Mid Season Tanks Update - Sejuani

So, it sounds like:

1. Keep Q
2. Nerf R
3. Change everything else

I honestly like playing Sejuani a lot, and a large part of it is her impactful ultimate. I'd say it's one of the few "ULTIMATE" ultimates in League, so i'm sad to hear it's going to be made weaker (that's kinda the pattern for stuff in LoL; if it's strong, nerf it and keep everything weak).

I do agree that her W and E are pretty underwhelming; it's kinda like old Alistar, where you use your big abilities and then just autoattack (and hope they stay close). It sounds like she'll basically be a brand new champion (with whatever these cavalry changes will be), and i'm not sure she needs such a drastic rework.

Some things i'd like to see in a new Sej Kit:

1. Her ult should still be impactful, even if the damage/range is nerfed. It doesn't feel right to be to just hamstring one of the few powerful abilities in the game.

2. No gimmicks. Skarner's and Mordekaiser's kits rely on gimmicks that were introduced for change's sake, not to make the champs feel better, and they're hardly played as a result. Sejuani should still FEEL like playing Sejuani.

That's all i can think of for now; just wanted to share my thoughts.

Oh boy.

So uh, I've played Sej ever since her initial rework pretty hard. Went from Silver to Plat my first time with her then did it again the next season. Check my Season 4/5 stats with her, don't remember if they're there in S6 but anyways I have hundreds and hundreds of Ranked games with her. I've gone vs Silvers, Golds, Plats, and if memory serves right a few Diamonds in Ranked (plenty of them in Normals but I dont really count that.)

Anyhow uh. Few points.

1. Be very careful in how you approach things like this. What I mean is there are a lot of times themes are redone that irritates people who enjoy them, along with kit changes. Mordekaiser is one of the biggest offenders (-- he's also one I did this with and it saddens me that I've played him a whole ton since Season 2 and can't anymore because he just got left to rot.) It needs to be understood that some Champions just will not be as popular as others, and that's okay. They're allowed to be that way. They still might cater to some audiences, and Sej is one of them.

2. Tanks have to have damage or else they're ignored after they do what they do (in prolonged fights). An example is Sej W. She can continue to wail on people after her initial CC, instead of "I used my CC, I'm 100% ignorable now." If you're going to change this, then you have to provide a real reason for people to still be on guard and not just not care. It sounds like you want to do this as a "cavalier" Champion but that doesn't sound like a full tank. Maybe I'm wrong.

3. If you want to do it with allies I recommend doing it with an ice/frost theme, specifically Freljord. We haven't seen this type of thing before and it'd be refreshing. Yes, there are 3 different tribes that's true, but it'd still be interesting that their abilities would at least work together since they're all icy. Perhaps Anivia could get an E boost off of Sej's abilities-- okay, not -full- effect, that'd be outright broken as hell. But partial if she hasn't already. Something along those lines. I'm not saying that's necessarily one to actually do, but something along of what'd be neat. Frost works with Frost.

4. People who play her enjoy her -icy-, -frost- "cavalier" theme. Don't ditch it. Seriously, please don't. It's really really cool feeling.

5. If I had to personally choose what I would change -from a feel good- standpoint, not a balance one, it'd be her W. It's always felt good with her Q, E, R. Her W is what feels "meh." Don't get me wrong, it's a good ability, just, from a "this is fun" standpoint.

6. Be careful touching her Ultimate. It's something Sejuani players REALLY love. Just be careful in how you go around that. If you want to change it sure but just be wary of -how- you do. It's something people really, really, really like about her.

7. Another "feel good" is being able to Q through walls. Please do not change this.

Thanks for your time.

Longtime Sejuani main here, (by longtime, I mean I mained her back when you couldn't reliably Q thought a wall), so here's my two cents on this.

"Tap more into the cavalier / warleader fantasy We would like to have moments where it feels like Sejuani is actively leading and inspiring her allies. We would also like to add more elements to her kit that alludes to the cavalier fantasy who is always on the move ready to rush in on her opposition."

Sejuani already has this. When Sejuani is on your team, she IS your "GO" button. A good Sejuani can lead their team to victory with well timed Q's and R's. Sejuani isn't a "cavalier", she's a warrior. She's tenacious. She beats you down over time. Sejuani shouldn't be winning duels like a Fiora or Yasuo or Riven, but if you can't kill her, eventually she'll be the only one left alive. That's her fantasy. If you want "cavalier" fantasy, go look at Kled. Go rework Xin Zhao into a cavalier. Cavalier isn't in Sejuani's identity. She's mounted, yes, but it's more of a symbol of her leadership than of her fighting style.

"Create a more engaging base combat pattern We want to make her base pattern more engaging and worth mastering for Sejuani players, and also give enemies something to play around. We will be reworking her base spells so the majority of her damage no longer comes from just standing near her opponents. This will mean that we will need to take some of the power away from her currently overwhelmingly powerful ultimate so we can give all of her base spells real impact"

This is, I assume, aimed at W and E, two low mechanic abilities. W's power coming from her HP scaling and the AoE is very low counterplay, very un-fun to play against, and I can understand that this needs reworked. A sunfire cape over a sunfire cape isn't very engaging (even thought Amumu is far more guilty of this than Sejuani) and I'm intersted in seeing what you come up with for this. E falls into a similar position, people don't necessarily realize they're got the debuff on them until you pop E and they're massively slowed. Again, something I'm interested to see what you come up with.

"Create a clear and unique defensive profile We want tanks to be defined more by their defensive mechanics and Sejuani is no exception. As we reduce the amount of reliable damage she can put out, we want to change her passive so it is both more character defining and appreciable."

So you're looking to expand on her current passive then? It's honestly the most underrated part of her kit, the bonus armor, especially in the jungle, is quite valuable. What you need to keep in mind is that, Sejuani already has a very slow early clear compared to non-tank junglers and hasn't been meta in ages as a result. As someone that's played hundreds if not thousands of Sejuani games at this point, I already appreciate this passive, although it's very invisible power.

" Allow her to directly synergize with specific allies We’re looking to give Sejuani ways to directly augment the effectiveness of her allies. Instead of just augmenting all her allies, we want Sejuani to benefit specific allies in ways that will make her feel like a true barbarian warleader."

Umm... what? You want to make her more niche than she already is? League has a roster of over a hundred champions, and now you want to make it so that Sejuani only has synergy with a specific set of them? Would this be in addition to her identity as a powerful teamfighting champion, or are you trying to remove that?

You have me half excited, and half terrified about this rework. Considering I'm relatively quite happy with where Sejuani is now, you can see how I'm worried. I'd love to talk at length about this. If you're going to rework her again, I hope you go 2 for 2 on them.

Okay, there are a couple of things...

In a broad sense, can we have a discussion about the tank direction in general, separate from the specific focus champion topics?

Moving along...

Allow her to directly synergize with specific allies We’re looking to give Sejuani ways to directly augment the effectiveness of her allies. Instead of just augmenting all her allies, we want Sejuani to benefit specific allies in ways that will make her feel like a true barbarian warleader.

This sounds dangerous. If there is a unique interaction in game with specific allies, there are one of two ways this works out: either it's too weak for that interaction to really matter much, or it's so powerful (and takes up so much of her power budget) that said allies are mandatory. It's okay for certain champions to work well with one another (like Diana and Leona or Jarvan IV and Rumble) but specific forced synergy within her kit sounds dangerously close to the latter case, so I find that troubling.

Create a clear and unique defensive profile We want tanks to be defined more by their defensive mechanics and Sejuani is no exception. As we reduce the amount of reliable damage she can put out, we want to change her passive so it is both more character defining and appreciable.

Can you explain what you mean by this in more detail? For example, when I think of a more interactive defensive profile, the first things that spring to mind are like Vi and Camille's shield passives: mitigating damage with a condition. You also mentioned reduced reliable damage output as apart of her defensive profile, which... doesn't make a whole lot of sense..?

After reading the top comments in here I feel compelled to post. I'm not a Sejuani main, but there are a number of values in the comments that I share strong sentiments with. I've gone through the fair share of reworks and played some while giving up other characters after they were reworked into something I no longer love.

Hopefully letter pointing makes this simpler since I tend to be poor at putting my thoughts down in a fully coherent manner.

A. Gimmicks - I definitely agree with the sentiments people have here. Don't stick gimmicks on just to make a character unique or because it "gives us more tools to leverage their balance." There are good gimmicks and reworks like Warwick and Poppy where they don't have a specific gimmick but still hit a very good mark on several marks. On the opposite spectrum as some people have pointed out, you have characters like Skarner and Mordekaiser. The problem with the heavy spectrum is that their gimmick is feast or famine. When it's too good they stomp, when it's too bad they're worthless.

If you go to the middle you'll find people like Shen, Fiora, and Gangplank. I won't comment on Gangplank much other than that his mechanic is what made him viable and is half of what I liked about playing him to begin with. I loved auto Q autoing people for high damage with his old passive. Managing a mini game is what I hate the most because it feels like my attention is being drawn by something superficial.

Then there's Shen and Fiora. I don't play Fiora, but playing against her more often than not just feels like she gets to win a trade every few other seconds. She honestly just feels like a set of stat checks with high mobility. I don't pay attention to the "mini game" beyond if my weak point is the complete opposite of her because that's the only time I feel I can do anything about it. As for Shen, I think his rework was pretty good, but hate his spirit sword concept. It functions, but has a very mini gamey vibe while failing to accomplish much for the opponent and only a decent amount for the Shen. You rarely pay attention to it beyond it giving away your bush positioning or if you back. Basically I think it's not hitting the mark, but when looking for a fix, would prefer it if it wasn't there.

tl;dr I think that you should AVOID sticking gimmicks on as much as possible.

B. Polarizing impact around the kit - To summarize, when some parts of the kit are very strong, and the others feel weak or underwhelming. I don't think this is a problem in and of itself necessarily. Many people continue to use Annie E as just a throw away skill for charging stun as far as I know, but that doesn't mean the skill should be buffed and we take damage away from Annie's combo. Cho'gath's E edges to being fairly low impact past the laning stage, but that doesn't mean it needs buffs for the late game. It's still satisfying to get a good silence or knock up.

Sometimes taking power budget out for the sake of balance is needed, but if you're going to do it just to make some other skills feel better while making the strong skills of the champion feel meh, then that's a problem. If you're going to shore up the other skills, then take the Alistar route at least and touch the skills that people don't like/care about if possible. I used to play AP Alistar since I could lane sustain top by spamming E to get farm and become a pseudo assassin that targets the back lines and runs out with Stormraiders, but the change killed it. However, I was not playing Ali the way his mains were, so I think there was no real loss there.

tl;dr Don't reshuffle power around the kit for the sake of your own ideologies. Mains have feelings too. If you do, try to make it worth it like with Warwick, or disrupt the high power of the skills as little as possible like with Alistar.

C. Don't chase the mains away. - Next to gimmicks, this is the one thing I hate the most. Often times when a character undergoes great change, then their demographic changes as well. This in some ways is inevitable since the reason the mains play the character may be for something that's labelled unhealthy for the game by you guys, but the idea here is to try and find a way out as much as possible before reaching that point. Successful reworks that kept the core of a character's skills and what made them awesome to play for the mains I feel are: Master Yi, Katarina, Warwick, Shen.

tl;dr Pull every stop before chasing the mains away to make the character viable/closer to YOUR idea of what they should be.

Extra self commentary,

C is kind of a repeat of things I typed up in A and B, but meh. I don't think I did a good job with the whole letter pointing idea, but hopefully my ideas got through at least.

While I agree that Sunfire does not create deep combat patterns, I don't think that everything in league should create deep combat patterns. Sunfire punish the opponent to stick to a tank, which makes sense in a good teamfight: a successful team should kite the tank, not stick to it to DPS it. This is a good pattern enhanced by sunfire and other AOE around the tank. Also, I agree that Sunfire is great to push minion waves when you have no damage. It could be interesting if sunfire damaged turrets as well.

My point is: It is great if some items are useful for macro-play, even if not great at micro-play. I think it would be great if Leagues reward both macro and micro play (not only micro play)

Being skillful to win 1v1 with Yasuo/Zed is one thing (micro). Being skillful to coordinate a 5v5 as a team is another (between micro and macro). Map awarness, map pressure and objectives focus is another (macro).

You're saying that you'll be taking away the reliable damage and improving on CC and defensive capabilities. But you don't really lean towards putting any unreliable damage into a kit.

Tanks (in my opinion) do need respectable damage early game to not only play in top lane, but also clear the jungle at a viable speed. How do you plan on approaching this? Especially since Sejuani's AoE power is her clearing tool.

Sounds interesting and as one of the few people who play her now I'm excited and terrified to see her rework since it will have to be substantial since you guys basically are unhappy with everything except her Q.

I do have one question regarding to the Tank update in general that I think it's worth addressing now and keeping in mind as the work goes forward. If you are reducing tank damage are tanks going to be relegated to the top lane or will you be giving them customized traits that will allow them to clear the jungle despite not doing real damage?

I am... Very interested in how you are going to add the cavalry / warleader part to Sejuani. Some things to really consider are:

• She rides a boar. Where normal "knight" style designs would use a horse, Sejuani goes totally badass using Bristle. Unlike normal horses, this could make Bristle to a much more "forgiving" mount that, say, Skaarl. Where Skaarl would hop around the battlefield, Bristle would trample people. I would love to see the toughness, strenght and overwhelming power in Sejuani's kit.

• In her kit, I have not noticed that Sejuani fights for basically everything. However, turning her into a Vi-styled champion wouldn't work either. I think the balance point for Sej as a warleader would have to do with leading the charge. I like to consider her as a more forgiving Kled; They both lead the charge, disrupting the field whilst slamming around with their big weapons. However, where Kled focuses on himself (except for his Ult), Sejuani could seriously lead a powerful, yet stoppable charge with her team.

• Her E seems extremely out of place. Sejuani is not a mage, as far as I've noticed. She relies on strenght. Her E does not fit at all, if you would ask me.

Overall, I'm really interested to see what Riot does to her, and I'm very much excited!

We’re adding more skill expression to Tank combat patterns, for themselves as well as their opponents. We’re looking to offer more points of play and counterplay and reward players for mastering them.

So everybody gets to be Sion? :^) Sounds good to me!

We’re reducing the amount of reliable damage that Tanks bring to the game and instead amplifying their defensive and crowd control capabilities. We want to ensure that the tanks are correctly valued for the right reasons and definitively set them apart from their offensive counterparts.

I assume this will mainly be done through changes to Grasp, and their Itemisation? (Sunfire Cape, Iceborn etc) You guys said you wouldn't be touching Sion Directly with this update, so I'm guessing that's how it'll effect the Vanguards that won't receive any direct changes... Sounds fine to me.

How many tanks are you guys doing? Big 4 again or more like 5 or 6?

Super excited to see the tank reworks, particularly interested in seeing how you advanced the thematic of Sejuani being a cavalier with a badass mount as well as being a savage war leader.

But aside from that, how many 'main reworks' can we expect to see from the Tank update? (along the lines of the Big Six from Mid-Season Magic and the Big Four from the Assasin preseason).

first :D

omggg

We’re reducing the amount of reliable damage that Tanks bring to the game and instead amplifying their defensive and crowd control capabilities. We want to ensure that the tanks are correctly valued for the right reasons and definitively set them apart from their offensive counterparts.

Does this mean changes of certain tank items?

Also make her passive an AOE slow in her vicinity. LUL

Previously posted on the PBE:

Most tanks, if given more access to tankiness and utility inside of their kits, seem like they would just utilize these abilities as free stats and build more damage regardless. Is there any way that this will be addressed with these upcoming reworks?

As always, thanks for the insight Solcrushed. =)

As always, thanks for the insight Solcrushed. =)

Leona's not going to be needing big changes, right? She's been solid for years. If anything, she sets the bar for Vanguards - great durability, great CC, great initiation power, weak damage.