How does the Rioter comment on complaints about the power of Death’s Dance?
You can find many items in League of Legends. Each of them has assigned statistics and abilities that diversify or strengthen their set of skills. Such a large influence of items on the gameplay means that in addition to the champions, Riot also has to look at items.
Players often urge developers to take a look at specific items. This time it was Death’s Dance. What do fans say is wrong?
Is the item too strong?
Death’s Dance is an item for attack damage characters that want to gain some armor at the same time. The ability of the item also plays an important role, because some of the damage is dealt to its user a bit later, and getting a kill allows the owner to avoid it completely.
The item seems quite strong on paper, but only after looking at the stats you can see how it is actually doing on Summoner’s Rift. One of the League of Legends fans – ScaredOfMyRawr – decided to share his thoughts on this topic.
Death’s Dance has an 84% pick rate with a 57% win rate, isn’t it in need of a nerf? I know item win rates are not as clear cut as champion win rates, but DD is generally built quite early on (e.g. second item) and feels strong to play against with the insane healing it can offer, usually on top of Goredrinker healing from the first item.
One of the designers from Riot – Riot August, who is responsible, among others, for the heroes who go to League of Legends, spoke in the thread.
Not going to comment on whether or not DD is OP, but the stats you’re referencing aren’t the best way to determine item power.
Items bought later in the game tend to have higher winrates (you’re more likely to be winning when you can afford a 3rd slot item) and the pickrate stat on that site is partially influenced by champion popularity (an item that Lee Sin builds will have higher popularity because Lee Sin is in a lot of games)
- ALSO – Over two years ago, Riot was supposed to commemorate the Zz’Rot Portal item in LoL, but still hasn’t
A better way to compare item power is to compare winrates and pickrates VS. other items in the same slot on the same champion. There’s always hiccups though when you factor in things like item price (expensive items are harder to get so they tend to have higher winrates), counter items (how strong should an item be when it is ONLY bought to counter something), and snowball items (how strong should an item be when it is ONLY bought when winning).
So, the strength of items is about much more than their win rate and how many games players choose them in. Players do not have access to such a large amount of statistics and do not have as much experience as Riot employees. Despite many mishaps, the balancing team usually knows what they are doing and takes care of selected items or heroes when they are too strong or too weak.