R0gueFool

We are looking at champions with high ban rates. Some champions will always have a high ban rate due more to frustration than to power. And I'm curious to hear your thoughts as an Akali player.

Would you rather Akali being objectively weak but less frequently banned or balanced but with a high ban rate?

I suspect players would rather be able to play their champion favorite champions even if they are on the weaker end. But what are your, and anyone else who mains high ban rate champions, thoughts?

Its just nerfing his Ad growth per level, so it will effect each shot, though I wouldn't expect it to be drastic.

Thanks! And thanks for making such great content, its always fun to check out your take on patch notes, even if I disagree and get frustrated at times =P.

Yes as we get into higher levels of play the player base shrinks and an individual's performance carries a larger weight on the total data for sure. As you know, this is especially true when looking at pro play where certain players just mesh with certain champions, and even if that champion is thought of as weak the right player piloting them turns them into a force to be reckoned with. Asol and Singed players are a great example of this, where they have a small player base but when you see one there is a good chance they have 100s of games on the champion.

But at some level it is also a good thing, we wouldn't want brand new Akali players to have a sub 30% winrate just so that skilled ones are balanced at 50%. So finding where we are happy with those extremes is good, and something I think we could be a bit better at. At some level, this comes down to the different balance levers we have talked about, where we want to find levers to buff a champion (like Akali) at lower s...

We do worry about over buffing them for sure, that is why we have been hesitant to give them any buffs before the crit item changes went live.

A large part of the reason that Yi is so tricky is that his identity basically requires him to be a low elo stopping stat checking champion when balanced for higher levels of play. So the trick really comes down to what areas do we think we can buff that higher skilled players are better at taking advantage of.

Ideally, we can reach a place where all champions are viable at all elos, but that will always be tough. In order for champions to feel different, and have skill expression, some will inevitably perform better at different skill levels. In the past, this has often been a major reason for champion kits to receive new mechanics or reworks that focus on a bit of skill expression. A great example in this patch is Soraka. While not a stat checky champion Soraka had been underperforming at the highest levels of play but was...

The total cost of the item is still the same, but this does mean you have to wait a tad longer before you can turn your amp tome into a NLR so it is more difficult to build. Thus why we think of it as a nerf.

But you are correct, buying the item outright largely unaffected (other than the -10 AP).

Scaling AP ratio is an option for sure, we choose to go this route because of how mid tier item build paths are much smoother in Wild Rift (asking players to sit on gold for longer).

The new items did help him, but he was still in a weaker state than the rest of the champion roster. We are hoping that these help push him up a little bit, without pushing him over the top.

As for the idea of pushing him into the "must ban" category. That is not our goal, and we don't want any champions to be sitting at that point. We want players to be able to play the champions they love, and will try and find ways to adjust/nerf them if they are banned to often (though this can be tricky).

Yi has never been much of a high elo jungle pick, and tends to dominate in lower skilled play while being a bit too predictable at the higher levels. That is what has always made him tricky to balance, if we make him balanced at high skilled play he dominates for the rest of the player base. So we tend to be carful with balance changes for champions like this.

Mostly because Lee Sin and Akali aren't actually preforming very well at higher elos. They are popular and frustrating for sure, I won't deny that, but they don't preform nearly as well as many players on reddit think.

Honestly it doesn't matter what elo range I look at with them. When I look at the top 50% of players, the top 10%, 5%, or even when I watch progames the seem to preform fine but are not oppressively powerful.

Obviously there is some frustration/perception with these champions, and we are looking into it, but in terms of raw power we just don't see it.

Good question! Honestly, this could be a whole talk and it can be tricky for sure. I'll try to use crit users as my examples because of their recent item changes, and they have a prominence right now.

Depending on the class of champions we see different levels of item variety. Some classes should have plenty of options (crit users) but if they tend to build the same few items then it's likely that those items might be a problem.

Champions within a class. Even within a class different champions care about different stats. Even within crit users, there are different secondary stats that champions care about. Draven and Miss Fortune don't really care about attack speed, they are about large amounts of AD (for Draven's basic attacks, and Miss Fortune's abilities). So buffing Bloodthirster was a good way to buff them while also buffing an item that felt like it was still being underrepresented in the class as a whole.

Conversely, we are seeing crit users with f...

Oh thank God, cause I don't.

High elo is where she has been performing the best. This should make a rather safe champion with a powerful engage tool a tad more vulnerable in the early game where higher elo players tend to be a bit better about capitalizing on the early game.

She'll still be totally viable, and if you are enjoying and her keep it up.

For ADCs Bloodthirster, Phantom Dancer, Guardian Angel, or Wit's End are all great buys.

For actives I recommend Stasis or Quicksilver (people HIGHLY underestimate boot enchants power).

If you are looking for defense options for mages then Rod of Ages, Archangel's Staff, and Crystalline Reflector go a long way (again alongside the actives).

We agree with you that Death Cap shouldn't be a rush item. IMO it works best when it's a 3rd+ item, and we want to shift it more into that space.

Part of the reason why its a little trickier in Wild Rift is because every item other than Sheen) builds out of a 500g starting component. So it's much trickier for us to give extra power to items that require you to sit on a large chunk of gold before you can buy them.

For those that don't know Needlessly Large Rod (NLR) costs 1250g, but doesn't build out of anything. So getting the item is much smoother in Wild Rift, as you don't need to sit on as much gold. We could make Amp Tome not build into NLR, and ask players to sit on their gold longer, but we like this smoothness so we decided to go this route and see how things play out.