devtrackers.gg
Read moreI genuinely think it’s completely fine to have some pro play oriented, super high skill champions that are always bad for low elo. I don’t think that in a game with 150+ heroes, every single one needs to be easily accessible to all players. Even if it would be more fair mathematically for these heroes to have an accessible value floor, it would still feel incredibly unbalanced if 20 games on Annie and 20 games on Azir had an equal power level. I think it would deeply invalidate almost every other champion’s purpose if you could just easily pick up and play these pro play heroes, but they also had a way higher skill cap. I also think that it can makes the game less interesting if you tune these kits down to basic levels. They still need to not let pro meta get stale and imo just let them have shit winrates in low elo.
I guess in some sense it depends what you want to watch in pro play. The flashy kits are very entertaining and seeing the skill cap and the big pop off moment...
The only time I have a "problem" so to speak with pro-bound champions is when they profess that they're broadly approachable.
Azir is clearly a high skill cap champion. His pick rate is directly influenced by his pro presence. Meanwhile, Garen is the kind of champion that really shouldn't be in pro jail. He's meant to be an intro champion.
I think Jinx falls into the Garen camp and Aphelios falls into the Azir camp, to provide a few more examples. Really this is more of a sliding scale, but directionally this is where my thinking is.
Ultimately this means signing ourselves up for constantly tuning Azir, Aphelios, K'Sante, and similar champions who are going to be viable in pro or not at all. They're aspirational and difficult. That means the average player will fail on them. That's fine. But if they aren't even pro viable, then no one gets to have fun and there's no more aspiration.
Personally I'm comfortable with Azir, K'Sante, etc. having a permane...
Read more