PBE Chat with the Playtest Team - 8.9

These poppy changes seem so out of the blue. She is already pretty weak but these changes are looking like straight nerfs for me

can we please get context on the changes on the PBE? ill take anything but its just so random when shes in a good spot, albeit weak but, you gave reasons for changing and wheres 's this is what we want to happen?

In my opinion the Poppy changes are completely unwarranted and should be reverted, as she is decently balanced right now. Didn't Meddler say that Poppy was in a good spot just last month? I would like to know the thought process behind these changes and if the full consequences of these changes were considered.

The ultimate change is not a "straight utility buff" as Riot Endstep has put it. The people defending the change as a pure buff to Poppy's kit have either not played her enough to be very familiar with the intricacies of her kit or playing unconventional full damage/burst builds. The decrease in the knockup duration makes the uncharged ult less effective in certain situations. For instance, an uncharged ult can be used to reposition for a stun during the 1 second knockup duration, stall for cooldowns, and delay their escape so your team can catch up during a pick, among other things. All of these use cases have been hurt by the knockup duration decrease. Furthermore, the base movespeed nerf as well as the scaling movespeed nerf on the W exacerbates the problem by making it even harder to reposition for a stun while they are knocked up. This pigeonholes the ult into just another way to deal damage during a duel, making the spell one-dimensional and discouraging creative uses for the ult beyond a way to lay down more damage onto the opponent. You might mention that knocked up enemies no longer are untargetable, but while this indeed does make the ult less prone to causing your team to miss all their skillshots during a teamfight, the knockup duration is a measly 0.75 seconds which is not impactful enough as an engage or disrupt tool (especially with the long cooldown, Note: Alistar Q has a 13 second cooldown with a 1 second knockup and Malphite R has a 80 second cooldown with a 1.5 second knockup at max ranks, while Poppy R has a 100 second cooldown with a proposed 0.75 second knockup at max rank). Albeit Poppy's R has an uncharged and charged version with different uses, the 0.75 second knockup from the uncharged version seems underwhelming. In response to Riot Endstep's comment about using the ult to guarantee both procs of Q and an auto attack, given that the recovery frames of the ult on PBE (~16 frames), the startup frames of Poppy's Q (~13 frames), and the time to proc Poppy's second Q (~31 frames), enemy recovery frames (i.e. time spent in the AIRBORNE state: ~23 frames), there is no guarantee that the enemy will be hit with both procs of the Q if they flash out (as shown in Pyrofiend's recording in this thread). Using Q before R would guarantee it, but that combo would not be optimal in most situations.

The movespeed nerf in general is something that will hurt Poppy's greatly as utility as well. Movespeed has always been a stat that Poppy has relied on heavily since the rework (moreso than most champions) due to the nature of her abilities. Even if the E range increase is considered, I feel that there is a net loss as far as the reliability of successfully landing an E due to this movespeed nerf. The change that very few people seem to be concerned with but should be is the nerf to the base movement speed. A decrease of 5 in the base movement speed of a champion might seem like a small inconvenience, but I am of the opinion that it is a huge nerf, especially in Poppy's case without a reliable dash/gapcloser (E requires a target). In isolation, analyzing the movespeed stat of a single champion is useless. The only statistic that matters in regards to how fast a champion is is the movespeed in relation to other champions. The average movespeed of all champions as of today is 337. Poppy's movespeed is being changed from 345 to 340. This movespeed delta of 5 can be seen in Janna's most recent nerf, one of the most consistent champions with one of the highest winrates in her role across multiple years. Why are we seeing a nerf of the same magnitude on a champion with abysmal pick/ban rates, both in solo queue and competitive, outside of as a Camille counterpick (because let's face it, she is only picked right now as a counterpick and because of one trick ponies like myself). Poppy's kit relies heavily on the fact that she can catch up to her targets given the lack of a reliable dash/gapcloser; increasing the range of Poppy's E while nerfing her movespeed heavily does not circumvent this problem and instead arguably lowers the overall skill ceiling and skill floor simultaneously.

I understand that statistics such as win-rate, pick-rate, and ban-rate are not good indicators of how well-balanced a champion is, but looking at the numbers, it cannot be denied that Poppy's 48.28% win rate, 2.83% pick rate, and 0.31% ban rate (lolalytics.com) points to her not exactly being a must pick/ban in the current meta of the game. In my experience, she is only used either as a counterpick or because a player mains/one tricks her. Meddler has stated that "one of our goals with champion balance is to ensure they're good choices in a wide range of contexts" (leagueoflegends.com). If Poppy is currently seen as a counterpick-only champion in both solo queue and the competitive scene, I feel that nerfing her further would only serve to lower the rate at which she is played, even though her pick/ban rate is already abysmal with the baffling amount of people I've seen say they have only seen Poppy being played once in a blue moon (does that not go against the ultimate goal of balancing a game? seeing the same 20 champions over and over again is tiring). I am of the opinion that one of the major problems of Poppy right now is that she does not excel at anything at the moment, and these changes are not sufficient to resolve this problem. She has the ability to take multiple roles and adapt to different situations, but in the end, whichever role she takes, other champions can do it better. Right now, I feel that she is in a good spot, but a weak one.

One of the more common builds on (at least from what I've seen) has been starting and then getting on the first or second back, since it helps her very mana-hungry play style, but seeing as both of these items are receiving mana sustain nerfs, I feel like she might end up being in sort of a weak state. Are there any plans to compensate with some additional base mana regen similar to the other mages?

Why are mages - the class that is already the most dependent on skill shots - held to a different standard than others - especially adc’s and ad casters (meaning champs like zed and Yasuo) - when it comes to resources?

First of all...sorry if this comes out as a big rant, but this entire change on mana makes me really annoyed and would like a chance to talk to some one from Riot about it.

So mages are supposed to be all about the resource of mana, which ADCs and other classes aren't gated around, how exactly is that fair? Especially when AP items used to have a high AP value (with low mana, and CDR) and over the past few seasons, we kept losing a lot of AP on our items but was compensated for Mana and CDR. So we lose a lot of AP to add CDR to our items, and then ADCs gets easy access to 40% CDR AND ways to refill mana with without sacrificing anything for it, and now Mages are losing a large portion of mana and gets nothing for it?

I know that ADCs changes are coming soon...but why is this massive nerf to base mana of mages coming before the ADC changes? If this all happened on the same patch as ADC changes then it might be a bit more acceptable, but mages are getting a massive role nerf in 8.9 so we become weaker, while ADCs continue to stomp for another patch or 2...and that's assuming ADCs changes even make them weaker at all.

Also these changes are going to force most mages into because the amount of mana from isn't going to be enough for them...and this is 1 patch after you harshly nerfed Archangel Staff to be a poor item to rush and require stacking.

You make it sound like Mages still have all these options like Building on every mage isn't a way to "fix" this as not every mage can really build that, and even if they do...they would be extremely useless until like 30 minutes into the game, which games don't even last that long anymore and even stalling with mages wave clear is going to be even harder because of this...which in the end makes it more snowbally.

Don't even bring up Ocean Dragon or Blue buff as viable ways to counteract it...Ocean dragon isn't super strong until you get 2 of them which is basing solely on RNG to even be lucky enough to get 2 of them AND that's only if your team is even in position to attempt to take it. And Blue buff? Sure in LC$ you would have no problem getting those blue buffs as a mid laner, but most of the time in Solo Que you don't even get blue buff as a Mid Laner. Only time you really see jungler give it is usually if the mid laner is super carrying/insanely ahead, OR your jungler is a resourceless champion or some one who barely uses mana. Most games, the jungler take the blue buff for themselves.

And what are we supposed to do against Baron minions? Mages won't have the mana to waveclear through that all that well anymore...and even if you do manage to do so, would be OOM and useless for when the enemy team jumps on you. Do you basically want it to be, whoever gets Baron first can just push for game?

This whole change is terrible...especially for the main reason you guys give for the "Mages shouldn't be able to waveclear without worry" or something. Mages use their CDs to waveclear and uses mana to do so...You may think it's infinite mana but have you actually played as a mage when your team is losing and trying to defend? What about all the Non-mage waveclear in the game? even can be used to help.

What about all the Mages who already struggle to actually wave clear? Do you just want them to never be played because they can't waveclear with what little mana they have? Guess that's why we never saw played mid anymore with his extremely low wave clear and why you are kind of heavily pushing him for bot now.

On a scale from 1-HELL, how are you mage mains feeling about the CS changes? Specifically:

• Income and CS appear to be down in 8.8 for mages without reliable spell CS (eg Cass, Annie, etc). Does this need to be addressed?

• Do you feel it's a problem that there is virtually no perceptible visual difference in a cannon minion's hp bar between last hitting and missing.

• Based on the metrics, has there been a significant transfer of income away from APs in favor of ADs during laning phase?

• Does +5 minion damage on PBE Doran's Ring actually fix a single one of the issues listed above?

So. Those Poppy changes. Why exactly?

Alright, I'll just kick start this whole thing:

What are y'all's opinions of the mana changes? How much do they effect mages vs the way they currently play? And do you believe those changes to be for the better?

How do the mana changes on the PBE affect mages, in your opinion? I understand the problem they're trying to solve (mindless, cheap waveclear), but it seems like as a whole it will just be a blanket nerf to mages without any real compensation in a meta where I don't feel they particularly shine (to me they feel fairly average). Do you have any concerns that they will be locked into Archangel's/Presence of Mind to function?

@Riot Novalas Since you're here, I've got a rune clarity request that it would be wonderful if you could forward up the pipeline:

For the "hunter" line, it would be really nice to have some sort of metric by which to measure how effective they are over the course of the game. Because it's nice to know when you got full stacks, and such, and, honestly, for relentless hunter, that might be all you would need, but for ravenous Hunter it would be nice to know how much HP we healed over the course of the game and for ingenious hunter, how much active item CD (in seconds) we managed to reduce over the course of the game, because I really want to be able to decide if certain runes are "worth it"

Why the Poppy changes? She's been pretty weak for a while now, and I seriously doubt she needed nerfs, especially on her movement speed.

There is something that kinda bothers me

There is one champion that has been seeing litle to none play for 4 seaons now, has a really low playrate in high elo, currently has trash winrate, and the few times he was picked, its picked in a role he was not designed for, and serves for supportive purposes he wasn't supposed to fulfill.

Its been like this for many years now, and i'd like some context of why this champ hasn't been buffed, considering its considered by many ust a trollpick in any comp in any situation.

im talking about Ziggs.

Ziggs has a win rate 46.88% for Diamond+ players whilst the very best Ziggs's are earning a win rate of 49.46% with the average rank of these top players being in Diamond IV.

• Lolalitycs

Win Rate 49.33%. Play Rate 1.16%.

• Champion.gg

47.85% winrate, 35th /47 1.35% pickrate.

-Op.gg

So, these stats looks fine, but Ziggs has been hovering on a 53% winrate for a long time, while striking a close to 0% pickrate on higher elo (Diamond+) And from personal experience, i can safely say that his agency is close to unexisting due to some match ups beeing straight up impossible.

I'd liek to know Riot's opinion on the champion, since he hasn't been touched ever since the +0.2 AP ratio on his ult, and even after that, his pickrate didn't change one bit, doy ou think he is fine the way he is right now? You think its ok for the champion to only be picked ADC in competitive, and never midlane?