[2023] 13.22 Patch Preview by RiotPhroxzon

Eh, I probably did too many things at once that weren't strictly going to achieve goals. For example, lower health growth makes sense systemically for enchanters (their items give HP, armor is synergistic with shields), but actively works against Mid/Bot skew (though it does help with Bot/Support). More shielding helps support but also helps bot, since you get nearly double value in both cases.

To be fair though, part of this observed win rate disparity is people building "wrong." For example, W max Seraphine Support is actually her strongest build now with a 1% win rate gain over Q max. It gained some popularity last patch, but we'd see a 1% win rate rise if the rest of the population moves over. On that vein, a significant portion of Mid Seraphine players max E 2nd, more than Bot Seraphine does, and is very incorrect even after the buffs. So because W max 2nd is still stronger than E max 2nd, any role that "obviously" wants to max W outperforms, which is bot moreso than mid.

There are other weird oddities, too. Mid Seraphine tends to run Scorch, Biscuits, and Cosmic Insight whereas Bot tends to run Gathering Storm, Presence of Mind, and Coup de Grace, all of which are stronger on Mid Seraphine as well. Shoutout to Cut Down now that Seraphine has low base health, but players aren't picking up on it. Support Seraphine could also do with swapping from Scorch (84% pick rate) to Gathering Storm. And from Inspiration to Resolve for Font of Life and Revitalize. In all cases, Haste is her best Stat Shard, but only Bot Seraphine runs it more than half the time. So some of the current win rate differences are purely a build optimization problem. It doesn't explain the relative win rate gains of the patch, though.

What's interesting (and encouraging) is all of her basic outputs went the direction we wanted. It's also encouraging that her play rate has measurably increased in all three roles while her ban rate hasn't moved. Compared to patch 13.20:

All of those indicate that we nerfed bot lane the most (healing) and buffed mid/support the most (damage, farming). A decent rule of thumb is 2% more damage is roughly 1% win rate, so the fact that this would indicate a 1% win rate skew just from damage stats is meaningful.

Significant changes to her late-game stats via health growth and mana regen growth likely undid some of the mid/bot gains got from reshaping her abilities.

From here there are two paths: Continue on the line of ability changes (level scaling, a shift toward abilities better used by mid/support) or undoing some of the base stat changes that were done for consistency and self-synergy. It's worth noting that XP per minute is pretty linear between mid/bot/sup, which means anything relatively gained mid will be lost in support. This secondary path would be basically hard sacrificing one of her roles just to get bot in line.

Overall, if Seraphine winds up at ~51% in mid/sup (she's currently 51%/49%, both of which have a lot of room for optimization) and 53% in bot (where she was last patch), I'm happy.

I don't think E missile speed should be faster.

I'd expect Q speed and base MS to be mid/support skewed. The question is what players would be willing to give up. Not sure a longer Q cooldown would feel good, since that also means fewer passive cycles.

Well the more damage E deals, the better she is with magic pen instead of simply haste for CC/shielding.

Ideally, Seraphine has the option to go Q+E and it's comparable in power to Q+W.

I think of her as more of a Lux/Karma/Morgana. Lux has a mid laner's stats. Morgana/Karma have those of an enchanter (albeit tankier since they're shorter range). Some mage outputs, some enchanter ones. Seraphine is far closer to those champions than Zyra or Brand. Sona and Janna have a somewhat similar shape, too.

Making her a better enchanter was an easy way to buff her in ways that were really support-skewed. She's always going to be around a teammate so more Ws is going to do more for support than mid/bot. She's generally going to earn less gold here, thus her gold scaling isn't as important. I noticed that a decent portion of Seraphine players maxed W and a large portion of them went Echoes despite it being pretty poor. Now Echoes is comparable to Liandry's and that's good.

I think a decent portion of low MMR players don't really think critically about their builds. One of our UX designers on SRT is a bronze Seraphine main and she used to max E 2nd earlier this year. It used to be correct. It just isn't any more. Logically "Oh, better crowd control spell" can make sense if you don't compare each ability. When initially playtesting the 13.21 changes, I asked her to try W max first and she had a really good time with it. Sometimes players just need some guidance. Unless a guide comes out, recommended builds update, or we manually set them, it will simply take a long time for lower-MMR players to adapt to game changes. Let's not forget how long it took Zeri players to get off of Trinity Force.

As another point of reference, E max 1st was more common than W max 1st for Seraphine for silver players last patch. It still is this patch, too. I'm generally in favor of not allowing players to fall into those traps if I can help it. And that means if an ability feels logical to put points into, it should probably do that thing better. Either way, that's a nontrivial part of what's depressing her win rate in support.

It scales off of your allies' missing health, the number of nearby allies, ability haste, and Heal/Shield Power.