When Riot Game releases a new champion, the community generally expects it to be very or even too strong. There are several reasons for this strategy, the first being of course financial : a strong champion, he’s a champion that players want to play and who will therefore sell, as well as its skins. However, although this argument is admissible, it is far from being the main argument advanced by the publisher of League of Legends.
Why is it better for a champion to come out strong? (according to Riot Games)
It is obvious that at the exit of the champion, his optimal builds are not known, and its strongest mechanics are not mastered by most players. These will therefore make mistakes, whether in their choice of items to put on the champion, or in which skills are maxed first, or even in spell rotation. have a champ a little stronger than the average makes it possible to compensate for these small errorswhile still giving want players to keep trying to master itgiving them the feeling that they can do better (no need to be Deft to surrender when one of our spells does not hit), while saving them some frustration.
Of course, Riot Games plans then to refine the champion, by readjusting the synergies that are too strong in his kit. But for strike the right balance, developers need as much data as possibleand therefore many games are played with the character in question. Which therefore explains why it has to be strong, because only players really enamored with the character’s concept and/or appearance will stick with the champion if he’s not strong.
The K’Santé problem
Unfortunately, K’Santé seems very far from strong enough to interest players for long. Currently his overall win rate in the world revolves around 42%, taking all ranks into account. If we keep only the top ranked ranks(therefore with players who are supposed to master the game), its winrate rises to 44.5%, what makes him the second worst champion in the game, just ahead of Zeri. When it was released on the PBE, Riot buffed it a bit, but hasn’t touched it since.
One of the reasons for his abyssal winrate would be champion difficulty. Apparently, K’Santé is a character difficult to handle, not because his spells are hard to place, but mainly because you have to find the right moment to switch from defensive to offensive form. Moreover, when we look at his stats in a little more detail, we realize that his match up grid seems very particular. K’Santé has a negative winrate against characters that generally struggle against tanksa negative winrate against most bruisers (and looks like a free lane for Mordekaiser), but wins against Gragas and Trundle, two rather tough characters made to counter/hinder other tanks. So it would be a tank that counters counters to other tanks?
The good news is that it still seems to have a nichehaving good results against top ranges, including bully lanes like Heimerdinger. We have to see how this evolves in the coming weeks, and the adjustments that Riot will make, but it is not impossible that its bad winrate can partly be explained by an unusual match-up grid for a tank, and which baits players to take it in bad condition, while avoiding champions that it can dominate.