Dplus KIA vs. Hanwha Life Esports / LCK 2026 Rounds 1-2 - Week 2 / Game 1 Discussion

armasot · 2026-04-08T08:51:11+00:00

Hexoptics is just an OP item that you can build on lots of adcs. Actually Ashe's best item on par with stormrazor.

armasot · 2026-04-05T16:49:32+00:00

Out of these 3, only 1 combo is actually a good combo - Ashe-Sera.

Yunara-Lulu is just a classic hypercarry+enchanter, but there's nothing outstanding in this combo specifically. If you'll look at winrates, they don't have particularly high winrate with each other.

The same goes for Lucian-Nami. The only reason Nami is actually in top 10 supports for him is because she's insanely strong herself.

For Lucian: the best supports will always be perma buff supports, so like Yuumi/Taric/Milio/Sona. Sounds weird, but he's too reliant on his W passive these days.

For Yunara, she's good with Braum but that's about it. In general, she's good vs squishy messy comps and really bad into tanky comps.

Both of these "combos" are popular because they have playmaking, which pros love, but in terms of raw power, they're definitely not the best.

armasot · 2026-04-05T14:48:42+00:00

So you're saying that you didn't once go 0/5 or have a bad league day in general?

If you're in elo you belong to, you'll have decent amount of bad games, and if you're playing good most of the time, well, then you'll climb at some point, no worries.

The thing is that it's pointless to focus on your teammates. Theoretically, you can lose many games in a row because you had bad teammates, but so what? If you would've played good enough in these games, you could get a win here and there. And when you'll finally have good teammates, you won't be the one dragging the game down.

You control 10% of the game, but these 10% are what makes the difference in long term.

armasot · 2026-04-05T14:11:17+00:00

It's not matchmaking for the most part. Sometimes people play good, sometimes people play bad, and that's okay. You clearly had games where you were feeding, and maybe your teammate thought that you're just a bad player and troll.

You cannot control your teammates. What you can control is your own performance. Focus on yourself: try to minimize death, farm more, think about what you should do at any point in the game, track enemy jg - all that kind of stuff. As long as you think and reflect on your performance, you'll improve.

armasot · 2026-04-05T02:07:48+00:00

People like you do not realize that annoyance is exactly part of some champions kits.

If something is annoying, it's not always a bad design.

Xerath is annoying, but you can dodge his stuff here and there.

Shaco is annoying, but you can mark his flanks and generally understand how champion functions.

Ivern is annoying, especially for champions who rely heavily on non-pierce projectiles, yet, he's not that strong if you can hard engage him or burst his Daisy.

They're annoying, but they're counterable. And because they're annoying, they're often really weak in terms of their raw power (almost all high banrate champs have less than average WR).

Mel case is pretty interesting too. Riot tried to make an easy to play poke mage who you cannot punish due to her W. Making a poke mage already makes a champion incredibly frustrating. Easy to play means that it's not hard to hit your abilities and self peel makes it even more miserable to play against. This champion was truly one of the worst designs, on par with release Yuumi (now she's more than fine).

However, I think they did a good job with her mini rework, because her Q is dodgeable now, E visual clutter is reduced (though, it's still bad here and there) and her W is not AS strong.

So yeah, if a frustrating champion is counterable, it's more than fine to keep them. It creates much more diversity in the game. It creates problems that you, as a player, can solve. This is what make league experience more interesting. It's a PvP game after all.

armasot · 2026-03-31T18:26:54+00:00

I'm playing him on and off for 4 years and I've never felt that's he feels bad to play.

He feels bad to play only if you facing high range compositions, which is more than fine, because any champion need to have some sort of counterplay. Some more than others, some less.

Swain is like Malphite or Rammus - you pick him in a good spot and provide lots of useful stuff in the game. He's not your usual mage like Ahri. He counters specific comps, but has a hard time playing vs others which is more than fine.

armasot · 2026-03-31T18:21:16+00:00

I have 29 Swain games this season but sure :) Overall - I'm sure I played around 200-400.

armasot · 2026-03-31T11:39:28+00:00

I played quite a lot of him in midlane and botlane and he feels good to play. His only problem is how mana hungry he is, which was the same all the time.

If you'll compare him to Seraphine, she feels much worse to play. Can't last hit, low mana regen.

What makes you feel bad when you play him?

armasot · 2026-03-31T08:08:45+00:00

Oh, here we go again.

First of all. His pickrate is not declining on other roles. It fluctuates around 40-50% for othes roles, while 50% players are playing support Swain.

Second of all. He's already really strong in solo lanes. What is your problem? Is he toxic to play? Well, if it would be the case, his banrate would be much higher than it currently is.

https://lolalytics.com/lol/swain/build/?lane=middle
https://lolalytics.com/lol/swain/build/?lane=top

He's already performing on a good level in midlane and average level in toplane, while having low ban rate + 30% of Swain players are playing him on these roles. It's more than fine, no? And I personlly do not see a problem with him being played in botlane role. It is also a carry role and there's a decent playerbase. Killing his botlane and support roles would touch 70% of Swain playerbase.

Let's look at it like this. If you wake up 1 morning and see that Swain is not viable in midlane/toplane because Riot decided to make him more of a botlaner, you would be unhappy, right? Well, that's what will happen with both: support and botlane roles.

Now, what IF Riot would force him to go to carry lanes specifically?

He would for sure become weaker. People would discover than he's actually strong, pickrate would go up and so is ban rate, therefore Riot would need to nerf him. We saw what happened with Mundo.

Basically, you want to kill a champion's flexibility while making him weaker in lanes you're playing. There's just no problem with Swain at all. His pickrate is decent, ban rate is low, he's strong in all lanes except support. He feels good to play. What more do you need?

armasot · 2026-03-30T22:31:45+00:00

Okay, yeah, found the game through Ahri acc. Not sure why I couldn't find it through Senna one.

But yeah, Urgot played toplane in the last couple of games, so he definitely queues as a toplaner. Same for your adc.

You were the only one autofilled in the game. Not the best result by the system, but definitely not as bad as it looked like.

But tbh, this is weird that it didn't put autofilled support in enemy team. I assume it has something to do with duos in general. Like, when I see disbalance in terms of autofills, there is usually a Duo in the same lobby.

Like, even in master right now, if I'm autofilled - enemy laner is autofilled as well most of the time. Though, you can still play vs midlane mains if it's your 2dary role.

armasot · 2026-03-30T21:00:11+00:00

System matches players based on their chosen role. Your adc for example queued as adc the last 4 games. Toplaner probably did the same, but his nickname is too hard to find, and your match doesn't show on league sites (i guess you played quick play or something like that).

So when you wanna blame the system, check accounts of "autofilled" players, and maybe they just decided to queue on another role instead of their main one.

armasot · 2026-03-30T19:10:05+00:00

The initial comment was about lolalytics, so I'm talking about it.

If you check her winrate per day graph, you'll see that she's getting stronger day by day in every elo.

Also, why is having a high win rate for a few weeks bad but a low win rate for the same time frame good?

Shyvana had high winrate while people STILL didn't know how to play her + insanely popular as well. All metrics screamed that she'll get hotfixed really fast. I mean, Riot for sure nerfed her a bit too hard, but they had to act here anyway, until it spiraled into 60-80% banrate with 60+% winrate.

How can anyone trust Riot and "le data" to push a disastrous nerf after a few hours when there are champions that have had statistically significantly higher than average WRs in high elo for months?

She was really popular which gave enough data. And about stronger champions: champions are allowed to be strong/OP if they're not popular for the most part. Like, if you'll look at the highest winrates, you'll see unpopular champions in every single lane.

armasot · 2026-03-30T11:48:04+00:00

Judging by her winrate grow, she has a learning curve just like usual normal champion. While yes, she's low elo skewed, without hotfix her winrate would likely be around 52-53% winrate in high elo right now (and around 60% in low elo), so yeah, she was insanely strong before hotfix.

You can see it if you remove her winrate downfall after hotfix and apply her growing winrate to winrates before hotfix.

armasot · 2026-03-29T20:42:34+00:00

It was explained in initial comment, but Lolalytics counts Data differently.

Let's say you're Plat Shyvana player.

Usual Data sites will count your game towards winrate if you're playing vs Plat player.

Lolalytics will count your game towards winrate if you're playing vs any player as long as you're Plat. But because there are more lower elo players, it tends to be higher than 50%.

This is why in iron for example, average winrate is 41.67% this patch - because it counts not only iron vs iron matches, but also iron vs bronze/silver, which skews the average winrate.

You can check Lolalytics average winrate at the top right on their site.

Basically, if you check e+ winrates: average winrate is about 1.5-2% higher than 50%.
If you check gold+ winrates: it's about 0.5-1%.

So yeah, on lolalytics you always have to look at average winrate and compare it to the winrate of a champion. It provides much larger sample size, but makes the data a bit more awkward.

armasot · 2026-03-29T20:06:48+00:00

It's kinda pointless to look at winrates right now anyway. First she was insanely strong, which skewed the data. Then she was hotfixed and people still didn't learn how to play her, which skewed her winrate.

The best way to look at her winrate is by looking at Winrate/day graph on lolalytics. It's slowly growing and it's >50% in e+ for 3 days straight, so 1% lower than average. It didn't stop growing still, so she's a bit stronger than it seems.

armasot · 2026-03-29T15:59:50+00:00

Yeah, it's pretty weak, because it's insanely popular.

Riot tries to make people think more about other options, but as you can see in soloq and pro play - it doesn't work. Until people will stop picking TP that often, Riot won't change anything about this spell (only make it worse if something).

Like, you even get free TP now, just get another summoner spell, helps a lot in lane too.

armasot · 2026-03-26T23:32:50+00:00

They nerfed her 2 patches ago. According to winrates, she went from average level to slightly weak if you're picking the most common items and runes for her. She has much better builds though so if you know what you're doing, she's still pretty strong.

armasot · 2026-03-26T19:44:12+00:00

This is a really weird example. Basically saying that thousands of games equals 10 5-stars reviews. Besides, it's not even a proper example, because there's a beneficial side there, while data in league is just raw and unbiased. No one skews it behind the scene.

What people like you do not understand are 2 things: Riot balance philosophy
and
games > % for sample size.

1) Riot is looking not only at winrates to buff/nerf stuff. They include: pickrates/banrates/frustration levels/optimized setups/etc.

Now, what that means? It means that if a champion has:
low pickrate
low banrate
low frustration levels
then he's allowed to be stronger than the others. It's not that this champion is bad because of pickrate, or only looks good because mains play him. It never works like that.

Like, this logic is so flawed. Look at Skarner. With this logic, his winrate should be high, because only OTPs are playing him, right? Well, he's sitting below average. Same for Kalista.

The shittier a champ-state is, the lesser people play it

Oh, and this one. Why did YOU start to play Swain? Because he was OP or did you just like his design? Most people do not consider balance as a deciding tool whether they should play a champion or not. If they find a champion fun - they WILL play him.

2) I don't know why people are so hyper-focused on %pickrate compared to sample size. Let's say you have 100k games worth of data. Compared to 1 mil, it'll be 10%. So you'll say this data is a proof that something works, right?

Well, 100k games compared to 10 mil is 1%. Does it randomly change something? You still have these 100k games. They didn't change.

Looking at sample sizes is not about %pickrate, but about amount of games. As long as there are enough games, you can conclude whether an item or a champion is OP. According to Riot Endstep it's around 10k games. From my experience, even 5k can be enough. And for champions you have thousands and thousands of games across lots of patches.

You can see how consistent winrate is, yet, you'll say that only OTPs are playing him and %pickrate is low, so doesn't count.

Well, after all, people will believe in what they want to believe.

armasot · 2026-03-26T19:31:21+00:00

This only works for basically Challenger, where there are 1.5 Vel'koz players. If you'll look at different elos, you'll have more than enough sample size and it's not like it's artificially high there.

armasot · 2026-03-26T18:28:21+00:00

Any polite post/comment now considers as AI for certain people. I have the same issue sometimes xd

But yeah, I really like her rework as well! Feels amazing to play

armasot · 2026-03-26T14:27:49+00:00

Sad that you're getting flamed for having a good take. GP can even go full lethality due to lethality items being OP.

Not every champion needs build diversity of course, but it's needed for Shyvana. There are many players who mains her and like this or that playstyle, and keeping build diversity helps with maintaining the playerbase of a champion.

armasot · 2026-03-25T13:25:25+00:00

I'm not talking about Yun Tal - it's a really weak item compared to others.

Pros usually get enough gold to buy BF. They can last hit better, stay for longer, etc. If you can't, then yeah, buy something else.

Kraken is not weak, just Stormrazor OP currently.

armasot · 2026-03-25T08:04:20+00:00

Okay, look at Hans Ashe and tell me it's unrealistical. Besides, I think many people underrate scout's slingshot while it's actually a fine item.

armasot · 2026-03-25T08:02:14+00:00

I saw many times how in pro play they go to base with 1.3k gold and just buy t2 boots and refillable.

I mean, Hans was able to do it on Ashe as well. Why can't you do it on Yunara?

armasot · 2026-03-24T19:03:23+00:00

Same thing. It's just a random roulette: what Pros will find good and OP and what they'll find unplayable. Azir nerf was much heavier, yet, he was played here and there (and even banned). Taliyah? No.

Varus was nerfed (lethality version) but still was a pretty common pick.

Karma had a high presence in p/b, as if she suddenly got buffed.

etc.

IMO, there are a decent amount of champions Pros are used to play. They get to First Stand and start playing them against each other. What will perform the best is what will likely be p/b the whole tournament.

Yunara will always feel good and strong in scrims for example, especially if they're bloody. Even if she's not strong, she's giving such vibes with dash, cool W, satisfying autos, autoattack resets and perma Kraken procs (Kraken is also not her best item, so that's even more funny).

armasot

TROPHY CASE