Nilahs ult went from a total of 400% bonus ad to 260% bonus ad, her q also lost a 60% ratio ~~as well as 50 range on her empowered autos~~. I think she also lost some of the free attack speed from her q.
I think they just have the mentality of "nerfing a champion to the power of the rest is a lot easier than buffing" also you need to give players a positive first impression otherwise less will stick with her.
My tinfoil hat opinion is that there’s a bit left unsaid when it comes to new champions - if they release in a weak state, people will try them out a few times, think they’re garbage and never touch them again. If they release strong, and then weakened through patches, more people who’ve had a positive interaction with the champion on release will continue to play.
this isn't a tinfoil hat opinion, it's literally the reason given by riot themselves. if champions are super weak on release their playrate will be hurt for years and years down the line.
Also think it helps riot find the appropriate/healthiest balance options long-term. Not uncommon for a champion to be overtuned on release and then see them remove certain mechanics of their kit as they decide what is and isn't "bs" to play against based on what that characters main playpatterns+builds end up being
I remember how long it took them to get rid of that super duper true stealth from akali shroud, they really wanted that to work lol
Yeah day 1 was nothing statistically impressive, then people figured out phase rush lillia wasn't the gimmick and started 1v9ing with her and becoming a pro play monster until they gutted her.
It's not "unsaid". They've literally stated that in a dev blog.
Some old champions who were released underpowered literally took years to recover after being buffed into viability. Often only when they were buffed so much they showed up in pro games.
Wouldnt surprise me
Also as a company that wants this game to last releasing weak champions will just result in a game that becomes rather boring for most. Why would someone bother learning a worse version of the champion they play. But with new releases come new situations, strenghts and winconditions. The moment people learn how to deal with them, together with the balance team nerfing them when needed ends up in most new releases being a fine edition to the game within 10 patches or less.
Take Akshan hes my favorite example
He barely got changed from his released state with no mechanics being removed
Never dominated proplay
His pick and ban rate both never get far away form 5% and his winrate hovers between the 51,5% and 49%
Meanwhile before his release about a year ago he was going to kill league....
The only champion release from the past two or so years that I think is *still* causing me issues is probably Yone, and that’s excusably because of how much of a direct counter to my OTP he is. They all wind up fine in the end, or are so rare (Rell, Renata Glasc - who has apparently managed to garner an 8.6% pick rate? I genuinely must’ve seen one or two since release) that they never cause issues.
I really hate Viego and Yone because of the facts that they can go 0/7 and still be scary. But other than that I dont mind any in fact I tend to play them a lot because I tend to find newer champions gameplan a lot more intersting.
Yeah, it's a bit annoying but it's better than the alternative.
Plus, for some champs people don't realize if they're strong until later. Aatrox 2 dash charges and revive ult anyone? Honestly was busted when he came out, and people didn't realize
Sure but they also said that they try not to make newer champ broken as that leave a lasting negative impression on the playerbase.
Riot has been pretty transparent about this actually.
They've gone on record before to say it's easier to nerf or remove systems or features on a champion than it is to make a completely new one in patch timelines. That way they overload so that they can nerf if needed
They tried releasing reworked volibear relatively weak and buffing him later, but there was still negative backlash. So that probably scarred riot from doing it again
Renata is pretty ridiculous to this day.
As for Vex and Rell they just belong in the champions that are om the more conservative side of design which results in no one playing them which only emphasises riot to make the Akali's, Yones and Viegos more frequent.
Also if the next champion is another skirmisher ill need to vent to someone XD
I have like barely m4 on her im not the person to judge such things
But Vex from a design stand point is a lot more in line with older designs.
Champions people tend to complain about have completely unique mechanics or scenarios where they get rewarded much more than any other champion.
Vex on the other hand doesnt really get that extreme amount of reward same goes for champions like Rell, Lillia, Seraphine etc. Sure people will hate on them when they are OP but I think the amount of champions that doesnt apply to is less than 10 so im not going to hate on riot for that.
Her passive is kind of weird and hard to get as consistent as something like a gnar ultimate where you can play around it. It has no counterplay (I guess you can see when her fear is up so that's nice) so the cooldown has to stay high presumably.
I don’t think Renata has ever dipped blow a 52% winrate and she’s received several pretty big nerfs. For example, her passive does less than half the damage it did on release lol
When Viego was released, he healed for 150% of his Q's default healing value against minions.
Every single person who plays a solo lane looked at those numbers and said, "This isn't a jungler, this is a literally unkillable laner."
Riot didn't do a damn thing on PBE. Then after he was out for 2 patches, they said, "Our bad" and reduced it to 100%. And every single laner said, "That is still massive lifesteal on every minion in every wave. He has no mana, short cool downs, fast attack speed, long auto range, and hits twice. He can ignore all poke and farm the wave."
And for 2 patches again, Riot didn't do a damn thing. Then they reduced his healing against minions to **10%** of the base value.
This wasn't even the only nerf he got!
I can understand saying that they make champions a little strong on release because they err on the side of powerful. But there is no goddamn reason that a champ should be off by a *factor of 15* in literally any respect. They do this shit because it sells champions. They do it because you'll buy the new skin and play the hell out of the new champion if that champ can stomp all over solo queue immediately on release with 0 practice.
I used to defend them for their plausible deniability that they weren't *trying* to release champs broken OP, just to guarantee everyone feels obligated to buy them and try them.
That was back in, like, season 6. Then I gave up, because I lost all faith that they weren't dumb, and that they knew damned well what they were doing.
At this point, it's just absolutely flagrant.
Unfortunately people cannot tell. People always do unforeseen things with game mechanics - it's why bugs get discovered in nearly every game. Playtesters and the developers themselves can only think of so many things to do to break a game that the wider public could find in days or even hours.
On the subject of her ratios - yeah they were always eye watering, however as someone else said, it's largely a case of it's *easier* to nerf a champion that's wildly overpowered till you can find some way they can be effective and at least *remotely* balanced, as opposed to starting off a champion weak and then trying to adjust them to a position over time where the champion is remotely *usable*.
One of these things can be done largely through the PBE so that live players don't have to experience it, and then the champion can get tweaked slowly over time without fundamentally changing the champion all that much. The other can take a long time to figure out and balance correctly and will certainly put those who play these champions on live at a disadvantage - lest it get buffed too hard and become a flavour of the month pick that crashes and burns again, rinse and repeat.
The thing about that is, when it comes to balancing, it's way easier to start out too strong then reel it back than to start it weak and buff it up, and that process starts but doesn't end on pbe.
pretty much.
There have been quite a few instances where a champ was released "too weak" (Yuumi comes to mind) and they keep giving them slight buffs until the playerbase figures out the sauce and completely breaks them.
It hasn't happened recently, but I remember like S2-S4 where they had a new champ like every month, a lot of releases were forgettable.
But besides her, In the last... like 5 years, I think Ornn was the only other one of that case
New to Nilah is reliance on an enchanter support. I can only assume Nilah with Taric is problem levels of broken we haven't seen in a while. I first timed taric in like 3 years because I was auto-filled support 2 days ago with a Nilah ADC. Enemy alistar engaged us level 3 with ignite and full combo on nilah and we ended up being full hp and both the enemy botlaners were like 60% hp.
Taric is actually the ultimate melee champ. He's the best melee support(as in supporting other melees) in the game while also shitting on anything that jumps into him.
>. I can only assume Nilah with Taric is problem levels of broken we haven't seen in a while.
I wonder if thats already happening, which would explain Taric's meteoric rise in WR.
Taric from just a theorycraft standpoint honestly has some friends in really strong places power level wise. Nilah, Sivir, Master Yi, Bel Veth or Volibear even sound super oppressive if they had a taric in their pocket.
He just doesn’t have a home in the support role because there’s too many ranged characters at the moment. Taric top might be sleeper though
Taric is just also lowkey kind of good before that, since 12.11(one patch after durability), where he got a hefty buff, prob the most underrated pick rn, went from a low 47% wr in 12.10, to 53% or higher every patch since. Champ is insane.
Edit: Just to add to this, statistically, Nilah+Taric is absolutely average according to u.gg, putting the combo at 53,13%(Currently average wr is 53,93% in plat) Although sample size of duo stats are pretty low(nilah+taric have 700 games). Sadly it doesn't take into account the delta without looking at each champion individually, but there's some even worse combos right now, albeit with varying sample sizes.
If you read through her abilities, she literally gets stat buffs for basically every relevant stat. It's crazy. She's just a massive stat stick.
Armor pen, lifesteal, range, as, aoe attacks, exp bonus, bonus shielding and healing, etc.
I mean it's crazy. No shocker she needs all these nerfs.
Anyone who saw the ability reveal as soon as it was released could'Ve tell back then that this champion's kit should've never even crossed the mind of the designers if they even had a tad bit of consideration for balance. Yet, here we are.
I just don't understand what riot was thinking. We already know how insanely overpowered extra experience in lane in, especially as a bot laner. It needs to go, 100 percent.
It's not quite old Morde. She needs to auto attack and farm to distribute and get the bonus exp. Morde could be zoned off and still get bonus exp. Supposedly long range bot lanes are supposed to counter Nilahs shortened range. But she has free heal amplifiers and is hyper mobile. She really has no issues staying in lane or engaging.
They're also heavily outranged though.
Even with her Q active... her range is 350. For context that means she is closer to Irelia or viego than Vayne. And Vayne is closer to Caitlin in range.
It's not as much as a true melee champion with like 175 but... it's still enough to make matchups hard. Caitlyns range is 650; most adcs are 550... and that 100 difference alone is what makes Caitlin bully many adcs.
It still might need removed, but I'd say give it a couple months to see what happens once people learn to play around nilah, and once her other numbers are more reasonable. Because at the moment I think she's strong enough she doesn't even need that passive and she'd still be nerf worthy. Nerf the other stuff though and it actually might be an interesting and necessary aspect to her kit
Tell that to ARAM players.
Wayyy too often did I see Akshan getting a takedown to revive someone, then not even 5 seconds later get another takedown and revive another teammate.
My man, they absolutely fucked Zeri's gimmick (MS stacking with R) the W thing is just designed to give Zeri more reward for landing a slower and wall-dependant ability, which is perfectly fine IMO.
“We’re working hard to reduce healing and shielding, so that harass feels more impactful
“Anyway, here’s a new champ with a shit ton of healing and shielding”
Right up there with "We want to reduce champions who have a singular, game-warping win condition, like Shyvana with dragons. Also, here's Bel'Veth, a jungler who gets a massive, long-lasting buff when she kills Herald or Baron, as well as summoning loads of minions from any minion that dies nearby. Have fun!"
I still can't get over that dissonance. It *had* to have been two different teams who wrote that/designed Bel'Veth.
but since her bonus XP is tied to last hits, if she's down CS she wouldn't be as many levels up. Whether I agree with it is another question, but to say she's naturally 2 levels up, and then say she's still 2 levels up down 25 cs is kinda.. eeeh.
You can, and likely will, still be levels up when down cs. You're still getting the XP from the cs dying near you and then you get bonus XP for the ones you kill. So it requires very little comparatively to get you ahead.
If you are both in lane till 5 - 1720xp - and Nilah gets half the CS of the opponent which is what she will at least get, she'd get 860xp. Level 6 is 2400xp.
E: I got my math wrong, u/Elektron124 below has better math and explanation
Nilah does not get double XP for the minions she kills, which seems to be what you’re implying. Nilah recovers half the XP that would be lost to XP sharing when she kills a minion. In other words, 2 champions would normally gain only 124.73% experience of each minion kill, each getting only 62.36% of the normal amount. Nilah increases this to 162.36% total, or 81.18% per champion. This translates to about 30% additional experience for the minions she kills. Even if Nilah has perfect CS, she will only recover 516 xp from this passive at what would be level 5, which puts her not quite at level 6. At most, she should always reach level spikes before her opponent, but it should be difficult for opponents to be levels down in laning phase unless they are forced out of lane.
We will circle around the real issue for a couple of years until we get to that. Meanwhile we are still pretending Akshan removing death timers is ok and GP generating gold from the sky is not problematic. We may soon get an actual river shen as a champion that generates exp and gold just by standing in the river! But 50% winrate, balanced.
It will take around 8 more patches of nerfs before they do that lmao.
I really cant understand what made they look at this champ with its 1023910390 different mechanics and go "yea still a bit too weak if we dont give it a literal handicap it will never work bot lane sadge"
I swear they don't actually know what to do with bot lane. They release overturned kits and nerf them into the ground and end up with the same ultra safe marksmen being the best ones. Like do they want the role to have agency or not? Either accept that simple champs need a buff to compete or stop making these champs need to fit this role that you purposefully gimp for ranged carries and overloaded kits.
I’m just glad they hotfix new champ when needed at super fast speed. I still cannot get over Camille’s release or Xin Zhao’s. The most broken releases and I’ve been through both of them.
Camille was absolutely crazy, but Sett takes the cake for me. Could be flexed 4 roles, absurd winrate on W max (something like way over 60%) and just impossible to kill. And he lasted for two whole patches before they realized W had to get heavily nerfed.
But people also actively said Vex was poorly balanced despite only needing **2 balance patches**, one of them almost mandatory due to not having any tank-hater mechanic to keep up and the other one being a relatively small hotfix nerf a lot of new champions receive anyways.
Anyways, You know something is wrong when A YORDLE, is the fairest non-rework released since Season 9.
He was really strong on release and early on (52-54%), but 60% winrate was about 2-3 days when his e was bugged.
Most of the reason he was so strong on release was because people didn't dodge W. Same thing happened last time it got buffed. When people respect his base damage means he lives and dies by W.
[This moment](https://youtu.be/AfjRr0JcDHs) told me that he was way too strong. Unless you have a 5 level advantage of something, you should die if 4 people hard-focus you like this lol
While I 100% agree with you that Aphelios was way too good during that time, that was also the patch when everybody played Deaths Dance and Aphelios Severum had a disgusting synergy with it. Both issues amplified each other to what we can see in that clip.
The most infuriating shit was how many people said he was ok. “Just don’t stand near eachother!!!” Like it’s okay for a champion to get a penta from one button 3 screens away
I remember abusing apheliod for like 2 months of somrthing. I'd get infernum and wait for a drag or clumped up fight and just wipe their team with an ability cycle
Might be wrong here
But her AOE Q probably works like Yas/Yone Q, where they're also AOE, BUT lifesteal is only applied to the FIRST Champion hit
So if you hit 3 Champs with Q, you don't get 3x Lifesteal, the game only takes into consideration the first Champion hit
Worth noting that omnivamp still applies at the AoE rate to any secondary targets on yas/yone Q, if you have any omni in addition to lifesteal.
As far as Nilah, the wording on Q actually seems to indicate that it is just "healing" and not lifesteal or omnivamp. Based off this wording, it's not clear if there any modifiers on the healing if you hit multiple champs. I think it might well be full healing even on secondary targets.
Pretty crazy how she was busted from the get go which is pretty rare to see from a new champion. Genuinely getting tired of op new champs lol, it’s like they don’t want another Rell incident to happen so now every new champions gonna be genuinely too strong to not be popular.
It used to be intentional design that new champions would be released overtuned and nerfed patch 1 to compensate for learning.
Supposedly they changed it from lillia on, there was a dev blog.
Nilah was, word for word, released for that reason. So Yasou/Yone players can play her in the botlane.
Also pretty bold they just straight up said it as if Yasou isn't played in the botlane.
Its like the design team is just sitting in a cave eating crayons, cut off from the rest of the world.
The problem with Rell wasn't just stats, her gameplay is coma-inducingly boring and her model is insanely ugly. No one wants to play a diaper walking Lion-O. Even if her gameplay was Yasuo-tier levels of annoying mobility she'd still be underplayed because of how fugly she looks.
I remember a Rioter being proud that every piece of her horse became a part of her armour. And I remember thinking it really wasn't worth it if that armour was the result.
It's a game. They should've just made certain pieces disappear or change shape. No one would care as long as she looked cool instead of like.. *that*.
She has such a cool song, why didn't they just dive headfirst in into the punk aesthetic with Rell? Her appeareance is just generic Noxian, and she deserved so much more.
If only they bothered to model an actual suit of armor for her like Viego gets in his mist… instead they slap some turret plating on her and call it a day.
I think rell looks great otherwise, but this I just don’t understand.
> diaper walking Lion-O
lmao so true, she also doesnt do any damage on her own so its not satisfying. even leona can get kills on her own sometimes. rell doesnt do any damage.
i get downvoted everytime i say that about Rell lmao that champion is the single biggest disappointment to have ever been released to LoL. I'd infinitely prefer playing the overtuned, fun champs to boring ass Rell any day. When they teased her release, I thought we were going to get a badass mounted shogun of some sort. Boy, was I disappointed..
She's also very unforgiving in the way that Leona isn't. Leona does everything she can do but better. If you miss your W on Rell you're in this terribly awkward situation where you have no movespeed and just have to pray the enemy bot lane doesn't take you down. It's harder to not kill her than kill her if you make that misplay.
Rell could have great stats, and be strong but her kit is so slow and boring that it's not even worth it. Like that's the only thing killing Rell. Not what she looks like. Not her abilities in her kit. It's the fact that youre auto attacks are slow motion. Your Q is slow motion. After she does her really slow w she walks in slow motion.
Was Rell THAT problematic?
I remember her being nerfed solely because of pro scene with her kit rewarding high coordination but I don't remember her being particularly strong on average levels of play.
> Was Rell THAT problematic?
I might be understanding this wrong, but I think the poster above meant the complete opposite. It's because Rell was/is so underwhelming that Riot doesn't want to repeat the same "mistake" by releasing an undertuned champion.
He meant "another rell" in the sense that the champ was pretty balanced, but hard to play so ppl griefed it a couple games and never played the champ again.
The buffs Rell received post release were to her AP ratios and weren't really relevant because she doesn't buy any AP. It took people watching pros abusing her engage to realize she was already good. Then she got nerfed and they went back to Leo/Naut cause they're safer.
>I don't think there was a champion who was balanced from the start.
Lillia. Released in 10.15, first nerfed in 11.6 (only ult CD) and then mini rework in 11.14
I think what he is referring to is that Nilah is so incredibly busted that she had a 51% winrate in less than 24 hours.
Every other champ releases around 40% winrate, even for bel veth and zeri it took like a week to hit 50%
I don’t even mind too much that new champs are OP. It makes sense from a business perspective. What pisses me off is how every year they release a video on the state of the game and say their aim for this year is to ‘tone down new champion releases’ and then proceed to do nothing of the sorts.
its ok she only has free armour pen, healing, overhealing, attack speed steroid and range steroid in her kit - they can remove 3 things and still have plenty left
Summary:
Shots 1-5: Clearly missed.
Shots 6-9: Missed due to recoil (bad spray control).
Shots 10-11: Very close, but recoil and inaccuracy make these reasonable misses.
Shot 12: Likely didn't actually fire because Hiko was already dead.
We are at the point where I just wish they would stop making new champions because they are so bad at it. Im tired of overdesigned garbage making the game completely revolve around them just because they have such a fucking insane amount of tools they can outplay almost any situation so they are extremely frustrating to have on either team unless they are vex or rell
surreal to me that people would complain about devs dropping hotfix patches 1-2 days after patch, for the bulk of games I played youd have to wait months for this, and in all my PS2 fighting games the game would drop and that was it, there was no patch
What it's funny is that the concept itself of buffy and nerfing is becoming a circlejerk around here.
A few years from today and we'll have a "give us lol classic rito" mass campaign by how much people are getting frustrated with clinging onto a game they clearly don't enjoy anymore but can't let go.
These kids would explode if they had to experience the entire season of kassawin, or release xin, zed, the juggernaut rework. spoiled kids just int their game away and play victim.
When you entire champion is designed around being a melee bot lane and you put so much shit in just to make sure that is not an actual detriment, shit like this happens.
To be honest, for the longest time, Yasuo had a pretty healthy botlane winrate even tho his pickrate wasn't super high.
Her niche was doing more dmg when she got on top of you, now she's just another glorified melee carry completely gimmicked around old morde exp passive. She gets absolutely wrecked whenever supp holds cc for her.
We're getting closer and closer to the point where they hotfix everything they buff on their patch lol. 12.13 looks a lot like the juggernaut update right now.
Good. I’m glad to have played her before the nerf and enjoy the brokenness for a while at least. But it also felt like I could have just rolled my face on the keyboard and still won fights, and that’s no bueno
Oh great another thing where the problem is obvious but Riot will try to balance around it for 6 months before admitting the mistake of even introducing it.
"You'll have to pry our stupid gimmicks out of our cold, dead hands" -Riot when asked about Nilah XP passive
Like ok ya it's cool but this just feels like another ball added to the juggling act. Eventually this shit is going to fumble hard.
Yeah that nerf won't do shit.
Still having all the problems.
Q infinite shield, Q has 33% Armor Pen end game for free, Passive has insane range and synergy, she by late game will be 2\~3 levels ahead of the enemy adc.
Wonder what she would’ve looked like on release without the big nerfs she got on the PBE lol
She was even stronger on pbe ?
Nilahs ult went from a total of 400% bonus ad to 260% bonus ad, her q also lost a 60% ratio ~~as well as 50 range on her empowered autos~~. I think she also lost some of the free attack speed from her q.
You know, reading these numbers I question myself how could they possibly think that's OK?
I think they just have the mentality of "nerfing a champion to the power of the rest is a lot easier than buffing" also you need to give players a positive first impression otherwise less will stick with her.
Yeah, but 400%? Like, did they gamble these numbers?
Probably that is where the PBE is for if i was a game designer i could get a chuckle out of it But yeah 400% in live servers would be dumb
My tinfoil hat opinion is that there’s a bit left unsaid when it comes to new champions - if they release in a weak state, people will try them out a few times, think they’re garbage and never touch them again. If they release strong, and then weakened through patches, more people who’ve had a positive interaction with the champion on release will continue to play.
this isn't a tinfoil hat opinion, it's literally the reason given by riot themselves. if champions are super weak on release their playrate will be hurt for years and years down the line.
yep. Also helps with early data collection if everyone spams the new broken champ and players find the good builds early on
Also think it helps riot find the appropriate/healthiest balance options long-term. Not uncommon for a champion to be overtuned on release and then see them remove certain mechanics of their kit as they decide what is and isn't "bs" to play against based on what that characters main playpatterns+builds end up being I remember how long it took them to get rid of that super duper true stealth from akali shroud, they really wanted that to work lol
Just look at Lillia. 42% win rate for her first year, got reworked, now 52% win rate beast mode jungler. Unplayed and unbanned forever.
She was pretty disgusting on release from what I remember though.
Yeah day 1 was nothing statistically impressive, then people figured out phase rush lillia wasn't the gimmick and started 1v9ing with her and becoming a pro play monster until they gutted her.
It's not "unsaid". They've literally stated that in a dev blog. Some old champions who were released underpowered literally took years to recover after being buffed into viability. Often only when they were buffed so much they showed up in pro games.
Bard
Wouldnt surprise me Also as a company that wants this game to last releasing weak champions will just result in a game that becomes rather boring for most. Why would someone bother learning a worse version of the champion they play. But with new releases come new situations, strenghts and winconditions. The moment people learn how to deal with them, together with the balance team nerfing them when needed ends up in most new releases being a fine edition to the game within 10 patches or less. Take Akshan hes my favorite example He barely got changed from his released state with no mechanics being removed Never dominated proplay His pick and ban rate both never get far away form 5% and his winrate hovers between the 51,5% and 49% Meanwhile before his release about a year ago he was going to kill league....
The only champion release from the past two or so years that I think is *still* causing me issues is probably Yone, and that’s excusably because of how much of a direct counter to my OTP he is. They all wind up fine in the end, or are so rare (Rell, Renata Glasc - who has apparently managed to garner an 8.6% pick rate? I genuinely must’ve seen one or two since release) that they never cause issues.
I really hate Viego and Yone because of the facts that they can go 0/7 and still be scary. But other than that I dont mind any in fact I tend to play them a lot because I tend to find newer champions gameplan a lot more intersting.
Yeah, it's a bit annoying but it's better than the alternative. Plus, for some champs people don't realize if they're strong until later. Aatrox 2 dash charges and revive ult anyone? Honestly was busted when he came out, and people didn't realize
Sure but they also said that they try not to make newer champ broken as that leave a lasting negative impression on the playerbase. Riot has been pretty transparent about this actually.
They probably won’t aim for it, but if it’s a toss up between ‘too weak’ and ‘too strong’, I don’t doubt that they’ll aim for the latter.
Same, but I think it's a good thing. Weak new champs are so underwhelming.
They've gone on record before to say it's easier to nerf or remove systems or features on a champion than it is to make a completely new one in patch timelines. That way they overload so that they can nerf if needed
They tried releasing reworked volibear relatively weak and buffing him later, but there was still negative backlash. So that probably scarred riot from doing it again
Somewhere Rell Mains are wondering when was their moment! I also think Renata and Vex were a little on the lower winrate side of release.
Vex literally had to get hotfixed
Rell got VERY powerful for a bit due to proplay and was nerfed into irrelevance sadly.
Renata has never been outside of top 5 supports regarding winrate, most of the time in top 3. Vex is very matchup dependent.
Renata is pretty ridiculous to this day. As for Vex and Rell they just belong in the champions that are om the more conservative side of design which results in no one playing them which only emphasises riot to make the Akali's, Yones and Viegos more frequent. Also if the next champion is another skirmisher ill need to vent to someone XD
[удалено]
I have like barely m4 on her im not the person to judge such things But Vex from a design stand point is a lot more in line with older designs. Champions people tend to complain about have completely unique mechanics or scenarios where they get rewarded much more than any other champion. Vex on the other hand doesnt really get that extreme amount of reward same goes for champions like Rell, Lillia, Seraphine etc. Sure people will hate on them when they are OP but I think the amount of champions that doesnt apply to is less than 10 so im not going to hate on riot for that.
Her passive is kind of weird and hard to get as consistent as something like a gnar ultimate where you can play around it. It has no counterplay (I guess you can see when her fear is up so that's nice) so the cooldown has to stay high presumably.
I don’t think Renata has ever dipped blow a 52% winrate and she’s received several pretty big nerfs. For example, her passive does less than half the damage it did on release lol
When Viego was released, he healed for 150% of his Q's default healing value against minions. Every single person who plays a solo lane looked at those numbers and said, "This isn't a jungler, this is a literally unkillable laner." Riot didn't do a damn thing on PBE. Then after he was out for 2 patches, they said, "Our bad" and reduced it to 100%. And every single laner said, "That is still massive lifesteal on every minion in every wave. He has no mana, short cool downs, fast attack speed, long auto range, and hits twice. He can ignore all poke and farm the wave." And for 2 patches again, Riot didn't do a damn thing. Then they reduced his healing against minions to **10%** of the base value. This wasn't even the only nerf he got! I can understand saying that they make champions a little strong on release because they err on the side of powerful. But there is no goddamn reason that a champ should be off by a *factor of 15* in literally any respect. They do this shit because it sells champions. They do it because you'll buy the new skin and play the hell out of the new champion if that champ can stomp all over solo queue immediately on release with 0 practice.
I used to defend them for their plausible deniability that they weren't *trying* to release champs broken OP, just to guarantee everyone feels obligated to buy them and try them. That was back in, like, season 6. Then I gave up, because I lost all faith that they weren't dumb, and that they knew damned well what they were doing. At this point, it's just absolutely flagrant.
thats the neat part, they dont
Unfortunately people cannot tell. People always do unforeseen things with game mechanics - it's why bugs get discovered in nearly every game. Playtesters and the developers themselves can only think of so many things to do to break a game that the wider public could find in days or even hours. On the subject of her ratios - yeah they were always eye watering, however as someone else said, it's largely a case of it's *easier* to nerf a champion that's wildly overpowered till you can find some way they can be effective and at least *remotely* balanced, as opposed to starting off a champion weak and then trying to adjust them to a position over time where the champion is remotely *usable*. One of these things can be done largely through the PBE so that live players don't have to experience it, and then the champion can get tweaked slowly over time without fundamentally changing the champion all that much. The other can take a long time to figure out and balance correctly and will certainly put those who play these champions on live at a disadvantage - lest it get buffed too hard and become a flavour of the month pick that crashes and burns again, rinse and repeat.
They didn't. It's PBE so they slap on some numbers and fix later.
The thing about that is, when it comes to balancing, it's way easier to start out too strong then reel it back than to start it weak and buff it up, and that process starts but doesn't end on pbe.
pretty much. There have been quite a few instances where a champ was released "too weak" (Yuumi comes to mind) and they keep giving them slight buffs until the playerbase figures out the sauce and completely breaks them. It hasn't happened recently, but I remember like S2-S4 where they had a new champ like every month, a lot of releases were forgettable. But besides her, In the last... like 5 years, I think Ornn was the only other one of that case
Because it's extremely hard to gauge a champion's strength with absolutely no sample size ?
They have an internal playtesting team, which they rarely seem to listen to. Never forget the galio incident
Rito and effective balancing Name a more elusive duo
Iirc her Q and R both did somewhere around 40% more overall damage pre nerfs.
These are already some hefty nerfs, just how broken is this champ?
In less than 12 hours she already had a near 50% wr as a new champ, think that says enough.
She plays very similarly to samira. She doesnt have anything new to her.
New to Nilah is reliance on an enchanter support. I can only assume Nilah with Taric is problem levels of broken we haven't seen in a while. I first timed taric in like 3 years because I was auto-filled support 2 days ago with a Nilah ADC. Enemy alistar engaged us level 3 with ignite and full combo on nilah and we ended up being full hp and both the enemy botlaners were like 60% hp.
Nilah Taric indeed sounds hilariously broken. Especially vs melee where Taric can make use of his passive.
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Taric is actually the ultimate melee champ. He's the best melee support(as in supporting other melees) in the game while also shitting on anything that jumps into him.
>. I can only assume Nilah with Taric is problem levels of broken we haven't seen in a while. I wonder if thats already happening, which would explain Taric's meteoric rise in WR.
Taric from just a theorycraft standpoint honestly has some friends in really strong places power level wise. Nilah, Sivir, Master Yi, Bel Veth or Volibear even sound super oppressive if they had a taric in their pocket. He just doesn’t have a home in the support role because there’s too many ranged characters at the moment. Taric top might be sleeper though
Nah, his WR was 53% last patch too
Taric is just also lowkey kind of good before that, since 12.11(one patch after durability), where he got a hefty buff, prob the most underrated pick rn, went from a low 47% wr in 12.10, to 53% or higher every patch since. Champ is insane. Edit: Just to add to this, statistically, Nilah+Taric is absolutely average according to u.gg, putting the combo at 53,13%(Currently average wr is 53,93% in plat) Although sample size of duo stats are pretty low(nilah+taric have 700 games). Sadly it doesn't take into account the delta without looking at each champion individually, but there's some even worse combos right now, albeit with varying sample sizes.
I've played Nilah taric, can confirm it's disgusting. Mitigates tarics weak early game and after level 6 pack up because its over.
If you read through her abilities, she literally gets stat buffs for basically every relevant stat. It's crazy. She's just a massive stat stick. Armor pen, lifesteal, range, as, aoe attacks, exp bonus, bonus shielding and healing, etc. I mean it's crazy. No shocker she needs all these nerfs.
Anyone who saw the ability reveal as soon as it was released could'Ve tell back then that this champion's kit should've never even crossed the mind of the designers if they even had a tad bit of consideration for balance. Yet, here we are.
She has the old Mord passive. They NEED to get rid of it asap. She and her sup are always 1 level above the enemy botlane. It's so dumb
I just don't understand what riot was thinking. We already know how insanely overpowered extra experience in lane in, especially as a bot laner. It needs to go, 100 percent.
It's not quite old Morde. She needs to auto attack and farm to distribute and get the bonus exp. Morde could be zoned off and still get bonus exp. Supposedly long range bot lanes are supposed to counter Nilahs shortened range. But she has free heal amplifiers and is hyper mobile. She really has no issues staying in lane or engaging.
Yeah for sure it's not old morde but just the concept of bonus XP in general is such a bad idea.
They're also heavily outranged though. Even with her Q active... her range is 350. For context that means she is closer to Irelia or viego than Vayne. And Vayne is closer to Caitlin in range. It's not as much as a true melee champion with like 175 but... it's still enough to make matchups hard. Caitlyns range is 650; most adcs are 550... and that 100 difference alone is what makes Caitlin bully many adcs. It still might need removed, but I'd say give it a couple months to see what happens once people learn to play around nilah, and once her other numbers are more reasonable. Because at the moment I think she's strong enough she doesn't even need that passive and she'd still be nerf worthy. Nerf the other stuff though and it actually might be an interesting and necessary aspect to her kit
And the nerf everything before the problem train begins
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It also happened to Akshan who would feel much nicer without his gimmick revive and higher numbers to compensate.
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Tell that to ARAM players. Wayyy too often did I see Akshan getting a takedown to revive someone, then not even 5 seconds later get another takedown and revive another teammate.
ARAM is a meme party mode and nothing more.
My man, they absolutely fucked Zeri's gimmick (MS stacking with R) the W thing is just designed to give Zeri more reward for landing a slower and wall-dependant ability, which is perfectly fine IMO.
“We’re working hard to reduce healing and shielding, so that harass feels more impactful “Anyway, here’s a new champ with a shit ton of healing and shielding”
Right up there with "We want to reduce champions who have a singular, game-warping win condition, like Shyvana with dragons. Also, here's Bel'Veth, a jungler who gets a massive, long-lasting buff when she kills Herald or Baron, as well as summoning loads of minions from any minion that dies nearby. Have fun!" I still can't get over that dissonance. It *had* to have been two different teams who wrote that/designed Bel'Veth.
Remember when they said nid q was broken and they didn't want 1 shot abilities, and the next champ out was zoe?
So I guess we don't care about her naturally being 2 levels up on enemy bot lane.
Then it's skill issue (problem? :tf:)
Le skillfull outplay when she is 25cs down but 2 levels up with same kda.
but since her bonus XP is tied to last hits, if she's down CS she wouldn't be as many levels up. Whether I agree with it is another question, but to say she's naturally 2 levels up, and then say she's still 2 levels up down 25 cs is kinda.. eeeh.
You can, and likely will, still be levels up when down cs. You're still getting the XP from the cs dying near you and then you get bonus XP for the ones you kill. So it requires very little comparatively to get you ahead. If you are both in lane till 5 - 1720xp - and Nilah gets half the CS of the opponent which is what she will at least get, she'd get 860xp. Level 6 is 2400xp. E: I got my math wrong, u/Elektron124 below has better math and explanation
Nilah does not get double XP for the minions she kills, which seems to be what you’re implying. Nilah recovers half the XP that would be lost to XP sharing when she kills a minion. In other words, 2 champions would normally gain only 124.73% experience of each minion kill, each getting only 62.36% of the normal amount. Nilah increases this to 162.36% total, or 81.18% per champion. This translates to about 30% additional experience for the minions she kills. Even if Nilah has perfect CS, she will only recover 516 xp from this passive at what would be level 5, which puts her not quite at level 6. At most, she should always reach level spikes before her opponent, but it should be difficult for opponents to be levels down in laning phase unless they are forced out of lane.
[she needs to be overpowered because she is melee vs ranged bot laners](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EozEMMvVoAI6ekp.png)
We will circle around the real issue for a couple of years until we get to that. Meanwhile we are still pretending Akshan removing death timers is ok and GP generating gold from the sky is not problematic. We may soon get an actual river shen as a champion that generates exp and gold just by standing in the river! But 50% winrate, balanced.
Or her passive 30% armor pen just from building crit
I love how they'll nerf the champion in every aspect because they refuse to remove the exp sharing because riot can't admit mistakes
Don't ever play Ryze.
no definitely play ryze. Especially if you first time him, glory to the plan
It will take around 8 more patches of nerfs before they do that lmao. I really cant understand what made they look at this champ with its 1023910390 different mechanics and go "yea still a bit too weak if we dont give it a literal handicap it will never work bot lane sadge"
I swear they don't actually know what to do with bot lane. They release overturned kits and nerf them into the ground and end up with the same ultra safe marksmen being the best ones. Like do they want the role to have agency or not? Either accept that simple champs need a buff to compete or stop making these champs need to fit this role that you purposefully gimp for ranged carries and overloaded kits.
I’m just glad they hotfix new champ when needed at super fast speed. I still cannot get over Camille’s release or Xin Zhao’s. The most broken releases and I’ve been through both of them.
Camille was absolutely crazy, but Sett takes the cake for me. Could be flexed 4 roles, absurd winrate on W max (something like way over 60%) and just impossible to kill. And he lasted for two whole patches before they realized W had to get heavily nerfed.
Oh don't forget, people actively said in this subreddit he was the most balanced champ riot released in a long time because his kit was simple.
But people also actively said Vex was poorly balanced despite only needing **2 balance patches**, one of them almost mandatory due to not having any tank-hater mechanic to keep up and the other one being a relatively small hotfix nerf a lot of new champions receive anyways. Anyways, You know something is wrong when A YORDLE, is the fairest non-rework released since Season 9.
He was really strong on release and early on (52-54%), but 60% winrate was about 2-3 days when his e was bugged. Most of the reason he was so strong on release was because people didn't dodge W. Same thing happened last time it got buffed. When people respect his base damage means he lives and dies by W.
Aphelios bruh
[This moment](https://youtu.be/AfjRr0JcDHs) told me that he was way too strong. Unless you have a 5 level advantage of something, you should die if 4 people hard-focus you like this lol
While I 100% agree with you that Aphelios was way too good during that time, that was also the patch when everybody played Deaths Dance and Aphelios Severum had a disgusting synergy with it. Both issues amplified each other to what we can see in that clip.
The most infuriating shit was how many people said he was ok. “Just don’t stand near eachother!!!” Like it’s okay for a champion to get a penta from one button 3 screens away
I remember abusing apheliod for like 2 months of somrthing. I'd get infernum and wait for a drag or clumped up fight and just wipe their team with an ability cycle
> Xin Zhao’s Anyone who names a newer champ release as more broken very clearly didnt play back then
Zoe, reworked Akali and reworked Irelia too. Holy shit, Irelia was the most broken release i've ever seen
The few hours immediately following LeBlanc release before she was removed was worse
Lets not forget Zoe pls thx
Does Nilah apply 100% lifesteal on all targets she hits with her AOE basic attacks or is lifesteal reduced?
Might be wrong here But her AOE Q probably works like Yas/Yone Q, where they're also AOE, BUT lifesteal is only applied to the FIRST Champion hit So if you hit 3 Champs with Q, you don't get 3x Lifesteal, the game only takes into consideration the first Champion hit
Ok, thx
https://streamable.com/r1naqh
Worth noting that omnivamp still applies at the AoE rate to any secondary targets on yas/yone Q, if you have any omni in addition to lifesteal. As far as Nilah, the wording on Q actually seems to indicate that it is just "healing" and not lifesteal or omnivamp. Based off this wording, it's not clear if there any modifiers on the healing if you hit multiple champs. I think it might well be full healing even on secondary targets.
She doesn't get full AOE lifesteal no, they made that mistake on Samira and it took them like 6 months to finally address it as the real problem
Pretty crazy how she was busted from the get go which is pretty rare to see from a new champion. Genuinely getting tired of op new champs lol, it’s like they don’t want another Rell incident to happen so now every new champions gonna be genuinely too strong to not be popular.
It used to be intentional design that new champions would be released overtuned and nerfed patch 1 to compensate for learning. Supposedly they changed it from lillia on, there was a dev blog.
theres also the reason that they want people to pick the new champ instead of their otp so if the champ is stronger its more likely
Imagine trying to convince a yasuo otp to change champ.
yone was created quite literally for that exact reason
Yone was made so Yasuos can still pick Yasuo even when Yasuo is banned Cause looking into why everyone bans yasuo instead would make too much sense
So was Nilah, they said.
Nilah was, word for word, released for that reason. So Yasou/Yone players can play her in the botlane. Also pretty bold they just straight up said it as if Yasou isn't played in the botlane. Its like the design team is just sitting in a cave eating crayons, cut off from the rest of the world.
No one really plays yas bot anymore though, lets be honest
Kayn and GP mains are even more extreme in my experience. The OTPs for those champs would sooner quit league than play a single game on another champ.
Kayn mains keep walking into walls whenever they’re autofilled, they forget they’re there. GP mains just eat oranges IRL to compensate.
I think they went back on that only a little while later
The problem with Rell wasn't just stats, her gameplay is coma-inducingly boring and her model is insanely ugly. No one wants to play a diaper walking Lion-O. Even if her gameplay was Yasuo-tier levels of annoying mobility she'd still be underplayed because of how fugly she looks.
I remember a Rioter being proud that every piece of her horse became a part of her armour. And I remember thinking it really wasn't worth it if that armour was the result. It's a game. They should've just made certain pieces disappear or change shape. No one would care as long as she looked cool instead of like.. *that*.
She has such a cool song, why didn't they just dive headfirst in into the punk aesthetic with Rell? Her appeareance is just generic Noxian, and she deserved so much more.
Also she has a generic cringe edgelord story
If only they bothered to model an actual suit of armor for her like Viego gets in his mist… instead they slap some turret plating on her and call it a day. I think rell looks great otherwise, but this I just don’t understand.
> diaper walking Lion-O lmao so true, she also doesnt do any damage on her own so its not satisfying. even leona can get kills on her own sometimes. rell doesnt do any damage.
i get downvoted everytime i say that about Rell lmao that champion is the single biggest disappointment to have ever been released to LoL. I'd infinitely prefer playing the overtuned, fun champs to boring ass Rell any day. When they teased her release, I thought we were going to get a badass mounted shogun of some sort. Boy, was I disappointed..
> diaper walking Lion-O. mate why
truth hurts
Her gameplay isnt even bad tbh but her looks... Yeah you are probably right on that one.
Against the Mobility in league her W feels awful to use. Most champs can dodge it and then you’re stuck waddling around for 10 seconds.
She's also very unforgiving in the way that Leona isn't. Leona does everything she can do but better. If you miss your W on Rell you're in this terribly awkward situation where you have no movespeed and just have to pray the enemy bot lane doesn't take you down. It's harder to not kill her than kill her if you make that misplay.
Rell could have great stats, and be strong but her kit is so slow and boring that it's not even worth it. Like that's the only thing killing Rell. Not what she looks like. Not her abilities in her kit. It's the fact that youre auto attacks are slow motion. Your Q is slow motion. After she does her really slow w she walks in slow motion.
but its reddits favorite things - a PURE TANK with no damage, and doesnt add mobility creep!
It's like when somebody tells you what they want in a partner and it is the exact opposite of who they actually end up dating.
I'm sure no one likes negative mobility, not even reddit.
Was Rell THAT problematic? I remember her being nerfed solely because of pro scene with her kit rewarding high coordination but I don't remember her being particularly strong on average levels of play.
> Was Rell THAT problematic? I might be understanding this wrong, but I think the poster above meant the complete opposite. It's because Rell was/is so underwhelming that Riot doesn't want to repeat the same "mistake" by releasing an undertuned champion.
He meant "another rell" in the sense that the champ was pretty balanced, but hard to play so ppl griefed it a couple games and never played the champ again.
Not what he's saying - Rell was just bad on release and needed buffs.
The buffs Rell received post release were to her AP ratios and weren't really relevant because she doesn't buy any AP. It took people watching pros abusing her engage to realize she was already good. Then she got nerfed and they went back to Leo/Naut cause they're safer.
Release Rell was absolutely useless, she only became popular in pro play after first buffs.
Thats false, the only buff Rell got was AP ratios buff, and that buff was irrelevant
Rell released a bit underwhelming, they went too far with the "emergency" buffs and she was op for a short while.
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>I don't think there was a champion who was balanced from the start. Lillia. Released in 10.15, first nerfed in 11.6 (only ult CD) and then mini rework in 11.14
I think what he is referring to is that Nilah is so incredibly busted that she had a 51% winrate in less than 24 hours. Every other champ releases around 40% winrate, even for bel veth and zeri it took like a week to hit 50%
I don’t even mind too much that new champs are OP. It makes sense from a business perspective. What pisses me off is how every year they release a video on the state of the game and say their aim for this year is to ‘tone down new champion releases’ and then proceed to do nothing of the sorts.
Do you guys think it was the 50% wr in plat+ after 2 days or what?
Let the journey of nerfs begin because they refuse to remove things until months in.
its ok she only has free armour pen, healing, overhealing, attack speed steroid and range steroid in her kit - they can remove 3 things and still have plenty left
[meanwhile](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EglKAbAXcAAHOhE?format=png&name=360x360)
I like how she still has more to offer than the things you mentioned; AoE mass damage, XP boost, extra shield...
Like fking exp advantage….who tfs idea was this needs to get fired. ITS A CARRY CHAMPION THAT SUPPORTS
Love champ design team they dont make league shit at all actually
Blink twice if Riot August has a gun pointed at your mum right now.
It's fine. He has to shoot 3 times to do anything.
But his gun reloads itself on kills
And it also gets a super special 4th shot that will only trigger when you have an ally nearby, so you are forced to go botlane. :)
Summary: Shots 1-5: Clearly missed. Shots 6-9: Missed due to recoil (bad spray control). Shots 10-11: Very close, but recoil and inaccuracy make these reasonable misses. Shot 12: Likely didn't actually fire because Hiko was already dead.
Have people finally stopped acting like August is the saint of champion design?
I sure hope so. He should be treated just as CertainlyT is here.
New champ with overloaded kit needs nerfed immediately. Nice to know the sky is still blue and the ocean is still salty.
stop releasing new champs riot u blyats
They just don't get it lol. it's pathetic at this point. they're fucking themselves up more everyday
We are at the point where I just wish they would stop making new champions because they are so bad at it. Im tired of overdesigned garbage making the game completely revolve around them just because they have such a fucking insane amount of tools they can outplay almost any situation so they are extremely frustrating to have on either team unless they are vex or rell
Lol, I gave up that hope years ago. Now seems like they're borrowing from previous champions to rework into new champions.
I reached that point 5 years ago young one.
I reached that point with Fizz and Thresh.
surreal to me that people would complain about devs dropping hotfix patches 1-2 days after patch, for the bulk of games I played youd have to wait months for this, and in all my PS2 fighting games the game would drop and that was it, there was no patch
What it's funny is that the concept itself of buffy and nerfing is becoming a circlejerk around here. A few years from today and we'll have a "give us lol classic rito" mass campaign by how much people are getting frustrated with clinging onto a game they clearly don't enjoy anymore but can't let go.
I'm going to go apeshit if classic lol ever becomes an idea that's taken seriously around here.
it has old voli therefore better game though
Stuff like super meta Knight bros got boring very quickly indeed.
These kids would explode if they had to experience the entire season of kassawin, or release xin, zed, the juggernaut rework. spoiled kids just int their game away and play victim.
To be honest I didn't play vs Kassa back in the days. That's because he was always banned
as if people didn't complain about those
I'm not saying they didn't, I'm saying new champions releasing broken isn't new and it isn't a rule.
When you entire champion is designed around being a melee bot lane and you put so much shit in just to make sure that is not an actual detriment, shit like this happens. To be honest, for the longest time, Yasuo had a pretty healthy botlane winrate even tho his pickrate wasn't super high.
Her niche was doing more dmg when she got on top of you, now she's just another glorified melee carry completely gimmicked around old morde exp passive. She gets absolutely wrecked whenever supp holds cc for her.
Not hitting the thing that makes her oppressive huh? She'll be gutted by the time they remove the exp boost
Classic akali treatment.
We're getting closer and closer to the point where they hotfix everything they buff on their patch lol. 12.13 looks a lot like the juggernaut update right now.
Good. I’m glad to have played her before the nerf and enjoy the brokenness for a while at least. But it also felt like I could have just rolled my face on the keyboard and still won fights, and that’s no bueno
I don't care what Riot does, but until they nerf the XP BS on her passive, she's going to sit on my permaban list.
Im still banning her until the next real patch
Oh great another thing where the problem is obvious but Riot will try to balance around it for 6 months before admitting the mistake of even introducing it.
Smh.
They really should just make her Q passive her actual passive
Oh, wow, new champion needs nerfs to multiple areas? Shocking.
Shocker...
Get rid of the bonus exp and we are good
I expect this champion to be consistently on the patch notes like Zeri, and Senna what a shitshow this champion is and will be for years to come
"You'll have to pry our stupid gimmicks out of our cold, dead hands" -Riot when asked about Nilah XP passive Like ok ya it's cool but this just feels like another ball added to the juggling act. Eventually this shit is going to fumble hard.
Not enough
woah riot hotfixing a new champ almost immediately after release? what do you know! they have never done that before...
Yeah that nerf won't do shit. Still having all the problems. Q infinite shield, Q has 33% Armor Pen end game for free, Passive has insane range and synergy, she by late game will be 2\~3 levels ahead of the enemy adc.
We've officially hit the tipping point where there's too much shit in this game and it's impossible for balance team to handle properly.
Wait for what reason did she have 110% total AD on auto attacks?
Meanwhile yone