In a recent Reddit post, Riot talked about Pro Play specific champion changes.
Riot is gearing up to start the last tournament of League of Legends Esports. Worlds 2023 is set to be held in Korea as leagues around the world have concluded their runs. All the teams are now getting ready to compete for Worlds 2023.
The upcoming event is the Asian Games 2022, where players like Faker, Chovy, knight, etc, will be competing to win the trophy. After that, we have the Worlds Qualifying Series between Golden Guardians and Team BDS. Then, Worlds 2023 will officially begin with the Play-Ins draw and the Swiss Stage draw to be done after the Play-Ins end.
So, with the biggest international event of League of Legends coming up, people were wondering about the balance strategy for Pro Play. However, with Pro Play not being that up-to-date with the current patches, people had a lot of questions.
Fortunately, a Riot dev decided to drop in and leave a fairly insightful comment about balance strategy. This is what we know so far.
Read More: Worlds 2023 Play-In Draw Results
Pro Play Balance Philosophy
Riot Endstep provided some insight on Pro Play balances, even though they do not work in the live game.
There is a lot to tackle with what was said, as Riot Endstep says that mandatory pro play changes are part of the framework. So, if you notice the balance track record, there are times when Riot buffs or nerfs champions for pro play. K’Sante is one of the biggest examples as of late.
Although Riot does not use Pro Play to determine buffs, but they definitely use it for “must-nerfs.” So in essence, Pro Play does affect balance decisions made at Riot. However, there are some problems with the system.
Patches running up to Worlds don’t give a lot of data, as Pro Play is usually pretty far behind the live patches. This year, it is more problematic. So, Riot has to make a lot of decisions with limited data in terms of Pro Play. There can also be some weird changes like Heimerdinger Support.
Another example that was mentioned was AP jungler in Pro Play. A lot of the time teams do not want to invest in learning a single AP champion because a ban would stop the effectiveness of that line of thinking. So unless multiple AP champions or AD mid-laners are viable at the same time, bans become too powerful.
Hence, teams do not want to invest in that. So this causes data shortage and makes the balance team think about how to approach changes. Pro Play is tricky to balance around as they will maximize champions to their limits while the rest of the player base generally will not.
So, this is an insightful post that everyone should give a read and understand where Riot is coming from in terms of changes to Pro Play. They make them in order to change things in Pro Play while also using it to nerf OP champions.
