Thought: Winrates and Balance

It's becoming extremely popular to judge the value of a champion by their winrates (as recorded by LolKing or Elobuff). Champions with winrates below 50% are judged to be underpowered, while those above must be overpowered. This idea seems logical enough, but it has a few flaws.

The primary problem is that the League of Legends community is both stubborn and fickle. The community is quick to label flavor of the month champions as overpowered, underplayed champions as underpowered, and throws new champions into either category based on initial impressions alone. It generally takes months for the community to changes its mind, and even then the process is slow and begrudging. Only in extreme cases, such as the abusive Nunu top build pioneered by SmashGizmo, is there a sudden flip in perceptions.

As a result, champions or meta-shifts that might counter those with high winrates often go unnoticed. When Nautilus was released he was considered a subpar jungler, unable to keep up with Shyvana, Mundo, and Udyr, the titans of farming. It took three months for him to slowly shift from being underpowered and ignored to a first-ban meta-breaking ganking machine. Nautilus almost single-handedly shifted the jungle meta toward tanky, gank-heavy initiators, where it has remained ever since.

Before Nautilus everyone had simply assumed that Shyvana, Mundo, and Udyr were overpowered farmers with no counters. While LolKing and Elobuff weren't around in those days, it's very likely we would have seen all three with above-average winrates. Today, long after Nautilus received nerfs and faded from the spotlight, those three champions still sport below-average winrates. Defeating them only required a simple shift in community awareness and the meta.

This sort of obliviousness is pervasive, and means we cannot take winrates at face value. There is a correlation between winrates and a champion's strength, but that isn't the only possible cause. It is necessary to account for the community's blindspot and carefully the role the meta, typical champion picks, and playstyles play in determining a champion's strength. Winrates, like all data, are at their most useful when appraised carefully.