[2020] The Review: Patch 10.12 Balance Change Analysis by the Numbers

I haven't played her yet, but I assume the increase in winrate to Akali was because she can now oneshot backline at level 9 again? That would explain the large bump

(not on the balance team, just a bad mid player)

The balance team usually hit the mark, Reddit just likes to amplify negative opinions and doesn't really talk about positive opinions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc

https://i.imgur.com/lUNI4Dq.png

I mean, Perkz suggests that the Rakan change (70-270>>70-290) on W won't affect Rakan til 17-18, which is incorrect. Most Rakan players in solo queue are maxing W at the moment, according to every third party source I could find (such as op.gg etc). Maybe Rakan is skilled differently in pro play, but this will be a buff to him in levels of play where more frequent aggressive play takes place. I don't know that it will make him significantly better than other strong enchanters like Lulu, but it's still going to help somewhat.

there is a good reason why the Balance team is receiving huge and justifiable criticism!

I think it's fair to criticize the balance team for some decisions they may, as I said, sometimes they miss the mark, but people tend to point to a single choice and say 'this is the reason why the balance team should be criticized!' and ignore all the other changes that are uncontroversial.

'Hit the mark' here means 'They meet my expectations as a player'. I have no involvement in any balance decision, though I play League enough that I do have particular expectations :)

You and I are allowed to have different expectations. I think that, in general, the balance team make the right decisions.

As an AD main, I am sure you have some thoughts on the state of the game right now and my op.gg is not going to change those, it's just going to give you something to attack or justify that your opinions are better than mine.

I personally think TTK in the game right now is too low, which is part of the reason AD feels so weak to play, but I also acknowledge it may be difficult to change that in the middle of the season. The competitive meta appears to be shifting towards a more AD-centric game, but it's still really bursty which makes it unforgiving of mistakes and makes crit ADCs, which are disproportionately less mobile, much more punishing to play.

Right now I am Diamond 4 - I barely played any ranked this season, literally only played my placement games in March and stopped playing, hit Diamond this weekend and had a really unlucky stream of games during that weekend. I peaked at Master tier in August last season. So, while my rank is not as good as yours currently, it's definitely high enough to have a qualified opinion on how the game works.

I'm not aware of anyone at Riot 'attacking' the community or pro players.

They are just bad at the game and their expectations are mostly invalid, no good for balance team.

The game is still balanced around different levels of play, so I don't think it's fair to say that their opinions are invalid. They might not necessarily be amateur pro players, but the majority of the players of the game are in those ranks and so if something is overtuned to them that's something that should be addressed in some cases (I agree with you in other cases; if a player is failing a skill check, like losing lane due to poor wave manipulation, they should learn to beat that skill check rather than nerfing the champion that abuses poor wave manipulation)