[Satire] I got Ziggs in ARAM. 80% dmg out, 120% dmg in, -20 AH, not displayed in champ select. Definitely not a guaranteed loss. Neat.

So you know how ridiculous the situation was, here were the teams.

Ziggs, 80% dmg out, 120% dmg in, -20 AH
Maokai, 80% dmg out, 110% dmg in, -20% healing
Teemo, 85% dmg out, 110% dmg in, -20 AH, 66% dmg to minions
Heimerdinger, 90% dmg out, 110% dmg in
LeBlanc, 105% dmg out, 90% dmg in, +20 Tenacity, +20 AH, our one buffed champ, not like we’ll be 100% reliant on that to carry all these perfectly fine nerfed champs
Nocturne, 110% dmg out, 85% dmg in, +20% healing
Udyr, +20 Tenacity
Ekko, 110% dmg out, +20 Tenacity
Nilah, 95% dmg out
Veigar, 90% dmg out, 110% dmg in, +3s E CD, enemy team actually got a champ with significant ARAM nerfs, he must be real strong

We had almost all nerfed champs and they had mostly buffed champs. That means we are more likely to win. Good thing nobody dodged!

I don’t mind telling you, fighting that Udyr was like facing a raid boss. I’d die in a teamfight, respawn, Udyr is still in that same teamfight, he’s soloing two of my teammates under our inner turret (outer turret was just a suggestion, apparently), I continue to hit him, I literally have to use my semi-global AoE ult to hit this one dude point blank or he just won’t die.

But that’s fine! Even then, and all throughout the match, I knew we were in good shape to win this game of League of Legends. Even though most of our team is nerfed for this mode, mine most of all. And none of those changes are announced in champ select. These nerfed champs are just too strong. That’s why my champ had to have three separate nerfs, not just -20% out and +20% in, that’s the biggest ARAM damage nerf in the whole game by the way, but also an AH nerf, because reasons. Reasons like, “yOu’LL dEaL 70% oF tHe GaMe’S oBjEcTiVe DaMaGe” and “yOu’LL LaSt HiT LiTeRaLly EvErY eNeMy StRuCtUrE, wHo CaReS iF yOu DiEd a BiT.” Like Ziggs says, “DoN’t WoRrY, i GoT tHiS.” Being able to execute turrets with W totally makes up for pretty much tickling the enemy bruiser. Deleting structures with empowered autoattacks that reset with a couple spell casts justifies the balance changes. They don’t need to tell us about that in champ select so we can reroll. Why reroll the best champion in the game? The heavy nerfs are a good sign, not a bad sign! Pretty much anything one-taps my guy, but that is very okay and doesn’t bother me because my job is demolition, not a problem at all. LB went on a rampage and basically invalidated their Ekko and Nilah, but it’s not because of her ARAM buffs, it’s because that LB player was just really good at playing LB. She needs all those buffs because most people who try to pilot that champion end up totally useless. We were just really lucky to get someone capable of contributing to a win on a champ with huge buffs. But my Ziggs was also useful! Because I… checks notes pushed waves from moderate safety and personally destroyed literally every enemy structure including their Nexus. That was definitely good enough to win the game.

I’m sure there are many matches that go down like this, because nerfed champs are nerfed while buffed champs are buffed for really good, non-BS reasons. I love playing nerfed ARAM champs like Ziggs, Lux, Heimerdinger, Brand, Maokai, Kog’maw, Karthus, Teemo, Veigar, Malzahar, and Sona. They’re my favorites. They’re very strong, and I pick them on purpose because they’re also fun to play in spite of exploding when an assassin sneezes in their general direction. Sometimes I see people reroll those champs, and I just think “my teammate rerolled a great champ, I know it’s great because it has a giant nerf,” and I play that champ, and that definitely makes us more likely to win. Giga-buffed champs like Akali and LB are basically just traps. I could play them… if I wanted to do really poorly and lose.

TL;DR: It’s so cool that champ select doesn’t list ARAM balance changes. People would gravitate away from nerfed champs and toward buffed champs, and then they would lose more. We perform better when kept in the dark.

P.S.: Except Ashe W CD being 450% of normal. Every other ARAM change is a balance change to move an extreme WR toward 50%, but this one does the opposite. That’s a substantive difference and it deserves to be treated as such. ARAM teams that roll Ashe should be notified of this change.