Riot. If you can not balance Jayce without making him feel really crappy to play as, why not Remake?

5G8Nri0B54·May 13, 2014·2 votes·817 views

So you considered old Jayce to be OP. Fine. Now you balanced him, except he feels REALLY terrible to play as now because of your approach to balancing him. THAT is not fine.

To compensate for the fact that he has two abilities that gave him mobility, they made his movement extremely slow without being buffed.

To compensate for how strong his poke is, they gave his Acceleration Gate a blooming 16 second cooldown that doesn't go down with levels so he is unable to spam it as often.

The result. A Jayce that feels way too gated by, ironically, his Acceleration gate. Want to get some where at a reasonable pace? Better sacrifice poking ability by using his gate that won't be up again till the battle's over. Want to save your gate to charge your Q that is useless if it's uncharged? Better put up with how sluggish movements.

Look.** I understand that Jayce as he is is probably "balanced". But the one thing you can not deny is that he feels clunky as all hell now. And that is on top of the flaws of his kit even when he was OP.** Like how his hammer form W has an awkward magic damage DoT that has diddly squat to do with the rest of his kit for absolutely no reason.

Cue mountains of response from people completely missing the point and talking about Jayce in a balancing perspective.

6 Comments

Dax AyrtonMay 13, 20142 votes

Honestly? These aren't actually facts. I actually think Jayce is one of the most fun champions to play. Having 6 skills, which are all incredibly dynamic and visually appealing is enough to make me love him.

5G8Nri0B54May 13, 20141 votes

That addresses like...nothing I brought up. And as important as visual appeal is in a champion(no visual appeal=Veigar's ultimate mistaken for his Q), that doesn't change a few chinks in his kit.

For making their goal to let players have as much opportunity to make plays as possible, Jayce is really badly gated by their Acceleration Gate nerfed, which was understandably nerfed because his poke harass was insane. But the consequence is this right now.

BigfootNamedYetiMay 13, 20141 votes

I agree his balancing has made him more awkward to play and because of this i feel less like a piltover hero and more like a zaun sidekick when playing him

ThalesMay 13, 20141 votes

They were working on a rework of him. One that makes his transform a 1 level skill, lets his other abilities rank up to 6, and made Lightning Field integrate slightly better with the rest of his kit.

Personally, if I were to remake Jayce, I'd make his transform a one level skill, known from the start. I'd also turn his E into a pseudo ult. I think leave four skill levels in it, seven in his Q and W. E could be leveled at levels 6, 9, 13, and 16, perhaps. The cooldowns on both modes of E would be radically higher.

I'd probably have to remake most of W, as having four (non-pseudo ult) damaging abilities with seven levels in each just wouldn't work. I think the damage on To the Skies! would have to be reduced almost to nothing. For W, the damaging ability should be in hammer stance, and the more utility heavy one should be in cannon stance, the opposite of Q. Going with the direction of the kit rework Riot was experimenting with, I'd have Lightning Field deal minor damage but mark enemies with a low duration debuff that significantly increases the damage Jayce does to them with autoattacks.

Cannon W is harder. One thing that might be nifty would be a sort of aggregate Quinn vault. As in, pushes him away from concentrations of nearby enemies. So he could use a minion wave to vault towards an enemy champion, or just use it as a panic button if he gets jumped on. Or perhaps his current Hypercharge is workable. I'm not sure. What's important is that Cannon W not be a high damage skill, because we can't have a six skill damage rotation, or else his damage will be too excessive too soon.

E gets exaggerated in both modes. His hammer E is now more like Lee knockback, if lower damage and not also knocking up people in the way. His cannon E still functions to speed up champions who pass through it, but it now can accelerate all kinds of projectiles, boosting their speed, range, and damage. This does include some sillier ones like Nid spears and Ashe ult (as well as most ranged autoattacks period), but this is hopefully balanced by the ult-level cooldown and relatively short duration. Rather than be a tool for relentless poke, Acceleration Gate is now more geared towards engage or single, devastating snipes.

5G8Nri0B54May 14, 20141 votes

I don't know, Jayce doesn't come off as the nimble vaulting type to me.

As for what I have in mind. I feel that an un-charged Q should have some sort of benefit that the charged version doesn't have. That, or give Jayce players an incentive to use Q without charging it with an E. As of right now, uncharged, his Q is truly underwhelming. That way, players have to think whether they want to charge his Q or not when using it.

NighteaterMay 17, 20141 votes

So let me say before hand that Jayce is my main, even though I play casually. That being said, I agree that he feels super clunky now, but I don't think a remake is necessary. His cannon Q is super underwhelming, but I feel like a slight slow would fix that. I like the idea of a buff that increases basic attack damage from Field, and I think that Gate could use something, either damaging or slowing enemy champs that pass through it. Instead of reducing the cooldown, maybe each transform reduces it by a %?