Originally posted by FrankTheBoxMonster

Today's story time is brought to us by Zyra P cooldown:

Zyra P's cooldown is not actually implemented as a normal cooldown like "go on cooldown for 12 seconds" but instead as "number of 0.25s ticks". This is defined as 50 ticks at level 1, then -1 tick per level. With 0.25s ticks, this should come out to 12.5s-8.25s total cooldown.

Except, due to server framerate, a 0.25s tick is actually a 0.264s tick. This means the effective cooldown actually becomes 13.2s-8.712s. Despite this, the spell still calculates itself as if it's using 0.25s ticks.

But also, the server actually waits an additional 0.25s tick (really 0.264s tick) afterwards before actually spawning the next seed. This brings the real effective cooldown up to 13.464s-8.976s.

In order to account for this, the game does a bit of fudging for the visuals. The icon cooldown indicator simply adds a flat 0.75s to the intended value to get it to match up better. This is mostly accurate, coming out to 13.25s-9s, but is still not perfect, although this indicator is purely visual so it's not like you're gaining or losing any seeds by it being inaccurate. You can also see the difference, as at level 1 your seeds will noticeably wait a bit after the cooldown comes off before spawning, while at level 9 it's almost immediate, due to the closer timing match.

Meanwhile, the tooltip tried to approximate the cooldown differently, but only listed it as "13s / 12s / 11s / 10s / 9s @ 1 / 5 / 9 / 13 / 18". The tooltip has now been changed to 13.5s at level 1, then -0.25s per level (9.25s at level 18), which while still not exactly accurate is still an improvement.

Also very much worth noting that they do in fact possess the ability to make this spell work like a normal cooldown, like other passive cooldowns, but they just chose this instead, along with all the bandaids necessary to cover up its side effects. I was hoping that these data changes would be indicative of such a rescript, however a new calc was also added that corresponds to the "50 ticks -1 per level" formula, implying that this tick-based system is still in place, and it's just a visual improvement on the tooltip. But, I'll need PBE to come back up to be able to notice the presence or absence of these side effects to know for sure.

edit: PBE actually came back up right after I posted this and yep it's functionally unchanged and still wonky

Originally posted by Advacus

Very interesting to do this rebalancing on multiple support mages at once. Does anyone have any more context from the balance team on what their end goal is here?

Obviously they have spoken about Seraphine but I hadn’t heard anything about Brand or Zyra being lumped into this. But with that being said neither of the above changes will likely do too much to either of them.

It’s nice to see Zyra with a bit more scaling, ever since her rework she has been slowly pushed into being more and more dependent on snowballing to be effective in mid/high elo. I don’t think this will really significantly move the needle, but a little is nice.

Originally posted by hpp3

Is this supposed to be power-neutral on support Zyra? This seems to be a nerf on Zyra's main role to support a fringe playstyle. Losing 40 base on E seems really harsh.

Originally posted by MazrimReddit

The amazing thing about Seraphine is letting me queue for support/bot while still having a fun champion that lets me play the game at the same level in two roles. All the match-up and macro knowledge I have is still vital in the role, compared to what I used to queue before Sera's release of support/mid to play something boring like Malz.

Sera plays like a botlaner unlike ziggs or veigar and doesn't require cheese team comps to be good like say karma bot. She wants to scale with items and team fight, she isn't focused on zero interaction push your tower down in the same way. Both other botlane players and myself are going to have a lot less fun in the games I'd now have to go ziggs.

Killing Seraphine bot is genuinely damaging for mine and many other higher elo support players entire game experience

Originally posted by MikuShikhu

Wasn't she literally described as a "melodic mid-lane mage with massive potential" in her spotlight?

Originally posted by ImSpooks

The reason Seraphine mid has no popularity is because there is simply no reason to play it over apc, because apc is simply more broken. Matchups for bot lane are much better and you have an ally to power you up. If sera apc had similar win rates to mid, sera mid would've been picked more and I can guarantee you this. So I think its important to keep mid lane in mind when balancing apc.

Originally posted by ImSpooks

But then why are Brand and Zyra for jungle buffed when they have no pick rate at all? This is even more niche than sera mid.

Originally posted by ThotianaGrande

because yall didn’t balance her properly around mid like we were promised?? She couldn’t lane against most laners especially with shit like horrendous 19 base armor like make it make sense? All the mid players went bot because of a balancing failure you guys permitted you guys never truly prioritized mid even when she was released like we were promised. If you guys actually went through with what was expected and killed support seraphine way earlier then we wouldn’t have this issue. Yall keep f**king forcing mages to become supports and it’s frankly exhausting and disgusting

Originally posted by AobaSona

Are the current changes final? A lot of peopled liked the faster Q missile speed buff but it was just reverted. Plus the W mana cost nerf along with the base mana nerf is a bit rough. Will there be follow up for her if she ends up bad?

Originally posted by AobaSona

Thanks for the insight. The change I was worried about though was the W mana cost going from 0-90 to 80-100. 30 more at the early game seems like a lot when her base mana is going from 440 to 360.

^{(plus I think basic abilities costing 100+ mana always feels kinda wrong somehow})