What's the point of working on champions that just stay permabanned? When 5% of players get to use it don't you fell like it's a waste?
The fact that a champion gets banned a lot isn't usually that important in our decision making. There are a few reasons for that. Bans tend to be correlated power, which we'd be targeting anyways, and they are disproportionately distributed across champions based on type, kit, and current trends. Assassins for example have a high ban rate because when they impact a game it is very noticeable. On the flip side defensive supports like Soraka will almost never get banned regardless of how strong they are. That said bans can be a good data point for what players are currently frustrated with or don't want to play against though, which we do give some weight to. It's just never something you want to act on in isolation.
Two other points I'd call out on bans and why we don't weigh them super heavily in our balance prioritization.
- Bans have a strong herd mentality to them. Some people just tend to ban what they see being banned and will continue to do so even if a champion gets adjusted unless something drastic happens. This creates a default scenario where when a champion is deemed "banworthy" they are essentially permabanned. There is very little middle ground in bans between 0 and close to 100%.
- More of our games are still played blind pick rather than draft pick. If a champion like Darius is stomping on people's games the fact that "Eh, folks can ban them" isn't a good reason to not address a problem because the majority of folks actually can't ban the champion in their games.
Two other points I'd call out on bans and why we don't weigh them super heavily in our balance prioritization.
- Bans have a strong herd mentality to them. Some people just tend to ban what they see being banned and will continue to do so even if a champion gets adjusted unless something drastic happens. This creates a default scenario where when a champion is deemed "banworthy" they are essentially permabanned. There is very little middle ground in bans between 0 and close to 100%.
- More of our games are still played blind pick rather than draft pick. If a champion like Darius is stomping on people's games the fact that "Eh, folks can ban them" isn't a good reason to not address a problem because the majority of folks actually can't ban the champion in their games.
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