[2023] Spideraxe Teases Changes to Toplane Champions, ADC Items, and Ghost

Originally posted by Ok_Regular_9436

the ER changes are a nerf to intended users when the item isnt that meta atm , kinda weird

edit: so they are nerfing ER instead of nerfing rengar?

Originally posted by OceanStar6

Having crunched the numbers on many of these changes, some of them actually appear to be nerfs. I'm hoping either I'm drunk and my math is just wrong, or Riot typo'd these or something.

For example, the Sett change to his second punch is a nerf until he reaches 226.666666 bonus AD which is going to be like ~4-5 AD boosting items which is turbo lategame after he has likely either won or lost already. The R buff is also going to take a few items to really make a difference as well.

The Morde change is very similar, and is saying he's down ~50 damage on his Q and breaks even at 333.33333333 AP which is sorta a lot. Most Morde's like to mix a few tank items in so he doesn't just get blown up, so again it appears to be a nerf? I guess if he goes a rocket belt full AP build it will begin to climb past the typical Q amount, but I'm not sure if that's really what Morde wants to be doing.

Originally posted by Its_Da_Muffin_Man

Yeah those morde changes are absolutely disgustingly huge, entirely gut his jungle build and make top quite a lot worse.

Originally posted by ImSoFar

Some of the champions in that list are not even picked in pro play(they're not even that popular/strong to begin with) and you don't increase top lane agency by nerfing their champions. Tanks also do care a lot more about gold since their items cost more.

You're idea is just to turn top lane in a better hunting ground for the so weak jungle that sure doesn't deserve nerfs.

Originally posted by Ok_Regular_9436

so it is a late game nerf

Originally posted by Phr33k101

Respectfully, that seems counterintuitive. Top lane as a whole has been complaining about lack of agency for quite some time - tanks included. Nobody really feels like they have much impact at all. These changes seem to take part of the little agency that tanks have and redistribute it to fighters. Now, don't get me wrong, I'll be glad to see more fighters in pro play, but this feels like it's going about it the wrong way. The goal should be to have all top laners feel like they have more agency, whether they are fighters, tanks, mages, or adcs. I hope I am wrong, but from your explanation it sounds like Riot is robbing Peter to pay Paul with this patch.

Originally posted by Aruillavain

I don't understand how getting jungler/team attention qualifies as top lane impact. That's getting impacted not impacting something yourself.

They primary reason tanks don't care about money (in pro play at least) is that the team focused tank items were changed to be support/low income items (Radiant Virtue/ Abyssal). Tanks can care about winning lane and having money if they have a use for that money. In solo queue a tank cares a lot about money if it has to facetank a 15/0 enemy adc and try to carry.

Originally posted by Intelligent-Syrup-68

Why are you making tahm kench weaker?

Originally posted by Ok_Regular_9436

alright, mind showing a spreadsheet for gangplank, mr. phreak? i dont know how to math it out.

Originally posted by Its_Da_Muffin_Man

Yeah but the problem is that AP bruisers can almost never reach 330 ap until literally 4/5 items so for morde it's a straight up nerf. Is there a reason he was tarfeted along with all the others? Just curious.

Originally posted by Intelligent-Syrup-68

He’s already weak now though, why do you feel the need to adjust him in place of just making him less shit

Originally posted by Minishcap1

Why do we think that buffing fighters = buffing top lane? Top lane's issues are systemic. It's too rewarding for the enemy jungler to gank bot and play botside. The value of those areas getting ahead should be brought down. All this accomplishes is further power creeping the game (while for some reason nerfing ghost because it wasn't already awful enough to play as an immobile melee champ in this game)

The enemy support being able to perma-roam top while top being unable to respond without getting massively far behind is an issue as well. Why is bounceback exp so powerful for that role?

The jungle role also needs power reduction. The role has been made to be so extremely powerful especially in high elo games because "no one wants to queue for jungle" but making the role unhealthily powerful is not a good answer. Jungle decides the outcome of 9/10 games.

While it's a good goal to make the jungler want to come top, just generically buffing only the fighter class isn't a good idea.

Originally posted by ImSoFar

neutral changes

Why would you sell it like that? These are not neutral changes when top lane already has less gold than a jungler. Making them weaker early game is a huge nerf despite that "they are getting better at 3-4 items". Surviving until that point makes them weaker overall, not "neutral".

Jungle champions are already stupid strong and they deserve nerfs on top of nerfs, but somehow top laners are getting "neutral changes" by nerfing them in the early game. They won't be able compete with junglers and adc at any stage.

If Riot wants to increase top lane agency, nerf jungle champions. There is no reason for jungle to have monsters like Kha, Eve, Fiddle, Rek'sai, Kindred, Udyr, Ivern and Rengar.

The one in charge of these changes should do some big "neutral changes" on junglers, not on top laners.

Originally posted by doglop

Pls don't, those changes kill tahm supp who is already weak(you know, the role he was meant to be balanced around post rework?). No one asked for this

Originally posted by Phr33k101

I'm reminded of a quote by Mark Rosewater, lead designer of MtG, who once said at a game dev conference: "Your players are great at identifying problems, but awful at designing solutions". I don't pretend to have solutions to this issue, but I'm also not sure about the notion that top lane doesn't care about gold (or at least, I don't think it's the root issue).

I think it's uncontroversial to say that top lane is incredibly counter-pick focused, and teams generally tend to let top laners have the latest picks possible. Eventually, however, one of the two players will have to pick blind, and in doing so they need to accept that they can (and likely will) be counterpicked. Because of this, the blind picker has an incentive to pick the safest, most stable lane possible, that can operate well even in rough conditions (e.g. Ornn, Malph, Gragas, etc), instead of something that needs tons of gold and which can be countered easily (e.g. Camille). While the second picker often has the goal of winning the lane, the blind picker is likely playing for a draw in lane and later scaling. In essence, only one person has the luxury of caring heavily about gold.

While I appreciate that these changes will likely improve the pro play meta quite a lot, I think trying to push top lane towards both players caring equally about gold income is unfeasable as long as the counterpick is so favoured. You simply cannot ban Jax and blind pick a Camille, for instance, because if your opponent goes Poppy you're pretty close to screwed. It will be too easy for her to get gold, and too hard for you to do the same. As such I think distangling gold dependency from the specific context of toplane is missing the forest for the trees, and these changes will only further skew games towards being decided in champ select.

Originally posted by relrax

1) generally appreciate your work
2) agree that all toplane champs should care about gold, so weaksiding top becomes worse. (also pls no janna, bard, zilean top ever again)
3) i just have the personal fear that making toplane more snowbally by increasing the scaling of champions just makes bad matchups even worse, and the lane might become even more counterpick reliant.

Originally posted by No_Arm_Whatley

Winning "an average number of games" is a bit deceptive though isn't it.

Not only his playrate is very low, but as a very simplistic champion it would naturally follow that he would have a slightly higher than average winrate as people who try him are not going to massively lose games in the way they would on many popular high skill-floor toplaners like Yone, Aatrox, K'sante, ect.

Originally posted by Intelligent-Syrup-68

But you understand how a negligible pr inflates wr no?

Originally posted by doglop

most players have gravitated toward top lane TK by a ratio of about 3:1 despite the power levels being pretty close.

It has been historically not close(2-3% depending on elo for the last 2 years and much bigger pre 12.2 and started getting closer post tank item reworks) so a ton of players never actually realized the gap has been closer, cause it had mostly to do with the ranged/enchanter nerfs rather than him getting better. Regardless, support was his "og" role, that's like saying pantheon should be balanced around supp when he was 80% of the time picked as a support rather than reworked and making him way worse as a supp and better as a solo laner, or rumble should be a midlaner cause he was more popular there, when you just changed him to make him better at top. If anything the lack of support to tahm as a support is what is making him less and less picked, would be cool he was getting changes for support, rather than opening the gap even more to make him feel even more appealing as a toplaner for no reason

Originally posted by Boudynasr

Question regarding fighters, what is your general opinion about Trinity Force?

from my experience, if a champion's kit can build trinity then it is automatically their best item [whether fighters/bruisers or marksmen]

Originally posted by doglop

But my point is he shouldn't be getting nerfs to begin with, I know they aren't big but they still affect his laning as asupp + makes him even less appealing to buy supp items with, which just amplifies his current issues and a lack of caring about his support role which has been a heavy issue since the rework

Originally posted by Minishcap1

"It's why Ghost is being nerfed. There is a lot of agency in the ADC's coffers. This can go down somewhat."

But there are plenty of avenues to make ghost less appealing for ADCs while not making it weaker for melee champs as well.

Originally posted by Infinite_Delusion

I only build Riftmaker on him (Jaksho is cringe), and you get up to 330 AP late game and about 370 with Conqueror (I think). How are the numbers looking before that for the AP build, because it's hard to calculate when we don't have the +damage per level scaling on his new numbers for Q, since they aren't linear.

Any chance that you guys can instead target his passive, where most of his damage comes from for his tank build? People are always complaining about Morde never hitting hitting skillshots and "microwaving" them.

I'm not an expert at numbers of course, but maybe lowering the %Max HP damage to a flat 1% from 1-5%, then adding an AP ratio to the % Max HP damage could help. The tank build would get hit pretty hard, and the AP build would probably get a slight 1% Max HP buff at full build depending on numbers.

Originally posted by Jake_Berube

We were promised a year ago that big top lane satisfaction changes were coming in pre season and they didn’t come and now you are saying IF you ever look at big top lane changes? Can you guys please please please just be 100% transparent with us and tell us if we as top laners should continue to hope for actual help and healthy changes or if we are so far down the priority list that we should just accept where we are and maybe in a few years actually be able to play and have fun again?

Originally posted by Infinite_Delusion

Got it, so in a typical game, we probably wouldn't even see the change. Most likely a buff for Rylais -> Riftmaker -> Demonic build early-mid game, then a nerf for late game if you were actually going the Jaksho build.

Originally posted by DocTentacles

Junglers get more gold than top laners?

That does not match what I've observed, are you sure? What Elo are we talking about?

Originally posted by DocTentacles

Wild. I always feel like toplane CS is more reliable, even if you're BausFFing for it, but it's not like I can pull a statsite out to prove you wrong, so I gotta accept that paradigm shift. I always assumed jungle was 4th place gold. (Is it mostly from kills, or CS, or can you track that?)

I know tanks are usually low-gold, but it feels like solo tops just perma-CS. Wild. Good to learn, though.

I swear to god, getting these little riot factoids is the only reason I'm still on this reddit, thanks man.

Originally posted by WahtAmDoingHere

May I ask, what kind of direction is planned for the shiv tweaks you mentioned?

Originally posted by Kaboomeow69

Using jungle xp/gold diff as motive while his pickrate is substantially higher top feels weird

Originally posted by MORE-MONSTER-JGLERS

I feel like they only go heart and grasp when laning with senna. Please dont force him into that mythic it is too expensive and awful. It has no utility on a role which values it. Please throw us tahm supp mains a bone Mr. Phreak. Ive been supping him since release :(