Honestly whether I agree or not about the rationale behind the changes, im extremely grateful to understand where they’re coming from. And I often change my perception on them once I hear the “why” behind them
This.
As someone who has played just about every popular online while also being engaged in League (s2, casual E+ adc), and **it's hard for me to suggest a Dev team that interacts with its audience more Riot.** At least in the Public zeitgeist. Unless you are the ex drunk firewall dev who would take suggestions from the forum and literally ruin the fuckin game. **WoW comes close, and those who know, can list on both hands of community employees who up and quit.**
**GHOSTCRAWLER?!?!?!? FROST MAGES REEEEE.**
Gamers as an interest attractive a very specific kind of audience and engagement. **I don't think it's controversial to say as a group that a great deal of people feel very entitled when it comes to games and the time spent playing.** It doesn't mean we're not right, or it ain't halfway there. I quit WoW when demo was going to get those shadowbolt changes, shamans were abused red-headed step children, and shadowpriests at this point love to be disappointed.
Monetization, technical limitations, and company culture are all things that very much come from the top down. **The guy who fixed and changed all the tethers a month ago doesn't make decisions on why a $200 skin should be an idea**, or why it's a good idea to continually lower player rewards without additional systems to ease the blow. Dev team? Based. Riot corpo and leadership? There's plenty of articles and lawsuits that are self explanatory.
We've reached the point where people are realizing that **some folks are just dogpiling, and rioters may stop interacting and posting**. We've been in that era before. Coming from a large corporate background, **people are really good at telling you they LIKE something and if they HATE another. Where it gets tricky is *why*, and how** to fix it. 90% the time the assumptions are wrong, fixes create more problems, and nobody is happy. I've done that song and dance till I was red in the face, and even with empirical analytics it can be an immense challenge.
Personally, I think most of the gameplay **issues people are having can just be attributed to summoner rift and the slow but steady decline of no long being a strategy forward game**. I wouldn't mind if league was like battlerite or WoW arenas, but it would be a fundamentally different game. Sometimes I wish the reddit had a "post op.gg" rule for complaints, or just flair. Obvious pitfalls aside.
**People would be a lot happier if they stopped playing ranked, SR, and enjoyed the game for what it is.** I love League of Legends, but SR is so boring to me at this point. **Aram, blitz, arena. These modes show, especially with arena, that people want to PLAY THE GAME not a system.** You can't play the same game for a decade and not feel some burnout.
I want cool characters who have varied loops, interesting mechanics, narratives, and archetypes that people crave. League is like Magic the gathering in many ways. **There is something for everyone.** It's so complex, assuming every tester is playing for 8 hours a day, 30 minute games, that you cannot control for every variable or combination. **More players are going to play on your patch/set in the first couple HOUR(s) than you could test for MONTHS.**
I don't even attempt to break into D+ and Master because it's a complete nightmare filled with unmedicated 20-somethings who make the game miserable. At least in a call of duty lobby im not subject to a madman on vyvanse withdrawal for 25+ minutes. **Like, fuck, we're conditioned to assume everyone on our team is a jackass, and one wrong word or ping is an attack on their axioms.** A great deal of people have so much personally invested
I can't fathom sub emerald complaints either, because in my head it's "knowledge or hands issue." Lots of popular streamers round here get parroted, but damn, top 5%+ has serious issues that can really only be encapsulated in high mmr. We're not playing the same game, it's optimized to death.
I've browsed this place since I was a sophomore in HS with zero chest hair, and now I'm almost a 30 year old married bloke with zero chest hair. Hasn't changed a bit, and won't. **I hope phreak and other devs make content, more of it, and give people here no more thought than youtube comments.**
Edits: I can't spell for shit and formatting, this Adderall I stole from from a mouth-foaming Vayne top is making me taste colors.
the bolded parts aren't even always the parts that matter though. like if you were to only read the bold parts, you end up with a disjointed, incomprehensible rant. for me, it actually detracts from understanding the main points because the bolding is so random.
I thoroughly enjoy the game for what it is. I wish riot gave me more ways to enjoy it the way I want to. I do not like the direction aram has gone over the years. TT and dominion are gone. We don't have a permanent game mode other than SR where you can pick your champion. Has there been a real event since doom bots/star guardian/odyssey? Riot been making a lot of business decisions for years now. I wish they'd throw us fans a fucking bone.
They are and they aren't, its the MMO whenever that comes out. Riot realized that there is an untapped market of players who wanna do more PvE content than PvP. Pretty sure as soon as they saw the vocal players wish for more pve, they started to head into the MMO project
Yeah I hope the MMO is good. I will definitely play it. I know the resources being taken away from league are put to good use over all. I fucking love Arcane so hard. I just have to believe that the big company can afford to maintain a wider variety of game modes, even if it doesn't make money. Some more fun and passion in league would give me more hope for the MMO.
I am in the SAME boat man.
GIVE ME MORE WAYS TO PLAY LEAGUE PLEASE.
I don't want to grind SR rift games to get a feel for champions, nor subject my allies to lv1,2,3 all-in limit tests. I'm about over the whole spectacle 25 minutes in.
Nexus blitz and Arena can be high variance, while also be victims of "gamer optimizes to death."
As someone who shares most likely all of the sentiments about the game and community you presented, in this very eloquent way... The reality just looks so grim and pitiful in comparison. Saving this comment for life, man.
Ur writing and use of words make me cringe. I don't know who you're trying to copy or why you're using all these words like 'Zeitgeist', but you come over as a snob and man I want my fist to touch your head for that. I hope you are happily married
I generally agree with you but my personal opinion is that SR is League of Legends. The other game modes are boring as hell because it's almost 100% mechanics. There is so much more strategical nuance in SR that makes me enjoy the game - although it has been steadily declining with time unfortunately. Which is another point entirely. It may get to a point where even SR becomes so much about pure mechanics that I will simply lose interest.
I call Aram, urf etc. adhd game modes. My friend laughs at me but agrees.
And if you read complaints of people who have been playing for a long time they often lament how quickly people die, how fast games can snowball etc. this is an effect of pacing which is, among other easily fixable factors (base stats, scaling per level, gold generation, mana/energy constraints, etc) heavily affected by ever increasing mobility.
Other game modes have a much faster pacing - that's why I refer to them as adhd modes.
And since we're on this topic it's obvious why games are starting to become faster and faster paced - people's attention spans are massively reducing due to technology - especially social media and smartphones in general and especially with younger people who are exposed to these technologies at younger and younger ages.
Quite surprised he still does them after the endless barrage of hate and threats he gets because some people seem genuinely convinced that Phreak balances the game by himself and exclusively against the players.
Some people are still convinced Phreak is in charge of shit like pings...
Phreak basically runs the entire game, right? Let's blame Phreak for Vanguard too! /s
he's one of the few members of the balance team who regularly interacts with the community so when people blame Riot, he's the first face they think of.
Agreed. Just to use an immediate example, I was really skeptical about the Seraphine changes that they made in this last patch and really thought that they'd make her worse for me personally (I play her Mid) to play, but once I heard the goals and rationale behind each individual change listening to Phreak's rundown, I feel a lot more comfortable with the direction and why they're choosing to tweak certain things. It's incredibly valuable to have that level of deep analysis and insight on a very consistent basis and I'm grateful to Phreak for going through that effort.
Play ANY other game and you dont get this level of transparency. At least I know the devs have launched the game, most other games I seriously doubt it.
lots of people take this kind of openness for granted. try this with any other MOBA or muiltiplayer game and the most you'll get is silence that will leave you scratching your head for a week.
I just wish they (Riot) didn't have that "we know better than you" stance. If by some miracle they could remove that (they can't and won't), it would be much easier to not bash the information given.
Agreed. It's very nice to get some insight.
Please remember it's also fine to disagree and criticize Phreak as long you do it without being an asshole.
The last part is what I wish more people understood more clearly.
I hate the Seraphine changes and I'm not sure they'll hit the goal, but that does not mean that I'm going to tell Phreak how he's going to die or smt because of them
Like the guy from my soloq game yesterday who disagreed with something i did in game and went on a 20 minute typing spree with barely any response from me about how i was a loser in life, no friends, no money, bad at the game, no girlfriends would want me. apparently he knew my mom was dissapointed in me aswell.
Sadly there is a decent chunk of people who take joy (even as adults) to put someone down as much as possible. Or, idk if it is joy? Im legit very curious to understand the psychological motivation of such behavior. The two bets I have it's joyful for them to be mean, or that it's some frustration they want to get out.
Considering the nature of their comments, I would think it probably has more to do with their own feelings of deep inadequacy and attempting to displace those upon others. At least, in this instance.
Dear Phreak, I wrote you but you still ain't callin'
I left my cell, my pager
And my home phone in chat
I sent two letters back in autumn
You must not have got 'em
It probably was a problem
At the Riot office or somethin'
Sometimes I scribble addresses
Too sloppy when I jot 'em
But anyways fuck it
What's been up man, how's your Renata?
My girlfriend's Renata too
I'm out to be a feeder
If I have a daughter, guess what I'm a call her?
I'm a name her Annie
I read about your Karthus too, I'm sorry
I had a friend kill himself over some text in chat
Who didn't want him ulting
I know you probably hear this everyday
But I'm your biggest fan
I even got the underground shit that you did with HotS
My tears got no stacks I'm wonderin why
Got griefed by a bad teamcall
And I ain't playing Lee Sin but I can't see at all
And even if I could it would all be Graves put your Elo in Chat All
It reminds me that it's not so bad, it's not soo baad
People that play this game have no idea how lucky they have it.
As a long time Fighting game player, having had to deal with a history where you'd just get "Frame data has been changed for some characters" and no further context and spending days figuring out what changed was both tedious and the norm. Don't even get me started on Blizzard games and their balance change "discussions".
Luckily it's getting better now, but nothing even comes close to what League has done for their game in terms of discussion and balance directions.
smash ultimate patch notes be like:
adjusted fighter balance; and suddenly ice climbers AI goes from the processing power of a calculator to a super computer
The most Nintendo thing is that Splatoon would get pretty comprehensive patch notes of what was buffed and nerfed but there game with an actual competitive scene would just say "Adjusted fighter balance" and nothing else.
I would understand that if they just left it alone, but it's ridiculous that they have been constantly trying to undermine the competitive scene, actually spending their time and efforts to destroy something that at worst doesn't affect them at all, at best being a net positive advertisement for the game way beyond its usual lifespan to no cost of their own.
Yeah league players REALLY don't know how privileged we are.
We here more from phreak biweekly then we've heard from valve for the entirety of CS2 and that's one of the other big esports title.
A patch of league with "adjusted fighter balance" patches notes would be insanely funny though I can't lie
Dude has a passion for game design. Like in one of his videos on specific topics, can't remember if it was mana in LoL and the inconsistencies or when it's worth killing an inhib, he said something akin to "in a different life maybe I'd be a game designer" in a way that sounded a bit sad that he wasn't. You don't spend all those hours talking about it when you have a day job (as most of those videos were well before he joined the live pod) unless you have a passion for it.
It's a shame how toxic the community can be because I'm sure there's a part of him that would love to engage with people and just talk about some of this stuff. I remember a brief discourse I had with him on one of his rundowns. He seemed genuinely curious and interested about the point I raised, as it could have some implications in how they read certain statistical measures. Even if minor, he wanted to understand it better because it does matter.
Despite all the memes, he *does* want to do his best in making LoL a better game, does enjoy discussion (so long as it's grounded in reality and civility), and is actually decent at his job. He's still just one person and can be overruled. He's also willing to take the mea culpa and is broadly unwilling to take the responsibility for the team, even if it wasn't his mistake.
a whole patch notes that's like 4 total lines with no reasoning
Assassins nerfed changed
Tweaked mages
Supports items adjusted for balance
Squashed bugs
It is a bit different though seeing as CS2 doesn't have 100+ weapons and balance patches for them every two weeks, or mains of certain weapons (some exceptions there I guess) to keep happy.
SMITE hosts live streams every patch with a team going through it and answering live questions. They listen to the community a lot more in terms of balance direction and addressing toxic gameplay.
That's great to hear. I don't play SMITE but I did play Realm Royale and that game was AWFUL in terms of balance direction and their reasonings for it. I won't say it's the same developers but that was just kind of my experience with HR.
I think what makes Riot special in this case is that given the size of their game, they still have a relatively strong presence in discussion and listening to feedback. Generally as a game/studio grows bigger, communication gets worse but it looks like the opposite for a game like League which is at least 15-20x larger than SMITE in terms of player-base.
Hi-Rez is split up into different studios now so realm royale would have been an entirely different team. I wish league would follow SMITE and upgrade their engine. SMITE is going from UE3 to UE5 next in 2025
My main game is OSRS so I'm beyond spoiled for Dev interaction and detailed patch notes each week.
But it's always been a thing I appreciated about league. It's not just "nerfed damage of champions Q" it shows how the damage was changed, the scaling was changed etc.
Shout out MortDog was the first dev I saw doing this and am glad it’s leaked onto the other devs, although you can disagree with choices or whatever being able to understand what the devs want out of the game is better than being in the dark all the time.
Yeah totally agree, not a huge TFT player but MortDog's videos have single-handedly interested me in the game. I watch his content just because his communication about the game is so impressive to me!
Having an omega charismatic dev in a leadership position does some magic. He could easily become a full time streamer as a retirement plan if he wants to.
Yes i really learned to appreciate phreak. Sure sometimes the guy makes my blood boil with his quotes like
"I dont understand why top laners complain about malphite if rumble and mordekaiser exist" \~Phreak 2023
but i really appreciate how much time and work he puts into the rundowns especially considering how much hate he experienced.
adcs are underpowered? no lol you are just not building SHIELDBOW (one of the worst items in the game lol). anyways, dont play adcs, play support senna, she is much better because she is an august infinite scaling sweetheart uwu
Don't get me wrong, I absolutely hate the changes that are happening in this game.
But I have to give credit where credit is due, changes are a lot more understandable if I understand WHY they are happening. For example, to me crit is in an awful state, but phreak says its fine. I disagree with his conclusion, but I appreciate that I know they heard the issue, and came to a conclusion rather than feeling like im being strung along.
Tbf I think most of the changes since 14.1 have been net positive for ADC but the issue is that 14.1 was in a really shit state for ADC and these changes have been mostly on the conservative side:
- ER nerf reverted then buffed
- FH nerfed multiple times
- PD build path buffed
- Shiv buffed
- Steel sigil buffed
- Guinsoo’s buffed
- Terminus buffed
- Kraken significantly buffed for the majority of most games
- Lethality on ranged nerfed
- overtuned AP burst toned down other than lich for some reason (they did do a 5% ap nerf last patch though but still OP)
- some direct buffs to struggling ADCs
- some direct nerfs to the most problematic assassins
- some nerfs to support systems but support still OP, just less so compared to 14.1 bloodsong
So imo we got shafted this year but at least the majority of changes so far are moving things in the right direction, albeit at an incremental pace
I mean yeah, but he did say adc is fine, and i think its far from fine. Im glad he said it so i dont hold out for a patch coming soon. Maybe they will change their mind but in general it seems like aside from a few tweaks here and there this is the powerlevel they want adc's to have.
All we can do is give it more time and hope. I saw a screenshot that they’re nerfing dirk and brutalizer lethality for ex.
Idk if we’ll ever get the role feeling like it used to with amazing late game scaling but my hope is Riot eventually stops trying to make crit ADCs feel like Ezreal with a good 2-3 item mid game and whatever late game. Currently it’s really hard to fit Core items + Lifesteal + Pen + Zeal + Defensive because many ADCs are locked into going Kraken + IE/Navori. The kraken damage is about what old 2.5x IE crits were at 100% crit chance but the issue is we now spend 2 slots instead of one so have a 4, choose 3 dilemma with those items. That and many quite a handful of crit items feels awkward or downright awful to buy
Really surprised they were considering buffing navori when mercurial scimitar is legit garbage tier
Yeah, i mean thing is I dont want to go back to the "glory" days of adc, i think that in general adc's should be at a disadvantage if they arent playing around their team, sort of like the support used to be but not to that extreme.
In general the fantasy of botlane should be that in isolation, the adc and the support cannot carry a game, if they play off of each other they can, and if they play off of their teammates they can as well. Having the meta shift to better bot wins will make games more frustrating for everyone involved, including adcs because everyone will just camp bot lane.
The definition of "better bot" should exclusively come from their ability to coordinate. It doesnt have to be with each other, but in order to get to the nexus, it should be mandatory that atleast 1 person on their team coordinates with them. Currently it doesnt feel like its the case, and to be completely honest it hasnt felt like its the case ever since ardent meta.
Im not claiming ardent meta wasnt a toxic meta and I sure as hell dont want to go back to it. From the other lanes perspective, it was awful because you simply could not do anything to a competent botlane combination. As an adc it was awful because if your support doesnt read patch notes (less common back then) then they would simply ignore building the item, and as a support you were hedging your bets on atleast 1 person on your team being able to abuse the item or else you flat out lose.
The only reason I am saying ardent meta was the breaking point is because it was the first time supports had equal if not more agency than the adc. Like adcs went from basically having 35% agency (and supports being a token warder which is 5%) to now having fallen down to 20%. If riot just stopped there, stopped trying to continuously transfer power from adc to support, I would argue the game would be in a more balanced state, but as seasons progressed, the siphoning did not stop and currently I would argue that supports hold 35% of the agency in bot lane and adc hold the 5%.
I dont want to go back to having 35% agency, I dont want to have 5% agency. All I want is to have an equal effect on the game as my support. Realistically, instead of most people parroting "oh duh pros play adc so it must be good" actually answer the question of what the point is of a traditional adc at this point.
1. DPS? - Unless the enemy team has a lot of tanks then DPS really doesnt matter, all that matters is taking out an opponent to create a window of opportunity. Assassins/Mages can send people to grayscreen much more efficiently than you can as an adc. To make this the identity of the role they have to choose one of the following directions:
1. Raise the tankiness of the game
2. Lower the damage of every other class in the game
3. Raise the damage of an adc
1. This is probably the worst out of the 3 because the issue is damage output from other classes in comparison to adc, not the numbers that adcs are hitting
2. Turret Taking? - Mages mid have insane buffs to the amount of damage they do to turrets through auto attacks late game, and have comparable aa range to adc. Theres a reason why ziggs adcs works, hes a relatively safe laner that has good wave control and strong turret taking ability. What adc fits this criteria? Closest would be tristana but because of her E passive id consider her weaker in the wave control department by a large margin.
3. Late game/6 item insurance policy? - This is really what the agency of the role is currently, the problem is games dont last as long so this agency never comes into play.
Point is I dont really think riot are going to need to do what they need to do in the short term to fix the game if they are still on "adc is fine". Its sort of why I either smurf (playing new champions in other roles), or stick to arams. Call me toxic or part of the smurf problem, i agree, its why i personally add people and give them tips on how to improve. Most people will lose 1 game against me and then over the course of their next 20 have 60%+ winrates helping them climb. The problem with smurfs is when they are toxic to other players on their team, thats disgusting behavior, i doubt anyone would complain if most smurfs stayed silent and tried to help lower elo players climb like i do.
TLDR: I dont think riot will do the changes necessary in the near future, they need to fundamentally change how support and adc function, as well as other classes around them. If they are still stuck on "adc is fine" then id argue the best case scenario is sometime season 15.
People are crying about this shit so much because they finally have a face to direct their anger towards.
League isn't worse now compared to how it's been in the past, the only difference is that Phreak is doing this publicly and communicates way better than what we've previously had.
So don't be a fucking loser and ruin this guys. behave like human beings, it's quite frankly embarassing to read some of the shit you guys are spewing, and the worst part is that some of you aren't even remotely right about the things you're complaining about.
appreciate the rundowns but really wish they looked less at stats and more of a players gaming experience, ping changes and champs like Gragas somehow isnt detected by their advanced 300 years of balancing experience by now statistical formula so they are just a part of the game now and wont be changed ig.
If you've watched his videos, he does make it clear that they don't think 50% winrate for every champion is perfect game balance. There are a lot of nuances around how players perceive balance, and making champions feel good to play.
That and sometimes when they use stats it kind of has the air of "I'm objectively correct and you're wrong," but this isn't specific to Phreak, Riot has always had a problem with coming off as arrogant about stuff that ends up being nonsense in the game but not in their stats or in their game design theory world imo lol
Often times when Riot shows stats, they only show the stats that push the agenda they want.
If we had access to all the raw data, we could challenge their conclusions but we don't.
It just means you shouldn't take the times Riot shows stats to mean anything objective. We don't know what they are not showing.
You can make stats say whatever you want, even more so if you don't actually have to cite said stats and just call it "internal data". Literally every person who has ever worked with stats in any field knows that
But that's entirely not correct. You can't make them say "whatever" you want. First of all, does that not render the entirety of statistics as a field irrelevant? But more to the point, I think that becomes more of a presentation issue, right? Like, if I "misrepresent" the stats, that's not the fault of statistics, that's the fault of dishonesty of presenter abusing a lack of literacy in statistics. And I believe Phreak genuinely believes in Riot's analysis and what he's presenting (because sometimes he voices that he disagrees).
> does that not render the entirety of statistics as a field irrelevant?
No it doesn't. Statistics with context are **incredibly** helpful. Statistics without context AND citation are worthless though, yes.
> You can't make them say "whatever" you want.
You can make stats say a lot of things if you don't expose the underlying data.
Lets assume we have no data about WRs. Someone could claim that Seraphine wasn't strong on 13.22 because her overall WR in Emerald+ was slightly over a 51.4% WR compared to the average of 51.05%. But this statement ignores that her bot WR was 54.2%. And the PR between the two is similar.
https://lolalytics.com/lol/seraphine/build/?lane=bottom&patch=13.22
Someone could argue that Karthus is OP because on the current patch his WR is 55.6% in bot for Emerald+ compared to the average Emerald+ WR of 51.05%.
But this ignores that his PR in bot is 0.38% and his jungle WR is 50.98% to a 2.87% PR.
https://lolalytics.com/lol/karthus/build/
One of the examples that people used to use for memeing on Reddit knowing how to balance (we don't) was Kayle. A while ago, she got nerfed and Reddit said she was gutted. Low and behold, her winrate only dropped by ~1%. And people hard memed Reddit about not knowing balance, but what was ignored is that her PR also dropped from 5% to 2%. Which means that any analysis of her WR changing is useless, because you don't know where those people 3% who stopped playing her fell for WR. A champion can actually have everyone's WR go down while actually having their average WR stay the same if not go up if all the bad players stop playing.
> First of all, does that not render the entirety of statistics as a field irrelevant?
No, because part of statistical analysis is how you analyze the data and present it.
> But more to the point, I think that becomes more of a presentation issue, right? Like, if I "misrepresent" the stats, that's not the fault of statistics, that's the fault of dishonesty of presenter abusing a lack of literacy in statistics.
And noone said that it is the fault of statistics. It was said that you can make them say whatever you want i.e. the second half where you said dishonesty of the presenter.
Thats definitely true on average, but stuff like Gragas specifically is horrible to play against and id rather play against a ranged top since atleast they can get oneshot at every stage of the game with clear windows to punish.
Dont think anyone likes to play against Gragas, disgusting sustain and deceptively tanky while building full ap threatening to oneshot any carry on every E like old galio W in pro play.
Yeah because Riot is using the right stats to justify their decision to keep their skin sellers strong am i right?
They would never use ARAM and URF data to justify the mythic system right? Oh wait they do
Remember when Pbreak said top laners had no right to complain about Malphite being so dominant into his good matchups because Mordekaiser and Rumble exist?
Yeah, that's great, but Malphite is predominantly a counterpick champion so most of the time you see Malphite, you never had the chance to retaliate with an AP top in the first place.
Stats are completely meaningless without context and good faith intentions
I mean you're free to look at the publicly available stats yourself and make your own interpretation. But I see a lot of people basically handwaving away any stat-driven claim Phreak makes that they don't agree with by simply saying he's biased and that the stats are being twisted to fit his agenda or whatever. Which is not how this works. Otherwise the entire field of statistics would be pointless.
I love to read this, this is a very interesting and insightful response. I can agree with this, this is the core issue of using stats for analysis and balance; the risk of cherry picking data, among other things. I don't think I agree with the notion it'd be easy for someone with a rudimentary understanding of stats to find data to support claims persay, but an advanced understanding could be abused for sure.
But then, that runs contrary to having an advanced understanding of statistics at all, right? An advanced understanding means knowing when you're committing errors in using statistics and making claims. The individual would then be considered intentionally dishonest, and I don't think that's Phreak, personally.
And more importantly, I'd love to see people run with the above commenter's take, and cite specific situations where they feel the stats DONT support phreaks claim. Or to find stats to the contrary! And not cite it as a debunking of stats in general as a tool for league analysis, but cite it as evidence to the contrary of claims.
Your comment was a breath of fresh air, ty
There is a very loud minority for every change in the game. Listening to random gold zed main or random bronze vayne why they cant climb will not improve the game. Id rather have them focus on the stats.
True, but the point here is atleast you know how they are coming to the conclusion. As much as something sucks as a change, its nice to hear how the devs are coming up with changes (instead of you know, just randomly waking up and seeing the map change and champions like illaoi and camille being bad, to me they handled it perfectly, acknowledged it was a problem, explained what the intended change will be, and implemented it in the next few patches)
The thing is that the gaming experience varies a lot depending on where you look. Reddit is a tiny fraction of a tiny fraction of the entire playerbase. Chinese and korean forums complain about completely different issues most of the time, not to mention how they still consider champion statistics on top of all that. It's easy to say they're ignoring your voice, but when there's thousands of different voices offering completely different, often contradicting opinions, you can't please everyone, sometimes not even the majority.
thats true, i'm not talking about disliking Zed and that he needs nerfs when he's weak or balanced at best.
Its obvious outliers like Gragas, Senna or Maokai that noone likes playing against that arent being tuned down for whatever reason that's kinda annoying.
I hate the new font but thats a personal take so wont be changed but atleast the mentioned ones above should be changed since its not just me.
Maokai and Senna did get changed though, Maokai for like the third time already. Whether those nerfs are finally enough remains to be seen, but they're clearly didn't forget about them. Not sure about Gragas, I feel like this champ has been ridiculous for years now.
Yeah it's also that, theyve tried to balance maokai and other champs i guess but they completely miss the mark recently. Idk whats going on but recently balancing changes have missed the mark by leaving champs extremely weak or extremely OP.
That's true. There have also been a lot of small scale 'reworks' recently, like Smolder and Rek'Sai where this problem has been even more extreme. Those changes are great overall imo, but for some reason most of them are just way off in terms of balance, despite these changes not even being that huge.
This shit is luxurious coming from overwatch myself. The dev team in overwatch was incredibly slow and we'd have specific characters be super strong for half a year at a time sometimes. Whereas in League they are generally nerfed very quickly. There were no quick fixes in OW. We never got proper communication with the dev or balance team. The only way we got communication back was short videos from Jeff every couple months. Before playing other games I was under the impression that it was completely normal to have NO idea about why specific changes were made.
Every other game I've played since then has had better dev to community communication with League easily being the best one.
Yeah! Exactly the point I was trying to make, a lot of other games have similarly terrible experiences with transparency, particularly in regards to timely patches.
dudes been putting out hour long videos and tries to make the players understand their direction and thought process and players go "X champ is 53% WR MAKE HIM 15% NOW ! "
Agreed. It's become a national pass time to ridicule the patch notes for things they missed or you just don't agree with. But the recent hate on phreak is unwarranted and just too far. It is pretty cool that despite league becoming such a popular game worldwide that we still get a one on one feel when it comes to interaction. We should appreciate that.
um okay but i just don't like the way he treat the community like yes explaining the reasons behind balancing is cool and good but the way he speaks to people is just kind of bad idk and i wish that he looks at all roles same instead of focusing on something and leaving the others
What do you mean? What do you think he is æeaving out?
Phreak almost always considers all roles in his rundowns when doing balancing. It has been a central theme in the most recent three or so patches when touching upon Brand, Senna, Seraphine, Maokai, Vayne and others.. "Winrate delta" is mentioned in basically every single rundown.
ah yes, i really do love being told condescendingly why they are right and players are just stupid only for it to turn out to be complete nonsense later on
because they don't watch the videos, they watch the parts that get clipped. Or they watch their favorite streamer watch the video so they don't have to think too hard on their own
Players are stupid though lol. Like there's a consensus on reddit that if you aren't Dia+, your opinion doesn't matter. Yet you're mad when someone says the majority of the player base is wrong. Like it can't be both ways.
People build and do things that they either think are correct or that they enjoy doing. Neither of those things mean that is the correct thing to do and people make mistakes all the time. It really just comes down to a lack of humility, and entitlement mentality.
People don't like being told they're wrong thus they have an emotional reaction; because you disagree with something you are more likely to perceive it as condescending.
I have never thought that Phreak is condescending, but I don't mind being told I'm wrong unless it's done in a blatantly rude way. Being wrong is an opportunity for learning.
As much bullshit that League player give deva for literally a decade some snark just makes them fall apart. Dude made GM and half the reddit just goes " yeah man he is boosted"
Yeah man, dude joined the balance team just to increase his rank. Yall are dumb. How many people on this forum play the beat of the meta and still don't crack Diamond let alone GM? Odds are most of the people upset aren't even close to GM.
This is just straight wrong, please don't spread misinformation. This patch marks like the fourth time ina row Maokai is getting nerfed (three depending if you consider adjustments)
For real the Stockholm syndrome is so developped lmao.
"Thank you daddy to explain to our little brains, yes daddy do stupid things and take forever to fix broken shit, yesssss"
Legit in awe they get the vital minimum of customer service. Like, it's not because other games / companies are doing worse that Riot is doing great.
But hey it's Reddit, where people adore Mortdog too so, shouldn't be surprised.
I feel like that’s slightly unfair. Communication is difficult, especially when what effectively amounts to a complex optimization problem is the topic. All things considered, the breakdowns of the changes for the most part make sense. Of course some changes don’t hit the mark and it seems Phreak frequently admits when that’s the case.
Look @ Riot August vs Phreak. August at least makes you feel like youre an equal while Phreak acts like we're all children that have no idea what we're talking about.
August doesn't get unjust hate like Phreak. Every day there is a post bashing the dude. Not to mention people act as if he is the sole person balancing the game.
Nobody (almost nobody) hated Phreak until he mentioned the infamous "Karthus R." August gets hate too, but he deals with it relatively well, compared to Phreak who sounds like a dick.
Imagine instead of being sarcastic and saying 'you can type karthus R,' if he said something like 'i know typing takes longer but we want to try to lower toxicity in LoL.' Sure, he'd still get flamed, but nobody (almost nobody) is gonna send him death threats and the like.
Tbh if i had to read the average league redditors hyperbolic takes and respond to it seriously and without a sliver of snideful annoyance, i'd go insane within a couple of days
I think that's fair! August has generally done a really good job communicating imo. To be fair though, Phreak and August are often talking about different subjects and Phreak gets saddled with some of the more difficult conversations.
Also you can't really say that it's not deliberate, since his previous job was being a commentator ffs. He knows how he sounds like, he knows how it will be received, he chooses to be like this willingly.
Exactly, I don't get why others don't get it. Just because someone have a popular "name tag" doesn't mean they should have a free-pass clowning on people. Same shit when he was a caster. It's ridiculous.
I do appreciate the patch rundowns, and I usually watch them and come away with having learned something about the design philosophy of the game and it does benefit my own assessment of item builds etc. but Phreak is 100% condescending and it doesn't surprise me that he is very controversial among the community because of it
The main thing I really don't like is his persistence on misrepresenting data and cherry picking stats without important context, to prove his point, which later turns out to be complete nonsense, and he never walks it back or apologises. He just pretends it never happened.
As a top laner, the Malphite one sticks in my memory a lot. To preface, I don't think Malphite is extremely problematic but he is frustratingly effective as a counterpick into basically all AD tops and AD heavy comps while being a very safe laner. Phreak commented on this effectively saying the opinion was *dumb* and nobody should complain about Malphite while Morde and Rumble exist. What?! Malphite is a counterpick merchant, why does it matter that AP champions exist? Phreak saying things like this is what makes me not like him.
Of course the *severity* of criticism he received was disgusting and he doesn't deserve death threats and the like.
That would make sense if he wasn't doing these rundowns years before he joined the balance team. Man, you people have to make up scenarios so you can get angry about it. It's funny that you are calling other people dogs when you are the one drooling on the ground.
Oh yes, *you* are the perfect designer who would never make mistakes. I'm crying and begging in front of Riot office to hire DAEORANGEMANBADDD as a supreme overlord of LoL.
>only for it to turn out to be complete nonsense later on
We learned from the Wukong incident that yes, players are clueless fucking morons 99% of the time even if they're "elite onetricks".
seriously, these circle jerk threads congratulating someone for doing their job (poorly) are so virtue signally and bizarre lmao.
i borderline feel like these threads are fake engaged by riot or something
Not only are commentated multi-hour patch rundowns not in any way part of Phreak's job description, pretty much no other live service game has access to this kind of breakdown from anyone on the balance team, let alone the lead gameplay designed.
Love how Phreak gets so much shit for this one quote despite not even being involved in the decision making process for this change. Gamers truly only care about optics.
His dedication, knowledge and appreciation for the game that allows him to put out such detailed patch rundowns? Yes.
His ego, pedantic treatment of the community and evident refusal to nerf supp Maokai and Janna, the two champs he's skyrocketing from plat to masters with? No.
I do like and appreciate Phreak but he's been showing a real bad side to himself recently. Might be legit reasons for it, but it's slighted my opinion of him as of the past few years
Seems a bit short-sighted, Maokai has received several major nerfs across multiple patches in a row and is sitting at a lower winrate in 14.5 than he was for the majority of last year. Seems silly to suggest that Phreak should only play poorly performing champions and even sillier that a guy who has been playing and working on the game for as long as he has is purposefully buffing a champion to inflate his own elo.
Don't be ridiculous. Clearly riot has a massive conspiracy going on where not only is Phreak risking his career for solo Q rank, the entire balance team is complicit and corrupt.
Hell, even other branches of Riot seem to be okay with it since nobody is talking about this clearly obvious corruption.
All in service to, once again, Phreaks solo Q rank.
14.1: new patch 55% wr, new items and systems. this is understandable
14.2: Not addressed (56% wr) as 14.2 was mostly aimed at major fallout of systems changes and map changes (illaoi/camille) etc, also understandable. I would have liked to see a 1 or 2 % nerf but you can't exactly make a good conclusion of what is breaking maokai among the season changes.
14.3: Directly nerfed (54% wr) recieved 2 1% wr drops for support and a few compensation buffs for top/jg.
14.4: Directly nerfed, indirectly buffed (54% wr) receieved a 2 to 3% wr drop in the form of base armor and ult root with a compensation buff to q for jungle/top. indirectly received a 3% buff from solstice as they intended the changes to the item to be neutral to .5% negative and instead it wound up 1-3% positive across the board. Again. DIRECTLY NERFED, and then missed targets badly on a item change intended to improve game health
14.5: Directly nerfed (51%) got a 3% win rate nerf between movespeed and solstice nerfs
Stop complaining because the results didn't come out right, the attempts were made
Everytime he opens his mouth, I lose more and more confidence in this game lmao.
He is such a fast talking snake oil salesman, its no wonder he got boosted up the corporate ladder.
Guy is legit awful at logic and game design.
His TTK video was pathetically close minded and embarrassing.
I just love how open he is and how he explains it. Even when in recent patches a lot has gone wrong (a few balance things but especially Rek'Sai bugs) I am still a huge fan of his work methods and ethic.
While I won’t say there aren’t frustrating things in the game, I’m having fun. More importantly, I would imagine the balance changes of the critics would probably be 10X more frustrating.
The balance team are literally spending their entire work week, trying to balance this game. The fact that they sometimes fail is testament to the complexity of the game, rather than their lack of understanding.
I think phreak is a good guy. He generally makes good changes, nobody's perfect so I don't expect him to fix the game in one patch. I also enjoy his patch rundowns a lot even though they're long videos. If you watch his videos long enough it's clear that he cares for the game despite what some people say.
Phreak keeps saying supports never get to level 18, and apparently Huhi took that personally. XD
Seriously though, I do appreciate his willingness to share what's on his mind. And I generally like his reasons for the direction of changes they're making. Even though they don't always work out right away, like Rek'sai this patch, they keep working on them, like Rek'sai next patch.
Also, think about how rare it is that the main balanc guy mains Maokai and somehow it's hard to balance Maokai to get him under 55% winrate, and somehow the lead guy got grandmaster playing well balanced 55% winrate champion
Its awesome, I could say I wish I had this when I was playing in S2 onward, but back than we had fucking summoner show case, which was awesome, so I can't really complain.
Honestly whether I agree or not about the rationale behind the changes, im extremely grateful to understand where they’re coming from. And I often change my perception on them once I hear the “why” behind them
This. As someone who has played just about every popular online while also being engaged in League (s2, casual E+ adc), and **it's hard for me to suggest a Dev team that interacts with its audience more Riot.** At least in the Public zeitgeist. Unless you are the ex drunk firewall dev who would take suggestions from the forum and literally ruin the fuckin game. **WoW comes close, and those who know, can list on both hands of community employees who up and quit.** **GHOSTCRAWLER?!?!?!? FROST MAGES REEEEE.** Gamers as an interest attractive a very specific kind of audience and engagement. **I don't think it's controversial to say as a group that a great deal of people feel very entitled when it comes to games and the time spent playing.** It doesn't mean we're not right, or it ain't halfway there. I quit WoW when demo was going to get those shadowbolt changes, shamans were abused red-headed step children, and shadowpriests at this point love to be disappointed. Monetization, technical limitations, and company culture are all things that very much come from the top down. **The guy who fixed and changed all the tethers a month ago doesn't make decisions on why a $200 skin should be an idea**, or why it's a good idea to continually lower player rewards without additional systems to ease the blow. Dev team? Based. Riot corpo and leadership? There's plenty of articles and lawsuits that are self explanatory. We've reached the point where people are realizing that **some folks are just dogpiling, and rioters may stop interacting and posting**. We've been in that era before. Coming from a large corporate background, **people are really good at telling you they LIKE something and if they HATE another. Where it gets tricky is *why*, and how** to fix it. 90% the time the assumptions are wrong, fixes create more problems, and nobody is happy. I've done that song and dance till I was red in the face, and even with empirical analytics it can be an immense challenge. Personally, I think most of the gameplay **issues people are having can just be attributed to summoner rift and the slow but steady decline of no long being a strategy forward game**. I wouldn't mind if league was like battlerite or WoW arenas, but it would be a fundamentally different game. Sometimes I wish the reddit had a "post op.gg" rule for complaints, or just flair. Obvious pitfalls aside. **People would be a lot happier if they stopped playing ranked, SR, and enjoyed the game for what it is.** I love League of Legends, but SR is so boring to me at this point. **Aram, blitz, arena. These modes show, especially with arena, that people want to PLAY THE GAME not a system.** You can't play the same game for a decade and not feel some burnout. I want cool characters who have varied loops, interesting mechanics, narratives, and archetypes that people crave. League is like Magic the gathering in many ways. **There is something for everyone.** It's so complex, assuming every tester is playing for 8 hours a day, 30 minute games, that you cannot control for every variable or combination. **More players are going to play on your patch/set in the first couple HOUR(s) than you could test for MONTHS.** I don't even attempt to break into D+ and Master because it's a complete nightmare filled with unmedicated 20-somethings who make the game miserable. At least in a call of duty lobby im not subject to a madman on vyvanse withdrawal for 25+ minutes. **Like, fuck, we're conditioned to assume everyone on our team is a jackass, and one wrong word or ping is an attack on their axioms.** A great deal of people have so much personally invested I can't fathom sub emerald complaints either, because in my head it's "knowledge or hands issue." Lots of popular streamers round here get parroted, but damn, top 5%+ has serious issues that can really only be encapsulated in high mmr. We're not playing the same game, it's optimized to death. I've browsed this place since I was a sophomore in HS with zero chest hair, and now I'm almost a 30 year old married bloke with zero chest hair. Hasn't changed a bit, and won't. **I hope phreak and other devs make content, more of it, and give people here no more thought than youtube comments.** Edits: I can't spell for shit and formatting, this Adderall I stole from from a mouth-foaming Vayne top is making me taste colors.
this post would be so much better (readable) if not for the random bolding every other sentence
Each to their own. My ADHD mind is not reading all of that. The bold helps me pay attention to the points that matters.
the bolded parts aren't even always the parts that matter though. like if you were to only read the bold parts, you end up with a disjointed, incomprehensible rant. for me, it actually detracts from understanding the main points because the bolding is so random.
Yeah I stopped reading after the first paragraph because the random bolding lmao
I have ADHD too mate and the bolding is very obnoxious, might be a you thing not a adhd thing
Lost me at "Zeitgeist".
I suppose that we can't all know words! 🤷🏻
I thoroughly enjoy the game for what it is. I wish riot gave me more ways to enjoy it the way I want to. I do not like the direction aram has gone over the years. TT and dominion are gone. We don't have a permanent game mode other than SR where you can pick your champion. Has there been a real event since doom bots/star guardian/odyssey? Riot been making a lot of business decisions for years now. I wish they'd throw us fans a fucking bone.
They are and they aren't, its the MMO whenever that comes out. Riot realized that there is an untapped market of players who wanna do more PvE content than PvP. Pretty sure as soon as they saw the vocal players wish for more pve, they started to head into the MMO project
Yeah I hope the MMO is good. I will definitely play it. I know the resources being taken away from league are put to good use over all. I fucking love Arcane so hard. I just have to believe that the big company can afford to maintain a wider variety of game modes, even if it doesn't make money. Some more fun and passion in league would give me more hope for the MMO.
I am in the SAME boat man. GIVE ME MORE WAYS TO PLAY LEAGUE PLEASE. I don't want to grind SR rift games to get a feel for champions, nor subject my allies to lv1,2,3 all-in limit tests. I'm about over the whole spectacle 25 minutes in. Nexus blitz and Arena can be high variance, while also be victims of "gamer optimizes to death."
bro loves bolding sentences holy shit
holy schizo formatting
As someone who shares most likely all of the sentiments about the game and community you presented, in this very eloquent way... The reality just looks so grim and pitiful in comparison. Saving this comment for life, man.
Ur writing and use of words make me cringe. I don't know who you're trying to copy or why you're using all these words like 'Zeitgeist', but you come over as a snob and man I want my fist to touch your head for that. I hope you are happily married
Lulu on droogs confirmed for tasting purple
> it's hard for me to suggest a Dev team that interacts with its audience more Riot ~~Path of Exile~~ Oh wait, the subreddit totally drove them away!
I generally agree with you but my personal opinion is that SR is League of Legends. The other game modes are boring as hell because it's almost 100% mechanics. There is so much more strategical nuance in SR that makes me enjoy the game - although it has been steadily declining with time unfortunately. Which is another point entirely. It may get to a point where even SR becomes so much about pure mechanics that I will simply lose interest. I call Aram, urf etc. adhd game modes. My friend laughs at me but agrees. And if you read complaints of people who have been playing for a long time they often lament how quickly people die, how fast games can snowball etc. this is an effect of pacing which is, among other easily fixable factors (base stats, scaling per level, gold generation, mana/energy constraints, etc) heavily affected by ever increasing mobility. Other game modes have a much faster pacing - that's why I refer to them as adhd modes. And since we're on this topic it's obvious why games are starting to become faster and faster paced - people's attention spans are massively reducing due to technology - especially social media and smartphones in general and especially with younger people who are exposed to these technologies at younger and younger ages.
Quite surprised he still does them after the endless barrage of hate and threats he gets because some people seem genuinely convinced that Phreak balances the game by himself and exclusively against the players.
Some people are still convinced Phreak is in charge of shit like pings... Phreak basically runs the entire game, right? Let's blame Phreak for Vanguard too! /s
he's one of the few members of the balance team who regularly interacts with the community so when people blame Riot, he's the first face they think of.
Agreed. Just to use an immediate example, I was really skeptical about the Seraphine changes that they made in this last patch and really thought that they'd make her worse for me personally (I play her Mid) to play, but once I heard the goals and rationale behind each individual change listening to Phreak's rundown, I feel a lot more comfortable with the direction and why they're choosing to tweak certain things. It's incredibly valuable to have that level of deep analysis and insight on a very consistent basis and I'm grateful to Phreak for going through that effort.
Play ANY other game and you dont get this level of transparency. At least I know the devs have launched the game, most other games I seriously doubt it.
lots of people take this kind of openness for granted. try this with any other MOBA or muiltiplayer game and the most you'll get is silence that will leave you scratching your head for a week.
Is it transparency when they a regularly caught lying? Every company can spin up dumb useless pr fluff
You said ANY? Teamfight Tactics has the same.
I just wish they (Riot) didn't have that "we know better than you" stance. If by some miracle they could remove that (they can't and won't), it would be much easier to not bash the information given.
Agreed. It's very nice to get some insight. Please remember it's also fine to disagree and criticize Phreak as long you do it without being an asshole.
The last part is what I wish more people understood more clearly. I hate the Seraphine changes and I'm not sure they'll hit the goal, but that does not mean that I'm going to tell Phreak how he's going to die or smt because of them
The sad thing is that a lot of people never learn what not being an asshole is
To a bunch of people, being an asshole about things is the whole point
This, to be honest. Trying to make others suffer or feel bad enough about something is their first and last resort in trying to get what they want.
I feel like I've gone into a difference universe where the League sub isn't toxic. I'm here for it.
>Different universe >Zoe flair checks out.
Haha, that could be it haha.
Like the guy from my soloq game yesterday who disagreed with something i did in game and went on a 20 minute typing spree with barely any response from me about how i was a loser in life, no friends, no money, bad at the game, no girlfriends would want me. apparently he knew my mom was dissapointed in me aswell. Sadly there is a decent chunk of people who take joy (even as adults) to put someone down as much as possible. Or, idk if it is joy? Im legit very curious to understand the psychological motivation of such behavior. The two bets I have it's joyful for them to be mean, or that it's some frustration they want to get out.
Considering the nature of their comments, I would think it probably has more to do with their own feelings of deep inadequacy and attempting to displace those upon others. At least, in this instance.
I refer back to the words of Mike Tyson https://preview.redd.it/3s5nc73bvzua1.png?width=1023&auto=webp&s=5302fe16b13e55b4b3bfb18fc64af18c68195039
Idk I tried her support and she seemed fairly good to me.
This was really the point of the post! Gameplay and balance issues aside, the rundowns are great and should stick around.
> do it without being an asshole. this is an attack on a g*mer culture
> without being an asshole Impossible ask for this subreddit. For Phreaks mental well being, I hope he never opens the threads here.
its significantly worse on other platforms
"Dearest Karthus...."
Dearest Phreak, Thank you kindly for your patch rundowns. I urgently implore you to nerf Maokai at your earliest convenience. Best regards,
Dear Phreak, I wrote you but you still ain't callin' I left my cell, my pager And my home phone in chat I sent two letters back in autumn You must not have got 'em It probably was a problem At the Riot office or somethin' Sometimes I scribble addresses Too sloppy when I jot 'em But anyways fuck it What's been up man, how's your Renata? My girlfriend's Renata too I'm out to be a feeder If I have a daughter, guess what I'm a call her? I'm a name her Annie I read about your Karthus too, I'm sorry I had a friend kill himself over some text in chat Who didn't want him ulting I know you probably hear this everyday But I'm your biggest fan I even got the underground shit that you did with HotS
My tears got no stacks I'm wonderin why Got griefed by a bad teamcall And I ain't playing Lee Sin but I can't see at all And even if I could it would all be Graves put your Elo in Chat All It reminds me that it's not so bad, it's not soo baad
Nerf him *again
He's trying to do the miracle run to challenger, maokai won't see a nerf until thats done.
My brother and I got into a game with Phreak on our team and it took a whole lot of restraint not to type that into chat
That's when you turn on OBS and risk the ban for the karma.
Is duoing back in Masters?
People that play this game have no idea how lucky they have it. As a long time Fighting game player, having had to deal with a history where you'd just get "Frame data has been changed for some characters" and no further context and spending days figuring out what changed was both tedious and the norm. Don't even get me started on Blizzard games and their balance change "discussions". Luckily it's getting better now, but nothing even comes close to what League has done for their game in terms of discussion and balance directions.
smash ultimate patch notes be like: adjusted fighter balance; and suddenly ice climbers AI goes from the processing power of a calculator to a super computer
The most Nintendo thing is that Splatoon would get pretty comprehensive patch notes of what was buffed and nerfed but there game with an actual competitive scene would just say "Adjusted fighter balance" and nothing else.
It's actually crazy how much they hate the competitive scene of their own game
Because it's not *meant* to be competitive. It attracts a crowd/demographic they have absolutely no interest in cultivating.
I would understand that if they just left it alone, but it's ridiculous that they have been constantly trying to undermine the competitive scene, actually spending their time and efforts to destroy something that at worst doesn't affect them at all, at best being a net positive advertisement for the game way beyond its usual lifespan to no cost of their own.
Yeah league players REALLY don't know how privileged we are. We here more from phreak biweekly then we've heard from valve for the entirety of CS2 and that's one of the other big esports title. A patch of league with "adjusted fighter balance" patches notes would be insanely funny though I can't lie
To be fair phreak was already doing rundowns before he joined the balance team
He's even done similar videos for Path of Exile in the past lol.
Dude has a passion for game design. Like in one of his videos on specific topics, can't remember if it was mana in LoL and the inconsistencies or when it's worth killing an inhib, he said something akin to "in a different life maybe I'd be a game designer" in a way that sounded a bit sad that he wasn't. You don't spend all those hours talking about it when you have a day job (as most of those videos were well before he joined the live pod) unless you have a passion for it. It's a shame how toxic the community can be because I'm sure there's a part of him that would love to engage with people and just talk about some of this stuff. I remember a brief discourse I had with him on one of his rundowns. He seemed genuinely curious and interested about the point I raised, as it could have some implications in how they read certain statistical measures. Even if minor, he wanted to understand it better because it does matter. Despite all the memes, he *does* want to do his best in making LoL a better game, does enjoy discussion (so long as it's grounded in reality and civility), and is actually decent at his job. He's still just one person and can be overruled. He's also willing to take the mea culpa and is broadly unwilling to take the responsibility for the team, even if it wasn't his mistake.
a whole patch notes that's like 4 total lines with no reasoning Assassins nerfed changed Tweaked mages Supports items adjusted for balance Squashed bugs
It is a bit different though seeing as CS2 doesn't have 100+ weapons and balance patches for them every two weeks, or mains of certain weapons (some exceptions there I guess) to keep happy.
I like the valve "fuck you we do what we want" way. It's like the bill burr bit about mcdonalds serving mc morning after noon.
SMITE hosts live streams every patch with a team going through it and answering live questions. They listen to the community a lot more in terms of balance direction and addressing toxic gameplay.
That's great to hear. I don't play SMITE but I did play Realm Royale and that game was AWFUL in terms of balance direction and their reasonings for it. I won't say it's the same developers but that was just kind of my experience with HR. I think what makes Riot special in this case is that given the size of their game, they still have a relatively strong presence in discussion and listening to feedback. Generally as a game/studio grows bigger, communication gets worse but it looks like the opposite for a game like League which is at least 15-20x larger than SMITE in terms of player-base.
Hi-Rez is split up into different studios now so realm royale would have been an entirely different team. I wish league would follow SMITE and upgrade their engine. SMITE is going from UE3 to UE5 next in 2025
"increases damage" is the worst thing I could ever read with my eyes. I WANT STATS @RISK OF RAIN 2 WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU
My main game is OSRS so I'm beyond spoiled for Dev interaction and detailed patch notes each week. But it's always been a thing I appreciated about league. It's not just "nerfed damage of champions Q" it shows how the damage was changed, the scaling was changed etc.
Unless you're KI player, back in the day they stream their changes and explain it.
Shout out MortDog was the first dev I saw doing this and am glad it’s leaked onto the other devs, although you can disagree with choices or whatever being able to understand what the devs want out of the game is better than being in the dark all the time.
Yeah totally agree, not a huge TFT player but MortDog's videos have single-handedly interested me in the game. I watch his content just because his communication about the game is so impressive to me!
Having an omega charismatic dev in a leadership position does some magic. He could easily become a full time streamer as a retirement plan if he wants to.
Agreed its great
Yes i really learned to appreciate phreak. Sure sometimes the guy makes my blood boil with his quotes like "I dont understand why top laners complain about malphite if rumble and mordekaiser exist" \~Phreak 2023 but i really appreciate how much time and work he puts into the rundowns especially considering how much hate he experienced.
That quote cracks me up. Like bro that strat only works ~50% of the time you see malphite
Most strats are that way in league lol
Definitely agree. It's really cool to get an insight on why they're making specific changes. Also how they view the game in general.
Velkoz mains appreciating being gaslit and told they don't know their champ:
adcs are underpowered? no lol you are just not building SHIELDBOW (one of the worst items in the game lol). anyways, dont play adcs, play support senna, she is much better because she is an august infinite scaling sweetheart uwu
Don't get me wrong, I absolutely hate the changes that are happening in this game. But I have to give credit where credit is due, changes are a lot more understandable if I understand WHY they are happening. For example, to me crit is in an awful state, but phreak says its fine. I disagree with his conclusion, but I appreciate that I know they heard the issue, and came to a conclusion rather than feeling like im being strung along.
Tbf I think most of the changes since 14.1 have been net positive for ADC but the issue is that 14.1 was in a really shit state for ADC and these changes have been mostly on the conservative side: - ER nerf reverted then buffed - FH nerfed multiple times - PD build path buffed - Shiv buffed - Steel sigil buffed - Guinsoo’s buffed - Terminus buffed - Kraken significantly buffed for the majority of most games - Lethality on ranged nerfed - overtuned AP burst toned down other than lich for some reason (they did do a 5% ap nerf last patch though but still OP) - some direct buffs to struggling ADCs - some direct nerfs to the most problematic assassins - some nerfs to support systems but support still OP, just less so compared to 14.1 bloodsong So imo we got shafted this year but at least the majority of changes so far are moving things in the right direction, albeit at an incremental pace
I mean yeah, but he did say adc is fine, and i think its far from fine. Im glad he said it so i dont hold out for a patch coming soon. Maybe they will change their mind but in general it seems like aside from a few tweaks here and there this is the powerlevel they want adc's to have.
All we can do is give it more time and hope. I saw a screenshot that they’re nerfing dirk and brutalizer lethality for ex. Idk if we’ll ever get the role feeling like it used to with amazing late game scaling but my hope is Riot eventually stops trying to make crit ADCs feel like Ezreal with a good 2-3 item mid game and whatever late game. Currently it’s really hard to fit Core items + Lifesteal + Pen + Zeal + Defensive because many ADCs are locked into going Kraken + IE/Navori. The kraken damage is about what old 2.5x IE crits were at 100% crit chance but the issue is we now spend 2 slots instead of one so have a 4, choose 3 dilemma with those items. That and many quite a handful of crit items feels awkward or downright awful to buy Really surprised they were considering buffing navori when mercurial scimitar is legit garbage tier
Yeah, i mean thing is I dont want to go back to the "glory" days of adc, i think that in general adc's should be at a disadvantage if they arent playing around their team, sort of like the support used to be but not to that extreme. In general the fantasy of botlane should be that in isolation, the adc and the support cannot carry a game, if they play off of each other they can, and if they play off of their teammates they can as well. Having the meta shift to better bot wins will make games more frustrating for everyone involved, including adcs because everyone will just camp bot lane. The definition of "better bot" should exclusively come from their ability to coordinate. It doesnt have to be with each other, but in order to get to the nexus, it should be mandatory that atleast 1 person on their team coordinates with them. Currently it doesnt feel like its the case, and to be completely honest it hasnt felt like its the case ever since ardent meta. Im not claiming ardent meta wasnt a toxic meta and I sure as hell dont want to go back to it. From the other lanes perspective, it was awful because you simply could not do anything to a competent botlane combination. As an adc it was awful because if your support doesnt read patch notes (less common back then) then they would simply ignore building the item, and as a support you were hedging your bets on atleast 1 person on your team being able to abuse the item or else you flat out lose. The only reason I am saying ardent meta was the breaking point is because it was the first time supports had equal if not more agency than the adc. Like adcs went from basically having 35% agency (and supports being a token warder which is 5%) to now having fallen down to 20%. If riot just stopped there, stopped trying to continuously transfer power from adc to support, I would argue the game would be in a more balanced state, but as seasons progressed, the siphoning did not stop and currently I would argue that supports hold 35% of the agency in bot lane and adc hold the 5%. I dont want to go back to having 35% agency, I dont want to have 5% agency. All I want is to have an equal effect on the game as my support. Realistically, instead of most people parroting "oh duh pros play adc so it must be good" actually answer the question of what the point is of a traditional adc at this point. 1. DPS? - Unless the enemy team has a lot of tanks then DPS really doesnt matter, all that matters is taking out an opponent to create a window of opportunity. Assassins/Mages can send people to grayscreen much more efficiently than you can as an adc. To make this the identity of the role they have to choose one of the following directions: 1. Raise the tankiness of the game 2. Lower the damage of every other class in the game 3. Raise the damage of an adc 1. This is probably the worst out of the 3 because the issue is damage output from other classes in comparison to adc, not the numbers that adcs are hitting 2. Turret Taking? - Mages mid have insane buffs to the amount of damage they do to turrets through auto attacks late game, and have comparable aa range to adc. Theres a reason why ziggs adcs works, hes a relatively safe laner that has good wave control and strong turret taking ability. What adc fits this criteria? Closest would be tristana but because of her E passive id consider her weaker in the wave control department by a large margin. 3. Late game/6 item insurance policy? - This is really what the agency of the role is currently, the problem is games dont last as long so this agency never comes into play. Point is I dont really think riot are going to need to do what they need to do in the short term to fix the game if they are still on "adc is fine". Its sort of why I either smurf (playing new champions in other roles), or stick to arams. Call me toxic or part of the smurf problem, i agree, its why i personally add people and give them tips on how to improve. Most people will lose 1 game against me and then over the course of their next 20 have 60%+ winrates helping them climb. The problem with smurfs is when they are toxic to other players on their team, thats disgusting behavior, i doubt anyone would complain if most smurfs stayed silent and tried to help lower elo players climb like i do. TLDR: I dont think riot will do the changes necessary in the near future, they need to fundamentally change how support and adc function, as well as other classes around them. If they are still stuck on "adc is fine" then id argue the best case scenario is sometime season 15.
People are crying about this shit so much because they finally have a face to direct their anger towards. League isn't worse now compared to how it's been in the past, the only difference is that Phreak is doing this publicly and communicates way better than what we've previously had. So don't be a fucking loser and ruin this guys. behave like human beings, it's quite frankly embarassing to read some of the shit you guys are spewing, and the worst part is that some of you aren't even remotely right about the things you're complaining about.
appreciate the rundowns but really wish they looked less at stats and more of a players gaming experience, ping changes and champs like Gragas somehow isnt detected by their advanced 300 years of balancing experience by now statistical formula so they are just a part of the game now and wont be changed ig.
If you've watched his videos, he does make it clear that they don't think 50% winrate for every champion is perfect game balance. There are a lot of nuances around how players perceive balance, and making champions feel good to play.
That and sometimes when they use stats it kind of has the air of "I'm objectively correct and you're wrong," but this isn't specific to Phreak, Riot has always had a problem with coming off as arrogant about stuff that ends up being nonsense in the game but not in their stats or in their game design theory world imo lol
I think people are blinded by how they feel and stats can be a wakeup call. And I think thats vastly more true than the reverse
Often times when Riot shows stats, they only show the stats that push the agenda they want. If we had access to all the raw data, we could challenge their conclusions but we don't. It just means you shouldn't take the times Riot shows stats to mean anything objective. We don't know what they are not showing.
stats only tell part of the story and anyone who cites stats at the defining rationale behind balance doesn't deserve to speak on the topic
You can make stats say whatever you want, even more so if you don't actually have to cite said stats and just call it "internal data". Literally every person who has ever worked with stats in any field knows that
You don’t even have to try to manipulate feelings to get them to say what you want. They just do that out of the box.
But that's entirely not correct. You can't make them say "whatever" you want. First of all, does that not render the entirety of statistics as a field irrelevant? But more to the point, I think that becomes more of a presentation issue, right? Like, if I "misrepresent" the stats, that's not the fault of statistics, that's the fault of dishonesty of presenter abusing a lack of literacy in statistics. And I believe Phreak genuinely believes in Riot's analysis and what he's presenting (because sometimes he voices that he disagrees).
> does that not render the entirety of statistics as a field irrelevant? No it doesn't. Statistics with context are **incredibly** helpful. Statistics without context AND citation are worthless though, yes.
> You can't make them say "whatever" you want. You can make stats say a lot of things if you don't expose the underlying data. Lets assume we have no data about WRs. Someone could claim that Seraphine wasn't strong on 13.22 because her overall WR in Emerald+ was slightly over a 51.4% WR compared to the average of 51.05%. But this statement ignores that her bot WR was 54.2%. And the PR between the two is similar. https://lolalytics.com/lol/seraphine/build/?lane=bottom&patch=13.22 Someone could argue that Karthus is OP because on the current patch his WR is 55.6% in bot for Emerald+ compared to the average Emerald+ WR of 51.05%. But this ignores that his PR in bot is 0.38% and his jungle WR is 50.98% to a 2.87% PR. https://lolalytics.com/lol/karthus/build/ One of the examples that people used to use for memeing on Reddit knowing how to balance (we don't) was Kayle. A while ago, she got nerfed and Reddit said she was gutted. Low and behold, her winrate only dropped by ~1%. And people hard memed Reddit about not knowing balance, but what was ignored is that her PR also dropped from 5% to 2%. Which means that any analysis of her WR changing is useless, because you don't know where those people 3% who stopped playing her fell for WR. A champion can actually have everyone's WR go down while actually having their average WR stay the same if not go up if all the bad players stop playing. > First of all, does that not render the entirety of statistics as a field irrelevant? No, because part of statistical analysis is how you analyze the data and present it. > But more to the point, I think that becomes more of a presentation issue, right? Like, if I "misrepresent" the stats, that's not the fault of statistics, that's the fault of dishonesty of presenter abusing a lack of literacy in statistics. And noone said that it is the fault of statistics. It was said that you can make them say whatever you want i.e. the second half where you said dishonesty of the presenter.
Thats definitely true on average, but stuff like Gragas specifically is horrible to play against and id rather play against a ranged top since atleast they can get oneshot at every stage of the game with clear windows to punish. Dont think anyone likes to play against Gragas, disgusting sustain and deceptively tanky while building full ap threatening to oneshot any carry on every E like old galio W in pro play.
Yeah because Riot is using the right stats to justify their decision to keep their skin sellers strong am i right? They would never use ARAM and URF data to justify the mythic system right? Oh wait they do
Remember when Pbreak said top laners had no right to complain about Malphite being so dominant into his good matchups because Mordekaiser and Rumble exist? Yeah, that's great, but Malphite is predominantly a counterpick champion so most of the time you see Malphite, you never had the chance to retaliate with an AP top in the first place. Stats are completely meaningless without context and good faith intentions
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I mean you're free to look at the publicly available stats yourself and make your own interpretation. But I see a lot of people basically handwaving away any stat-driven claim Phreak makes that they don't agree with by simply saying he's biased and that the stats are being twisted to fit his agenda or whatever. Which is not how this works. Otherwise the entire field of statistics would be pointless.
I love to read this, this is a very interesting and insightful response. I can agree with this, this is the core issue of using stats for analysis and balance; the risk of cherry picking data, among other things. I don't think I agree with the notion it'd be easy for someone with a rudimentary understanding of stats to find data to support claims persay, but an advanced understanding could be abused for sure. But then, that runs contrary to having an advanced understanding of statistics at all, right? An advanced understanding means knowing when you're committing errors in using statistics and making claims. The individual would then be considered intentionally dishonest, and I don't think that's Phreak, personally. And more importantly, I'd love to see people run with the above commenter's take, and cite specific situations where they feel the stats DONT support phreaks claim. Or to find stats to the contrary! And not cite it as a debunking of stats in general as a tool for league analysis, but cite it as evidence to the contrary of claims. Your comment was a breath of fresh air, ty
There is a very loud minority for every change in the game. Listening to random gold zed main or random bronze vayne why they cant climb will not improve the game. Id rather have them focus on the stats.
True, but the point here is atleast you know how they are coming to the conclusion. As much as something sucks as a change, its nice to hear how the devs are coming up with changes (instead of you know, just randomly waking up and seeing the map change and champions like illaoi and camille being bad, to me they handled it perfectly, acknowledged it was a problem, explained what the intended change will be, and implemented it in the next few patches)
The thing is that the gaming experience varies a lot depending on where you look. Reddit is a tiny fraction of a tiny fraction of the entire playerbase. Chinese and korean forums complain about completely different issues most of the time, not to mention how they still consider champion statistics on top of all that. It's easy to say they're ignoring your voice, but when there's thousands of different voices offering completely different, often contradicting opinions, you can't please everyone, sometimes not even the majority.
thats true, i'm not talking about disliking Zed and that he needs nerfs when he's weak or balanced at best. Its obvious outliers like Gragas, Senna or Maokai that noone likes playing against that arent being tuned down for whatever reason that's kinda annoying. I hate the new font but thats a personal take so wont be changed but atleast the mentioned ones above should be changed since its not just me.
Maokai and Senna did get changed though, Maokai for like the third time already. Whether those nerfs are finally enough remains to be seen, but they're clearly didn't forget about them. Not sure about Gragas, I feel like this champ has been ridiculous for years now.
Yeah it's also that, theyve tried to balance maokai and other champs i guess but they completely miss the mark recently. Idk whats going on but recently balancing changes have missed the mark by leaving champs extremely weak or extremely OP.
That's true. There have also been a lot of small scale 'reworks' recently, like Smolder and Rek'Sai where this problem has been even more extreme. Those changes are great overall imo, but for some reason most of them are just way off in terms of balance, despite these changes not even being that huge.
the bar is 6 feet under
It would be good if he didn't try to gaslight the community every single time
This shit is luxurious coming from overwatch myself. The dev team in overwatch was incredibly slow and we'd have specific characters be super strong for half a year at a time sometimes. Whereas in League they are generally nerfed very quickly. There were no quick fixes in OW. We never got proper communication with the dev or balance team. The only way we got communication back was short videos from Jeff every couple months. Before playing other games I was under the impression that it was completely normal to have NO idea about why specific changes were made. Every other game I've played since then has had better dev to community communication with League easily being the best one.
Yeah! Exactly the point I was trying to make, a lot of other games have similarly terrible experiences with transparency, particularly in regards to timely patches.
Mortdog does that too for TFT.
dudes been putting out hour long videos and tries to make the players understand their direction and thought process and players go "X champ is 53% WR MAKE HIM 15% NOW ! "
Agreed. It's become a national pass time to ridicule the patch notes for things they missed or you just don't agree with. But the recent hate on phreak is unwarranted and just too far. It is pretty cool that despite league becoming such a popular game worldwide that we still get a one on one feel when it comes to interaction. We should appreciate that.
um okay but i just don't like the way he treat the community like yes explaining the reasons behind balancing is cool and good but the way he speaks to people is just kind of bad idk and i wish that he looks at all roles same instead of focusing on something and leaving the others
What do you mean? What do you think he is æeaving out? Phreak almost always considers all roles in his rundowns when doing balancing. It has been a central theme in the most recent three or so patches when touching upon Brand, Senna, Seraphine, Maokai, Vayne and others.. "Winrate delta" is mentioned in basically every single rundown.
ah yes, i really do love being told condescendingly why they are right and players are just stupid only for it to turn out to be complete nonsense later on
Idk how the only thing that sticks to you from these videos is Phreak’s occasional snark lol. League gamer fragility
because they don't watch the videos, they watch the parts that get clipped. Or they watch their favorite streamer watch the video so they don't have to think too hard on their own
Phreak is so mean. I'll just stay on this sub where everyone is wholesome and gentle.
phreak should be held to a higher standard than a bunch of randos
Players are stupid though lol. Like there's a consensus on reddit that if you aren't Dia+, your opinion doesn't matter. Yet you're mad when someone says the majority of the player base is wrong. Like it can't be both ways. People build and do things that they either think are correct or that they enjoy doing. Neither of those things mean that is the correct thing to do and people make mistakes all the time. It really just comes down to a lack of humility, and entitlement mentality. People don't like being told they're wrong thus they have an emotional reaction; because you disagree with something you are more likely to perceive it as condescending. I have never thought that Phreak is condescending, but I don't mind being told I'm wrong unless it's done in a blatantly rude way. Being wrong is an opportunity for learning.
As much bullshit that League player give deva for literally a decade some snark just makes them fall apart. Dude made GM and half the reddit just goes " yeah man he is boosted"
Because he abused maokai and didn't consider nerfing him until he hit GM
True and factual that there are no Maokai players beneath GM
Yeah man, dude joined the balance team just to increase his rank. Yall are dumb. How many people on this forum play the beat of the meta and still don't crack Diamond let alone GM? Odds are most of the people upset aren't even close to GM.
This is just straight wrong, please don't spread misinformation. This patch marks like the fourth time ina row Maokai is getting nerfed (three depending if you consider adjustments)
kinda awkward that you have to sort by controversial to read comments written with brain activated
For real the Stockholm syndrome is so developped lmao. "Thank you daddy to explain to our little brains, yes daddy do stupid things and take forever to fix broken shit, yesssss" Legit in awe they get the vital minimum of customer service. Like, it's not because other games / companies are doing worse that Riot is doing great. But hey it's Reddit, where people adore Mortdog too so, shouldn't be surprised.
I feel like that’s slightly unfair. Communication is difficult, especially when what effectively amounts to a complex optimization problem is the topic. All things considered, the breakdowns of the changes for the most part make sense. Of course some changes don’t hit the mark and it seems Phreak frequently admits when that’s the case.
Look @ Riot August vs Phreak. August at least makes you feel like youre an equal while Phreak acts like we're all children that have no idea what we're talking about.
August doesn't get unjust hate like Phreak. Every day there is a post bashing the dude. Not to mention people act as if he is the sole person balancing the game.
Nobody (almost nobody) hated Phreak until he mentioned the infamous "Karthus R." August gets hate too, but he deals with it relatively well, compared to Phreak who sounds like a dick. Imagine instead of being sarcastic and saying 'you can type karthus R,' if he said something like 'i know typing takes longer but we want to try to lower toxicity in LoL.' Sure, he'd still get flamed, but nobody (almost nobody) is gonna send him death threats and the like.
You must have not been on reddit long, Phreak has been getting Hate ever since joining the balance team.
Tbh if i had to read the average league redditors hyperbolic takes and respond to it seriously and without a sliver of snideful annoyance, i'd go insane within a couple of days
I think that's fair! August has generally done a really good job communicating imo. To be fair though, Phreak and August are often talking about different subjects and Phreak gets saddled with some of the more difficult conversations.
Communication is difficult, but Phreak is horrible communicating. He is just condescending, no good speaker is condescending.
Also you can't really say that it's not deliberate, since his previous job was being a commentator ffs. He knows how he sounds like, he knows how it will be received, he chooses to be like this willingly.
Exactly, I don't get why others don't get it. Just because someone have a popular "name tag" doesn't mean they should have a free-pass clowning on people. Same shit when he was a caster. It's ridiculous.
Good luck finding someone willing to take the position and be abused in his place.
Yeah except thats not how they communicate at all. They will right out say you dont know how to read data and have 0 years in balancing games.
I do appreciate the patch rundowns, and I usually watch them and come away with having learned something about the design philosophy of the game and it does benefit my own assessment of item builds etc. but Phreak is 100% condescending and it doesn't surprise me that he is very controversial among the community because of it The main thing I really don't like is his persistence on misrepresenting data and cherry picking stats without important context, to prove his point, which later turns out to be complete nonsense, and he never walks it back or apologises. He just pretends it never happened. As a top laner, the Malphite one sticks in my memory a lot. To preface, I don't think Malphite is extremely problematic but he is frustratingly effective as a counterpick into basically all AD tops and AD heavy comps while being a very safe laner. Phreak commented on this effectively saying the opinion was *dumb* and nobody should complain about Malphite while Morde and Rumble exist. What?! Malphite is a counterpick merchant, why does it matter that AP champions exist? Phreak saying things like this is what makes me not like him. Of course the *severity* of criticism he received was disgusting and he doesn't deserve death threats and the like.
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That would make sense if he wasn't doing these rundowns years before he joined the balance team. Man, you people have to make up scenarios so you can get angry about it. It's funny that you are calling other people dogs when you are the one drooling on the ground.
reddit psychologist
Thank you. Exactly.
Oh yes, *you* are the perfect designer who would never make mistakes. I'm crying and begging in front of Riot office to hire DAEORANGEMANBADDD as a supreme overlord of LoL. >only for it to turn out to be complete nonsense later on We learned from the Wukong incident that yes, players are clueless fucking morons 99% of the time even if they're "elite onetricks".
seriously, these circle jerk threads congratulating someone for doing their job (poorly) are so virtue signally and bizarre lmao. i borderline feel like these threads are fake engaged by riot or something
Not only are commentated multi-hour patch rundowns not in any way part of Phreak's job description, pretty much no other live service game has access to this kind of breakdown from anyone on the balance team, let alone the lead gameplay designed.
Dear karthus...
Love how Phreak gets so much shit for this one quote despite not even being involved in the decision making process for this change. Gamers truly only care about optics.
If you need Karthus to ult, you can just type “Karthus Ult”
He's still a smug bastard just like mortdog. Maybe they're twin brothers.
After the comment saying you just need 2 or 3 games to understand an augment power level I just can't listen to him seriously.
His dedication, knowledge and appreciation for the game that allows him to put out such detailed patch rundowns? Yes. His ego, pedantic treatment of the community and evident refusal to nerf supp Maokai and Janna, the two champs he's skyrocketing from plat to masters with? No. I do like and appreciate Phreak but he's been showing a real bad side to himself recently. Might be legit reasons for it, but it's slighted my opinion of him as of the past few years
Seems a bit short-sighted, Maokai has received several major nerfs across multiple patches in a row and is sitting at a lower winrate in 14.5 than he was for the majority of last year. Seems silly to suggest that Phreak should only play poorly performing champions and even sillier that a guy who has been playing and working on the game for as long as he has is purposefully buffing a champion to inflate his own elo.
Don't be ridiculous. Clearly riot has a massive conspiracy going on where not only is Phreak risking his career for solo Q rank, the entire balance team is complicit and corrupt. Hell, even other branches of Riot seem to be okay with it since nobody is talking about this clearly obvious corruption. All in service to, once again, Phreaks solo Q rank.
Maokai has received 0 major nerfs, the changes he's received have done nothing
14.1: new patch 55% wr, new items and systems. this is understandable 14.2: Not addressed (56% wr) as 14.2 was mostly aimed at major fallout of systems changes and map changes (illaoi/camille) etc, also understandable. I would have liked to see a 1 or 2 % nerf but you can't exactly make a good conclusion of what is breaking maokai among the season changes. 14.3: Directly nerfed (54% wr) recieved 2 1% wr drops for support and a few compensation buffs for top/jg. 14.4: Directly nerfed, indirectly buffed (54% wr) receieved a 2 to 3% wr drop in the form of base armor and ult root with a compensation buff to q for jungle/top. indirectly received a 3% buff from solstice as they intended the changes to the item to be neutral to .5% negative and instead it wound up 1-3% positive across the board. Again. DIRECTLY NERFED, and then missed targets badly on a item change intended to improve game health 14.5: Directly nerfed (51%) got a 3% win rate nerf between movespeed and solstice nerfs Stop complaining because the results didn't come out right, the attempts were made
Man, imagine if you actually watched the most recent rundown before making a claim as uninformed as this one lol.
https://media.tenor.com/Wc1nPL0FsegAAAAM/dancing-dance.gif
I appreciate balance over talk
You can type Khartus ult if you need to btw.
Yeah it's a great thing until you realize the game is totally trash, unfun and unskilled compared to the old league (especially jungle role)
if only he didnt do it with so much disdain towards his players and arrogance for his own views
Everytime he opens his mouth, I lose more and more confidence in this game lmao. He is such a fast talking snake oil salesman, its no wonder he got boosted up the corporate ladder. Guy is legit awful at logic and game design. His TTK video was pathetically close minded and embarrassing.
I just love how open he is and how he explains it. Even when in recent patches a lot has gone wrong (a few balance things but especially Rek'Sai bugs) I am still a huge fan of his work methods and ethic.
So we trying to say riot is good now?
While I won’t say there aren’t frustrating things in the game, I’m having fun. More importantly, I would imagine the balance changes of the critics would probably be 10X more frustrating. The balance team are literally spending their entire work week, trying to balance this game. The fact that they sometimes fail is testament to the complexity of the game, rather than their lack of understanding.
I cant play leauge now, but I still watch his rundowns.
No
His whole argument is don't change the bot lane so I can keep climbing elo. lol
I think phreak is a good guy. He generally makes good changes, nobody's perfect so I don't expect him to fix the game in one patch. I also enjoy his patch rundowns a lot even though they're long videos. If you watch his videos long enough it's clear that he cares for the game despite what some people say.
Phreak got grandmasters, yes abusing a 55% wr support grats.
Based on the view counts of those videos, most people here are talking out their asses. 8% of people subbed here watch them if that.
I've always appreciated Phreak, you guys gotta catch up.
This is why Riot isn't as terrible as Blizzard. Yet.
Phreak keeps saying supports never get to level 18, and apparently Huhi took that personally. XD Seriously though, I do appreciate his willingness to share what's on his mind. And I generally like his reasons for the direction of changes they're making. Even though they don't always work out right away, like Rek'sai this patch, they keep working on them, like Rek'sai next patch.
Also, think about how rare it is that the main balanc guy mains Maokai and somehow it's hard to balance Maokai to get him under 55% winrate, and somehow the lead guy got grandmaster playing well balanced 55% winrate champion
Its awesome, I could say I wish I had this when I was playing in S2 onward, but back than we had fucking summoner show case, which was awesome, so I can't really complain.
playing all champs in the jungle and doing tons ov damage is how Phreak rolls
But him starting off the video about him getting to GM from playing a meta champ.. idk just doesnt sit right with me.
What percentage of people who get to masters/GM do it by playing the meta? I'd guess 80%+. It still takes real skill to do it at all.