The "Worst" Champion in League of Legends

What’s up guys it’s me Jeremy!
Throughout the history of the game, one of the biggest challenges the League developers
have faced, is how to balance things for Professional Play, while also balancing for casual play.
They have always taken both aspects into account when balancing and designing things, especially
champions, but quite often there are discrepancies that cause major issues in certain champions
or the meta.
One of the biggest examples of this is Ryze.
Statistically the worst champion in the entire game, Ryze has a win rate that sits at the
lowest of all of the league of legends champions currently across multiple winrate websites.
LoLKing, even places him at a winrate below 40% overall.
Looking only at the statistics and nothing else, Ryze would be considered the worst champion
in the game right now.
However despite being the statisticaly worst champion in league of legends, Ryze is certainly
not the worst champion in the game in terms of just about everything else.
And in fact, he is currently seeing competitive play.
Most recently, Ryze was used by Korean midlaner Maple at the Midsummer Invitational Tournament
in a game where he went 12/0/7 and undoubtedly carried his team to an overwhelming victory.
So despite being one of the worst statistical champions, Ryze manages to be one of the more
prominent mid laners in Professional Play, at least in Korea.
Designing a champion to be playable in both professional and casual play is generally
not a problem that occurs too often.
The large majority of league champions scale evenly in this aspect, if they are good in
pro play they are good in casual play and vice versa, and as a result a lot of casual
play champions are popularized by pro play.
But for some champions an inverse scaling can occur, where they can be amazing in pro
play, and horrible in casual play or vice versa.
Although there is no set guidelines or rules, there are a few major tendencies that these
champions who are much stronger in pro play typically have.
Again they are not completely decisive, but having a few or many of these traits tend
to make a champion much stronger in pro play, while also at the same time, much weaker in
casual play.
First and foremost, champions like this are always challenging to play.
It’s no secret that the average casual player will likely struggle with a champion that
is on the more difficult side of things.
On the flip side though, champions that are harder to play typically have more outplay
potential, which means that when played at the absolute highest level of skill, they
are much stronger than they otherwise could be.
In the case of Ryze, his high mechanical difficulty, skillshot reliance, and overall skillset does
tend to be on the more challenging side of things.
Ryze is far from the most difficult champion in the game, but he’s certainly not easy
to play.
In addition, these champions are often heavily reliant on their team.
Team strategy and team-based gameplay is something that will be a huge crutch for a champion
in solo queue, because you just can’t rely on your team as much in that type of setting.
Whereas in pro play as you would expect, these team based strategies can shine through immensely
and become incredibly powerful.
This is definitely where Ryze fits in.
With his Ultimate, it can be a completely game changing tool if your team can use it
properly, but in soloqueue, teams just don’t have the coordination to utilize the ability
to it’s maximum potential.
You could be the best Ryze player in the entire world, and you will still have a much harder
time in soloqueue than you would otherwise, because you will be missing that coordination
that is so crucial to making his ultimate work at its maximum potential.
And the third major thing that can define a champion in this area of design are their
weaknesses.
Now this is a design trait that is much more likely to make a champion bad in professional
play but good in soloqueue rather than the other way around, but there are a few that
can benefit from this, and I would make the argument that Ryze is probably one of them.
His combos allow for a ton of versatility and utility that give you something for any
situation, both aggressive and defensive.
But probably the most iconic benefactor of this design trait was Azir… at least before
he got nerfed a bunch of times.
Azir was a champion that when played to his fullest potential, really had no weaknesses.
Or at least he wouldn’t on paper, because if he was played perfectly, his kit was so
incredibly versatile, that he could be played in a way that completely negated the supposed
weaknesses of his kit, to the point where he would become unstoppable.
So I guess really the better way to think about this is the more versatile a champion
is, the better they will be in professional play, but at the same time, being more versatile
does not help a champion succeed in soloqueue because the casual players are on average
unable to make the most of that said versatility.
These three major focus points of design in a champion’s gameplay are typically what
shapes the difference in strength for pro versus casual play.
But at the end of the day, what’s really important to us, is how casual play is effected.
Riot has always had the approach in balancing that nothing is allowed to be outrageously
overpowered in any circumstance.
And since they take both casual and pro play into account when balancing, when a champion
like this dominates professional play, they are inevitablely going to get nerfed, and
as a result become completely unplayable for the casual player.
And this causes a lot of issues for a lot of champions in
casual play.
And it’s an issue that the developers have struggled with for a long time on quite a
number of champions.
Unfortunately, the solution, although it is quite clear cut, is not a great one.
The only real way to solve this issue for a champion, is of course with a rework.
And unfortunately, this is something Ryze is going to need if he wants to have this
issue solved for him.
The problem is just that these things stem from the gameplay, the mechanics of a champion,
rather than their numbers, so there is no real way to nerf or buff them without making
them extremely overpowered in professional play, or making them completely unplayable
in casual play.
But believe me when I say that Riot definitely understands this, and it’s precisely why
we are seeing a ton of what are essentially mini-reworks to champions.
Especially in the last year, there has been a massive increase in riot changing and tweaking
mechanics and ability design, rather than buffing or nerfing numbers.
When I see a change to a champion that influences their mechanics, for better or for worse,
it makes me a lot more excited than a change that just gives a champion plus or minus 5
AD.
Because although these mechanics changes may not always be the best, they are certainly
necessary to experiment with when trying to solve issues in gameplay.
In an ideal world, every single champion in the game should be playable in some form of
niche in both professional and casual play.
However, it just so turns out, that it’s going to take a lot of reworks for us to get
there.
Thanks for watching.
This video was part of a series I will be doing where I attempt to highlight and explain
the more complex and underappreciated design aspects of League of Legends.
So leave a comment and let me know if there is another mechanic or design concept you
would like me to take a look at.
Either way I hope you have a wonderful day, and I’ll see you guys next time.

The "Worst" Champion in League of Legends

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