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Just what exactly is riot going to be doing to Poppy? 5 questions.

Linna Excel··4 votes·745 views

Sion level undertaking and complete rework doesn't sound promising. Do you guys have any initial thoughts you can give us on what you want to do to her?

  1. Will she still be a hypercarry style champ that thrives in the lategame and can go crazy on the other team if fed (pre-nerf Jax lite)?
  2. Will she still be able to scale with either AD, AP, or tankiness? As phreak said, it's viable on Poppy.
  3. Currently she can go top, jungle, or support (I've seen a diamond player take her mid on a smurf and beat ziggs) After the rework will her laning roles be the same or more limited?
  4. Right now, part of her weakness is she has a lot of bad matchups, will that be the case after rework? If not, what kind of power tradeoff are we looking at?
  5. What can we expect to gain and lose from the Poppy rework. Most importantly what do you all perceive has her core gameplay in riot-land and what does riot see as the big plusses and minuses of her kit?

25 Comments

The Queen Viper4 votes

Considering the quality of RITO reworks, she will most likely end up being less viable than what she currently is.

MrBuffington3 votes

My guess is that they're evening out her power curve, so she's not as glaringly weak early and not as insanely powerful late. Looking over Poppy's kit, it seems like she's just accumulated these sort of band-aid fixes (like how her Q bonus damage randomly has an upper cap, or how her mana costs and mana pool are really at odds), so I'm expecting a lot to change with her kit. I'm assuming they'll keep at least some aspect of her E; I feel like it's pretty iconic and not as broken or awkward as say, her passive or her ult. I feel like a lot of her power budget is used on her passive, and I'd rather see that given a more regular feel and that power put into other aspects of her kit.

I'm assuming they'll keep her as a Jax-style carry/off-tank, similar to how pre and post relaunch Sion is supposed to be a crazy tank with good CC. Given the lack of new jungle champions recently, I get the feeling they might align her more with the jungler role, like they did with Sion. They said the Poppy update won't be as major as Sion's, so I'm hoping they keep some of the elements of her kit, but there's very little counterplay to her ult and her passive is pretty strange, as well a lot of her kit seems a bit dated, so fingers crossed that we get a cool champion after all's said and done

Linna Excel1 votes

I wouldn't hate it if she were more of a jungler, but jungler/tops can be interchangable. However I know she does has some loyal support fans and after what riot did to me, I'd hate to see them get crapped on. I'd understand it if riot moves away from that, but I'd still want to fight for them.

I know her E is iconic, but to me, her Q is really important to her gameplay as well. IMO her E sort of sets you up for a free Q if played right. The problem is, as much as she's a burst champ, a lot of people play her DPS AD/AS as well with the Q mainly to mix up the type of damage you deal. That's kind of what's upsetting me about the rework... there's just too many directions for her to go and as of now, she's not really a focused champ. That's one of her biggest strengths: she can adapt well to her circumstances and what the team needs of her.

Jungle Lux God2 votes

If she is the hypercarry style champ that thrives in the lategame, then she will likely have a weak early game and, very likely, will have a lot of bad matchups. I think Riot would be very likely to keep Poppy as a lategame champ as well.

I have a feeling that Riot will keep at least some sort of scaling on all three, but her ratios will likely only support more of a bruiser pattern with either AD or AP. She might have good AD ratios and not have any AP ratios, or she may have strong AD ratios but not have any sort of AD scaling and little support for auto attacking.

I think there are three things that Poppy would lose: Ult, passive, and W. Poppy's ultimate provides very little counterplay, her passive has a severe lack of clarity, and her W is basically just a stat stick. However, I would not be surprised to see an ultimate that slightly resembled Poppy's current ult, given its counterplay is improved.

Linna Excel1 votes

The question is how do they change her ult or what do they replace it with? Do they give her 6 seconds of 90% damage reduction and CC immunity? Do they make something more offensive?

Jungle Lux God1 votes

If Poppy's new ultimate has any sort of resemblance to her current ult, then it would likely have, at the most, tenacity and damage reduction instead of immunity to damage and crowd control, and even having the tenacity might be a stretch.

UPfreely2 votes

If they take away her burst i will be very sad

Marthian1 votes

For one, her ult is definitely going away. The clear choice in team fights is to ult the person that does the least damage, then go wail on the carry/ies without taking serious damage.

Hellhammer1 votes

I try to put it on someone who isn't going to CC me to death, and someone who's mind is off to mars tho I'm more of a fan about using it to declare someone dead.

Fried Noob1 votes

All that has really been said about it is that her ult and (possibly) her passive are gone and her E will remain. Also, don't expect her to remain viable with AP, AD, and tankiness. Poppy will most likely become an AD champion.

Spacesuit Spiff1 votes

Just want to point out that even though AP and Tank poppy are both viable, that's more an inherent trait of Poppy herself, not so much those builds. If you manage to get 4 items done on her she's going to be an absolute monster no matter what, and just because she can stand toe to toe with mages and tanks at that point doesn't mean it's worth the trouble of getting that much gold on a champ that struggles early.

As for the rework, I want to see her ult get some counterplay while still being interesting, so that it's a team effort to deal with it. There are already solutions to it (lots of picks will make her hate life) but it's pretty unfair that if one person craps the bed by picking Mundo or Blitz instead of Tris or Nami, the whole team suffers. W should also be replaced with something else; it's pretty boring and it's 3 purposes (speed boost, steroid, sheen proc) are at odds with each other in a totally uninteresting way. The passive should stay, at the end of the day it's really a lot like the Diana/Yasuo/Azir passives in that it dictates what stat she scales well with (because obviously her stats are balanced around the passive) and let's face it, getting a penta while sustaining yourself at 10% HP with lifesteal and Dangerous Game is unarguably fun.

NeoScout1 votes

knowing how anti-dota Riot is she will be able to spam her abilities early game, and her passive and ult will be drastically changed if not removed

TheI3igDaddy1 votes

I'd assume they're going to take away her disgustingly powerful lategame and tune her to not be the ultimate hypercarry.

I'd also assume (since she has a shield FFS) that they're going to keep her as 'the tanky yordle'. Look at the others; Teemo, Ziggs, Trist, Heim, Veigar, Corki, Rumble, Amumu, etc. Aside from mummy boy, tankiness is not the first thing that comes to mind for any of them.

Poppy will (and probably should) be known as the one yordle who's actually going to jump into a teamfight and start smashing people with her hammer, enough so that even Darius or Olaf will raise their eyebrows at how aggressive she is despite her size.

Linna Excel1 votes

The problem with yordle tank is threeofold:

  1. It screws over her jungle because tanks not named Sej, Nas, Mao, or Chogath can't jungle.
  2. It screws over her fans that like her as a burst assassin or damage bruiser.
  3. Why pick her over Sej, Leona, or any other tanky initiator?

However not going tank screws over the tank poppy fans for the non-tank fans.

In a way, her rework gives riot a similar problem that soraka's did: there are several groups of people who like her for different reasons.

Also it isn't like riot can rework her into a bruiser because right now, bruisers are kind of getting dumped on by riot atm and reworking her into a weak class will mean she'll either be weak when completed or she'll be nerfed soon afterward because that's how riot is treating that class of champs. So picking something in the middle of the two extremes probably shouldn't be on the table for them either.

TheI3igDaddy1 votes

Forgetting Cho'Gath as a jungler. Add him to that tank list.

Linna Excel2 votes

Done. ;)

RevyUp1 votes

I don't get what's so wrong about poppy's ultimate. It's kind of like kayle's in that it prevents damage but the person marked can still cc and do damage to poppy. For kayle she can ult any of her allies. If poppy's ult lasts too long then cant the duration be nerfed? If riot intends for poppy to kill her target cant they just make it so that she does reduced damage to champions that aren't marked?

Linna Excel2 votes

I don't get what's so wrong about poppy's ultimate.

I feel similarly but I play her every now and again.

I personally think that Trynd's ult is worse overall. Counterplay is a weird concept in practice though. I mean why is an AoE stun or knockup that hits all your team and leaves everyone defenseless against the entire other team better than one champ on your team being a wrecking ball when they can still run? Also Poppy's ult does let at least 1 person on the other team react to her. If poppy ults nami, nami can still bubble her or wave her (trading an ult for an ult is fair). So it isn't like there isn't counterplay, it just puts one person on your team on the spot.

I mean I totally get why counterplay is important to a game, but when you've got cases of this has counterplay where that doesn't is far more subjective. I mean if blitz grabs a nontank to start a teamfight, that person is dead and there's no way his team can save him short of blowing a lot of ults, even then it isn't guaranteed. If that happens, your team is left in a 4v5 that is difficult to counterplay. Yet that's considered fair by riot. So how is a team getting an advantage when someone fails to act (the person who got ulted by poppy) bad where one team getting a big advantage by someone failing to dodge (the person blitz snagged) good?

I'm not trying to pick on blitz, I just want to show how counterplay has grey areas in it. I kind of wish riot would come out and say these are skills we think have fair counterplay (trynd's ult) and these are the ones we don't (poppy's) so at least we could see their reasoning and pick their brains on that.

I guess this leads us back to what riot wants of her ult. Do they want it to be a dueling ult? Even though it isn't used that way, in a team fight her ult can be used to force a duel. Do they want her ult to be tankmode? Do they want it to be something that an assassin would love?

I can see why people hate it as it does give the poppy player a lot of options, but she seems like she was designed to maximize a player's options and adaptability.

Hellhammer1 votes

I couldn't agree more, I think people also take it for grantite that every ult is a miracle from god and perfectly placed.

  • nothing like ulting a nami only for your team to decide to kill her, while your mosh pitting in the enemy....

the problem is she isn't played out the butt like tryn or anyone else so people are clue-less on how to deal with her.

Xtremey1 votes

rito shud def. mke hre mnalss pls an ty

bad manner kid1 votes

idk even know what Poppy is supposed to do, I'm so bad at her I may as well be afk.

While I understand some people are good with her and she does snowball quite well, her kit is painful to play in general.

  1. Her wave clear is awful. No matter how fed you are, slow attack speed and single targeted hits are super boring.
  2. Her kit is basically charge and sheen hit. It's like 1.5 skills and ult timing.

She just needs a total rework. I think if they rework her like Sion she will be much more rewarding to play. Her ult could have a similar effect, but more like Trundle and less like Alistar.

Linna Excel1 votes

As I see it, Poppy's role is partly up to the player and partly up to the situation. She's sort of an "I am what I need to be" style champ.

Also I highly recommend getting a Hydra on Poppy. It scales well with your Q and gives you good wave clear. I think that's also why people get either a TF or Bork on her as well, both help her attack speed in addition to other benefits.

Hellhammer1 votes

her 2nd Item besides boots should be working towards a hydra I never have problems with wave clear. the 3rd item is usually a Bork or gunblade when I play.

Vyvuyk1 votes

I don't understand why everyone is convinced that her ult is going to be scrapped, it could easily be tweaked so that she can only damage the one she ulted keeping her lategame scary but also giving it counterplay. Personally, with rito's stance on hidden power i think that her passive is the most likely thing to be scrapped in order to let them buff her numbers.

Linna Excel1 votes

I think some devs have stated they don't like it.

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