Riot Games is happy about Lillia and Yone’s release in terms of balance update.
Riot Games released the dreamy jungler Lillia in patch 10.15 and after just one patch they released the 150th champion Yone on patch 10.16. Both champions received almost the same amount of hype from the League community because of their unique kit and Riot’s reveal approach.
And they were also released in a very well-balanced way compare to previously released champions Aphelios and Sett. Just after one patch of Aphelios release, he had the highest ban rate among any other champions in League of Legends with a whopping 223%. Sett also had the highest win rate after his release on patch 10.1. Which resulted in them getting back to back nerfs in multiple patches.
However, compare to Aphelios, Lillia had a complete opposite run. On her release patch, she had one of the lowest win rates, although that did increase after one patch when players started to figure out her entire kit.
Yone on the other hand has a bit of overpowered kit. He even received a nerf on the PBE way before is the release date and despite having a 48% win rate Riot again nerfed him in patch 10.17.
And today League of Legends’ lead gameplay designer Mark “Scruffy” Yetter shared a dev post where he discussed the state of recently released champions and VGUs.
Regarding Lillia, Riot Scruffy said, “Lillia was the combination success so far of very close to balanced on release and an effective wait and see approach.” He also thinks her release was “great”. As she has a high skill cap it was intended for her to have a low win rate at the beginning. But Scruffy did mention that “we still may need to apply some slight buffs or nerfs in the long run, but as far as launches go this is ideal.”
Likewise, Riot also said that “we’re happy so far” regarding Yone’s balanced state in the current patch. But Riot warned about Yone by saying “time will tell if we need to do more”, means based on the upcoming patches feedback they will change Yone accordingly.
