On a recent post, League of Legends Lead Gameplay Designer “RiotScruffy” spoke on behalf of the Riot team on how they feel regarding the newest champions. They certainly nailed the fun factor and made characters who stood out, like Sett and Aphelios, but it isn’t perfect, either.
It is a known thing in the community to spam the new champion in games because they are always broken at launch. They are miles stronger than any other champ of the same role, and they only become balanced after several nerfs through several patches. What Scruffy is saying isn’t that they don’t plan to release the champions perfectly right off the bat (they are only human, remember that!), but they will be working towards not letting new champions impact the meta too much. For comparison, look at this graph from patch 10.1, otherwise known as the patch in which Sett came out:
If you look above, Sett’s popularity makes complete sense since he just came out, but both him AND Aphelios (champion who came out before him) have insane banrates. It shows that right out the floodgates, these champions are absolute monsters, and it is usually months after they arrive that they are properly nerfed.
When it comes to the ideal launch of a champion, Scruffy says these are the two key points he wants to hit:
- Launching with a long term balanced target (Like Kayn and Warwick, who have remained the same for a long time)
- Faster / stronger followup (As people master said champions, the winrate slowly goes up)
Scruffy is moving forward with this in mind, and considering that new champions are planned for a summer release, we hope that his goals are realized. That is good not only for them but for us players! Check out the full post here to read what was not covered; it’s worth a read.
Stay tuned for more League of Legends content.
