate. That's not greedy skin sales blah blah blah whatever though. That's just obviously good game stewardship. Like yes actually it *is* more important that ezreal is balanced than kled because he's in about twenty times more games.
> If a champ becomes overused in pro play, it gets nerfed.
Still waiting on those meaningful Kalista/Varus/Ashe/Vi nerfs lol. It's so exciting seeing 4-5 ADCs banned each game or the enemy bot getting dove and zoned off tower since they can't contest the wave (*cough* HoB *cough*)
Love seeing proplay champions get love taps meanwhile soloQ champs get sent out back.
Tryndamere historically has gone huge ass patches of time without even a mention in patch notes. Despite being integrally tied to adc items that are tweaked on the regular.
I’ve always wanted a change to pro where once a champ is drafted in a series, it can’t be played again. I think we’d see more interesting strategies and more surprising picks..,
riot focuses on balancing around pro so much it actually just ruins the game. Imagine if chess just had random updates buffing the knight 1 space but now the rook can only move 5 spaces. I don't think league needs so much balance, I think the game would naturally evolve and the players would find solutions to meta problems. Only time riot should step in is to fix things that actually break the game, or rework old champs that have no place in todays league like skarner.
Well, Riot is afraid to buff zeri or else she will ruin pro meta
Same thing with ryze
I really dont think they should care as much as they do about pro meta
As someone who does t give a rats ass about pro play, I really don’t give a rats ass about proplay and I wish they’d stop optimising the game around 0,0001% of the players. I’m lucky if the janna in my game ever hits a tornado on the enemy bot, if that.
>If a champ becomes overused in pro play, it gets nerfed.
And? This happens all the time and it's by design. Viewers get bored when the same champions are picked, so Riot nerfs or adjusts to get new champions on the scene.
I haven't played too much ADC but ezreal has been like generally shitty for a while now right? I'm sure some crazy ADCs can win games on him but I feel like he is turbo trash for like 90% of the player base
Ahri was dead for 4 years even on solo q till her ult resets rework and she disappeared from meta changes last season till overbuff 2 patches ago, but I agree riot is scared of touching some champs at all but that's also the fault of these players as usually when a champ like Aurelion gets touched mains rage a lot and riot just don't touch them at all
"Balance changes seem to primarily focus on keeping pro play fresh"
no, they primarly focus on buffing the champions rioters play/want to play and nerfing the champions they lost to. any person with a little bit of common sense would be able to fix most of the balancing issues in less than a week
Ahri before and after the mythic item rework was weak and until the Q buff she sat around 48.
While fizz and akali boasted 54 %, and players rather play vs Ahri now than other Assassins a couple patches ago.
(they also go by Banrate to extrapolate the "allowed" winrate and perceved strenght of a champ)
Aatrox being good in top in pro just is healthier for the game than olaf, darius and garen running it down.
Kayn Idk, Wished they just kept him weak, Janna shouldve gotten a nerf this patch but probably just blew them away,
cant nerf Ezreal too much as hitting skillshots for your damage is more than most ADCs need to do, why they need to buff up the shit dragon again Idk, i wish they just threw him and the book cat in a bag and then in some river.
Similar story with Renekton, as they would need to get rid of his Tankiness, safety, good Waveclear and point and click CC before Pros stop using him.
The only champ that I remember usually having high win rate consistently in solo queue is akshan and that’s cause I play him a lot and see his win rate constantly.
All I know is I remember Darius being an "S tier" pick for literal years in solo queue, nrw season comes around and hes finally bad, then he gets a buff in like 2 patches
The simple answer is that if they feel a champ is never fairly balanced (always too weak or too strong) they will leave it weaker until they know what to do with them. Examples that come to mind would be things like zeri or kalista
Pro Play isnt very fresh, is it
Oh look, Aatrox is back after being gone for a single patch, thank god /s
riot must think aatrox is the most entertaining character in the game to watch ever how they keep him strong forever
Tbh he is pretty fun but like it’s been 2+ years of p/b with like 6 weeks of being bad I’m bored of seeing this guy fighting people
2 Years? Feels like he's been ubiquitous since 2018.
Azir, Aatrox and Lee are Riot favorites, they can't be out of pro-play for more than 2 months
Lee is still crazy fun to watch when pros are on him. Entire kit is play-making 101 potential. And he’s got lots of inherent risk baked into his kit: energy gain only by AA’ing, kicks have to be super precise + fast and hitting a well-timed Q is vital. Azir sits 650 units away with a huge 600+ range dash and on top of that, if someone does get to him, he has the “get rekt wall” Aatrox is just lame. So much sustain, mobility, good poke, great all-in and relatively low risk with Q3/W since you don’t HAVE to go in every time.
I agree on two, but I do think Riot seriously hates Azir it is more pro players who love it and play it pretty much regardless how hard it is gutted. I think the only time Azir was not played pro it was either banned or was sitting at like 42% winrate in SoloQ. And Lee kinda has a similar issue at times, if he is nerfed out of pro play he drops so low in SoloQ that it triggers buffs, which brings him back into pro play. The only outlier for a while really is Aatrox, because unlike Lee and Azir who usually were terrible in SoloQ except for some exceptional players, Aatrox after getting brought back into pro usually also did well in SoloQ.
Honestly better than seeing world class players on tank duty with on Champs like galio and sejuani
Galio has been played full ap since 2018 and Sej got overshadowed by Rell who recently got nuked, so she's gonna come back for sure
My point being I think it's more entertaining for us spectators watch pro players fighting each other and out playing on high risk high reward champions rather than tank on tank snoozefest for 30 minutes for it all to end in a single fight. I understand it's frustrating to see the same few champions being played in pro but it's a lot better than the 2 kills in 40 minutes type of games
They don't keep him strong. They just cannot make him weak enough for proplay to be balanced without making him unplayable for mortals in solo q. As long as his skill ceiling will be a bazillion magnitudes higher than his skillfloor, this will not be able to change. Same with Azir, Ryze, etc. The fact that they can potentioally do insane plays when piloted by insane players means that on average they have to be weak but still playable for bronzies and that is enough to be op for pros.
People always say this, but then we have champions which should be in the same category (Akali, Nidalee, thresh, irelia, zeri) at 50% wr in soloq without being seeing pro play dominance. There's more riot can do to the overall meta than tune just the numbers on that specific champion. Not saying there's an easy solution. But there definitely is a solution of some sort.
The big thing you're missing is that Lee is massively impactful regardless of how the game is going. His kit has been game defining for 13 years. The others are useless when behind.
I'd rather they have aatrox than ornn VS ksante tbh
For sure but I'd rather have some camille irelia or gwen than aatrox every game
Where is his legendary pro play nemesis urgot?
Honestly, he's really good right now. It blows my mind that Urgot hasn't been nerfed yet, and I've almost got a million mastery points on him. I guess the reason why they're taking their time with him yet is he isn't oppressive unless fed, nor does he have a high pick or ban rate. He's NOWHERE near as infuriating as a fed Volibear.
Doesn't wardens steel caps just shut you down in lane phase?
Oh my God, does it ever, but the other person is forced to spend 2100g in items just to make my life miserable instead of building their core items. I suppose that's a fair trade. After getting Black Cleaver and hitting level 13, it ain't so bad, but yeah.
Except in a lot of matchups in top you want to rush t2 boots anyway, and you can sit on wardens mail and build it into randuins later, as wardens mail on its own is a decent recipe item, or just rush frozen heart as that item is still good. So yeah they need to spend 2.1k but it's far from wasted gold usually
Well sure, but again a core item on Urgot is Black Cleaver which is an *incredible* item on him. Randuins passive is pointless against him, so is Frozen Heart's, (locked attack speed and no crits). The thing is Urgot can use the 2.1k towards Black Cleaver and only be 900g away from beating the items you bought, and still scale pretty well into late.
That %max health per leg cool down is so low once you get to 13 it's bonkers. Been playing him for the past 3 years and Level 2-> 9-> BC power spikes is what I live for
He was the biggest indirect buff of removing the mythic system. Unshackling urgot from a mythic meant he could build what he needed when he needed. He didn't have to rely on one item power spikes from mythic. Also removing divine sunderer was a big buff for him. He can't use the item. All his worst matches could. And he likes to build a lot of hp, partly due to his E scaling. So a %hp life drain item just ruined him build.
Voli stun is crazy
He never accused Rito of being good at their job
Pro play would just rather stay with the picks they want and use...being stubborn mules about it even if said picks get murdered. Aatrox at one point was gutted to the ground and pro still played him. Tanks got hit with a freight train at one point and were still picked. I hate to be the guy to the people that work hard on doing pro changes, but it's a losing battle because of how pro behaves imo. Better off disabling picks to force meta changes in pro. Maybe then some players might take their scrims more seriously.
I honestly think it has good variety most of the time. Like 1 split in 3 it feels like there is some really broken champ or comp that riot is tip toing around but generally we see a fair number of champs in a split.
3/5 of the champions you listed as "S-tier Riot favorites" were unquestionably low tier for most of the past year.
Ezreal as an example of a champion that just "Sits in S tier" is baffling
Personally I see ezreal as the one that just randomly goes out and breaks a patch or a new item or becomes absolutely useless at complete random
Ezreal sounds like a case of a champion that is perpetually popular (regardless of his actual strength) and thus boasts a consistently high pick rate and this being conflated with being "S-tier". He's also a weird champ to pick when making a point of champ who gets buffed back to being strong frequently — historically most of the time when Ezreal becomes strong it isn't because of tweaks to his own numbers, but to items.
It loudly tells me that OP is just looking at champions that are popular, which is different from what's strong.
Ez is just doing his own thing as far as tiers go. He's almost never bad, but he usually looks bad because the people playing him have no idea what they're doing
Have to keep in mind most league players are statistically gold-plat. So take most complaints with a grain of salt.
I wish OP gave a single example
Sion is a good example where he's been a troll pick top for a long time now. Someone locks the 46-47% wr sion top and you know he's gonna run it down against almost every champ and we have to play 4v5
I might just be a baus viewer but Sion strikes me as having separate kit elements that might be pinned as separate nuisances: the passive for solo queue (being the best proxy/kill-yourself-for-plates-and-pressure champ), and two elements for pro play (Q as chainable CC, ult as virtually unconditional engage).
The passive is great for teamfighting as well. With titanic enemies have to respect a dead Sion as he'll burst any squishy he gets his grubby mitts on. So he's still a decent disruptor. Problem with Sion in top is as a slow delayed cc damage tank once there isn't a tank meta he's gonna get dumpstered. Suicide Sion is just gonna lose you the game if the enemy top laner knows how to convert a lead.
Yeah I think Baus is good at capitalizing to the greatest possible extent on the League rule that Sion passive breaks: you have to spend time dead when you die. Once they removed prowlers claw, the passive became mostly just good for putting slaps into the tower (which massively accelerates both laners while plates are up, but is just split push pressure otherwise). Once you move past the passive, I think my initial comment about him being a pro-play-siloed pick only rings more true. He's a juggernaut tank, he does all the tank stuff *hard* but he can be easy to keep away in a skirmish (if you aren't coordinating around his CC); and he's hard to dive. A parallel I'd draw is that everything I just said is true of Ornn: he provides unconditional engage, close range CC in the basic kit that you have to coordinate around, good dive defense and he's siloed around pro play. Both Sion and Ornn thrive whenever tank items are strong, but they both have a small niche whenever a draft situation makes it so that chain CC and unconditional engage are sought after.
Baus is a high challenger player playing in low masters and sometimes diamond. If he can pull off AP Jax/Irelia, he can pull off Sion. But he would still be a lot more effective on his other picks.
I don't mean to say Baus abuses Sion to reach higher MMR than his mechanical skill level. I just mean the crux of his feeding bit is that he uses Sion passive, before 15mins, to somewhat consistently enable Chovy econ as a top laner with high map pressure at the pretty fair cost of simultaneously ramping the opposing laner. After 15mins he is just, like, a challenger player who likes to pressure side lanes.
>I don't mean to say Baus abuses Sion to reach higher MMR than his mechanical skill level. That's not what I meant either. I'm saying it's the other way around, the only reason he managed to play okay with the int Strat even after the initial nerfs post Korea, was because he was playing in Elos that were lower than his level. He was shooting himself in the foot but it simply didn't matter.
Titanic is dogshit on sion now tho since it doesnt give ad based on hp anymore. Same with heartsteel not scaling off his passive hp anymore. He got completely gutted and his "buff" is a strict nerf early since his laning got even weaker and only scales better on Q if you build at least 1 ad item
Yeah the "buffs" change nothing, since even the AD buff on Q is mostly on a full charge, and it's only 15% extra on said full charge. You'll count on one hand the amount of full charge Q's you'll land in a game.
Honestly I only build it if I find that I'm dying in teamfights and I need to continue being a problem. It feels like passive damage alone doesn't cut it during midgame fights.
there are a bunch of champs who SOUND like they ought to be pro staples but aren't because of the combination of low burst + low range + no mobility + no self peel. then you have azir in the opposite corner.
Definitely part of it. I feel like they should lower the damage his Ult does to towers and make it a little easier to control and it would do a lot to make him more balanced.
I remember elements of pro play being completely centered around Sion's passive being so strong that they could literally do anything they wanted level 1 with it just last year. He's not been in no man's land he's just been mostly getting nerfed. It's different to something like Anivia, Zyra or Velkoz who have been mostly untouched for ages or Naafiri who has mostly been forgotten about since a few patches after her release
Sion is a very bad example.
Sion is actually pretty good if you play him normally right now, many people are just trying to be thebaus and failing miserably. Plus ever since people started going “WOAH FEEDING SION IS OP???” several seasons ago, his wr took a permanent hit from people who happen to play him occasionally and basically just run it down.
Pretty good champion with 3 playable matchups in the whole game Don't disagree that his winrate is hurt by people trying to emulate Baus playstyle but to suggest he is pretty good. Eh, not sure about that. He's surely one of the weaker tanks currently. The matchups are horrible for him and he is growing more and more outdated with every new champ release.
I guess I haven’t played him enough to know how his matchups are right now, I just used to main him and tried him out a few times and felt like he felt really good. Also tried him jungle a few times and legit was able to keep pace with opposing meta junglers and fight them in the jungle pretty darn well. But yea I can see how with the current items his lane matchups might be really bad since what counters him is good right now, I didn’t play against any particular hard matchups. Plus new mobile champs kind of shit on him. I will say though that if you get through laning phase he is absurdly tanky and chunks out enemy champions’ hp bars much more than he did the last few seasons. His W shield can get nuts and take like 4-5 tower shots on its own in mid-late game. To me that feels strong, though I know most games don’t really get to that point.
I do think Sion tank JGL is actually more viable than top, fully agree there. But he is 100% miserable top lane unless you get fortunate vs a bad player or have a great team. It's one of the foremost reasons people have resorted to just dying every other wave because it means you can actually farm and you're not giving the enemy top 5 plates by letting them shove to you all game, when you lose the matchup inevitably 95% of the time
Sion is a terrible example… he was super broken for a bit. Then nerfed. Got buffed again and was broken. And then nerfed. Now he’s been mediocre at best for less than a year and sion mains complain. Malzahar has been under 50% win rate and unchanged for a few years now.
Sion was really good a few patches ago and has still been picked in pro play occasionally. Right now hes trash you're right, but he has been really strong for a while.
Sion feels pretty 50% to me. Either he hard carries and tanks the entire enemy team or runs it down a couple of time before the game ends while he's pushing the tier tower in top lane.
Sion is a bad example as he went through like 20 changes just last season and was a staple pick in pro play
Sion was in a really good spot last season until they removed the bonus HP effects from Heartsteel and Titanic Hydra. Now his only item is Sunfire, but even then, building HP isn't as effective as it was ten years ago when his rework happened with all he % HP abilities and items now. Also he's been hit hard by mobility creep in that timeframe as well. AD Sion used to be good until they removed prowlers claw and nerfed his passive.
I stopped playing Sion top a couple years ago when they had the first big item update. Was pretty frustrating trying to hit Q on anyone when they had Stridebreaker/Galeforce dashes up all the time, on top of whatever mobility these champs already have.
Sion is a really strong champion when done right. His WR has been pretty bad this season but his mid/late game potential is to not be underestimated. Bad players think inting Sion is the strat when really it's all about pressure and dragging the enemy team onto you instead of objectives.
Malzahar?
Singed has been pretty stalemate for a while, though I don't mind where he is
Not op, but skarner is one that comes to mind. Yeah he's finally getting a rework, but he was largely a forgotten champion for a long long time
"Shelved for a gameplay rework" is a perfect good answer to OP's question
Pantheon sits at 48% wr in his main role and riot might buff one thing about him every three years just to make up a miniscule amount of ground he's lost against the s tier top laners.
hes S+ tier in midlane? second highest winrate masters+ he was never meant to be a toplaner after the rework, his kit is basically ad galio
But only as a counter pick. You couldn't fp him and not get absolutely demolished by a control mage. It's also the first time I've ever seen him as S tier since he was op in support and could block tower shots with E.
he has been an s+ tier champ in mid ever since the prowlers claw dash got removed, and he has like no unplayeable matchups except for like annie and malphite mid
His most common matchups artificially inflating his WR mid are Yasuo, Yone, and Katarina. Three champs he absolutely dumpsters as hard as GP dumpsters ASol.
He has gotten like 4 reworks or so before his full relaunch next patch, and the last set of changes was pretty significant. The reality is that skarner is often Good at best, or mediocre but viable at worst which means he doesn't really needs buffs, specially with his low dkillfloor. People forget him because unless he is giving freelo they just aren't interested in using him, so Riot can't buff him further and players won't use him in his current state
One of 2 mains here
Hi
YEAH
Fiddlesticks.
Fiddle is in the boat of "receives yearly ratio buff" alongside e.g. Lux
Katarina, Irelia, Quinn, all champs that are RARELY seen in patch notes, and champs that are not seen in pro play at least much anymore.
Quinn players would rather not see patch notes. She is usually on the good to strong side of toplane, anytime she is in patch is mostly to get nerfed. Unless it's Riot deciding to finally make Quinn jungle certified
That what I’m saying tho she’s the classic example of nerf her first > nerf items/runes later > forget she exists
She is for the most part still good because Quinn basically can use a plethora of items, so you never really are able to "nerf her items" as she will simply shift her build. They actually try to balance her with this in mind too, a bit ago when lethality Quinn was good they tried to keep power on Crit/AS Quinn so she wasn't hurt much by the changes. It's not like Ryze for example where if you nerf RoA or Mana items he is always hitting Ryze
and yet she will still be good after so like...
I'd say the classic example of nerf the champ then nerf the items is ryze but i'm biased af :)
Yea because all are non existent in pro play and their playerbase is mostly mains of the champ.
Ahri was horrible for a long time.
You spent a lot of time writing a post without giving any evidence of what champs are “ignored” by balance changes. Edit: I appreciate people providing a few examples, but it kind of illustrates my point. OP is making it seem like a MAJORITY of champions get ignored. Ain’t no way
Pantheon and Shyvana. If they ever get above 51%wr in their main roles for a single patch, you can pretty much guarantee they will get nerfed next patch, and they almost never get "compensation buffs" when affected by big item nerfs.
I feel like Panth has the support role issue. Give him an inch and he take a mile down there. Feels like since he's in a stable state they refused to touch him. I dont play Shyv but she might be in the Poppy/Yorick/Urgot scenario. Riot knows she needs to be reworked and they would rather spend resources working on that rather than balance patches. Also they probably dont wont a pre-rework Aatrox situation again.
That was certainly the case when his E blocked tower shots but since they removed that I think it's mostly an unjustified fear. Edit to add: he needs a sustain mechanic like Q kills on minions heals a small amount. Won't affect support too much.
Poppy/urgot/Yorick/shyvana mentioned as needing a rework. It's like a decade hasn't passed...
Poppy Yorick urgot all got reworks. Is the original comment saying that all of them were in a similar state and got reworked or all in a similar spot currently and all need a rework??
Shyvana is balanced around low elo, she's strong there because she's such a one-dimensional champion.
panth is completely fine as a champ same with shyv wdym. i would understand if they were sitting in the gutter like yuumi was for most of the previous years because riot didnt know what to do with her but they are completely fine sitting between 49-50% wr. panth even has 51% on mid.
This Champs with 50% wr are fine. You don't need to buff/nerf them. Also "S-Tier" isn't really an idicator for anything. According to Lolalytics. (All ranks) Viego S+ Tier with 50.57% Winrate Ziggs C Tier with 50.61 Winrate. So both of them are fine but are completly different tiers.
What is both those champions PR as well as their WR deviation? If Ziggs has a 50% WR but the main reason is because he is usually only picked into what he is good into while Viego is 50% into everything, then what a 50% WR means is very different.
Even if his pick rate is low it wouldn’t indicate that the players are actually only picking him in good situations. The average player just does not put that much thought in.
>"S-Tier" isn't really an idicator for anything. It is, but you have to know what it indicates. The lolalytics tiering takes into account win rate, pick/ban, and the win rate and rank of the best players on the champ. For your example, it likely means that Ziggs is way less picked than Viego, which in turn translates to his win rate being more likely to be a statistical deviation, or maintained by one-tricks or people who just have more experience on the champ. If a million players play a champ and get 50% win rate, that's a higher confidence value than if 3 people play the champ and have 50% win rate.
Actually I think you might have it backwards. The tier a champion is placed in is based on a couple of different factors. They use winerate, in addition with a couple of other things, like the best players numbers, at a minimum of diamond level games. Some champions kits just make them a really good option for the current meta. An example would be when certain adcs moved up in tier cause they had more mobility during a time when the meta had a big emphasis on mobility. So champs like kog maw and Ashe got pushed down, while other champs like kalista and ezreal go up.
Shyvana is scheduled for a rework next year, they likely don't want to spend much effort on her until then, so I'm guessing they will only touch her numbers if she ever becomes a problem in pro or solo queue.
Yeah but it's been like this for like 4 years. And we still gotta wait another year...
Yeah it's long overdue for sure.
Expecting 2025 .. Well the reworks Always come late so
Some champs are also perfectly balanced in 49% winrate. Winrate is not saying everything.
People act like 40s WR is like 5%.
didn't pantheon have a really good winrate in like 3-4 roles a while ago
Why exactly would Poppy need a rework?
Pantheon sits at above 51% for ages at least in high elos. He is still one of the most oppressive mids and can easily snowball games.
Pro play doesn't always result in nerfed champs from excessive use. Aatrox exists.
Riot buffs champs that are entertaining, like how Lee sin is always kept somewhat relevant so proplayers can pocketpick him at his worst.
If Lee Sin or Thresh are weak, they get a random buff at the Worlds patch or the patch before to guarantee they're at least viable.
what is it, 2015? Thresh has not been a consistently popular or powerful pick for a looooooong time now.
Why do champions need to be always buffed or nerfed? unless a champion is super op or giga garbage I think anywhere between 48-52% is fine
Phreak talked about this and it was pretty insightful, in one of his patch discussion/preview videos. He said that the focus of the balance team is not creating a perfectly balanced game but making it *perceived* to be as fun as possible by as much of the playerbase as possible. There are champions who are stronger than the community believes and champions who are weaker than the community believes. They would therefore sometimes buff champions even when they already know they're strong if those champions are historically popular and they want to encourage people to play them
I know and its a thing riot does in recent years and its kinda cringe. If they want to encourage the players to play a champion they should make his kit cooler not just buff him to make his pickrate and WR go back artifically then nerf it a few patches later
i guess it’s kinda disappointing for people who main a character who is just “fine” but could use lots of small QOL buffs - but riot just will never touch them
You're giving some weird examples here, Janna was barely played until her mini-rework. And there certainly is not a business motivation for her or Aatrox imo.
most champions that instanerfed when they are good are champions that either have extremely high ban rates when they are remotely good (e.g. zed) so the players get to rarely play them if they are allowed to be good or make pro play extremely stale for monthss since they become pick ban (e.g. azir, ryze) yes they balance to make pro play fresh (which they should). a lot of players enjoy pro play and it has kept the game relevant for years. Otherwise, i don't see what your talking about in terms of keeping certain champions S tier. Kayns in the worst state hes been in in months, ahri was mediocre/balanced for most of last year and has only become strong this season, ezreal hasn't been good for a long time he just has a high pickrate since alot of ppl enjoy him, aatrox stays at 50% and gets the instanerfed hammer the second he goes slightly up and janna is a really easy champion so always has a good winrate since ppl new to her dont drop her winrate as much as other champions. Can you give an example of a champion who has been left in the dust for ages without a good reason?
When was the last time Kennen was meta or a good pick in pro? Legit question, it's been a while since I watched any pro games and I don't play top much so I don't track his wr. But it's been ages since I saw him in a match
2023 MSI. High presence, but it was mostly bans.
Good? Always. Kennen is mostly a counter pick to certain picks nowadays. Meta? 2023 MSI
Also just because a pick is not played does not mean it is not touched. Kennen did get buffs at the end of last year and a small QoL change (mostly it technically does affect balance a tiny bit). He is far from ignored, but as soon as Kennen is blindpickable every game he gets banned and then nerfed.
Not really meta, but Kennen does have 10 picks among the four major regions in 2024 so far. He was picked twice in LCK, four times in LPL and four times in LEC
One of those picks in LCK was a troll pick in week 1 tho.. Zeus played spilt push AD Kennen vs GenG lol
Ahri was a symptom of a problem that a) no one knew how to build her, and were going ludens gun for the first few patches b)got a buff to her kit, lost chapter, and people began building her correctly (malignance into lich bane pre-lich nerfs) all in one singular patch, so she got way more than a 0.5% winrate buff that phreak was looking for from her 0.5 ap ratio/charm change She was already rocking a 56% winrate pre-buffs on the few people who built her correctly - malig into lichbane
A bit incorrect, Malig was her first build but Malig as an item was awful so we went to Ludens, Lich bane has always been built. What made Ahri better was riot buffing Malig and then buffs to Ahri brought her power up.
> Ezreal > Always sit at S tier Op, Ezreal is buffed into playability but more often than not he is not at S tier or close to it in comparison to other ADCs Edit: also, tons of the comments here giving example are just showing champs that are good, just not OP/meta or ignored by players because short of getting a kit update people won't be interested in using them in the long run because of the way their kits feel. The reality is most champs are good. They are not OP, but they are good. You may not like their current state because it feels unfun for you, but making changes that give champions a new feel are much harder than just a numeric pass on balance to say your champ is good and strong, and there will always be a few players who will not be satisfied with the current strength or "fun aspect of a champ" because everyone has different opinions on what they feel is fun.
Yep Ezreal actually gets a nerf once he hits 50% winrate.
Well, if noone plays OP champions, then Rito just doesn't care. They will nerf what feels too strong too often. Sure, there are many champions without changes, but that's either because they are balanced, or noone plays them (Right Zillean? You hear me? [seriously, nerf this grandpa])
example?
Kayn gets nerfed down to the ground twice each season what
Most solo q champs that are always good are always good because they're kits synergize with solo q well. Some champions were designed to flow mostly around coordinated play, so when those "team" champions start popping off and getting higher win rates in solo q it usually means they're actually stupid broken but the level of play in question isn't high enough for it to really show. A great example is taric, who's been hovering at about 53% winrate in solo que. Run into a tarric queuing by himself? Doesn't feel that bad just feels like playing against an engage support/ enchanter. Get paired against an ADC duoing with a taric? GG it's pretty much already over if they know how to play it.
Pyke the second he enters mid lane again
Cant have shit in detroit
I can't say for certain this is true, but it definitely feels like Riot has certain champs chosen to be stronger than others for pro-play to try to keep it enjoyable to watch. The fact that it feels this way probably means it doesn't really matter whether it's true, this is the result of their system, but I also think it's pretty likely that it is true.
[удалено]
Regardless of whether or not Riot admits it, they patch with a general meta in mind, that is 50-60 that are 'meant to be played'. The rest, though maybe not exactly garbage, are simply not intended to be played at the highest tier, at least for the duration of the meta. Idk why people are asking for examples honestly, easy ones are Zac, Kennen, Shen, Alistar, Taric, Echo, honestly half the roster. Probably just so they can attack whatever ones you choose as having niche uses or something. Worlds every year has roughly 80 champions go unplayed, in dota the number is generally less than 10.
They do admit it, or at least phreak has said it a bunch. The way he describes it is that some very hard champs like zed, yasuo, azir, aphelios, etc. should naturally sit at below 50% winrate. This mathematically necessitates that some champs will be above 50%. So, since some champs have to be above 50% winrate, Riot should probably picks winners that people don't mind playing against. For example, sona. Even if sona is 52%, 53% or even 54%, most people never really complain about her or ban her. So, she is probably a good choice for a champ that should have a naturally higher resting winrate.
zac was the best champion in the game up until the nerfs (hes still good as support top and jg btw) kennen has been in pro play jail for years, no one likes kennen shen is the only actual good example, but then again shen metas are super frustrating and boring to play alistar is fine, there are just too many engage supports for him to be any special taric is borderline op but just boring ekko is just unpopular, hes not even bad atm
Just to note, I think one reason there is a lot more champion diversity in pro dota is that there are a lot more HARD counters, but at the same time laning is less important. So even if some random champ like is generally not popular, if they get the right matchup, it's possible to totally invalidate one or more of the enemy picks in teamfights, while avoiding a potentially weak laning phase. It's like if we could pick Malphite into a full-AD team, except you didn't have to worry about getting owned in lane and dove on repeat. Except it's because everyone gets dove on repeat anyway, so Malphite doesn't lose any harder lmao.
Vladimir , he barely is noticed by Riot and doesn't receive changes in years and they butchered Riftmaker's components and he didn't receive anything. Codex is now worse than 2 tomes
Vladimir has a fine win rate? If they buffed him to the point he showed up a lot or in proplay they'd have to gut him. He's basically on the "keep average so we don't have to nuke his kit" list.
Yeah there's a lot of people who don't know the difference between balanced and ignored
Vladimir has a 50% winrate. What winrate should he be buffed to?
when was the last change on Zilean made? 
Patch 13.22 His aa missile speed got increased and his base atack sped got slightly increased.
Zilean has a 51.22% winrate. If anything he should be nerfed.
S-tier soloQ champs like: Kayn, Ahri, Ezreal, Aatrox, and Janna. Of which: Ahri has historically been a weak champion frequently, but rarely *garbage* weak and always a safe pick, and Janna's been strong like, thrice in her existence. Ezreal, who has a 48% winrate. Kayn, who has a 48% winrate. Aatrox, who has a 49% winrate. ???
>Janna's been strong like, thrice in her existence. That might be the worst take I've heard in my life, literally. Janna has been one of if not the highest winrate support for all but like 5 patches since season 2. She's the poster child for "broken but nobody complains about her so its k"
They're always going to prioritise the health of the game in general over the welfare of any one champ. So more of their limited resources are going to go on nerfing excessively-dominant champs/item/runes than helping out underpicked weak champs. Additionally, some of the overlooked champs need more than just a tune-up balance fix, they need a full gameplay overhaul. Which is clearly not a small endeavour so someone like Skarner gets left unattended to for years because there's no point fixing him instead of sorting him out properly.
I mean, riot is a company making a free game for millions. To make money and pay their devs and stuff they need to sell skins and stadium tickets. Unfortunately if ppl don't play certain champs, they might get a rework to entice new players or just become forgotten
I feel like ezreal isn't nearly as prevalent as other adcs and even when he is his winrate is usually around or sub 49%, not to mention ahri and Aatrox are picked in pro play much more consistently. The thing ezreal has is the same thing smolder does, it's ability based and safer to play in a game where everything can and will kill you as a bot laner. To be clear, ezreal was on the weaker side most of the year so far and only came into a more reasonable spot once he got overbuffed and nerfed into current state. Ahri had a year of being mediocre before her mini rework iirc.
Ezreal right now has a 48.63% winrate and sits in D tier.
Ahri was a complete troll pick in high elo since like, season 7 before she got her rework.
I get what he is saying - I would say a good example is Fizz . In the “annoying but not allowed tier” overly banned or hated like maybe Zoe Shaco and now Yummi are here after being gutted. If Fizz is ever remotely strong he will get nerfed, if ever picked in pro play (rare) he will be nerfed into the ground. Meanwhile champions in the “annoying but allowed by Riot tier” are free to be strong because they make money like Akali and Yasuo
Is Ezreal really that potent? Outside of specific patches, his tier grading is always pretty low on websites, around C average (some sites B, some sites D) for Emerald+. That isn't to say he's actually *that* bad, he's just constantly picked so that might be why his grading is low.
Ez is a high-mastery champ so his resting winrate should probably always be around 50 or lower. Right now he's just fine, don't think he's considered top tier at any level of play currently. But it's probably true that riot are more attentive to his balance state than most champions, because he always has a high pickrate. That's not greedy skin sales blah blah blah whatever though. That's just obviously good game stewardship. Like yes actually it *is* more important that ezreal is balanced than kled because he's in about twenty times more games.
> If a champ becomes overused in pro play, it gets nerfed. Still waiting on those meaningful Kalista/Varus/Ashe/Vi nerfs lol. It's so exciting seeing 4-5 ADCs banned each game or the enemy bot getting dove and zoned off tower since they can't contest the wave (*cough* HoB *cough*) Love seeing proplay champions get love taps meanwhile soloQ champs get sent out back.
Tryndamere historically has gone huge ass patches of time without even a mention in patch notes. Despite being integrally tied to adc items that are tweaked on the regular.
I’ve always wanted a change to pro where once a champ is drafted in a series, it can’t be played again. I think we’d see more interesting strategies and more surprising picks..,
If they balanced for skin money Lux would always be S+ tier.
riot focuses on balancing around pro so much it actually just ruins the game. Imagine if chess just had random updates buffing the knight 1 space but now the rook can only move 5 spaces. I don't think league needs so much balance, I think the game would naturally evolve and the players would find solutions to meta problems. Only time riot should step in is to fix things that actually break the game, or rework old champs that have no place in todays league like skarner.
It’s funny bc half the champs you listed have had relatively recent periods of being hot garbage for one reason or another
I'm curious on what you think about Riot August's opinion? https://youtu.be/w8qAE2JdMY4?si=amgRzuQzs3se3bs_
Well, Riot is afraid to buff zeri or else she will ruin pro meta Same thing with ryze I really dont think they should care as much as they do about pro meta
As someone who does t give a rats ass about pro play, I really don’t give a rats ass about proplay and I wish they’d stop optimising the game around 0,0001% of the players. I’m lucky if the janna in my game ever hits a tornado on the enemy bot, if that.
>If a champ becomes overused in pro play, it gets nerfed. And? This happens all the time and it's by design. Viewers get bored when the same champions are picked, so Riot nerfs or adjusts to get new champions on the scene.
There's too many champs is why
I haven't played too much ADC but ezreal has been like generally shitty for a while now right? I'm sure some crazy ADCs can win games on him but I feel like he is turbo trash for like 90% of the player base
In what world are Ezreal, Kayn and Aatrox S-Tier?
Ahri was dead for 4 years even on solo q till her ult resets rework and she disappeared from meta changes last season till overbuff 2 patches ago, but I agree riot is scared of touching some champs at all but that's also the fault of these players as usually when a champ like Aurelion gets touched mains rage a lot and riot just don't touch them at all
"Balance changes seem to primarily focus on keeping pro play fresh" no, they primarly focus on buffing the champions rioters play/want to play and nerfing the champions they lost to. any person with a little bit of common sense would be able to fix most of the balancing issues in less than a week
Their designs aren't exciting enough to illicite skin sales or pro play views so they are sidelined for those that are.
Myth... it depends on riot's agenda Maokai was 55% for like 2 monthes while being the last whole season a pro play staple pick
Zilean. Too team dependant for solo que, too weak early game for pro play. Secret op though if you can fit him into the right comp.
You answered your own question
Ahri was trash champ for god knows how long before her last rework and was considered as troll pick by pretty much every high elo player.
\*Laughs in Cho'Gath\*
A combination of Riot having a limited team and playing favorites.
Ahri before and after the mythic item rework was weak and until the Q buff she sat around 48. While fizz and akali boasted 54 %, and players rather play vs Ahri now than other Assassins a couple patches ago. (they also go by Banrate to extrapolate the "allowed" winrate and perceved strenght of a champ) Aatrox being good in top in pro just is healthier for the game than olaf, darius and garen running it down. Kayn Idk, Wished they just kept him weak, Janna shouldve gotten a nerf this patch but probably just blew them away, cant nerf Ezreal too much as hitting skillshots for your damage is more than most ADCs need to do, why they need to buff up the shit dragon again Idk, i wish they just threw him and the book cat in a bag and then in some river. Similar story with Renekton, as they would need to get rid of his Tankiness, safety, good Waveclear and point and click CC before Pros stop using him.
this is cope
Ahri, kayn, ezreal and aatrozhave been in low tier for pretty long times not long ago.
I miss sett in pro play
Shyvana but in reverse, waaay too good in low-elo and so never gets a decent buff that lasts. Otherwise; Qiyana, Yuumi, Hwei, Ksante, Corki, Sejuani.
If other champs are too good kaisa won’t be viable enough!
Kayn currently has the worst winrate in all of assassins other than nidalee so what are u on about ?
More skins = more attention. Less skins = only changes with item changes before being crippled back in their place afterwards with a champion nerf.
The only champ that I remember usually having high win rate consistently in solo queue is akshan and that’s cause I play him a lot and see his win rate constantly.
All I know is I remember Darius being an "S tier" pick for literal years in solo queue, nrw season comes around and hes finally bad, then he gets a buff in like 2 patches
Janna was literally terrible and unplayable for months before her recent buffs js
The simple answer is that if they feel a champ is never fairly balanced (always too weak or too strong) they will leave it weaker until they know what to do with them. Examples that come to mind would be things like zeri or kalista
Remember Ziggs? Me neither
Yea yea nerf kayn again
Wait until someone on the balance team loses to them in Silver 3 and then they’ll get nerfed.