EPTOn June 08 2013 20:25 Alaric wrote:+ Show Spoiler +
I guess the most important part about Hourglass is how much AP it gives: it's about the price of DFG (160 more) and Deathcap (60 less), gives as much AP, 50 armour, and huge utility. Deathcap was nerfed to provide less damage so it's not the first stop anymore and it involves trade-offs, but it also means that pretty often the 50 or so AP more than it gives isn't as important (counter-case: you're a burst caster, typically ult-reliant/long cds, and there are no assassins out for you on the enemy team. Pretty rare case on both points with the current popular pool).
DFG has 10% CDR and the active instead. Those 10% aren't crucial when most of the popular APs use Morello or Grail anyway, and the active is associated, again, to a burst AP/assassin (single-target) while more often than not (*cough* Diana) if you're playing an AP champ atm your strengths lie in utility rather than damage.
If anything, don't nerf Hourglass (or target the AP so it competes with other utility/survivability items instead, like Rylai/RoA), buff Deathcap and don't touch DFG since it's more meta/FotM-reliant.
Morello mentioned a day or two ago that the team responsible for skins and stuff is also responsible for visual reworks and new champions. Because they put a lot more work into skins and have had several VUs, and want to focus on that, they have to slow down on champ release because of resources, is basically what he said (and their choice too).
I'll try to make the part about Irelia, Zed, etc. short (edit: that's when you laugh, fuck) because I already know I mostly disagree with ClutZ and he and I have totally different focus on our pet peeves.
I think Olaf, Zed and Talon are interesting to watch/offer counterplay by nature, because you can't stop Olaf but he still needs to reach the his target: keeping track of his ult duration and good positioning can also allow to trap him, make it hard for him to pick up an axe, etc. and the simple fact that he lacks a gap closer (one of my pet peeves that you're not defined by having a gap closer but by not having one now) makes his laning that much more awkward.
Zed because he's got a lot of room for outplaying with the shadows and stuff, kinda like Lee. Talon because he has to watch his timing, the angle he comes from, how much the enemy team focuses on him, etc. to get his 1v1 situation in teamfights. Kha'Zix is uninteresting because he never has to plan a way out post-11: he pokes till you're low, jumps in, jumps out, while Talon has to kill (without having poke himself so either be farmed, or have your team poke for you) and be positioned correctly that he can disengage for his next CDs before he dies.
Irelia isn't really fun to watch, nor is Jax, but they have counterplay. They innately lack nuking power (they have burst, but not the 80-0 in 2s kind), have weak early laning, little shoving, and thus splitpushing, power (especially compared to 1v2/caster champs with the exception of Shen), and rely on a long cooldown.
Irelia's strong because Hiten Style's powercurve is basically that of a single-target burst caster. Super strong when it's close to maxed, then starts falling off. People don't seem to realise when they say "she has so much so her kit sucks" that it can be translated to "when he W is down she doesn't have much", she has huge vulnerabilities when that happens, and the latter the game goes, the more susceptible her target is to survive those 6 seconds, while she typically lacks outside damage (only building BotRK or triforce) after that.
(No, really. Kha'Zix or Zed have stronger 1v1/dps than her while being classified as assassins too, because they have shorter cooldowns (Kha) / stronger dps steroids (Zed's W) even if their target can survive the initial burst. And don't even try to pretend Jayce's ranged W is weaker than Hiten. At level 9 if you max them, yeah, sure, but once people get levels/items Jayce's actually scales. And sustain? She needs to auto to sustain, it's like Nasus. Akali, WW, Yorick, Kha have ranged sustain that doesn't push the wave if you take it that way.)
When it comes to champs having too much there are distinctions to make, I believe. Irelia had too much from a laning viewpoint, with the whole "sustain, damage, gap closer, cc" bit. She still has timings, heavy cooldown reliance, no way to poke, she falls off, needs her ult to shove real quick, etc. Rengar's closer to that.
Kha'Zix and Zed (and probably Diana and Jayce) have too much from a global point of view: excellent single-target burst combined with incidental AoE, good to godlike poke, gap closers, cc (though limited to slows for 2 of them), excellent 1v1 and teamfighting, good shoving/splitpushing/tower-killing capabilities, and either tankiness (Diana) or disengage (the rest). They don't even have a clearcut role because they are so versatile, you even sometimes see Zed initiate because his team can exploit the chaos his ult creates to follow-up and swarm. They also have 0K to excellent pre-6 laning and excellent scaling even into the late game.
So, talking about "Irelia has too much" is sort of ignoring the issues currently at hand in favor of the past ones—top lane power creep. Notice how we don't even talk about "top lane" anymore because those champs are able to go to several of them and also 1v2 if needed?
I agree that she has "bad design" in that she isn't exciting to watch (I like playing her, there's outplaying potential and stuff but it's not flashy because it relies more on planning, creep management and playing around cooldowns, compared to Zed/Kha'Zix), and that she lacks the "cool"/non-generic aspect abilities like Zilean's ult have, but from a working/playing standpoint it really isn't as bad as a lot of recent shit.
I guess the most important part about Hourglass is how much AP it gives: it's about the price of DFG (160 more) and Deathcap (60 less), gives as much AP, 50 armour, and huge utility. Deathcap was nerfed to provide less damage so it's not the first stop anymore and it involves trade-offs, but it also means that pretty often the 50 or so AP more than it gives isn't as important (counter-case: you're a burst caster, typically ult-reliant/long cds, and there are no assassins out for you on the enemy team. Pretty rare case on both points with the current popular pool).
DFG has 10% CDR and the active instead. Those 10% aren't crucial when most of the popular APs use Morello or Grail anyway, and the active is associated, again, to a burst AP/assassin (single-target) while more often than not (*cough* Diana) if you're playing an AP champ atm your strengths lie in utility rather than damage.
If anything, don't nerf Hourglass (or target the AP so it competes with other utility/survivability items instead, like Rylai/RoA), buff Deathcap and don't touch DFG since it's more meta/FotM-reliant.
On June 08 2013 16:09 Seuss wrote:
39 days since Lissandra was released and Aatrox is still missing in action. The previous post-launch record was Quinn at 37 days (ignoring the 53 day gap between launch and Udyr). The past four, in fact, have taken roughly a month, with most taking longer.
+ Show Spoiler [Numbers] +
I think it's good for the game that champions are taking longer, but it's interesting that Riot started taking longer on champions without much word of warning.
39 days since Lissandra was released and Aatrox is still missing in action. The previous post-launch record was Quinn at 37 days (ignoring the 53 day gap between launch and Udyr). The past four, in fact, have taken roughly a month, with most taking longer.
+ Show Spoiler [Numbers] +
- Lissandra: 32 days
- Zac: 28 days
- Quinn: 37 days
- Thresh: 35 days
I think it's good for the game that champions are taking longer, but it's interesting that Riot started taking longer on champions without much word of warning.
Morello mentioned a day or two ago that the team responsible for skins and stuff is also responsible for visual reworks and new champions. Because they put a lot more work into skins and have had several VUs, and want to focus on that, they have to slow down on champ release because of resources, is basically what he said (and their choice too).
I'll try to make the part about Irelia, Zed, etc. short (edit: that's when you laugh, fuck) because I already know I mostly disagree with ClutZ and he and I have totally different focus on our pet peeves.
I think Olaf, Zed and Talon are interesting to watch/offer counterplay by nature, because you can't stop Olaf but he still needs to reach the his target: keeping track of his ult duration and good positioning can also allow to trap him, make it hard for him to pick up an axe, etc. and the simple fact that he lacks a gap closer (one of my pet peeves that you're not defined by having a gap closer but by not having one now) makes his laning that much more awkward.
Zed because he's got a lot of room for outplaying with the shadows and stuff, kinda like Lee. Talon because he has to watch his timing, the angle he comes from, how much the enemy team focuses on him, etc. to get his 1v1 situation in teamfights. Kha'Zix is uninteresting because he never has to plan a way out post-11: he pokes till you're low, jumps in, jumps out, while Talon has to kill (without having poke himself so either be farmed, or have your team poke for you) and be positioned correctly that he can disengage for his next CDs before he dies.
Irelia isn't really fun to watch, nor is Jax, but they have counterplay. They innately lack nuking power (they have burst, but not the 80-0 in 2s kind), have weak early laning, little shoving, and thus splitpushing, power (especially compared to 1v2/caster champs with the exception of Shen), and rely on a long cooldown.
Irelia's strong because Hiten Style's powercurve is basically that of a single-target burst caster. Super strong when it's close to maxed, then starts falling off. People don't seem to realise when they say "she has so much so her kit sucks" that it can be translated to "when he W is down she doesn't have much", she has huge vulnerabilities when that happens, and the latter the game goes, the more susceptible her target is to survive those 6 seconds, while she typically lacks outside damage (only building BotRK or triforce) after that.
(No, really. Kha'Zix or Zed have stronger 1v1/dps than her while being classified as assassins too, because they have shorter cooldowns (Kha) / stronger dps steroids (Zed's W) even if their target can survive the initial burst. And don't even try to pretend Jayce's ranged W is weaker than Hiten. At level 9 if you max them, yeah, sure, but once people get levels/items Jayce's actually scales. And sustain? She needs to auto to sustain, it's like Nasus. Akali, WW, Yorick, Kha have ranged sustain that doesn't push the wave if you take it that way.)
When it comes to champs having too much there are distinctions to make, I believe. Irelia had too much from a laning viewpoint, with the whole "sustain, damage, gap closer, cc" bit. She still has timings, heavy cooldown reliance, no way to poke, she falls off, needs her ult to shove real quick, etc. Rengar's closer to that.
Kha'Zix and Zed (and probably Diana and Jayce) have too much from a global point of view: excellent single-target burst combined with incidental AoE, good to godlike poke, gap closers, cc (though limited to slows for 2 of them), excellent 1v1 and teamfighting, good shoving/splitpushing/tower-killing capabilities, and either tankiness (Diana) or disengage (the rest). They don't even have a clearcut role because they are so versatile, you even sometimes see Zed initiate because his team can exploit the chaos his ult creates to follow-up and swarm. They also have 0K to excellent pre-6 laning and excellent scaling even into the late game.
So, talking about "Irelia has too much" is sort of ignoring the issues currently at hand in favor of the past ones—top lane power creep. Notice how we don't even talk about "top lane" anymore because those champs are able to go to several of them and also 1v2 if needed?
I agree that she has "bad design" in that she isn't exciting to watch (I like playing her, there's outplaying potential and stuff but it's not flashy because it relies more on planning, creep management and playing around cooldowns, compared to Zed/Kha'Zix), and that she lacks the "cool"/non-generic aspect abilities like Zilean's ult have, but from a working/playing standpoint it really isn't as bad as a lot of recent shit.
Zed would be interesting, if you actually had to play with his shadows. Like, he should have to jump in multiple times to kill a squishy target. Like, Lee Sin doesn't kill champs on his own when he dives, he kicks them to his team. But if he was trying to he would have to Q in > W out several times to kill a champ without dying. If Zed actually had to do that he would be fine.
