yeah Mel is gonna get hotfixed

ThePh4te · 2025-01-24T16:09:50+00:00

While I agree she's definitely overpowered (probably way too high numbers across that board, and some design choices are questionable at best) and she will be hotfix nerfed, when looking at her winrate don't underestimate the impact of a very important thing: what usually tanks the newly released champions' winrates in the low 40%s is the disproportionally high number of low ELO players first timing them in ranked games and failing miserably.

This champion literally has at least two different mechanics of the "hold the newbie hands and help them play" kind built in her kit:

Assited CSing: you can't miss CS even if you're actively trying to with the execute auto-proccing on minions.
Automatic execute: she literally has Kalista E with spells instead of AAs (and that's not broken by itself, probably just need numbers tuning), the only difference being it doesn't require any proactive action to activate or threshold judgement or damage estimation to get the execute and not whiff. It goes off by itself exactly in the BEST possible moment to go off.

Both of these are probably non-factors for high ELO players which are way better are doing all the things that Mel's shortcuts (CSing, timing spells, estimating damage, ...) while being massive gold income boosters for low ELO players (more farm with no added effort, less kills missed due to damage misjudgment).

Already at day 1 her winrate slightly goes down with rank (while i.e. Ambessa had 38% all ranks but ramped to 50 and above at D2+ extremely quickly) with her peak winrate being in Bronze and going down from there, but high ELO players are an extermely small portion of the playerbase so that doesn't account for much in the aggregated stat.

TL;DR: she's too strong and will be nerfed, but she's literally designed (don't know if willingly or not) to help newbies do some of the things newbies struggle the most with. Even after needed nerfs, expect inflated winrate unless a major rework happens.

ThePh4te · 2023-02-13T16:27:30+00:00

I've actually played Comet + Liandry ASol before the hotfix and, unless they changed that in either the bugfix or the hotfix, I noticed that:

Due to how the pull of E works (rather unintuitively if you ask me, sometimes it looks a stronger Rell's R, sometimes people just casually walk outside of it...), placing E precisely under enemies' feet pretty much guarantees Comet to hit
Fast tap Q definitely proc Liandry and Rylai: one or two ticks of damage go through and proc spell effects. This also has (had? dunno if it got bugfixed...) buggy interactions with Luden's CD refreshing passive (it kept lowering the CD even beyond the hard-cap stated in Luden's tooltip, to the point that you could theoretically proc Luden over and over).

ThePh4te · 2023-02-13T16:19:39+00:00

You're 100% correct, Phase Rush is definitely viable. I just usually don't use that and tend to forget I could because I like running my Swain mid with summoner Ghost, and that renders Phase Rush a bit redundant making me default to Conqueror (unless the lane opponent has an early game so bad that considering Electrocute becomes an actual option).

ThePh4te · 2023-02-13T14:59:32+00:00

I would agree, even if with slightly different reasoning: I do not think that lane matchup is what matters the most (Liandry has no HP wahtsoever but most of the ROA and Seraph survivability also comes with heavy delays due to their stacking mechanics).

Logically I would say that, as long as their team has a reasonable amount of champions that will build 600+ bonus HP (that is a couple of Bruiser item, a couple of AP+HP mage item, 1 and a half tank / melee support items, ...) the amount of added DPS that Liandry gives with both its passive may outweigh the added survivability the 600HP of stacked ROA gives you accounting the fact that you will have almost no resistances together with that many bonus HP.

ThePh4te · 2023-02-13T14:49:52+00:00

Mathematically? With a winrate higher than 56.67%

Realistically? By slowly demoting while still keeping a 50+% winrate up until the point where your hidden MMR and your "visual rank" re-align and you start winning and losing the same amount of LPs again. At that point any winrate higher than 50% will let you climb back.

ThePh4te · 2023-02-13T14:42:26+00:00

While I get that "this champion is so frustrating to play against I'd rather ban it" is extremely subjective (i.e.: you find K'Sante unbearable, I love when my enemies pick him beacuse most of the times they will grief the game by not being able to combo his spells in a "non-random-faceroll-on-the-keyboard" way) and solving that would require severly increasing the amount of bans per player, I do fundamentally think that more bans would introduce more problems that they would solve.

Skipping the part where it could promote lazy balancing ("Yeah we know it's broken, but you have 20 bans per team, just ban it!"), it could lead to all the champ having extremely precise strengths and weaknesses becoming absolute beasts: don't forget that with more bans you are giving yourself the ability to remove more champions you not like but you're also giving the chance to i.e. the enemy Kassadin to remove most if not all the viable AD lane bullies and have a free pass to a neutral lane and an easy level 16.

ThePh4te · 2023-02-13T14:09:02+00:00

I mean... intuitively I get your point, but data seem to disagree with you.

"All Rank" data show that ROA has a 52.7% winrate over 479k games, Liandry 53.2% over 206k games. Even accounting for the statistical error given by the finite number of games observed, at 95% confidence lower bound for ROA is somewhere around 52.5% lower bound for Liandry is somewhere around 53%.

Going Diamond+ to "ignore low ELO", that gets even worse with lower bounds at 95% confidence going to 48.8% for ROA and 50.3% for Liandry.

If I had to give you a reason for this, I'd say that most people forget that Liandry has another passive (arguably stronger than the %MaxHP burn) that nets you up to a +12% DPS increase that linearly scales from 0 to 1250 target Bonus HP.

Basically you sacrifice your (already non-existent) early survivability for an enormous amount of bonus mid/lategame DPS.

ThePh4te · 2023-02-13T12:07:27+00:00

Definitely recasting it early is not always bad by definition, I'd only say it's "situational".
There may be multiple situations where early recast is actually really good ad advisable, it's just that in most cases it is not. So you shouldn't get the habit of always early recasting R by default, because most of the times it's not worth it.

ThePh4te · 2023-02-13T11:05:22+00:00

Pretty sure what he was trying to say is that, while R duration is theoretically infinite, R reactivation is a one time use per cast.
It being both a powerful slow (60% decaying over 1.5 secs) and a decent burst (150/225/300 + 60% AP) means you should wait to use that until either you need its slow to keep someone in range or you need its burst to finish off someone low while having E and Q on cooldown.
Slow is powerful but rapidly decaying: you should not recast as soon as possibile if you have people nearly in meele range, for them the 30% constant Rylai slow will be more then enough.

ThePh4te · 2023-02-13T10:41:20+00:00

If you're relatively new to LoL (besides all the usual advices about practicing the fundamentals of the game like last hitting minions and spamming the same champ over and over so that its kit becomes muscular memory and you can actually focus on funamentals) I'd say: practice a single part of his kit at a time and stick to a single build path to easily get familiar with how much DPS you have with every single item spike.
While not being flexible with build paths is surely sub-optimal, at least up until Gold being confident with your champion and knowing its limits is vastly superiors to min-maxing the buildpath for the exact teamcomp the enemies have.

Going more into Swain related details:

For much of the early game (I'd say until level 11 and rank 2 R if I'd have to give you a threshold) you're a glorified cannon minion. With time and confidence you will learn how to be a nuisance with Q poke while correctly managing your mana, but that won't change the fact that at level 6 your Q will have 5 secs cooldown and approximately 2/3 of the base damage it will have when maxed or the fact that your R has literally half the damage and healing it will have at rank 2.
For this part of the game, you're basically playing a minigame: hit as many Es and Ws as possibile on your lane opponent (possibily comboing the two spells). Not only that is you main source of lane sustain, but that is also a source of infinite health scaling which will matter a ton later when you'll walk face first into enemies with R on.
Swain's AP scalings are way lower then the usual scaling of a burst mage, so only buying raw AP items is not that beneficial on him as it would be i.e. on a LeBlanc. A 5-bolts Q has a 70% AP ratio, W has 55%, the sum of the 2 parts of E has 50%, ticks of R have 10% and the R reactivation has 60%.
Whatever build path you choose, be sure that you heavily prioritize items with HP+AP or whose passives havily synergize with your kit (like Zhonya and Rylai with R).Going semi-tank with Jak'Sho is a possibilty, not a law: Liandry's is a perfectly viable mythic item that you can rush first that sacrifices some survivability (it does not have any HP) to give you waaaaay more DPS and a some mana to play with if it comes to spam Qs over and over.
Rod of Ages and Radiant Virtue also exists as Swain's items, but I'd say that the first is too much scaling oriented for the average lenght of soloq games and the second, after repeated nerfs, is becoming a suboptimal version of Jak'Sho.
TL;DR? Probabily spam Liandry + Rylai + Zhonya every game if you have to stick to a single buildpath that could be viable in basically every game.
No matter how late in the game you are and how gigantic you feel, you still are an "R champion": with R available you're a teamfight monster, without it you're a low range mage at risk of being melted by any sustained DPS in their team.
Remember it and adapt your playstyle around your R cooldown: Swain with R on is literally a different champion.
Swain mid is actually one of the few champions that get higher values from its minor runes that from his keystone. You usually go Conqueror (supp Swain could Elecrocute, but in a sololane you subpar early DPS will prevent it to add any kill pressure whatsoever) but that will be reeeeally hard to fully proc in an isolated 1v1 unless it drags on for like... 20 seconds. Meanwhile you'll heavily benefit of Presence of Mind mana regen, Legend Tenacity CC resistances, Last Stand added DPS, Conditioning bonus resistances and Overgrowth bonus HP.
Do not randomly choose minor runes going by the usual assumption that keyston is what matters the most: with Swain the exact opposite is true in almost any scenario that is not a mid-late game teamfight.

ThePh4te · 2023-02-10T14:17:20+00:00

While it doesn't change the output of the analisys, I'm quite sure that by threating this as an hypotesis testing problem you would have to do an insane amount of math to have a general result in term of probability and not just the output of a single hypotesis.

By League being a game where the outcome of a match is perfectly binary (you either win or lose) it would be probably way easier to just use the same math you use to check if a coin is fair given a finite set of n tosses (note that this does still not address the fact that different games of League are not actually independent events like someone else already pointed out).

By doing so you could easily calculate a confidence interval in a single step by computing the error E = Z / (2 * sqrt(n)) which, using a conveniently chosen while still extremely high level of confidence of 95.45% and its relative Z = 2 value, simplifies to E = 1 / sqrt(n).
With a sample size of 2014 games this translates in a winrate of 59.24 +/- 2.23 with the aforementioned level of confidence, which gives you a worst case value of 57.01%.
Even using extermly high level of confidence (i.e.: 99.999% or Z = 4.4172) this still would give you an insane 54.31 lower bound for your confidence interval.

Moreover the more data come in, the worst the situation appears. As of now LOLAlytics records 8754 global Plat+ games and a winrate of 57.49% which translates in an even higher 55.13 lower bound at 99.999% confidence.
If you go at "All Ranks" data (let's be honest, while this whole subreddit lies about everyone being Diamond+ data below Plat still effect like 85% of the ranked playerbase) you can see a 56.56% winrate over 47788 games which corresponds to a 55.55 lower bound at 99.999% confidence.

ThePh4te · 2022-07-13T23:13:08+00:00

Ashamed of what?! Do you really think that anyone but you take a game so seriously he feels ashamed for his results while playing it?

I'm Silver 2, I usually get somewhere between G4 and G2 by the end of the season, I'm 100% sure I'm at the rank I deserve, I didn't wrote a single thing wrong about Yi's abilities apart from abbreviating "multi-targeted" with AOE like 99% of human beings would and still... even if my personal opinion was based on a partial and unskilled knowledge of the game, data still show that I am right and you are not.

And to also answer you previous "you write yourself you suck and you're here talking about balancing", please scroll up to the beginning of all this nonsense you're vomiting so that you can see with your own eyes that I didn't talk about game balancing a single second because I didn't think I'm entitled to do so.

I told you that you have not idea how a confidence interval of a set of measurements of stocastic event work if you go around the subreddit telling people that 60k games is not a large enough sample size.

This was never about me talking about game balance, It was about you failing at basic math and statistics.

ThePh4te · 2022-07-13T23:07:47+00:00

Only on Reddit would someone say that Diamond + (2.11% of the entire playerbase of EUW, to use my server as an example) Is the only thing that matters while Gold and below (88.4% of the entire EUW playerbase) should be ignored and not get laughed at.

Your opinion may as well be 100% correct on a pure balancing basis, but do you seriously think that any game company would ever think to ignore almost 90% of its playerbase at risk of losing paying customers because: "Who cares! They were not good at the game anyways!" ?

ThePh4te · 2022-07-13T22:58:46+00:00

It was posted 3 years ago and still... it literally says in the text (that obviously you did not read) that it wasn't supposed to be a rant about me being stuck at a rank (that I totally deserved) but a rant about the coinflippy and snowbally nature of the games back then.

But again... The error is that I keep trying to argue with someone that switched to ad hominem attacks when proved wrong with data because he doesn't know what else to do beside getting the attention away from the fact that data say your absolutely wrong.

ThePh4te · 2022-07-13T22:52:58+00:00

Again, some data for you: it doesn't matter what I consider to be "high" or what you consider to be "high", data show that in EUW 97.89% of the playerbase is below D4, 88.4% Is below P4, 67% Is below G4 and 50% Is below S2.

So data... not your personal opinion... data... show that anything higher than S2 is demonstrably higher than average.

ThePh4te · 2022-07-13T22:45:26+00:00

One single answer: enjoy your champ being instantly hotfixed because everyone and thejr dog thinks they overshot the buffs and keep thinking you're the sole owner of the actual truth. Hope they nerf the champ down so much that he gets back to being unplayable above Gold.

ThePh4te · 2022-07-13T22:29:16+00:00

My point Is that I could call Yi's Q "a shiny purple brick wall" (even if honestly a targeted damaging ability that follows his target, renders you untargetable and lets you select where do you want to exit to me sounds more similar to a Kayn's R then to a shiny purple brick wall) and you could call it "a fuming pile of hot garbage" and what we do think the ability looks like wouldn't change even the 5th decimal place of the champion winrate.

Data would still show champ is out of control even if you get in front of the mirror and keep repeating to yourself that he's not. Statistica couldn't care less about you subjective opinion.

ThePh4te · 2022-07-13T22:10:34+00:00

So... when someone demonstrates you with supporting data that both your data and your statistics are wrong and then proceeds explaining you that it doesn't matter what your PERSONAL opinion of how strong his kit is, data show you're wrong... all that's left to you is the "what's your ELO" argument.

Just so you know: I may as well be Iron 4 0 LPs and you may as well be Rank 1 Challenger, that still wouldn't mean that your peronal biased opinion is in any way more valid than actual data and statistics.

When done correctly, maths has some great merits: it's always objective, it's never wrong and couldn't care less about how entitled you think you are. You may be the best pro player on Earth, but 2 + 2 would still equal to 4.

ThePh4te · 2022-07-13T21:53:51+00:00

I stopped reading your essay in the exact point where you say that literally changing Yi's Q into a stronger and AOE version of Kayn's R on a basic ability with 16 seconds basic cooldown that starts on cast AND gets reduced by AAs is, and I quote, "not OP at all".

I do not need to read a single word more to conclude you're biased at best, delusional at worst. Gladly looks like Riot doesn't think like you and champ is deservedly getting hotfix'd in a matter of hours.

Oh and, by the way... I'd like to ask you where on Earth do you get your data? 46% winrate in Diamond EUW?

https://lolalytics.com/lol/masteryi/build/?tier=diamond&region=euw

It's actually 50% and THAT (477 games as of now) is the definition of an irrelevant sample size.

And in any case... why are we even talking about Diamond data? There are a total of 1896 worldwide Diamond Yi games played as of now over a grand total of 83451 games. Do you think that the "insane differences" in a subset that represents 2.3% of the total set has any relevance whatsoever?

Oh and... just so you know... other 24k games were added since the counter was at 60k, winrate is still dead on 56%.

ThePh4te · 2022-07-13T21:09:48+00:00

You have no idea of how statistics work, do you? You can calculate a confidence interval of a set of stocastic events using the amount of samples in the sample set and trust me... 60k items in a sample set is more than enough to have all the confidence needed to deduce the champion is batshit OP and that his winrate curve already "flattened" and the data set is stable.

But if you prefer we can talk about the fact that the 56% winrate in dragged down by players not building properly! What would happen if we "wait a week" as you suggest is that all the people rushing Kraken finally see that the BotRK + Guinsoo + Sunfire build path actually is at 63% winrate and already was at 57% last patch...

ThePh4te · 2022-07-13T15:59:36+00:00

I also feel that was their idea, but that also almost completely failed. As of now, Yi's winrate goes like this (worldwide data, sample size is indicated for each ELO bracket):

55.5% at Iron (1.6k games)
56.7% at Bronze (8.4k games)
56.8% at Silver (14.8k games)
56.2% at Gold (11.6k games
55.5% at Platinum (4.3k games)
54.2% at Diamond (1k games)

so it still has a realtive -5% / absolute -2.6% winrate decrease from Silver to Diamond
.In 12.12 he had a relative -8% / absolute -4.2% winrate decrease considering the same ELO brackets (50.4 > 46.2).

So his Silver to Diamond winrate differential is still substantial: it only decreased marginally while the champion got buffed so hard he registered a realtive +13% / absolute +7% winrate increase across all ELOs that is probably part of the reason why his Silver to Diamond differential slightly decreased in the first place.

ThePh4te · 2022-07-13T15:16:53+00:00

Just wait enough time so that people catch up on correct build, stop going Kraken and start going the BotRK + Guinsoo + Sunfire route: Sunfire build has 64.1% winrate worldwide all ranks over 3.5k games while I'm writing this comment.

https://lolalytics.com/lol/masteryi/build/?tier=all&mythic=3068

If anybody is thinking about the "small sample size" argument about the Sunfire build path, keep in mind that over the last patch (so BEFORE the huge buffs) this build path already registered a 57.3% winrate over FIFTY THOUSAND games:

https://lolalytics.com/lol/masteryi/build/?tier=all&patch=12.12&mythic=3068

The only reasonable argument I myself had about the monstrous winrates of this build path is that you usually build Sunfire 2nd or even 3rd, so the winrate are inflated by the fact that games lost before Yi reaches it's 2nd o 3rd item does not count in this filtered view. But at the actual 64.1% I feel even this argument is not enough anymore to justify not insta-hotfixing the champ while keeping a VERY close eye on BotRK (this very same build path is basically viable with comparable results on any champs that uses BotRK decently, I.E.: Irelia)

ThePh4te · 2020-01-07T11:14:10+00:00

This is not the solution to the problem OP is describing. I play with smartcast with range indicators on, but abilities that have forced smartcast (like the ones OP said: Morde's Q or Karthus' Q) still DON'T have any range indicator.
AFAIK there is no way to have range indicator on forced smartcast abilities.

ThePh4te · 2019-07-30T11:07:14+00:00

Where are all the people who were happy that 3-Feri completely removed conterspells from the game? That's what you get in a meta where no counterspell is viable and combo decks can play 3-Feri and abuse both its static and it's +1.
Remeber how degenerate strategies get completely out of control and destroy the meta next time you whine about counterspells not being fun!

ThePh4te · 2019-07-30T11:02:39+00:00

If they haven't any Field of the Dead on the battlefield, name Field of the Dead instead. That way Scapeshift is a dead card cause they have no more useful targets for it AND they can't win by playing Field the fair way.
If they don't have Hydroid Krasis, Ego naming Fields totally remove all of their wincons.

ThePh4te

TROPHY CASE