A discussion on Diana's lack of presence in game.
Hello Everyone! Tea and Naps here, hope you're having a good day, enjoy the read!
TLDR: Rework Diana's ultimate to give her more mobility.
I feel like Diana has joined the ranks of Urgot and Sion (sorry you two!) as a champion that is very rarely seen. I had actually literally forgotten she existed until I was scrolling through the shop looking for a new champ to pick up.
That being said I'd like to look at why people don't play her so if you've tried her please feel free to leave your experience below as I am about to do.
I've played Diana around 15-20 times across all my accounts over the last week or so and I feel like her fundamental flaw is very similar to Fiora's, she has no escapes!
For a melee champion to have no escapes is pretty rough, even more rough if they have no CC. This is akin to removing Elise's rappel and her stun, it leaves the character heavily balanced in the offensive with nothing for defense. If you look at Fiora and Diana they're actually very similar in their champion concepts. They both have gap closers, slightly defensive abilities (that are still used to deal damage) and if fed they snowball very hard. But, like fiora, if Diana doesn't get fed then she doesn't do well and she falls off late game pretty hard.
Thats great and all and I kind of see what you're saying but why is it important!
Well I like Diana and simply put I'd like to put her in the spotlight to get some minor quality of life changes to make her a competitive top laner, or at least make someone else think about her and maybe they'll eventually write the post that convinces Riot to look at her.
Well what do you have in mind as far as changes go?
Giving Diana an escape would solve the problem but could you imagine a fiora with an escape? Its worse then yasuo, Diana would be zipping around the battlefield dumping out damage and preventing any counter-play with her shield. BUT! There is a key difference between Fiora and Diana, Diana's gap closer is her ultimate and has a much higher CD then Fiora's Q.
Diana CD on R (Her gap closer) 25/20/15 Fiora CD on Q (Her gap closer) 16/14/12/10/8
To me this means that there is a chance to add a new mechanic that would give Diana the mobility she needs to be a relevant top laner without creating an unstoppable beast. What I propose is that her ultimate be given a double ability. The first cast of her ultimate is called "Waxing" this is her standard gap closer that still does damage, and the second ability is called "Waning" where she jumps to an ally, minion, ward, etc. Waning would only trigger if her target for Waxing had the moonlight debuff on her, otherwise the cooldown would be started. If Waning is triggered then she has 8 seconds to use the ability before it goes on cooldown, similar to leesin's abilities.
I feel like this synergizes really well with her toolkit and would allow for her to see competitive play (or just... regular play, I want her to see REGULAR play, haha).
With these changes her damage would take a pretty big hit because before Diana could ultimate twice in a row (on a target with moonlight). I think this is just another easy fix, remove the double ult ability and up her AP scaling on her ult from 60% to 80%.
I know this was really long to read and if anyone got to here you deserve a prize of some sort, too bad the only thing I can offer you is this beautiful face.
