i think it's all about keep players engaged with new matchups and new fresh metas but many times they go beyond shaking meta

As a midlander, the matchup is usually that 3-7 champions which is incredibly broken right now, and there isn’t anything else. It changes about 3 patches but I know half of the time what I am facing before even queueing up. when I get something I don’t see it’s usually OTP like 1 million mastery Anivia or 2 million mastery Azir. Hell even laning against Sion mid feels like breathing fresh air

I think the problem isn't necessarily the frequency of changes they do, but how patternized they have become. Like, the whole idea behind the 2 week patch cycle is to shake up metas, so that every champion can, at some point, be viable to play. And so that no single champion remains at the top for too long. However, that doesn't work out the way it should, simply because of Riot's seemingly favoritism towards certain sets of champion. Example being the likes of Hecarim or Kha'Zix, who have been absolute S tier champions for several consecutive years now. I think this stems partially from Riot's philosophy that they only want showmaker and highlight champions in comptetive. That fact get's pretty obvious when you look at how Lee Sin gets buffed every year at the same time, only to be nerfed again a few patches later. They deliberately keep the "exciting to look at" champion in the meta for a good E-sports eperience, leaving a lot of the older and less exciting champions (most control mages, for example) in the dust. So instead of *actually* "shaking up the meta", what they do is just cycle the same metas, sometimes maybe with different flavors of champions, on repeat, while keeping their favorit children viable and strong all year around. I haven't felt an actual "meta shift" in, like, 3 years. Only the occasional outlier becoming a tier 0 champion due to being overbuffed, but those are usually not meta warping. The closest to a "meta shift" we had in the past few years was this one patch we just had with the likes of LB and Kai'Sa rushing Statikk. And then again, Kai'Sa was a very popular champion before that already. Meaning the only impact on the meta it really had was bringing LB back.

the problem is some champs are always meta and others never are meta and almost never get changes ever

+1000 range on q and +500 range on w is something they should try giving veigar. It would be funny.

To add on what you said towards the end of the video, similar to the Zyra meta, there was the ardent censer meta where it was only soraka janna lulu, but then Ignar from Misfits pulled out the fervor of battle Leona vs Lulu against the reigning champions and it made an otherwise stale series which I assume would just be a 3/0 sweep turn into one of the most exciting series I still remember.

Not me thinking I left Star Rail running in the background...

The other hand that was not mentioned was that sometimes the constant change can inspire a reaction of "it doesn't matter what I pick to play since it will likely change soon anyway" which does encourage people to pick the champion they like, not the kit and number set that's the most powerful at the moment.

Think best of 3s in pro play should ban all champions picked and banned from the previous games in the match, i feel like we’d see some wacky shit after 30 champs are banned

I think a once a month patch schedule would be the most effective. It wouldn't be so long that the player base feels it's too long from biweekly, but just long enough for things to be played, tested, and retested. And would allow for those changes to settle better

While in uni I legit picked up and dropped league like 4 times every year. Every exam/ project season I just knew I wouldn't be able to keep up with the changes and it always felt so bad getting into a game again and feeding in part because things were just that bit different. This was a lot more impactful for tft though. Given how a missed update can cause you to miss game winning plays just because you didn't know a specific comp got just the buffs it needed to work.

It is worth noting that game devs, Riot included, already know what they're gonna do if needed when they release content. Naafiri isn't out yet but I guarantee you that they already have several, very detailed plans on what to do if she proves unbalanced.

My current favorite system is the one Omega Strikers is currently using. A patch every month/few months, along with added content per patch, BUT They make a few "micropatches", to prevent something too strong for being that strong the whole time. Micropatches can come just a few days after a patch, up to a few weeks! It makes the game *feel* balanced because they don't need to nerf/buff everything and anything all the time, while still adding a lot of change from time to time. Really cool!

Was about to head to bed (definitely a time zone difference haha) when I saw the notification for a new Vars video. The points you brought up will definitely give me some stuff to think about before I fall asleep haha. Ty for the chill and comfy vibes with your voice and the HSR music

While the idea is riddled with flaws and issues that may or may not be possible to overcome, a part of me yearns to go back to old game versions, let's say, Season 5. The issues with it are countless, but I often wonder if there would be ways to make it work in some way. "Rotating old seasons/patches game mode", which would rotate every 1st of the month, sounds like so much fun to me, with all the flaws of the idea ignored.

I was feeling a sort of frustrated feeling with balance changes but I wasn't able to put it into words until watching this vid. I realized that I would often simply play or ban the most meta thing of the current patch and wait until the inevitable nerf rather than formulate a way to properly beat it. It worked, but it wasn't satisfying and then I wondered why I was getting so bored. but that's because I wasn't trying new strategies and planning around what was strong, I was just stubbornly refusing to participate and holding out until Riot changed things. I'd really gotten caught up in following a meta and out of fear of getting flamed I never wanted to try or even formulate my own strats anymore, even though that was what I found fun in the first place. And like, no wonder I was finding the game less satisfying! I wasn't engaging with it anymore! I was literally just following statistical trends! Really good vid Vars, I like how you handled the discussion of this nuanced topic.

The irony is that Riot is trying to avoid making the game feel stale but inadvertently doing so with these constant changes as players get tired of it. It's basically a balancing act between; player annoyance at constant changes - player enjoyment/acceptance overall - player annoyance at little to no response.

I really like the new editing style that you used for this video.

I wish they would do less balance changes but bigger ones. For example a balance patch where they try to nerf dmg a lot more. I remember when they did the dmg reduction patch 1 year ago, it wasn´t enough and with all the fast buffs to champion dmg in the following patches it was gone pretty fast and we are yet again in a dmg meta

vars with the star rail ost? 👀

was i the only one that noticed the fact that star rail music is in the background and at a certain point he says " *trailblazing* ambitions"? i dont know if it's a coincidence or not and i'm debating with my brain over it

I hate to say it because I know it's no fun to think this way, but I really do think that the biggest problem league has right now is that there are just too many champions. The only way Riot can realistically gauge the power of each champion is through raw data. The sheer amount of time it would take to cycle ideas and REALLY playtest every buff/nerf idea for each champion is just unrealistic. The bigger a team gets, the more of that team has to be relegated to just the logistics of holding the team together and keeping everyone on track. At this point the buff/nerf cycle for riot is less to achieve perfect balance and more to keep their game from getting stagnant, like pumping air into an artifical lake.

Could someone comment the name of the Doublelift video referenced in the beginning of the video? I'd be interested in watching it and I didn't see it linked in the description.

I didn’t expect Honkai Star Rail music in the background lol

I think it's alot because they like to buff the just under meta champs instead of nerfing the meta so its very easy for them to overshoot on buffs. Also I would prefer small patches of buffs and nerfs every 2 weeks but once every 3 months have a huge meta shake up patch.

Gaddamn space walk really calming

HSR music in the background makes very peaceful vibe

Not Vars using Star Rail music :o ❤❤

dude the honkai ''Space Walk'' ost must be one of the best ost's ever made. amazing music choice sheesh

Daym HSR music from the space station!

love you vars , never stop the vids you have such an amazing content and i can't get enough of it

Because I, Draven, think it is funny when we buff, and nerf them simultaneously.

The biggest source of frustration on a gameplay level is that league’s strategy is all about preventing your opponent from playing the game, and therefore the reason you lose is because your agency is less (whether that’s because you make mistakes due to being less skilled is irrelevant here because everyone starts out unskilled). So learning the ropes often feels like banging your head against the wall for this and the reason you mentioned; this is the main source of frustration on a long-term level. Any game that has disabling effects applying to players will have this problem, but it’s particularly awful in league where pve-style disables are being flung around in a PvP environment.

Herta space station ost in the background 👌

I think this is one of the greatest of your videos. It's a topic that i never thought about while playing this game for so long unlike others that i was aware of but still watched.

Bro put in Star Rail music and thought we didn't notice

the intro editing was IT

A lot of reasons, I suggest you watch Phreak's channel since you'll get a lot of reasoning for the constant changes, especially in the last 2-3 videos. They balance around three groups, low elo, high elo and pro. A lot of changes usually are meant for high elo and pro play, so it won't always affect everyone, since players that aren't skilled enough won't be able to capitulate on the changes. Bottom line is, it's done for variety's sake and keeping players engaged. Pro players also almost never change what they play, and if you'd let them play the same 10 damn champions for 20 years, you can be sure they freaking will; hence why it's the balance team's job to force pro players off of certain champions and give them more options. They also have a design philosophy if one champions is buffed or nerfed in a role, another has to receive the opposite treatment. They follow statistics across all ranks and since they also enjoy the game a lot, they see what people post on Reddit for example too, it's not just shots in the dark. They generally know what to hit add or shave off a 1% win rate and sometimes it's experimental. As for why what champion you're playing isn't getting any attention, is mostly because they consider it in a good spot (for the players that know what they're doing) or they aren't high priority enough. The balance team is definitely not as out of this world as people claim they are, it's just that perceptions and loud voices matter a lot on what others perceive.

Yay, another Vars video!!!

Remember when they duffed jungle morg a few seasons ago and it was broken so they nerfed it only to bring it back a few a couple season later? Or when they buffed mao passive bc he wasn't doing good in top but then reverted it bc they "didn't know" it would buff sup mao? Or that one time....

The most fun I've had watching Vars's videos is trying to recgonize the background music. So far I think I've recognized Persona 4 and 5, Genshin, Honkai Star Rail, Danganronpa, and a couple others I'm probably forgetting.

6:00 On the "players ban what is doing well" note, I got 2 shot by a Draven on Janna after the adc mythic rework. At level 1. Through my shield. He has been my perma ban for the past month and change ever since then. The point being that more often than not, bans are influenced by poor experiences or your personal counter picks rather than what is strongest at the present time. Edit: Albeit, Draven was a pick or ban champion for a while but that was due to an item not a change to his kit.

The Honkai Star Rail background music playing 👌

They recently gave veigar a small buff and then gutted his ap ratios 1 patch later.

I was playing HSR while watching the video and coincidentally just finished with simulated universe, the whole time I was thinking that my game was bugged before realizing that it was the same music.

Yooo Request: Can you do champion guide according to ur analysis? I.e. Morgana is catcher, how would you play her in assassin meta?

how can you adapt vs giga buffed 55% wr kindred and reksai or hybrid kaisa spaming W every 3 sec i have to get nerfed

I used to play a lot of this card game, Magic the Gathering, and because all the cards were in paper, the only way they could control the meta was banning cards entirely, which they did every few months or so, and they rarely did. I really appreciated the point that we are susceptible to change, because yeah, all it really takes to beat the meta is finding an off-meta strategy that counters the meta. People pick up on that strategy and the old meta becomes obsolete, and a new metagame arises. The cycle continues, and only when the meta truly becomes stale is a ban needed. Good video!

My issue is it feels like they see the stats of a champion or an item but they never get the reason or cause of said win rate garages being a recent example of this the nerfs he got was a bit light toned if not noticeable at all to anyone who faced or played with garages it is obvious that garages neutral game is simply too good you can't dive him becuse he will body slam you but he can still poke with q hell he can dive YOU instead

This era of stats and desktop apps has lead to some funny things happening like when rageblade became a mythic and people tried it on kindred which worked…kinda leading to it being recommended everywhere and everyone built it when in reality it wasn‘t that good. The funniest thing though is when in low elo someone plays terribly bad because they use the best build but don‘t know why its good and how to use it.

maybe make a very big patch say every 2-3 months then micro-patches in between every 2 weeks (like making minor adjustment to ~3 champions at max,stuff like +/-5 dmg etc.) just to take care of outliners

Winrate also depends on pickrate, for example a champion with over 10% pickrate should not have over 50% wr because that would mean anybody can first time the champ and be good with it. In opposition a champion with very low pickrate should have above 50%wr because if even the few otps can't get the champ to work then that means the champ actually sucks. And at last the champs considered skillful to play should not have over 50% wr because that would mean that the champ is just overtuned and anybody can pick it up, fiora for example may have a hight skill ceiling, but her skill floor is low hence why she's so popular and overperforming since her rework (not to mention the toxic aspects of her kit), also divine sunderer was a mistake.

I didn't know honkai star rail music is copyright free.

Music in the background?

Regardless of meta if I like a champ I just play them and if I put enough time into them then it doesn't matter much to me. The only time change really bothered me was when they reworked Akali which I invested a lot of time into just for them to absolutely gut and murder her afterwards leaving her in a deplorable state for so long because of pro play. It felt really bad to play her for a bit especially when they would change her literally every patch and you would have to re learn damage thresholds or even just adjusting to them just straight up removing stuff from her kit. The thing that probably bothered me the most was losing the ability to combo your Q while casting your E for a bunch of burst damage since that directly affected how smooth the champ felt to play. She felt very clunky for a long time after that. But kindred has always been my safe space in this game since their release no matter what happens I can always play them and I've always maintained a 60-70% WR on the champ. Other than that I've always played vayne and ahri as well so my small little champ pool is relatively safe. I probably play about 10 champs consistently. My biggest gripe with riot is the lack of content in the game. I always loved the neat new game modes and maps so not getting them for so long really hurts and why I'm looking forward to the new gamemode coming out soon. I really wish they'd just make Nexus blitz a permanent mode as

Love the HSR background music

I see u with that star rail ost

Is mhy's music copyright free or isnt it dangerous to use? O.o

You really went out of your way to use trailblazing, I can appriciate that

i kept thinking i had star rail open because of the background music loll

I remember when FPX appeared into the worlds with his AP naut mid and won

You should make a video about abilities that create structures such as trundles W or Azir's Ult. The only abilities that I can rememebr off yhe top of my head are Trundles Pillar, Azir's Wall, Anivia's Wall, Ornn's pillar, and probably a few more? And by structures, I don't mean a Yasuo's windwall. That may seem obvious to some, and to most it is, but you'd honestly be quite surprised.

yeah as a yorick main it was nice to get a buff a year and a half ago but yorick getting a nerfed the following patch to the point he was worse than he was before the initial buff really sucked

I think it’s less about how frequent the patches are, and more about how much they do in each patch. Some things need to get fixed ASAP, because let’s be honest, Riot releases shit that completely destroys that game. But that doesn’t mean that they have to change 15+ champions every other week. They need to be more judicious with their game changes

The Star Rail bgm really slaps

Not the HSR BGM AND sneaking the word trailblazing into the script on the first channel

I think if Riot swapped to Monthly updates for a while, and then to a patch every 2 months, they could get into a healthier rhythm. I'm no master, but balance with a rhythm of one patch brings new stuff (Champs, Items, Reworks, etc), then the next patch a month later that focuses exclusively on Balance, I think that would be a much healthier system, gives 2 months between a new release of something or a rework for Riot to figure things out, and a full month to gather data and dig into what causes that data for the new stuff. I think the release of new game modes would give a great opportunity for them to do this, give us Nexus Blitz, 2v2v2v2, and other fun new game modes for 2 months at a time and then give us something else to do for 2 months while they deal with everything else. I think it would do wonders for game health for both the casual and competitive sections of the player base.

10:50 btw thats the starcraft player Boxer not Bisu

Honestly, I think the size of the changes is as significant as the frequency. Look at your Veigar example... instead of a small increase to one ability, Riot greatly extended the range or two abilities at once! This makes no sense -- especially if you're frequently balancing anyway. The other factor champion interactions, which I don't think you addressed enough. Which so many champions, it's likely that any new champion will have strong synergy with AT LEAST one of the existing champions. But it doesn't make a lot of sense to nerf the old champions just because of that. And, similarly, it doesn't make much sense to nerf the new champions because of that. The problem is that it's simply very difficult to introduce new champions in a balanced way. Or, for example, you could have a situation where one champion is regularly banned that has a strong interaction with another champion. Ok, fine, whatever. But when a new champion is introduced that has a similar synergy with an existing champion... it can become difficult to ban or counter the combination. And this will keep getting more difficult as more champions are introduced.

Apparently I've got Genshin ptsd because I jumped at the 0:07 quest sound effect lol

Very nice analysis!

I play a different MOBA and I also struggle with the insecurity of sticking to one champion only for it to be nerfed soon.

why is the background music honkai star rail lol

Theres skin buffs, theres pro play nerfs and then theres random other stuff that sometimes is them fixing past skin buffs.

Hsr music in the background is so calming btw 😴

Before i was 13, i was playing RotMG. I've seen your channel before, when you were posting videos about rotmg and your videos really did helped me (especially that one with good drops). Then after 2016 i stopped watching youtube alltogether. Years later i find you again but this time, you're posting about League of Legends... i will sub to you because this really made me widen my eyes, Have a great day/night

I really like that you put Honkai:Star Rails OST lmao

Great vid for a major issue that doesn't get discussed enough. What I would like to see is two things; less patches, and only buffs. Don't make people's preferred picks worse, just pick up those champs that are lagging behind a bit.

The big thing that in my video debunks the point of this video is what you say at 5:54. It fundamentally untrue, if you have champion mastery on a champion with 48% win rate, it will always feel better than to play a 52 % win rate champion without champion mastery. Below top 50 challenger and pro play, patch notes simply doesn’t matter.

Stats and tier lists are an easy way to present information and get people's attention. Whilst also beiing attractive to players because they seem to provide quick information. In truth they serve nearly no purpose and often hurt how we percieve the champions; turning our focus from who we enjoy/perform well with to who has better WR. Stats/Tier list provide no concetre information, stop putting so much thought behind them and play whoever tf you want. This applies to any game

Just a thought here, but what if riot updated every 2-4 months and they just made some small number adjustments every couple of weeks, e.g. lowering ezreal q base dmg by 5 or something, just to make sure any hyper-oppressive strategies (like meta knight in brawl) aren't too overpowered. This wouldn't be a huge nerf, just a small adjustment so that the champ would still be good, just not 60% winrate good

Btw, Riot buffed Sylas like 3 times before giving him a prestige skin while having a positive winrate and NEVER reverted those changes. He was sooooo strong for months. Same with fiddle, they buffed his ult a lot before his Nemesis skin and now he can completely one shot with one his ult at lvl 6 with two items.

One issue with the idea that players adapt is that even when a winning strategy is found, like MF vs zyra as you mentioned, counterpick is not counterplay, especially in soloque. So if malphite is meta, your only real counrerplay is drafting specific champs/comps and you have to endure that for months, while with the current system you at least know (or can consider it likely) that the malphite sufferinf will only last for 2 weeks.

I think that one of the other reasons that smash has more character diversity than league at the top level is that losing matchups are a lot easier to mitigate in smash through skill expression at the top level. Smash has players like Skyjay, T3 DOM, Big D, Armadillo, etc. playing less than stellar characters but are still completely able to make them function even in losing matchups. In pro-play, you'd never see this. There are just so many times where a bad character is useless and that disparity can't be made up with player skill when against another professional player. Smash's character skill expression is so high that almost all top-level players play a character pool of one or two. On the OrionRank 2022, there were only 23 players out of 200 that played 3 characters or more in any major tournament setting. When character specialization is so important to the game, it can actually give reward to players who take the time to learn niche characters.

I'm really curious how the game would look if they didn't update it for a year, like in Team fortress 2 it's always interesting when people find out how strong something actually is that's previously viewed as bad. Same with Smash

I’d just go for toning down items across the board. Whatever the current op item is determines the meta based on who utilizes it best.

This is also similar to a point Tyler1 made on stream a while ago raging about how much they keep changing the game

The flipside is that pros will not adapt quick enough for it to matter outside of do or die needing to during a world event. They are fine flipflopping from zeri yuumi to lucian nami all split, and only crunching down on a counter during the tourney. nobody wants to watch it play out like that, so what else can you do but try and nudge them off these picks

So remove stat websites?

this is not tecnically a buff/nerf but i remember when riot "fix" a bug with shacos q smoke not been visible in fog of war . they fix it so you can see the smoke of shacos q in fog of war . that patch shaco wr go sooo low . like 47/46 % the next patch riot reverted this . sooo yes shaco current state is so fck up that even fixing a but its bad for him

I'm thinking a solution might be to specifically announce who's getting worked on a month in advance, or to make a point of ensuring that the free-to-play champions are always whoever has been buffed in the last patch and trying to keep to that number. It's not much of a solution, but it could help new players get into the game while a champ has a buff, but also it gives the long-term players advance notice before a nerf drops. Not the best solution, probably the best solution would be to just reduce the total number of buffs/nerfs in any given patch overall so that change is still frequent, it just isn't hitting everyone all the time.

I always had this burning question ever since I noticed it in league, out of all of the roles, there is a lack of adc champions compared to other available champions in other lanes, and the past few released adc's are now melee or really have short range, even if they release marksman type champs they always go in another lane like akshan in mid and senna for support. Why won't riot release more marksman champions for botlane?

I do see a lot bigger champion variety than I used to see before. I would say ADC is currently the only role filled with meta slaves and statistics say it too, out of top 5 champions with highest pick rate, 3-4 of them are always marksmans

I had about a week of enjoyment where my champion (LeBlanc) was not at the bottom of every tier list, and RIOT just went and nerfed the crap out of the Stattik Shiv build. One frigging week. Dantes made a really weird comparison whilst streaming this one time... He was asked why he was abusing Hecarim (back in the beginning of S13 when Hecarim was super strong with the new Ravenous), and he compared it to m*sturbating with a grater - ridiculously painful, but every once in a while the grater changes into the most perfect fl*shlight possible, before being turned back into a grater a week later.

The thing is, metas go though stages and mature, sure, some of the stages may be less desirable, but I'd argue after the early rush of experimentation, the second stage of "everyone trying to get free wins abusing what's busted" it's the absolute worst of them all. League is most of the time on that second stage, and the guarantee that it will go away incentivises people to abuse it even more.

the hsr music

imagine if they did buffs and nerfes without telling the players what in particular was changed, i think for most changes only the 1 trick would feel the difference maybe still not knowing what is the specific detail

Pretty much sums up how shiv Leblanc came about and it’s story

Well simple, League is not designed to be balance, League is designed to be addictive.

Just here to share my experience I've played taliyah for 6 years in jungle and welp now I can't in master + it's close to trolling to pick her in jungle that feels horrible.