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nafta
Bulgaria18893 Posts
Lulu just needs xp too much and scales really well with gold (even though she is still strong without it) to be put in the support role. There is no reason to put lulu support except to take it away from the enemy team. Blows my mind alistar still exists though lol. Lulu's ult also has an aoe knockup and aoe slow after you use it how is it fair to compare the shield amount? | ||
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kongoline
6318 Posts
On March 11 2016 10:29 Gahlo wrote: Actually, most bruiser tops buy it now that you can't swap Hydras. only the ones who desperately need wave clear like fiora and trundle, that item is balanced for top laners u dont see poppy or irelia rushing it cuz "omgz its OP!!" it only becomes problematic on certain junglers because of sated and their kit. Effectively titanic adds around 80 AD to your auto attacks from on-hit passive, which is being abused by shyvana's Q, master Yi's passive and sated devourer., yet they're nerfing the AD portion? That nerf doesnt target shyvana/Yi/sated devourer junglers at all. It only nerfs bruisers. | ||
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Volband
Hungary6034 Posts
On March 11 2016 19:33 nafta wrote: You are overreacting a lot. Lulu support is shit anyway so this just makes her even weaker while it is a good change for solo lane lulu. Lulu just needs xp too much and scales really well with gold (even though she is still strong without it) to be put in the support role. There is no reason to put lulu support except to take it away from the enemy team. Blows my mind alistar still exists though lol. Lulu's ult also has an aoe knockup and aoe slow after you use it how is it fair to compare the shield amount? Comparing those abilities in a vacuum is not fair, I agree, but I did not try to say those are better abilities. If I had to choose to have Nami W, Sona W, Taric Q or Lulu R on a 10 second cooldown I would go with Lulu, unless Nami's W's mana cost would be capped at 100. Then Nami W for bot lane, and 10 sec Wild Growth for mid/late game. But these are all basic abilities, which grant the same or even more effective hp than Wild Growth by (in the worst case scenario) level 9 and they are not on a ~100 sec cooldown. It is quite sad when an ultimate is only better than these basic heals and shields if you got to use it in a perfect scenario, where you get big value from the knockup and slow aura as well. And support Lulu is far from shit, not sure why you say that. She might be outclassed in a competitive setting (though she was picked in LCS as well with a good result, so there's that), but she is a perfectly fine support for solo q. Her W is like the strongest single target CC in the game on a basic ability, and her ultimate is very versatile. Lulu can adapt to fill the role of a peeler or support the frontline. She can make an initiator out of (almost) anyone, and she is capable of disengaging. Not only the initial slow on her Q is pretty filthy, so throwing a Q backwards to an entire team chasing you is pretty strong, the nerfing wave on Swifties means less people are getting it, so the value of slow is increased. Might not be as strong as a chraged up tornado, but it's instant, and can be shot from a proxy location, making catches (or disengages) from a great distance. It's true QSS makes the polymorph part of his W obsolete, but the knockup and her ult is unavoidable by anyone who wants to kill her target, and right now it packs a good amount of basic health, that support Lulu is fine without investing much in AP. Her biggest weakness is her lack of sustain in lane, and she is royally screwed if get behind. But she has a very strong early level harass, she especially fucks up melee supports, and she has a great level 6 power spike. Her lane is very easy to gank for, but not the easiest to gank to. The worst days of Lulu support was when she was gutted the first time because of solo Lulu's presence and Sona was in the meta. Lulu vs. Sona was a sad-sad lane. I mean, it still is, but people don't really play Sona. She is easily tier B (assuming tiers start with S, consisting of Alistar, and ends with D, where Taric and Zyra are looking back of old replays about games where they were relevant), and her biggest "problem" is that tier A is stuffed, because there are many good support choices nowadays, and solo Q has at least one more with Blitzcrank. Anyway, I know it's rather pointless to defend any champion who is not played 0-24 competitively (in the role we are discussing him/her), I went through the same shit last season, when I talked about how Janna needs to be nerfed, not buffed, and people were like "yeah, that's why pros don't play her bruh!!! I bet she's strong!!!". So let's make this argument easier, by shifting the discussion from whether Lulu is godawfully shit or perfectly viable, into whether Lulu is a support or a mid/toplaner. She was released as a support character, that is a fact. It also happened in the past that champions which were meant to be AP carries ended up in the support role. Riot even tried to balance them accordingly, ultimately accepting that Zyra and Annie are support characters, but eventually they killed off the former, and sent back the latter to torment the mid lane in solo Q. This season even saw tanky champions being tier A support picks, like Trundle and Nautilus, and Riot did not seem to have a problem with it. Now, let's take a look at the opposite end of the spectrum. Soraka mid lane? RIP Janna mid/top lane? RIP Alistar top lane/jungle? RIP, RIP Lulu's first rise in solo lanes? RIP Riot stated back in the day that they do not think support champions being played in soo lanes or in the jungle is healthy, and I totally agree with them. Support champions are packed with cc, heals, tankiness or utility, or even all in one (can't milk those), so if they can actually deal decent damage in top of those, that's extremely unfair. Hence, back in season God knows when, they reworked almost every single supports scalings and base values, so ensure they can still get better with items, but it's either not worth to play them on a solo lane, or they are just too weak in the early game to take on anyone in 1v1. It worked well for everyone, but Lulu. Now, here at Riot HQ, someone has to, I repeat, has to ask the question: do we want Lulu to become a solo laner, or a support champion? If they want the former, then delete her W, nerf the cc and base health on her R and there we go, Lulu is now an utility oriented AP carry. But if you want her to be a support, then give her the Janna treatment, and make Lulu's Q just as useless in a solo lane as they did with Janna's. Suddenly top and mid Lulu is completely useless on her own, and you can now focus on improving the support Lulu experience both playing with and against her. Reduce some mana costs on basic abilities, nerf the initial slow on Q from 80% and watch where it leads. Her E is kinda boring too outside of using it as a proxy for Q, so I'd probably look into that as well, maybe make her passive more interesting, and less limiting in fear of aspd on hit Lulu making a return. Right now Riot is afraid to uphold their own principle to not let support champions be viable solo laners, which was supposed to assure that metas where a Janna and a Lulu are afk pushing mid and top lane with their Qs and scaling into monstrosity while jungle Alistars ganking you from behind your tower as early as their lvl2 can not happen again. Even if support Lulu would be a Z-tier 0% win rate champion, there is simply no justification as to why beat her up even more, instead of reworking her if necessary - and before you would say a rework takes time, the infamous Lucian changes arrived in a regular PBE cycle not that long after Riot realized they can't balance him properly in his current form. And a food for thought: there's a good chance if these changes go through, even solo Lulu loses her grit in the competitive scene, which would mean all these inconsistencies and back-pedaling from Riot would result in a complete failure, where people won't even want to play Lulu anywhere at all. | ||
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nafta
Bulgaria18893 Posts
How is a champion being below average make them not shit? You still can't compare an ability with aoe hard cc+cc after used to basic abilities that just shield/heal. That shit makes absolutely no fucking sense. Her w becomes a good ability after you put multiple points in it. Which on support means either you don't put points in q or you just wait infinite time to get to that point. | ||
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Volband
Hungary6034 Posts
The posts I was talking about were not recent, it was around the time when solo Soraka, then Janna got nerfed, and then every support champion had their AP ratios and base damages rebalanced. That was when Janna got the bonus ad scaling on her shield for example to compensate. But even if we think logically, if a champion with a strong support kit is viable as a solo laner, that is a.) bad design and b.) not healthy. It's close to same situation when we were in a meta where tanks dealt the most damage. Makes no sense, bad design. (Orianna being the sole exception, but she's been the definition of perfect balance since season 2, and stuff like that only happens once in a lifetime) As for Lulu's strength, having stronger options does not mean she is bad. I.e. if support X is 9/10 while Lulu is 7.5/10 it should not qualify her as expendable or shit tier. Especially because such differences begin to blur in solo queue. There are challenger Shaco and Heimerdinger players, and the emphasis is on the s. When was the last time you saw them in a pro play? Leona is an extremely strong support pick across every elo, from bronze 5 to challenger. You don't see much of her in pro play either, but in soloQ she has the same pick rate as Janna (and J only has 2.5% ban rate, which is negligible). Hell, the funny thing is, Lulu is actually a decent pick vs. Leo and it's a fun matchup that can swing both ways and they pretty much scale against each other. The moment Leona gets her "let's initiate from a mile away and chain-cc this mofo" Lulu gets her "get out of jail card". Also, both are punished by not having sustain, so as I said, a fun lane. But I'm willing to bet we will never see a Lulu vs. Leona matchup any time soon in pro play, but that doesn't mean they are not decent champions. All right, do not compare abilities. Let's put it this way: support Lulu's ultimate got 33.3% weaker without any compensation whatsoever. That is brutal. People go apeshit about the Runic Echoes and Titanic Hydra nerfs, but somehow having an ultimate "heal" for 200 instead of 300 on a champion whose (supposed) main role is one where she badly starves for XP... how are you downplaying it, I'm not sure. And scaling up W is not hard at all. If you go the regular skill route, by lvl9 you have 2 points on W which means a 1.5 point and click stun in a meta where few people opt for tenacity. But one less point in Q and you have a 1.75 point and click stun by lvl 9. The slow and duration on even a lvl 4 Q is good enough, and it is early game where you need the damage badly to compensate for your lack of sustain, but you don't lose out on it since you only skip the last upgrade. But really, even at lvl 2 it's more than enough; just remember pre-minirework Taric with his stun. Fun times going up against Taric-Caitlyn or Taric-Graves. | ||
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nafta
Bulgaria18893 Posts
Don't see how is leona vs lulu relevant when both champs are below average :D. I don't see why should I care if the average player goes apeshit considering my opinion of the average player  .Fact is lulu right now is too strong. There need to be some nerfs. I think both of them are in a good direction. Don't think they will change much for the solo lulu if I have to be completely honest but would be VERY surprised if this makes her go to below an A tier pick. As for support I honestly don't really care. In my eyes she hasn't been a competitive support for a while and there is no reason to send her there if you can send her in a solo lane. | ||
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Ansibled
United Kingdom9872 Posts
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Slusher
United States19143 Posts
On March 12 2016 02:30 nafta wrote: Fact is lulu right now is too strong. There need to be some nerfs. I think both of them are in a good direction. Don't think they will change much for the solo lulu if I have to be completely honest but would be VERY surprised if this makes her go to below an A tier pick. As for support I honestly don't really care. In my eyes she hasn't been a competitive support for a while and there is no reason to send her there if you can send her in a solo lane. w change is a really big deal, like I'm not saying overnerfed because she's pretty op, but, the difference between Lulu and say Karma is how broken her w gets towards lategame. It's a good nerf, doesn't make her useless but halving the scaling on w is a really big deal. we'll never know because riot doesn't seem to understand the concept of isolating a variable, but I would imagine the ult change won't even cross people's minds compared to the w change. which is why for the support lulu players out there I would just do the w change for now and see what happens, I think you might be surprised. | ||
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Goumindong
United States3529 Posts
On March 11 2016 07:40 ticklishmusic wrote: Janna has been OP since basically season 1 and has had minimal nerfs which is pretty stupid. I'm guessing basically no one on the balance team plays support. Janna is probably the most nerfed support over all seasons. I don't recall her ever getting a buff* and all of her abilities used to be a lot stronger. Shit her w used to gain 55 damage, 5% slow(4 second duration), 3% move speed, 1 second CD per level, and have a .7 ratio. *ok that is a lie there have been two(?); when they added AD scaling to her shield but they took off .2 AP scaling on the HP at the same time so and when they made her hot instant knock back instead of delayed. | ||
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Volband
Hungary6034 Posts
On March 12 2016 02:30 nafta wrote: As for support I honestly don't really care. In my eyes she hasn't been a competitive support for a while and there is no reason to send her there if you can send her in a solo lane. How many champions do we have? ~130? There is no reason to gut a support so she can be a balanced solo laner (spoiler alert: a support champion will never be a balanced solo laner, heard it here first), when there are dozens of mid and top laners who are in line for months or even years to become relevant again. Up to this day, 2016. 03.12 Riot always made efforts to kill off any support who wandered from bot lane. Did not let any of them get away with it and Lulu should be no exception. Her kit is perfect to be a balanced support, and the only thing standing in the way of giving her QoL buffs are her AP ratios. On March 12 2016 04:46 Slusher wrote: w change is a really big deal, like I'm not saying overnerfed because she's pretty op, but, the difference between Lulu and say Karma is how broken her w gets towards lategame. It's a good nerf, doesn't make her useless but halving the scaling on w is a really big deal. we'll never know because riot doesn't seem to understand the concept of isolating a variable, but I would imagine the ult change won't even cross people's minds compared to the w change. which is why for the support lulu players out there I would just do the w change for now and see what happens, I think you might be surprised. Exactly! Lane Lulu won't give a damn about that 100 hp, and she will get to lvl 11 oh so much faster than support Lulu, and by lvl 2 R the nerf is even less relevant. But for bot lane, where the lvl6 power spike is the 2nd most important thing after the lvl 2 power spike, it is a literal death sentence. On March 12 2016 07:31 Goumindong wrote: Janna is probably the most nerfed support over all seasons. I don't recall her ever getting a buff* and all of her abilities used to be a lot stronger. Shit her w used to gain 55 damage, 5% slow(4 second duration), 3% move speed, 1 second CD per level, and have a .7 ratio. *ok that is a lie there have been two(?); when they added AD scaling to her shield but they took off .2 AP scaling on the HP at the same time so and when they made her hot instant knock back instead of delayed. Aaah, season 2 when your ult knocked them back to their base and you could kill everyone in lane with W max. Good times! But I agree that she's been one of the most consistent support champions ever. She's always been a perfectly viable blind first pick. She had it the hardest in season 3 when bot lanes used to be bloodbaths. | ||
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nafta
Bulgaria18893 Posts
You either accept it and play w/e you like or you pick good champions. I honestly don't see what the issue is. If riot wanted lulu to be a good support they wouldn't be doing those changes. This is even ignoring the fact that this change honestly doesn't even matter much. Her problems at support have nothing to do with how much her ult base hp is. | ||
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Jek
Denmark2771 Posts
There's plenty of champions that can perform exactly what supports do once lane phase is over. Any tank that can peel/initiate and utility mages spring to mind. Gragas for instance is essentially a more flexible Leona. The issue with Lulu at her current state is she sort of make any traditional adc a hyper carry which combined with an actual hyper carry is just... A recipe for disaster. | ||
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Goumindong
United States3529 Posts
On March 12 2016 18:01 Volband wrote: How many champions do we have? ~130? There is no reason to gut a support so she can be a balanced solo laner (spoiler alert: a support champion will never be a balanced solo laner, heard it here first), when there are dozens of mid and top laners who are in line for months or even years to become relevant again. Up to this day, 2016. 03.12 Riot always made efforts to kill off any support who wandered from bot lane. Did not let any of them get away with it and Lulu should be no exception. Her kit is perfect to be a balanced support, and the only thing standing in the way of giving her QoL buffs are her AP ratios. Exactly! Lane Lulu won't give a damn about that 100 hp, and she will get to lvl 11 oh so much faster than support Lulu, and by lvl 2 R the nerf is even less relevant. But for bot lane, where the lvl6 power spike is the 2nd most important thing after the lvl 2 power spike, it is a literal death sentence. Aaah, season 2 when your ult knocked them back to their base and you could kill everyone in lane with W max. Good times! But I agree that she's been one of the most consistent support champions ever. She's always been a perfectly viable blind first pick. She had it the hardest in season 3 when bot lanes used to be bloodbaths. In season 3 you could w max, skip boots, and make it a bloodbath in your favor. Hardest season is probably now because poke and siege are so prominient and because the types of champions that people like picking that aren't are not peeled well by Janna. | ||
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RagequitBM
Canada2270 Posts
On March 11 2016 23:48 nafta wrote: Those changes certainly will not make a close to 100% p/b champion into never picked lol. I know lulu was released with the solo intention of being a support (since I was there and playing her and that is how she was presented from riot) but why do you think riot doesn't want lulu to be a solo laner? I can't recall a single post of that nature recently. How is a champion being below average make them not shit? You still can't compare an ability with aoe hard cc+cc after used to basic abilities that just shield/heal. That shit makes absolutely no fucking sense. Her w becomes a good ability after you put multiple points in it. Which on support means either you don't put points in q or you just wait infinite time to get to that point. Actually Lulu was revealed as a jungler. Phreak said so in the spotlight | ||
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Volband
Hungary6034 Posts
On March 12 2016 18:52 nafta wrote: Until we see an actual statement of riot wanting lulu to be a support and not a solo laner you are just whining a champ you like isn't good at the role you play. I would like to play jhin jungle too don't see how is it relevant. Lulu released as a support. Lulu's kit stacked with cc-s, a shield, an hp increase, a speed buff and a long range, high impact slow. Lulu's kit follows the exact same pattern Riot tried to establish with utility supports back in the day. Your argument is that Jhin jungle = Lulu support. Like, holy shit... You should've started your first post in this matter that you do not believe Lulu is a support character, and we could have saved so much time not interacting with each other, because if you fail to see even square 1, then arguing about how balanced she is, or can she be a solo laner and a support and what nerfs does she need exactly are completely irrelevant. Eventually, she's going to end up in bot lane, and bot lane only, you heard it here first. Now, I can either see the future, or has seen the same thing going down numerous times in the last ~5 years. Hell, I actually remember Alistar junglers being mad for killing him off, because he should remain viable as a jungler too - they said. I guess history does repeat itself. On March 12 2016 21:20 Jek wrote: What is the argument for supports shouldn't be able to lane (or even jungle I suppose)? I mean you even wrote that Orianna is fine because she is balanced. There's plenty of champions that can perform exactly what supports do once lane phase is over. Any tank that can peel/initiate and utility mages spring to mind. Gragas for instance is essentially a more flexible Leona. The issue with Lulu at her current state is she sort of make any traditional adc a hyper carry which combined with an actual hyper carry is just... A recipe for disaster. Good point !!BUT!! The critical words about Orianna was the once in a lifetime part. Orianna should never have been a balanced champion, let alone the pinnacle of it. Riot struck gold with her in season 2. But the thing is, there is a difference between utility carries and support champions. With Soraka you walked out to mid lane, spammed Q, pressed W, good job, you won your lane. With Janna you queued up Qs to afk farm, and in case of danger just pressed E, zoom-zoomed away with the help of W (and old passive), or used the ultimate cock-block, Monsoon. Same toxic shit as Alistar, who dealt good damage, and all of his skills were either (hard? not sure if W counts) cc or sustain, while being innately tanky. All these champions did a much better job at supporting, than Orianna for example, but we could even mention Lissandra, because in paper, she has 3 crowd control abilities as well. You can't compare Orianna's shield with a Soraka who healed a shitton, gave free armor, had a point-and-click silence and shredded MR. Full AP Janna's shield was one of the saddest things in the game, and she was still capable of being a peel god if needed to be. Solo Lulu right now shares everything with her support brethren who once run amok as solo laners. She is an incredibly safe laner. She has very high range poke and waveclear. She has all the tools to survive a gank or walk out free from any assassin, but on the other hand, she's one of the easiest laners to gank to. Stun, (long range) slow, knockup, whatever you want. And in top of that, she gets to deal actual, relevant damage. Solo Lulu, just like every single support champion who were solo laners (or jungler) in their heydays are incredibly one dimensional, not fun to watch, not fun to play against, and overall, an error in the Matrix. If you want to balance solo Lulu, then give back LB and Talon their silences and give a stun to Zed. Hell, overload everyone's kit! Even if Kog would be disabled, it's still the season of marksmen, so Lulu would be a great choice to "average" adcs as well. On March 13 2016 04:13 Goumindong wrote: In season 3 you could w max, skip boots, and make it a bloodbath in your favor. Hardest season is probably now because poke and siege are so prominient and because the types of champions that people like picking that aren't are not peeled well by Janna. I wouldn't say so. Janna got no love in s3 and she constantly went up against the likes of Zyra or Annie. Maybe even adcs brought ignite, can't remember if it was S2 or S3. But this season is hardly the worst for her. I believe it's actually among the bests. Not only it's a marksmen meta and ding-ding, the queen of peel is Janna, her ratio reworks last season made her scaling really good. She is stil a beast versus most assassins (fuck fizz...) and she is much more capable of handling herself in lane than in previous seasons. Hell, most of her arch enemies are actually gone from bot lane. Staring down a Thresh, Braum or Soraka is still much better than getting rekt by Sonas or one of the most fun lanes of all time, the perfectly balanced Lulu-Caitlyn shitfest. Even with the coming (well-deserved) nerfs, she should be fine to keep her A tier, even in soloQ. Hell, as long as marksmen are as strong as they are now, I don't even see a way of her to fall out of meta currently. | ||
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nafta
Bulgaria18893 Posts
Orianna is also a champion with a supportive kit that sucks dick at playing the support position. Dunno what is so complicated about the idea that unless we see an actual post from riot about where and what they want lulu to be we have to assume in their eyes she is a solo laner first considering the changes. It was pretty much a meme that phreak jungled everything in the spotlight so it doesn't really matter . | ||
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Volband
Hungary6034 Posts
On March 13 2016 23:34 nafta wrote: Clearly saying I think lulu sucks at the support position means she isn't a supportive champion. Nice logic there Sherlock. Zyra was released as a mid laner but moved to support. Just because a champion is released and riot think they should be played in some specific role doesn't mean it is their best one. Orianna is also a champion with a supportive kit that sucks dick at playing the support position. Dunno what is so complicated about the idea that unless we see an actual post from riot about where and what they want lulu to be we have to assume in their eyes she is a solo laner first considering the changes. Whether she sucks now at bot lane should be irrelevant. I strongly disagree with it, but let's say she does; almost every support (hell, every champion) went through a phase when they sucked. The cycle of being P/B worthy then never played happened numerous times (ask Corki, Ryze, or Alistar and Sona for supports). But - for various periods of time - they always returned to bot lane, even Taric had a small resurgence back in the day. Name me one support champion (=released with the intention to be played as a support champion at bot lane) which Riot allowed to be a solo laner or jungler. One. Ever. To help you out, you can't. There are marksmen turned into top/mid laners or junglers (Quinn, Varus, Graves), junglers turned into top laners (Hecarim), ap carries turned into junglers (Gragas), top laners turned into junglers (Shen), mages turned into supports (Zyra), tanks turned into supports (Shen, Trundle), so basically (with the exception of marksmen support I guess) every role had champions which eventually crossed over and Riot supported the idea or even rebalanced the champion so it would fit into their new role, but never ever did they let a support to get away with leaving bot lane. And I am not talking about a small sample size, it's started since S2 at least. And we should differentiate the word utility and support. Orianna is a utility AP carry, Ashe is a utility AD carry, Janna is a (peeler, disengage) support, Alistar is a (tanky, hard engage, peeler, sustain) support, Lulu is a (peeler, soft engage, disengage) support. I used the term utility support, to differentiate between the likes of Blitzcrank and Nami, but technically every support is a utility one, so the only time we should say utility support is when we compare two supports to eachother. The reason you don't see Orianna or Lissandra at bot lane, because they are the worst of both worlds. They lack the proper sustain and range to be among Tier S-B supports, but they also lack the raw damage (and again, range) which other mage supports, like Brand or Vel'Koz can bring to the table. Lulu support outdamages, outsustains and outranges both of them (Liss has an okay all-in after lvl 6, she has that one thing going for her), and let us not even compare the peel power of these three, Lulu shits on them (at bot lane) big time, and as I said, I consider her tier B in an average game. The conclusion here is that aside from maybe some cheesy strats, supports top every other champion in utility - that's the trade-off for lacking in damage later on. Lulu's kit is overloaded because she has all the cc and shield/heal you'd expect from a support champion AND damage. You either rework her with less and weaker cc (as I said, polymorph from W have to go, it has no place on an AP carry, not even on a utility one, unless it's tied with her ultimate somehow), or nerf the shit out of her AP ratios. | ||
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Jek
Denmark2771 Posts
On March 13 2016 23:34 nafta wrote: It was pretty much a meme that phreak jungled everything in the spotlight so it doesn't really matter .Lulu was actually a surprisingly good jungler back then, with a certain amount of attack speed runes the Pix bolts would keep the camp re-aggroing making her only take a single attack from a small monster - from level 2 she took zero damage from camps thanks to her shield. Played her quite often in jungle after the support buff patch. On March 13 2016 23:23 Volband wrote: Good point !!BUT!! The critical words about Orianna was the once in a lifetime part. Orianna should never have been a balanced champion, let alone the pinnacle of it. Riot struck gold with her in season 2. But the thing is, there is a difference between utility carries and support champions. With Soraka you walked out to mid lane, spammed Q, pressed W, good job, you won your lane. With Janna you queued up Qs to afk farm, and in case of danger just pressed E, zoom-zoomed away with the help of W (and old passive), or used the ultimate cock-block, Monsoon. Same toxic shit as Alistar, who dealt good damage, and all of his skills were either (hard? not sure if W counts) cc or sustain, while being innately tanky. All these champions did a much better job at supporting, than Orianna for example, but we could even mention Lissandra, because in paper, she has 3 crowd control abilities as well. You can't compare Orianna's shield with a Soraka who healed a shitton, gave free armor, had a point-and-click silence and shredded MR. Full AP Janna's shield was one of the saddest things in the game, and she was still capable of being a peel god if needed to be. Solo Lulu right now shares everything with her support brethren who once run amok as solo laners. She is an incredibly safe laner. She has very high range poke and waveclear. She has all the tools to survive a gank or walk out free from any assassin, but on the other hand, she's one of the easiest laners to gank to. Stun, (long range) slow, knockup, whatever you want. And in top of that, she gets to deal actual, relevant damage. Solo Lulu, just like every single support champion who were solo laners (or jungler) in their heydays are incredibly one dimensional, not fun to watch, not fun to play against, and overall, an error in the Matrix. If you want to balance solo Lulu, then give back LB and Talon their silences and give a stun to Zed. Hell, overload everyone's kit! Even if Kog would be disabled, it's still the season of marksmen, so Lulu would be a great choice to "average" adcs as well. Good points. But I feel it's mostly the kit on the 'support' champions that define whether or not it's acceptable they can solo lane, a farmed Janna with high enough ratios/base - God bless her old level 5 wave clear with 2 Doran Rings - for instance would be a million times more toxic (right term?) than Lulu. In my opinion. That being said you bring a very good point on some sololane supports can make for incredible boring gameplay - top Taric against 3x AD, 4x AD is just "gg no-re" if game goes long enough, for instance (I think any ARAM player can testify to how insane a farmed Taric is), would make for an afk farm fest until he can fight 1v5 for three hours and a half. I think they went the wrong way about on the Lulu nerfs and would have much rather seen her ultimates (and shield too) changes be a slight reduction on ratios instead of the base - and Whimsey the other way around, it's honestly too flexible. The proposed changes the W doesn't really matter that much with the diminishing returns on movement speed. I found the old support Lulu very interesting, and wouldn't mind her being viable in both roles - but then again I'm a bit silly since I would love to see Thresh as an "ok" toplaner (of course not S-tier), tho I doubt that'd be possible to balance. | ||
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Volband
Hungary6034 Posts
On March 14 2016 01:59 Jek wrote: Good points. But I feel it's mostly the kit on the 'support' champions that define whether or not it's acceptable they can solo lane, a farmed Janna with high enough ratios/base - God bless her old level 5 wave clear with 2 Doran Rings - for instance would be a million times more toxic (right term?) than Lulu. In my opinion. That being said you bring a very good point on some sololane supports can make for incredible boring gameplay - top Taric against 3x AD, 4x AD is just "gg no-re" if game goes long enough, for instance (I think any ARAM player can testify to how insane a farmed Taric is), would make for an afk farm fest until he can fight 1v5 for three hours and a half. I think they went the wrong way about on the Lulu nerfs and would have much rather seen her ultimates (and shield too) changes be a slight reduction on ratios instead of the base - and Whimsey the other way around, it's honestly too flexible. The proposed changes the W doesn't really matter that much with the diminishing returns on movement speed. I found the old support Lulu very interesting, and wouldn't mind her being viable in both roles - but then again I'm a bit silly since I would love to see Thresh as an "ok" toplaner (of course not S-tier), tho I doubt that'd be possible to balance. Absolutely, we can make a chart of how strong each broken champion was, and there would be a significant power difference between the strongest and the weakest, even though the weakest are still shitting on the rest of the champion pool. Imo the worst offender in "support goes on a journey elsewhere) was jungle Alistar. That moment when he flashed over the wraith walls to me at lvl 2, under my fucking turret, Pulverized me, Headbutted to his midlaner, and he walked out alive till causes me sleepless nights. Ali jungle was stupidly op. Lulu (after her initial solo laner nerfs) is definitely not as destructive as Ali (top or jungle, both were cancerous, really) or Janna, or at least she's not nearly as flashy. I don't know how other mobas handle supports, but Riot proved many times that in LoL a support is only healthy to the game if it remains one, at bot lane. Balancing some champions can be tricky. Kassadin and Ryze are fine examples of champions with a seemingly unbalanceable kit (though they did an OK job with Kass, but that was a looooooooong process), but we have other unique champions like Bard or Thresh where balance is tricky, because you just can't put a price tag on some of their spells. Like, how strong is Bard exactly? The first thing to do when answering this question is comparing him to other champions in his role, but you just can't. I mean, you can start it, but then you arrive it to his magical journey and ultimate and suddenly we are in theory land. You see, Lulu has no such problem. Lulu is your by the book squishy utility support from the factory. Soraka, Janna, Sona, Nami; they all follow, or at least followed the same pattern. They all evolved from the same idea, and most of their skills are the same thing just re-imagined a bit. It's enough for just one of them to be a meta support and you can have a good idea how to try to make the others up to pair with her (damn, all of them are grills!). Lulu support is not a hard champion to balance; none of these, bar Soraka. Or, let me rephrase it: it's extremely easy to make them viable at all ranks in soloQ; guaranteeing they will see play in pro play is entirely different; as I said, Leona is a beast in soloq, but pros rarely use her. Hell, before solo Lulu started to fuck support Lulu over, she was a great introductory champion for someone who wished to master supporting. You did not need to be a beast to do work with her, hell, if you were not confident in your skillshot capabilities, you could even max E back in the day. On the other hand, she had a high skillcap thanks to the nature of basically all her spells. Decisions, decisions, decisions everywhere! And last, but not least, she was insanely fun! Nowadays, she is much more unforgiving and if the ult nerfs come through then the only reason to pick her as support will be that either you just love Lulu, so you go with her to bronze 5 if needed to be, or the enemy runs some mean assassin/melee heavy comp and Janna is not available. You just know that 200+ hp gonna fuck Zed up so much!! Back to my point: Lulu would be easy to balance as a support, and as we can see (and will see), impossible to do so as a solo laner. Trust me, with her current kit, there will be never a time, when people will just pick Lulu occasionally. She's either P/B, sometimes slipping through games without picked or banned, because certain team comps might not need her, OR she will be never played. The only other champion recently who has risen to competitive level with an overloaded kit such as Lulu's is a (hold your breath people) tank champion which has been to bot lane many times as a (hold it!!)... support! The name is Nautilus and Riot needed only one PBE cycle to tone him back where he needed to be: his damage. Isn't it surprising how sometimes Riot understands balance and what does the term "champion kit" means and makes efforts to cut off the sore thumb as soon as possible, while other times they just press the randomized panic button which results in the most random ass and senseless nerfs (or buffs) ever? | ||
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Osmoses
Sweden5302 Posts
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