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These are only suggestions. In my opinion, implementing these changes will improve the quality of the game and maybe help create some diversity in item builds.

  1. Stattik Shiv

This item is still fairly used by many champions. The stats and passive are decent and don't really need any changes. However, there is one mildly infuriating thing about it. The passive activates even when you are hitting turrets. When you're simply trying to take down a turret and there's an enemy champion present nearby, they will get hit by the passive and then you attract the turret agro. So you're forced to back off for no damn reason. I have had this experience countless times. The enemy champion is low health and simply have no means to force you off the turret but you're still forced to retreat because of this stupid thing. I would like to have it so that the item passive does ( or maybe doesn't) deal the bonus damage to turret but doesn't bounce off when attacking turrets. I think it's a much needed QoL change.

  1. Wit's End

This particular item feels really weak, have felt so from the start. You only get AS and MR. The bonus damage is just fine, although I feel a lot of it is diminished by the enemies' base MR. It also doesn't crit. Also, it gives you healing only when you are below 50%. The stats and passive are both underwhelming. It's simply not viable to build it as one of the first 3 items for any champ because its better to have a Vamp item like BOTRK or BT than this, even vs AP heavy teams. Proposed fix for this is to maybe give some AD or have the mitigation healing without the 50% health restriction.

  1. Maw of Malmortius

Another item with a really good passive but the stats you gain are just not worth it. I feel like this is the only item that is worth building against AP champs like Annie, Veigar, Brand, Kata etc. The passive is helpful for every bruiser and ADC. But again, it's simply not worth to build it as one of the first 3 items. You get only AD, minimal AH and some MR. There aren't that many champs that can benefit from AD only from one of their core items. The stats should be a teensy bit better. Maybe give 20% AS or 200 HP. It could be more popular among bruisers with the bonus HP.

  1. Another proposed QoL change is to reduce the slow from items like Seralda's Grudge and Iceborn Gauntlet FOR ranged champions. It feels too easy to kite and/or escape for a MM building one of these two. I know there aren't many ADCs that benefit from these but it's really unfun to have a Corki, Ezreal or Lucian kite you to death and escape easily when things go wrong. Maybe decrease slow time from 1s to 0.75s for ranged champions.

  2. This one is an important QoL suggestion. Can we please not have champions being broken on their release? Every time a champion is released, its busted af and you have to ban it every match, but sometimes you just can't. Then you have to deal with it for the next few weeks before it's nerfed. I know it's a pretty popular cheap tactic but it really kills the fun.

If you disagree or have suggestions of your own, you can write in comments. Hoping it gets noticed by a Riot employee.

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over 2 years ago - /u/R0gueFool - Direct link

I'm speaking from my own opinions here, and not for the rest of my team.
1. I agree this is annoying and a pain point I have felt too. I don't know if we currently have any plans here in the short term but I'll bring it up to people to see how they feel.
2. I actually think the issue with Wit's End comes from it giving too much. At a glance, the item seems to be doing just fine, if not a little strong. But it isn't something you should be buying every game.
Exactly like you said certain aspects can be hard to feel, but adding some AD to that would just exacerbate the problem because we would need to reduce its other effects to compensate for it, or increase its cost.

  1. I agree Maw feels a bit weak. Part of the issue here is that it is a very narrow item (MR items always will be). But also that it competes with Sterak's Gage, which has great synergy with Triforce.

  2. I haven't personally noticed this as an issue, especially with IBG as its AoE scales with Armor, so it won't be great on most ranged champions. It will always suck to be slowed, but neither should have a very high uptime unless you are playing against an Ezreal.

  3. We can try, recently Nunu and especially Brand have been on the stronger side. But how are you defining broken here? I know you are not referring to bugs, but to their power level. But I want to make sure we are working from the same point. Because as I see it the vast majority of releases have either been in a decent spot or VERY weak.

Regardless this comes with time and turning. We are getting better and learning what kind of impacts our changes will have and judging their release power.

over 2 years ago - /u/R0gueFool - Direct link

Originally posted by Euphoric_Software481

It just feels like whenever a champion is released, they're on the broken spectrum, in terms of damage mostly. Brand was way overpowered on his release. So much that literally all of his abilities received a nerf. And even after that, he's still on the strong side, picked or banned in nearly 70% of my games. So you get an idea how overloaded his kit was. Nunu isn't broken but still pretty strong. It feels unfair that only his ult shield scales with HP but he can build full tank and still deal the same amount of damage as an AP malphite. I hope his kit is updated so he's forced to build at least 1-2 AP items reach that level of damage. His tankiness is balanced but not his damage. Before that, when Lucian was released, he too was pretty OP. Had to be nerfed.

And now, let's talk about veigar. He's supposed to be a scaling mage, but he comes online way too fast. Scaling champions usually hit their power spikes around the 12 to 15 min mark. But veigar can start one-shotting you at the 10 minute mark if played well. It's too easy to stack with him. But in my opinion, along with his scaling, there is one more broken aspect about him. His cage. I haven't played PC league ever and have no idea how Veigar performs there. But in WR, his cage is literally the best form of CC, with unmatched utility. A cage that lasts for 3 seconds, stunning enemies hit for nearly as much time and can stun all 5 members of the enemy team, just doesn't feel balanced. Not to mention that it is big enough to block the path in jungle areas, where a lot of fights do take place to prevent escapes/follow-up. There's no way to fight a team who has veigar. If you try to engage with a champion like Leona, Wukong or Rakan, your engages are nullified. You get caught in the cage and die, simply because your team can't follow up against the cage. So then you are 4v5 and lose the fight anyway. I hope something is done about this because the map is too small for such AoE CC. Maybe only the first enemy hit is stunned and the rest are slowed by some amount?

On a side note, why was pick and ban phase changed? When it was first introduced, if you pre picked a champion and enemy team banned it, the icon would disappear and you would know that the enemy banned it. But in 2.5 ( I think), you can't know it anymore since the icons disappear only after the ban phase. We're seeing more of double bans now. I think it was healthy and perfectly fine before since the bans were mostly unique.

Brand was way overpowered on his release. So much that literally all of his abilities received a nerf.

I agree Brand was released too strong, and am sorry about that, but it hardly points to a trend. Nunu as we'll was a bit stronger, but it took most players a little time to catch up to it and really get a feel for him.

These are the point I'm interested in here:

It just feels like whenever a champion is released, they're on the broken spectrum, in terms of damage mostly.....

And even after that, he's still on the strong side, picked or banned in nearly 70% of my games.

And the criteria you use to define this. Because I'd argue that he is in a fine spot now and have seen that (as the team has defined champions strength) the vast majority of our champion releases have been under power (in some cases critically). Funny enough this is part of what led to Brand's OP release. We had been releasing champions that were very weak on launch that I was ok with us risking him being, what we thought was, slightly strong. So you can imagine how sh*tty I felt when I over shot the mark, and he came out as strong as he was =P.

This is why when I talk about balance and champions being OP/Weak I want to make sure we are talking about the same thing because people will define this differently. Often times it can be tied to a champion's pick rate, ban rate, maybe their win rate, or confusing counterplay, or a particular aspect of their kit. Often times I see people talking about something being unbalanced when what they are talking about is actually frustration. This is still valid, and super useful for us to know/take into account, but it is different than what people typically think of when they think of balance (all champions have a roughly equal chance of winning and a player/team's skill is the deciding factor).

But veigar can start one-shotting you at the 10 minute mark if played well.

I think the key thing here to note is "if played well" the reality of it is that he seems to be doing much worse in high/elite level play where the Veigar player likely knows what he is doing, but his opponents understand how to play against him. Your right when Veigar is doing well he can be very frustrating, most champions with short bursty kill windows can be. In fact, almost every time I see frustration about a champion this is the case.

A cage that lasts for 3 seconds, stunning enemies hit for nearly as much time and can stun all 5 members of the enemy team, just doesn't feel balanced.

If he is stunning all 5 members of the enemy team with his W then I'd argue he deserves to win that team fight, but I agree it's very frustrating for sure. But Merc Treads, MR, and QSS go a long way to stopping this from happening. He is also a sh*t roamer, who typically wants to farm. If a player can't deal with him in lane than making an advantage elsewhere can go a long way.

On a side note, why was pick and ban phase changed?

The baning phase was changed because that was a bug. =P We didn't intend for you to be able to tell who the other team banned by looking at the grid before bans happen.