Champions 101

#1

"Okay, let me just adjust the scene and we should be on the classroom...we are! Great. Alright, let me grab my glasses and do a quick costume change so I'll be off-screen for a moment, don't worry though I'm not ditching y'all. 'What's the subject today?' The subject today is why you should be building the Glock if you're playing any damage-dealing character, we got graphs and everything it'll be great. Alright, here we go."

"Welcome class to another lesson from Professor Alaska. Today we will be talking about why the Glock is broken and you should always be building it. Obviously the main clue that it's busted is that all the pros are using it and that is normally a good indicator of when things are at their most powerful. But while that is true there are some things the pros do that your regular SoloQ player just won't because it doesn't work in that environment. Look at when Samara saw play in the mid-lane at Clash and won, then everyone in Silver tried it and it just didn't work because you need proper communication and comps for that.

"But anyway, what we have with the Glock is a weapon that got a rework when Karen was added to the game, because tie-ins, but the numbers were mad overtuned, everyone knows this. It was pretty famous and it got hotfixed then got hit with a full nerf in the next patch along with Karen. Then it got hit with another nerf recently. Neither of these have been enough and we can see this easily from the fact all the pros are still building it for anyone that needs to do damage.

"For a case study we've got the board...the wheel's stuck on a wire, there we go. We've got the board and we're going to take a look at Karen because she's a frequent jungle and bot pick and is pretty tied in with the Glock seeing as it's her iconic weapon. So this graph shows her winrate across all divisions on release which we all agree is dumb. It's super high which is crazy since everyone was playing Karen and it still ended up hovering at around sixty-three percent. This second graph is her winrate after the hotfix went through, so we see a drop right? It's noticeable, we go down to around fifty-nine percent that's still too high though. So we nerf the Glock and Karen and then nerf it a second time. And you can see the number dips a fair bit. We're all the way down to fifty-four percent across all divisions which is acceptable as we continue but...

"If we compare that graph to people playing Karen—Thanks for the six months Rezcoon, welcome to Bake Club—where was I? Oh right so, Karen's winrate dropped but if we check the people that played Karen for one-hundred plus games across that period in Plat plus we can see that...there's no noticeable change. People that main Karen still win around fifty-nine percent of the time and you're probably thinking 'but Alaska that's clearly just proof that Karen needs nerfs and you said this was about the Glock'.

"And if you are then don't worry I've got you covered. There's a couple of junglers who didn't see any real changes in that same timeframe: Trace and Karol and when we check their winrates...both of them go up as well, when we remove gold and below it goes up even more. Y'all know the culprit right? Both these guys didn't really get any changes, Karol got a move speed nerf and Trace got a numbers tweak. I repeat Karol got a move speed nerf. Typically even off a small nerf you should see a slight decrease, but his winrate went up that same patch. It was also the same patch the Glock was reworked. This is a pretty consistent trend across the board so if you're wondering why you get burst all the time by people like Karol jumping out of a bush or Trace, who let's be real shouldn't be bursting people this is why.

"The numbers on the Glock and the way the effect works—if you go unseen for one second, your next basic attack deals damage on-hit—means that junglers get to reap all the benefits when they emerge to kill you. Hold up, I just saw a good question. 'Why not just nerf the numbers on the Glock then?'. Thanks for the question Ken-Chan, but the numbers on the Glock aren't what causes the problem. It's the effect itself, and the numbers attached to it. The raw Glock numbers have been nerfed but the effect is being left the same.

"So in short if you're playing a jungler and are not building the Glock, build the Glock. You'll probably win 'cause it's busted. Heck if you play a roaming style Kenny out of top I'd suggest building it for him too, the effect is just that good.

"'Should I go back to maining Karol once Karen gets nerfed then?' Thanks for the question VreeThree, ummmm, hmmm. Based on what they've spoken about nerf and buff wise Karol might get back into his niche. The Karen nerfs will help him for sure and the Glock will still be good. Plus they're taking some of Hatchet's power off her and they fill the same role kinda. So yeah now seems like a good time to pick up Karol again, especially once the next patch comes through."

Then Alaska saw another question appear in her chat.

'WHY DID YOU GET FAT?'

She banned the user as people jumped to her defense and continued answering questions and talking to her chat as if nothing happened. She played a couple of games on Karen, Trace and Karol, using builds that featured the Glock and ones that didn't and then she thanked everyone for watching and supporting her and said goodnight.

The board was rolled back into the corner of her room, the greenscreen packed away and a wardrobe change made. Then she lay on her bed with her laptop balanced on her legs, put another stream she frequented on in the background and lit up. She talked to Laura over Messenger for a while but then curiosity got the better of her and she loaded up her Instagram feed and started scrolling through it, going from older photos to the current day, looking for changes in her appearance and weight. Eventually, she stopped herself and booted up Champions again, using her alternate account. After playing some more games and carving through her bronze promotions with ease she logged off. Picking her phone up one more time as she wiped her makeup off and climbed into bed she checked the other feed that kept coming up when she looked at her old photos. Emmy's feed. She scrolled through it for a while. She seemed happy.

Then Alaska set her phone down, rolled over and went to sleep.