Ilyak1986

:( :( :( :( :(

Irelia is in such an awful state right now it's sad.

And then when I asked /u/Reav3 about her mastery curve, he gave me a fucking popularity chart. Well, no wonder.

Sorry, I couldn't find the mastery curve Tableu page when u asked me before. Here it is now

https://imgur.com/a/j4e2e71

Edit: Sorry I had accidentally forgot to sort by the most recent patch so that was a aggregate of all her patches, here is recent patch data

https://imgur.com/a/8iw9iOa

This shows that her mastery curve is currently on par with other high skill Champs like Yasuo/Riven

Ilyak1986

:( :( :( :( :(

Irelia is in such an awful state right now it's sad.

And then when I asked /u/Reav3 about her mastery curve, he gave me a fucking popularity chart. Well, no wonder.

Also here is her 100 Game curve compared to the same Champs

https://imgur.com/a/q5ji6hD

Ilyak1986

Thank you so much! Yeah, these charts sort of confirm some of my frustrations. Namely that it seems like these "hard to master" champs might never eclipse an "easier to play" champion like a Garen, or this patch, a Shaco.

Ideally, in a perfect world, every champion gets a chance to shine after some amount of games. That is, do you want to just one-trick 2-3 champions? Well, maybe you can swap between Irelia, Akali, and oh, Camille. Want to play a bunch of champions? Maybe pick up some easier-to-get-going-with champions like Shaco, Garen, etc.

However, what would distress me is that as a a player, if your goal is simply to maximize winrate, that there are champions you should never play (any hard to master champ, pro-play taxed champs like Sejuani, Tahm Kench, etc.).

Some champs, I'll concede, are simply problematic when they're good (Tahm), but I certainly hope that champs like the aesthetically awesome Ionian champs aren't among them.

The thing is we have over 140 champs in the game. I don't think the game would be a better designed game if all of them had the same mastery curve as Garen. Some players like hard champs and some like easy champs, and imo the game is better when there are all kinds of Champs with different classes, abilities, mastery curves, etc. I think this works the best when the theme matches the skill fantasy. For Irelia, Akail and Yasuo for example there themes imply skill (Samurai, Ninja, and Blade Dancer) so it makes thematic sense that you would have to play them a lot to master them, since the power fantasy of those archetypes imply that you have to train proficiently to be good. This is why I think those champs have very high playrates despite being hard to master, where-as the Tham Kenchs theme for example doesn't match up with the idea of mastery and skill.

Ilyak1986

NOW WE'RE TALKING. This is exactly the sort of data I wanted to see! Thank you so much!

I'm seeing that once you get higher up the "previous games" curve, that the data starts becoming a bit fuzzy--for instance, Akali's mastery curve starts to really encounter some noise. I am guessing that this means that a very small proportion of players actually play her for that many games.

How does that compare to someone like say, Shaco, Karthus, Kayle, Zac, Rengar, or Khazix? For instance, when I sort the LoLalytics table for this patch by main winrate (that is, the yellow win column), I see Shaco at an astounding 60.9% main winrate.

My assertion/frustration is that there may be some champions that are just outright better than champions like Akali, Yasuo, Riven, Irelia, etc. at every point on the curve. While I am fully willing to concede that champions like Ionian hard-to-master champs should definitely be lower starting out, what my concern is--is that they're lower on the tail end of the mastery curve. Meaning that these champions aren't just "hard to master", but actively punishing--that there's never a payoff for having a large amount of games compared to an easier champion.

That may be, but that doesn't mean these Champions can't be healthy for the game. Shaco is a bad example because he is clearly overtuned right now. The size of player base also tends to skew the winrate , so Champs like Trundle that have a small dedicated player base are always going to rest at a higher winrate, this is also compounded by the fact that they appear in less game so players have less experience playing against them. Popular champs like Akali, Irelia and Yasuo appear in many games so the community also has more experience playing against them.