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Mid Year Mage Updates - Low-Scope Mage Directions

RiotScarizard·4/8/2016, 9:54:22 PM·1 votes·117,209 views

When we began talking about the Mid Year Mage Update a while back, we mentioned that we’d be taking a sweep through the rest of the class and not just reworking the ‘Big Six’ and calling it a day. Similar to the Marksman Update, we’ve targeted 9 champions with low-scope changes to their existing kits, aimed at improving their feel and thematics. These champions weren’t in need of in-depth playstyle changes or visual work like the Big Six did, but were great opportunities to apply a fresh coat of gameplay nonetheless. Like the other direction posts you’ve seen, we’ll do a rapid-fire breakdown of why we picked these champions and what you can expect coming into midseason.

Let’s meet the team.

Fiddlesticks

What we’re happy with:

  • Sneaky. Fiddle’s always looking for the perfect opportunity to jump-scare the enemy team (and often wins the game because of it)

What we’re less happy with:

  • Low-engagement passive is just a stat-boost that’s hard to feel
  • Perma-drain on targets without CC to stop you lends itself to dull gameplay for both parties

What we hope to see coming out of the update:

  • Fiddlesticks’ passive feels impactful and interactive
  • Make some general game health improvements and remove some of Fiddle’s overall clunkiness

Veigar

What we’re happy with:

  • AP Stacking feels like you’re actively growing Veigar’s strength
  • Nukes a single target. We like Veigar’s presence in a game being meaningful for both teams - ‘how do we best enable his burst’ vs. ‘how do we defend against it?’
  • Strong fantasy. ‘Getting revenge on the big guys’ is a strong theme for someone that ultimately catches you out and destroys you.

What we’re less happy with:

  • Veigar has no optimal (or suboptimal) way to use his ult. He points and clicks and the output is always the same.
  • Current passive just feels like an excuse to give him higher-than-average mana costs

What we hope to see coming out of the update:

  • Veigar’s passive feels aligned with his thematics and overall game plan
  • Players understand when and why they get destroyed by Primordial Burst

Kennen

What we’re happy with:

  • Mark of the Storm lets Kennen show his mastery over chaining abilities to get stuns
  • Zone Control. Kennen generates a lot of threat over tight-spaces which creates tense pre-fight situations.

What we’re less happy with:

  • Slicing Maelstrom’s RNG makes it confusing for both teams to get a clear expectation of what Kennen’s going to contribute when the fight breaks out.

What we hope to see coming out of the update:

  • Increased payoff & satisfaction when setting up the perfect Kennen Ult
  • Strengthened identity of ‘skirmisher with lots of crowd control potential’

Ziggs

What we’re happy with:

  • Perfectly captures the Mad Bomber thematic.
  • Fills a unique artillery role by lobbing bombs constantly
  • Mega Inferno Bomb creates some high-moments and big plays

What we’re less happy with:

  • Has the ability to stall out games by keeping multiple minion waves pushed
  • Doesn’t distinguish himself enough from the other long-range mages (like Lux and Xerath), meaning you tend to just play whichever is the strongest

What we hope to see coming out of the update:

  • Ziggs fulfills a strategic niche that rewards you for picking him over other mages in the right situations
  • His ability to stall a game is diminished to the point that a strong Ziggs doesn’t delay the outcome of games by large lengths of time

Xerath

What we’re happy with:

  • Keepaway. Xerath has a lot of tension built-in to wanting to be just far away to poke, but never close enough to be in threat range.

What we’re less happy with:

  • For a mage that feels like he’s ascending to ultimate power, Rite of the Arcane can feel really lackluster.
  • Playing against Xerath can feel like some of his abilities cheat in his favor

What we hope to see coming out of the update:

  • Reinforce the use of his abilities at long-range while making them more fair to play against
  • Make Rite of the Arcane feel like a meaningful crescendo for Xerath’s poke-pattern

Swain

What we're happy with:

  • Sturdy. Swain's one of the few mages that can live on the front lines and take a punch.

What we're less happy with:

  • Damage-over-time spells, while central to Swain's damage output feel very 'fire-and-forget'.
  • Give Swain more meaningful decisions around his target selection rather than 'click on the nearest champion'.

What we're hoping comes out of the update:

  • Introduce more interesting decisions to Swain's pattern while keeping him familiar. If you like drain-tanking and DoT's, this won't change.

Anivia

What we’re happy with:

  • Strategic niche as a zone-control mage with R and W feels well-defined.
  • Feels very thematically tied to Ice

What we’re less happy with:

  • Effortless waveclear makes her hard to interact with when strong
  • ‘Feels old’ from a usability standpoint. Anivia’s one of our first champions and it shows.

What we hope to see coming out of the update:

  • Focus her strategic niche by increasing the power and game health of her zone control
  • Improve her usability so she feels crisp to play

Viktor

What we’re happy with:

  • ‘Glorious Evolution’ thematic and Hex Core feel unique
  • Multiple cast paradigms make playing Viktor different from other mages

What we’re less happy with:

  • Viktor’s primary contributions to his team are overwhelmingly about getting damage off quickly, lending itself to a flat experience overall.

What we hope to see coming out of the update:

  • Viktor provides a team unique ways to play around enabling his huge teamfight potential rather than feeling like a one-man show

Syndra

What we’re happy with:

  • Syndra’s interactions with Dark Spheres give her a unique combo feel
  • She’s an imminent threat that forces opponents to react to her as more Spheres pop up

What we’re less happy with:

  • Transcendence feels lame and forgetful compared to her fantasy’s promise of ultimate power

What we hope to see coming out of the update:

  • Give her passive some visceral power that Syndra can feel excited about
  • Follow-through on the promise of making her abilities evolve to allow stronger play-making

And that’s the squad! We’ll be sticking around in the comments to answer questions you may have about anything you see above - otherwise, we’ll see you when Midseason rolls around soon.

594 Comments

Zenthon Prime4/8/2016, 9:57:18 PM57 votes

Honestly, as a Xerath main, most of Rite of the Arcane's issues stem from the fact that it has garbage visuals. Please give me my orbital strike instead of water balloons. :P

EDIT: Personal thoughts on everything:

Fiddlesticks : You guys seem to have this one down. No arguments with any points. Veigar : This one is simple: look at W before anything else. That spell either needs to go or it needs synergy with his kit. Kennen : Basically same deal as Fiddle, no objections. I will note that although I don't play Kennan I think he has a lot of potential, so good luck. Ziggs : You hit this one right on the mark, yet again. Please make this champion viable, I want my Master Arcanist Ziggs to see the light of day and get the recognition as the best 1350 skin it deserves. Xerath : Warning: I am a Xerath main. So here we go:

  • Agreed on ult. Again, give it better visuals. It needs to be League's Sunstrike, not a water balloon of pity and shame.
  • I feel Xerath Q is actually quite fair, and that it only hits perfectly every time when someone is just flat-out bad at dodging it. I am biased as a Xer main, but I can immediately tell the difference between someone who sucks at dodging Xer Q and someone who actually knows what they're doing.
  • Although, I will say that the exact maximum range of Q (specifically the tip) isn't displayed well by the ground indicator (and I get a lot of shots off on the exact tip of the spell due to this), so even something as simple as fixing that could help a lot with counterplay.
  • If you guys are really intent on making mages work with flat mana instead of mana regen (I disagree with this but that's beyond the point), make Xerath's passive restore a % of his mana pool, and possibly add mana scalings to his kit (perhaps ult and W) Tear Xerath has potential, but it needs help to get it off the ground.

Swain : No objections here. Anivia : On usability, maybe improve animations? I don't see a lot wrong with her from a mechanical standpoint TBH. Viktor : Honestly, I feel as if Viktor's core issue is that he's so generic. Some AoE damage, bit of CC, targeted spell that acts as a defensive ability as well. He was picked in the LCS for instant waveclear, but that isn't really his job anyway. I mean, what IS his job? Syndra : No objections. Minor visuals at Rank 5 of abilities could help with feel.

D1onys1us4/8/2016, 11:28:31 PM25 votes

And again Karthus Karthus is completely forgotten.

Patch after patch everything has been bad for Karthus:

  • Wall nerfs
  • Bugs with items such as rylai's and archangel staff when Karthus is in passive form - also sometimes it doesn't register your Q-spam (I have uncountable high ELO Karthus games on multiple of my accounts so I know something is really bad with his Q sometimes in passive)
  • New champs almost all have a good way to avoid Karthus's ult (Bard ult, Kindred ult, new Taric, Tahm Kench eat thingy, ...)
  • Early game meta
  • Hourglass way more expensive, so really hard vs certain ad champs
  • General ap item nerfs
  • Premades: way easier to keep track of Karthus's ultimate
  • Too many popular items with shields: hexdrinker, steraks, ...

And nothing is being done about it. End rant from last season Master SOLOQ Karthus main. PS where even is SOLOQ please...

SeargentAnus4/8/2016, 10:02:15 PM24 votes

What do you guys mean when you say it feels like Xerath abilities cheat? Playing as and against Xerath he feels pretty fair to me. He has clear windups and animations that give you as a player clear moments to dodge. If you fail to respect or recognize those animations you get punished hard.

ItsPierce4/9/2016, 12:53:20 AM18 votes

Can we get Veiger's Q stacks to show as a buff on his character like Nasus? It's fairly vital information to know when playing against him. This would be a great QoL feature.

Auryiel4/9/2016, 12:15:55 AM15 votes

So basically you hate the fact that mages can clear waves? Because that's what it feels like.

May I ask why it's considered such a bad thing? Different classes have different strengths. Why is it so awful that mages have the ability to control minion waves better than most other champions? Clearing waves is a powerful tool and has its uses, but also its limits. No matter how fed a Ziggs is, you always have options to make his wave clear much weaker, like Baron buff or a item 3060. You can also poke towers with item 3094 rather easily.

I get that you don't want to go back to the old ''we're clearly winning and have total control of the map but have to farm up a 20k gold lead to safely dive under towers and get a clear win'' but you guys have already put several things in the game to ensure that this almost never becomes possible again, so I don't understand why great wave clear is a bad identity to have. It merely forces the enemy team to adapt.

Overlord Forte4/8/2016, 11:23:28 PM14 votes

Will there be any mechanical adjustments to Scatter the Weak's unreliable hitboxes at melee range for Syndra? I'm talking the weird angles and outright misses the ability results in. Practically speaking, it is actually dangerous and suicidal to use Syndra's E for personal defense in CQC.

A Liberal4/9/2016, 12:41:31 AM14 votes

On Veigar:

Current passive just feels like an excuse to give him higher-than-average mana costs

Wait.

So Veigar's passive is out of line but Lissandra's passive is a-okay?

Rito y u do dis

FlashnFuse4/9/2016, 12:30:03 PM13 votes

Hey there! I've actually got a few ideas that I've kicked around for making Syndra 's passive more exciting. Instead of the current bonuses the passive gives (which feel a bit lame for the most part), I like the idea of these ones:

Q- max ranks makes the Q sphere bigger, gives more reliability for less payoff (no bonus damage to champs). Synergizes well with W and E since bigger Q sphere means bigger hitboxes for those spells.

W- tie the duration to ranks in W (instead of the passive). At max ranks W roots anyone hit with a direct shot from the sphere. This could set up a brutal root/stun combo for Syndra's enemies.

E- probably the only one thats kind of alright as is, the bigger AOE is pretty noticeable and it's tough to justify making this one much stronger than that.

R- Tie range to level ups in the spell (if needed). Max rank R should significantly increase the amount of time dark spheres remain on the ground. Would give Syndra that "ULTIMATE POWER" fantasy of a huge ultimate in the later game.

G2 Hrøgnaar4/8/2016, 10:19:58 PM11 votes

As an anivia player, I don't get it.What exactly is going to change besides lowering waveclear.Especially those two points are not clear for me :

‘Feels old’ from a usability standpoint. Anivia’s one of our first champions and it shows.


Improve her usability so she feels crisp to play
Snorlaxstar4/8/2016, 10:18:39 PM10 votes

As a Veigar Main Veigar

I am really happy that his passive is getting a bit more love as I do agree, his mana costs are stupidly high so his passive never feels very useful. I hope it makes his early game a little better so he can counter ganks/all ins without sacrificing his ability to stack Q as he runs our of mana.

I'm also interested to see what is planned to make his kit a bit more useful without his ult.

Jofeyy4/8/2016, 11:14:23 PM9 votes

I'm really excited about Syndra pls make my waifu stronger :D

Nausicäa 4/8/2016, 10:44:40 PM9 votes

Please tell me you're going to remove Veigar's ult enemy AP scaling in favor of something else.

StrangeHabits4/9/2016, 1:09:36 AM4 votes

Teemo

xSleepy4/9/2016, 12:30:09 AM3 votes

tbh i think i know why veigar's ult blows me up, if i built ap it's because there is ap, if i didn't it's because i don't have mr. not a mystery, really. i kinda like it this way.

Le Panda4/8/2016, 10:53:10 PM2 votes

Nothing on Malzahar hmmmmm. Maybe its because hes the third champ getting reworked this year PogChamp