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PhreakRiot

PhreakRiot



02 Aug

Patch 13.15 Notes

Comment

Originally posted by Sylent0o

A multiplier that you are actively pretending it's stronger than it is. Most champions HAVE to buy % pen item 2nd or 3rd so the armor and mr and so much worse than hp. Hence why overgrowth and scaling hp rune has been on the rise

About half of Yorick's common matchups don't get % pen from their kit or common item buys. Additionally, the durability being placed into armor/mr is resistant to %hp damage, which several of Yorick's matchups have.

I'm not saying it's strictly a buff, but there's also a really severe negativity bias here.

Patch 13.15 Notes

Comment

Originally posted by Goldensburg

Is the health at lv18 meant to be 1650 on live? The preview said 1950 and so does the client patch notes but then the website patch notes say 1650 along with live.

I'm unsure. I meant to ship 1950 and either made a mistake (entirely possible) or someone tuned her down because of playtesting feedback or another reason (also entirely possible).

I'm very happy to revisit Maiden durability if Yorick ends up in a bad state next patch.

Patch 13.15 Notes

Comment

Originally posted by Whodoesntlovetwob

It's removed from tier 1 now? Why?

Tier 1 smite can't damage champions and doesn't slow pets.

Tier 2 and tier 3 smite (the two that can damage champions) should be unchanged against champions and mimic all the same rules against pets unless someone else shipped a change meant as a jungle nerf.

Patch 13.15 Notes

Comment

Originally posted by yorick_support

On lethality build, it might be stronger at rank 1 but falls of at rank 2. There's less incentive to build hp items, we go for build pure damage instead.

Having base armor/mr is functionally a multiplier on the HP ratio. The late game HP ratio is essentially higher than before.

Patch 13.15 Notes

Comment

Originally posted by Raffaele520

I can understand the smite changes on pets, now it should become more a team effort.

But why removing the slow from the first smite upgrade? It doesn't impact the early game, it's just a f you to junglers. Are all main ADC at riot or what

Pretty sure that's a misquote in the patch notes or it's someone else's change. I didn't remove the slow from t2 smite.


01 Aug

Should Riot remove Mythics?

Comment

Originally posted by microsoftpaintt

I'd be curious about champs like Zeri/MF/Samira who have abilities that can crit. Zeri in particular has a way higher pickrate with Navori but she still has a decent amount of games with IE. IE has almost a 2% higher winrate(lolalytics).

IE is goated for Samira. Collector IE is a cracked build. Yeah the untargetability sometimes matters but she's so good at applying both of those items.

Zeri is also a good IE user, yeah. Players should typically buy it instead of Quickblades.


31 Jul

Should Riot remove Mythics?

Comment

Originally posted by ThomasFromNork

Ie now has the opposite problem though. There's like no champs that buy it bc it's extremely underwhelming in that it just provides stats

This is false. It’s BiS on Yasuo Yone Jinx Caitlyn Aphelios, and maybe a few others that I haven’t checked.

Phreak - A Clarification on Win Rate Targeting

Comment

Originally posted by InfieldTriple

Maybe I should clarify, I know you do game design, I meant like I didn't get the impression that you are on the preseason team (which would be responsible for changes like changing how top interacts with the game). And if you are, that is not the purpose of this particular video and the Aatrox change. If that's not fair either, I can delete my comment because apparently I'm woefully uninformed.

Really just depends on the scope of the work. We absolutely can make large systemic changes on the Live pod.

Phreak - A Clarification on Win Rate Targeting

Comment

Originally posted by InfieldTriple

Right, its not really Phreaks job. He is on balance changes, not game design stuff. Maybe he will do some preseason work in that vein but that is not the point of what he can do as far as balance changes are concerned over a short period.

Not really an accurate description of my job, tbh.

Phreak - A Clarification on Win Rate Targeting

Comment

Originally posted by D4ZR

Phreak talks here about having top lane carries feel good in the late game... which honestly I don't care about.

I might be in the minority here, but I'm just interested in top lane feeling less horrible for the other 80 percent of the game. I think all top lane changes should be completely focused on fixing how a entire game can be UTTERLY lost for top lane in the span of 1 minute. Bad jg gank from a counter pick matchup into getting frozen for 20 minutes OR the other option getting heralded 5 plated and being at an absurd gold deficit.

I'm not interested in aatrox being able to delete champs in 1 combo. I want top lane to be punished less for 1st pick and I want less snowball, less freeze, less unfun bs.

P.S. f**k Aatrox

One of the tasks coming up (IDK if it's on my sprint or not, I wasn't in last week) is identifying what we want the shape of top lane to be in modern League of Legends.

Most players tend to really not like the results of pure split pushing and I think I agree with them. Feels like they single-handedly decide who wins. Compared to a fed ADC, you can usually one-shot the ADC with Rengar or something and at least more people are involved in the game. This is a very short summary, to be clear.

I have ideas. Regardless, there needs to be a holistic look. Top lane in particular probably needs to snowball less, at least in the early game. It probably needs to be less decided by jungle ganks. And we need to figure out what actions a top laner is meant to take after 10 or so minutes into the game. Again, there is a lot to look at here.

What's funny (and this isn't really targeted at you in particular), last time I made a video talking about how I'd like to see top la...

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Is toplane going to be stuck in a gigabuff into nerf loop?

Comment

Originally posted by mystireon

out of curiousity, while 17% on u.gg isn't exactly the highest among champs and I'm sure it might also just be a deceptive stat.

What if anything does the balance team do when a champ has too high a pick rate for whatever reason?

Like I know some champions are insanely popular even when not really that strong but I can only assume that still has an effect on the game perspective as a whole as it could make metas feel stale so what happens then?

Like Kai'sa for example who's winrate seems about average with other ADCs but who's pickrate is like 40~% according to u.gg

I think punishing a champion for being popular is a very silly approach.


30 Jul

In case you're wondering if there's been kill inflation in LoL, Peyz got his 500th kill within 7 months of joining the LCK

Comment

Originally posted by Ronizu

Do you have any stats of the average kills per game in soloqueue, let's say diamond+? Not sure if this is something you guys keep track of (well, you probably do in some way, but I don't know if the stats are easily accessible for you) but it would be interesting to see.

Yes.

In case you're wondering if there's been kill inflation in LoL, Peyz got his 500th kill within 7 months of joining the LCK

Comment

Worth noting that this is specially LCK games, not necessarily League of Legends as a whole. Historically the LCK has had incredibly low bloodiness, which was not remotely representative of the typical League game.

Is toplane going to be stuck in a gigabuff into nerf loop?

Comment

Originally posted by ToTheNintieth

Is that so? I'm using lolalytics as a point of reference, which has him at 52-ish in silver and gold and on the upper side of 54 for platinum and diamond, going up with ranking. Last I remembered, lolalytics was called a reasonably close approximation of internal data by Rioters. Is there another public site you'd recommend as having more accurate data?

Lolalytics win rates are fake. Look in the top right corner. See where it says "Average Emerald+ Win Rate: 52.xx%"? Yeah, you have to subtract that. That's the baseline for any champion at that tier for that website.

The vast majority of "but look at the win rate!" posts make this mistake.

Is toplane going to be stuck in a gigabuff into nerf loop?

Comment

Originally posted by l_Kage_l

Thank you for explaining. Your communication here has been astounding ever since you got into the balance team. I bet every one appreciates this, please please keep it up!

My pleasure. My challenge now is to have better emotional control and not let the frequent antagonism get to me.

Is toplane going to be stuck in a gigabuff into nerf loop?

Comment

Originally posted by ToTheNintieth

It's interesting because despite Reddit claiming Aatrox is giga-busted, he was in 1 of 9 LCS playoff games this week and there isn't a single minor league on the patch that has him at 100% presence.

His winrate in solo queue is off the charts, though

It’s like 51-52% at every skill bracket. That is well within the charts.

Patch 13.15 Preview by Phreak | League of Legends

Comment

Originally posted by WoonStruck

How many times have we buffed damage as opposed to durability

The problem with this is that they don't question "how significantly have we buffed damage in any given instance versus durability, and how often?"

Nerfs are most often flat nerfs, or nerfs to base stats as opposed to scaling now, while buffs VERY often include buffs to scaling, especially in terms of CDs. Riot has given many significant scaling buffs over the years when champs aren't popular but aren't weak, and the overall impact typically goes unseen even when they become popular as most games don't reach 4-5 items.

Mid-late game fights are extremely obnoxious now as a result of this. This is why games are often nuclear arms races. Champs just scale too fast in general now combined with the global gold increases, power creep among items, and runes over the 13+ years league has been out.

This wasn’t a thorough analysis. It was simply, hey, in 15 minutes we can check a binary patch note. This was just an off-hand comment, don’t read too much into it.

We have much better ways of tracking the actual game impact. We have a report for how long each death takes, for example.

Is toplane going to be stuck in a gigabuff into nerf loop?

Comment

Originally posted by Makomako_mako

you're referring to viewer impact though, with things like measures of excitement, i would say

Yeah absolutely. However, a huge portion of the game is driven by pro play. I'm not talking about our changes in reaction, I'm talking about actual regular player behavior. Azir's play rate spiked when he got buffed in 13.11. It then spiked again (at a somewhat similar magnitude) because he got picked in pro. Like, the act of Faker picking him almost had as much impact as 2% win rate of buffs.

So when the pro play meta was Jinx vs. Aphelios every game and a snoozefest tank vs. tank in top lane, it's incredibly easy for players to say, "See? The game is just all about whichever bot lane wins, top is useless." And while certainly that is directionally accurate, the degree to which that's true isn't. But from what I've seen of playoffs so far, the carriability of each role seems a lot more fair. And I expect that to trickle down to other players.

Outside of that, pro is also a decent indication of the game overall. It's certainly not identical to the ...

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Is toplane going to be stuck in a gigabuff into nerf loop?

Comment

Originally posted by Makomako_mako

2:1 ratio of carries to non-carries in top in pro play

why?

Plenty of reasons. A few:

  • Side lane 1v1s are cool
  • This is a role with a dedicated source of gold/xp income. Players of the role should be able to use it.
  • Every role should be able to carry but you shouldn't have to every game.

Tank vs. tank top lanes are generally low excitement and tends to actually pan out as just waiting around to fight around whichever bot lane wins. That said, tanks are good for League of Legends. They should be viable in many roles so that teams always have access to a strong tank in champ select across a variety of roles.

Is toplane going to be stuck in a gigabuff into nerf loop?

Comment

Originally posted by Jstin8

Wait, I’m sorry if I’m reading this wrong, but are you saying that Sion nerfs were planned for a perfectly balanced champ simply because you felt there were too many tanks top and the nerfs for the actual over preforming tank weren’t ready yet?

Because assuming I havent made a complete hash out of understanding your comment, that seems like a completely shit idea

Sion isn't perfectly balanced. When planning changes on 13.14 his win rate was well within reason for calling for a nerf in anywhere except the top ~1% of players. But that's discretionary. We don't balance the game purely by numbers, we are merely informed by them. We've stated that we'll nerf something if it reaches some threshold and we hold to that. The rest is our choice. For example, Kai'Sa only just barely qualifies as a data-driven nerf because she was 80% present in top leagues over 13.12 and 13.13. If she had 8% lower pro presence in 13.12 she wouldn't qualify. But even outside of that we'd have acted anyway.

Also, K'Sante hasn't qualified as a data-driven pro nerf since the 13.12 nerf. There's no data in any level of play that says he should be a nerf target. Nothing indicates he's "problematic" from a solo queue win rate, ban rate, or pro presence stance. This doesn't mean he shouldn't receive changes.