League of Legends Balance Team Will Focus Less on Team-Oriented Champions

Some of League of Legends most team-oriented champions that have proven difficult to balance over time will soon take a backseat to other champions.

Champs like Ryze, Azir, and Kalista were mentioned specifically when Riot Meddler said that League's balance team would be shifting away from trying to close these champions' gaps between professional and normal play. Each of these champs have had their off and on times to shine in pro play that usually result in them being too weak in normal play with the opposite holding true as while. Riot acknowledged the long-standing difficulties that accompany trying to balance these champs while referring to them as still being "situationally strong."

"We've had long running difficulties with some champs who perform dramatically better for organized teams (pro teams, premade 5s, Clash soon etc) than they do for matchmade solo queue teams," Riot Meddler said on the League boards. "Azir, Kalista and Ryze are the strongest example of that, where their performance for the average player trying them will often look pretty weak if they're in a balanced state for organized teams. One of our goals with champion balance is to ensure they're good choices in a wide range of contexts, so that's not ideal. At the same time though they're still situationally very strong even in solo queue sometimes."

With so much time put into attempts to balance the champions over the years, Riot Meddler said that they've had "mixed success" and mentioned the champions' innate team-oriented nature as part of the reason that they're difficult to balance. Instead of continuing to work on these champs, Riot will shift focus to other champs who haven't received as much attention.

"For a while, quite possibly a long while at that, we're going to be prioritizing most other champion work over closing that gap as a result. That means Azir, Kalista and Ryze will be balanced for their strong cases (organized play primarily), even if that leaves them quite weak in other contexts (exception: a bit of Ryze work that's already underway and might or might not ship). It's not that we think that's the perfect solution, but that we think the time's better spent on other champions who haven't got that same degree of attention over the years and would benefit a lot from it."

Riot Meddler agreed that this will probably feel like a raw deal to those solo queue players who enjoy playing these champs and apologized to those who won't be able to play them as much. He admitted that the decision was not without issues, but said it seemed to be the best course of action at the moment.