Let's talk about Rakan! (Solo Lane & Support)

Hello! Cinnamon here, hope you're having a great day!

Without further delay let's address my current Rakan comments as a Rakan OTP (Laner).

(I am only playing Rakan at the moment, anybody else is either picked because Rakan isn't going to find success in the draft-mode Ranked/Normal game or because he was picked by somebody else)

So, Rakan is similiar to Thresh/Kayle when it comes to him having Ranged or Melee auto attack animations. This is dependant on how close you are to your target. (Whether this is closer to Kayle or Thresh mechanically, I cannot say. I can, however, say that the kiting functionality and fluid kiting of his range auto-attacks put him visibly near Kayle and thus I believe should be treated as such thematically outside of Support.)

The first problem I am seeing here is, why is he barred from Tiamat purchasing but is allowed to take Runaan's Hurricane? I currently only play Mid/Top Rakan and whilst I can admit that he is a Support, I have found amazing success and enjoyment from playing him in those lanes since his debut onto the PBE. (Previously I had pretty much quit when Galio's Rework came out, I came back and stayed solely for Xayah, and ended up loving Rakan tenfold that. Hell, I love the dude more than Katarina who I have a collective 1million mastery over several accounts & Years of dedication too!)

Now, getting onto the issues at hand more in-depth, why is Tiamat disabled? Let's delve into this a little more. His biggest issue as a Solo laner is the fact he has absolutely abyssal waveclear, leaving him only able to buy Runaan's or GLP; The former which has no real functionality or scaling unless you are investing into Nashor's Tooth. (I have not tested if Runaan's gives him more seconds shaved off of that juicy passive) However, you only would ever want Nashor's Tooth as your slotted Attack Speed item and not the two combined on Rakan as he needs his slots open for other items.

Were you to ever go Nashor's route as he scales with Attack Speed, AP & Cooldown Reduction - Despite the clear weaknesses this provides, he does play very well around a "Kite & Sustain" playstyle (See: Rakan's Q & Passive). Nashor's tooth does grant help on waveclearing, but it is very minimal when everyone can buy Tiamat in Top lane or just has better waveclearing capabilities with their Kit/GLP or even both. GLP on Rakan is nice... But Gunblade provides the damage you're missing, the extra sustain (30~ per auto attack, about 40-50 on a Q every 6/4/2 seconds respectively) and the AD to farm under tower. Now, GLP is a good team-comp item and something I'd build on Rakan more often... but in Ranked setting let's face it - You want to be carrying your team by grabbing the priority targets (See: Rakan grabs ADCs and makes them melt like butter with AP, 50% on all abilities across the board gives him exactly the damage + Gunblade & Thunderlords to burst squishies.) In a higher elo setting (See: Plat 2 or higher) I would probably be rushing GLP 100% every game.

Further more, he is a close-quarters combatant (or Mid-Range chip/kite sustainer) and if he were to ever go an off-meta build, you would really want to use Titanic Hydra and not Runaan's. (Mostly in Top lane, Tiamat is good enough to waveclear for Mid and doesn't hurt your build path too much, as I've played enough Riven Mid games (130k Mastery)/Melee AP Scalings (Katarina) to note this).

So the choice between one over the other when the former is incredibly important in all the areas Rakan needs to see viability as a Solo Laner (He is currently absolutely dead weight as a Support during laning phase and hasn't got anything going for him from laning phase. Solely because of the way Bottom Lane works. -in my opinion combined also a collective of other's who feel he's gonna need some more work until he functions as the Enchanter-theme-), either as a laner or Support.

I've put a lot of time into Rakan, having almost Mastery 7 (proving to be difficult because the score only accepts an S rank if I have 150-200 CS) and quickly climbing the ladder of points. (Currently Gold 1, previous Plat 2 cap as a Utility Mid Laner). I'm quickly also beating out any other pocket-pick that I would pick on the side when Katarina wasn't feeling it in my mind. (boy do I have a lot of those)

Some other issues to address are:

Rakan's Passive: This Passive has a cooldown of (Lv.1) 40 to 31 (lv.7), this is far too high for a champion who is supposed to reduce it by landing Q, Auto-Attacks & his W (Multi-hit ability). That's basically 3, 4 or 5 seconds reduction, not very rewarding mana costs for a shield value of (lv.1) 33 to 111 (lv.7) base, then +90% AP. At lv.7 it's fine, but early game it seems a bit too weak, or is it just me? One auto attack removes the shield and you have two people hitting you at least 4-6 times during your W or when you looking for Qs. The other issue with this passive is that it's suggesting you look for Auto-Attacks in the most optimal settings that you can afford to auto-attack for, but NONE of this Kit allows you to use Auto-Attacks. Q Range is much farther than his Auto-Range (900 max skillshot range & 300 Auto-Attack range) and you do not want to be looking for exchanges early game where you can take hard damage from autos/spells. W doesn't allow you to auto-attack during any part of this animation, most likely so that you don't abuse your own CC. E, duh, doesn't let you Auto-Attack either, unless you are willing to play with fire and let your carry either die where applicable or leave your shield range whilst you hit that one auto for a minor reduction of 1 second, not worth it. R only lets you hit melee-animation autos, yeah, no. More on that later. The only time I see me constantly refreshing this shield is when the opponent just doesn't bother to punish me for being within 300 auto-attack range and stands there letting me wail on them with my Q + Attack speed runes (some MUs are better with Attack Speed (14%+AD or just 20% + Mpen) than flat AP + AP/CDR per level)

Rakan's Q: heal scaling on level just makes no sense at all. Every other enchanter has a really decent or strong initial healing tool and is bolstered significantly by the current Support item purchases - but Rakan gets locked out by having +7(?) base value a level and a really good source of scaling FROM Ability Power. Sure, on paper, his late-game Q/Mid-Game Q with CDR+AP is incredibly brutal - But none of that matters when he's unable to perform in the laning phase (As a Support) to achieve such glorified numbers.

Rakan's W: The end lag on this animation is absolutely horrible and really needs a second or decimal seconds shaved off of it, too many times will you find yourself frozen on the spot after landing your CC but unable to follow-up with a Q, Auto-Attack, your Ultimate or even freakin' move before the CC ends and they can all kill you because you are not permitted to move until they do execute you. You absolutely are forced to either R > W (Confirm) or R > W (Dash through as far as you can and still get confirmation CC (or missing it for Charm trajectory reasons) by charming them into the knock-up, which in turn saves you from getting shafted because they are CC'd). Strangely enough using E>W seems to smooth out the animations of his W, not sure if this is intended? I do not notice any buffering issues in that instance. Also, the base damage on this thing sucks for all it's worth (From a Support perspective, again). Yes, it's a hard skillshot to land, but Nami's Q caps at 295 + 50% AP which does not require her to throw her body into the fray for a confirm, she at least has some relative distance to keep her safe.

Rakan's E: The distance of his combination patterns of skill rotations do not match-up when Xayah is not present in the game, which I understand is a bonus but why are we stuffing Rakan even more in the functionality department and allowing him to basically only exist when Xayah is in the game? (Hint: Because she'll solo the lane and doesn't care about Rakan's weaknesses enough, she sets up everything for him to play from and hardly even needs him to begin with. Done a lot of these playing as Xayah or Rakan, or playing Rakan with my Diamond Xayah Main.) There are so many consistency issues with rotations of differing orders that mess up solely because Q either needed to be cast at a closer proximity or because his W goes too far out to get back to his team and help keep everone - including Rakan - alive.

Rakan R: The base damage is far too low for a Support in my opinion (50 difference should be added). Doesn't every Support have a good lv.6 base of 150+? (See: Nami 150 base. Karma 225 base at lv.6 including explosion which is 150. Sona 150 base. Braum 150 base. Thresh 250 base.) Edit: Rakan cannot perform his ranged auto-attacks during this Ultimate, which is supposed to just be an Aura that charms everyone. (It uses his homeguard running animation because of the speed buff, which is weird enough already.) This is a super niche complaint but he IS supposed to auto-attack whenever possible, when better than when you are CHARMING MULTIPLE UNITS towards you? (reducing your shield by 1 per champion for this Ultimate alone) This is also the only time you CAN auto-attack, no other abilities allow you to Auto-Attack (because he has a low range with new Q buffs that help you stay further back as an Enchanter or because the animation does not permit you to do that (W+E).) Far too many times have kills escaped because you cannot auto-attack (Solo or Support, really annoying).

Rakan's other horrifying problem are his beyond insane initial cooldowns. The hell is up with 20 seconds across the board on all his abilities? I know there's a buff to his E on PBE, but why is his emphasised poking/sustain tool so weak alongside 20 seconds on his W?? You have a hard time laning as a Support when people are hurling spell rotations out of their ass but you can only use one rotation for every 2-3 they throw at you, making Rakan a roasted Turkey on Thanksgiving and his ADC the toxic "I main flame". Nobody wants somebody who is near-AFK because they are too busy being disabled from their Kit until every ability has at least 3-4 points and you've rushed 20% CDR. (Good luck getting CDR when you are unable to get Relic last hits, Spellthief poke and be near Ancient Coins quest reward essentially ending up taking Gold per 5 runes.)

Auto Attacks: His Auto-Attacks are actually very smooth and fluid for what they are worth, I love the ability to be able to use them when his moves aren't getting in my way. They are very good at kiting and work amazingly well with attack speed, hence why it's a good stat for him and probably why it was added to his passive - Just a shame he's too squishy as a Support (not Laner, he's fine in that regard) to even get auto-attacks. The only issue here is that his auto-attack range is FAR too low for an Enchanter-Type to actually use the benefits, because you'll aggro minions or just outright lose 60% of your health bar trying to get an auto-attack in (On any lane.) My suggestion would be to, ignoring most other things, change his AA's to throw his compact at an enemy champion (500 or higher like other Supports) and have to wait for it to return before he can throw another one or he throws out a feather projectile similar to Xayah's feathers (so that this works with his cape animation & Xayah's W buff.)

Rakan is essentially forced to be a "Bad Janna Player" and sit back, watching (and praying) his ADC gets caught just so that he can find the time to engage and switch the table on his opponent - But only because they have none of their spell rotations or auto-attack timers to punish him so hard that he throws out a free sack of 400/300g to the ADC (Or a Support, I know what some of your kind is like ! ;P) I don't think this is a good playstyle to be enforcing and Riot has noted hundreds of times that inactive gameplay is not what they want.

All in all, I'm not asking for everything here, I'm just writing down all the grey areas and things that can be improved, they don't all need improving, he just needs some. He has a 39%(?) winrate right now and that's just awful for his early game when the game is built around 15-25 minute game times, where Rakan only -just starts- becoming potent at around the 25~ minute marker.

I know that this all started from Tiamat and went to the whole Support/Playstyle thing, I'm not really trying to bias-beg for buffs to his solo lane (he honestly only needs Tiamat it's his only excruciating weakness that costs you a lot of games and flame from teammates. Everything else is a Support/Gameplay issue which I tried to emphasise.)

His Solo Laning, however, is a totally different topic of discussion and I thoroughly enjoy how his kit works in a Solo-Lane/With a Jungler (Pray I ever actually get one that isn't busy flaming my ass for going Rakan Top/Mid.)

He can survive/win trades by relying on his ranged auto attacks and pick up sustain after his first back (because AP items/Mana Idol), which also works with his AP Passive Shield timer (Has a whopping 90% Ratio, should probably get gutted because it does make his Mid/late-game as a Solo-Laner to be pretty disgustingly oppressive when it is up so often and negates so much damage; despite this being his biggest saving grace for Solo/Support.)

Final thoughts/Personal discussion:

Sure, I'm an experienced "Meta-Breaker", playing the likes of Janna Mid/Top to Plat 2 and so forth, not to toot my own horn - Just people would obviously want a record of the statistics, surely? I dunno. Seemed worth noting. I play a lot of "weird stuff", having to give up on the likes of Nami/Janna Mid because the flame becomes too much to keep as a burden. Sure, I shouldn't let people get me down when I know I can perform very well - But when people are trolling you and force-inting your lane in Ranked because you didn't pick "their idea of flavour/strong/broken freelo picks" - It starts to get very exhausting. Riot likes to give us a nice helping hand and showcases League's creative side, but this is constantly enabling us to pick these things without making it very clear abusing actually serious players to an almost suicidal degree (Yes, being abused 30 games a total by up to 9 other players can bring serious depression about when you're just trying to have a serious game with a quirky pick. I don't mean to sound sensitive, I think anyone would start doubting themselves to such a level after playing since Season 2 with quirky picks like this.) and not inexperienced/troll inters seems to be a lacking focus there. You can also make the argument that taking Janna/Nami/AP Jhin Mid in Diamond/Plat showcases I'm "not taking the game seriously", but I think that's debunked by the fact I am taking this stuff seriously and do want to climb. These days I find myself just wanting to stay in Gold 1 because I rarely get flamed and the Ranked environment aids me by not making my game experience horribly catatonic. (from the player "feedback").

All of this information I'm discussion is based solely on my experience as a player from Season 2, playing in various elos such as Master, Diamond, Platinum, Gold & Silver/Bronze. Each game is different, but the same issues seem to affect Rakan in every game, regardless of where he's picked. If anything, Solo Lane actually gives Rakan players something to look forward too, instead of this steep hill he seems to experience playing as a Support.

PS: I'm sorry for such a long post and I am willing to discuss anything & everything with everyone on this Boards, happy days to you and I hope you're having a good day!

Edit: Forgot to note that Rakan seems heavily designed around coring Athenes as a rush, whether as a Mid or Support(?)

Sincerely, Cinnamon.