Who Is League of Legends' Most Balanced Champion? 

Next video topic - thinking about how I saw Quinn buffs on the PBE today for the first time in what... 3 years or something? Next video about how no one remembers Quinn even exists?

"Kennen is balanced" hashinshin wants to know ur location

Anivia today: >chasing an enemy together with team >place wall >enemy dash over >team dash over >anivia stuck behind wall >get pinged ????

I love how the first couple of minutes indirectly explain why garen exists

"You're dead, I'm alive. See? Balance." Akali

"When everything is OP, nothing is op" The main reason why I enjoyed League so much back in the day.

I'm Italian and I practically haven't left my house in two months. I live alone, so even though I can still keep in touch with friends and family virtually, I often feel lonely. I usually watch these videos during lunch and dinner and they always manage to cheer me up. I find it really relaxing to leave them on in the background while I'm doing the dishes, too. I like them because they are actually full of interesting information, they're never clickbaits, and they are really well thought. Thank you so much for taking the time to work on them!

"Perfectly balanced champions like kennen for example" *angry hashinshin noises*

6:27 "The ones who are Timeless...like anivia and kennen.." Would have been a perfect to introduce zilean as timeless instead haha

1:57 "but I am always the better player but most of the time the worse player wins" Every Katerina main ever

"zilean is Timeless" Nice.

“Let’s talk about who is the most balanced champion” “Jk I’m just gonna talk about zilean history”

Plot twist: riot actually forgot of zilean and now will rework him

The time and effort you put in these videos is actually nuts

Surprised Oriana wasn't mentioned here, she basically gets a random armor or ad scaling change

Could've used "Can't Killean the Zilean" as the outro

Hopefully, Zilean gets a Visual Rework. His design is so old, you almost forgot that the guy is older than anyone.

"Read paragraph of abilities like Aphelios... " Me: "Dis gun go pew-pew"

He didnt even talk about tripple bombing or his 8 second cc chain...

I forgot who said it, but there is a riot quote saying “zilean would 100% need nerfs however his playrate is so low”,

I love Anivia aesthetically but she’s one of the champions that just gets outmatched by the newer champions movement capabilities. She might be balanced but not for the game league’s become imo

You're literally one of the best League youtubers out there, keep it up Exil.

Exil is literally the personification of quality over quantity. Every one of his videos is literally a quality documentary. Love the videos and keep it up, Exil!

I OTP Zilean, like almost 1,5M mastery ATM. He is the most rewarding champion, once you master him. He is also honestly the MOST balanced one in the game. He has many counters, and even his R can be countered by "Stop aggro" counter. Tenacity also denies him, etc. Yet he is insanely underrated. Someone will "Discover" him, and everyone will play him, and he'll get nerfed, I bet. Edit: Also thanks A LOT for making a video about him, man...

"Balance is subjective." New Champions that are overtuned for the next 3 Months: Allow us to interduce ourselves.

Those videos and documentaries are one of the most polished videos i've seen from the league community. Keep it up Exil!

One of the most balanced champions of all time was pre-rework Xerath, a perfect 50% win rate across all elo's except 51% at the highest elo. He was also always fair to play both against and as. As both a previous (and current) Zilean player and pre-rework Xerath player their kits have one aspect that feels really similar: Simple and fair mechanics. They have no fancy mechanics that allow you to do 7 different things at once and change between them 6 times in a fight leaving your opponent struggling to respond, nor do they have the ability to respond if he gets too strong like Karma, whom if she ever gets ahead will stand behind your minion and zone you off/two shotting you while shielding herself. This is the core to good balance: Fair, simple, but with a high skill ceiling and many ways to fuck up if you're ahead (unlike Karma).

he does suprisingly alot of dmg, specially when the enemy bot lane doesnt expect it

“A balanced game, albeit fair, may not always be exactly what we wanted.” It hurts to agree, lol. “Riot balancing” is memed so much that we forget NO competetive team-based esport besides maybe Rocket League is completely balanced to the point that everyone does the same thing. There are exceptions of course but generally no game is completely balanced and that is fine, as long as that imbalance isn’t killing the game. (and no, that 21/0 Sylas that stomped your team isn’t killing the game, calm down)

17:01 What the heck is that win spike at 2017, that was almost 70%!

“One person can win a lane and carry four teammates” ha ha funny joke

Riot: "New players should have fun in the game :3" Akali lvl 15 smurf: "Are you sure about that?"

As a Zilean main, it feels so good to see a video about him, and one in line with what I always thought ! Thanks for this video, keep it up, you're by far one of the best league youtubers !

I forgot how much I miss playing mw2 until you mentioned it, the good old days where children mic spammed you for interrupting their trick shot off the crane in highrise.

“The best zillians are so much better than the worse zillians” .... ice is water

Sees Anivia in thumbnail *NOT MOVING AT ALL AGAINST THAT CHAMP IS TOTALLY BALANCED KEKW*

Legend says if you're early, Exil replies

16:26 ah yes, the legend of "5 AD"

On the topic of people being not wanting to play a game when it’s hard to win or beat it, I think victory royales have actually completely transcended this rule, because winning is so rare that your standards drop and even if you don’t win, you can still be satisfied with one or two kills, surviving a bit longer than everyone else, or finding a rare weapon.

Anivia being balanced hasn’t aged that well has it

I always seen ori as the balanced champ, though the recent buffs have made her pretty strong

You see I started playing near the end of 2019 so listening to these are so informative about past metas

watching that clip of season 4 worlds just reminds me of a time when i used to love league, not just play it to pass the time, actually thought about the game day and night man i used to get so hyped for pro play, now i dont even remember the last game i watched it might have been worlds s8 or 7

16:16 makes me remember when irelia was op and they took 5 ms

12:27 there was already the twitch bug with his r on nexus huh......

i have 700k mastery on Zilean and i just love this champ and what he brings to every team comp

Grandpa Zilean, I knew you would be a good role model, age experience wins over anything!

Kayn: Is one of the strongest bruisers in soloq atm Exil: *NO*

I main anivia, zilean and viktor. Might have just found the explanation on why I like them. Plus the fact no one else plays them. I feel very attracted to aurelion sol though.

4:00 but first, let's talk about parallel universes

19:35 Because simply put, like in so many other games, damage dealing roles usually have the best character design as in looks and playstyle.

One way to summarize it about Zilean (and some of the before mentioned champions) is: It's a strategic kit. He does, what he does best, and he does not try to be something else at the same time (a problem, that most melee champs are facing). In a game, that tries to achieve "perfect imbalance" for balancing, counterplay is incredibly strong. It allows to force the enemy into a situation, in which they can't (or: shouldn't) recklessly play the way they are strongest. In their own ways, that's what Zilean, Kennen and Anivia do. Have that incredibly high-scaling playmaker as an opponent? Divide their team in fights, force them to separate and stand their own ground. Alone. Stun, or otherwise lock them out of their position where they are most useful, reliably. Or in case of Anivia: Lock the enemy mid to the midlane, without making plays in other parts of the maps without getting instantly punished. At least.. in theory. In practice, it often differs, unfortunately.

8:43 **cries in Kayn & Swain main**

oh boy anivia being called balanced did not age well...

Gotta say I really love ur videos. I’ve always found the history of league and whatnot interesting, and your vids really help me out with learning this. Also another champion I’d like to point out fits into the “always solid champion with very few changes” is Warwick (since his rework). A lot of the points you made about Zilean here can also apply to him. Not counting the global stat changes that came with the preseason 8 patch, Warwick has only gotten 3 changes since his rework on patch 7.2 that weren’t bug fixes. Like Zilean he’s not super popular, but still a consistently balanced champion.

Ive been playing SW for about 4 years now and i didnt expect to see an AD about it on your channel. That got me off guard

I suffered severe mental damages those 3 seconds that Yas was in the intro, plz pay compensation to me

Exil: Will Zilean need Changes Girls: yes buff him hes my favorite Support! Boys: Cant killean the zilean dance change

Zilean is nerfed hard with every patch He's just untouched because he keeps reversing time until he gets an iteration where he isn't

Kellen: “No champion is 100% perfect.” Me: *Laughs in Jhin*

IMO the term “balanced” has kinda become vague and diluted over recent years in the gaming industry, perhaps due to the idea of power creep and always having to bump up the “balance” standards

I would flame you in the comment section since you told me to but I don't want to because you're one of my favorite RU-vidr

As someone who plays Zilean pretty much everytime i get autofilled to support, i heavily disagree that he has no solo carry potential. Glacial Augment makes you one of the most obnoxious champions to play against, you have almost guaranteed aoe stun, crap ton of slows and get out of jail almost free card. He completely shits on assasins, makes juggernauts like Darius or Morde borderline unplayable (or terrifying if they are on his team), he can make Hecarim one shot people with his speed up and all you really need as Zilean is patience and knowing when, how and on whom to use your spells. That and ask your teammate to ban either Caitlyn or Sylas, since they counter Zilean pretty hard.

15:55 I remember laughing for hours when this video came out

Ah, 22:22 perfectly balanced as all things should be

5:13 I will Exil, I appreciate the effort lmao

Are you ever going to do Mordekaiser vid? He used to be my main and he was good when mastered. Not many knew how to play against him and he had a unique kit, which gaved many that mastered him a big advantage, since he was HEAVILY underestimated. Mordekaiser nowadays feels so lame.

Seeing old league from season 2-4 or so makes me soooo nostalgic. My god please give this experience back to me, new league isnt even close in terms of quality.

I feel like Thresh would fit in very well too. He will always be strong just because of the amount of utility he provides but he never felt op in the 8 years I've been playing this game.

"When everything is OP, nothing is OP" Boy, if only we knew what would come in the new season

I love these types of videos and sometimes I put them on in the background to listen to. I have watched this video before and on a second viewing, I just noticed 5:13

"he never does more or less than you expect him to" except when full AP Zilean throws 2 bombs at you. No one ever sees the grey screen coming.

15:58 it is kinda hard to focus on the joke of the video when you're a spanish speaker xd

0:58 I was like: Wait... what!

Forgot to mention that the changes he received over the years were just base stat adjustments for all mages in MYMU and all champions in Runes Reforged, which means Zilean actually received 0 balance changes for 5 consecutive years.

Zilean is definitely up there. I wanna add Thresh, though. His kit has stayed roughly the same since he came on the scene, he only had minor tweaks and a shitton of bug fixes. He is not overloaded and his kit allows him to be paid in literally every elo and although he is "just" a support his kit enables the most amazing plays.

I swear you tilt me every time you mention Yasou's Balance

I love you :] just started play league few weeks ago XD nice to hear about champs thats not been touched and LoL history :]] x Love from the UK

Would have loved to see you talking about Orianna. In every single Meta she was viable, has always been able to stabilize etc and almost all of her changes were... kinda small. Anyway a good video!

A change I'd like for anivia is that her wall actually walls off enemies because like 80% of the roster has a way to completely ignore her wall

Finally somone talks about zilean, I appreciate that

I just whish they would make a younger version of him skin. So he looks cool. I think a lot of players dont play him because of his looks.

In my opinion there are 2 champion that are the MOST balanced. I count balanced as not being able to 100-0 at lvl 3 or even at late game, have ok poke but not INSANE poke that does like half your health bar. Cant build broken items to become a broken champ. The player has to play at least 100-200 games to actually get good at the champion, so skill based. And not just pick that champion up and go 10-0. The champion has to have ALOT of counter play to there kits, and also can be out played. Now that you know my criteria. Here are the champs. #1: Sion Sion meets all the criteria. You have to be a special kind of bad to lose 100% of your health at lvl 3 to a Sion in a 100-0 trade. His poke is really good and balanced. Because almost ALL his damage comes from one ability, that is a skill shot and has a long charge time to do actual damage, and has a long CD, so you can walk out of range before you take a lot of damage, and if Sion misses it he has to wait 10 seconds at lvl 1 to 6 seconds. Most of the time you will take a small amount of damage from Sion's Q when he's trying to trade. GL on try to do well if you build anything but tank or lethality on Sion. Both versions of Sion can EASLY be counter built with items like Bork, BC, lethality, percent health damage items. Or for lethality, movement speed and percent health damage items and some tank. Sion takes skill to be able to play him well in lane and actually win it. You need to know when to trade, how to trade, and how to survive, and use your ult correctly in lane, and in team fights. Itemization is HUGE on Sion. Knowing when and what to build vs almost every match up is HUGE. And that take time to master. Sion has ALOT of counter play to him from being able to stun/hook/pull/kick his Q, which as I stated earlier is 80% of his damage. If Sion cant use his Q he cant do damage. His ult is very easy to dodge when so many champs have dashes, and high movement speed, and also items like stopwatch, and skills like flash. You can flash his ult, dash away from his ult, or just move out of the way if Sion used a bad ult. But this doesn't mean Sion is bad. In lane your trades so look something like this, W, E slow, Q, grasp prock, W. This should do about 1/4-1/3 of there health depending how long you charged it. If you have six and they are about 1/4 health you can start the same combo but use ult if they start to run. So W, E, Q, point blank ult if they run, grasp prock, W. In team fight you have 2 options, ult from a far and charge into the enemy, W, E, Q, W while your team engages with you. Or if you are with team, then W, E, Q, ult point blank into the enemy, knocking them up, and then W. #2: Maokia Much for the same reasons, Maokia doesn't do insane damage at lvl 3, his poke is in one ability, his Q, a lot like Sion's main damage comes from his Q. Maokia has counter play, but in my opinion its not as much as Sion's counter play. His Q has sort range and so it is relatively easy to predict when he might use it. Chances are he's going to use it to knock enemies back when they go up to trade with him, so use stuns/hooks/pulls to start the trade. Don't walk into bushes when laning vs a Maokia. His E will hurt, but literally can be useless all laning phase if the enemy doesnt walk into bushes. His saplings also have a slow movement speed so most of the time the enemy will be able to out run the sapling. Maokia only really has one built path, and that can EASILY be counter built with percent health damage and armor shred. Maokia takes more skill than Sion to play. Learning how his damage works can be challenging and his combos can be VERY hard to pull off. Learning his team fighting can also be challenging. Knowing when to engage the enemy and knowing how to use his kit to the fullest in team fights can be hard. Maokia laning combos go something like this. He will throw his saplings into bush, W onto you, Q you close to the bush, and then auto attack. If the enemy tries to run, he will W, Q the enemy back, and if he has 6, ult you into the root, and then throw a sapling at your feet. In team fights he will W I to the team, Q them towards his team, then press ult, to root them.

The worlds clip takes me back.. Joe 'don't call me Joe Miller' Miller! Great times.

Now that Exil put him on the map, he's going to get overplayed and Riot will have to find a nerf for him.

"Only one damaging ability." Taric and Bard: uh ok.... 😤😔.

Zilean has so many balanced things in his Kit: His ult counters focus, so he will be a good champ if played in a game where he can protect a vital memeber, otherwise, he is not very good. Also, his ult gives the enemy time to react, you can see the marked champ and you have time to react to the revive itself. His E guarantees a double hit with his Q under normal circumstances, but it can be countered witg dashes. Also, his E has little range, so he has to walk up close to use it, he has no "safe" combo without counterplay. Certain examples of champs that don't have that: - Old Yorik: His ult used to instantly revive a teammember - Nautilus: he can just R you from a safe distance and than hook when you are knocked up, you can practically only be saved by others. It is too reliable. - Orianna: Can do literally anything in the game and is never a bad pick. Waveclear, protection, damage, range, zoning, utility, CC - Nidalee: sure she has to land her Spear, but she gets no punishment for not doing so.

im a zilean one trick and ive been playing him since season 2. the cd of chronoshift is actually the same as before his rework. they just removed the fact you had to spam w between ults. you can still ult twice. so its basically a buff.

3:00 dota meanwhile throws you into the pit and laughs at you for how bad you are, until you git gud yourself xD One of the things that makes league the more poppular game of the two,no matter quality or balance.

xerath is for me the definition of balance

Yeah the snowball mechanic is definitely the best thing about the game. Not only that, also the counter-snowballing that can happen. Let me put two examples: I'm a new player, just started playing this Monday, yet I know quite a bit about the game cause my brother plays it since forever, so I'm not a complete noob. In one match, I picked Twitch for support as you do... but my Tristana was AFK for the first half of the match. So... 1v2 in bot lane as a support. I was able to get a first blood on a Warwick that got greedy, and I started to snowball cause the two bot laners kept feeding me. I got like 6 kills and ended up three to four levels ahead of everyone else, and with a ton of money. I totally carried my whole team (Tristana later came back, but later on another player went AFK), won and ended 34/0/3. Then in a different match, all the team played bad as a whole. Some played decently but others bad, and we were consistently pushed back in all lanes. Played agaisnt a very pro Pike. But... we were able to stop their big pushes, and win the game. At one point we had our nexus with half health. But after we stopped their snowballs (by some miracle) we were able to counter-attack very efficiently and take them out. I'm still pretty confused about how we did it, but I think that was the key. This is all newbie games btw as I said. This is why the game is so popular, you can snowball which feels amazing when you do it, you can carry a team which also feels great, but you can turn the tide in a split second which is one of the craziest feelings you can have.

Fun fact: you can still actually auto someone after headbutt on Alistar, but it's much harder to do, and you need to have your E active to do it

Zilean has one thing unique , he only has one damaging ability. *cries in Bard*

Zilean is my favorite and he's perfect.

You must be one of the best League youtubers out there. No click bait bs, just facts and incredible editting and plotting. Keep it up bro.

Dunno if anyone has mentioned him, but Thresh is one of the best balanced champs IMO. He's one of the more difficult supports, not because of mechanical complexity, but because of how many options you have with his kit. Every ability can be used to initiate or disengage a fight, your positioning matters, and in the hands of someone experienced he can be extremely strong, but never oppressive or unfun to play against. There's counterplay to his kit, and he's almost never touched by the balance team because his numbers are good.

I like how the most timeless and balanced champs seems to be the time manipulator. I also thought Jax is a champ with a kit that stood the test of time

me and my friends always watch your videos, its on a different level, we always go "did you guys see exils new one?", that shit never happens with videos from like idk, voyboy, sanchoviez etc etc

There is also Trundle worth mentioning, as he received his first change on a patch note more than 3 years after his launcj

To me what makes a champion balanced are a few things: 1) Design: how many mechanics are in the champions kit, be it to few (garen) or too many (aphelios) and how dependant on them is the gameplay, how would it change if some were added or removed, for example, akali's move speed boost after every passive proc. 2) Numbers: forgetting about base stats, lets talk kit numbers, a champion's base numbers and scaling ratios should depend on how well executed that champions mechanics were if any were executed at all, for example veigar and garen ultimates have no mechanics at all while having absurd damage simply, because. on the opposite side, take gangplank's Q+ Barrel combo, which is both realtively hard to land and not that hard to dodge, making it rely on both the caster and the target's skill to make it land or miss, justifying its base damage and stats while empowering it with items in a way that would be useless, if you cant hit a single barrel. 3) Gameplay: mechanics and numbers make up for quite a large piece of what makes or brakes a champion, but whats most important is how both those aspects affect gameplay, for example, take akali or riven, both easy to use and realtively hard to master champions, which are arguably the hardest to balance precisely because they fit into that category, how do you buff or nerf a champion in a way that doesnt screw its amateur players but makes the masters rejoice in their instawin main. remove or change a mechanic and the high skill players will feel their champion is being gutted while lower skilled players might not even notice the difference, like with akali's R1 microstun. But say you reduce some numbers instead and dont change any mechanics, say you reduce riven's R2 execute or maybe her Q or W damage, lower skill brackets will see a decrease in both her winrate and playrate but her more skilled players will abrely see a difference given her core strength is not in her numbers but her animation cancels and passive combo mechanic, thus making her almost unbalanceable. The most balanced champions in the game are thos with a decently loaded kit from design and easily tweaked stats that dont completely change their gameplay for one group of players while not changing it at all for another, take Aatrox for example, after his revive removal and a few tweaks to both his kit and his items he in a fairly balanced spot, where he is both playeable and counterable in any elo. He is a good example of an overloaded mechanic that was removed and was balanced around compensatic for it but not too much, leaving him the perfect gray area where he can stay relevant without overstepping and becoming overpowered.