As the team gets ready today to prepare the balance patch for 14.16, a common question that gets brought up is “Should they nerf the top, or buff the bottom, or a mix of both?” Let’s walk through how to approach that.

The first that’s important to do is establish a baseline. Take a look at the comps and find the one that is as powerful as it can be while behaving the way you would expect the game to. Do the champs in their respective costs feel like the appropriate cost? Does the traits in the comp function the way they intend to?

Let’s say for example (and this is just an example) you look at the current Kog/Trist comp and you say that this is going to be your baseline. Kog and Trist feel like 2 costs that are fun and powerful without being overbearing, and the front line feels correctly powerful.

Once you establish this baseline, then you can look at the other champs/traits/comps/etc and decide if they need to be nerfed or buffed relative to the performance of that baseline. You still need to take into account things like counter matchups and what not, but having that baseline makes it much easier to decide where your balancing direction should go.

So for those of you who played a bunch of games this weekend, what do you think is the baseline? Think about that, and then that can give you a picture of what needs nerfed or buffed. It’s fun to think about!

Hope you have a great week! I’m mostly in future land this week working on stuff a long way off, but that’s always exciting! Have fun, and take it easy 🙂