Boards›Dev Corner

Janna Hotfix Context

RiotRiot MapleNectar·9/27/2017, 8:35:41 PM·1 votes·36,577 views

Hey folks!

As you’re reading this, we just finished deploying a balance hotfix for Janna as follow-up on our changes to her on 7.19. The goals for the initial changelist were pretty simple, if a Janna wants to win lane, she has to interact and engage with her lane opponents in ways she didn’t have to before. We wanted to make playing as Janna feel more rewarding when played well while giving her opponents the opportunity to actually outplay her in lane, instead of just watching her sitting behind her ADC and shielding their way through lane.

Before shipping, we took the deliberate approach of not over nerfing Janna considering that we were working on reshaping Ardent Censer in parallel to her kit changes. We judged that a world where both her and the item were nerfed substantially to be a worse world, and planned our changes to that. At the end of the day, we concluded that she had the potential to be strong on release, but firmly believed that when properly tuned, the direction of this new play pattern would result in a Janna that was healthier for League. In light of that, we made plans to quickly follow up based on her day one metrics if need be, which is why we’ve pushed out our balance hotfix to her today. We’ll also continue to be pay attention to both to her and Ardent Censer closely for the new few weeks.

Ultimately, with how hot of a topic Janna has been recently, you might be wondering why we didn’t just hold off on Janna for another patch, or why we shipped her like this. To us, it felt more valuable to put a change out we were far happier with directionally than leave her in her current state for another two weeks. It’s important to note that the extra time of internal playtesting likely wouldn’t have resulted in a drastic increase in confidence in this changelist, especially not when compared to the millions of games we can get from around the world in a matter of hours once we go Live. So, if you’re a Janna main (or enthusiast, or someone who just bopped her in lane), feel free to let us know what you think about her changes!

The changes that we shipped an hour and a half ago:

Base Stats Base Movement Speed :: 335 >>> 320 Base Health :: 525 >>> 500 Base Mana :: 409.52 >>> 350

Zephyr (W) Cost :: 40/50/60/70/80 >>> 50/60/70/80/90

120 Comments

Raxistaicho9/27/2017, 9:24:26 PM39 votes

Jee, whodathunk that buffing Janna across the board and giving her a nerf that goes away at level 9 to compensate wasn't a smurt move.

Shadow Blinkèr9/27/2017, 9:51:18 PM29 votes

I don't get it, why would she engage more by being squishier? Wouldn't that make her play even more passive?

Mârty9/27/2017, 9:25:56 PM26 votes

Why not just straight up remove the part of her passive that gives allies bonus movement speed for moving towards her?

It's the most boring part of her kit, and a ton of free power that players generally don't think about. She doesn't need it, that part of her power budget should be invested into more fun parts of her kit.

Now that she has a passive which gives her flat MS and bonus damage, the ally movement speed is unnecessary.

Keithioapc9/27/2017, 11:45:04 PM14 votes

The move speed thing makes me sad because I considered being speedy part of Janna's identity.

I've played hundreds of games of Janna, and some of my fondest memories are escaping fights at ~1 HP while enemies chase me but Janna is too speedy.

Rework Quinn9/27/2017, 10:04:57 PM8 votes

[sg-janna]

CS Practice9/27/2017, 10:51:32 PM7 votes

My idea with how to fix the current ardent censer meta is not to nerf every support that can abuse ardent censer, but instead to just put a cooldown on the ardent censer buff so that it can't be procced over and over in a short period of time. Making Janna have to be more engage oriented not only changes her for the worse but it's kind of against the whole idea of Janna, a weak in combat support that has to use all of her abilities to enable others whilst staying safe. She was never meant to be front line as her entire kit is based around disengaging. Q peels W peels R peels E negates damage. The bigger problem with the nerf to Janna is that her win rate is only so substantially high because of the meta. Her win rate always shoots through the roof around worlds every year. After worlds the meta almost always shifts and creates a dynamic where she's played very rarely. The best route to take would honestly be to nerf ardent censer substantially or change the way champions can interact with shields. Karma's shield was nerfed heavily because of it's power, now Janna's shield is being nerfed cooldown wise because if it's power in conjunction with ardent censer (as well as her entire kit being perfect to abuse the item), now with her nerfs lulu and soraka (maybe even taric, because he can keep the ardent buff up forever so long as he has the mana and cdr for it) will climb to the top until they are eventually nerfed. It's unhealthy to allow one item to determine whether or not champions should be buffed. Especially sense the only reason the sustain and negate supports are so popular currently is because of how strong one item is.

Fütanari9/27/2017, 9:11:56 PM6 votes

So make her worse then you already made her? ok

Ibuki Suika9/28/2017, 3:55:40 AM6 votes

I just dont understand why her movespeed was made below the "minimum". Before the boots rework years ago the slowest you made any champ ever no matter what was 300, then you took 25 speed from boots and put it on champs base speed, this made 325 the lowest movespeed. I think Janna's speed should be at that, not below it.

Sheldons9/28/2017, 4:00:26 AM5 votes

this is enraging. I really noticed the movespeed change before reading this hotfix, i was like "what the fuck why am i SO SLOW."

this is actually aggravating because jannas identity is being a speedy support who can outrun an ally so you can shield them. Now as your ally is chasing a kill you are so fucking slow and will only catch up to shield if they stop to fight.

Pheor9/28/2017, 6:39:42 AM4 votes

Janna is not supposed to be played as a champ who jumps in and engages. Thats why you have leona. Id rather see ardent censer be removed from the game altogether rather than see these nurfs on Janna.

She was my support main. Not playing her anymore.

cheers

WorthlessSupport9/28/2017, 5:25:51 PM4 votes

I dont feel like Janna even needed those hot fixes.

I play in D1 and people still dont even try to punish her E CD and dont even try trading at all.

I won lanes 1v2 vs Janna with my ADC being pretty much afk farming.

You guys should put up a loading tip stating that Janna E has a huge ass CD and watch her winrate drop.

Lucifer9/27/2017, 10:20:11 PM4 votes

[{quoted}](name=Maple Nectar,realm=NA,application-id=A7LBtoKc,discussion-id=gikJEw03,comment-id=,timestamp=2017-09-27T20:35:41.741+0000)

Hey folks!

As you’re reading this, we just finished deploying a balance hotfix for Janna as follow-up on our changes to her on 7.19. The goals for the initial changelist were pretty simple, if a Janna wants to win lane, she has to interact and engage with her lane opponents in ways she didn’t have to before. We wanted to make playing as Janna feel more rewarding when played well while giving her opponents the opportunity to actually outplay her in lane, instead of just watching her sitting behind her ADC and shielding their way through lane.

Before shipping, we took the deliberate approach of not over nerfing Janna considering that we were working on reshaping Ardent Censer in parallel to her kit changes. We judged that a world where both her and the item were nerfed substantially to be a worse world, and planned our changes to that. At the end of the day, we concluded that she had the potential to be strong on release, but firmly believed that when properly tuned, the direction of this new play pattern would result in a Janna that was healthier for League. In light of that, we made plans to quickly follow up based on her day one metrics if need be, which is why we’ve pushed out our balance hotfix to her today. We’ll also continue to be pay attention to both to her and Ardent Censer closely for the new few weeks.

Ultimately, with how hot of a topic Janna has been recently, you might be wondering why we didn’t just hold off on Janna for another patch, or why we shipped her like this. To us, it felt more valuable to put a change out we were far happier with directionally than leave her in her current state for another two weeks. It’s important to note that the extra time of internal playtesting likely wouldn’t have resulted in a drastic increase in confidence in this changelist, especially not when compared to the millions of games we can get from around the world in a matter of hours once we go Live. So, if you’re a Janna main (or enthusiast, or someone who just bopped her in lane), feel free to let us know what you think about her changes!

The changes that we shipped an hour and a half ago:

Base Stats Base Movement Speed :: 335 >>> 320 Base Health :: 525 >>> 500 Base Mana :: 409.52 >>> 350

Zephyr (W) Cost :: 40/50/60/70/80 >>> 50/60/70/80/90

Agree with Janna Mechanics. Seems weird you keep hitting her damage (by nerfing her MS again, you're now nerfing her damage and her "shtick" of being the "fast" champion) when the main issue seems to be her passive combined with Ancient Coin. It's granting Janna's allies ~20% bonus move speed for Janna just existing. That is a ridiculous amount of invisible power that should be allocated elsewhere. I'd like this power budget to be allocated to her offensive or playmaking parts of her kit. Coin in general is still way too strong in comparison to frost queen's and relic shield. Far better rewards (more gold, better passive) for far less risk. I'd suggest talking with some high elo support mains at Riot like Jinxylord to get an idea on how best to approach coin going forward.

I'd like to see Janna's shield duration looked at as well (and perhaps every shield support). A shorter length shield better rewards a well timed shield. It might be also worth nerfing her late game shield length. Something like 16-15-14-13-12 might be more appropriate for her shield CD, so that Janna still does need to make meaningful shield decisions late game. With 45% CDR, shield has effectively no cooldown late game. That's a huge part of her problem, to be honest.

I'd also caution over-nerfing her right away. People need time to figure out that Janna needs to be punished early game now, where she is exceedingly weaker in lane.

I also do think that having dialogue with the community would be good... You were pretty much silent until now about the Janna changes, and there was a lot of useful feedback that could have been collected from Janna mains on how to best approach her.

Vermonster10/10/2017, 11:55:04 PM4 votes

what a shit change... You gutted her movespeed so she's gonna get hit by more poke, and gutted both her health and mana while increasing the mana cost of her w. Basically, has no ability to sustain herself in lane now. I like how you pretend you didn't want to nerf her too hard and were being careful yet you gutted her entire laning phase immensely the same patch that you plan on reducing the mana from her starting item. No reason to ever pick Janna over Lulu anymore since lulu and every other support received the same buff from ardent censor but no nerfs. The movespeed nerf is ridiculous, basically just gutting the champions core for no reason. Yea she gets fast end game but all she does is disengage, shield and heal, that movespeed was part of her core build for a reason. Her early game is so weak now its ridiculous. Her e cd is already ungodly long, you basically just lose lane now if your opponents are even the slightest bit competent in laning phase.

I waited a few days to post this to make sure I was seeing the same thing with her game to game. As soon as Ardent Censor gets nerfed Janna will be gone from the game thanks to Riots inability to balance. item 3070 Janna

Emestie9/28/2017, 5:07:54 AM4 votes

Why to nerf her MS when it's her identity? It's how nerf Soraka's heal... oh wait.

AA power is a thing now. This is what should be hotfixed not MS. Janna is supposed to be safe we don't need another 320ms Soraka.

I INT ON HERE XD9/28/2017, 5:40:50 AM4 votes

Filthy Janna main here to say: As long as the items I use aren't nerfed (ardent, redemption, locket), Janna won't be nerfed. Janna is a slave to their adc, so nerfing Janna stats and not stats that are applied to their adc/team is meaningless (in my opinion)

BloodyVampir9/28/2017, 5:43:04 AM4 votes

Please give her the movement speed back. You are just destroying her core identity with this nerf and its unnecessary because you just stole Jannas uniqueness imo. It always felt nice to be the fastest champ on the rift whivh actually played a big part in Jannas role.

PS: Fix her Star Guardian face splash ingame

Neyfthys9/29/2017, 12:52:40 PM4 votes

Janna was my main. but i think they changed her to a whole new character , and i dont like her game play now. probably need to find a new main champion now

for me janna was all about being best peeler / defender- yes that might mean that some of her game play felt a bit boring , but oh man when enemy charges at you there was no one better than janna to save your assss :P so i was picking her when i saw enemy was choosing charging all in champions and good peel was needed.

Now jana is made into poking champion like sona , meeh , in that case id rather have sona with faster and easier poke

sorry just my opinion I think we should have more varierty in champions and if some are a bit passive in lane let them be so , you take which one u need to counter ur lane some are pokers , some are damage , some are cc , some are peelers - dont really need all to be doing same thing ()

kpxjt093Rj10/11/2017, 12:23:45 AM3 votes

i don't understand you want Janna to play aggressive but you lower her base health, mana and damage and increased mana cost how to be more aggressive with this changes I don't understand.... like u lower her base health so she can be stronger ?

Newerthian9/27/2017, 9:43:13 PM3 votes

Completely out of context but I'm curious as to how maple nectar would taste like.

nınth10/10/2017, 8:13:19 PM3 votes

The tailwind passive damage nerf is just too much. You want Janna to play aggressive, but you've lowered her base health, base mana, and damage -- then increased her mana costs. Come on, now. I'd love for Janna to be more than a shield'n peel drivethru, but you can't say one thing and then do the exact opposite. As it stands, she won't be drafted over Lulu.

vhearts9/27/2017, 9:04:33 PM3 votes

uh... how about telling us what the hotfix was.

TeCoolMage9/29/2017, 12:33:25 PM2 votes

To people complaining about Janna being aggressive now, not about being passive or being aggressive, it's about lane interaction and engaging.

She can't play aggressively now simply by Eing the ADC whenever it's up as they auto attack and then throwing in a few autos herself, and she can't play passive by instant Qing everything and Eing all damage. Now she can play passively by setting up good Qs and only taking trades when there's a clear advantage while holding onto her abilities when the enemy has big spells off cooldown, and play aggressive by choosing to use all her abilities to really set up a good Q, chase them down with W, give the ADC damage with E, and so on.

Riot misjudged the changes thinking that making Janna more difficult would in turn make her weak, but when they increased the reward she got for playing well it was clear they overcompensated.

For people who still don't understand: look at 'passive' late game mages in mid lane. Against a melee matchup, or when an equal range ability is on cooldown they still take opportunities to auto and harass, and even use their disengage CC to engage and combo. Passive is not braindead negation, it's responding to the enemy rather than trying to elicit a response, and Janna has always been capable of both.

tangent: It annoys me how some enchanter mains believe it's a divine right to ensure all lane interaction and influence they have is put on the shoulders of the ADC (and in exchange they deal with the more 'subtle' things like timing when they press their buff button), then complain that if their ADC is not good they lose. That's not passive play, that's just being annoying.

Solidair39/28/2017, 3:02:58 PM2 votes

I think the base MS is uncalled for, fine with the other changes, though.

Schwarzi19/30/2017, 9:50:25 PM2 votes

Janna is useless until 6 now.Amumu item 3070

Support Position9/29/2017, 1:23:08 AM2 votes

Her E is what need nerfs. Reduce the damn shield already, its even worse than before -.- the damn champ just needs a full scale rework tbh. Her shield is WAY too overpowered and "that's the only good thing about her kit" time to make that the worst thing about her kit. Rework her. Thanks.

SirPurrr9/29/2017, 2:43:44 AM2 votes

[{quoted}](name=Maple Nectar,realm=NA,application-id=A7LBtoKc,discussion-id=gikJEw03,comment-id=,timestamp=2017-09-27T20:35:41.741+0000)

Hey folks!

As you’re reading this, we just finished deploying a balance hotfix for Janna as follow-up on our changes to her on 7.19. The goals for the initial changelist were pretty simple, if a Janna wants to win lane, she has to interact and engage with her lane opponents in ways she didn’t have to before. We wanted to make playing as Janna feel more rewarding when played well while giving her opponents the opportunity to actually outplay her in lane, instead of just watching her sitting behind her ADC and shielding their way through lane.

Before shipping, we took the deliberate approach of not over nerfing Janna considering that we were working on reshaping Ardent Censer in parallel to her kit changes. We judged that a world where both her and the item were nerfed substantially to be a worse world, and planned our changes to that. At the end of the day, we concluded that she had the potential to be strong on release, but firmly believed that when properly tuned, the direction of this new play pattern would result in a Janna that was healthier for League. In light of that, we made plans to quickly follow up based on her day one metrics if need be, which is why we’ve pushed out our balance hotfix to her today. We’ll also continue to be pay attention to both to her and Ardent Censer closely for the new few weeks.

Ultimately, with how hot of a topic Janna has been recently, you might be wondering why we didn’t just hold off on Janna for another patch, or why we shipped her like this. To us, it felt more valuable to put a change out we were far happier with directionally than leave her in her current state for another two weeks. It’s important to note that the extra time of internal playtesting likely wouldn’t have resulted in a drastic increase in confidence in this changelist, especially not when compared to the millions of games we can get from around the world in a matter of hours once we go Live. So, if you’re a Janna main (or enthusiast, or someone who just bopped her in lane), feel free to let us know what you think about her changes!

The changes that we shipped an hour and a half ago:

Base Stats Base Movement Speed :: 335 >>> 320 Base Health :: 525 >>> 500 Base Mana :: 409.52 >>> 350

Zephyr (W) Cost :: 40/50/60/70/80 >>> 50/60/70/80/90

Give me back my AP Kog. It's why I purchased the champion. I wanted one truly godly late game poke mage. He has so much counterplay via split pushing, engages, dodging, shields, heals, stealth assassinations etc. Why was he gutted after being viable as AP for so many seasons. I want AP Kog FULLY supported for every ELO bracket like he deserves to be. He has a completely different playstyle and attracts different players than AD Kog. He's not a gimmick like AP trist was. His whole kit has AP ratios and makes sense with AP. I don't even care if his winrate isn't good since he's actually difficult to play well but it feels like he's not even good for people who put a ton of work into him. AP Kog was supposed to be the late game terror of the rift with godly poke + burst late. Idk what you need to do but that .2 AP E nerf was total BS... in the same patch as the Rylai's nerf too. He wasn't even played competitively at that point and nor was he picked or banned almost at all in ranked. I'm really annoyed by this. I purchased Kog SOLELY because I loved his AP playstyle. At least with shit like trist she's still somewhat similar in how her kit works but my champion was basically deleted.

AP Kog late was the ONLY surgical poke champion with solid DPS vs tanks due to W, fantastic burst if he can get picks and decent poke from a crazy range (the most fun and difficult aspect of the champion). Ziggs and Xerath are just not for the same thing. Xerath has conditional crazy range but no DPS vs tanks. Ziggs has pretty bad range relative to both since his Q almost never hits if it bounces more than once and even in that case, it would just be blocked by tanks. His late game is alright but nothing special. He's just very different and also a champion I enjoy. No one does what AP kog did and AP kog himself now doesn't seem to do enough late game for how easy he is to shut down early, dive, etc. He's only really decent if you have a ton of CC to get them lower and keep abilities chained on them. For example, if you have a malphite who can ult. and then you clean up, that works fine assuming the game is somewhat even.

Again, if you do not want to support AP kog exactly as his kit is now, think of ways it can work while keeping those late game fantasy elements fully alive. Just never nerf his range/ability to chain ult. and damage. His ult. is already nothing like what it used to be. This is the reason I like the champion. Hell, I'll even take a hit somewhere else to make this ability as strong as possible. For example, perhaps its AP ratio can be weaker at 6 and then grow at 11, 16.

Xyltin9/27/2017, 11:59:46 PM1 votes

Any plans for Ardent?

After a day I would expect you also seeing that it was not a nerf (probably not a buff either), but mostly a neutral change. A good one, shifting more power towards the support, but still too strong, especially in the early game. How about going down to 18-35% AS/On hit dmg and 50 AP

Another option would be 13.75 - 35% AS/on hit dmg (12.5 + 1.25 x lvl). At lvl 6 (the earliest you get this item) it would be at 20 instead of 24, which is a decent nerf but not a too large one.

A small tip for people after the Janna nerf: Taric with Ardent. People talked about Lulu now having the buff or Janna or speedy bananas, but Tarics passive, Q CD and constant AAing can be pretty annoying.

Lulu and Karma seem to be the only 2 champs that suffered from the Ardent change (a bit strange, but makes sense for Lulu, she gives her passive towards the ADC anyways and Karma, as nice as her AA CDR is, it probably is too risky in most cases and not too impactful).