League of Legends (Old)

[Ser Arthur Dayne]

Who are your top 3 for each spot Saki?

Top- Wukong, Nidalee, Riven
Mid- Diana, Mordekaiser, Teemo/Kennen
Jungle- Mumu, riven, Aatrox (want to try malph though)
Supp- Nami Sona Lulu
Adc- Kog Trist (and whoever is free)

I still die a little inside any time I see a teemo play mid.

[Junpei]

when are we going to start the tournament if we have 20 people? And how do we form teams? I don't care who I'm with at all.

Thing about akali is that it's not hard to get good with her, and people who are good with her and know when she is weak in fights can shut her down pretty well. Though she is a great assassin and if she gets to roaming can be pretty effective. I've found I can do all the things akali can with kassadin without being a glass canon that has to be right on top of the enemy.

[PJ.]

Anyone who's low level/wants to play with me, add my smurf: SmiteFail

Just bought some XP boosts so i'm pretty much nly playing on him for the next week so he's 30

[notscience]

Panz I'll play with you tomorrow (later in the day)

[Saki]

I has alt too

Viera Assassin

[notscience]

I have like 3

Illumise-Srsly low level

Cameda- 11/12ish

badscience-30

[PJ.]

Top- JARVAN
Mid- JARVAN
Jungle- JARVAN
Supp- JARVAN
Adc- Sivir.

[PJ.]

Top- JARVAN
Mid- JARVAN
Jungle- JARVAN
Supp- JARVAN
Adc- Sivir.

[DeathRowKitty]

I hear Sivir is also an amazing jungler.

[BROseidon]

@the post above, that's absolutely and ridiculously wrong. Exhibit A: Rengar Exhibit B: Hecarim, Exhibit C: Janna

...all are fine right now?

Numbers don't just have to be damage. Shit like ability range and cc duration are also numbers.

[PJ.]

Yes one of the worst champs in the game, the second best jungler in the game and the highest win rate champ in the game are fine.

[BROseidon]

Rengar is weak because Riot is fixing his play pattern, but he's not horrible. Certainly not heimer-level bad.

Hec is not "second best jungler in the game." He's solid, but there are plenty of junglers who are about as good, if not better, depending on team composition.

Public data on winrates is bad. Janna is solid, but not substantially stronger than Sona/Nami/Lulu/Thresh.

What the pros do is, if anything, generally more indicative of what is OP (pros will congregate around currently or recently OP champs). Janna was picked once in NA last week and banned 0 times. Hec was pick/banned 0 times in NA last week.

[PJ.]

Rengar is weak because they have nerfed his numbers into the ground because they admitted the kit they put out intially was impossible to balance. And Heimer is another example. His numbers are irrelevant because his kit is too bad.

Hec certainly is the second best jungler in the game. He's weaker than Nunu who has silly numbers right now, and is marginally stronger mummy, Nautilus and fiddle.

Janna IS significantly stronger then all of those beside thresh, who is another incredibly imbalancable champion absed on his kit.

What pros do has no impact on 99% of the people that play this game, outside of nerfs/buffs.

[BROseidon]

Rengar is not impossible to balance, it's that his kit is un-fun to interact with when it's good. There's a difference there.

You forgot Elise and Lee Sin in your jungler list, both of whom are stronger than Hec right now.

Janna is not better than any of those. Easier to play, sure, but she's not actually better. Which is why the pros aren't picking her all the time.

And yes, different balance exists at different levels of play, but talking about balance other than every play playing near-optimally is pointless because the game is balanced around competitive play. Riot only deviates from this if a champ causes serious problems at another elo bracket (old Xin, Yi, Trynd, etc).

[Shanba]

I think its a little absurd to say that any champion can't be balanced simply by tweaking the numbers because I can't see how there could be a sharp cutoff point where above a certain number that champion is op and below it the champion is up - using rengar for example, if he were balanced with, say, his q doing 50 damage at level 1, changing it to do 51 damage at level 1 wouldn't then make him overpowered - but clearly, if it did no damage he would be too weak and if it did 700 damage he would be too strong, so somewhere in between has to be a sweet spot in terms of how likely you are to win if you pick him.

Of course there are some caveats, like there could be kits where the sweet spot is harder to hit, or kits where hitting that sweet spot leaves you with unfun gameplay patterns (for example, feast or famine type gameplay of the sort that katarina used and still to some degree does have), or kits where tuning it to be balanced as a one off is technically possible but the champion is so sensitive to changes in their environment that every time you change something about one of their core items, or the way passive gold generation works, or the talent trees get tweaked, then it has an impact on their gameplay that you have to address again. Or it might even be that the correct numbers at a professional level and at a high elo level are vastly different to the correct numbers for scrubby people like us and that makes the champion really hard to balance correctly.

[Phillammon]

Shanba, think of Blitzcrank, Leona, Alistar and Thresh. These are (In my noobish opinion) some champs for which that doesn't hold true- Zeroing all of their numbers but MS and Health would have very little effect on their core gameplay. True, they'd have a harder time, but the fundamentals would be unchanged. Blitz'd still have the same play and counterplay, Thresh would still be the sovereign king of interrupts and ganks, and Leona and Alistar would still be able to dash into the middle of a fight and take the enemy carry out for 4 seconds. Tweaking the numbers on them has very little effect on their play- they'd be weaker, but not massively so.

[PJ.]

I think its a little absurd to say that any champion can't be balanced simply by tweaking the numbers because I can't see how there could be a sharp cutoff point where above a certain number that champion is op and below it the champion is up - using rengar for example, if he were balanced with, say, his q doing 50 damage at level 1, changing it to do 51 damage at level 1 wouldn't then make him overpowered - but clearly, if it did no damage he would be too weak and if it did 700 damage he would be too strong, so somewhere in between has to be a sweet spot in terms of how likely you are to win if you pick him.

Of course there are some caveats, like there could be kits where the sweet spot is harder to hit, or kits where hitting that sweet spot leaves you with unfun gameplay patterns (for example, feast or famine type gameplay of the sort that katarina used and still to some degree does have), or kits where tuning it to be balanced as a one off is technically possible but the champion is so sensitive to changes in their environment that every time you change something about one of their core items, or the way passive gold generation works, or the talent trees get tweaked, then it has an impact on their gameplay that you have to address again.

Or it might even be that the correct numbers at a professional level and at a high elo level are vastly different to the correct numbers for scrubby people like us and that makes the champion really hard to balance correctly

.

The bold is a much more concise and clear version of my premise, saying that what pros do doesn't matter.

And I agree, that it isn't a hard cut off, but it's not that the number is the part that is unbalanced, it's the mechanic itself. Let's stay on Rengar for a second, His ferocity and the fact that when he hits max ferocity he can double trigger a move is the part that makes it hard/impossible to balance. It gave him way too much with CDR( the steroid, the ult, the heal) and the numbers just helped his laning be too dominant. They had to tune down everything because the ferocity mechanic was too strong and with split pushing with the double Q steroid and laning with the super strong heal(which is why the changed the heal to scale on level). Also let's go to the most recent and obvious example of a mechanic they atually couldn't balance so they just took it out, Draven's bleed. Riot pretty much admited that his old passive couldn't be both balanced and useful so they removed it even though it was a huge part of his lore(The Bleed Brother with Darisu.) Let's go to my point on Janna. It actually doesnt matter what her numbers are, the kit is just too good at doing what it's supposed to do. She already doesn't really provide that much lane prescence because they already tuned her down so much but still the only thing that really kept her down was how OP Taric was and Leona just be too damn good at being aggressive. She's just too good at protecting the AD carry. You can make her nado do no damage, it still does a great job saving a a bad player. Same with the ult and the slow. No one even really channels the ult outside of weird lane skirmmishs early game. Same goes with thresh. It's not the numbers it's the kit.

If the kit is too good at fulfilling what the role is intended to do, then it's not a numbers issue. Lantern being able to be a repeatable get out of jail free card, Janna in general being able to be a repeatable get out of jail free card. Those are things that have nothing to do with numbers. Rengar being able to take out towers too quickly and get away, wasn't a numbers thing, because they adjusted the numbers ever so slightly and now it doesn't work at all.

Also another thing that prevents numbers tweaks from being the end all be all of balancing is when a champs numbers are fine but he is too good at doing something they didn't intend for him to do(Ap Rengar, Jungle alistar). Rengar was a combination of DFG being far too strong and the scaling being way too high, so they completely decimated both things which is another thing that gave way to why he is so weak now. Alistars numbers a support were fine and he was a good support but not OP by any means but because he was way too strong in the jungle, they tuned him down so he wouldn't be and now he's not good enough to be a support AND he can't clear the new jungle so he's virtually worthless.

There are so many things that go into balancing a champion beside numbers and saying that a straight numbers tweak will fix every champ is just straight up bullshit. If it was that easy, the game would be perfectly balanced and every champ would be able to be put on equal footing with every other champ.

[Phillammon]

Darisu should be a thing.

Also what he said.

[PJ.]

Darisu should be a thing.

Also what he said.

Another example of a guy who they couldn't figure out the numbers on so they killed his mechanic with arbitrary restrictions, although he was never a problem in Pro Play.

EDIT: just got what you meant. Darisu is a thing.

[Phillammon]

...?

His problem wasn't pro play, it was the opposite- he was reliably curbstomping at anything remotely resembling a low level, regardless of numbers. And they did change his numbers first, if you take a look. (Also I was commenting on the typo, but nevermind)

[PJ.]

...?

His problem wasn't pro play, it was the opposite- he was reliably curbstomping at anything remotely resembling a low level, regardless of numbers. And they did change his numbers first, if you take a look. (Also I was commenting on the typo, but nevermind)

That was what i said. he was never a problem in pro play. His mechanic was too strong at a low level and the number couldn't balance it cause the number wasn't the problem. Double killing bronze top-jungler duos was. Pro play = not the end all be all of champion balance, numbers can't always balance a champion. Darisu in both points

Darisu is not a typo.

And if you remember correctly, they changed his mechanic first. It was reseting on assist and any kill reguardless if the dunk was the final move

[notscience]

Thats OP

I want to try Darius ;-;

[Phillammon]

Apologies, I only restarted playing just after that patch, apparently. My apologies. I evidently misinterpreted.

[BROseidon]

I think its a little absurd to say that any champion can't be balanced simply by tweaking the numbers because I can't see how there could be a sharp cutoff point where above a certain number that champion is op and below it the champion is up - using rengar for example, if he were balanced with, say, his q doing 50 damage at level 1, changing it to do 51 damage at level 1 wouldn't then make him overpowered - but clearly, if it did no damage he would be too weak and if it did 700 damage he would be too strong, so somewhere in between has to be a sweet spot in terms of how likely you are to win if you pick him.

Of course there are some caveats, like there could be kits where the sweet spot is harder to hit, or kits where hitting that sweet spot leaves you with unfun gameplay patterns (for example, feast or famine type gameplay of the sort that katarina used and still to some degree does have), or kits where tuning it to be balanced as a one off is technically possible but the champion is so sensitive to changes in their environment that every time you change something about one of their core items, or the way passive gold generation works, or the talent trees get tweaked, then it has an impact on their gameplay that you have to address again.

Or it might even be that the correct numbers at a professional level and at a high elo level are vastly different to the correct numbers for scrubby people like us and that makes the champion really hard to balance correctly

.

The bold is a much more concise and clear version of my premise, saying that what pros do doesn't matter.

And I agree, that it isn't a hard cut off, but it's not that the number is the part that is unbalanced, it's the mechanic itself. Let's stay on Rengar for a second, His ferocity and the fact that when he hits max ferocity he can double trigger a move is the part that makes it hard/impossible to balance. It gave him way too much with CDR( the steroid, the ult, the heal) and the numbers just helped his laning be too dominant. They had to tune down everything because the ferocity mechanic was too strong and with split pushing with the double Q steroid and laning with the super strong heal(which is why the changed the heal to scale on level). Also let's go to the most recent and obvious example of a mechanic they atually couldn't balance so they just took it out, Draven's bleed. Riot pretty much admited that his old passive couldn't be both balanced and useful so they removed it even though it was a huge part of his lore(The Bleed Brother with Darisu.) Let's go to my point on Janna. It actually doesnt matter what her numbers are, the kit is just too good at doing what it's supposed to do. She already doesn't really provide that much lane prescence because they already tuned her down so much but still the only thing that really kept her down was how OP Taric was and Leona just be too damn good at being aggressive. She's just too good at protecting the AD carry. You can make her nado do no damage, it still does a great job saving a a bad player. Same with the ult and the slow. No one even really channels the ult outside of weird lane skirmmishs early game. Same goes with thresh. It's not the numbers it's the kit.

If the kit is too good at fulfilling what the role is intended to do, then it's not a numbers issue. Lantern being able to be a repeatable get out of jail free card, Janna in general being able to be a repeatable get out of jail free card. Those are things that have nothing to do with numbers. Rengar being able to take out towers too quickly and get away, wasn't a numbers thing, because they adjusted the numbers ever so slightly and now it doesn't work at all.

Also another thing that prevents numbers tweaks from being the end all be all of balancing is when a champs numbers are fine but he is too good at doing something they didn't intend for him to do(Ap Rengar, Jungle alistar). Rengar was a combination of DFG being far too strong and the scaling being way too high, so they completely decimated both things which is another thing that gave way to why he is so weak now. Alistars numbers a support were fine and he was a good support but not OP by any means but because he was way too strong in the jungle, they tuned him down so he wouldn't be and now he's not good enough to be a support AND he can't clear the new jungle so he's virtually worthless.

There are so many things that go into balancing a champion beside numbers and saying that a straight numbers tweak will fix every champ is just straight up bullshit. If it was that easy, the game would be perfectly balanced and every champ would be able to be put on equal footing with every other champ.

I do agree that the bolded is relevant, but it brings up the question of "how do I deal with things that are OP in lower levels but weaker in higher levels if I am trying to improve." Old Xin is a good example of this. Sure, you could pick him to crush your way up from bronze, but once you hit gold you would probably have a lot of trouble winning with him because your ability to secure early ganks would be greatly diminished by players knowing how to ward and how to play passively. Part of playing the game is learning how to deal with things that are stronger at weaker levels but weaker at higher levels, since usually those champs abuse the fact that lower level players are weak at some aspect of the game (old Xin punished warding/overextending, Darius punished bad positioning, etc). Playing against these champs consistently would also give you a way to improve specific skills better (my positioning got a lot better after going top against Darius a lot with champs like Teemo).

However, the way you are approaching "numbers" is too narrow. Numbers are more than just damage and stats, they are also cooldowns, CC durations, ranges, aoe sizes, etc. For Rengar, one way they could have balanced the ferocity mechanic would have been to make it require more casts to charge up. Instead of getting a free reset every 5 spells, you're now getting it every 7 or 10. That would work towards balancing him. There are a bunch of places where Janna could still be nerfed if Riot wanted that would weaken her without hitting her core gameplay patterns. Her passive is one of the strongest in the game, but it's underappreciated by Janna players because they always have it and don't notice it. Part of the reason why Janna is strong is that her passive completely transforms mid, top, and jungle matchups. They could also reduce the bonus AD her shield gives, which would hurt her ability to produce further multiplicative scaling on ADCs. They could reduce the duration and/or strength of her slow, or the range of her tornado.

Also, your point about unintended gameplay patterns is a bit off. Usually there is a way to fix the problem that doesn't involve hitting the champ in their intended area. With Rengar, they only really needed to hit his AP ratios and DFG. The AD assassin build should be unaffected by that. With Alistar, the problem was a systemic issue in the jungle that made clearing camps too easy; the season 3 changes fixed that, and now Riot is free to buff Alistar support because you won't see him in the jungle anymore (also, Alistar is not that bad. He has the highest and most mana efficient sustain in the game).

The reason why the game hasn't reached perfect balance is that "numbers" can mean a lot of things. All of the numbers on Janna's kit, as an example, are:

Base stats (health, health/lvl, health regen, health regen/lvl, AD, AD/lvl, AS, AS/lvl, etc)
%MS buff on her passive
CD of tornado
Damage of tornado
Damage scaling of tornado
Charge time of tornado
Base knockup of tornado
Knockup scaling of tornado
Base range of tornado
Range scaling of tornado
Width of tornado
Projectile speed of tornado
CD of W
Damage of W
Damage scaling of W
Projectile speed of W
Slow strength of W
Slow duration of W
MS bonus while W on CD
Range of W
CD of shield
Strength of shield
Scaling of shield
AD bonus of shield
Range of W
CD of ult
knockback of ult
Channel duration of ult
Healing/second of ult
Mana costs on all her abilities.

I think I got everything there, but that is a looooooooooooooooooooooooooot of numbers they can play with without changing Janna's core gameplay.

[Junpei]

shanba if you think about it OP an underpowered aren't quantitative attributes. They are opinion statements and thus you can't adjust numbers hoping to have universal balance on one champion.

And I would go on to say that theoretical balance (or true balance) is impossible because champion kits are so different that you can't quantify the added power of every skill.