[Patch 1.0.0.125: Riven] General Discussion - Page 123

Basically, there are 2 main problems with Vlad right now.

1) His free gold passive
His passive gives a lot of free stats. Most problematically, when he builds offensively with AP he gains HP and vice versa. This means that the effectiveness of farm is much greater for him so his power curve is much steeper with respect to farm. This also means that even if Vlad is behind on farm, it is still possible for him to still be equal in power level due to the multiplicative nature of his passive.

2) The broken nature of his spell costing and gating
His spell usage mechanic is supposed to be like a sink. You pour hp in with Regen and Q, you lose it from using your other spells. This in-out mechanism is supposed to prevent him from just mindlessly spamming skills and having that 100% do-lots-of-damage-uptime with enough CDR. The problem though is that thanks to things like Spellvamp (and to a lesser extent, hp regen and FoN) this sink relationship doesn't work properly. When you heal for almost as much as it costs to cast a spell, then there's no thinking involved and you just hit buttons for free damage. If your Q is off cooldown, there's almost no reason to ever not use it on something. Increasing costs of casting his spells just hurts him even more earlygame before he itemises. Changing spellvamp has repercussions for other champions that rely on it. Reducing his damage too much risks making him subpar compared to other AP Carries even if he can cast spells 24/7.

Any changes or remake to Vlad need to take into account the following issues:

1) Create thoughtful gameplay
QWER faceroll champs don't encourage a high skill ceiling, and lack style. Take the changes to Sona for example. Now to have to think about what every 3rd spell you cast is. Do you really need to heal right now, or is it better to use your E so when your jungler comes in 10sec to bot lane you have a slow-charged autoattack ready? Alternatively, with Rumble (another CD-only based champion) you want to think about how you pace your spells so you don't accidentally silence yourself when you don't want to. Part of this links to the risk-reward function. If there's too much reward for little to no risk then there is less incentive to pace yourself or think hard. Given that lowered skill ceiling is a common complaint (see: lack of wall jumping from Riven or Vayne) this is a chance to address that issue.

2) Take into account his lore and feel
Despite sounding mundane, champions need to have a feel to them in order to be fun to use. What makes champions fun is their feel. When it comes down to it, most AP carries are just people who press buttons and hurt you, while AD carries right click you and hurt you. But people still have preferences for champions because of their feel. When you play Ezrael, you feel cool hitting all your skillshots and blinking around being annoying. Annie is a little girl that plays with fire and throws her monster teddy bear at you who mashes your face in. You can sing the Mulan soundtrack when playing Xin and not feel silly. Losing this isn't worth balancing a champion if it just makes them some generic clone of something else.

In Vladimir's case, his vampire feel is important to him. Despite the gating issue with his spells, it would not be inaccurate to compare it to an AP with bluebuff, a large manapool and spelvamp. In order to address balancing issues, that suggests it's necessary to...

3) Remove his broken passive
Since I've talked about this above, I won't go into it again. Suffice to say, having one very strong mechanic on a champion isn't a problem. Many fun and rounded champions have their own unique characteristics. Having many of them is an issue though. Since lore and feel is important, this seems like the candidate to drop.

So what are some things that can be done about it? This something I've thought of that tries to fulfil the above criteria. It's a suggestion and has no numbers and is just theorycrafting.

Vlad as a design
The passive for many champions governs how their playstyle works and how they function. For Vlad, what could be done is having his power change depending on his health. For example, at full hp he does regular levels of damage. But, as his hp decreases, he gains bonus AP/damage on spells/some other benefit. This encourages more thoughtful use of his spells. Do you want to constantly spam spells for damage and heal, or do you want to allow yourself to get low and enter a "danger zone" so to speak of and put yourself at risk for more reward (damage)? This works maintinas his vampire theme of someone who thirst harder for blood as he gets lower on hp (i.e. getting hungrier for life sustenance) and so becomes more frenzied and do more damage.

His spells could then work around the feel of his passive. Q would be his main low CD nuke and main source of damage. As he gets lower in health, his Q would do more damage. But you would want to balance its usage with his health level for maximum effect. E could be a low CD "mini-nuke" that costs %hp instead of flat HP. This would be a quick method for Vlad to "lose" hp when he wants to put himself at rick for more damage. W and R would be similar to their current form. The idea would be to quickly lose hp when you feel the need for more damage by using E inside some enemies. Perhaps E could even apply a debuff on enemies. Then you unleash Q as a primary nuke on people for damage. If you allow yourself to fight with lower hp, you put yourself at risk of being killed faster. However, you do more damage in return. When things get hairy, W is still the troll escape tool it's always been. R is another way to lose hp and open a fight and its damage amplification complements the way his passive works too.

Does his passive mean that it's counter-intuitive to get hp regen and spellvamp since even if you want to be low hp, your spells still heal you?
To a degree, yes. However by making E %hp based it can act as a rapid method to lower your hp when necessary without killing yourself accidentally but still put yourself into the danger zone. Another possibility is that its CD could increase for every stack you gain, or its hp cost could change.

It's also rather counter-intuitive for low health to be considered good. However, given his vampire nature, it is a method to try and encourage smarter gameplay by making people think a bit more rather than QWER faceroll and getting only positive results.

Don't champions such as Morgana with her inherent sustain do a similar thing?
To an extent, yes. However, most AP champions are gated by their mana. A Morgana without bluebuff or mana regen that tries to non-stop spam spells will run out of mana and peter out. The same goes for other AP champions, such as energy based champions. Akali has spellvamp and sustain, but her limited energy pool means that she can run out quite quickly if you max CDR on her in an attempt to get 100% damage uptime on her spells. The same does not apply to Vlad as his spells either have no cost (e.g. his Q) or can be offset or compensated for and therefore have no practical cost. Since everything all runs off hp and spellvamp can compensate for it, it can reach a stage where it's almost always a positive thing to hit spells with no cost to using them at all.

How does Vlad's powercurve change as a result? Is this an attempt to "homogenise" power levels?
I personally believe that champions shouldn't all have the same power level. It's okay for some champions to be weaker lanes that feel like they need to fight tooth and nail for their farm, but once they get to a certain stage they can go all terror on the enemy. For Vlad, losing his passive means that his late-game is less terrifying. What can be done is to make the levelling of his spells non-linear.

What happens with most spells is that increasing each each rank of a spell increases its power by a similar amount. For instance, increasing Vlad's E currently increases its damage by 30 for each rank you take it. To create a more late-game feel, this could be changed to increase exponentially. So, each rank of his spells could do increasing more damage. This would make levelling his spells feel stronger. Combined with his passive it would mean his spells do proportionally more damage as you level them so he still has more power as time goes on. Of course, there is a limit to how much power he can gain, but that is still the case with his current passive once you get 6 items+elixers. His passive in its current form simply raises the speed at which he reaches each power level and raises the maximum power level.