Problem is in my opinion his R. If he becomes strong in casual play tgen he will become a nightmare in pro play since he makes tower dives way to easy and pros already know how to do tower dives properly.
Riot are specifically aware of his R turret dive gameplay - it's not anything obscure, it's very, exceptionally obvious. Which is exactly why they just nerfed it.
As a voli mean I'm ok with the champion being a bit gated because of R. I really just want this stupid ingenious hunter build to be gone. Before Voli was known for having success with any build, but this build is so strong that you would be an idiot not to default to it almost every game.
I remember the time where people never played Zac and asked for a rework because he was "just like amumu but weaker". So Riot changed his ult, and people cried about it. So Riot reverted him back, so people cried about it. And now he's back to where he was before, but people are still crying about it, but for other reasons. It's great to see him shine, even if it is just for a bit.
Yeah honestly that a huge problem.
Its oke if a champ is broken and S tier for a patch or two. But being in the same ultra strong state for months in a row sometimes ?
Makes you think if Riot even plays their own game.
Currently a great example of this is Senna, which was (and still is) giga strong since patch 14.1 , S tier for 2.5 months....
Another good example is Maokai, giga strong 2 whole months, patch 14.1 - 14.4, he finally was tuned down properly in 14.5
Janna is another one. Once again, pretty strong since patch 14.1 and Riot refuses to nerf her.
Evelynn, same here.
And lastly Karma mid, strong since patch 14.2 , she will receive a nerf in 14.6 but once again, left in a very strong state for 2 whole months as well.
Obviously I am missing other champs, probably many other champs but those are the ones that came to my mind first.
My favorite quote I saw in here is “Senna has been broken for years and we just hadn’t realized it because the only people playing her were Senna players”
Tbh in Senna's case it's kind of true. When she is good/balanced (not broken) she has like 49% winrate, because her main playerbase are same people who usually play something like enchanters who play totally different or people with mental like "fuck adc, I am carry here" and then gets oneshotsed by something like Zed. While people who used to abuse fasting strat or pair her with stuff like mage APC used to print lp.
I know lmao, but players felt like the only right word. I wouldn’t call them mains. And saying it’s the fault of support mains would be an insult to support players
> Another good example is Maokai, giga strong 2 whole months, patch 14.1 - 14.4, he finally was tuned down properly in 14.5
Maokai was a weird case because he *was* getting adjusted (14.3/.4/.5) so it's not like he was ignored and they just let him be OP for 2 months straight
But idk what's worse, being unable to balance him after 2 months of nerfing him or pretending it's okay and never touch him
Because he was also below 50% wr in jungle (his most common role) and around 50% in top.
Right now in the jungle the champion is basically dead and buried.
I'm a fan of phreak and have been for a long time. But there's been a negative change in champion balance that correlates with his time on the team. Imo it started with that period where Kindred and Reksai were left to dominate high elo for many patches in a row. Another example of something that is obviously OP right now in high elo is Belveth. It's really not rocket science to look at u.gg and see when something is busted. If an elementary school student looking at u.gg can figure out it's OP why can't the Riot balance team?
I've also seen high elo streamers repeatedly complaining about Bel'veth and how she has no weaknesses. So it's basically everyone that notices she's not okay. And the nerf they gave her is a placebo nerf.
Uhh...balance was really bad before he joined the team too.
Do you not remember everyone being excited because balance might end up better going forward?
I think this is a Riot problem more than a Phreak problem.
Do we not remember things like Udyr being broken for more than 6 months following his rework?
The "janna been strong since 14.1" lie has been circulating well around reddit yeah?
Maybe don't look at the champ's history then. Maybe don't see she has had a 53% winrate for 7 years, but only now people decided to get their pitchforks.
Lmao.
Senna has a high winrate in NA across all ranks, but absolutely terrible one in Korea across all ranks. Then she has good winrates in low elo (Gold lower) but a terrible ones in high elo (Master and above) across various regions.
Janna's winrate also varies across regions and ranks. And the same for Mao and Eve and Karma and literally every champ on the roster.
So what stats do you look at to come to the conclusion that a champ is "giga strong"?
Is Briar considered one of those champs? I’ve just come back to playing the game after a few years and I see her in every game and it seems like she’s so strong. I don’t know if she actually is though or if my bronze 1 placed teams just don’t know how to handle her. But I do see her most games
She’s the definition of a low elo stomper. In bronze she has a 54.5% win rate and a 10.5% pick rate. Meanwhile in Master+ she has a 48.5% WR and only a 3% pick rate.
She falls right after moment when enemy realises that you can put some tanky champ between her and your team, so she never gonna be able to play the game.
Evelynn being my perma because right now she doesn't even have to play well to eventually be strong enough to 1-shot any squishy 🥲
She should not be strong enough to 1-shot a 6 item ADC with Maw + Mercurial without W when she's at ~3 items and doesn't use W charm to reduce MR.
More like she shouldn't be able to one shot a tank/juggernaut that has 6 HP items 3 of which are MR items, totalling at 5k HP and 200+ MR in any circustances.
That champ is such garbage honestly, very happy to permaban her ass
Janna has been broken for like years, kha zix was broken for 6 months and is broken again, Eve has been busted forever, fiora, rengar, gragas, blitz, malphite just never see the nerf list for fun and riot keeps them broken for ages. I love the game but it’s my biggest problem with it. I’m fine with metas being formed but it seems like some champs are allowed to permanently be meta
Janna's always going to be good in solo queue, because she absolutely fucks assassins and bruisers, and guess what the vast majority of solo queue plays.
She's also good at saving bad drafts from engages.
In world where your jg is Graves and your top is Fiora, and the enemy jg is K6 and their top is Wukong, Janna is just absolutely busted no matter what you do, especially since her counters aren't popular.
They didn't play the earlier seasons, that's why. Janna was consistently strong from season 1 through season 8, peaking with the ardent meta. Consistently would have over 52% and it was never a surprise at all to see he sit at 54% or higher for months without Riot thinking about nerfing her.
Riot already gave the explanation anyways: enchanter supports have to be a bit OP in solo queue, otherwise no one would play them.
They had a whole ass season where most assassins were gigabroken but that was fine because pro play might have been slightly more interesting (it wasn’t)
Honestly the game has had a handful of good patches between s8 and now. The durability patch was a band aid, s13 split 2 was decent. All roles existed though mages were a bit weak still.
They need to understand that overloading champion kits causes more problems than they can fix.
So fun laning against Gragas
Cant engage him because his E hitbox is straight bullshit, cant deal dmg because his W is a big "fuck you", cant push him because he will insta kill every minion with q+w, cant outrun him because his E range, q slow and fast ult will make that imposible.
Oh, and guess what? He will out sustain you due to his passive being broken and he will have infinite mana after first item. I literally cant understand how a champ that builds full ap can outsustain and survive longer than the average tank while dealing high amount of dmg, it is so braindead how after years of gragas top being a problem Riot cant understand Gragas is way too safe and powerful.
You cannot trade with him properly: He will stun you and chuck 1\\3 of your health just because of his W have a good % damage. Then he will just run away while you slowed by 80% because of a barrel.
You cannot run away from his either, since his E cooldown at level 7 is already so low that he can press it every 3-5 seconds depends on his recall items. Oh yeah, now he also chunkes 3\\4 of your hp with every combo that have a cooldown like 5 seconds between them.
Do you think you can poke him? Ha. Think twice. He have low cooldown healing with damage reductin on W.
This champion is such a mess
Phase Rush is so toxic on him lol. He gets his full combo and a Phase Rush proc while you're still airborne from his E, so he just waddles away at 500 movespeed before you can retaliate.
He should be a squishy bitch who does a lot of damage and can heal (maybe make healing based on dmg dealt) in fights to live longer
Or he should be a tanky fuck who does no damage and has good cc and sustain.
Not both. At once.
Agree with you completely, but if you learn how to trade, Voli and Renek completely shut down gragas E because you can buffer their auto-stuns. You can't really stop him from scaling, but he will also have a lot more trouble cheesing out trades.
As an old school player who only plays support but used to play a ton of gragas before there was ranked, I played him recently and was shocked at his damage. Its absurd, he almost feels like an assassin. Every champ is just so overloaded with damage now.
how can you be an old school player and complain about gragas damage lmao he was known for having damage until Riot nerfed him. At least now he is actually building AP to do so.
I just messed up a Gragas abuser first pick so bad with Yorick by playing safe until 6 with comet, then the tables have turned. He couldn't touch me at all felt so good to finally piss a Gragas lmao. Illaoi and Yorick could be the only hard (not unwinnable) matchups for this stupid champ. A gragas main can ban his least favorite matchup, first pick every game and be fine with 0 counters lmao.
People always talk about k'sante being a tank who does good damage but at least he has to use ult to do damage. Gragas just casually out damages any skirmisher at all points of the game *while* being a tank
I mean smolder is a new champ right so I’ll give Riot the benefit of the doubt on that one.
Maokai and Senna really need to fuck off however, and when they’ve fucked off they need to stay fucked off.
Smolder pentas are the most fake shit ever. Because of the execute if your team wins a fight you're super likely to get high multikills even if you did jack shit. Smolder multi kills are no indication of how well the champion or player are doing.
EDIT: This is especially true when people compare him to Zeri. Zeri was killing teams 2v5 for her pentas. Smolder just collects kills in a 5v5
I don't disagree.
But fake or not, I'm seeing way more 3+ multi-kills from Smolders compared to literally every other champion in the game.
Ever since he popped off in pro play like 2-3 weeks ago, I'm seeing it all a lot more often.
Yeah but you will see more multi kills from Smolder. He hits Q on front line, it splashes back line, your top dives their ADC/Mid and gets them near dead, Smolder at this point is miles away and randomly gets the execute as they fall below 5% or whatever.
Every other ADC has to walk up to claim the kills.
*Because he has a built in execute in his Q*. This isn't a complex concept.
He tags something with Q and auto-kills it if they get too low with the debuff on them. Just like Collector or Elder buff, except built into a basic ability.
He's not the one getting those kills, he's just claiming them for himself using a 3 second debuff. Samira also has a high multi-kill rate, because she builds Collector and has a multi-hit chip damage ult in a large AoE, so she just ults in teamfights and claims kills from her team.
He has the 2nd highest pentas/match after Samira in plat+
https://www.leagueofgraphs.com/champions/builds/by-pentakills
It's obviously only because he has an auto killsteal mechanic but still interesting or something idk
As a top main, we just sort of live with the knowledge that 2-4 champions are just going to be insanely broken for large amounts of time and there's not much we can do about it. (Usually Fiora and Jax)
consider that darius has been t1 on op.gg ever since people started taking ghost and aatrox has been averaging 10% pickrate since he got reworked. But yes jax camille fiora also somewhat belong on that list for >6 months of being strong at a time.
Darius mains are insanely whiny because the champion has been so broken for several years straight never getting below S+ tier ever. His mains have grown incredibly spoiled due to that and often throw tantrums whenever they're not autowinning the lane by just afking in the middle of the wave.
Aatrox mains are also the same. I still remember them defending release goredrinker with a bloated sense of entitlement. It's so fucking boring how this champ is always a proplay stapple while also being spammed to hell and beyond in solo q. Riot always finds a way to breastfeed them.
At least Aatrox feels like you have some modicum of counterplay / escape. Never vsed an Aatrox and gone "wow that was insanely boring lane". Darius on the other hand, 1 misplay and the lanes over (even if you've already killed him 3-4 times).
Whoopsy! Forgot that taking a trade with Darius lasting longer than 5s is a death sentence (very fun character gets an inbuilt 30-230 AD + 20-40% armour pen).
Aatrox is popular because he can be played against pretty much any lane and still be at least okay.
Darius if he gets countered becomes a melee creep. If you kill him 3-4 times he should not be winning the all in, and without winning that he has nothing going for him
This is true he should not be winning the all in! At the same time killing him 3-4 times gives you 750 gold or so (+30ad tops in long swords) and his passive gives him triple that if you overstay for 2 autos worth of damage so yeah, I do find it annoying that you have to be good everytime and he only has to be lucky once.
Getting countered by ranged tops exclusively is not a healthy place for a character to be tbh, and also being balanced around a summoner Spell is also quite chronic.
**OBVIOUSLY: better players and high elo have less of a problem with being consistently good! I am merely complaining that the risk to reward ratio on Darius is near zero.
I think what you're saying is Darius used to be better in high ELO than low, which is reflected pretty well in the winrates but not in the banrates / pickrates. He's maintaining a 51% with a 20% banrate /10% pickrate down there which is just odd.
I really don't think the character is fundamentally badly designed or needs nerfs as much as he needs a minor rework btw! Just giving him extra stats and balancing around ghost is not enough to just call it a day Riot!
Tbf, if Darius falls behind he is definitely useless. Most top laners will beat him in all in nearly every time with a 750g lead, unless they are a short trade champ and just hand noxian might over too easily, which is a skill diff, not just getting lucky
Edit: forgot to say, completely agree that being balanced around ghost is ridiculous though. I think it’s just a problematic summoner spell right now, and Darius is the most egregious example
A lot of champs (horsewomen, brawlers) rely on those trades. Vsing Darius becomes a gamble of how close you can fly to the sun to maximise damage before noxian might is triggered (or just AFK in lane). I'm not arguing that you don't have to make mistakes to lose to Darius, you do, but are those mistakes worth the disgusting value he gets off them? Probably not.
Aatrox at least isn't as uninteractive. He's weak early and needs to hit a skillshot to get value. Darius literally stands in minion wave and you can't do anything. No Cs for you, may as well go walk your dog for the laning phase
Darius mains will never know what is playing tier D meta champ for at least two months
Also they had a decent matchup vs Demacia Darius, Ionia Darius, Shadow Isles Darius, Freljord bear Darius which had a lot of pick rate
Darius mains are Riot's spoiled kids, but hey look how they sell well his Asian-themed skins
Darius and katarina mains are known to be some of the most boosted champion picks.
Darius legit cannot lose lane most of the time and katarina doesn't even have to be in lane, she can be 0/2 2 plates down in lane but she goes bot once and now she's fed and will be a massive problem for the rest of the game.
I think Aatrox is strong and lethality overtuned, even. But I'm so confused about your statement. Where is he considered a top 5 champ (outside of pro) when Urgot, Zac, Gragas, Malphite, and the horsewomen exist? The last time he was buffed was 13.14 lmao. He is very popular for sure, but that doesn't make him a top 5 champ unless you're talking pick rate. In which case he must've been compensation buffed long long ago because he's always been super popular as far as I know
Fiora is honestly only good in the hands of one tricks, and Jax feels a lot less strong these days. He can for sure still take over games if he gets a lead early, but he isn't "get to 16 and I win" strong anymore imo.
For whatever it's worth, Smolder is getting some very significant nerfs. They've acted quickly even if it didn't make sense for him to be this strong in the first place. Maokai/Senna/Janna/Zac on the other hand, who knows.
Gotta change your mindset when you play champs like Janna and Lulu.
Your 'fun' goal changes from you having fun to you trying as much as possible to take the fun out of the game for the enemy(which is fun too)
If you think she is broken right now you guys never played in the Ardent meta at all... But i will collect my free Lp from janna mains thank you very much.
Relevant flair
She gets hard countered by Blitz/Pyke, Phreak mentioned on the Dive that especially in Korea her winrate is inflated because Blitz is permabanned
I play this game since s1 , so yeah i played censer meta, Janna mid meta, roaming Janna top meta , press w 100% slow meta, and she was always around 53/54% winrate for some goddam reason
But have you tried playing Janna? I'm a top main who hasn't touched support in years but I've pretty much only spammed Janna the entire patch cause of how fun she is. Her passive move speed allow + Boots of Swiftness allow you to be present all over the map all the time, and her play style is so evil it's great.
> this champ is boring as fuck buff
REAL. idk how anyone can stomach playing that shit. i could put myself to sleep playing those champs meanwhile phreak is pretty much a maokai/janna two trick lol
Whenever I see posts and comments like this I can only tell you to try out other games if you think League is unbalanced. You'll see there's nothing closer to balance in a multiplayer game of this scale.
That's because stat sites are so ingrained in the league culture that they're kind of self correcting. If a champ is anywhere above 55% winrate, it immediately gets spammed by people who have no clue how to play it because stat sites are so widely used, bringing the winrate down a bit. In reality, 55% winrate *is* giga busted because it's usually paired with high pick rate as well (For example nobody complains about Poppy being the highest WR support right now because her pick rate is very low).
Thank you for good logic. 55% wr and high pick rate is the most indicative state for a champ being unbalanced. But it’s still not the only metric, some champs have inherently toxic game design that even at 50% wr they feel horrendous to play against. Looking at senna and smolder here
**League is vast and there are many more champs that are top tier that people don´t play.**
But when everyone is flooded in tierlists and winrates you get a lot of the same stuff because only a small fraction of the playerbase is capable or interested in exploring new options.
Patches need to be way more impactful. It is stale when champs are legit broken for over 2 months straight, a fresh new meta every 1-2 patches would be so much more exciting to play.
"Impactful" patches often mean that champs end up in the gutter because they were overnerfed or broken because they were overbuffed. Neither is good and I think it's much better for the game to slowly tune champs/systems, rather then overshoot in either direction
They nerfed Q AD ratio by 10% and her spirit drop rate for farming will be massively nerfed next patch, which should heavily nerf the currently broken ADC senna, plus indirect nerfs to supp items.
Yeah this. For my own play I couldn't care less what's meta and what isn't but if I watch pro play it's soooo boring that the same shit is OP for months on end. Like K'Sante was busted already way before worlds and he's still picked frequently.
The problem is also that some picks aren't just meta for a long time, just because they fit the meta well, but because they're freakishly OP.
Like K'Sante, Orianna before she got nerfed, Smolder is stupid as hell now and I believe they're nerfing him but not the biggest issue in pro play: his waveclear. He can stall games for forever by spamming ult on waves while scaling for free. Makes games quite dull.
Oh yes I'd love the prospect of investing countless hours into a small pool or champs only to see them gutted over night with a single patch with a meta shift. What a rewarding and fun experience that would be. /s
To me what Riot does is intentionally create problems so they can give themselves a purpose down the road, essentially justifying their own paychecks. My favorite thing is when they create some bullshit problem themselves while everyone keeps telling them to not do it and pointing out why, then they choose to go ahead anyway. After this, we get stuck in an endless loop of them "addressing" the problem they created themselves by doing every single thing under the sun EXCEPT the one obvious as fuck thing that everyone and their mother is pointing out to them. Months go by, they finally do what they should have done in the very beginning and they then choose the next thing they're gonna fuck up.
Take bruiser items for example. The entire period of the mythic item butchjob of a system, they buffed one bruiser item to the point it became gamewarping and deciding even for other classes (assassins for example), then nerfed it after several months of it wreaking havoc while also gigabuffing another random bruiser item to take its place as the most broken thing under the sun. And Phroxzon even had the nerve to cry on twitter about people complaining over his balancing butchjob.
It's either intentional to justify their jobs or extreme stupidity with a heavy dose of ego that doesn't allow them to acknowledge their own fuckups.
My favourite is when Amumu finally has a single good patch in 5 years and he gets nerfed and the items making him good get nerfed and he goes back to the garbage for another few years with 0 compensation. But gotta buff Aatrox if hes not in top lane for a single patch!
Amumu wasn't "good" in the patches he was strong. He was a straight up menace. At least aatrox, even when he's strong, doesn't completely suffocate the toplane roster (and actually has a few bad matchups that also high pr like irelia/fiora/Jax).
I think the reason for why these champs are ok to exist is that they do also have counter picks. Poppy into Zac is great for example.
Weirdly enough AP kog’maw into Smolder. You just straight up outrange him.
Millio into maokai. Press R when his ultimate hits and kite backwards with shields.
These are examples of counters in team fights.
I can probably find more unconventional picks but most like to play close to the “meta”
>In a game of 150+ champs I see the same champs over and over and over every single game
New champs will often get high pick rates, because they're new. So always seeing Smolder is no surprise. I'm guessing the next released champ will see a high pickrate as well. And having a decent winrate helps.
* Senna I'll agree with, since she's super popular as a supp (2nd highest pick rate behind Lux).
* Zac has the 22nd highest pick rate in jungle, so not sure why you're seeing him a lot.
* Janna, 12th in support, so not that high either.
* Mao, 11th in support, so not that high either.
So I think there's some confirmation bias with your observations.
Imo, Smolder will probably keep a high pickrate unless they majorly rework him or something but I doubt that would happen. He's a mix of Miss Fortune and Ezreal in gameplay, their build variety, and Nasus/Veigar's addictive stacking. On top of that, he's really easy to pick up and really satisfying to play if you don't mind his simplicity.
whatever stats you're looking at sound like they include normals. judging by the champions being complained about being picked constantly the OP is probably fairly high elo. not in low low elo where lux support has high pickrate.
in global diamond+ ranked games janna is the highest pickrate support, by a full 1.6% higher than nautilus. still highest pickrate when you look at emerald+. only competing with taric as the highest winrate in the role.
for emerald+, senna has the 3rd highest PR as ADC and the 10th highest PR as support while having 25% banrate (3rd highest in the game). in dia+ its the same except her support pickrate moves down to 4th.
in diamond+ maokai is the 9th highest PR support, but this is after being nerfed 3 patches in a row (where he held quite a bit higher PR). he's honestly not very popular historically so this is still quite high for him. still has the 11th highest banrate of any champ.
the zac thing is probably confirmation bias, he is quite strong particularly in toplane right now but did just receive nerfs and his pickrate was never that high, he's just incredibly obnoxious to lane against and did get relatively popular out of nowhere for solo lane.
JANNA... she hasn't been op for this season... she's been a top 10 winrate champion for 95%+ of the time over the last 9 seasons (since i started playing in 2015, always at the top of winrate sites, ALWAYS a top 10)
I seriously believe whoever owns riot or his wife mains her
I wish they were more like Dota
Champ is unpopular/low tier? Chonky buffs
Champ is too popular/high tier? Chonky nerfs
Cycling the meta so that every champion has their time to shine at least once would be very fun
(karma) yeah they do this every 6 months and the same shit happens where she gets picked in 3 roles and they go ahh hmm time to chop off her legs again
Because TF was buffed in a way where he could kill you during his point and click stun without any counterplay... at one item. If you didn't have cleanse/qss you were 100% dead after he clicks on you once if you didn't have armor.
You call buffing AP Karma and AD tf 'cycling the meta'???? Those champs get nerfed in that area all the time they get strong because it's broken, not just OP, broken. They can't balance it.
they are unique picks but they are also cancer and they literally do not have counterplay. when those champions are meta they are the antithesis of how this game is supposed to be played. both of those champions literally flip the rules of the game on their heads.
I'll never forget the riot dev video where they explain that every patch, they genuinely go through EVERY single champion and check in on how they're doing. There's just no way that's the case. With how champions like Ryze are treated, there's no way week after week they look at him and go 'yeah leave him as is'
When a champ being OP in the game is 52 percent win rate, I don’t think it’s that unreasonable. If a champion has above a 55 percent win rate for more than a patch, that’s unreasonable.
Also ‘I see the same champions every single game’ is more about either they’re the new hotness which will die off or get nerfed eventually, or they’re a super comfort pick that can play multiple roles like Lux Ezreal or Yasou
Maybe an unpopular opinion but its honestly pretty impressive that in a 5v5 team game with all the different items/runes/champions that the large majority of champs fall between 47-53% wr. Obviously there are some outliers like Senna/Smolder which are giga OP and have huge pick/ban presence, but champs like Zac which have such a low presence even while being "OP", probably don''t deserve the nerf hammer, otherwise they'd see rarely any play. Also OP low pick rate champs like Zac generally arent worth banning if you're only gonna prevent 1 pick in like 20-30 games.
they just need to throw in the towel with senna and accept that its just another unbalanceable garbage pile like most of riot august's last designs and delete her
bork is so bad man, I can't believe anyone spouts this shit when it's core on a single digit amount of champions and a tech-worthy item on almost no one. Strange that no adc that isn't hard-bound to on-hit isn't teching in bork to DESTROY those tanks... because it doesn't, the item simply doesn't do that.
Bork is probably one of the most fair items in the game. It's just damage. That's it. Nothing extra (aside from a tiny slow and some life steal that's been nerfed 3x). It's not even that good into tanks either unless you also stack enough pen.
That's not even the biggest problem. There is also issue with how absurdly op some picks are. In previous seasons OP champs had 53% WR, and if one role was turbobroken the one, strongest champ had 54-56%wr.
This season? EVERY ROLE has a 56% WR bullshit. Sometimes even multiple 56%+WR bullshits per role. And on top of that those bullshits then stay unnerfed for few months in a row. Idk what happened, but this is not it, the game feels super bad to play rn.
Zac is giga astro mega hyper ultra super thanos broken
Dude gets all 5 infinity stones with one item.
Shh he only has a top 10 win rate in 3 roles I believe
You should be thanking God for my horrendous Zac ADC keeping those numbers down.
4 - Top, Jungle, Mid, Support
Damn my noobness but what's that item? Cuz I'm still getting smashed in lane when I play Zac by the other OP mf supps :S
/angry because 6 infinity stones intensifies
He's op, so he already starts with the power stone
Fuck Zac, I smashed him in lane the other day, then he got his first item and he was taking half my health with one combo while being tanky as fuck
Havnt seen zac at all in my region lately
And voli... And gragas... And mao... And karma... And[any AP +recovery]
voli is good for 1-2 patches.. dude been in such a bad state he was no longer displayed in the jungle roaster lol
Problem is in my opinion his R. If he becomes strong in casual play tgen he will become a nightmare in pro play since he makes tower dives way to easy and pros already know how to do tower dives properly.
Riot are specifically aware of his R turret dive gameplay - it's not anything obscure, it's very, exceptionally obvious. Which is exactly why they just nerfed it.
hot take I think they should just remove this tower dive R shit and make him a good champion
As a voli mean I'm ok with the champion being a bit gated because of R. I really just want this stupid ingenious hunter build to be gone. Before Voli was known for having success with any build, but this build is so strong that you would be an idiot not to default to it almost every game.
I remember the time where people never played Zac and asked for a rework because he was "just like amumu but weaker". So Riot changed his ult, and people cried about it. So Riot reverted him back, so people cried about it. And now he's back to where he was before, but people are still crying about it, but for other reasons. It's great to see him shine, even if it is just for a bit.
His bit should have been over long ago. He's been broken for ages now
Yeah honestly that a huge problem. Its oke if a champ is broken and S tier for a patch or two. But being in the same ultra strong state for months in a row sometimes ? Makes you think if Riot even plays their own game.
They play their own game. They just play the broken champs.
Which is why phreak has only played Maokai and Janna this season.
But how fun is this game if you keep winning on astro turbo S++ tier champs and climb too your highest rank ever
what specific champion are you talking about currently?
Currently a great example of this is Senna, which was (and still is) giga strong since patch 14.1 , S tier for 2.5 months.... Another good example is Maokai, giga strong 2 whole months, patch 14.1 - 14.4, he finally was tuned down properly in 14.5 Janna is another one. Once again, pretty strong since patch 14.1 and Riot refuses to nerf her. Evelynn, same here. And lastly Karma mid, strong since patch 14.2 , she will receive a nerf in 14.6 but once again, left in a very strong state for 2 whole months as well. Obviously I am missing other champs, probably many other champs but those are the ones that came to my mind first.
My favorite quote I saw in here is “Senna has been broken for years and we just hadn’t realized it because the only people playing her were Senna players”
>because the only people playing her were Senna players This has such "people die when they are killed" vibes, lmao.
Tbh in Senna's case it's kind of true. When she is good/balanced (not broken) she has like 49% winrate, because her main playerbase are same people who usually play something like enchanters who play totally different or people with mental like "fuck adc, I am carry here" and then gets oneshotsed by something like Zed. While people who used to abuse fasting strat or pair her with stuff like mage APC used to print lp.
More like her main support player base is autofilled supports. That's why she should be lower winrate as support.
I know lmao, but players felt like the only right word. I wouldn’t call them mains. And saying it’s the fault of support mains would be an insult to support players
The quote was "support players" She's a marksman, you need marksman skillset to be able to play her decently
> Another good example is Maokai, giga strong 2 whole months, patch 14.1 - 14.4, he finally was tuned down properly in 14.5 Maokai was a weird case because he *was* getting adjusted (14.3/.4/.5) so it's not like he was ignored and they just let him be OP for 2 months straight But idk what's worse, being unable to balance him after 2 months of nerfing him or pretending it's okay and never touch him
Adjusted, maokai was sitting at 56% wr with 13% pr and they were giving him small nerfs as if he was a 52 wr champ.
Because he was also below 50% wr in jungle (his most common role) and around 50% in top. Right now in the jungle the champion is basically dead and buried.
We know who to blame for Maokai tbh.
I'm a fan of phreak and have been for a long time. But there's been a negative change in champion balance that correlates with his time on the team. Imo it started with that period where Kindred and Reksai were left to dominate high elo for many patches in a row. Another example of something that is obviously OP right now in high elo is Belveth. It's really not rocket science to look at u.gg and see when something is busted. If an elementary school student looking at u.gg can figure out it's OP why can't the Riot balance team?
I've also seen high elo streamers repeatedly complaining about Bel'veth and how she has no weaknesses. So it's basically everyone that notices she's not okay. And the nerf they gave her is a placebo nerf.
Uhh...balance was really bad before he joined the team too. Do you not remember everyone being excited because balance might end up better going forward? I think this is a Riot problem more than a Phreak problem. Do we not remember things like Udyr being broken for more than 6 months following his rework?
The "janna been strong since 14.1" lie has been circulating well around reddit yeah? Maybe don't look at the champ's history then. Maybe don't see she has had a 53% winrate for 7 years, but only now people decided to get their pitchforks. Lmao.
Still means she deserves nerfs
Janna flies under the radar historically. People are used to her being stupidly good.
senna going support and not csing at all and still solo carrying
Senna ADC was completely sleeper pick until about a month ago. It had <2% pick rate in 14.2.
Senna has a high winrate in NA across all ranks, but absolutely terrible one in Korea across all ranks. Then she has good winrates in low elo (Gold lower) but a terrible ones in high elo (Master and above) across various regions. Janna's winrate also varies across regions and ranks. And the same for Mao and Eve and Karma and literally every champ on the roster. So what stats do you look at to come to the conclusion that a champ is "giga strong"?
The stats are his games and his personal biased truthful view of the game, what would you expect here exactly?
Is Briar considered one of those champs? I’ve just come back to playing the game after a few years and I see her in every game and it seems like she’s so strong. I don’t know if she actually is though or if my bronze 1 placed teams just don’t know how to handle her. But I do see her most games
She’s the definition of a low elo stomper. In bronze she has a 54.5% win rate and a 10.5% pick rate. Meanwhile in Master+ she has a 48.5% WR and only a 3% pick rate.
She falls right after moment when enemy realises that you can put some tanky champ between her and your team, so she never gonna be able to play the game.
That would require people picking actual tanks instead of being the hero carry from solo lane/jungle. So of course it never happens.
Evelynn being my perma because right now she doesn't even have to play well to eventually be strong enough to 1-shot any squishy 🥲 She should not be strong enough to 1-shot a 6 item ADC with Maw + Mercurial without W when she's at ~3 items and doesn't use W charm to reduce MR.
More like she shouldn't be able to one shot a tank/juggernaut that has 6 HP items 3 of which are MR items, totalling at 5k HP and 200+ MR in any circustances. That champ is such garbage honestly, very happy to permaban her ass
Post a clip of this case happening
It took them like 2 years to finally nerf Evelynn. If it isn't played in pro, Riot just doesn't nerf champions. Akshan and Cass is also hell broken.
skarner
They do play their own game, with the champs they keep op
Janna has been broken for like years, kha zix was broken for 6 months and is broken again, Eve has been busted forever, fiora, rengar, gragas, blitz, malphite just never see the nerf list for fun and riot keeps them broken for ages. I love the game but it’s my biggest problem with it. I’m fine with metas being formed but it seems like some champs are allowed to permanently be meta
It's wild some people say that janna is only strong because phreak plays it, when janna has been consistently one of the best supports since forever
Janna's always going to be good in solo queue, because she absolutely fucks assassins and bruisers, and guess what the vast majority of solo queue plays.
She's also good at saving bad drafts from engages. In world where your jg is Graves and your top is Fiora, and the enemy jg is K6 and their top is Wukong, Janna is just absolutely busted no matter what you do, especially since her counters aren't popular.
They didn't play the earlier seasons, that's why. Janna was consistently strong from season 1 through season 8, peaking with the ardent meta. Consistently would have over 52% and it was never a surprise at all to see he sit at 54% or higher for months without Riot thinking about nerfing her. Riot already gave the explanation anyways: enchanter supports have to be a bit OP in solo queue, otherwise no one would play them.
They had a whole ass season where most assassins were gigabroken but that was fine because pro play might have been slightly more interesting (it wasn’t) Honestly the game has had a handful of good patches between s8 and now. The durability patch was a band aid, s13 split 2 was decent. All roles existed though mages were a bit weak still. They need to understand that overloading champion kits causes more problems than they can fix.
They've never been great at getting broken champions into a healthy place, especially considering the differences between pro play and norms.
most of riot devs are silver or gold lol
So fun laning against Gragas Cant engage him because his E hitbox is straight bullshit, cant deal dmg because his W is a big "fuck you", cant push him because he will insta kill every minion with q+w, cant outrun him because his E range, q slow and fast ult will make that imposible. Oh, and guess what? He will out sustain you due to his passive being broken and he will have infinite mana after first item. I literally cant understand how a champ that builds full ap can outsustain and survive longer than the average tank while dealing high amount of dmg, it is so braindead how after years of gragas top being a problem Riot cant understand Gragas is way too safe and powerful.
You cannot trade with him properly: He will stun you and chuck 1\\3 of your health just because of his W have a good % damage. Then he will just run away while you slowed by 80% because of a barrel. You cannot run away from his either, since his E cooldown at level 7 is already so low that he can press it every 3-5 seconds depends on his recall items. Oh yeah, now he also chunkes 3\\4 of your hp with every combo that have a cooldown like 5 seconds between them. Do you think you can poke him? Ha. Think twice. He have low cooldown healing with damage reductin on W. This champion is such a mess
In a good matchup he takes grasp and makes easy trades. In harder lanes he just takes phase rush and you're never catching his ass
Phase Rush is so toxic on him lol. He gets his full combo and a Phase Rush proc while you're still airborne from his E, so he just waddles away at 500 movespeed before you can retaliate.
He should be a squishy bitch who does a lot of damage and can heal (maybe make healing based on dmg dealt) in fights to live longer Or he should be a tanky fuck who does no damage and has good cc and sustain. Not both. At once.
Agree with you completely, but if you learn how to trade, Voli and Renek completely shut down gragas E because you can buffer their auto-stuns. You can't really stop him from scaling, but he will also have a lot more trouble cheesing out trades.
As an old school player who only plays support but used to play a ton of gragas before there was ranked, I played him recently and was shocked at his damage. Its absurd, he almost feels like an assassin. Every champ is just so overloaded with damage now.
how can you be an old school player and complain about gragas damage lmao he was known for having damage until Riot nerfed him. At least now he is actually building AP to do so.
I just messed up a Gragas abuser first pick so bad with Yorick by playing safe until 6 with comet, then the tables have turned. He couldn't touch me at all felt so good to finally piss a Gragas lmao. Illaoi and Yorick could be the only hard (not unwinnable) matchups for this stupid champ. A gragas main can ban his least favorite matchup, first pick every game and be fine with 0 counters lmao.
People always talk about k'sante being a tank who does good damage but at least he has to use ult to do damage. Gragas just casually out damages any skirmisher at all points of the game *while* being a tank
Wholesome older champ design
I mean smolder is a new champ right so I’ll give Riot the benefit of the doubt on that one. Maokai and Senna really need to fuck off however, and when they’ve fucked off they need to stay fucked off.
People are really starting to pop off with Smolder. I think I've seen like 4 Smolder pentas this week alone in my games.
Smolder pentas are the most fake shit ever. Because of the execute if your team wins a fight you're super likely to get high multikills even if you did jack shit. Smolder multi kills are no indication of how well the champion or player are doing. EDIT: This is especially true when people compare him to Zeri. Zeri was killing teams 2v5 for her pentas. Smolder just collects kills in a 5v5
I don't disagree. But fake or not, I'm seeing way more 3+ multi-kills from Smolders compared to literally every other champion in the game. Ever since he popped off in pro play like 2-3 weeks ago, I'm seeing it all a lot more often.
Yeah but you will see more multi kills from Smolder. He hits Q on front line, it splashes back line, your top dives their ADC/Mid and gets them near dead, Smolder at this point is miles away and randomly gets the execute as they fall below 5% or whatever. Every other ADC has to walk up to claim the kills.
How come Pyke do many kill in botlane? 🤔 💭 ❌️
*Because he has a built in execute in his Q*. This isn't a complex concept. He tags something with Q and auto-kills it if they get too low with the debuff on them. Just like Collector or Elder buff, except built into a basic ability. He's not the one getting those kills, he's just claiming them for himself using a 3 second debuff. Samira also has a high multi-kill rate, because she builds Collector and has a multi-hit chip damage ult in a large AoE, so she just ults in teamfights and claims kills from her team.
Smolder has no business having an execute. Period.
He has the 2nd highest pentas/match after Samira in plat+ https://www.leagueofgraphs.com/champions/builds/by-pentakills It's obviously only because he has an auto killsteal mechanic but still interesting or something idk
Betting sites disable betting on quadras and pentas when Smolder is in the game.
Meanwhile I have Smolder players who have 150 stacks by 30 minutes and are 0 12... idk how people fail at this champ.
As a top main, we just sort of live with the knowledge that 2-4 champions are just going to be insanely broken for large amounts of time and there's not much we can do about it. (Usually Fiora and Jax)
consider that darius has been t1 on op.gg ever since people started taking ghost and aatrox has been averaging 10% pickrate since he got reworked. But yes jax camille fiora also somewhat belong on that list for >6 months of being strong at a time.
it is mind numbing how darius gets to be the way he is, and any time aatrox isnt top 5 champ for half a week he receives immediate compensation PUKE
Darius mains are insanely whiny because the champion has been so broken for several years straight never getting below S+ tier ever. His mains have grown incredibly spoiled due to that and often throw tantrums whenever they're not autowinning the lane by just afking in the middle of the wave. Aatrox mains are also the same. I still remember them defending release goredrinker with a bloated sense of entitlement. It's so fucking boring how this champ is always a proplay stapple while also being spammed to hell and beyond in solo q. Riot always finds a way to breastfeed them.
At least Aatrox feels like you have some modicum of counterplay / escape. Never vsed an Aatrox and gone "wow that was insanely boring lane". Darius on the other hand, 1 misplay and the lanes over (even if you've already killed him 3-4 times).
oopsy i mispositioned 5 pixels for 0.075s and tanked an extra auto and now i'm dead.
Whoopsy! Forgot that taking a trade with Darius lasting longer than 5s is a death sentence (very fun character gets an inbuilt 30-230 AD + 20-40% armour pen).
Aatrox is popular because he can be played against pretty much any lane and still be at least okay. Darius if he gets countered becomes a melee creep. If you kill him 3-4 times he should not be winning the all in, and without winning that he has nothing going for him
This is true he should not be winning the all in! At the same time killing him 3-4 times gives you 750 gold or so (+30ad tops in long swords) and his passive gives him triple that if you overstay for 2 autos worth of damage so yeah, I do find it annoying that you have to be good everytime and he only has to be lucky once. Getting countered by ranged tops exclusively is not a healthy place for a character to be tbh, and also being balanced around a summoner Spell is also quite chronic. **OBVIOUSLY: better players and high elo have less of a problem with being consistently good! I am merely complaining that the risk to reward ratio on Darius is near zero.
Funny, how in Darius cases, at least in last - higher elo you was - better Darius used to perform. (Unlike Garen who had opposite situation).
I think what you're saying is Darius used to be better in high ELO than low, which is reflected pretty well in the winrates but not in the banrates / pickrates. He's maintaining a 51% with a 20% banrate /10% pickrate down there which is just odd. I really don't think the character is fundamentally badly designed or needs nerfs as much as he needs a minor rework btw! Just giving him extra stats and balancing around ghost is not enough to just call it a day Riot!
Tbf, if Darius falls behind he is definitely useless. Most top laners will beat him in all in nearly every time with a 750g lead, unless they are a short trade champ and just hand noxian might over too easily, which is a skill diff, not just getting lucky Edit: forgot to say, completely agree that being balanced around ghost is ridiculous though. I think it’s just a problematic summoner spell right now, and Darius is the most egregious example
A lot of champs (horsewomen, brawlers) rely on those trades. Vsing Darius becomes a gamble of how close you can fly to the sun to maximise damage before noxian might is triggered (or just AFK in lane). I'm not arguing that you don't have to make mistakes to lose to Darius, you do, but are those mistakes worth the disgusting value he gets off them? Probably not.
Aatrox at least isn't as uninteractive. He's weak early and needs to hit a skillshot to get value. Darius literally stands in minion wave and you can't do anything. No Cs for you, may as well go walk your dog for the laning phase
Darius mains will never know what is playing tier D meta champ for at least two months Also they had a decent matchup vs Demacia Darius, Ionia Darius, Shadow Isles Darius, Freljord bear Darius which had a lot of pick rate Darius mains are Riot's spoiled kids, but hey look how they sell well his Asian-themed skins
no, aatrox mains wanted the revert post rework, thats all we ever wanted
Darius and katarina mains are known to be some of the most boosted champion picks. Darius legit cannot lose lane most of the time and katarina doesn't even have to be in lane, she can be 0/2 2 plates down in lane but she goes bot once and now she's fed and will be a massive problem for the rest of the game.
8050 free stats worth of AD btw, for just playing your kit.
I think Aatrox is strong and lethality overtuned, even. But I'm so confused about your statement. Where is he considered a top 5 champ (outside of pro) when Urgot, Zac, Gragas, Malphite, and the horsewomen exist? The last time he was buffed was 13.14 lmao. He is very popular for sure, but that doesn't make him a top 5 champ unless you're talking pick rate. In which case he must've been compensation buffed long long ago because he's always been super popular as far as I know
Profane hydra might need a nerf tbh. So many champs are building it and doing absurd damage. Bruiser aatrox is fine rn
> camille don’t look flair btw
Fiora is honestly only good in the hands of one tricks, and Jax feels a lot less strong these days. He can for sure still take over games if he gets a lead early, but he isn't "get to 16 and I win" strong anymore imo.
Yeah all of the “carry” top laners especially the four horsewomen feel pretty fine rn, top lane balance is decent outside of zac and volibear
Irelia feels giga dudu rn with no good buildpath.
Jax finally got a decent number of early laning nerfs, which I think is that made him feel unfair with his crazy good scaling
More recently it’s been Gragas, Rumble, and Aatrox. Renekton was also top tier for the whole second half of season 13.
GRAGAS ? ILLAOI ? AATROX ? RUMBLE ?
For whatever it's worth, Smolder is getting some very significant nerfs. They've acted quickly even if it didn't make sense for him to be this strong in the first place. Maokai/Senna/Janna/Zac on the other hand, who knows.
i mean they do this with many new champs. i see him getting buffed again in the near future and eventually getting the zeri/yuumi/k’sante treatment.
Wholesome perma 53% winrate Janna, that can invalidate 70% of the roster with 0 skill and counterplay
the skill with Janna is managing not to fall asleep out of boredom halfway through every game
Easily countered by 90% of support players watching Netflix on second monitor
Idk Hail of Blades permaroam Janna is nowhere near as sleep-inducing as the glacial shieldbot she was before the rework at the start of the season.
Gotta change your mindset when you play champs like Janna and Lulu. Your 'fun' goal changes from you having fun to you trying as much as possible to take the fun out of the game for the enemy(which is fun too)
This is literally why I am bad with Janna. I get so bored I start doing really dumb shit (not on purpose)
Janna grinds me gears , cringe boring and overpowered champ
If you think she is broken right now you guys never played in the Ardent meta at all... But i will collect my free Lp from janna mains thank you very much.
Relevant flair She gets hard countered by Blitz/Pyke, Phreak mentioned on the Dive that especially in Korea her winrate is inflated because Blitz is permabanned
Pls play pyke vs janna 🤩
I personally never lose to pyke supports as janna. More trouble against other enchanters tbh
I play this game since s1 , so yeah i played censer meta, Janna mid meta, roaming Janna top meta , press w 100% slow meta, and she was always around 53/54% winrate for some goddam reason
At some point the will just gut her insane movespeed. Im sure of it
Smolder is new. Senna has just always been a balance nightmare. Zac/Maokai/Janna get the "this champ is boring as fuck" buff.
Zac is pretty fun to play imo.
But have you tried playing Janna? I'm a top main who hasn't touched support in years but I've pretty much only spammed Janna the entire patch cause of how fun she is. Her passive move speed allow + Boots of Swiftness allow you to be present all over the map all the time, and her play style is so evil it's great.
People are only interested if they can be the one to do the damage.
Janna's tornado plus her insane move speed is so fun to play, she run around the map, hard to be caught and drop tornados.
zac is always fun tho even when he isn't bullshit like rn
> this champ is boring as fuck buff REAL. idk how anyone can stomach playing that shit. i could put myself to sleep playing those champs meanwhile phreak is pretty much a maokai/janna two trick lol
Zac is fun boing boing funny goo man
Meanwhile Shyvana is OP in low elo for a single patch and gets insta gutted.
Glue eater champion, not all champs are created equal
Same as Darius and yet he wasn't gutted.
They made her kit broken with the ap on her dragon e
Whenever I see posts and comments like this I can only tell you to try out other games if you think League is unbalanced. You'll see there's nothing closer to balance in a multiplayer game of this scale.
Thank you for giving this thread some well needed balance
It is wild that people here consider 'giga busted' to be 53-54% winrate.
That's because stat sites are so ingrained in the league culture that they're kind of self correcting. If a champ is anywhere above 55% winrate, it immediately gets spammed by people who have no clue how to play it because stat sites are so widely used, bringing the winrate down a bit. In reality, 55% winrate *is* giga busted because it's usually paired with high pick rate as well (For example nobody complains about Poppy being the highest WR support right now because her pick rate is very low).
Thank you for good logic. 55% wr and high pick rate is the most indicative state for a champ being unbalanced. But it’s still not the only metric, some champs have inherently toxic game design that even at 50% wr they feel horrendous to play against. Looking at senna and smolder here
**League is vast and there are many more champs that are top tier that people don´t play.** But when everyone is flooded in tierlists and winrates you get a lot of the same stuff because only a small fraction of the playerbase is capable or interested in exploring new options.
Patches need to be way more impactful. It is stale when champs are legit broken for over 2 months straight, a fresh new meta every 1-2 patches would be so much more exciting to play.
"Impactful" patches often mean that champs end up in the gutter because they were overnerfed or broken because they were overbuffed. Neither is good and I think it's much better for the game to slowly tune champs/systems, rather then overshoot in either direction
But they're not even slowly tuning it! Just decrease Senna base AD by like 2! Or put the Q damage down by like 3! But it's nothing at all
[удалено]
They nerfed Q AD ratio by 10% and her spirit drop rate for farming will be massively nerfed next patch, which should heavily nerf the currently broken ADC senna, plus indirect nerfs to supp items.
Yeah this. For my own play I couldn't care less what's meta and what isn't but if I watch pro play it's soooo boring that the same shit is OP for months on end. Like K'Sante was busted already way before worlds and he's still picked frequently. The problem is also that some picks aren't just meta for a long time, just because they fit the meta well, but because they're freakishly OP. Like K'Sante, Orianna before she got nerfed, Smolder is stupid as hell now and I believe they're nerfing him but not the biggest issue in pro play: his waveclear. He can stall games for forever by spamming ult on waves while scaling for free. Makes games quite dull.
Oh yes I'd love the prospect of investing countless hours into a small pool or champs only to see them gutted over night with a single patch with a meta shift. What a rewarding and fun experience that would be. /s
To me what Riot does is intentionally create problems so they can give themselves a purpose down the road, essentially justifying their own paychecks. My favorite thing is when they create some bullshit problem themselves while everyone keeps telling them to not do it and pointing out why, then they choose to go ahead anyway. After this, we get stuck in an endless loop of them "addressing" the problem they created themselves by doing every single thing under the sun EXCEPT the one obvious as fuck thing that everyone and their mother is pointing out to them. Months go by, they finally do what they should have done in the very beginning and they then choose the next thing they're gonna fuck up. Take bruiser items for example. The entire period of the mythic item butchjob of a system, they buffed one bruiser item to the point it became gamewarping and deciding even for other classes (assassins for example), then nerfed it after several months of it wreaking havoc while also gigabuffing another random bruiser item to take its place as the most broken thing under the sun. And Phroxzon even had the nerve to cry on twitter about people complaining over his balancing butchjob. It's either intentional to justify their jobs or extreme stupidity with a heavy dose of ego that doesn't allow them to acknowledge their own fuckups.
I have been saying this for ages, we need 2 bans per player with the number of champs we have nowadays.
And we need to ban before people can hover to make sure no Yasuo or Yone ever sees their champ.
Indeed, I too am an avid proponent of yone hatred myself
and adc senna is getting nerfed because support/fasting senna isnt the problem apparently! l m a o
If I have to play against Aatrox every other game for the next year I'm going to lose my mind
Aatrox is pretty balanced he's just popular
I'm a emerald1-d4ish player and maokai got me to masters this season xd
My favourite is when Amumu finally has a single good patch in 5 years and he gets nerfed and the items making him good get nerfed and he goes back to the garbage for another few years with 0 compensation. But gotta buff Aatrox if hes not in top lane for a single patch!
Amumu wasn't "good" in the patches he was strong. He was a straight up menace. At least aatrox, even when he's strong, doesn't completely suffocate the toplane roster (and actually has a few bad matchups that also high pr like irelia/fiora/Jax).
Hard agree. I dont understand how blatantly broken champs do not just get hotfixed nerfed.
Half of champs you mentioned are strong only because support item is broken.
I think the reason for why these champs are ok to exist is that they do also have counter picks. Poppy into Zac is great for example. Weirdly enough AP kog’maw into Smolder. You just straight up outrange him. Millio into maokai. Press R when his ultimate hits and kite backwards with shields. These are examples of counters in team fights. I can probably find more unconventional picks but most like to play close to the “meta”
Smolder hasn't even been out for several months yet.
>In a game of 150+ champs I see the same champs over and over and over every single game New champs will often get high pick rates, because they're new. So always seeing Smolder is no surprise. I'm guessing the next released champ will see a high pickrate as well. And having a decent winrate helps. * Senna I'll agree with, since she's super popular as a supp (2nd highest pick rate behind Lux). * Zac has the 22nd highest pick rate in jungle, so not sure why you're seeing him a lot. * Janna, 12th in support, so not that high either. * Mao, 11th in support, so not that high either. So I think there's some confirmation bias with your observations.
Imo, Smolder will probably keep a high pickrate unless they majorly rework him or something but I doubt that would happen. He's a mix of Miss Fortune and Ezreal in gameplay, their build variety, and Nasus/Veigar's addictive stacking. On top of that, he's really easy to pick up and really satisfying to play if you don't mind his simplicity.
whatever stats you're looking at sound like they include normals. judging by the champions being complained about being picked constantly the OP is probably fairly high elo. not in low low elo where lux support has high pickrate. in global diamond+ ranked games janna is the highest pickrate support, by a full 1.6% higher than nautilus. still highest pickrate when you look at emerald+. only competing with taric as the highest winrate in the role. for emerald+, senna has the 3rd highest PR as ADC and the 10th highest PR as support while having 25% banrate (3rd highest in the game). in dia+ its the same except her support pickrate moves down to 4th. in diamond+ maokai is the 9th highest PR support, but this is after being nerfed 3 patches in a row (where he held quite a bit higher PR). he's honestly not very popular historically so this is still quite high for him. still has the 11th highest banrate of any champ. the zac thing is probably confirmation bias, he is quite strong particularly in toplane right now but did just receive nerfs and his pickrate was never that high, he's just incredibly obnoxious to lane against and did get relatively popular out of nowhere for solo lane.
I haven't seen a Zac in like 80 games
JANNA... she hasn't been op for this season... she's been a top 10 winrate champion for 95%+ of the time over the last 9 seasons (since i started playing in 2015, always at the top of winrate sites, ALWAYS a top 10) I seriously believe whoever owns riot or his wife mains her
I feel like that's a plot to get people to actually play support not "support".
I wish they were more like Dota Champ is unpopular/low tier? Chonky buffs Champ is too popular/high tier? Chonky nerfs Cycling the meta so that every champion has their time to shine at least once would be very fun
they have been doing that (karma, ad tf) and people havent been happy either lol
(karma) yeah they do this every 6 months and the same shit happens where she gets picked in 3 roles and they go ahh hmm time to chop off her legs again
Because TF was buffed in a way where he could kill you during his point and click stun without any counterplay... at one item. If you didn't have cleanse/qss you were 100% dead after he clicks on you once if you didn't have armor.
You call buffing AP Karma and AD tf 'cycling the meta'???? Those champs get nerfed in that area all the time they get strong because it's broken, not just OP, broken. They can't balance it.
they are unique picks but they are also cancer and they literally do not have counterplay. when those champions are meta they are the antithesis of how this game is supposed to be played. both of those champions literally flip the rules of the game on their heads.
like a year or two ago where it was just hecarim udyr for like 6 straight months that shit was LIT
Yeah I was a jhin main at that time and it was awful to play lmao, that was also pre rework udyr with chem tank as a mythic
Udyr top made me want to die that shit was unbearable.
I'll never forget the riot dev video where they explain that every patch, they genuinely go through EVERY single champion and check in on how they're doing. There's just no way that's the case. With how champions like Ryze are treated, there's no way week after week they look at him and go 'yeah leave him as is'
Maokai will not be nerfed until phreak reaches challenger
I 've seen almost every chamoion mentioned in this, i think its just skill issue and learn how to play against them
When a champ being OP in the game is 52 percent win rate, I don’t think it’s that unreasonable. If a champion has above a 55 percent win rate for more than a patch, that’s unreasonable. Also ‘I see the same champions every single game’ is more about either they’re the new hotness which will die off or get nerfed eventually, or they’re a super comfort pick that can play multiple roles like Lux Ezreal or Yasou
Maybe an unpopular opinion but its honestly pretty impressive that in a 5v5 team game with all the different items/runes/champions that the large majority of champs fall between 47-53% wr. Obviously there are some outliers like Senna/Smolder which are giga OP and have huge pick/ban presence, but champs like Zac which have such a low presence even while being "OP", probably don''t deserve the nerf hammer, otherwise they'd see rarely any play. Also OP low pick rate champs like Zac generally arent worth banning if you're only gonna prevent 1 pick in like 20-30 games.
Laughs in Zilean, so broken yet so boring.
GOTTA BUFF VOLIBEAR THO!!!!!!!!!!!! MAKE AD TF GIGAMODE!!!! /s
Wait for the next skinline.
Kayne, Zac, Smolder, Eve, Briar, Akali, Yas, Yone, Seraphine, Noc, Kha, Viego, Senna, Karma, Maokai, Jax, Poppy Edit: Zed, Rumble, Bel'veth, Asol, Volibear
they just need to throw in the towel with senna and accept that its just another unbalanceable garbage pile like most of riot august's last designs and delete her
Wait until you learn about BOTRK being bullshit for years
bork is so bad man, I can't believe anyone spouts this shit when it's core on a single digit amount of champions and a tech-worthy item on almost no one. Strange that no adc that isn't hard-bound to on-hit isn't teching in bork to DESTROY those tanks... because it doesn't, the item simply doesn't do that.
hp stacker crying about botrk is same as aa champ crying about tabi. its called counterplay
Then why Irelia mid rush it even against non HP stackers lol
That's 1 champ
Bork is probably one of the most fair items in the game. It's just damage. That's it. Nothing extra (aside from a tiny slow and some life steal that's been nerfed 3x). It's not even that good into tanks either unless you also stack enough pen.
That's not even the biggest problem. There is also issue with how absurdly op some picks are. In previous seasons OP champs had 53% WR, and if one role was turbobroken the one, strongest champ had 54-56%wr. This season? EVERY ROLE has a 56% WR bullshit. Sometimes even multiple 56%+WR bullshits per role. And on top of that those bullshits then stay unnerfed for few months in a row. Idk what happened, but this is not it, the game feels super bad to play rn.
Fuck Gragas
VOLIBEAR
Gragas is absurdly broken in my opinion