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*Sigh* Vel'koz changes

Verdade··43 votes·4,724 views

At first i liked Vel's changes on PBE but once i was able to play him... I am Vel'koz main with over 300k mastery, 62% W/L ratio, both as support and mid. Good work rito, there were like 5 threads at same time with titles like "Leave Vel'koz alone" "Vel'koz is fine" and similar, you didn't listen.

Q Mana refund was absolutely unnecessary and its just eating his power budget. Vel'koz never had mana problems, also i thought you wanted him to use Q more in lane and reinforce Vel's geometry patterns, but this change is in the opposite direction. It promotes firing Q straight at minions, getting mana and gold in process and if you're lucky or enemy is bad you get damage on enemy champion at random... If you wanted him to use Q more in lane and use the splits (geometry) it should be like "secondary projectiles deal 15% more damage" or "secondary projectiles restore mana on champion hit" if you wanted to add regen to his kit.

W/E Ratio nerfs and passive ratio buff is fine. It promotes more combo-oriented playstyle, which is fine by me. Decreases his waveclear as he's not able to use single W to clear the wave.

Ultimate. Seriously?!

  1. adding inconsistency do champion (passive now reads all spells except R proc it...)

  2. his R is much less reliable as punishment for overextending. You could do flash->R under enemy turret to get 1-2 ticks and kill your enemy, especially if he already had stacks. You can't do this now, as his R now hits like wet noodle without passive proc'd.

  3. his WER combo feels terrible. And here's why: Biggest counter to Vel's R is mobility. Because of this you want to use R on E'd target. You already know if you're going to hit your WE combo before it lands, so you ult before it lands so you get more damage from it, in case enemy tries to flash. So basically you use WER but your R hits first, then he gets first W tick, E knockup, second W tick and your ultimate is almost half way done. With old Vel'koz R it would work perfectly, as it doesn't matter in which order you use his abilities.- stacks apply regardless of ability order. Now you get screwed, because if you try to this, half of your ultimate deals magical and the other half true damage, which is HEAVY DAMAGE NERF. When you want to ult someone now, you need to wait until your W procs the second time, which is completely ridiculous, as they will just easily flash/dash away or CC you. In other words, i was able to gut Zed in lane, if i was able to predict his movements. I'd just WER him and he would be probably dead before i finish my R. Now is my damage much more delayed, meaning he can just dash away with his stupid shadow, dodging most of my R damage.

What do i propose? I don't care about Q changes much, W/E changes are fine, passive is fine. I wouldn't care much if you removed refund but it doesn't matter too much. But please, revert ultimate changes. You want it to be powerful? It already was powerful. Let it proc passive and completely remove its AP ratio. It procs his passive 5 times, 5 x 0.33 x 0.4 is 0.6, which means AP ratio remains unchanged to what it was before. His R would just be old "Channel lazor, dealing 500/750/900 damage over 2.5 seconds, proccing his passive every 0.5s"

EDIT:

So here's damage distribution of WER combo

OLD 80% of your burst is in first 1.5 seconds, and in these 1.5 seconds your target is mostly stunned so he can't do anything about that. The rest (1 second) is just your R firing off, not proccing anything, just doing its ability damage. NEW You need to wait until both E lands and W procs twice, and THEN you press your R. This means your "BURST" is long 3 seconds and damage is spread more evenly. This means interrupting/dashing out of it is much easier...

W+E damage is decreased by 0.025AP, R damage is decreased from 1291+0.6AP to 950+1.0 AP. The difference between true and magical damage is non-existent, barring masteries that reduce damage by %. Vel'koz always build full MRpen, meaning he dealt true damage to everything below 80 or 89 MR, depending on rune setup. His primary targets were always squishies in back line, NOT TANKS.

TLDR: He hits for less and his burst is spread out instead of being front-loaded, which is devastating for immobile squishy mage

EDIT2: http://i.imgur.com/JpgIRIx.png http://i.imgur.com/mwOoo8D.png Fancy graphs comparing old combo, new combo and delayed new combo over 2.75 seconds Old and new combo breaks even at roughly 500 AP

51 Comments

MorgManBasher11 votes

Not sure why you are being downvoted. As someone that use to love vel'koz mid and support I am never playing him again.... He feels so nerfed into the ground... Like, disgustingly weak. Going back to zyra who feels pretty much the same, but with a nice buff to her movement speed. Love the zyra changes <3

Verdade6 votes

Yep, im going to play Zyra/Brand/Bard instead of Vel... it's a shame what they did to him

Jezbo4 votes

I quit Vel'Koz support because of this patch. 6 games is enough to show me how stupid his build path is now. I tried Brand but it seems like the same story. It's too combo oriented.

Verdade2 votes

It just seems like they want kill poke/pressure support mages

ModAcademy Kayn1 votes

Ya mean Mages with a Sightstone bot? Because those are sure a pleasure to fight...

Verdade2 votes

Because fighting Thresh or Soraka is pleasure, RIGHT?! Mage supports are very vulnerable to all-ins and strong sustain because they are squishy and lack sustain themselves.

A Miss Fortune1 votes

Zyra changes were really good. She still feels like Zyra, but significantly more reliant on her plants rather than her Q/E combo.

Ulquiorra99510 votes

And another case of Rito "fixing" what was perfectly fine in the first case and trying to pass it of as a "success in giving the champion a strategic niche".

I guess they just want us to play someone like Zed or Lee. We know those fuckers aren't receiving any meaningful changes until this game dies.

Verdade6 votes

They changed basically nothing about his playstyle, he's the same as before. They just made his R combos more awkward and butchered support build. Thanks rito.

He's supposed to be combo siege mage, and they wanted to nerf his waveclear and promote combo/geometry patterns. Guess what they did? Waveclear untouched, on the contrary, buffed thanks to Q refund. Geometry/Q usage decreased as it is more of farming than poking tool in early game. His R gets butchered, breaking his main WER combo. Good work on your goals rito.

Ulquiorra9956 votes

One of the worst things for me is that they've taken away his unique build path and holed him into a generic AP-heavy build. True, his play style might be similar in the sense that his spells feel more or less the same - but at the same time it's way different because of the way he does it.

And Rito taking a perfectly fine champions, setting goals for update and end up achieving the exact opposite of this goals while also managing to make the champion feel significantly weaker and less satisfying to play as? Man, what a surprise! That surely didn't happen before.

What Rito failed to realize in their attempts to make Vel a tank shredder is that he already was one due to his ability to output constant, target-neutral damage due to his build including penetration and CDR as stats favoured over raw AP. Honestly, looking at some of these champions (mainly Vel and Viktor) I have to wonder if anyone in Riot has a slightest clue about them.

{quoted} What do i propose? I don&#039;t care about Q changes much, W/E changes are fine, passive is fine. I wouldn&#039;t care much if you removed refund but it doesn&#039;t matter too much. But please, revert ultimate changes. You want it to be powerful? It already was powerful. Let it proc passive and completely remove its AP ratio. It procs his passive 5 times, 5 x 0.33 x 0.4 is 0.6, which means AP ratio remains unchanged to what it was before. His R would just be old &quot;Channel lazor, dealing 500/750/900 damage over 2.5 seconds, proccing his passive every 0.5s&quot;

Amen to this. This single change would have met goals they wanted much better than all the shit they've put together.

Verdade2 votes

While i agree on Vel'koz doing great against tanks/bruisers, his primary target is always backline. He's strong against tanks thanks to his Q zoning (that thing hurts, also it has very strong slow) and MRpen builds, but he always builds that MRPen so that he deals true or close to true damage to squishies, as his ratios aren't that great.

ModAcademy Kayn1 votes

Question, what was Velkoz's "Unique buildpath" you say was now changed. I don't understand why Rylai's and Liandries aren't still good on him, if you don't mind explaining?

Ulquiorra9951 votes

First and most obvious is how his damage pattern has changed. Old Vel would go for several procs of passive over the course of the fight to maximize his damage output. This allowed him to go for penetration and CDR and output constant, target neutral damage.

New one, however, will want to proc his passive once and then follow up with ult for maximum damage - thus ending up far more reliant on AP to do his job. Where the old Vel would proc passive 3 times on someone, new one will do so once - thus needing lots of AP to compensate.

Second and less obvious is that both of those items were nerfed for his ultimate - while the beam itself applies those effects as an AoE, passive procs that it inflicted still applied them at full strenght.

ModAcademy Kayn1 votes

When you say Fight, can you clarify by whether you mean fighting his lane Opponent, or fighting a Teamfight. Personally, my opinion, I'd say that his TeamFight is relatively the same. If you caught someone out with E, or someone else did, you unload whatever you had then ult from a safe position.

I can see though, how new Velkoz has changed in skirmishing his Lane Opponent. Poking wise, he'll probably stay within the idea of W and Q, with an E if the situation presents itself, but fighting itself? My experience with Velkoz, I always aimed for a single passive proc, than back off to reserve my CD's. I never fought a consistent fight with an opponent that got me 3 Procs of my passive (Without counting his Ult, but I may have misread what you said). It was always, poke till low, than aim that E.

Verdade2 votes

What? I never used W without landing E first for other purposes than waveclear, or when fighting in chokes. It's just too easy to dodge. Also in teamfights it's pretty risky to try landing E, instead you just poke with Q, use W in chokes and position yourself for maximum damage R. You save E+W for when enemies try to close the gap

Ulquiorra9951 votes

His kill pattern has changed in both of those situations. While a single passive proc would suffice for poke, when going for a kill you could apply 1-2 stacks and fire your ult to a good effect - now you are required to hit 3 (or a double W) spells to use your ultimate to the full extent. So, a kit that was once smooth and reliable in most of the situations turned into a clunky, 1-trick combo. This draws out the problem not only with Vel but with lots of updated mages; how they got clunkier and far less satifying to play in the name of "counterplay" - Vlad, Vel'koz, Viktor, Swain, Anivia.

I did count his ultimate into those 3 procs - as that passive made for a huge chunk of his damage and was what made Vel'koz what he is; when I think of that champion I think of death laser and deconstructing eneimes more and more as fight progresses. His new passive is just a glorified setup for his ultimate, thus taking another large part of Vel's uniqueness. OP edited his post to include a graph comparing new Vel to old, check it out. To sum it up, he is basically forced into going full AP now and his passive has gone from an integral part of his damage to an ult setup. I feel like he lost a huge part of his uniqueness; now he builds and plays as a generic heavy-AP, single combo mage.

Verdade3 votes

Rylai's was never good on VK, it has suboptimal stats for him (HP and AP) and his abilities already apply either slow (80% Q, 20% R) or CC (E). Getting slow on W is not enough to justify that item.

His buildpath was something like: Sorcs Guise (upgraded to Liandry much later on) Luden's Void staff Regen/CDR item situational item (hourglass on mid, sightstone support)

Not necessarily in that order.

Just with Sorcs(15MRP) and Guise (15MRP) you can ignore flat 50 MR, meaning anyone without one major MR item gets cooked by your combo. This is extremely powerful as these 2 items are very cheap, with combined cost of 2700 gold, which is far less than deathcap, while providing slight utility (MS from boots, HP from Guise). Also, not only VK's base damages are good to support this, both Thunderlords and Luden's have high base damage and poor scaling, meaning they work extremely well with MRPen.

I've mentioned it works very well on support, but most people don't know how well it works... Let's say you get Sorcs when you get level 6. At this point if you land WER on enemy champion you deal like 1.1-1.3k damage. How much HP do champions have at level 6? Between 700 and 900. And you do this in AOE, meaning if you get that miracle WER on both ADC and support you just get double kill.

Im talking about old Vel'koz of course, because with reworked ultimate this is not applicable. With new ultimate you either activate it before it deals true damage, losing huge damage potential, or you activate after your proc your marks meaning support will CC you or they just flash away.

devdev4633 votes

They do this because riot has some pathological need for change. I hope paragon is good enough to steer me away from league :/

A Loyal Support8 votes

nods head in agreement

zavtacular8 votes

VK main here too, I'm not sure why you are getting downvoted either, I think you mentioned a lot of good issues that have come up due to the recent changes. One thing I haven't seen anyone mention is that the target indicator on the q was supposed to be hidden for everyone but VK, this would have made his q much more difficult to predict and would be a decent buff. I also agree that the R was better when it applied stacks as well, my only thoughts are change it back or drastically increase the time someone stays 'researched' as in like maybe a minute or longer. This would allow him to research some targets before the fight when people are still poke dancing.

Verdade4 votes

I saw it in changes back when it was on PBE. Removing that indicator has both pros and cons when playing against Vel. When there is that indicator, newbies always assume it HAS to reach that far, so they try to dodge it by moving towards Vel. Then they get hit by second activation and they're confused what happened. On the other hand, its removal is very punishing for more experienced (but not VK mains) as that ability has ridiculous range, even more when angled. But i agree, removing it was unnecessary.

Also, R changes nerfed Liandry, Rylais and DFT. R applied AOE version of these effects, but when passive popped it applied stronger, single-target version of these effects.

Verdade6 votes

That's it, im done with this. Last game i was playing support, my R was always aviable because i could never fire it off when i needed to (as opposed to pre-patch)... At first i was pretty happy as there was alistar laning against me, and you know, R now ignores his R... or so i tought. New Vel's R does laughable damage even on researched targets so i was never able to kill him... Also, there was this Lee Sin running from me, he had like 100 hp and i had one W charge... of course it didn't kill him because of the ratio nerf. I had to flash and ult him, first tick killed him. Seriously, this is garbage and im thinking about ending with league as a whole.

Richtard6 votes

It's so sad that so many people begged Riot not to change Vel'Koz's playstyle before the patch, but unsurprisingly they didn't listen.

MXXXXXL5 votes

Riot should make Strawpolls for design changes like Vel'Koz's (Not in terms of balance but if the Vel'Koz player base would enjoy pre rework R or post rework R).

Verdade12 votes

There's a huge problem tho, Vel'koz changes are seen as a buff by non-VK mains (OMG ULTI AOE 1k TRUE DAMAGE WITH 1.0 AP SCALING OP OP OP) while people who understand VK's mechanics see these changes as outright nerfs. People are hyped because he deals tons of true damage, but he dealt true damage before changes too, and not with just his R but with his whole kit. Anyone with less than 80/89 MR took true damage from VK...

I think same would apply to other mechanically difficult champions (Heck, that kennen 6.25s duration -> 6s duration seems like nothing but its huge for him). The problem is his player base is kinda small, so few people arguing aren't going to change a thing... which is sad.

MXXXXXL1 votes

I guess i didn't make it clear enough in my original post, i meant that the Vel'Koz player base gets to vote, maybe Riot could hide ratios so people vote based on the design and idea and not how strong it is.

Verdade1 votes

Oh right, that could work. But its not going to happen, when did they revert their mistakes? :/

MXXXXXL1 votes

Dominion.

strut1 votes

I hope it won't take years this time

Timid Togekiss2 votes

I hate to piggyback on your post about Vel'Koz, having never really played him, but Anivia, Cassiopeia and Viktor seemed to have the same thing happen. It seems as though the people on the balance team did not have the same understanding of these champions and their playmaking abilities as we dedicated players do, leading to changes which seem bizarre, clunky, and unneeded.

(As an Anivia player myself, I understand the immense power, damage, and control a decent Vel'Koz could have over his lane. But I also think that his changes were unjustified and he was in a good place, no matter how many times he beat me pre-6.)

Hopefully together, as mains of the four champions, we can get Riot's attention even though individually each champion has a relatively small playerbase.

Karma Deified5 votes

A moment of silence and reinforcement for not buying RP this season.

Rengar Cassiopeia Mordekaiser Skarner Quinn KogMaw Shen MalzaharViktor Cassiopeia Anivia Vladimir SwainVelkoz

Br4ndon5 votes

I don't know why vel'koz was even reworked. He was fine how he was and now hes always going to be weak with his current kit. Numbers will not fix fundamental problems, buffing or nerfing his numbers will always just create huge power spikes that will need to be dealt with immediately. The only reason you would ever have to play velkoz over ziggs or lux is if hes OP.

Verdade1 votes

There are 4 siege mages, all of them are unique Ziggs - bomb lobbing lunatic, the only siege mage with escape, but has limited burst when compared to the others. Also great for fastpushing and punishing enemy when he roams/goes b. Lux - best at getting picks via her Q->combo, longest effective range Vel'koz - Lazor squid combo mage capable of huge teamfight damage, works best when defending, also lazors Xerath - definiton of poke mage. Terrible otherwise, but man, that poke

ModAcademy Kayn1 votes

I'm still not certain you'd classify Velkoz as Siege. Only his Q had long range with the use of Geometry, since his W isn't that long. I'd classify Velkoz more of Wombo-Combo type mages, that deal lots of AOE damage, while he also has some kiting ability.

Verdade1 votes

Well, the rest of combo mages are rather short ranged and you could say Lux is combo based too, QER hits like truck as well

ModAcademy Kayn1 votes

Lux is a mixed of Wombo Combo and Siege. She has range to Siege/Catch people and Burst to pack it all up.

Goosetard4 votes

Great thread. I'm glad it's getting attention. I tried really hard to like/defend the changes, but they feel absolutely horrible to play with. I have a lot of graphs and math to back up your (our) conclusions. Let me know if/what you want to see and I'll get it to you.

Verdade2 votes

Just post it here so people can see it. Also im curious about how will these changes affect his win/play rate. He was sitting at 52-54% as mid laner, roughly 50% as support. I think it will be going down, quickly, considering many new players will try to pick him up after flashy true damage ultimate changes.

CamouflagedVirus4 votes

I agree with this thread entirely. Vel'Koz is a much weaker champ now since this change. People who don't play Vel'Koz jump out of the bush and scream that "true dammage is so much better for him" without even understanding the mechanics to them. All they see is numbers, and assume he is dealing a lot of damage. In truth, he is not. He is no longer a threat to the bot lane due to them not having to worry about his ult knicking them from under tower since it is so weak now. This kind of thing got me to stop playing ranked for now. I can't handle a change like this to a champ I had loved for so long now. They took his only perk away, and now he is just some squishy fuck who dies in a couple hits.... RIP Vel'Koz....RIPitem 3070

Verdade1 votes

I feel you brother :/

McKeifus3 votes

Riot shit the bed across the board with these mage changes. No idea what they were thinking.

Le Dauphin2 votes

Agree with everything you said. Having to delay firing the ultimate feels very disappointing.

I'm not playing Vel'koz to melt tanks, I'm playing Vel'koz because I like shooting my giant laser into the enemy team.

Lumpy13372 votes

u also lose alot of dmg once u put a point in ur ult cause now they get researched and while thats up ur passive stops procing on said target so ur losing out on ur passive dmg entirely which leads to stoping dmg entirely for 7 secs another dps loss if u want to deconstruct them again to top that all off his ult hits like a garden hose now yeah the ap scaling is nice now and the true dmg while researched is a neat concept i dont wanna put a point in my ult till lvl 16 so i can enjoy my passive till late game and by then ill have the ap to make the ult worthwhile as a velkoz main since he came out i can feel the dps loss it is obvious night and day his dmg is just awful so now all three of my fav champs have been completly ruined by terribad reworks morde vik and vel this is far and away the worst patch ive ever seen on any game idk who came up with these ideas but they should be sacked and so should the people that allowed this to make it to live

velkoz before mage patch velkoz after mage patch

Verdade1 votes

Vel's win rate dropped by over 4% in both support and mid roles...gg rito

Spellvamp Garen1 votes

I just played a game as Vel'koz support and it is pretty much unviable as a role now. His ult does very little damage, even on researched champs. It is hard enough to get 3 stacks and then to drop an ult on the target and watch them laugh at you? Forget it.

Please revert the changes. Nothing about him feels good right now. This rework feels like a complete failure.

Verdade1 votes

Yeah, the only way to get something going is WE and hope they're just bad and stand in your R the whole time :/

strut1 votes

http://imgur.com/a4FkQaY

Verdade1 votes

Yeah, it's sad

Verdade1 votes

Buffs on PBE for VK, increasing his R damage by 0/50/100 base damage... but it won't do a thing...

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