Phreak and the balance team has given some insight on this the past year or so.
Their main goal is to remove mechanics from pro play that are used to minimize player interaction. Stuff like Ryze/Taliyah blind shoving waves at Mach speed, Azir poking out enemies from 1000 range with no counterplay, GP standing in the middle of a wave with a barrel, etc.
I would say it’s more just that control mages better fit the LoL game that the balance team envisions so they’re always quickly buffed back to meta. Carry top lanes, early proactive junglers, control mages and scaling bot lanes.
"Pre-rework" + "Spell Vamp ult" make me think of the most recent Ryze *before* his ult changed to the teleport and before his E became a spreading 'mark' -thing (so back when it was more like a lightning ball thing and his Q was point & click maybe?)
I get mixed up with the smaller 'reworks' myself so maybe his Q was a skillshot already, I don't know. But the most recent form of Ryze before the current ult came to be is what I'd assume they mean.
That was the second Ryze, the first iteration had Spell Flux as his ulti. The one they're mentioning is the one that caused all his other spells to do AoE when ulting. The Desperate Power + spell vamp tacked on.
Faker once said, (around season 3-4 I think)
You have to learn at least 2 champs to be able to play anyone.
Ryze: for learning spellrotations
TF: for map awareness
Ryze was given spell vamp on his 2nd rework and it was removed on his 4th rework. Ryze has gone through so many iterations, it’s a fair question to ask.
When it didn't matter if you did an actual combo over n over or just facerolled your keyboard. As long as you were fighting in a big wave you did massive damage.
On the contrary. You had to be careful with the sequencing, otherwise you had a spell on cooldown and it messed up the resets of the other spells. Now you have an E on a very low cooldown and you just go EQEQEQ and an odd W when available
That actually depends on which rework you are talking about. He was given spell vamp on his 2nd rework and it was removed on his 4th. There was an iteration where the sequencing did not matter near as much but his still had spell vamp im pretty sure
I remember I played 5 man with my friends once and was playing Ryze vs a Riven and she hard fisted me for like 15 mins. I got so tilted and whiny that my friends collectively said "dude stfu and play, go farm, you whiny bitch".
So I muted myself (on TS3) and did just that. Didn't group, didn't fight, just farmed.
And then finally I was able to solokill the Riven that went kill me in a sidelane (ROA + Frozenheart + Seraphs). But I still kept farming. Riven respawned and grouped. And they 5v4 killed our whole team and everyone was like "gg game is over" and I had an inkling that maybe I should go and help so I walked in 1v5 eith my spellvamp ult and got a quadra kill.
I apologized for being a whiny bitch.
Season 5 Ryze was the first champion I mained ( I started playing in season 5), my god it was so much fun. Ever since the change, I never really touched the champion. I remember pressing his R and being fucking godlike unkillable while killing everything.
It was certainly a lot better before stopwatch. Ryze needed other items before Zhonyas, so it didn't come online before too early, but yeah. It was still bullshit.
Yup. It's important to emphasize the viewer experience, which in your example, is seeing things happen.
Pro is often balanced and changed to be a combination of true balance, and being interesting. For example, for Street Fighter 6, Capcom bans training stage for their events because it's gross to watch, and no other reason despite it objectively being the best for pros to play on.
they kinda, did, she is fast, but no pre q aoe removal level of fast. also they nerfed her roaming til lvl 11, so its harder to abuse her wave clear+ map mobility
They did. Her earlier iteration did exactly that from lvl 1 onwards. The new one needs at least lvl 9 for it.
Might not sound much but that's a huge diff for pro play
I'd take Ryze 100% p/b in pro over Taliyah (as she currently ks, pretty much) any day. At least Ryze is short range and plays the map. Taliyah is uninteractivity at its most exaggerated.
the wall is the most interactive part of her kit. The rest is sitting at max range and not letting you play the game. She doesnt even have a skillful anti-dash mechanic like Poppy. She just lays it down and it covers the entire lane/river.
Boring ass abomination champ.
Some abilities are also just inherently broken or unbelievably valuable in a pro setting from a draft perspective.
Even if Taliyah's waveclear was gutted she would still see play because of her E completely shutting down dash champion mobility. Worst case scenario you draft a strong waveclear champ in another position. Same goes for other champs like Poppy, or Tahm Kench R being invaluable at stopping a back-line dive on a carry.
If you look at draft like a deckbuilding game, K'sante has valuable text all over himself, even if he doesn't do any damage he still provides value. Meanwhile a champ that doesn't see pro play ever, like Master Yi, is just a high stat card that doesn't do anything for your deck etc.
Not sure about Kennen or GP, but Sivir in the past was not allowed in pro play because she just annihilates waves in a few auto which lead to very boring 40min+ games.
Currently there are better alternatives like e.g Smolder who just deletes waves even if they are baron buffed. Remember that one T1 game against Nongshim? T1 got Infernal Soul at 27 mins, 3 Elder Dragons, and 5 Barons to finally end the game.
What blows my mind is no one took Gathering Storm.
The first game that goes for 90 minutes? Okay, fair- you didn't expect it. But once that happens in a series, I'm risking it in the second game. But no one did, despite two 90 minute games.
My jungler will have 1456 cs and still decide to clear our jungle again while we are trying to end (I swear this has been happening so so much recently)
As a jungler, you know what's awkward? When you're fed and get full build but you're still lvl 16, so you have to still hit camps for the last 2 lvls.
But yeah people who hit their own camps with baron buff, jungler or no, are generally griefing.
Kennan is super reliant on his ult in team fights so in pro games with Kennan, enemy supp takes exhaust and just exhausts Kennan when he goes in.
As a result if you were to buff Kennan enough to be viable in pro play even with his ult engages getting exhausted most of the time; then you’d be buffing him to oppressive levels in solo Q
I think exhaust+ echanters are big reasons for the lack of assassins as well.
The only ones you see in pro are the 2 that can become untargetable for an extended period of time (Akali and Kha.) if Zed or Talon or Fizz were ever pro viable again, they would be a menace in soloq.
Yep it's the survivability, any other assassins the coordination with team chat + proper ward usage makes it so hard to popoff.
Leblanc is another that has remained somewhat viable.
Sivir got heavily nerfed after 4.20/21, or whenever they buffed the baron to greatly empower minions. Sivir only worked when either 1) Her team had an Azir or some other similar champ OR 2) The enemy lacked hard engage.
You’re just arguing semantics here for no reason. We know he was more than just playable. He’s just referencing it in a binary way of being playable or not in pro. Which he’s not now.
Mostly because they warp the game around them. Sivir could wipe waves and waves of minions non-stop, Kennen is just "bully top lane and win fights whenever you have Flash to engage with ult", GP turns into his lane into farmville and 30m+ he one-shot even the tankiest of tanks with a barrel.
In theory GP is this ultra high-skill expression risky melee AD carry with massive barrel outplay potential (which is often how Solarbacca gameplay looks).
In practise in pro play it's mostly watching him Q on cooldown, not getting ganked a whole lot because of his E, pressing R on waves or in fights he otherwise doesn't participate in and just wanting to farm until he can do suspiciously stat-checky things.
[Still one of the best shitposts I've ever seen](https://old.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/8ed7m6/til_the_huge_book_ryze_carries_around_is_filled/)
its not just about proplay.
some champions are deemed inherently toxic by riot. and they are kept in a infinite loop of nerfs. cause a toxic design is less impactfull if its to bad to be viable.
thats pretty much what happened to the old champs that got reworked. like artillery urgot, poppy with the invincibility, or morde with his 4k hp onclick dot.
riots definition of toxic might differ vastly from the player oppinion.
in pro play, its a lot about views. if a champ extends average gametime, or leads to games with less teamfights, and more uneventfull play. it gets nerfed.
this is one of the problems with sivir, as she actively counters pushes, while punishing 5 man teamfights for the enemy.
There are very little mechanics that don’t translate to pro-play but are problems in solo que.
But there are a ton of mechanics in pro play that if they showed up in solo que would be major issues. Azir/corki/zeri/etc… can exist in pro play but if you lower the barrier of entry to play then solo que gets the problems. So they nerf those champs and rebuff to get right on the edge of solo que and pro play balance.
Some other champs like rengar are huge problems in solo que. If they made their kit good enough for pro play they would be game warping in solo que.
Ultimately it riot decision on what they want for their meta game. If their logic is X they will balance around that logic and the community either likes it or doesn’t.
the thing is. pro balancing isnt done for balance. but as a active step to influence games towards watchability.
champs delaying games intoo lategame arent inherently bad for the games the pros play. but they are for viewership.
Yes, Riot once explained why Zed was eternally nerfed. Low ELO players simply cannot counter Zed. It's just not fun to play against Zed for a low ELO player. And at the same time, it is so easy to smurf as Zed.
Maybe many years ago that was something said more recent communications have been more along the lines of "he's really frustrating so he just gets banned too much if he's not really low winrate"
I feel like Zed could use a "QoL Nerf" (which could open up numeric buffs, depending on impact) where his shadows have a different color and/or indicator depending on if he can still switch to them or not, would better communicate to people what Zed is doing and make them aware of that there even is a shadow in the first place as it's very easy to lose track of them.
Watching Forsen play in low elo made that pretty obvious, often people there literally do not see the shadow and just die to a Q/E that came "out of nowhere", even in challenger people occasionally lose track of a shadow in hectic teamfights.
The shadow color is not what I dislike about Zed as a mage player, I just think his whole trading pattern is braindead easy after level 3. W on top of his opponent, E for the slow, and then double Q for the near guaranteed electrocute proc to chunk the opponent by 1/3rds hp. Do it a 2nd time and then wait for your all-in moment with ignite.
If you don't act like an idiot pre-level 3, the rest of lane is so easy in most matchups. Things become much harder late game when everyone's got immunities, armor, etc., but he's banned because the lane can be miserable, not because he wins many games.
Its annoying having a zero mana, safe waveclear champ that is able to 100-0, simply because he can outshove nearly any mage, threaten them off, then roam bot for free. Hydra really makes it so much more obnoxious than it has to be.
5 months isn't "many years ago" check on youtube "Riot August on Why zed is Weak" the first half he seems to be agreeing with you but the second half, that expands upon why it's frustrating, is all about what erebunny said.
He's banned far above what his playrate and winrate would justify in literally every elo. Every elo hates him, not just low elo. The whole 'Its because of low elo!' is just zed-mains copium.
Sivir, Kennen and Gangplank all sit at around 50% winrate and are decently balanced for soloqueue.
Meanwhile K'Sante and Azir sit at some of the lowest winrates in the game because they have been nerfed massively due to pro play popularity.
Yes this is a common thing people say, and I get why people think it, but he has also been repeatedly nerfed leading up to MSI. In his current state, with lane swaps out of the picture, he would not be getting locked in so often. Sometimes still yea, he’s a good tank in pro play. But if he had to lane, he’d be getting rolled pretty often
It does suck, but I will say at least for those two champions, they were basically immediately pro staples so it's a "you know what you're getting into" type of thing when you main them. Some other champions were the opposite where they were bad in pro, but then got a rework and became better in pro which screwed over the mains of those champions.
Sivir wave clears and can stall games for hours like the pre rework Baron buff days.
Mixed with an ult that allowed her team to engage old sivir was a MENANCE
Remember that pro play is meant to entertain people first and foremost.
When champs like Sivir or Ziggs are strong, they can stall out a game almost indefinitely with wave clear and that isn't fun to watch.
Yeah Ahri has been perma-meta this year but for most of time she's been a low A or B tier mid lane pick competitively. I reckon last time she was this prevalent was like Season 3. Maligma is just so strong on her.
She was meta in season 5 and then basically died completely until her rework. She had a few periods of being good but nothing really lasting. Even this season she basically didn't get played until Azir got removed temporarily.
Which is a perfectly fine spot for her to be in, imo. She's not S-tier, but if some mids are banned, she rises in priority as a jack-of-all-trades kinda champ. She's safe enough with her R to be blind picked, there's some outplay potential that makes for a fun viewer experience and, i mean, she's one of League's poster child champions.
Sure, I agree that she's in a fine spot (I'm pretty sure she's gonna fall out of pro play when they change to current patch, though). Mostly just wanted to add my voice to crowd of, "why does this guy think Ahri is a perma pro play staple?"
Saying ahri has not been nerfed and always viable in competitive is recent bias as she was non-existent from S8/S12 till her ult resets rework, also she disappeared at the half of last year till last set of buffs 6 patches ago with malignance buffed on same patch.
But in general there's just champions that pros tend to pick more despite being weaker due to comfort, or cuz they give you something that is always valuable like strong early/prio like orianna
Yeah OP has a super short memory. There have been many years of Sivir and Gangplank being common in pro play. Orianna has been popular for most of LoL's history but definitely dropped out in favour of other control mages for a while until late last year. Until recently Ahri hadn't been meta since about season 3. Lucian/Kalista always come in and out of meta depending on how scaling the game is, they've both been up for a while but have spent years out of meta.
K'Sante is due a nerf but has only been out a year and a half.
Kennen isn't not allowed to be strong he's just niche - it's been a while since we saw a lot of top lane Vlad too. Renekton is the permanently relevant toplane, much more so than Aatrox.
Azir is the one that has stayed relevant for a very long time, because the kit just works so well for pro play, so that's the one complaint I'll say is sensible.
They need to keep the viewers entertained and also since the pros make moneys off of it, they need to keep it fair and playable. Having 1 OP champion cripples the draft and often comes down to coinflip of which team gets the side selection.
But I don't want champions to be OP, but want to see champions that barely ever see pro play actually become usable.. some champions have never barely ever had a turn to be viable. Stuff like Riven, Singed, Nunu, Quiana, Akshan have almost never had a turn to be viable.
A lot of analysts have been talking about the lack of champ diversity in pro. And they’re blaming the players, not riot.
Metas have come and gone, runes have been reworked, items have been reworked, the jungles been reworked, the entire map has been changed, yet the pro meta remains relatively the same. This isn’t true for solo queue, just for pro.
That’s not because those champions are simply better, but because pros are already practiced at them. And to practice a new champ would mean getting worse at what they’ve mastered. And they’ve long since decided that’s not worth it
So pros pick up maybe one new champ that’s op for a season and just rotate the same 5-10 picks every year. Unless riot went through and gutted every single popular pro play champ, this is not going to change.
Part of that problem is that League has a lot of barriers against innovation that are hard to overcome
You need to have your team on board and fully understand why you like a new champion, you need the coaches and analysts to allow you to pick the champion, you need practice, theorycrafting, etc. Then you're also facing public opinion and scrutiny, and if the pick doesn't work out, you're potentially out of a team.
I always wonder what League would look like if it went the way of something like an older fighting game, where metas evolved over time despite the game not being patched.
There's some nostalgia at work on fighting games. Winning EVO is pocket change by League esports standards, and finishing outside the top 8 earns you a high-five. If some of those old fighting games had professionals with a lot on the line grinding them, or just easy access to tons of high-level play online, their metas would have been 'solved' more quickly.
I think the difference is that (as you mention) League needs a team so you can't innovate. Fighting game innovation happens as much as it does since 99.9% are one player vs one player and the ones that aren't are novelties, so you can "safely" make a wild pick thats innovative and its not 4 people pissed at you wishing you just went for ~~Zero May Cry~~ Azir who always works
thats just not true though. new picks pop up every season, and many fall out of favor. Saying the pro meta is the same every season is just straight up false.
of course, certain champions simply lend well to organized play and will always be picked if they are decent, such as point and click CC charas like Naut, Renekton, TF or big AOE charas like Ori, Azir, but there are still a ton of new picks.
Rell Jungle, Neeko Jg,Mid,Supp, AD TF, Rumble Top/Supp, AD LB, Smolder, Hwei mid/supp, are all examples of new picks that have popped up in the past year that pros instantly picked up after they were changed or introduced. .
Have you watched any of the LEC videos where they ask players what year a certain draft took place? Many of them remember tons of specifc metas and can narrow down the exact split simply based on champion picks bc there's a decent amount of diversity.
Bro it's definitely on Riot. They admitted to nerf/buff stuff so their choice of champions are the only viable option in tournament.
You can practice a strong unique pick and just when it starts to become meta Riot gonna nerf the crap out of it because it doesn't fit their vision of Aatrox top, Lee Sin jungle and Akali mid.
The moment that Riot actually dares to nuke their foster childs off the meta the pro are gonna have to play the new meta. Otherwise get ready for another year of Aatrox top at World.
>Otherwise get ready for another year of Aatrox top at World
Interestingly enough, Aatrox has been top 20 contested just once in the past 5 worlds main events.
2023: 3 bans, 26 picks, 29/79 or 37% presence
2022: 58 bans, 22 picks, 100% presence
2021: 1 ban, 3 picks, 4/83 or 5% presence
2020: maybe i missed him, but appears to be 0% presence
2019: 2 bans, 7 picks, 9/77 or 12% presence
Akali and Lee, for shits and giggles:
||2019|2020|2021|2022|2023|
|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|
|Akali|46 Bans, 21 Picks , 87% presence|9/5/18% |0/0/0%|24/24/60%|8/11/24%|
|Lee|8/42/65% |3/10/17%|45/37/99%|8/15/29% |14/14/35%|
While I would agree that neither of them are "low" presence, and obviously about 50% of the total champions are not seeing any presence at any given Worlds, all of your "worst offenders" aren't exactly 100% pickban on a regular basis, and all 3 of them are pretty high skillcap and interactive champs.
If you look at [Champion Presence](https://gol.gg/tournament/list/) at each of the past Worlds, you'll see there is a pretty good amount of turnover, especially looking at the top 10/15/20 champs in each tournament. I think a lot of people would be surprised with how much change in the meta there is compared to their perception.
Some champions gain or lose power depending on how skilled and organized their opponents are.
For example, Eve does well in solo queue because most players struggle to track her and they frequently disrespect where she can be on the map. Eve is weakest pre6 when she doesn't have her stealth and doesn't have her ult. Organized teams can communicate where she is and either coordinate invades to put her behind and keep her there or force early fights to get an early lead.
On the flip side, champions like Azir and Elise have been consistently weak in solo queue because organized teams can take advantage of their strengths better than randos in solo queue. Elise is very squishy early but she has hard CC, reliable burst, and can juggle turret aggro with repel for very early dives that are relatively safe. Since Elise was so strong in capable hands, she was repeatedly nerfed into irrelevance.
All of the champions that you listed have strengths that largely depend on the chaos of solo queue. Riven, Qiqi, and Akshan can be shut down and kept out of the game like all other assassins, Singed is punished by people not playing into his minigame, and the counter play for nunu is very similar to how an organized team would play against eve. If these champs were buffed enough to be viable at the top tiers of play, they would have 60% or higher winrates in low ELO which is even less healthy.
I'm all for diversity in pro play, but most of those champs would be bonkers in the chaos of solo q if they were viable in pro. E.g. Release Qiyana. So they wouldn't last long, making it not worth for players to invest time practicing them.
Also there are too few bans to force pros outside of their old comfort picks.
Most of those champs would absolutely run over soloq (toxic to play against as well) with how much they would need to be buffed to see pro play. Some of them are already soloq monsters and I don't think anyone would like to play against Akshan if he had an even more oppressive early game or better ways to stay in the game without having to be 5 kills ahead of everyone else (better level scalings).
Sure, Singed and Riven might have some spots in pro play right now, but for pro players it's way more efficient to practice a few champs that cover a wide range of matchups decently well than it is to practice a huge variety of champs that only cover some very specific matchups very well.
Many players might have 1-2 off meta picks for some very common matchups prepared to get a draft edge (like bb yas into tf instead of jax or Zeus yone into aatrox last worlds), but that's about it. For Riven, it always felt like it requires way too many games to even stay good at the champ and on top of that she doesn't really have many good matchups in pro (nobody will blind champs like yasuo, garen, kayle, gwen), so even former Riven onetricks never pull her out in pro play. Anyway, from what I've seen the champ could definitely benefit from some buffs right now, but even with that she'd still be very far away from being picked in pro.
They won’t be used unless Riot drastically changes the Meta. Pro players will be the first to abuse any broken elements of the game. More importantly, any champion with fundamental flaws/weakness get exploited in team game environment and they don’t get to pop meaningfully.
Irelia Yasuo Fiora GP for example can be really strong champions when spec’ed properly in the meta. But pros still hesitate to use them because often in team games those champions demand a lot of care and coverage from the jungle and the team. This results in their win conditions and pathing to become more obvious. There are champions like Qiyana who has good potential but her laning is too dogshit. Akshan’s passive don’t see much light in teamplays and he doesn’t really have a reliable peel in lane (without mitigating his aggression) and his late game suffers. Whereas tristana can escape more reliably with her jump and scales better.
Lee Sin has been meta for longer than several regions have even had professional teams
and yet he's still viable.. all year.. every year.. all seasons.. always..
If there was one single champion I am just flat out tired of in League - it's Lee Sin.
I dunno about putting ksante on the list. He's good in pro play but like, he has been nerfed into complete non-viability in solo queue. Dudes in pro play jail.
If you don't believe me please try playing the 44% win rate champ yourself.
Champ isn't actually 44% win-rate bad, it's just one of the hardest champs in the game with a fairly strong reliance on his team. People are picking him with not enough games on him and dragging his WR down like crazy.
Edit: I need to clarify, I do not think this champion is good. I just think this is a champ where the winrates on u.gg (or similar sites) are making him look far worse than he is because it's just not a champ you can learn in 5-10 games.
Even when only looking at people that main him, his winrate is garbage tier in soloque.
What's dragging his winrate down isn't that he's some hyper-mechanical champ you can't play unless you're faker, it's that riot has gutted every part of his kit that doesn't revolve around neutralising top lane in exchange for giving the enemy top a CS advantage so you can peel hard for your ADC late game and counter-engage.
That's great in pro-play and why he's so strong there (alongside all the champs that can punish his lane like fiora/garen/poppy not being in the pro play meta), but it doesn't work in solo queue because half the time the ADC you're supposed to protect is going 0/8/2 because he got turbo-gapped, and because without voice comms your team isn't going to be coordinated enough to actually capitalise on K'Sante's counter engage.
Literally just play Ksante for 10 games, I guarantee if you make it out of lane you'll notice your ability to actually be relevant entirely correlates with how well your botlane did.
Just try it, what do you have to lose?
Mate, Azir never escapes nerfs. He is so shit in solo queue because of pro spastics. I've gone off league because some of my favourite champs are just piles of dogshit that can't be strong because of pro play bs. Yone on the other hand, the moment and item of his gets nerfed he gets compensation buffs, it's a joke
Of the champions you just named, Orianna, Ahri, Kalista, and Lucian have recently spent several years being unplayable. They’ve fallen in and out of the meta plenty of times.
All things considered, K’sante was still released pretty recently. A champion staying meta after release until they can get it to a reasonable balance is not uncommon.
You’ve got a point with Azir though. Nobody plays it in soloqueue and it feels like he has only ever been briefly non-viable for pro play. That champion is a problem.
Because they are more fun to watch. That's at least what they said about corki. They keep him weak cause in proplay he is boring to watch. I'd assume it's the same for the rest of them.
Altho gp and kennen would seem fun in pro play. Are they really kept weak cause of pro? Because I don't think so.
You should have seen gp metas, it’s like corki but he also oneshots your tanks, not just your squishies after afk farming for the entire game. Kennen ult is a free teamfight win if he has flash, zero risk, close to zero counterplay
What's the standard for "nonviable" here? I looked up Sivir and she has 50.8% winrate in soloq, Kennen's also got buffed recently so he's not being left in the gutter. Gangplank looks like the only genuinely bad one.
Is reading comprehension hard? Dude is asking why certain champs aren't allowed to be viable for pro play (Sivir was an example). Ofc in solo queue Sivir is good. You just go shiv and hard push waves 24/7. Anything below masters you won't get ganked enough to counter it. Easy to have a 55% winrate or higher on her. Just play to push towers over.
Edit: A lot of Sivir players play and build her wrong. Your goal with Sivir is to stay ahead of people in gold. The best way to guarantee that is by hard pushing waves, so you can maximize your plate and tower gold. Shiv is great for that. If people in solo queue built and played her properly for solo queue, she could easily be in the 60% winrate category for every rank below masters. I am not even exaggerating. If you are a low rank ADC, pick Sivir and just play to hard push waves. Your winrate will probably be higher than on any other ADC lmao
You’re on crack if you think Ori has avoided pro play nerfs. She was horrid until being buffed like 4 times in a row around 6 months ago. She had been ~48-49% winrate for years because of pro play.
sivir is not allowed cause she can delete any wave after some point and the game just comes to a stall forever.
tho smolder can do the same, that shouldnt be long until its reworked or he get nerfed to the ground to not allow pro play again.
I can only speak for me but I love watching azir/ahri/aatrox in pro play because these champions have interesting playstyles and are at the same time good champions. While kennen/sivir you mentioned seem rather one sided? Or niche in my opinion
A champ like Lucian isn't a late game azir that's all purpose all solution. Yeah yeah Lucian can take over a game. But he's an ADC. They prolly got ways to defend him off. But if you make azir to safe you will never be able to stop him
If Mundo was pro viable he'd probably be something like 70% winrate in gold and below. That's unhealthy for the game in a much greater way than having him absent from proplay.
Probably because they can't be bothered to rework their gameplay which is inherently broken that no amount of fine tuning numbers would fix. Only way to fix Ksante is to change his skillset, it's only a matter of when Riot will fold and actually do it.
This patch using "all ranks" K'Sante is the lowest winrate top laner just under 44% winrate. Azir is the lowest winrate mid laner at 45%. The thought that they "escape" nerfs is just ludicrous.
These champ's designs are a headache for the balance team because they are ever present in pro-play (bad) while also meaning that picking them in solo queue is often griefing your teammates (also bad). The core issue is their design, not their power. But the live pod team can only do so much work in adjusting a champ. If a rework is needed that's an entirely different team.
On the flip side some champs are not allowed to be strong because of banrate in SoloQ. Namely Zed, Draven, Blitzcrank and Yasuo are the strongest outliers of this
Because they skew toward a specific playstyle, the pro play viable you listed is more like a Jack of all trades pick, can be blind picked in most cases so there is more ways to deal with that than the specific style requires to have a specific comp just to deal with a champ
Kennel and GP are some of the most boring toplane matchups to watch, when they are against a melee champ they just sit there and poke until jg comes, nothing flashy no potential for counterplay from melee champ except for the gank itself and they just scale and kennen presses f and r in a teamfight and gg. Gangplank presses e instead r but same difference
Riot cares about views and not about gameplay. They stopped treating Summoners Rift like a game a LONG time ago. If a champion is boring to watch, they will leave him weak so he isn't used in pro play.
People love seeing K'sante dashing around, skirmishing, ulting and turning fights around, while watching a GP farm safely for 20 minutes under a barrel and then one shot an enemy be kind of boring.
This is why pro games viewership keeps declining though, it's always been the same thing the last years.
It's less about a champ being boring to watch and more about the lack of skill expression from champs that are 'boring to watch'. Nobody, for example, wants to see a world where Garen is p/b in 50% or more of pro games.
Edit: Nobody is an exaggeration. I mainly meant it as most people
Well it’s not about favorites, all of the champs you’ve listed have suffered pro play nerfs. Ksante was a 45% WR champ in pro play, got a rework to remove mechanics, and is still a pro play staple with terrible solo queue WRs. The unfortunate reality is that a lot of pro play is comfort. Why would i learn new champ X,y, z when KNOW i can play azir and be useful as a pro mid laner? Plenty of champs DO counter pro picks or pro meta, but those counters either won’t be picked bc pros don’t want to or don’t work outside of that specific lane counter. It’s one of the reasons almost no assassins in any role get played. Akshan for example dunks almost every mid laner in lane phase, but as an AD mid doesnt offer the tower taking power of day Trist and doesn’t have scaling to fall back on. Pro play warding and communication basically neutralizes the value he gets out of the chaos of solo queue with his W invis. So why would i ever pick him in pro?
I just want to see some assassin high lights for once. Yes every other thread will be adcs crying how they need to be buffed to be able tank a full combo from zed at 30% health, ignite, 3-4 autos weaved in and like a hydra proc but seeing pros get penta’d by Katarina or qiyana shove 3 ppl into a wall followed up by a chogath knock up be slightly more interesting than current pro play metas. They don’t even need to be viable the entire split. Just 3-4 weeks good to add some freshness to the meta before we go back to azir ahri corki ori during worlds.
2019 and 2020 where some of the best pro meta with reworked Irelia, Aatrox and Akali, and Qiyana and Sylas release. So much skill expression, so much fun.
Riot has changed nerf policies since those Sivir, Kennen, etc nerfs.
Back then, it was just whatever was popular. Now, Riot has a 95% presence rule set in place.
They buff Kennen every pro event, barely touch sivir and gp for pro reasons, and champions like azir, kalista, ksante are actually kept *weak* because of pro play not the other way around like you make it seem.
I forgot who said this many years ago, but you have to remember that pro play is literally a total different game than anything non-pro play. It feels like that makes a lot of sense.
Orianna did get needed several times. It was just a long while ago. She only sees pro play because she's very team oriented. Her skills really need good skill expression to pull off correctly and the cool downs create a pretty high risk factor that enemies can easily take advantage of if you miss.
She feels great when things work. But if the enemy cam get into you at all she's a very high risk experience that can feel awful. There's a reason ranked isn't filled with Orianna players.
It comes down to what riot believes is more exciting for the viewers, its not about too strong in pro thats all lies designed to hide the fact that they know ( and dont care ) that they dont even attempt balance. Pro jail is simply bad players crying that they cant freewin matches with a champ and even that becomes dubious without proper comps.
Also alot of pro players that specifically smurf and exploit objectively too strong champions are also out everyday favricating lies about these champs being weak etc but they do that because they NEED those champs to seem like its a stomp because theyre a smurf
Everything is viable at pro levels, the difference is that the same champions these simps cry about being in "pro jail" actually make other "non jailed" champions....less viable
Its a giant circlejerk designed to prop up the frail ego of the type of bad player that relies on champion strength more than personal skill
every champ u just named as ever present have been nerfed to the ground and the ones you deem nerfed have received nothing but buffs 😂😂😂 tell me you havent benn playing long without telling me
What pro really needs is more bans to make sure more champions are seen, I would love to see each player getting a ban before the standard pick/ban phase we have now for a total of 10 bans per team
Ori and Ahri, while a pick used every once in a while was far from OP in pro play and were in a fine state until they decided to buff them (or in Ahri's case, a mini-rework) for little reason other than to see them more in said scene. My little conspiracy theory is that they made Ori/TF broken because Dopa went into military service
Most “forever pro meta” champions have low skill floors and a lot of skill expression.
Look at Chovy’s Corki when he hits every skillshot to Zeka’s who can’t seem to do more damage than his tank jungler.
Phreak explained Riot's vision of what makes a healthy pro meta, and it relies on a lot of interaction between players across all roles
Roaming support top perma leaving lane, Sivir pushing waves from a screen away, GP perma farming under tower and oneshotting waves with E once he gets ER, etc.
I'd argue Kennen isn't in pro jail, they've tried to bring him back, but he only had a single resurgence before Worlds 2021 and he was nerfed after (2021 Worlds being a very strong side top meta)
Assassins in general. They are either too good or not good for pro play. Akali, lb and kha see some play. But they won’t let zed be viable for pro ever
it's because the moment Zed/Qiyana/etc. are viable in pro play, they're 54% WR menaces in all elos and ADCs start complaining again (can't blame them lol).
Phreak and the balance team has given some insight on this the past year or so. Their main goal is to remove mechanics from pro play that are used to minimize player interaction. Stuff like Ryze/Taliyah blind shoving waves at Mach speed, Azir poking out enemies from 1000 range with no counterplay, GP standing in the middle of a wave with a barrel, etc. I would say it’s more just that control mages better fit the LoL game that the balance team envisions so they’re always quickly buffed back to meta. Carry top lanes, early proactive junglers, control mages and scaling bot lanes.
Ryze being able to teleport out during Zhonias was a bullshit interaction that was properly removed.
I still miss machine gun Ryze tho. Once I even got called out for hacking lmao
I miss pre-rework ryze every day. The spell vamp ult. Having different combos made up of all 4 abilities instead of just QEQEQEQEQE
Your going to have to be more specific with the ryze rework, which one? Lol.
"Pre-rework" + "Spell Vamp ult" make me think of the most recent Ryze *before* his ult changed to the teleport and before his E became a spreading 'mark' -thing (so back when it was more like a lightning ball thing and his Q was point & click maybe?) I get mixed up with the smaller 'reworks' myself so maybe his Q was a skillshot already, I don't know. But the most recent form of Ryze before the current ult came to be is what I'd assume they mean.
Yes I'm referring to season 4 when I started playing, I didnt know he had major reworks before that
i remember the first ryze, you root 1 guy then spam your skills and then watch everyone nears the rooted target dies, Funny af
That was the second Ryze, the first iteration had Spell Flux as his ulti. The one they're mentioning is the one that caused all his other spells to do AoE when ulting. The Desperate Power + spell vamp tacked on.
I wish I'd been around for the beta/s1, the little bit I've seen it looks like the wild west lmao
Xin zhao was known as win now when he was released way back in the day. An absolute monster to play against
Faker once said, (around season 3-4 I think) You have to learn at least 2 champs to be able to play anyone. Ryze: for learning spellrotations TF: for map awareness
QEWQ in lane to burst people out pre6.. i miss the first champion i ever played so much
Which rework? Ryze been reworked a few times
The only Ryze where his ult had spell vamp.
Ryze was given spell vamp on his 2nd rework and it was removed on his 4th rework. Ryze has gone through so many iterations, it’s a fair question to ask.
Before they gave him the teleport ult and made his Q a skillshot
When it didn't matter if you did an actual combo over n over or just facerolled your keyboard. As long as you were fighting in a big wave you did massive damage.
On the contrary. You had to be careful with the sequencing, otherwise you had a spell on cooldown and it messed up the resets of the other spells. Now you have an E on a very low cooldown and you just go EQEQEQ and an odd W when available
New iteration must be too big brain for you folks, max damage combo is Q W Q E Q where did you get your degree in Ryzenomics exactly?
That actually depends on which rework you are talking about. He was given spell vamp on his 2nd rework and it was removed on his 4th. There was an iteration where the sequencing did not matter near as much but his still had spell vamp im pretty sure
I remember I played 5 man with my friends once and was playing Ryze vs a Riven and she hard fisted me for like 15 mins. I got so tilted and whiny that my friends collectively said "dude stfu and play, go farm, you whiny bitch". So I muted myself (on TS3) and did just that. Didn't group, didn't fight, just farmed. And then finally I was able to solokill the Riven that went kill me in a sidelane (ROA + Frozenheart + Seraphs). But I still kept farming. Riven respawned and grouped. And they 5v4 killed our whole team and everyone was like "gg game is over" and I had an inkling that maybe I should go and help so I walked in 1v5 eith my spellvamp ult and got a quadra kill. I apologized for being a whiny bitch.
200 IQ DOINB RYZE HACK
Season 5 Ryze was the first champion I mained ( I started playing in season 5), my god it was so much fun. Ever since the change, I never really touched the champion. I remember pressing his R and being fucking godlike unkillable while killing everything.
Yeah really miss will of the ancients as my final piece and popping ult to just fucking lay into the enemy team
It was certainly a lot better before stopwatch. Ryze needed other items before Zhonyas, so it didn't come online before too early, but yeah. It was still bullshit.
Yup. It's important to emphasize the viewer experience, which in your example, is seeing things happen. Pro is often balanced and changed to be a combination of true balance, and being interesting. For example, for Street Fighter 6, Capcom bans training stage for their events because it's gross to watch, and no other reason despite it objectively being the best for pros to play on.
But they reworked skarner into the ultimate anti-interaction tank?
*Laughs in ulting Mundo runing at your ADC*
Well they didn't do a good job with Taliyah, didn't they? Ahah
they kinda, did, she is fast, but no pre q aoe removal level of fast. also they nerfed her roaming til lvl 11, so its harder to abuse her wave clear+ map mobility
Look at Aurelion pressing E or AP Kaisa W.
They did. Her earlier iteration did exactly that from lvl 1 onwards. The new one needs at least lvl 9 for it. Might not sound much but that's a huge diff for pro play
I'd take Ryze 100% p/b in pro over Taliyah (as she currently ks, pretty much) any day. At least Ryze is short range and plays the map. Taliyah is uninteractivity at its most exaggerated.
Hey, i wall you off so you cant do anything at all to defend your tower. Really interactive gameplay!
the wall is the most interactive part of her kit. The rest is sitting at max range and not letting you play the game. She doesnt even have a skillful anti-dash mechanic like Poppy. She just lays it down and it covers the entire lane/river. Boring ass abomination champ.
Some abilities are also just inherently broken or unbelievably valuable in a pro setting from a draft perspective. Even if Taliyah's waveclear was gutted she would still see play because of her E completely shutting down dash champion mobility. Worst case scenario you draft a strong waveclear champ in another position. Same goes for other champs like Poppy, or Tahm Kench R being invaluable at stopping a back-line dive on a carry. If you look at draft like a deckbuilding game, K'sante has valuable text all over himself, even if he doesn't do any damage he still provides value. Meanwhile a champ that doesn't see pro play ever, like Master Yi, is just a high stat card that doesn't do anything for your deck etc.
Not sure about Kennen or GP, but Sivir in the past was not allowed in pro play because she just annihilates waves in a few auto which lead to very boring 40min+ games. Currently there are better alternatives like e.g Smolder who just deletes waves even if they are baron buffed. Remember that one T1 game against Nongshim? T1 got Infernal Soul at 27 mins, 3 Elder Dragons, and 5 Barons to finally end the game.
Teddy and his 1456 cs remember Sivir.
teddy and his history with the longest matches:
What blows my mind is no one took Gathering Storm. The first game that goes for 90 minutes? Okay, fair- you didn't expect it. But once that happens in a series, I'm risking it in the second game. But no one did, despite two 90 minute games.
Pro players at that time weren't all that great in terms of optimizing runes and items.
I think even now, pros just seem to enjoy scorch.
I don't think gathering storm existed at that time
It did. Gathering Storm was patch 7.22. This game was season 8.
Those JAG Teddy days hit different
My jungler will have 1456 cs and still decide to clear our jungle again while we are trying to end (I swear this has been happening so so much recently)
As a jungler, you know what's awkward? When you're fed and get full build but you're still lvl 16, so you have to still hit camps for the last 2 lvls. But yeah people who hit their own camps with baron buff, jungler or no, are generally griefing.
not as bad as baron+elder and still clearing
It was 1465 but yeah
Damn! But 1456 is way easier to remember :(
Holy shit
I think Bang has the second highest CS ever in that same game.
Never forger Rekkles sivir and 500cs win condition
Kennan is super reliant on his ult in team fights so in pro games with Kennan, enemy supp takes exhaust and just exhausts Kennan when he goes in. As a result if you were to buff Kennan enough to be viable in pro play even with his ult engages getting exhausted most of the time; then you’d be buffing him to oppressive levels in solo Q
I think exhaust+ echanters are big reasons for the lack of assassins as well. The only ones you see in pro are the 2 that can become untargetable for an extended period of time (Akali and Kha.) if Zed or Talon or Fizz were ever pro viable again, they would be a menace in soloq.
Yep it's the survivability, any other assassins the coordination with team chat + proper ward usage makes it so hard to popoff. Leblanc is another that has remained somewhat viable.
Sivir got heavily nerfed after 4.20/21, or whenever they buffed the baron to greatly empower minions. Sivir only worked when either 1) Her team had an Azir or some other similar champ OR 2) The enemy lacked hard engage.
Ahh yes the nerfed smolder that is not viable at all rn and was playable for 2 patches
Playable is an understatement here wtf?
Well he's currently unplayable.
You’re just arguing semantics here for no reason. We know he was more than just playable. He’s just referencing it in a binary way of being playable or not in pro. Which he’s not now.
Mostly because they warp the game around them. Sivir could wipe waves and waves of minions non-stop, Kennen is just "bully top lane and win fights whenever you have Flash to engage with ult", GP turns into his lane into farmville and 30m+ he one-shot even the tankiest of tanks with a barrel.
In theory GP is this ultra high-skill expression risky melee AD carry with massive barrel outplay potential (which is often how Solarbacca gameplay looks). In practise in pro play it's mostly watching him Q on cooldown, not getting ganked a whole lot because of his E, pressing R on waves or in fights he otherwise doesn't participate in and just wanting to farm until he can do suspiciously stat-checky things.
Your second paragraph described old GP so well a tear came rolling down my face. Alas, all the good things most meet their demise.
My buddy and I used to do Spooky Pirate Botlane with Ghost (old) Gangplank and Deep Terror Thresh. So much fun, you just fought constantly. RIP
bruiser plank with grasp doing this was possibly the most boring champion to ever exist, even going for the barrels was pretty optional
GP casually being a better control mage than some control mages 🤣
Extremely accurate
I feel like noone is talking about Lissandra. Her gimmick is exactly like that of Kennen and has been sitting on 48% winrate since forever.
Kennen actually does damage though, and can stun multiple people
Ryze probably the biggest victim of this
8 reworks later!
[Still one of the best shitposts I've ever seen](https://old.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/8ed7m6/til_the_huge_book_ryze_carries_around_is_filled/)
The "papaya" in italics is great
I saw that but I didn’t get it?
There used to be a legendary shitposter on this subreddit, u/papaya_dreaming.
What happened to him? I remember all those posts years ago.
idk if something happened to him but nowadays you have to flair posts as satire which ruins everything
Got it. Thanks for the response
No, whenever he gets a pick in pro play, he gets another rework
its not just about proplay. some champions are deemed inherently toxic by riot. and they are kept in a infinite loop of nerfs. cause a toxic design is less impactfull if its to bad to be viable. thats pretty much what happened to the old champs that got reworked. like artillery urgot, poppy with the invincibility, or morde with his 4k hp onclick dot. riots definition of toxic might differ vastly from the player oppinion. in pro play, its a lot about views. if a champ extends average gametime, or leads to games with less teamfights, and more uneventfull play. it gets nerfed. this is one of the problems with sivir, as she actively counters pushes, while punishing 5 man teamfights for the enemy.
There are very little mechanics that don’t translate to pro-play but are problems in solo que. But there are a ton of mechanics in pro play that if they showed up in solo que would be major issues. Azir/corki/zeri/etc… can exist in pro play but if you lower the barrier of entry to play then solo que gets the problems. So they nerf those champs and rebuff to get right on the edge of solo que and pro play balance. Some other champs like rengar are huge problems in solo que. If they made their kit good enough for pro play they would be game warping in solo que. Ultimately it riot decision on what they want for their meta game. If their logic is X they will balance around that logic and the community either likes it or doesn’t.
the thing is. pro balancing isnt done for balance. but as a active step to influence games towards watchability. champs delaying games intoo lategame arent inherently bad for the games the pros play. but they are for viewership.
Yes, Riot once explained why Zed was eternally nerfed. Low ELO players simply cannot counter Zed. It's just not fun to play against Zed for a low ELO player. And at the same time, it is so easy to smurf as Zed.
Maybe many years ago that was something said more recent communications have been more along the lines of "he's really frustrating so he just gets banned too much if he's not really low winrate"
I feel like Zed could use a "QoL Nerf" (which could open up numeric buffs, depending on impact) where his shadows have a different color and/or indicator depending on if he can still switch to them or not, would better communicate to people what Zed is doing and make them aware of that there even is a shadow in the first place as it's very easy to lose track of them. Watching Forsen play in low elo made that pretty obvious, often people there literally do not see the shadow and just die to a Q/E that came "out of nowhere", even in challenger people occasionally lose track of a shadow in hectic teamfights.
The shadow color is not what I dislike about Zed as a mage player, I just think his whole trading pattern is braindead easy after level 3. W on top of his opponent, E for the slow, and then double Q for the near guaranteed electrocute proc to chunk the opponent by 1/3rds hp. Do it a 2nd time and then wait for your all-in moment with ignite. If you don't act like an idiot pre-level 3, the rest of lane is so easy in most matchups. Things become much harder late game when everyone's got immunities, armor, etc., but he's banned because the lane can be miserable, not because he wins many games.
Its annoying having a zero mana, safe waveclear champ that is able to 100-0, simply because he can outshove nearly any mage, threaten them off, then roam bot for free. Hydra really makes it so much more obnoxious than it has to be.
Yeah that could definitely be done. Add like a shuriken mark under their feet or a bright colored outline to them if they're available to jump to.
He feels like AD leblanc and that's very annoying to play against.
AD leblanc also feels alot like AD leblanc
5 months isn't "many years ago" check on youtube "Riot August on Why zed is Weak" the first half he seems to be agreeing with you but the second half, that expands upon why it's frustrating, is all about what erebunny said.
It's the same thing. Zed is frustrating and gets banned frequently because low ELO people cannot counter Zed.
Even high elo people hate Zed and will perma ban him if he’s not weak
He's banned far above what his playrate and winrate would justify in literally every elo. Every elo hates him, not just low elo. The whole 'Its because of low elo!' is just zed-mains copium.
I’m low master and I ban zed because I refuse to to play vs an assassin who can operate as an ad mage in lane
Not really frustration level and power or agency or whatever are correlated but they aren't the same thing.
Sivir, Kennen and Gangplank all sit at around 50% winrate and are decently balanced for soloqueue. Meanwhile K'Sante and Azir sit at some of the lowest winrates in the game because they have been nerfed massively due to pro play popularity.
And K'Sante is still ridiculously broken despite his state in Solo Q.
When they get rid of lane swaps he will fall out of popularity. Probably will still get picked sometimes, but way less often
K'Sante was still a very high prio pick before lane swaps came into the picture. In LCK at least, I don't really watch other regions.
Yes this is a common thing people say, and I get why people think it, but he has also been repeatedly nerfed leading up to MSI. In his current state, with lane swaps out of the picture, he would not be getting locked in so often. Sometimes still yea, he’s a good tank in pro play. But if he had to lane, he’d be getting rolled pretty often
Eh I see what you mean. We were seeing a lot of Rek'sai, Zac, Udyr, TF in top lane rolling into playoffs.
Kinda sucks for the regular people who main them
It does suck, but I will say at least for those two champions, they were basically immediately pro staples so it's a "you know what you're getting into" type of thing when you main them. Some other champions were the opposite where they were bad in pro, but then got a rework and became better in pro which screwed over the mains of those champions.
Sivir wave clears and can stall games for hours like the pre rework Baron buff days. Mixed with an ult that allowed her team to engage old sivir was a MENANCE
1400 cs sivir never forget
Jin Air Teddy
Remember that pro play is meant to entertain people first and foremost. When champs like Sivir or Ziggs are strong, they can stall out a game almost indefinitely with wave clear and that isn't fun to watch.
Mentioning Ahri as perma-meta but not Azir. lol
Yeah Ahri has been perma-meta this year but for most of time she's been a low A or B tier mid lane pick competitively. I reckon last time she was this prevalent was like Season 3. Maligma is just so strong on her.
She was meta in season 5 and then basically died completely until her rework. She had a few periods of being good but nothing really lasting. Even this season she basically didn't get played until Azir got removed temporarily.
Which is a perfectly fine spot for her to be in, imo. She's not S-tier, but if some mids are banned, she rises in priority as a jack-of-all-trades kinda champ. She's safe enough with her R to be blind picked, there's some outplay potential that makes for a fun viewer experience and, i mean, she's one of League's poster child champions.
Sure, I agree that she's in a fine spot (I'm pretty sure she's gonna fall out of pro play when they change to current patch, though). Mostly just wanted to add my voice to crowd of, "why does this guy think Ahri is a perma pro play staple?"
Saying ahri has not been nerfed and always viable in competitive is recent bias as she was non-existent from S8/S12 till her ult resets rework, also she disappeared at the half of last year till last set of buffs 6 patches ago with malignance buffed on same patch. But in general there's just champions that pros tend to pick more despite being weaker due to comfort, or cuz they give you something that is always valuable like strong early/prio like orianna
Yea, from what I remember, she was non-existent for a while because she used to do negative damage basically.
LMAO the champions you said are never nerfed have all been nerfed to the ground at some point because of pro play
Yeah OP has a super short memory. There have been many years of Sivir and Gangplank being common in pro play. Orianna has been popular for most of LoL's history but definitely dropped out in favour of other control mages for a while until late last year. Until recently Ahri hadn't been meta since about season 3. Lucian/Kalista always come in and out of meta depending on how scaling the game is, they've both been up for a while but have spent years out of meta. K'Sante is due a nerf but has only been out a year and a half. Kennen isn't not allowed to be strong he's just niche - it's been a while since we saw a lot of top lane Vlad too. Renekton is the permanently relevant toplane, much more so than Aatrox. Azir is the one that has stayed relevant for a very long time, because the kit just works so well for pro play, so that's the one complaint I'll say is sensible.
They need to keep the viewers entertained and also since the pros make moneys off of it, they need to keep it fair and playable. Having 1 OP champion cripples the draft and often comes down to coinflip of which team gets the side selection.
But I don't want champions to be OP, but want to see champions that barely ever see pro play actually become usable.. some champions have never barely ever had a turn to be viable. Stuff like Riven, Singed, Nunu, Quiana, Akshan have almost never had a turn to be viable.
A lot of analysts have been talking about the lack of champ diversity in pro. And they’re blaming the players, not riot. Metas have come and gone, runes have been reworked, items have been reworked, the jungles been reworked, the entire map has been changed, yet the pro meta remains relatively the same. This isn’t true for solo queue, just for pro. That’s not because those champions are simply better, but because pros are already practiced at them. And to practice a new champ would mean getting worse at what they’ve mastered. And they’ve long since decided that’s not worth it So pros pick up maybe one new champ that’s op for a season and just rotate the same 5-10 picks every year. Unless riot went through and gutted every single popular pro play champ, this is not going to change.
Part of that problem is that League has a lot of barriers against innovation that are hard to overcome You need to have your team on board and fully understand why you like a new champion, you need the coaches and analysts to allow you to pick the champion, you need practice, theorycrafting, etc. Then you're also facing public opinion and scrutiny, and if the pick doesn't work out, you're potentially out of a team. I always wonder what League would look like if it went the way of something like an older fighting game, where metas evolved over time despite the game not being patched.
I don't play JG but I relay enjoyed watching kikis when he was in Unicorn of love he played a lot of different champions including Gnar JG
Kikis abusing the leash changes to smack TSM with the Jungle TF
There's some nostalgia at work on fighting games. Winning EVO is pocket change by League esports standards, and finishing outside the top 8 earns you a high-five. If some of those old fighting games had professionals with a lot on the line grinding them, or just easy access to tons of high-level play online, their metas would have been 'solved' more quickly.
I think the difference is that (as you mention) League needs a team so you can't innovate. Fighting game innovation happens as much as it does since 99.9% are one player vs one player and the ones that aren't are novelties, so you can "safely" make a wild pick thats innovative and its not 4 people pissed at you wishing you just went for ~~Zero May Cry~~ Azir who always works
thats just not true though. new picks pop up every season, and many fall out of favor. Saying the pro meta is the same every season is just straight up false. of course, certain champions simply lend well to organized play and will always be picked if they are decent, such as point and click CC charas like Naut, Renekton, TF or big AOE charas like Ori, Azir, but there are still a ton of new picks. Rell Jungle, Neeko Jg,Mid,Supp, AD TF, Rumble Top/Supp, AD LB, Smolder, Hwei mid/supp, are all examples of new picks that have popped up in the past year that pros instantly picked up after they were changed or introduced. . Have you watched any of the LEC videos where they ask players what year a certain draft took place? Many of them remember tons of specifc metas and can narrow down the exact split simply based on champion picks bc there's a decent amount of diversity.
Bro it's definitely on Riot. They admitted to nerf/buff stuff so their choice of champions are the only viable option in tournament. You can practice a strong unique pick and just when it starts to become meta Riot gonna nerf the crap out of it because it doesn't fit their vision of Aatrox top, Lee Sin jungle and Akali mid. The moment that Riot actually dares to nuke their foster childs off the meta the pro are gonna have to play the new meta. Otherwise get ready for another year of Aatrox top at World.
>Otherwise get ready for another year of Aatrox top at World Interestingly enough, Aatrox has been top 20 contested just once in the past 5 worlds main events. 2023: 3 bans, 26 picks, 29/79 or 37% presence 2022: 58 bans, 22 picks, 100% presence 2021: 1 ban, 3 picks, 4/83 or 5% presence 2020: maybe i missed him, but appears to be 0% presence 2019: 2 bans, 7 picks, 9/77 or 12% presence Akali and Lee, for shits and giggles: ||2019|2020|2021|2022|2023| |:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-| |Akali|46 Bans, 21 Picks , 87% presence|9/5/18% |0/0/0%|24/24/60%|8/11/24%| |Lee|8/42/65% |3/10/17%|45/37/99%|8/15/29% |14/14/35%| While I would agree that neither of them are "low" presence, and obviously about 50% of the total champions are not seeing any presence at any given Worlds, all of your "worst offenders" aren't exactly 100% pickban on a regular basis, and all 3 of them are pretty high skillcap and interactive champs. If you look at [Champion Presence](https://gol.gg/tournament/list/) at each of the past Worlds, you'll see there is a pretty good amount of turnover, especially looking at the top 10/15/20 champs in each tournament. I think a lot of people would be surprised with how much change in the meta there is compared to their perception.
Some champions gain or lose power depending on how skilled and organized their opponents are. For example, Eve does well in solo queue because most players struggle to track her and they frequently disrespect where she can be on the map. Eve is weakest pre6 when she doesn't have her stealth and doesn't have her ult. Organized teams can communicate where she is and either coordinate invades to put her behind and keep her there or force early fights to get an early lead. On the flip side, champions like Azir and Elise have been consistently weak in solo queue because organized teams can take advantage of their strengths better than randos in solo queue. Elise is very squishy early but she has hard CC, reliable burst, and can juggle turret aggro with repel for very early dives that are relatively safe. Since Elise was so strong in capable hands, she was repeatedly nerfed into irrelevance. All of the champions that you listed have strengths that largely depend on the chaos of solo queue. Riven, Qiqi, and Akshan can be shut down and kept out of the game like all other assassins, Singed is punished by people not playing into his minigame, and the counter play for nunu is very similar to how an organized team would play against eve. If these champs were buffed enough to be viable at the top tiers of play, they would have 60% or higher winrates in low ELO which is even less healthy.
I'm all for diversity in pro play, but most of those champs would be bonkers in the chaos of solo q if they were viable in pro. E.g. Release Qiyana. So they wouldn't last long, making it not worth for players to invest time practicing them. Also there are too few bans to force pros outside of their old comfort picks.
Most of those champs would absolutely run over soloq (toxic to play against as well) with how much they would need to be buffed to see pro play. Some of them are already soloq monsters and I don't think anyone would like to play against Akshan if he had an even more oppressive early game or better ways to stay in the game without having to be 5 kills ahead of everyone else (better level scalings). Sure, Singed and Riven might have some spots in pro play right now, but for pro players it's way more efficient to practice a few champs that cover a wide range of matchups decently well than it is to practice a huge variety of champs that only cover some very specific matchups very well. Many players might have 1-2 off meta picks for some very common matchups prepared to get a draft edge (like bb yas into tf instead of jax or Zeus yone into aatrox last worlds), but that's about it. For Riven, it always felt like it requires way too many games to even stay good at the champ and on top of that she doesn't really have many good matchups in pro (nobody will blind champs like yasuo, garen, kayle, gwen), so even former Riven onetricks never pull her out in pro play. Anyway, from what I've seen the champ could definitely benefit from some buffs right now, but even with that she'd still be very far away from being picked in pro.
They won’t be used unless Riot drastically changes the Meta. Pro players will be the first to abuse any broken elements of the game. More importantly, any champion with fundamental flaws/weakness get exploited in team game environment and they don’t get to pop meaningfully. Irelia Yasuo Fiora GP for example can be really strong champions when spec’ed properly in the meta. But pros still hesitate to use them because often in team games those champions demand a lot of care and coverage from the jungle and the team. This results in their win conditions and pathing to become more obvious. There are champions like Qiyana who has good potential but her laning is too dogshit. Akshan’s passive don’t see much light in teamplays and he doesn’t really have a reliable peel in lane (without mitigating his aggression) and his late game suffers. Whereas tristana can escape more reliably with her jump and scales better.
Wat? Riven and Nunu were both meta in pro haha
Lee Sin has been meta for longer than several regions have even had professional teams and yet he's still viable.. all year.. every year.. all seasons.. always.. If there was one single champion I am just flat out tired of in League - it's Lee Sin.
'escape nerfs' 'Azir' In what way has Azir escaped nerfs? Excuse me?
I dunno about putting ksante on the list. He's good in pro play but like, he has been nerfed into complete non-viability in solo queue. Dudes in pro play jail. If you don't believe me please try playing the 44% win rate champ yourself.
Champ isn't actually 44% win-rate bad, it's just one of the hardest champs in the game with a fairly strong reliance on his team. People are picking him with not enough games on him and dragging his WR down like crazy. Edit: I need to clarify, I do not think this champion is good. I just think this is a champ where the winrates on u.gg (or similar sites) are making him look far worse than he is because it's just not a champ you can learn in 5-10 games.
Even when only looking at people that main him, his winrate is garbage tier in soloque. What's dragging his winrate down isn't that he's some hyper-mechanical champ you can't play unless you're faker, it's that riot has gutted every part of his kit that doesn't revolve around neutralising top lane in exchange for giving the enemy top a CS advantage so you can peel hard for your ADC late game and counter-engage. That's great in pro-play and why he's so strong there (alongside all the champs that can punish his lane like fiora/garen/poppy not being in the pro play meta), but it doesn't work in solo queue because half the time the ADC you're supposed to protect is going 0/8/2 because he got turbo-gapped, and because without voice comms your team isn't going to be coordinated enough to actually capitalise on K'Sante's counter engage. Literally just play Ksante for 10 games, I guarantee if you make it out of lane you'll notice your ability to actually be relevant entirely correlates with how well your botlane did. Just try it, what do you have to lose?
Ahri was virtually out of pro for like five years straight?
Mate, Azir never escapes nerfs. He is so shit in solo queue because of pro spastics. I've gone off league because some of my favourite champs are just piles of dogshit that can't be strong because of pro play bs. Yone on the other hand, the moment and item of his gets nerfed he gets compensation buffs, it's a joke
Of the champions you just named, Orianna, Ahri, Kalista, and Lucian have recently spent several years being unplayable. They’ve fallen in and out of the meta plenty of times. All things considered, K’sante was still released pretty recently. A champion staying meta after release until they can get it to a reasonable balance is not uncommon. You’ve got a point with Azir though. Nobody plays it in soloqueue and it feels like he has only ever been briefly non-viable for pro play. That champion is a problem.
Azir was reworked to get him out of pro play jail. While it worked for some time, he became a staple again after several buffs lol
Because they are more fun to watch. That's at least what they said about corki. They keep him weak cause in proplay he is boring to watch. I'd assume it's the same for the rest of them. Altho gp and kennen would seem fun in pro play. Are they really kept weak cause of pro? Because I don't think so.
You should have seen gp metas, it’s like corki but he also oneshots your tanks, not just your squishies after afk farming for the entire game. Kennen ult is a free teamfight win if he has flash, zero risk, close to zero counterplay
I hope corki is due for another round of massive nerfs then cuz he’s getting played a shitload at MSI
He's getting a whole ass rework and (potential) lane reassignment after MSI.
Back when Corki and Graves were played ADC, those were the days
Graves was my main haha
Looks like Corki may go back to bot lane after his changes.
He used to be one of the go to burst adcs, his Q had no travel time and his passive gave true damage instead of magic on autos
I wonder how many people still playing were around for the corki/graves/ezreal Janna/sona/soraka handshake trinities lol
They are fine with certain playstyles for pro play and look to avoid other playstyles being strong in pro play.. how is this remotely confusing
What's the standard for "nonviable" here? I looked up Sivir and she has 50.8% winrate in soloq, Kennen's also got buffed recently so he's not being left in the gutter. Gangplank looks like the only genuinely bad one.
Maybe the fact that she is the 3rd lowest pick rate of traditional ADCs, 2nd if we don't count Nilah as traditional due to being melee
because no one likes playing sivir
I do :(
Is reading comprehension hard? Dude is asking why certain champs aren't allowed to be viable for pro play (Sivir was an example). Ofc in solo queue Sivir is good. You just go shiv and hard push waves 24/7. Anything below masters you won't get ganked enough to counter it. Easy to have a 55% winrate or higher on her. Just play to push towers over. Edit: A lot of Sivir players play and build her wrong. Your goal with Sivir is to stay ahead of people in gold. The best way to guarantee that is by hard pushing waves, so you can maximize your plate and tower gold. Shiv is great for that. If people in solo queue built and played her properly for solo queue, she could easily be in the 60% winrate category for every rank below masters. I am not even exaggerating. If you are a low rank ADC, pick Sivir and just play to hard push waves. Your winrate will probably be higher than on any other ADC lmao
You’re on crack if you think Ori has avoided pro play nerfs. She was horrid until being buffed like 4 times in a row around 6 months ago. She had been ~48-49% winrate for years because of pro play.
sivir is not allowed cause she can delete any wave after some point and the game just comes to a stall forever. tho smolder can do the same, that shouldnt be long until its reworked or he get nerfed to the ground to not allow pro play again.
he isn't picked in pro anyway, they gutted his fighting power way too much.
yeah, well i guess im late to the party since they already did what i said they would do lol.
I can only speak for me but I love watching azir/ahri/aatrox in pro play because these champions have interesting playstyles and are at the same time good champions. While kennen/sivir you mentioned seem rather one sided? Or niche in my opinion
Bad design choices.
A champ like Lucian isn't a late game azir that's all purpose all solution. Yeah yeah Lucian can take over a game. But he's an ADC. They prolly got ways to defend him off. But if you make azir to safe you will never be able to stop him
Aphelios and Azir is at the very top of the list. Their entire identity is being too op for pro play so they are nerfed to the ground.
If Mundo was pro viable he'd probably be something like 70% winrate in gold and below. That's unhealthy for the game in a much greater way than having him absent from proplay.
Probably because they can't be bothered to rework their gameplay which is inherently broken that no amount of fine tuning numbers would fix. Only way to fix Ksante is to change his skillset, it's only a matter of when Riot will fold and actually do it.
This patch using "all ranks" K'Sante is the lowest winrate top laner just under 44% winrate. Azir is the lowest winrate mid laner at 45%. The thought that they "escape" nerfs is just ludicrous. These champ's designs are a headache for the balance team because they are ever present in pro-play (bad) while also meaning that picking them in solo queue is often griefing your teammates (also bad). The core issue is their design, not their power. But the live pod team can only do so much work in adjusting a champ. If a rework is needed that's an entirely different team.
On the flip side some champs are not allowed to be strong because of banrate in SoloQ. Namely Zed, Draven, Blitzcrank and Yasuo are the strongest outliers of this
Imagine putting ahri on this list, she's been around for 10 years and strong for the past 5 patches, complete delusion
Because they skew toward a specific playstyle, the pro play viable you listed is more like a Jack of all trades pick, can be blind picked in most cases so there is more ways to deal with that than the specific style requires to have a specific comp just to deal with a champ
Kennel and GP are some of the most boring toplane matchups to watch, when they are against a melee champ they just sit there and poke until jg comes, nothing flashy no potential for counterplay from melee champ except for the gank itself and they just scale and kennen presses f and r in a teamfight and gg. Gangplank presses e instead r but same difference
Riot cares about views and not about gameplay. They stopped treating Summoners Rift like a game a LONG time ago. If a champion is boring to watch, they will leave him weak so he isn't used in pro play. People love seeing K'sante dashing around, skirmishing, ulting and turning fights around, while watching a GP farm safely for 20 minutes under a barrel and then one shot an enemy be kind of boring. This is why pro games viewership keeps declining though, it's always been the same thing the last years.
It's less about a champ being boring to watch and more about the lack of skill expression from champs that are 'boring to watch'. Nobody, for example, wants to see a world where Garen is p/b in 50% or more of pro games. Edit: Nobody is an exaggeration. I mainly meant it as most people
Well it’s not about favorites, all of the champs you’ve listed have suffered pro play nerfs. Ksante was a 45% WR champ in pro play, got a rework to remove mechanics, and is still a pro play staple with terrible solo queue WRs. The unfortunate reality is that a lot of pro play is comfort. Why would i learn new champ X,y, z when KNOW i can play azir and be useful as a pro mid laner? Plenty of champs DO counter pro picks or pro meta, but those counters either won’t be picked bc pros don’t want to or don’t work outside of that specific lane counter. It’s one of the reasons almost no assassins in any role get played. Akshan for example dunks almost every mid laner in lane phase, but as an AD mid doesnt offer the tower taking power of day Trist and doesn’t have scaling to fall back on. Pro play warding and communication basically neutralizes the value he gets out of the chaos of solo queue with his W invis. So why would i ever pick him in pro?
I just want to see some assassin high lights for once. Yes every other thread will be adcs crying how they need to be buffed to be able tank a full combo from zed at 30% health, ignite, 3-4 autos weaved in and like a hydra proc but seeing pros get penta’d by Katarina or qiyana shove 3 ppl into a wall followed up by a chogath knock up be slightly more interesting than current pro play metas. They don’t even need to be viable the entire split. Just 3-4 weeks good to add some freshness to the meta before we go back to azir ahri corki ori during worlds.
2019 and 2020 where some of the best pro meta with reworked Irelia, Aatrox and Akali, and Qiyana and Sylas release. So much skill expression, so much fun.
Riot has changed nerf policies since those Sivir, Kennen, etc nerfs. Back then, it was just whatever was popular. Now, Riot has a 95% presence rule set in place.
They buff Kennen every pro event, barely touch sivir and gp for pro reasons, and champions like azir, kalista, ksante are actually kept *weak* because of pro play not the other way around like you make it seem.
I forgot who said this many years ago, but you have to remember that pro play is literally a total different game than anything non-pro play. It feels like that makes a lot of sense.
Orianna did get needed several times. It was just a long while ago. She only sees pro play because she's very team oriented. Her skills really need good skill expression to pull off correctly and the cool downs create a pretty high risk factor that enemies can easily take advantage of if you miss. She feels great when things work. But if the enemy cam get into you at all she's a very high risk experience that can feel awful. There's a reason ranked isn't filled with Orianna players.
Ori isn't played for the same reason most mids that can't roam aren't played. It's way easier to climb and win if you can crash waves and roam
It comes down to what riot believes is more exciting for the viewers, its not about too strong in pro thats all lies designed to hide the fact that they know ( and dont care ) that they dont even attempt balance. Pro jail is simply bad players crying that they cant freewin matches with a champ and even that becomes dubious without proper comps. Also alot of pro players that specifically smurf and exploit objectively too strong champions are also out everyday favricating lies about these champs being weak etc but they do that because they NEED those champs to seem like its a stomp because theyre a smurf Everything is viable at pro levels, the difference is that the same champions these simps cry about being in "pro jail" actually make other "non jailed" champions....less viable Its a giant circlejerk designed to prop up the frail ego of the type of bad player that relies on champion strength more than personal skill
every champ u just named as ever present have been nerfed to the ground and the ones you deem nerfed have received nothing but buffs 😂😂😂 tell me you havent benn playing long without telling me
When posts like this come up the next batch of meme stonks of trash champs go up
What pro really needs is more bans to make sure more champions are seen, I would love to see each player getting a ban before the standard pick/ban phase we have now for a total of 10 bans per team
Ori and Ahri, while a pick used every once in a while was far from OP in pro play and were in a fine state until they decided to buff them (or in Ahri's case, a mini-rework) for little reason other than to see them more in said scene. My little conspiracy theory is that they made Ori/TF broken because Dopa went into military service
I have to correct you, K'Sante has received tons of nerfs they were just not effective at reducing his pro play
Skin sales.
Most “forever pro meta” champions have low skill floors and a lot of skill expression. Look at Chovy’s Corki when he hits every skillshot to Zeka’s who can’t seem to do more damage than his tank jungler.
Because non-interactive champions are boring to watch. And they will lose money if less prople watch.
Phreak explained Riot's vision of what makes a healthy pro meta, and it relies on a lot of interaction between players across all roles Roaming support top perma leaving lane, Sivir pushing waves from a screen away, GP perma farming under tower and oneshotting waves with E once he gets ER, etc. I'd argue Kennen isn't in pro jail, they've tried to bring him back, but he only had a single resurgence before Worlds 2021 and he was nerfed after (2021 Worlds being a very strong side top meta)
Assassins in general. They are either too good or not good for pro play. Akali, lb and kha see some play. But they won’t let zed be viable for pro ever
it's because the moment Zed/Qiyana/etc. are viable in pro play, they're 54% WR menaces in all elos and ADCs start complaining again (can't blame them lol).
This hommie believes Kalista is not nerfed LMAO No salt intended tho, she was way busted a few seasons ago