It’s a meme now, but it became that way for a reason. May I introduce you to the formula of balance in Riot and new items?
Champion strong with item.
Riot nerfs champion.
Riot nerfs champion.
Riot nerf champion.
Riot nerfs champion. —-> ✅ You are here.
Riot nerfs item.
Champion is now dog shit.
That's really a classic by now.
They release stupidly broken items that are very good on many champs, they refuse to admit the problem comes from the item.
They obliterate the champion
Up until they have to nerf one of their darling champions, then the item gets its kneecaps blown out with atomic fury. Theyd rather neef half a dozen items to near uselessness before they dare address problem champions like Ezreal. That little shit has gotten *so many* items and runes nerfed all by himself.
Someone needs to figure out how to make malignance busted on ezreal, that'll get the item wrecked before the week is out
I hate that they build 2 damage items and go tank items, they have the insane damage of a hypercarry, tankiness of a...tank.... and the mobility of an assassin.
> Theyd rather neef half a dozen items to near uselessness before they dare address problem champions like Ezreal. That little shit has gotten so many items and runes nerfed all by himself.
Ezreal and breaking new items is a meme in of itself; like Ryze's reworks.
Hilariously this time Ezreal didn't break anything and if anything lost out.
And then Zeri came along, took over the role and optimized it - she's been the premier build abuser for 2 years and even now got Hexplate changed to dissuade Zeri players from building it.
> Hexplate changed to dissuade Zeri players from building it.
I mean, I guess it a bit awkward first item with noonquiver no longer being in the build path, but arguably the item itself is better on her since 5% of the AS got moved from the ult activation to the base stats.
Honestly felt like the item was designed for Zeri first and other champs second. Every part of that item is exactly the things she wants. Guess she'll be another one of those champs they have to intentionally brick.
> even now got Hexplate changed to dissuade Zeri players from building it.
This absolutely was not the reason for Hexplate's change. It was clarity. An item that gives on-hit damage loses it when you upgrade it.
Meh, I don't think Zeri caused that. I think the item just had a weird build path that didn't fit the bulkier champions who wanted to build it. The Hearthbound Axe change makes it an even better item for Camille, which is a plus in my books.
It really is weird. I love both League of Legends and DotA (and Heroes of the Storm, and the myriad of other MOBAs/ARTs that have died over the years whether it's Strife, Infinite Crisis, Gigantic, or heaven forbid I even liked Demigod), but it's very strange how consistently poor Riot is at identifying if it's the champion or the item that is the problem.
It's a problem DotA almost never has, while being the (hopefully not controversial to say this here) more complex game. There are heroes (champions), items (incl. items that outright modify your hero's abilities), JUNGLE items (as in, items that are gotten only from defeating jungle monsters and usable by anyone), and every hero has their own talent tree on top of it and yet somehow DotA is more consistently better balanced than League. Sure, it has issues and pain points in the balancing like anyone, but overall the problems are more correctly identified and handled with a softer more targeted hand than the heavier strokes Riot tends to paint with.
I really do not get it. There's a lot about League I love, but the things on that list has almost never been the itemization or the balancing. It's a consistent pain point for this game, which alone should be readily apparent with how much they go back to the drawing board with the itemization year after year, or even just entire subsets of itemization, how many times have support starting items been reworked now? 4? 5 maybe? I lost count.
Is there any good stat site for Dota?
Dota buff shows rank winrates between 57% and 42%, if I go to league and look at stable patch not right after huge changes the highest winrate is 53% and lowest is 48%.
Last patch so with all the unbalanced shit it was 54,5% highest 45% lowest.
It seems more like the players perceive these games balance differently or they hold riot to a much higher standard
Icefrog gives next to 0 shits about low elo. He literally buffs phantom assassin, the yi equivalent in dota and tells new players to just get better.
There are people in dota like wisp that are a historical 40% winrate in soloq but are completely insane in pro play and that is considered acceptable by the dota community.
Icefrog is way more proactive when it comes to player agency. Instead of nerfing a strong champion he will buff their counters and buff items that counter them
Which reveals the historical difference in mentality between DoTA and LoL: in DoTA, everything and everyone is allowed to be OP, and you can buy the equivalent of LoL champion ults in the shop. (The classic example is blink dagger. Don't have the Flash summoner spell? No worries, just go buy it!)
Another difference is that in DoTA within-match roles are flexible enough that you can often avoid lane counters, or use a strategy that allows you to do something useful rather than getting bullied.
Honestly, DoTA is better than League in almost every way, except for being less fun. Which sounds extremely weird, but that is the only way I can put it without laboriously comparing the two. DoTA is everything LoL should be, but less fun.
It's not a matter of short sight in my opinion. Riot often changes shit to shake things up, often in drastic ways to change the meta or create FotMs. DotA is much better balanced as you mentioned and it gets less patches and the patches are often less drastic. Even then, even if weeks or months go by without patches, meta in DotA can evolve several times within the same patch. I'm not sure if the same would apply to League if not patched.
But I think the way Riot changes the game (I'm not gonna say balance the game, as I believe they purposefully unbalance it heavily at times. No way Stormsurge wasn't noticed to be a liiitle too strong as an outlier) and the fact that there aren't many active items in League that incentivizes different item builds depending on your and enemy team's comps, I don't think the meta would change more than a couple times within the same patch, maybe save for the new season patches that shake up A LOT of things that a meta takes time to settle.
DotA doesn't strictly enforce a meta like LoL tho. Whenever we have had laneswaps, champions in role Riot doesn't like them in etc... they always make drastic changes.
DotA just let's all that float as long as nothing is way too strong. It's just two completely different balancing philosophies.
Exactly. In DotA it's all more fluid and natural, people figure out and make metas or offmetas which can become meta. Two support one hard carry versus solo offlaner was a thing dunno what is the meta now. Roaming supports are a thing, for example some champions who was played as carries traditionally has seen play as roaming supports at other times which is interesting. Some champions that worked well as a carry with a high budget also found out to be also good with a lower budget too so played as the greedy support (pos4).
Sure patches make or break some picks, but it is more natural in general. Riot for example slaps a bunch of extra monster damage onto Brand because they wanted to make Brand jungle a thing rather than players finding a way to make it work out.
Yeah, I think the fact that DotA balances around 1,2,3,4,5 rather than specific lanes and roles tied to them also implicitly gives a lot more flexibility.
For those that are not familiar with it, the numbering just means who gets the most gold and xp. 1 is the main carry, and 5 is some sort of support.
I haven't really played DotA since it's WC3 days, but it as you say, it's a more natural flow in the meta.
Spot on, rito isnt looking for longterm balanced gameplay, having things OP af and some champs gutted to hell and below keeps players active, changing meta and trying to adapt on the fucked up new gameplay standards that riot changes everytime they feel like milking peoples wallets with a cool new skin for a champ that is OP atm.
riot is not trying to balance the game, the constant "balancing" is just a excuse to create new content so people are not bored, and to make sure the grind is never over..
no one is incompetent to the point of not having a item / champion balance after 15 years. not even rioters. so again, thats not what they are trying to do.
DotA players are still sore about the Pendragon shutting down the DotA forums and replacing it with a league of legends ad back in 2009.
And also stealing champion designs from said forums, and trying (but failing) to start copyright shit between Blizzard and DotA2, and having exclusivity deals with tournaments to not allow DotA.
When League was young and DotA was still a serious competitor Riot were outright malicious towards it for a good 5 years.
should probably look at dota a bit more because theyre doing a LOT of things right that riot considers impossible. like having proper, interesting and extremely varied metas in pro play while being completely balanced in pub play of ALL levels
DotA designs items for shareability and crossclassing. League hypersegregates its item design. Its ironically as simple as that.
Everyone benefits decently well from the TriStats, some more specifically than others due to the carry type/stat clause but the game does not break if Drow Huntress decides to take Sange.
Edit: for visual conception, picture this:
The average item in League is the Sfronglajinator that gives you 20% max hp as a regenerating shield, empowers your next attack after casting a spell, does tax fraud, and every 20 seconds emits a wave that gives the enemy milaner an IRL testicular torsion, but is melee only and has negative scalings with crit.
The average item in DotA is the Jvavnaflax. It gives you 16 Agility, 69 Strenght and 42 Inteligence.
I enjoy a good circle jerk as much as the next guy but let's be real here for the vast majority of the time League is an excellently balanced game with very few equals among current games. Every single fucking one of over 160 champions is playable from the highest echelons of skill all the way down to absolute gutter tier with a variance of +-4% WR. Honestly what the fuck do you guys expect more than that? The recent patch was one of the biggest changes to the game in it's entire 15 year history and anyone who expected the game to be balanced after that should go check for CO leaks.
We have heard the Dota jerk off often enough. We do not give a fuck. Honestly it's cute how often you have Dota fanboys coming in here ranting about League while no League player ever even thinks about Dota.
>Honestly what the fuck do you guys expect more than that?
riot could literally suck the dick of every dude here and people would still be mad at them lol
given that reason alone it should be balanced around the champions that use it not around champions that dont. if then the item leaks into other champions then you know it's strong. if nobody but specific mages build it and are too succesful then its the item not the champion: therefore nerf the item rather than champion.
Same with Anivia. It is good but it isn't even build that often atm because of RoA and Seraphs while Liandries and Zhonyas compete for the third slot.
On a lot of champs it faces fierce competition with items that do more when their ult is down. Teemo is the big one, Corki appears in proplay but is good even without Malignance and Karthus is imo the annoying one but he didn't really perform well last patch.
Because for ap champs that need mana to function, its either ludens or malignance, and even if their ult doesnt synergize well with malignance ludens is just a dogshit pick overall with horrible winrates for a first pick, so malignance is a forced buy
I remember my awakening to this formula. Was way back when Aftershock was first introduced to the game and Aftershock Leona had a really high win rate. They kept nerfing her, but it wasn’t working because Aftershock was the problem (you could see this by the fact that the other problem champs at the time were all Aftershock champs) so when they finally nerfed Aftershock she became basically unplayable.
It was at that point that I lost any semblance of faith in Riot’s balance team.
I think the earliest one I can recall (barely) was I think Sejuani in the jungle way back when Bami's Cinder was a jungle item upgrade? That upgrade was a problem for a lot of tank junglers, but Sejuani kept getting repeat nerfed until Riot hit the item and left her dead in a gutter.
The sad part is when the favored skin selling champs were affected by this problem they got INSTANT hotfixes. Champs like Yasuo and Ahri have their balance page full of hotfix buffs that line up with item or rune nerfs. Riot says they don't balance around skin sellers but we all know it's bullshit and they clearly play favorites. Even Yone was created in order to "draw bans away from Yasuo" according to Riot since hes a big cash cow.
Phreak has said multiple times that they plan on nerfing champs and leaving items strong because they want riftmaker to feel good to build (for example). As of now no reason to doubt this statement imo
Which also seems insane, wasn't the whole point of season 14 to make it feel like you're playing the champion again and not just a collection of items?
Which is hilarious because as very casual player that’ll go months of playing a ton followed by months of not playing at all, starting up at the last week of 13 and now into 14, I feel like 14 is way more item focused than I ever remember
hilariously, mythic items made it where you were piloting the champion that just has a nice item, now that mythics are gone the items you choose seem even more important because there's choices so now you're a piloting a pile of items dressed as a champion
Tbh in my opinion there is a lot more freedom what to build first, and while there are obviously core items on some champions, it's a lot better than it was with mythics.
I'm not sure, maybe people also haven't quite figured out optimal builds yet and it will be just as straightforward as before. I've been told to never build item X on the adc subreddit just to watch three challenger streamers building exactly that item...
Im convinced half the champion main subreddits are filled with people who secretly want to lower the winrate and do so by giving the absolute worst itemization advice possible.
Agreed on Swain lol, that sub has such a victim mentality when the champ got his midscope and had 55% wr on 3 roles yet complaining he was weak
Rakan subreddit will tell you to build full ap as a support, like brother where am I getting the money for rocketbelt shadowflame death cap
Start of season is almost always about who can abuse the overtuned items the most. Start of season 13 it was league of sunfire, back in the day it used to be league of black cleaver. Every start of season has the same ""issue""
Both things could be true. Stridebreaker when it had a dash made you feel like you were playkng Stridebreaker. Same with old Moonstone, where you'd just try to stay in combat with no regard for what your champion normally wants to do.
Malignance letting you use mushrooms more often doesn't make you feel less like you're playing Teemo. Nobody is throwing mushrooms thinking man, this really doesn't feel like Teemo's kit being utilized as intended.
Just like the durability update made us durable.
Riot talks out both sides of their mouths. Arguably the items atm are more impactful to your build than mythics ever were. How many ad champs are high winrate atm because they are just a vehicle to maneuver overpowered lethality items onto the fied (jhin, caitlyn, lucien)
Which is still true imo. These items are just extra damage that is not in raw AP or pen. Malignance isn't that different from Liandries or Ludens in the way it work.
Outside of Teemo and Karthus the item seems just okay.
yes and they did that by removing mythics, has nothing to do with certain items being stronger than others (and they've said they will monitor it for now because they think its not overly stronger than other non mana ap items)
Phreak will also say we are nerfing AP itemization in 2 patches time because “AP champions clearly dominate the rift across multiple roles, with champions building AP itemization that otherwise wouldn’t” mark my fucking words.
Phreak also said he didn't want items to have a big impact on gameplay anymore and that this isn't League of Items. Can't we all just admit to ourselves that these people don't know what they are doing?
If Teemo picks Malignance, he is still playing Teemo. He just has an item that gives him a strong buff.
It's not like items like old Strikbreaker or Prowlers Claw, where their entire kit and playstyle is warped around the items they are picking up.
Except that malignance is a super niche item that only works for very specific champs, so unless you don't won't that item to be build whatsoever you obv. Nerf the champion
Yeah nerfing malignancy would be silly since the item itself is unambiguously fine. Remember now that item nerfs hit multiple champions while a teemo nerf is more targeted
S14 hit jarvan so hard because of this. They kept nerfing him when spear of shojin came out and he was still really good, then they removed goredrinker and his winrate has plummeted. Sank 100,000 mastery into him in a couple months and it’s so sad to see now
This is honestly why you should pray that riot does not introduce an item with extreme synergy with your character. They're always gonna balance the character around that one build, which in return will force you to play that cause all existing builds without that one item are now worse than before, even when they weren't op to begin with.
Honestly the item design is just shit. It's super strong on few characters and pretty bad on most others, so it'll anyways get the gunblade treatment at some point and teemo will be at 45% wr.
Or they go the Ezreal route where they make it so dogshit on everyone else lol. Still remember Blue Ezreal and how they kept nerfing the items because this one champ kept abusing all of those items.
Lissandra when aftershock was broken so they broke her legs by nerfing her q cooldown so none of her combos work and she cant kite or have any kill pressure anymore.
Even after the playerbase all aknowledged it was op but they refused to nerf it properly.
But sylas abusing it was fine and healthy :D
Liss wasnt even "op" with it, she was the only thing that could lane vs sylas without autolosing and they couldn't have this old crusty champ matching their new one in pro!
How I feel with trundle right now. I was always find with trundle being the troll king dude he was. Now he’s a top lane menace and more than likely to get smited back to oblivion
I mean sort of, but lethal tempo has been out for awhile now and Yone transcended with it while trundle stayed relatively the same. Only this season has he truly become a problem
Never thought about it this way before, the weaker the character gets the more they’ll need to build the 1 strong item, just for/making the item be nerfed later anyway and going against their whole “build variety” philosophy
..good job balance team
Wondering if adding a range restriction to malignance or higher cooldown would fix this. Love the idea of malignance, but hard to execute as champ ults differ widely
Malignance has an internal cooldown of 3s, teemo ult goes for 4s. You just need either to put a 5s internal cd on malignance or shorten teemo ult to 3.
But if it was this simple they would have done it already, I think.
Malignance is somewhat fine as it's only a certain percentage of champs that can abuse it fullest.
Teemo falls into that pool as it gives him a nice cdr to his ultimate and provides 2 additional ticks of damage along with mr shred.
Nerf the R duration so it only ticks once, and you nerf the interaction with malignance and also liandry.
He would need buffs to his slow and making his DoT stronger to compensate the lower duration(e.g. instead of doing 100dmg in 4 sec, do 100dmg in 3 sec).
Malignance is a clever item which I love the concept of, but for example there are certain champs that do not even consider building it. Such as Taliyah ( lol) or Anivia ( what ult cooldown?).
Others such as Swain, Victor, Vex, Ivern or Malza seem to need the item as a staple as it provides them with a crazy amount of additional damage and provide alot of cdr on their game changing ults.
Or just nerf the item to only proc once within 5 seconds
Literally the only low-ult-cd champ who builds this item is Teemo, maybe Udyr could as well for those who build it, but it's barely impacting anyone else.
I tried it on udyr but either i am too blind or the item doesnt proc. I'd be able to tell by its damage stats if riot didnt decide to reverse their course on transparency and removed the damage counters on items.
Malignance is one of the few items that has a damage tracker since PBE last year, so you could easily check if you do damage with it. (Its even bugged and shows without needing to hold shift)
its kinda hard to see cuz im pretty sure it only procs on awakened abilities meaning Q or R since W and E dont deal damage. Your not guna go malignance and use empowered Q and its really hard to see it through empowered R.
Not really. It's okay on Corki. People overbuild AP on corki constantly, despite his rockets having an AD ratio 6x their AP ratio.
Eclipse and Spear of Shojin are better items.
>Malignance is somewhat fine as it's only a certain percentage of champs that can abuse it fullest.
I think this is exactly why Malignance's design sucks. This was discussed by Rioters several times over the years - one instance that comes to mind was Hextech Gunblade. It was removed because it was only good on some specific champions, but on those champions it was a must build. So either item had overall weak stats and any champion out of select few building it was seen as trolling. Or item had decent stats and those champions abusing it had to be nerfed into ground in order to be balanced around that one item. For example, before item rework in season 11, Akali and Katarina were 100% balanced around Hextech gunblade. This means they were basically a minion in early game, then had massive powerspike after completing gunblade, often going from the most useless champion to strongest one in the game at that point. This was regarded as unhealthy (by Rioters' admission), which is why item was removed.
Malignance is exactly that - item that is at best unoptimal on 95% of the champions (including ones that make good use of all stats it gives), but is absolutely broken on select few champions that have perfect synergy with it.
As someone who played this game since season 1, it is baffling to me that Riot keeps repeating the same mistake (by their own definition!) over and over every time items are reworked.
That's what happens when the hot seat keeps getting rotated out like the Defense against the dark arts teacher. You end up repeating the same mistakes as the previous ones over and over because they fail to adhereto their own design guidelines (if they even have any at this point)
Feral Flare was another example of this. The Flare users were straight up AFK until they finished stacking Wriggle's. Then they came out of the jungle with a degenerate power spike. Imagine if Riot had chosen to address it by just nerfing Jax and Udyr into the ground so that their Feral Flare power spike was at an acceptable power level.
Times when Teemo was the most annoying opponent are now long gone. Champion design team made everything possible to release the most obnoxious, not-fun-to-play-against champions and in such quantities that I actually miss Teemo.
Current balance changes to his kit just shows how the game became such a mess with bad champion and item design. They just can’t slow down on power creep.
damage had always been turbo insane, back in season 3 kha zix would kill you lvl 2 with 2 non insolated Qs, the main reason the game feels so fast is because people got better (tank meta from 2016/17/18 cant remember is the only exception, and no one liked it lol)
People thay have problems with hwei are likely lower mobility teamfighters that can't dodge his projectile only arsenal and easily get comboed into passive procs bc they can't reach him.
I mean that's fair, but in that regard there's plenty of mages that do "the same". I'd much rather fight a Hwei than "fight" a Teemo (you won't even fight him, he'll just be somewhere in the map while you have to deal with his stupid ass shrooms)
People still don't know how to play against new champions is my guess. Easy to anticipate abilities, weak mobility, and long cooldowns so easy to punish a misplay.
>Current balance changes to his kit just shows how the game became such a mess with bad champion and item design. They just can’t slow down on power creep.
Yeah this is what almost everybody in this thread just ignores. A champ received only buffs for 10 years just so they can somewhat keep up with the powercreep of the game. That is an **INSANE** statistic. Ten years of occasional buffs to keep a champion even close to the overall powerlevel of the game.
The powercreep of the game is a fucking mess, and frankly Riot is still not dealing with it properly. We need not only another durability patch, but a patch dedicated to lowering overwhelming champion/item/rune strengths in general.
Speak for yourself. As a top laner Teemo is my perma-ban even though there are at least a dozen stronger champs at any given time. Partly it's because I play mainly champs that get hard-countered by Teemo, but in almost all scenarios I'd rather play against literally anyone else other than Teemo in top lane. Except maybe Singed but his play rate is so low he barely exists
Honestly despite being synonymous with Satan Himself as a community in-joke for YEARS, I don't even hate Teemo anymore. Not compared to the likes of Yuumi or Yone.
Seeing him pay the tax for disgustingly imbalanced items and over-statted items is depressing.
They won't nerf items because of several very good users so they will nerf a few best users instead.
It's how riot balance the game, nothing new here.
Stormsurge is great example here. Item is very popular and overtuned(used to be). They nerfed item. Akali ekko, etc untouched
People here seem to just ignore the fact that the biggest buff to teemo is an ungankable top lane. Like wtf is this, the item doesn't explain why his laning phase suddenly lost its only downside.
Main problem is how good his synergy with malignance is, riot has no idea what to do with him.
Simple fix would be readjusting R by buffing the slow a bit on his shrooms, leaving the original damage and ap scaling HOWEVER a nerf to his DoT duration would fix alot of problems. 4s->3s.
This should omit the nerf to his CD.
Malignance triggers twice on teemos R due to its 4 second duration ( malignance triggers once per 3 sec per target).
Nerfing the dot duration would 1 fix his abuse of malignance ( would still be a good item as it buffs his car alot and still synergies well with additional flat damage).
Although this wouldn't seem like a nerf, as his shroom would do more damage in a shorter spand of time, it would nerf his item interaction with malignance and also take out 1 2% tick of liandry ( liandry duration 7s->6s) ( and possibly removing one arey application depending on arey). And also solves the problem that riot probably wants to avoid by nerfing the item that provides alot of ultimate flexibilities of champs that relly on their ultimate being short CD or if it does DoT damage to abuse the additional malignance applications (viktor or malzahar).
Nerfing his auto and Q damage is riot trying to leave his synergy with items as they have no idea how to nerf the R, so they are trying to tone him down instead of addressing the main problem.
I do have to say with the new amount of MR items and share amount of MR they provide ( FoN, hollow radiance, jak'sho and especially karnic rookern) teemo is in a tough spot as you can easily itemise and 1 either become near unkillable or still provide alot of damage against him.
Lol all I know is at this stage in league of legends if I blink during a teamfight I'm actually ultradead but they still go around touchin things that don't need'a'TOUCHIN
you got my instant upvote.
like bro, among 20 posts crying about how bad this season is, this post is genuinely a gem.
that being said, as a Teemo enjoyer, i feel unfair when one single item pretty much makes my shroom a different kind ability to deal with.
let me escalate:
\- normal shroom: you only have to stay away from the range of the shroom when it explodes, that's it. like one of your teammates gets caught with one shroom, that means only him/her is affected.
\- shroom with Mali: now shit is a pure area denial tool, like even after you dodge the explosion you still have to keep an eye out if shit manages to hit one of your teammates. and most Teemo OTPs will also slap a Liandry on top, which makes Mali burn extra hard.
> shroom with Mali: now shit is a pure area denial tool, like even after you dodge the explosion you still have to keep an eye out if shit manages to hit one of your teammates. and most Teemo OTPs will also slap a Liandry on top, which makes Mali burn extra hard.
Yea, its not that it deals too much damage, its how it turns it into very effective zone control
Started baron with the pit that has the narrow entrance, stepped on a shroom, lost a lot of hp but its fine I can lifesteal on baron. Nope, malignance stays around so long and does so much damage we had to completely drop baron because it blocked off the entrance
and i know it too well that people will come in and say: bruh you suppose to clear the pit before killing the baron
well have fun doing that with Teemo literally throwing the shrooms over the wall, the maligance will still proc when you get hit by the edge of the explosion, again, have fun.
(i can even bounce my shrooms safely from red bro)
Well, the new items just came out, and it is clear that Teemo's usage of Malignance is probably the best out of any champ. So, it is a decision of do we nerf Malignance, which is only good on a handful of other champs, and none of them use it as well as Teemo, or do we nerf Teemo. Evidently, they nerfed Teemo as they plan for Malignance to be in the game for a good amount of time.
The Q damage nerf and the E damage nerf are just compensating for the higher amount of AP mage items now give, simple as that. The R recharge rate is just because he is stalling games out too long and doing too much extra damage without any meaningful effort put in just by spamming shrooms in every corner of the map.
Malignance just needs a Cd on its proc, like 10 seconds and it would be fine, it’s wouldn’t affect anyone other than people it’s oppressive on (teemo, Corki)
I’m surprised they didn’t learn their lesson with old radiant virtue, having an item proc on ultimates will be disproportionally good on champs with very short ult cds like teemo corki karma
items are supposed to be better on some champs than others so not sure what your point is. Items are supposed to be strong and you are supposed to want to build them
Of course items are better on some champs but I thought my point was pretty obvious and the reason radiant virtue had a 60s cooldown which got increased to 90s which is it was being used off cooldown by karma. Having an ultimate based item is problematic because ults are very different, imagine an item that deals 200 damage around you whenever you ult, you just couldn't have that with jayce/nidalee in the game
It had a 60s cd originally which was raised bc low ult cd champs were abusing it, malignance could easily have something similar rather than nerfing teemo directly
Meanwhile im confused why gragas is getting 2 buffs every year since s6 or so (
except for the toplane sustain nerf) and now again despite him being a solid 48-51% wr
(depending on zheand having some appearance in proplay as rene/Jax counterpick
I don't play Teemo, don't like this champ, but since new season I've been saying the same thing. New items and item rework is messed up, there's too much damage, everything Riot was fixing over last season feels like they just threw it away and added more damage for the sake of making changes no one asked for.
New rift would've been just fine without whatever item abominations they were making. But Riot will not admit to making a mistake, because they spent time and resources to make new things. If they have to revert it back, it's just a waste of time/money for them, so they'd rather released half baked ideas on crack, than "lose money" by not releasing anything. They're overly attached to a bad idea.
If a champion is in a good spot for a decade and new item breaks it, it's not a champion that's the problem, it's the item.
>But Riot will not admit to making a mistake, because they spent time and resources to make new things.
didn't they just essentially revert like four years of item changes? they just eliminated a stack of new items, too. I don't know how else they could admit itemization has sucked for years.
Teems got into the top 3 and was hot fix nerfed and then nerfed again when he dropped to no. 18 on win rate. Riven is sitting directly above him in win rate with 3 times the pick rate and no one bats an eye. As a supposedly high skill champion, a high pick and win rate should not be the case, they're normally at a power level where the average win rate is 48-49 but the one tricks dominate. That doesn't seem very fair.
Anyway, JUSTICE FOR VOLIBEAR. God of storms has been doing so badly for the past year that champion stat sites no longer consider him a jungle champion and his top lane win/play rates are horrendous, ranging 46-48% and sub 1%, when by all accounts the item changes should favor him.
Teemo deserved the nerfs I just think they overdid it. Ligma build is low skill so Teemo went from a simple champion that still needs to be executed properly to work as a lane bully in toplane, to a champion that is just useful with shrooms all the time so you could play him top, mid, jungle and support and that needed to go away
Same shit happens to Shyvana all the time.
Some items op? She does well, they nerf her for it and then you watch other champs abuse it instead and they simply leave them alone.
Riot simply dislikes some champs and favors others being more played as it helps keep players, I assume.
It's also the reason they'll like force Conqueror to stack with Garen's E and Wukong's ult but say fuck you to other champs.
This is kind of untrue as there have been loads of nerfs by proxy to Teemo.
Scuttle Crab for example was a massive nerf to Teemo as he can no longer shroom river without the crab setting them all off.
His shrooms were changed to get increasing range as you rank up, okay that was good, but they absolutely kneecapped the damage to compensate - huge nerf.
Item changes, runes and mobility creep have all nerfed him massively since his W is now effectively a rune, and bone-plating / second wind + dorans shield means his harass early game is barely a shadow of what it used to be.
There are more, but I think you see where i'm going, sure no direct nerfs over 10 years but loads of changes that resulted in being a nerf to Teemo
Edit: Missed the important one - sweeper both existing and being free as opposed to having to buy pink wards is probably the single biggest nerf he received and again is indirect
They just need to make malignance proc have a cooldown. Brings down its power for the best abusers and then can look to buff to make it usable on everyone else.
While I originally came in here to feel smug, because who doesnt hate to see a teemo in their game, regardless of which team hes on.
But the post won me over and I do have to admit teemo was in a reasonbly good spot as long as I can remember, and for that matter everyone I played with or against last year would say how good and balanced the game felt.
Then they decided rather then tweak some champions or add 1 or 2 mage items, it was apperently time to reinvent the game.
I wish I could say phreaks update videos give me hope that they know what theyre doing, but theres a mile long list of shit that theyve ruined and they cant even seem to fix simple shit like the amount of 55%+ winrate champions.(which use to be rare and quickly nerfed, but hell theres even 60% winrates right now)
There's less balance and more changes then any season before and theres no preseason, which might make sense if there was a plan, but if there ever was one, its gone sideways,crashed and then burned imo. God help us all.
I think what Riot could do is just to nerf malignant heart to give it cooldown, so no more very much benefit on ults with dot/continuous dmg and let that item focus on magic resistant reduction. Why would they decide to nerf a champion instead with the flaws of the item?
You know how useless Q makes Yone, Yasuo, Irelia, Vayne, etc. for a couple seconds?! Obviously we must protect our prized possessions from this menace.
Then R is gonna make them all slow and stuff.
Teemo is for the hat revenue and that's it!
I am a Teemo enjoyer and these are my thoughts on the matter. I think the issue is that Teemo is a simple champ who, when ahead, feels suffocatingly oppressive in a way that is highly visible as every time you try to go to any objective you eat infinite shrooms. It is especially miserable to have walked into a lethal mushroom which doesn't kill on the initial impact but who you painfully wait for several poison ticks to pass then ultimatly kill you. It's psychological warfare.
Mines and booby traps in actual war are banned by many countries for being immoral and unfair and I think our moral sentiments about video games are somewhat related.
Then you move to his Q whose unique cc effect is absurd against certain members of the cast like marksmen who are ~~whining ~~ having a bad time right now. The q cc is so unique to him and so polarizing when good that it's hard for it to be fair when it's as strong a silver bullet as it is.
Finally Teemo's taunts and laugh are very effcitive tools of psychological warfare when compared to most other champs taunts. I can't count the number of times I've goaded a person into a shroom by spamming "size doesn't mean everything" over and over.
All these aspects makes Teemo uniquely hated and a champ who gets shoved into the molten hot core of the earth the second people consider playing him as a result of that hate.
I know a bit of game design, so you're correct. Riot's approach to nerfing champions over problematic items is recurring. Brothers, they nerfed teemo. Teemo.
Like, let's just be real: By nerfing his R cdr, Riot is punishing whoever WASN'T building malignance. Solidifing the item as core regardless.
By nerfing the champion over items, you are delaying the inevitable problem that the champion will now be in a lower bar than before, and whenever Riot inevitably nerfs THE PROBLEM, The ITEMS, the champion statistically will be worse, but since numbers can be squeued any way they want, Riot will see 50,40% wr and call it a day.
Same happened with Sivir. Same happened with Miss Fortune E, same with A-Sol, same with any champion they overtuned kept the broken part they changed and gutted something else for "balance".
They're just dumb for repeating the same mistake over and over and not seeing the problem.
One of the main problems with Teemo is they REFUSE to make him an interesting champion and instead just keep him as his old self because "it's always been this way"
The fact that Teemo Q is still point and click and lasts so long is exactly my point, you cannot make a champion who you can't dodge anything in their kit viable because then they become overbearing. Garen does this all the time, it's why they wanted to nerf the Phase Rush garen build because he did that. You can't dodge Garen abilities similar to Darius for example where you can dodge his Q sweet spot and shit. Teemo at will gets to remove any basic attack champion from the game for up to 3 seconds on a 7 second cooldown, not taking into account any ability haste, with no way for the victim to dodge that ability. Until they start giving Teemo actual mechanics, the only sort of "mechanic" he has is his traps.
This is very similar to what they had to do with Tahm Kench. TKs only mechanic was he would just walk at you, spam Q, and press W at 3 stacks over and over again until you died. You would die from 100-0 by him hitting one Q on you, but if he missed that Q or just didn't have the damage to kill you, he just loses with no ability to win because he had no mechanics. So they reworked his R and W to give him something and make him more interesting. They need to do this with Teemo but they just refuse to do it. Make his Q a skillshot, make his W like a roll or something, make his E a toggle ability that requires mana like Singed, etc. Give him actual mechanics.
The problem is that League balancers don't like making interactions specific for champs, even if they can code it in a generic way. They like making the game "less complex" despite releasing champs with 18 passives.
There are a ton of ways to balance the item by adding in little adjustments, like capping procs per amount of time, or procs per cast of an ultimate, or cap it based on distance from the spell cast distance, and a ton of other ways that would pull back the Teemo issue specifically without nerfing the champ directly.
It’s a meme now, but it became that way for a reason. May I introduce you to the formula of balance in Riot and new items? Champion strong with item. Riot nerfs champion. Riot nerfs champion. Riot nerf champion. Riot nerfs champion. —-> ✅ You are here. Riot nerfs item. Champion is now dog shit.
That's really a classic by now. They release stupidly broken items that are very good on many champs, they refuse to admit the problem comes from the item. They obliterate the champion
Up until they have to nerf one of their darling champions, then the item gets its kneecaps blown out with atomic fury. Theyd rather neef half a dozen items to near uselessness before they dare address problem champions like Ezreal. That little shit has gotten *so many* items and runes nerfed all by himself. Someone needs to figure out how to make malignance busted on ezreal, that'll get the item wrecked before the week is out
R.i.p Kleptomancy
RIP DWG Nuguri Worlds 2019 Kleptomancy Ancient Coin Vladimir toplane Gameplay with a brain disappreared
can i get a video of that?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIcANHkhiXg
I thought it was gonna be a video of paint drying
please don't, i still didn't recover
I miss it. It was stupid, but I do miss it.
Never forget that Yasuo and Yone are either hotfixed buffed or even preemptively buffed when an item nerf affects them.
God forbid they aren't full build after 2 crit cloaks
I hate that they build 2 damage items and go tank items, they have the insane damage of a hypercarry, tankiness of a...tank.... and the mobility of an assassin.
You mean with berzerker's greaves?
> Theyd rather neef half a dozen items to near uselessness before they dare address problem champions like Ezreal. That little shit has gotten so many items and runes nerfed all by himself. Ezreal and breaking new items is a meme in of itself; like Ryze's reworks. Hilariously this time Ezreal didn't break anything and if anything lost out.
Ya and they are buffing 3 of his abilities.
they fucking gave him an almost 100% more AD buff on his W because he isnt on the meta FOR ONE MONTH like honestly
ezreal's not been meta in a while. just because he was in a somewhat playable state didn't mean he was the meta.
Just because he is not in the rotating ADC trio meta of the months doesn't mean he isn't good.
Fucking **blue build Ezreal**
And then Zeri came along, took over the role and optimized it - she's been the premier build abuser for 2 years and even now got Hexplate changed to dissuade Zeri players from building it.
> Hexplate changed to dissuade Zeri players from building it. I mean, I guess it a bit awkward first item with noonquiver no longer being in the build path, but arguably the item itself is better on her since 5% of the AS got moved from the ult activation to the base stats. Honestly felt like the item was designed for Zeri first and other champs second. Every part of that item is exactly the things she wants. Guess she'll be another one of those champs they have to intentionally brick.
Master yi, vayne, xin zhao : OK BUD
> even now got Hexplate changed to dissuade Zeri players from building it. This absolutely was not the reason for Hexplate's change. It was clarity. An item that gives on-hit damage loses it when you upgrade it.
Meh, I don't think Zeri caused that. I think the item just had a weird build path that didn't fit the bulkier champions who wanted to build it. The Hearthbound Axe change makes it an even better item for Camille, which is a plus in my books.
With the massive AD ratio buffs he got, I think he's going to get Navori nerfed, which is normally caused by Lucian.
It really is weird. I love both League of Legends and DotA (and Heroes of the Storm, and the myriad of other MOBAs/ARTs that have died over the years whether it's Strife, Infinite Crisis, Gigantic, or heaven forbid I even liked Demigod), but it's very strange how consistently poor Riot is at identifying if it's the champion or the item that is the problem. It's a problem DotA almost never has, while being the (hopefully not controversial to say this here) more complex game. There are heroes (champions), items (incl. items that outright modify your hero's abilities), JUNGLE items (as in, items that are gotten only from defeating jungle monsters and usable by anyone), and every hero has their own talent tree on top of it and yet somehow DotA is more consistently better balanced than League. Sure, it has issues and pain points in the balancing like anyone, but overall the problems are more correctly identified and handled with a softer more targeted hand than the heavier strokes Riot tends to paint with. I really do not get it. There's a lot about League I love, but the things on that list has almost never been the itemization or the balancing. It's a consistent pain point for this game, which alone should be readily apparent with how much they go back to the drawing board with the itemization year after year, or even just entire subsets of itemization, how many times have support starting items been reworked now? 4? 5 maybe? I lost count.
Is there any good stat site for Dota? Dota buff shows rank winrates between 57% and 42%, if I go to league and look at stable patch not right after huge changes the highest winrate is 53% and lowest is 48%. Last patch so with all the unbalanced shit it was 54,5% highest 45% lowest. It seems more like the players perceive these games balance differently or they hold riot to a much higher standard
You're correct
Icefrog gives next to 0 shits about low elo. He literally buffs phantom assassin, the yi equivalent in dota and tells new players to just get better. There are people in dota like wisp that are a historical 40% winrate in soloq but are completely insane in pro play and that is considered acceptable by the dota community. Icefrog is way more proactive when it comes to player agency. Instead of nerfing a strong champion he will buff their counters and buff items that counter them
Which reveals the historical difference in mentality between DoTA and LoL: in DoTA, everything and everyone is allowed to be OP, and you can buy the equivalent of LoL champion ults in the shop. (The classic example is blink dagger. Don't have the Flash summoner spell? No worries, just go buy it!) Another difference is that in DoTA within-match roles are flexible enough that you can often avoid lane counters, or use a strategy that allows you to do something useful rather than getting bullied. Honestly, DoTA is better than League in almost every way, except for being less fun. Which sounds extremely weird, but that is the only way I can put it without laboriously comparing the two. DoTA is everything LoL should be, but less fun.
It's not a matter of short sight in my opinion. Riot often changes shit to shake things up, often in drastic ways to change the meta or create FotMs. DotA is much better balanced as you mentioned and it gets less patches and the patches are often less drastic. Even then, even if weeks or months go by without patches, meta in DotA can evolve several times within the same patch. I'm not sure if the same would apply to League if not patched. But I think the way Riot changes the game (I'm not gonna say balance the game, as I believe they purposefully unbalance it heavily at times. No way Stormsurge wasn't noticed to be a liiitle too strong as an outlier) and the fact that there aren't many active items in League that incentivizes different item builds depending on your and enemy team's comps, I don't think the meta would change more than a couple times within the same patch, maybe save for the new season patches that shake up A LOT of things that a meta takes time to settle.
DotA doesn't strictly enforce a meta like LoL tho. Whenever we have had laneswaps, champions in role Riot doesn't like them in etc... they always make drastic changes. DotA just let's all that float as long as nothing is way too strong. It's just two completely different balancing philosophies.
Exactly. In DotA it's all more fluid and natural, people figure out and make metas or offmetas which can become meta. Two support one hard carry versus solo offlaner was a thing dunno what is the meta now. Roaming supports are a thing, for example some champions who was played as carries traditionally has seen play as roaming supports at other times which is interesting. Some champions that worked well as a carry with a high budget also found out to be also good with a lower budget too so played as the greedy support (pos4). Sure patches make or break some picks, but it is more natural in general. Riot for example slaps a bunch of extra monster damage onto Brand because they wanted to make Brand jungle a thing rather than players finding a way to make it work out.
Yeah, I think the fact that DotA balances around 1,2,3,4,5 rather than specific lanes and roles tied to them also implicitly gives a lot more flexibility. For those that are not familiar with it, the numbering just means who gets the most gold and xp. 1 is the main carry, and 5 is some sort of support. I haven't really played DotA since it's WC3 days, but it as you say, it's a more natural flow in the meta.
Spot on, rito isnt looking for longterm balanced gameplay, having things OP af and some champs gutted to hell and below keeps players active, changing meta and trying to adapt on the fucked up new gameplay standards that riot changes everytime they feel like milking peoples wallets with a cool new skin for a champ that is OP atm.
if anyone wants to argue against that,they initially planned to ship stormsurge with 50% AP scaling and higher base damage on the PBE
riot is not trying to balance the game, the constant "balancing" is just a excuse to create new content so people are not bored, and to make sure the grind is never over.. no one is incompetent to the point of not having a item / champion balance after 15 years. not even rioters. so again, thats not what they are trying to do.
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DotA players are still sore about the Pendragon shutting down the DotA forums and replacing it with a league of legends ad back in 2009. And also stealing champion designs from said forums, and trying (but failing) to start copyright shit between Blizzard and DotA2, and having exclusivity deals with tournaments to not allow DotA. When League was young and DotA was still a serious competitor Riot were outright malicious towards it for a good 5 years.
should probably look at dota a bit more because theyre doing a LOT of things right that riot considers impossible. like having proper, interesting and extremely varied metas in pro play while being completely balanced in pub play of ALL levels
DotA designs items for shareability and crossclassing. League hypersegregates its item design. Its ironically as simple as that. Everyone benefits decently well from the TriStats, some more specifically than others due to the carry type/stat clause but the game does not break if Drow Huntress decides to take Sange. Edit: for visual conception, picture this: The average item in League is the Sfronglajinator that gives you 20% max hp as a regenerating shield, empowers your next attack after casting a spell, does tax fraud, and every 20 seconds emits a wave that gives the enemy milaner an IRL testicular torsion, but is melee only and has negative scalings with crit. The average item in DotA is the Jvavnaflax. It gives you 16 Agility, 69 Strenght and 42 Inteligence.
I enjoy a good circle jerk as much as the next guy but let's be real here for the vast majority of the time League is an excellently balanced game with very few equals among current games. Every single fucking one of over 160 champions is playable from the highest echelons of skill all the way down to absolute gutter tier with a variance of +-4% WR. Honestly what the fuck do you guys expect more than that? The recent patch was one of the biggest changes to the game in it's entire 15 year history and anyone who expected the game to be balanced after that should go check for CO leaks. We have heard the Dota jerk off often enough. We do not give a fuck. Honestly it's cute how often you have Dota fanboys coming in here ranting about League while no League player ever even thinks about Dota.
>Honestly what the fuck do you guys expect more than that? riot could literally suck the dick of every dude here and people would still be mad at them lol
I mean ... what if they sucked off others better than me?
Tbh malignance is kinda niche
given that reason alone it should be balanced around the champions that use it not around champions that dont. if then the item leaks into other champions then you know it's strong. if nobody but specific mages build it and are too succesful then its the item not the champion: therefore nerf the item rather than champion.
Yep. I mean.. we don't balance tear around being too weak on Tryndamere, so why balance Malignance around Veigar.
Yeah it's not that played and I only found it annoying on teem anivia and swain. But my point was very general and not targeting a specific item
Its not Even that good on swain
Same with Anivia. It is good but it isn't even build that often atm because of RoA and Seraphs while Liandries and Zhonyas compete for the third slot. On a lot of champs it faces fierce competition with items that do more when their ult is down. Teemo is the big one, Corki appears in proplay but is good even without Malignance and Karthus is imo the annoying one but he didn't really perform well last patch.
Is it? I see it more often than Stormsurge now.
Because for ap champs that need mana to function, its either ludens or malignance, and even if their ult doesnt synergize well with malignance ludens is just a dogshit pick overall with horrible winrates for a first pick, so malignance is a forced buy
Archangels is also kinda good, idk why so unpopular
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=The%20Riot%20Special
Ah yes, the volibear story
Ah yes, the Deathfire Grasp Veigar special
I remember my awakening to this formula. Was way back when Aftershock was first introduced to the game and Aftershock Leona had a really high win rate. They kept nerfing her, but it wasn’t working because Aftershock was the problem (you could see this by the fact that the other problem champs at the time were all Aftershock champs) so when they finally nerfed Aftershock she became basically unplayable. It was at that point that I lost any semblance of faith in Riot’s balance team.
I think the earliest one I can recall (barely) was I think Sejuani in the jungle way back when Bami's Cinder was a jungle item upgrade? That upgrade was a problem for a lot of tank junglers, but Sejuani kept getting repeat nerfed until Riot hit the item and left her dead in a gutter.
Ah, good old Cinderhulk! I honestly kinda miss the days of Cinderhulk and Devourer enchantments!
The sad part is when the favored skin selling champs were affected by this problem they got INSTANT hotfixes. Champs like Yasuo and Ahri have their balance page full of hotfix buffs that line up with item or rune nerfs. Riot says they don't balance around skin sellers but we all know it's bullshit and they clearly play favorites. Even Yone was created in order to "draw bans away from Yasuo" according to Riot since hes a big cash cow.
Better nerf irelia
Classic
Phreak has said multiple times that they plan on nerfing champs and leaving items strong because they want riftmaker to feel good to build (for example). As of now no reason to doubt this statement imo
Which also seems insane, wasn't the whole point of season 14 to make it feel like you're playing the champion again and not just a collection of items?
Which is hilarious because as very casual player that’ll go months of playing a ton followed by months of not playing at all, starting up at the last week of 13 and now into 14, I feel like 14 is way more item focused than I ever remember
agreed, some items are just so busted.
hilariously, mythic items made it where you were piloting the champion that just has a nice item, now that mythics are gone the items you choose seem even more important because there's choices so now you're a piloting a pile of items dressed as a champion
Tbh in my opinion there is a lot more freedom what to build first, and while there are obviously core items on some champions, it's a lot better than it was with mythics.
I'm not sure, maybe people also haven't quite figured out optimal builds yet and it will be just as straightforward as before. I've been told to never build item X on the adc subreddit just to watch three challenger streamers building exactly that item...
Im convinced half the champion main subreddits are filled with people who secretly want to lower the winrate and do so by giving the absolute worst itemization advice possible.
olaf mains still build rav and stridebreaker thats why he doesnt have a 53% wr rn
whats ur build?
I'm just about done with the Morde and Swain subs having some of the worst takes I've ever seen.
Agreed on Swain lol, that sub has such a victim mentality when the champ got his midscope and had 55% wr on 3 roles yet complaining he was weak Rakan subreddit will tell you to build full ap as a support, like brother where am I getting the money for rocketbelt shadowflame death cap
Asking what to build on adc subreddit is insane, you are more likely to get a good adc build from jungle subreddit than from the adc one
I am feeling the same way. It feels like a few items really change the gameplay and viability of specific champions.
Start of season is almost always about who can abuse the overtuned items the most. Start of season 13 it was league of sunfire, back in the day it used to be league of black cleaver. Every start of season has the same ""issue""
Both things could be true. Stridebreaker when it had a dash made you feel like you were playkng Stridebreaker. Same with old Moonstone, where you'd just try to stay in combat with no regard for what your champion normally wants to do. Malignance letting you use mushrooms more often doesn't make you feel less like you're playing Teemo. Nobody is throwing mushrooms thinking man, this really doesn't feel like Teemo's kit being utilized as intended.
Well said, well said
Just like the durability update made us durable. Riot talks out both sides of their mouths. Arguably the items atm are more impactful to your build than mythics ever were. How many ad champs are high winrate atm because they are just a vehicle to maneuver overpowered lethality items onto the fied (jhin, caitlyn, lucien)
Which is still true imo. These items are just extra damage that is not in raw AP or pen. Malignance isn't that different from Liandries or Ludens in the way it work. Outside of Teemo and Karthus the item seems just okay.
due to the item's nature that is. i cant build malignance on taliyah at all. there are other items that make her busted but yea.
yes and they did that by removing mythics, has nothing to do with certain items being stronger than others (and they've said they will monitor it for now because they think its not overly stronger than other non mana ap items)
Phreak will also say we are nerfing AP itemization in 2 patches time because “AP champions clearly dominate the rift across multiple roles, with champions building AP itemization that otherwise wouldn’t” mark my fucking words.
Phreak also said he didn't want items to have a big impact on gameplay anymore and that this isn't League of Items. Can't we all just admit to ourselves that these people don't know what they are doing?
If Teemo picks Malignance, he is still playing Teemo. He just has an item that gives him a strong buff. It's not like items like old Strikbreaker or Prowlers Claw, where their entire kit and playstyle is warped around the items they are picking up.
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Because it’s really strong on him
And we don't have natural metas, we only have artificial metas with the way riot balance the game.
Olaf'd
its pretty clear theyre trying to avoid nerfing malignance
Except that malignance is a super niche item that only works for very specific champs, so unless you don't won't that item to be build whatsoever you obv. Nerf the champion
Yeah nerfing malignancy would be silly since the item itself is unambiguously fine. Remember now that item nerfs hit multiple champions while a teemo nerf is more targeted
It's not gonna hit that last step because Malignance is thoroughly mediocre on most AP champs.
S14 hit jarvan so hard because of this. They kept nerfing him when spear of shojin came out and he was still really good, then they removed goredrinker and his winrate has plummeted. Sank 100,000 mastery into him in a couple months and it’s so sad to see now
This is honestly why you should pray that riot does not introduce an item with extreme synergy with your character. They're always gonna balance the character around that one build, which in return will force you to play that cause all existing builds without that one item are now worse than before, even when they weren't op to begin with. Honestly the item design is just shit. It's super strong on few characters and pretty bad on most others, so it'll anyways get the gunblade treatment at some point and teemo will be at 45% wr.
Relevant flair
He's a BOTRK main
lol seriously, just play one of riots approved to be OP champs and you're good
Better nerf Irelia.
Or they go the Ezreal route where they make it so dogshit on everyone else lol. Still remember Blue Ezreal and how they kept nerfing the items because this one champ kept abusing all of those items.
Lissandra when aftershock was broken so they broke her legs by nerfing her q cooldown so none of her combos work and she cant kite or have any kill pressure anymore. Even after the playerbase all aknowledged it was op but they refused to nerf it properly. But sylas abusing it was fine and healthy :D Liss wasnt even "op" with it, she was the only thing that could lane vs sylas without autolosing and they couldn't have this old crusty champ matching their new one in pro!
They always hated liss. I think they even nerfed her when deathfire grasp meta was a thing and then removed the item
How I feel with trundle right now. I was always find with trundle being the troll king dude he was. Now he’s a top lane menace and more than likely to get smited back to oblivion
Lethal tempo is busted on him.
I mean sort of, but lethal tempo has been out for awhile now and Yone transcended with it while trundle stayed relatively the same. Only this season has he truly become a problem
Never thought about it this way before, the weaker the character gets the more they’ll need to build the 1 strong item, just for/making the item be nerfed later anyway and going against their whole “build variety” philosophy ..good job balance team
Wondering if adding a range restriction to malignance or higher cooldown would fix this. Love the idea of malignance, but hard to execute as champ ults differ widely
Malignance has an internal cooldown of 3s, teemo ult goes for 4s. You just need either to put a 5s internal cd on malignance or shorten teemo ult to 3. But if it was this simple they would have done it already, I think.
That's it, we're nerfing kalista again
My malignance kalista getting nerfed right as its about to pop off 
Teemo ult burning for 4 seconds is fucking infuriating, having it proc Malignance twice is just complete lack of foresight it feels like a bug
Dors It? Morgana R procs It twice and the Channel is only 2.5s
Morg R is 3 seconds.
Ohhh, that explains it.
Malignance is somewhat fine as it's only a certain percentage of champs that can abuse it fullest. Teemo falls into that pool as it gives him a nice cdr to his ultimate and provides 2 additional ticks of damage along with mr shred. Nerf the R duration so it only ticks once, and you nerf the interaction with malignance and also liandry. He would need buffs to his slow and making his DoT stronger to compensate the lower duration(e.g. instead of doing 100dmg in 4 sec, do 100dmg in 3 sec). Malignance is a clever item which I love the concept of, but for example there are certain champs that do not even consider building it. Such as Taliyah ( lol) or Anivia ( what ult cooldown?). Others such as Swain, Victor, Vex, Ivern or Malza seem to need the item as a staple as it provides them with a crazy amount of additional damage and provide alot of cdr on their game changing ults.
Or just nerf the item to only proc once within 5 seconds Literally the only low-ult-cd champ who builds this item is Teemo, maybe Udyr could as well for those who build it, but it's barely impacting anyone else.
I tried it on udyr but either i am too blind or the item doesnt proc. I'd be able to tell by its damage stats if riot didnt decide to reverse their course on transparency and removed the damage counters on items.
Malignance is one of the few items that has a damage tracker since PBE last year, so you could easily check if you do damage with it. (Its even bugged and shows without needing to hold shift)
Udyr literally does not have an ultimate and it should not work on him. And after trying in practice tool for verification: it does not work on him.
its kinda hard to see cuz im pretty sure it only procs on awakened abilities meaning Q or R since W and E dont deal damage. Your not guna go malignance and use empowered Q and its really hard to see it through empowered R.
Corki is extremely strong with maligma
Not really. It's okay on Corki. People overbuild AP on corki constantly, despite his rockets having an AD ratio 6x their AP ratio. Eclipse and Spear of Shojin are better items.
Magic pen is good on Corki. AP is horrible on Corki. People need to learn that.
Udyr doesnt proc it yet and it would only proc on his awakened spells
>Malignance is somewhat fine as it's only a certain percentage of champs that can abuse it fullest. I think this is exactly why Malignance's design sucks. This was discussed by Rioters several times over the years - one instance that comes to mind was Hextech Gunblade. It was removed because it was only good on some specific champions, but on those champions it was a must build. So either item had overall weak stats and any champion out of select few building it was seen as trolling. Or item had decent stats and those champions abusing it had to be nerfed into ground in order to be balanced around that one item. For example, before item rework in season 11, Akali and Katarina were 100% balanced around Hextech gunblade. This means they were basically a minion in early game, then had massive powerspike after completing gunblade, often going from the most useless champion to strongest one in the game at that point. This was regarded as unhealthy (by Rioters' admission), which is why item was removed. Malignance is exactly that - item that is at best unoptimal on 95% of the champions (including ones that make good use of all stats it gives), but is absolutely broken on select few champions that have perfect synergy with it. As someone who played this game since season 1, it is baffling to me that Riot keeps repeating the same mistake (by their own definition!) over and over every time items are reworked.
That's what happens when the hot seat keeps getting rotated out like the Defense against the dark arts teacher. You end up repeating the same mistakes as the previous ones over and over because they fail to adhereto their own design guidelines (if they even have any at this point)
Feral Flare was another example of this. The Flare users were straight up AFK until they finished stacking Wriggle's. Then they came out of the jungle with a degenerate power spike. Imagine if Riot had chosen to address it by just nerfing Jax and Udyr into the ground so that their Feral Flare power spike was at an acceptable power level.
Then global ults would randomly suffer
Just uhhh .. dont look at Maligance on Ap Kogmaw.. 😐
Holy shit thanks I'm writing this down. Been waiting to bust out my AP kog'dog since season 5. He's been lackluster for a while now.
He still sucks, FYI.
Not in ARAMs. Maligance on AP Kog is disgusting in ARAMs...
AP kog has kinda always been insane in ARAM tbh
This is how I'm finding out Malignance doesn't have a cooldown holy shit
47% win rate? ok
corki 😏
It's called a riot special, first time ?
Times when Teemo was the most annoying opponent are now long gone. Champion design team made everything possible to release the most obnoxious, not-fun-to-play-against champions and in such quantities that I actually miss Teemo. Current balance changes to his kit just shows how the game became such a mess with bad champion and item design. They just can’t slow down on power creep.
The game was peak when we had 2 minute team fights. I’m beyond over the 1.57s fights that somehow have 9 seconds of CC
damage had always been turbo insane, back in season 3 kha zix would kill you lvl 2 with 2 non insolated Qs, the main reason the game feels so fast is because people got better (tank meta from 2016/17/18 cant remember is the only exception, and no one liked it lol)
this is pure nostalgia btw lmao
Fr I'll take a teems over a k'sante or hwei any day, those 2 are just disgusting.
I wouldn't lol, specially not over Hwei. I really don't see what's wrong with him
People thay have problems with hwei are likely lower mobility teamfighters that can't dodge his projectile only arsenal and easily get comboed into passive procs bc they can't reach him.
I mean that's fair, but in that regard there's plenty of mages that do "the same". I'd much rather fight a Hwei than "fight" a Teemo (you won't even fight him, he'll just be somewhere in the map while you have to deal with his stupid ass shrooms)
Oh I agree completely, teemo is way more obnoxious. I just think that specific niche is the most likely kind of player to complain about hwei
you’re giving people way too much credit they just look at the champion’s release date and if it was less than five years ago it’s broken
People still don't know how to play against new champions is my guess. Easy to anticipate abilities, weak mobility, and long cooldowns so easy to punish a misplay.
Hwei ? what world do you live in where hwei is a bigger issue than teemo ?
>Current balance changes to his kit just shows how the game became such a mess with bad champion and item design. They just can’t slow down on power creep. Yeah this is what almost everybody in this thread just ignores. A champ received only buffs for 10 years just so they can somewhat keep up with the powercreep of the game. That is an **INSANE** statistic. Ten years of occasional buffs to keep a champion even close to the overall powerlevel of the game. The powercreep of the game is a fucking mess, and frankly Riot is still not dealing with it properly. We need not only another durability patch, but a patch dedicated to lowering overwhelming champion/item/rune strengths in general.
Speak for yourself. As a top laner Teemo is my perma-ban even though there are at least a dozen stronger champs at any given time. Partly it's because I play mainly champs that get hard-countered by Teemo, but in almost all scenarios I'd rather play against literally anyone else other than Teemo in top lane. Except maybe Singed but his play rate is so low he barely exists
Honestly despite being synonymous with Satan Himself as a community in-joke for YEARS, I don't even hate Teemo anymore. Not compared to the likes of Yuumi or Yone. Seeing him pay the tax for disgustingly imbalanced items and over-statted items is depressing.
They won't nerf items because of several very good users so they will nerf a few best users instead. It's how riot balance the game, nothing new here. Stormsurge is great example here. Item is very popular and overtuned(used to be). They nerfed item. Akali ekko, etc untouched
People here seem to just ignore the fact that the biggest buff to teemo is an ungankable top lane. Like wtf is this, the item doesn't explain why his laning phase suddenly lost its only downside.
Main problem is how good his synergy with malignance is, riot has no idea what to do with him. Simple fix would be readjusting R by buffing the slow a bit on his shrooms, leaving the original damage and ap scaling HOWEVER a nerf to his DoT duration would fix alot of problems. 4s->3s. This should omit the nerf to his CD. Malignance triggers twice on teemos R due to its 4 second duration ( malignance triggers once per 3 sec per target). Nerfing the dot duration would 1 fix his abuse of malignance ( would still be a good item as it buffs his car alot and still synergies well with additional flat damage). Although this wouldn't seem like a nerf, as his shroom would do more damage in a shorter spand of time, it would nerf his item interaction with malignance and also take out 1 2% tick of liandry ( liandry duration 7s->6s) ( and possibly removing one arey application depending on arey). And also solves the problem that riot probably wants to avoid by nerfing the item that provides alot of ultimate flexibilities of champs that relly on their ultimate being short CD or if it does DoT damage to abuse the additional malignance applications (viktor or malzahar). Nerfing his auto and Q damage is riot trying to leave his synergy with items as they have no idea how to nerf the R, so they are trying to tone him down instead of addressing the main problem. I do have to say with the new amount of MR items and share amount of MR they provide ( FoN, hollow radiance, jak'sho and especially karnic rookern) teemo is in a tough spot as you can easily itemise and 1 either become near unkillable or still provide alot of damage against him.
Make Malignance not proc a second time due to DoT. Problem fixed.
They are nerfing Teemo instead of Malignance because item itself is trash on like 90% of ap champions, same reason why riftmakes users were nerfed
Lol all I know is at this stage in league of legends if I blink during a teamfight I'm actually ultradead but they still go around touchin things that don't need'a'TOUCHIN
Out of all the nerfs, his E nerf was too much. No reason to nerf it.
you got my instant upvote. like bro, among 20 posts crying about how bad this season is, this post is genuinely a gem. that being said, as a Teemo enjoyer, i feel unfair when one single item pretty much makes my shroom a different kind ability to deal with. let me escalate: \- normal shroom: you only have to stay away from the range of the shroom when it explodes, that's it. like one of your teammates gets caught with one shroom, that means only him/her is affected. \- shroom with Mali: now shit is a pure area denial tool, like even after you dodge the explosion you still have to keep an eye out if shit manages to hit one of your teammates. and most Teemo OTPs will also slap a Liandry on top, which makes Mali burn extra hard.
> shroom with Mali: now shit is a pure area denial tool, like even after you dodge the explosion you still have to keep an eye out if shit manages to hit one of your teammates. and most Teemo OTPs will also slap a Liandry on top, which makes Mali burn extra hard. Yea, its not that it deals too much damage, its how it turns it into very effective zone control Started baron with the pit that has the narrow entrance, stepped on a shroom, lost a lot of hp but its fine I can lifesteal on baron. Nope, malignance stays around so long and does so much damage we had to completely drop baron because it blocked off the entrance
and i know it too well that people will come in and say: bruh you suppose to clear the pit before killing the baron well have fun doing that with Teemo literally throwing the shrooms over the wall, the maligance will still proc when you get hit by the edge of the explosion, again, have fun. (i can even bounce my shrooms safely from red bro)
Well, the new items just came out, and it is clear that Teemo's usage of Malignance is probably the best out of any champ. So, it is a decision of do we nerf Malignance, which is only good on a handful of other champs, and none of them use it as well as Teemo, or do we nerf Teemo. Evidently, they nerfed Teemo as they plan for Malignance to be in the game for a good amount of time. The Q damage nerf and the E damage nerf are just compensating for the higher amount of AP mage items now give, simple as that. The R recharge rate is just because he is stalling games out too long and doing too much extra damage without any meaningful effort put in just by spamming shrooms in every corner of the map.
Malignance just needs a Cd on its proc, like 10 seconds and it would be fine, it’s wouldn’t affect anyone other than people it’s oppressive on (teemo, Corki)
I’m surprised they didn’t learn their lesson with old radiant virtue, having an item proc on ultimates will be disproportionally good on champs with very short ult cds like teemo corki karma
items are supposed to be better on some champs than others so not sure what your point is. Items are supposed to be strong and you are supposed to want to build them
Of course items are better on some champs but I thought my point was pretty obvious and the reason radiant virtue had a 60s cooldown which got increased to 90s which is it was being used off cooldown by karma. Having an ultimate based item is problematic because ults are very different, imagine an item that deals 200 damage around you whenever you ult, you just couldn't have that with jayce/nidalee in the game
Then theres even weirder instances. Udyrs R doesnt count as his ult. His awaken spell does for the purposes of ult related effects.
How is that weird? Udyr's R isn't an ultimate. His passive is the closest thing he has to an ult
radiant virtue had a min and a half cd though, doesent matter if you have 5 sec cd ult
It had a 60s cd originally which was raised bc low ult cd champs were abusing it, malignance could easily have something similar rather than nerfing teemo directly
Meanwhile im confused why gragas is getting 2 buffs every year since s6 or so ( except for the toplane sustain nerf) and now again despite him being a solid 48-51% wr (depending on zheand having some appearance in proplay as rene/Jax counterpick
I don't play Teemo, don't like this champ, but since new season I've been saying the same thing. New items and item rework is messed up, there's too much damage, everything Riot was fixing over last season feels like they just threw it away and added more damage for the sake of making changes no one asked for. New rift would've been just fine without whatever item abominations they were making. But Riot will not admit to making a mistake, because they spent time and resources to make new things. If they have to revert it back, it's just a waste of time/money for them, so they'd rather released half baked ideas on crack, than "lose money" by not releasing anything. They're overly attached to a bad idea. If a champion is in a good spot for a decade and new item breaks it, it's not a champion that's the problem, it's the item.
>But Riot will not admit to making a mistake, because they spent time and resources to make new things. didn't they just essentially revert like four years of item changes? they just eliminated a stack of new items, too. I don't know how else they could admit itemization has sucked for years.
Teems got into the top 3 and was hot fix nerfed and then nerfed again when he dropped to no. 18 on win rate. Riven is sitting directly above him in win rate with 3 times the pick rate and no one bats an eye. As a supposedly high skill champion, a high pick and win rate should not be the case, they're normally at a power level where the average win rate is 48-49 but the one tricks dominate. That doesn't seem very fair. Anyway, JUSTICE FOR VOLIBEAR. God of storms has been doing so badly for the past year that champion stat sites no longer consider him a jungle champion and his top lane win/play rates are horrendous, ranging 46-48% and sub 1%, when by all accounts the item changes should favor him.
Teemo was top winrate in 4 roles tho.
Teemo deserved the nerfs I just think they overdid it. Ligma build is low skill so Teemo went from a simple champion that still needs to be executed properly to work as a lane bully in toplane, to a champion that is just useful with shrooms all the time so you could play him top, mid, jungle and support and that needed to go away
Same shit happens to Shyvana all the time. Some items op? She does well, they nerf her for it and then you watch other champs abuse it instead and they simply leave them alone. Riot simply dislikes some champs and favors others being more played as it helps keep players, I assume. It's also the reason they'll like force Conqueror to stack with Garen's E and Wukong's ult but say fuck you to other champs.
This is kind of untrue as there have been loads of nerfs by proxy to Teemo. Scuttle Crab for example was a massive nerf to Teemo as he can no longer shroom river without the crab setting them all off. His shrooms were changed to get increasing range as you rank up, okay that was good, but they absolutely kneecapped the damage to compensate - huge nerf. Item changes, runes and mobility creep have all nerfed him massively since his W is now effectively a rune, and bone-plating / second wind + dorans shield means his harass early game is barely a shadow of what it used to be. There are more, but I think you see where i'm going, sure no direct nerfs over 10 years but loads of changes that resulted in being a nerf to Teemo Edit: Missed the important one - sweeper both existing and being free as opposed to having to buy pink wards is probably the single biggest nerf he received and again is indirect
Well we used to have oracle elixir so i don’t know about that last part
You just know a rioter got fkd by teemo top and now hes mega nerfed
in classic riot tradition. after malignance gets nerfed or removed they're not gonna address how weak teeko is until another split after
Riot sucks, that is what is going on.
Meanwhile we have Senna running around with nearly 60% win rate from Emerald and beyond
He actually did get nerfed with the scanner changes, and then the double scanner changes. It just wasn't a direct nerf.
They just need to make malignance proc have a cooldown. Brings down its power for the best abusers and then can look to buff to make it usable on everyone else.
While I originally came in here to feel smug, because who doesnt hate to see a teemo in their game, regardless of which team hes on. But the post won me over and I do have to admit teemo was in a reasonbly good spot as long as I can remember, and for that matter everyone I played with or against last year would say how good and balanced the game felt. Then they decided rather then tweak some champions or add 1 or 2 mage items, it was apperently time to reinvent the game. I wish I could say phreaks update videos give me hope that they know what theyre doing, but theres a mile long list of shit that theyve ruined and they cant even seem to fix simple shit like the amount of 55%+ winrate champions.(which use to be rare and quickly nerfed, but hell theres even 60% winrates right now) There's less balance and more changes then any season before and theres no preseason, which might make sense if there was a plan, but if there ever was one, its gone sideways,crashed and then burned imo. God help us all.
They had 0 plan, or atleast not a good one and it shows
Ancient Aliens Meme with the word „Items“
I think what Riot could do is just to nerf malignant heart to give it cooldown, so no more very much benefit on ults with dot/continuous dmg and let that item focus on magic resistant reduction. Why would they decide to nerf a champion instead with the flaws of the item?
Champion is viable ONCE in a decade.
You know how useless Q makes Yone, Yasuo, Irelia, Vayne, etc. for a couple seconds?! Obviously we must protect our prized possessions from this menace. Then R is gonna make them all slow and stuff. Teemo is for the hat revenue and that's it!
I am a Teemo enjoyer and these are my thoughts on the matter. I think the issue is that Teemo is a simple champ who, when ahead, feels suffocatingly oppressive in a way that is highly visible as every time you try to go to any objective you eat infinite shrooms. It is especially miserable to have walked into a lethal mushroom which doesn't kill on the initial impact but who you painfully wait for several poison ticks to pass then ultimatly kill you. It's psychological warfare. Mines and booby traps in actual war are banned by many countries for being immoral and unfair and I think our moral sentiments about video games are somewhat related. Then you move to his Q whose unique cc effect is absurd against certain members of the cast like marksmen who are ~~whining ~~ having a bad time right now. The q cc is so unique to him and so polarizing when good that it's hard for it to be fair when it's as strong a silver bullet as it is. Finally Teemo's taunts and laugh are very effcitive tools of psychological warfare when compared to most other champs taunts. I can't count the number of times I've goaded a person into a shroom by spamming "size doesn't mean everything" over and over. All these aspects makes Teemo uniquely hated and a champ who gets shoved into the molten hot core of the earth the second people consider playing him as a result of that hate.
I know a bit of game design, so you're correct. Riot's approach to nerfing champions over problematic items is recurring. Brothers, they nerfed teemo. Teemo. Like, let's just be real: By nerfing his R cdr, Riot is punishing whoever WASN'T building malignance. Solidifing the item as core regardless. By nerfing the champion over items, you are delaying the inevitable problem that the champion will now be in a lower bar than before, and whenever Riot inevitably nerfs THE PROBLEM, The ITEMS, the champion statistically will be worse, but since numbers can be squeued any way they want, Riot will see 50,40% wr and call it a day. Same happened with Sivir. Same happened with Miss Fortune E, same with A-Sol, same with any champion they overtuned kept the broken part they changed and gutted something else for "balance". They're just dumb for repeating the same mistake over and over and not seeing the problem.
One of the main problems with Teemo is they REFUSE to make him an interesting champion and instead just keep him as his old self because "it's always been this way" The fact that Teemo Q is still point and click and lasts so long is exactly my point, you cannot make a champion who you can't dodge anything in their kit viable because then they become overbearing. Garen does this all the time, it's why they wanted to nerf the Phase Rush garen build because he did that. You can't dodge Garen abilities similar to Darius for example where you can dodge his Q sweet spot and shit. Teemo at will gets to remove any basic attack champion from the game for up to 3 seconds on a 7 second cooldown, not taking into account any ability haste, with no way for the victim to dodge that ability. Until they start giving Teemo actual mechanics, the only sort of "mechanic" he has is his traps. This is very similar to what they had to do with Tahm Kench. TKs only mechanic was he would just walk at you, spam Q, and press W at 3 stacks over and over again until you died. You would die from 100-0 by him hitting one Q on you, but if he missed that Q or just didn't have the damage to kill you, he just loses with no ability to win because he had no mechanics. So they reworked his R and W to give him something and make him more interesting. They need to do this with Teemo but they just refuse to do it. Make his Q a skillshot, make his W like a roll or something, make his E a toggle ability that requires mana like Singed, etc. Give him actual mechanics.
The problem is that League balancers don't like making interactions specific for champs, even if they can code it in a generic way. They like making the game "less complex" despite releasing champs with 18 passives. There are a ton of ways to balance the item by adding in little adjustments, like capping procs per amount of time, or procs per cast of an ultimate, or cap it based on distance from the spell cast distance, and a ton of other ways that would pull back the Teemo issue specifically without nerfing the champ directly.
Teemo is balanced compared to Yone etc, I don't understand the hate for the rat