The most watched stat to gauge the balance of a game or character is the win rate. Ideally, the champion should have 50% wins to win as many games as he loses. Players know that such a balance is impossible for all champions, so the general public agrees that a character whose gains fluctuate between 48% and 52% is balanced. Stats alone can sometimes lie, and this time the blame lies with the players rather than the Riot Games teams.
weak championship build
Most League of Legends players make the big mistake of buying the best items to equip their champions with. In most cases, while the most popular item is definitely the most suitable item to play the character, there are still plenty of heroes with approximate win stats with poor builds. Perhaps the most recent example involves Viego. When it was released, the champion was very strong and had two builds: one based on critical hits and the other more tank-oriented. The Cretan version uses the Kraken Slayer as a legendary item, while other versions prefer the Divine Slayer. After some beatings, the fallen king grew nervous.
Then the win rate plummeted and players guessed that Riot Games killed the champion. Only the design of the Divine Slayer was not designed for Viego and the Champion is much more effective with the Kraken Slayer. His win rate was absolute due to his low constitution, but picking the right items was better. Even after a few months, a significant portion of Viego gamers still choose the wrong version, and it is still their most popular version according to statistics. However, the devs have spoken about it and explained why they don’t feel they need to restore the champion’s balance. And Viego is not alone in this situation.
 mushrooms |
 Luden Eco (50.4% WR) |
 Immortal Shield Bow (52.6%) |
 Ezreal |
 Spectral Skiing (49%) |
 tripled (53.6%) |
 Camille |
 Divine Slayer (50.9%) |
 Trinity (53.2%) |
 viego |
 Divine Slayer (48.6%) |
 Crack hunter (52.1%) |
 hekarim |
 Chemical tanks (47.2%) |
 tripled (51.3%) |
The appearance of problems
This is why the Riot Games teams are faced with a very difficult problem: should they come to terms with the champion, how most players play him, or is it better to stick to the original vision of the character? Generally the second option is preferred, the developers still have a more global vision of the game than the players. Indeed, some symbols considered weak do not change. However, this could have the opposite effect because if the public feels that Riot Games is leaving the champion, they will stop playing. Some characters can disappear from games when they aren’t particularly bad when played well (personally, we recommend Ken Muramana for obvious reasons).
Of course, we shouldn’t just blame the players. In the examples above, many champions are more effective with Trinity Force in Season 12. However, the item was relatively bad for a few months when the legends came out, so players still ignore it today. If the product had been better, it would probably be much more popular now. Also, let’s not forget that there are contrary cases where the developers did not take into account that certain objects would be better suited to champions for whom they were not intended. (Akali Chemtank, we are thinking of you).
Source : Millenium
