The win rate imbalance between the Blue and Red sides in League of Legends isn’t just your imagination. Riot Games is aware of this issue, though it’s not as pronounced in lower Elo levels. They are actively working on solutions, but it will take some time.

This week, the LoL community has been upset about the imbalances between the two sides on Summoner’s Rift. The uproar began after a fan investigated and gave win rate statistics.

Although this issue has recently gained more attention, balance boss Matt Leung-Harrison mentioned that his team has been looking into this for a while and is already working on changes.

On July 7, Leung-Harrison stated on Twitter that they are “working on optimizing red/blue side balance” but warned that it will take some time to resolve. He also pointed out that the imbalance primarily affects higher-tier players in ranked play, while lower-tier players are less impacted.

In lower ranks like Bronze, Gold, and Emerald, there is a slight imbalance, but it usually balances out over time. However, in higher ranks such as Diamond, Master, and Challenger, the difference between the 2 sides becomes more significant.

The statistics support this: in low-tier Elo games, the blue side wins 51.1% of the time, which is fairly balanced. In Emerald and higher, the red side’s win rate increases to 49.4%, while the blue side’s win rate drops to 50.6%. In Diamond and above, the red side’s win rate dramatically increases to 52.9%, with the blue side’s 47.1%.

Riot’s most likely solution will involve changes to League lobby matchmaking. Historically, Riot has assigned the red side a higher average MMR to compensate for the disadvantage of playing with less favorable camera angles and map perspectives.

While Riot has not confirmed when these changes will be implemented, Leung-Harrison’s comments suggest it will take some time.

Aurora release

Aurora is the latest champion to join the League of Legends roster in patch 14.14. She is a mid-range mage designed for the mid lane, known for her ability to move swiftly and dodge attacks on the battlefield.

Balance changes

Patch 14.14 will include a series of balance changes affecting several existing champions. This time, a particular focus is on AP champions such as Nidalee, Aurelion Sol, Lillia, and Rumble. Additionally, other champions like Hecarim and Milio are also scheduled to receive some tweaks.

League of Legends Patch 14.14 early notes

Champions

Aurelion Sol

Base Stats

• Base AD increased: 55 >>> 58
• Attack range increased: 550 >>> 575

Q: Breath of Light

• Now consumers mana immediately instead of after 1 second

W: Astral Flight

• Cast range increased: 1200 flat >>> 1500-1900
• Stardust ratio reduced: 750% >>> 650%

E: Singularity

• Mana cost reduced: 80-100 >>> 80 flat
• Pets are no longer reduced to zero speed

R: Falling Star/ The Skies Descend

• Base damage increased: 150-350 >>> 200-450
• R AP ratio increased: 65% >>> 75%
• R2 shockwarve damage reduced: 100% of R1 >>> 85% of R1

Aurora

• You can read more about her kit here

Hecarim

Base Stats

• Health growth increased: 99 >>> 106

W: Spirit of Dread

• Healing increased: 20% >>> 25%
• Duration reduced: 5 seconds >>> 4 seconds
• Cooldown reduced: 16-14 seconds >>> 14 flat

E: Devastating Charge

• Cooldown changed: 18 seconds flat >>> 20-16 seconds

Lillia

Passive: Dream Laden Bough

• Healing on subsequent targets reduced: 33% >>> 15%

E: Swirlseed

• Base damage reduced: 70-170 >>> 60-160
• AP ratio reduced: 60% >>> 50%

Milio

Passive: Fired Up!

• AD ratio reduced: 15% flat >>> 7-15% (1/6/9)
• Base damage reduced: 15-50 >>> 10-50

Q: Ultra Mega Fire Kick

• Range increased: 1000 >>> 1200
• Cooldown reduced: 12 seconds >>> 10 seconds

W: Cozy Campfire

• Recast range increased: 700 >>> 3000

E: Warm Hugs

• Base shield reduced: 60-180 >>> 45-165
• AP ratio increased: 30% >>> 45%
• Recharge timer increased: 17-13 seconds >>> 17 seconds flat

Nidalee

W: Pounce

• Damage reduced: 60-210 >>> 55-190
• Now has a 50% bonus AD ratio

E: Swipe

• Base damage reduced: 80-260 >>> 60-225
• Bonus AD ratio increased: 40% >>> 70%
• AP ratio reduced: 45% >>> 40%

Rumble

Q: Flamespitter

• Base damage reduced: 125-185 >>> 80-180
• Minion damage increased: 55-75% >>> 71-75%

League of Legends Patch 14.14 is set to go live on July 17, 2024. This patch promises to bring significant updates, making it an exciting time for both new and veteran players to explore the game.

Yuumi and Zeri are hard to balance champions

Phroxzon cited these 4 elements as the cause:

• Perceptions of fairness and counterplay
• Champion is exciting to play and has “high moments”
• Performance in Elite/Pro play
• Performance in Average play

A high moment for a champion, such as Zeri’s R infinite mobility, is satisfying for the player, but is also frustrating for the opponent and thus can be perceived as unfair. Additionally, some champions are less effective in pubs but prove to be a constant menace at a high skill or pro level. Zeri/Yuumi in particular have been wrecking havoc across LoL pro games, but have notably sat at below 50% winrates on average according to mobachampion

Recent changes to Yuumi and Zeri in Patch 12.16

Zeri

• Q AD ratio: 105% – 125% >>> 100% – 120%

• W AP ratio: 60% >>> 40%

Yuumi

• E Movespeed AP ratio: (+6% per 100 AP) >>> (+2% per 100 AP)
• E Cooldown: 12/11/10/9/8s >>> 12/11.5/11/10.5/10s

• Q base damage (unempowered) increased from 50/80/110/140/170/200 to 50/90/130/170/210/250
• Q base damage (empowered) increased from 60/100/140/180/220/260 (+2/3.2/4.4/5.6/6.8/8% of the target’s current health) to 60/110/160/210/260/310 (+3/4.2/5.4/6.6/7.8/9% of the target’s current health)
• Final Chapter (R) cooldown decreased from 130/110/90 seconds to 110/100/90 seconds

Phroxzon admits they have no idea how to approach Zeri and Yuumi yet

Long term, reducing her ability to “go infinite” in teamfights while maintaining her ability to make plays around the map is where we’re looking to optimize her. This will take time to explore and implement, so for now we’re taking her out of the limelight until we can land on a healthy and sustainable direction.

Riot Phroxzon

While the direction of “reducing her ability to go infinite” is there, we could see some head-scratching there from the way Riot just decided to nerf and kick Zeri out of the limelight for the time being. The specifics are likely being figured out, but as we’re already onto the 1st of 3 Worlds patches, there is a chance ‘the time being’ might include even Worlds.

Longer term, we think Yuumi’s laning phase performance should be more important to her success. Reducing her strength on fighters in favor of marksmen and reducing her coordination burden will put Yuumi in a better state long term while retaining the aspects of Yuumi that her players care about.

Riot Phroxzon

Yuumi is the other recent controversial balance change. She received a nerf in Patch 12.16, but was buffed in a hotfix just a day after. This has turned heads within League community. According to Phroxzon, Riot intends on making Yuumi stronger individually and more aggressive with her Q pokes instead of just chilling on top of a teammate. But the changes so far have not really gone far enough to deliver this vision.

Patch 12.17 preview is already out, and no changes on either Yuumi or Zeri in sight. We might have to wait for the final Worlds balance patch 12.18 or even beyond.

Games with competitive multiplayer are infamous for having balancing problems. These games frequently experience problems with players abusing specific methods, which can be difficult to play against and forces developers to nerf or enhance systems appropriately. However, if gamers and devs do not agree on what is best for the game, these changes may cause a schism. League of Legends, developed by Riot Games, is the game that best illustrates this problem.

In advance of the upcoming World Championship, League of Legends patch 12.16, released on August 23, introduced a number of modifications that optimized the game for professional esports play. While certain modifications in this update, like the redesign of the venerable character Udyr, have gotten great reactions, others, like the needless nerfs, have angered players and are alarming indicators that point to a more sinister balancing mindset. Online debates over League of Legends’ current balancing have erupted following this news.

Zeri, an ADC champion introduced in 2022, received a nerf in patch 12.16, which is debatably the most divisive change. Zeri had a 47% victory percentage across all play levels, making her a terrible character to play, hence the choice to nerf her infuriated people. She did, however, completely dominate professional League of Legends, which forced Riot to temper her. Although the community would have embraced it, this nerf was the 13th modification she’s had since her release earlier this year. Players now think Riot Games has no idea about character design or game balance due to these frequent changes.

Due to the fact that Zeri’s performance in the solo queue was already subpar before the most recent modifications, which further decreased her win rate (43% in fact), players who main her have grown frustrated. It’s crucial to remember, though, that the esports sector has been responsible for numerous champions receiving nerfs in the past. The same procedure was given to Ryze and Azir, two champions. Ryze’s case was so well-known among players that they created the word “Ryze treatment” to describe a scene resembling that of Zeri, Azir, and Ryze.

Along with nerfs, patch 12.16 also boosted characters who were underwhelmed and others who had fallen out of favor. Players welcomed the upgrades for Kai’Sa and Zoe, although some were perplexed by the upgrades for Irelia. Irelia is a champion who has a record of victories, and this record only became better as Blade of the Ruined King gained power. Due to the players’ frustration with this boost, some have questioned Riot’s awareness of League of Legends’ current status.

Riot Games openly announcing that the forthcoming patches building up to the World Championship will all be targeted at professional players was the icing on the cake. This implies that no issues will be resolved during the upcoming weeks until the World Championship is over. Naturally, many players and broadcasters are upset about this approach since they feel it is unfair to concentrate on pleasing the 0.01% of players rather than the millions that help the corporation turn a profit. A counterargument may be made, though, for professional players, whose livelihoods and entire careers depend on tournaments, raising the stakes for them automatically.

Although the League of Legends balancing team at Riot Games works tirelessly to make the game equal and fair, this Sisyphean endeavor ultimately depends on thousands of uncontrollable factors. Riot Games has faced criticism from both the community and the esports community, despite efforts to improve the condition of the game, such as dividing balancing decisions among multiple tiers of play (Low, Mid, and High Elo vs esports).

You can discover a few players advocating various balancing adjustments if you look through the replies to any Rioter’s tweets. There are always concerns regarding the condition of the game, whether they involve requests for more Zeri nerfs, a rework for their preferred champion, or a minor change to certain systems.

With more than 160 champions available, it is challenging to create a “perfect meta” that appeals to all players. The community frequently pushes back on Riot’s adjustments because of how they will impact the meta.

While Riot generally gets most balance changes correct, they have made disastrous mistakes in the past. There have lately been teething problems following the durability update, with champions such as Nilah, Sivir, and Master Yi having extraordinary victory rates at one point or another.

The community occasionally claims they can do it better, but League of Legends lead designer Matt ‘Phroxzon’ Leung-Harrison claims there are a few things they get wrong about game balance.

“I think the community has no idea, at all, how difficult game design is. Just think about the number of permutations and combinations of every possible thing. Not only do we have to think about these things, we have to think about them ahead of time.”

Phroxzon on his podcast in August

Let’s say you’re making an item. You have to think about how that item is used on every possible champion and rune combination, in any team comp ⁠— and that’s just how it’s optimized. That’s not talking about the design quality of the thing: Is the thing satisfying when you press a button, is it intuitive, does it have counterplay? All of those esoteric values that the community doesn’t consider

Phroxzon

Riot teases their patches ahead of time and puts things in testing on the PBE with a broad notion of how it will affect the game. Riot, according to Phroxzon, gets it ‘right’ about 70-80% of the time – that’s a 1% victory rate.

The community loves to talk big, but no one actually draws a line in the sand about any changes, which is understandable given how difficult it is.

“It’s very difficult to predict balance changes ahead of time,” he continued. “You get really good at predicting what the outcome is going to be. We will predict what the outcome is going to be for every skill bracket, and we’re quite accurate I’ll say.

“These things are really hard to estimate. There are so many moving parts. There could be item changes going in the patch, there could be champion interactions, or the play rate could increase which will decrease the win rate. If more players play it, there are probably more new players and that changes the way the win rates play out. There’s a lot of factors involved.”

Why durability instead of damage?

Damage across systems (runes, items, spells, …) are too high but are balanced relative to each other, so instead of nerfing everything, they decided to focus on specific systems.

Balancing and Adjusting

The initial launch was unbalanced, but they’re trying to even out the rough edges.

Healing is still unbalanced so they’re trying to balance the game around Grievous Wounds’ 40% heal reduction. More healing nerfs are coming.

Thoughts on the Durability update

They think the update has landed relatively well with the player base and satisfied their goals

Combat is better paced and more understandable, snowballiness of the game is reduced, games are slightly longer which results in better pacing and more emphasis on strategic aspect of LoL.

There have been lots of complaints and negativity from the player base towards the update, but Riot seems to be of the opinion that such reactions are expected of a big update and are positive that these changes are necessary for the long term health of the game, hence the ‘relatively well’ remark. As they are still in the process of smoothing over the edges in patch 12.12 and future patches as well, it’s fair to be frustrated with the current state of the game at times.

What are your thoughts on the Durability update? Was it necessary or a total miss to you? Let us know in the comments!

Reddit user u/dumnem has been receiving a lot of upvotes on his thread about his thoughts on the mechanics of critical hits on the League of Legends community subreddit. The main point of the thread is to point out the bad things currently in the game due to the fact that this mechanic is heavily RNG dependent, though there is a [perfect example of how this should work inside the game.

Not only just fun, critical strikes are necessary for the game to progress as it benefits many late-game items dependent Champions. Even though this mechanic had functioned well back in the previous seasons, as the game evolved, it has shown its flaws.

• Crit chance in League of Legends doesn’t work like you think it would, u/dumnem called it pseudo-RNG, every time your champion lands an attack and it doesn’t procs, their critical chance will increase. This has been in the game since the original rune system, and the reason the infamous 1% rune was a thing. The developers’ attempt to favor critical strikes in the early stage of the game when your ADC’s critical chance isn’t high.

• This mechanic has been strangely imbalanced for champions who heavily depend on a single or a burst of attacks. There are many perfect examples of this, Gangplank’s barrels are used in the post. Right now the barrels can easily do up to 2,800 damage on a crit with the proper build. Most barrels are going to do between 1200-2000 on a crit. However, this is not the case of builds that play around the ability to explosively one-shot enemies aren’t 100% crit chance builds. They use lower crit chance but very high ad and lethality so when it does crit the ADC’s screen goes colorless.

• Obviously, this is bad for both teams or Gangplank and his target, especially. If the barrels explode but don’t crit, Gangplank will only cause 25% of the damage compared to if it is a crit, because of how much he depends on the mechanic. It only gets more difficult for a Gangplank to land barrels against ADC as he climbs higher on the ranks. Games simply won or lost depends on RNG. 

• Another perfect example is Aphelios’s ultimate – Moonlight Vigil. A lot of Aphelios mains agreed, it’s one of the most powerful ADC’s ultimate in the game when it comes to damage dealing, but if it doesn’t strike for double damage it will literally just tickles. Again this feels bad for both sides, maybe he wins the coin flip, and with just ~30% chance he ravages the enemies before him, or maybe he loses it and barely does a thing to the other team’s tanks. Moonlight Vigil deals 120% damage instead of 100% if Aphelios lands a crit, but with Infinite Edge, it deals 155% damage and that’s a lot of damage considering it is an ultimate ability.

• As critical strikes are one of ADC’s best chances dealing with tanks, but when it’s landed on squishies, the problems are the same but on a much larger scale of weirdness. Imagine the tide drastically turned on a lane because fate demands it when an ADC with 1 crit item manages to strike double damage a couple of times in a row on a trade.

But fear not, with 200+ years of experience in developing games Riot Games has saved us and created a not-perfect but far better mechanic, the catch is they applied it on just 1 per 156 Champions in the game – Ashe the Warmother of the Avarosans.

Ashes’s damage output is still gets its fair share of benefits when you buy Critical Strikes based items for her, but in this case, no RNG would change Ashe’s ability to pierce through her enemies’ frontline.

Making crit increases the damage dealt by your attacks by a scaling percentage, similar to ability haste, and if Riot can balance it properly you could even uncap it. 

This still gives teams a reliable way to punish enemy team comps without a proper front line. It should be scaled so that at ‘100% chance’ you have the same DPS you do now. RNG is not healthy in a game like League of Legends, it should be about Champions and Items creating advantages that you can use to win and close the game before you get outscaled.

Crit should work like Ashe passive in that you increase the damage you deal by a percentage that is always there, instead of sometimes you doing no damage and other times you doing explosive damage that you have absolutely no control over.

We can’t expect this to happen anytime soon, per se, with worlds just around the corner. But it’s something we can appreciate and be happy to see in future seasons.

With the 2021 preseason update, Riot Games brought us one of the biggest updates in League of Legends history. Heavily focused on changing the items of the game, the update’s purpose was to bring to League one of the reasons why its competitor Dota 2 flourishes – Item builds diversity. But as we have known by now, although the update brought a huge breeze on our League of Legends experiences, it fails to accomplish its goal of item build diversity. 

Recently, u/firewall245 shared his thoughts on the League of Legends subreddit about the state of item diversity in the game right now:

With the popularity of building guide websites such as op.gg, Blitz, and many more, players would always easily check Champion’s stats with a specific build and quickly select just 1 Mythic Item or just 1 identical set of items for every game.

True, some classes of Champions in the game suffer from a shortage of appropriate things to pick from, but the cause for this is our community’s viewpoint. Riot is aware of this, and numerous improvements have been made to assist some undervalued things to perform better, but a large number of players would still buy the same playstyle they see on these websites without hesitation.

They see that most people will choose an A build, while a substantial number of players will build like the B build, and those are the two builds they will buy from now on. A not underperforming build will never see the light of day until a high rank player spams it and has fantastic results, because only then will the numbers on these websites alter.

Despite all of the above, the absence of diverse builds in League of Legends is not a hot topic or a pressing issue that needs to be addressed; in fact, I believe League would be much more fascinating as a competitive game. At the end of the day, the game is still a very fantastic game with or without the diversity in item builds; after all, this is League of Legends, not Dota 2.

Taliyah has remained on the outside of the League of Legends meta since her release in 2016. The Stoneweaver has always had a tiny but devoted fan base, but several modifications have gradually reduced it.

She’s bounced from role to role, first as a mid laner before becoming popular in the jungle — and even have some viability as a bot lane or support pick — but her identity hasn’t truly connected with players. Taliyah’s win rate is decent — hanging just below 50% — but her pick rate is terrible. Taliyah has the lowest pick rate of any champion in the jungle, where she plays her major role.

Riot recognizes the issue, but their options are limited even after buffs as recent as LoL patch 11.3, due to her win rate.

“Taliyah’s win rate is already in a spot where there is not a lot we can do with her to give her satisfaction without giving her power,” developer ‘GalaxySmash’ explained to players on Reddit.

“We did the closest we could in opening her back up to being a jungler earlier this year, whereas before, she was only a mid laner and even more unpopular than she is now. Opening her up to jungler gave her a boost in playrate, and it seems Taliyah players overall enjoy her more in the jungle for a variety of reasons.” – he continued.

However, with the champ being “genuinely unpopular” and minor adjustments not having much of an impact, Riot has one ace up its sleeve – a bigger mini-rework.

Riot might experiment with her Worked Ground mechanic, as well as the rest of her kit, in order to carve out a new niche for the Stonewalker, similar to the modifications made for Irelia, Tahm Kench, Lucian, and Gangplank in Season 11. However, there is one major hindrance: time.

“I think at this point it’s clear to get a big increase in pick rate she would require some large-scale work which is difficult to find time for, but not out of the question,” GalaxySmash said. “We have tried small changes to solve it but couldn’t get anything to stick.”

There are no changes planned for Taliyah in the forthcoming LoL patch 11.17 release, but as preseason 12 approaches, Stoneweaver mains may be in luck.

Items are an essential element of League of Legends and any MOBA game in general since they provide champions with significant amounts of power and progression throughout the game. Making and modifying any items will therefore shape the metagame in an entirely different way.

When it comes to item design, according to Riot August, the chief of the League of Legends champion design team, he seldom develops items that reduce the champion’s stats. Riot August explains that such an item always has a favorable impact to compensate for the champion’s reduction in some stats. However, this frequently results in the player finding the item to be too good to use on specific champions and builds without concern for the other negative effect.

Riot August: “Actually, designing an item with a champion’s stat reduction effect is too difficult. Usually, this type of item always ends up being too strong in some champions to overcome the adverse effects it brings. For example, an item that increases AD by 50 but slows the champion by 10% for example, it will become too strong on Master Yi because this champion will not be slowed when he used his R.

In fact, we used to design this item with the old Gargoyle Stoneplate, the active item increases health with reduced damage. However, it became too strong on Cho’Gath, Sett because then we didn’t apply the damage reduction effect with true damage. In the end, the whole team had to redo the effect of the Gargoyle Stoneplate in season 11.”

It is possible to argue that equipment intended to have negative effects in exchange for certain stats is a good idea. However, in a game like League of Legends, such items are rarely used because, as Riot August stated, they become too powerful on specific champions and builds. As a result, Riot is forced to balance the item based on the champions that utilize it the most efficiently, and the item progressively becomes incredibly terrible for other champions.

Even with a common item like Turbo Chemtank, it was nerfed in the past few patches just because it was used so well by Udyr, Hecarim

Riot Games’ intention is obviously not to develop an item that can only be utilized by specific champions. Essentially, Riot strives to promote diversity in League of Legends by providing champions with a diversity of item-building possibilities. As a result, the item form that needs players to trade stats in order to gain a certain effect has been progressively disappearing from League of Legends in the past. Perhaps League of Legends players will have to wait a long time for an item like the old Gargoyle Stoneplate to reappear.