Why Nerf Shyvana's Q?

Linna Excel·Feb 8, 2018·22 votes·2,897 views

Most shyvana players don't max Q until last and TBH, the game will probably be decided before then. So why nerf her late game of all things? Shyvana is supposed to be someone who gets very big so shouldn't any nerfs to her come to her early game to slow her down instead. For instance instead of trimming about 10 AD off of her late game, why not reduce her base AD by 5 points and increase her per level scaling a little.

The other problem with nerfing just the damage on her Q is that she can still use it to trigger press the attack very well. Once it's triggered, the Q has done its biggest benefit.

44 Comments

ProfirixFeb 9, 201811 votes

OH man, that nerf combined with the reduced AD scaling is going to crush her clear. Invade her jungle level 2 is pretty much guaranteed to burn a summoner or get a kill.

Despite their appearances, those are HUGE nerfs. By all means Riot, nerf her ability to do her job and farm/invade. One less reason to play her I guess.

FYI: they tried this nerf to Q before and reverted it because she was gimped too badly.

BobaFlautistFeb 9, 20182 votes

Seriously, her problem is her ability to delete enemy champions. She's being held up by the low defences and high damage in the game. Her first clear has never been worse.

Buff her first clear, nerf her damage to champions.

BlåbæretFeb 9, 20187 votes

Shyvana doesn't need nerfs though.

ZelorxonFeb 9, 20186 votes

First of all your max Q second, if you max E second please don't play shyvana or if you must please play her against me so i can teach you a thing or two.

Second, wavebreak and meddler have a personal beef with shyvana, if they could they would make her damage in half, but zoe is completely fine.

BlåbæretFeb 9, 201811 votes

{quoted}

First of all your max Q second, if you max E second please don't play shyvana or if you must please play her against me so i can teach you a thing or two.

Second, wavebreak and meddler have a personal beef with shyvana, if they could they would make her damage in half, but zoe is completely fine.

U dumb if you max Q second.

SlythionFeb 9, 20184 votes

idk the reasoning, I just want to point out that Zelor here doesn't seem to be completely wrong. One site shows most players go Q max second while another shows W max second http://champion.gg/champion/shyvana/Jungle? http://na.op.gg/champion/shyvana/statistics/jungle

I personally haven't played Shyvana since devourer meta, so maybe you could explain rather just calling people dumb?

Anu3isIIFeb 9, 20184 votes

Since her last changes to her Dragonform, maxing E provides high amounts of burst damage. Moreover, she buids very little AD and more On-hit effects, making her Q bonus damage per rank on the low side.

SlythionFeb 9, 20182 votes

That makes perfect sense, I forgot about her E changes (oof, that fireball does hurt though). Thanks for the explanation!

ForFoxSakesFeb 9, 20181 votes

Fireball damage alone isnt always a good enough reason to just max E first. See below

ForFoxSakesFeb 9, 20182 votes

You talk about on hit items, then low Q damage while somehow ignoring the Q double on hit proc...

Anu3isIIFeb 10, 20182 votes

In a burst scenario, you want to use one rotation of your combo to murder the opponent.

Your Q doubles on hit effects all the time, my point is that ranking it up barely increases your burst damage, while her E provides solid upfront damage.

And no offence, but you seem to read selectively. I look back at my post and I clearly say upgrading Q provides low amounts of damage with every rank, not that the Q damage is low when you build On-hit effects.

ZelorxonFeb 9, 20182 votes

Don't worry they're just irrelevant players that 80 years from now they will still have learned NOTHING about the game and are here just to harass people because they know momma riot will have their back if i dare to insult them as they would 100% deserve, and since they are nobodies with no arguments they just spit out stats they can't even comprehend, and since they have no brain to formulate thought on their own they rely on somebody else to do the hard job for them.

The reasoning is extremely simple, and anybody that can perform high school math can easily understand.

Q cooldown goes down, this means more W aoe procs and more E procs, the % damage on E doesn't go up. E damage base damage goes up but it's an irrelevant amount, and since shyvana is only seeing poularity recently they see some streamer max E second or some irrelevant player from r/shyvanamains do that so they assume that is the correct way to go. They also are the same people that build frozen mallet on her and this makes me cringe as fuck since it shows completely that you understand nothing about shyvana's kit and purpose.

ForFoxSakesFeb 9, 20182 votes

It's ok, I added some real detail below to the blind E maxers who dont know why or what theyre doing while jumping on the bandwagon

Most bronze scrubs just see red and want to fight all day so E max for "more damage" is all they think about

ZelorxonFeb 9, 20181 votes

Glad to be dumb, too bad i'm the best shyvana player on the planet so i will take your opinion with the relevance it deserves.

ForFoxSakesFeb 9, 20183 votes

I have M7 on Shyv on both my accounts and maxing Q or E 2nd's answer is IT DEPENDS.

E gains more damage per level and lower CD so it's more useful for up front bursting since you likely only get 1 use of it in a gank or fight whether it's rank 1 or fully maxed the CD is still fairly high to not be spammable. AKA useful for back line dive instagibs or against assassins. E max if you plan on just smashing squishy targets all day but the benefits end here

Q max 2nd gets

More usage in prolonged fights so is much more useful against a bruiser or tank to proc your on hit items faster and lifesteal significantly more to win out
MUCH faster jungle clears if you opt for the harder farm route or are behind. Not only dooes your autos lower the CD but the lower base CD means it's up nearly every 2-3 seconds to double tap proc your hydra/tiamat, also while allowing your jungle item lifesteal more to keep you healthier while clearing
Stronger split pushing when you can Q double tap towers extremely fast where E literally does fuckall
To burn dragons, RH and baron A LOT faster. E mark provides the same damage debuff whether rank 1 or 5 which is the main damage amp vs living objectives. Multiple double tapping on an E marked target more often will melt it FAST
Q scales with AD which is all that you're building while E scales with AP that you build none of

More often than not I max Q 2nd for the above reasons. You're dumb if you just max E "because that's the way it's done" without even knowing what you want to do in the game. Even facing assassin junglers I'd often opt for Q max to be able to rip through dragons solo faster over bursting power to get the passive resists

Backup4nowFeb 9, 20182 votes

Alright, I'm gunna have to call you out here. Everyone else who thinks putting any points into q is worth it, too. First of all, M7 just means you player her a lot.

Q gets 15% ad ratio every rank you add to it. Unless you're actually facing a pure tank character like maokai, you will most likely never get more than two of these off in a single fight. How much flat AD or on-hit effects are you building to possible justify that pitiful amount of damage and those two extra on-hits? Fight's over long before that's relevant.

You should never be using q more than once against the chickens or wolves. The big krug and the single-enemy camps are the only ones where that becomes relevant. The AoE of W, E, and Tiamat is more than enough to instantly clear most camps past level 4. By the time putting points into it allows you to Q multiple times, it's irrelevant. Why would you need faster Q's when one alone does the job?

The only point that's actually valid is strong objective control, where you do actually endlessly attack and proc q multiple times. But, are you really going to max an ability just for that when it happens so infrequently and you can live without?

This sort of over-thinking is what makes me question people. E base damage is aoe, lowers the cooldown, and is generally much stronger in more situations. If you start at blue or red, it's the first ability you should take, and Q has the least priority. Maxing it first gives you an overall faster clear on the many-monster camps, followed by W for more AoE base damage. It's an obvious go-to that is almost always the right way to do it, not just "because that's the way it's done."

ForFoxSakesFeb 9, 20182 votes

So E is less relevant against all except wolves and raptors, so you'd rather justify having 40 more AoE damage against 2 of the 6 camps (7 incl scuttle where Q is used more too) rather than have faster clear with more Q against 5 of the 7? Yeah you're right with Tiamat its piss easy to clear multi monster camps, so why focus even harder in 40 damage more aoe when burnout and tiamat alone is enough to clear raptors and you can double Q the big one, same with wolves. You just made points against yourself

An extra usage of Q for 8% HP + 155% auto damage + double tiamat cleave damage vs 40 damage higher E sounds like its worth it to me against all but the squishiest champs who dont make it to the 2nd Q, which is why I said E for fighting squishies when you wont be able to use a faster CD Q.

Also if you take the Celerity rune (Sorcery secondary) you get bonus damage based on your bonus move speed. Ranking up W gives you plenty of bonus move speed which further enhances your auto attacks so Q scaling goes up with W scaling up. W scaling off of some AD as well increases your W damage on top. Speeds up your jungle clear and fighting power more than domination ever will (the secondary you seem to favor). E scaling wont go up with Celerity since you're going to be getting adaptive AD

Backup4nowFeb 9, 20182 votes

I never said E is less relevant in comparison to Q in those scenarios, just that Q is more relevant compared to itself in those different scenarios. E is still better so that you can actually give the max health damage more up-time, especially vs the single tanky enemies. What use is more on-hit procs when your E only has 50% up-time?

I reiterate the part where you will virtually never get multiple Q's off in a single fight against anything unless it's a tank or a late game bruiser, even with the rank 5 cooldown.

You also mislead by comparing an extra cast of Q to a single rank upgrade of E. You do not get "an extra usage of Q" by putting a point into it, you get an extra usage of Q maybe against the tankiest targets after getting it to rank 4 or 5, and virtually no damage outside of E and item-purchased on-hits. You will never, ever get a chance to Q multiple times against your priority targets (mages and assassins); They're long dead by then. Your Q is also extremely item-dependent, making it the least desirable skill to max until you have at least some money.

Also, I wrote improperly; my intention was not to imply that I max E first, but rather second after W and before Q.

ForFoxSakesFeb 9, 20182 votes

I know you didnt mean E max first.
I dont understand why you think having a higher E mark uptime is relevant when the mark lasts 5 seconds, yet multiple Q usages are not relevant. :/ If it's on a priority target and you cant get 2 Qs off then you wont be able to get 2 Es off with that having an even longer CD than Q

Maxing out Q earlier means you get to use 2 Qs within that 5 sec mark window on a rank 1 E, rather than trying to keep a mark uptime longer. The mark isnt the point of ranking up E, it's the base damage that matters more when diving the carries which I already talked about in my first post. E first has higher upfront burst, but Q rank has higher output any other time where the target isnt instagibbed

Look at my point on Celerity too. It adds a good chunk to Q over E

Backup4nowFeb 10, 20183 votes

The mark uptime was in reference to taking camps such as gromp/buffs/epics, mark uptime doesn't matter against champions because no fight lasts more than 3 seconds these days. In regards to fighting champions, I prefer the upfront power because there is no situation where you're able to stick to a priority target for any time at all before you die, and again, nothing but a tank will take more than one Q in a fight until late. Fights end in a flash, and focusing on dps that only kicks in after 1.5 seconds of fighting just isn't efficient in this meta.

In regards to celerity, it is a decent rune even without the bonus damage. Bonus movement speed is superb on most characters. I've just been taking domination secondary because of how overpowered the ghost ward rune is, and how it practically quadruples your early warding power for proper invasions and jungle defense. Ravenous Hunter just because I don't see anything particularly good, but i'm probably going to swap it for Ingenious because of Tiamat.

BeatzBoyFTWFeb 9, 20181 votes

[deleted]

BârdFeb 9, 20182 votes

"But the highest win rate skill order on champion.gg says max Q second! It's not my build, it's Riot's balancing and these shitty teams!"

ZelorxonFeb 9, 20181 votes

Too bad i have a 60% winrate in ranked (75% on shyv just this season, last season shyv got nerfed so i only played 2 games in flexQ that were lost surely not because of me) that would have been 100% if i didn't got trolled, since you are nothing but an insecure bad player that's trying to project his ignorance about the game on me, but since i do have facts to back my words up i don't need to spew some percentages that bad players use to make themselves feel better. I never complained in my life about garbage players in ranked, what i complain about is trolls, which is different since they intentionally attempt to lose. Opgg doesn't mean jack shit.

Oh, and cherry on top i'm the best shyvana player in the world, so your words don't even irritate me, they just make me feel sad like a child that charges towards an adult man with a toy plastic fork and seriously attempts to injure him. (Especially because said man was just walking by and minding his own business.)

And before you even reply, which you shouldnt since i'm not interested of losing my time for your amusement just to troll me with your bullshit, i don't play many ranked games just because of players like you, pretty frustrating if you ask me and the reward is non existent especially compared to the amount of effort i put into games to hardcarry 1v9 just to get flamed by horrible players that don't care about winning and are not even trying.

BârdFeb 10, 20182 votes

"best Shyvanna in the world"

Silver 5. 44% Shyvanna win rate last season.

ok buddy if you say so.

ZelorxonFeb 10, 20181 votes

Oh i see you can't even read, now the league part comes natural. OR It's not like you don't know how to read, is that you don't WANT to read.

Listen dude, you're irritating and sickening me, go find help for your insecurities somewhere else, i'm not available to help.

ZelorxonFeb 9, 20181 votes

https://clips.twitch.tv/AffluentJazzySashimiTinyFace

ThefrostyvikingFeb 9, 20181 votes

E maxing was started by the koreans as a means to getting around some tanks armor, with mixed damage it's harder to itemize against you.

That and there isn't really any really great merit in maxing Q once you have high attackspeed anyway, the cooldown will drop fast as long as you are attacking anyhow-

Some people did math on it all as well and they more or less concluded that there wasn't a big difference, both skill orders have merits and demerits but nothing truly significant unless dealing with a armor heavy champ.

ZelorxonFeb 9, 20181 votes

I know, but that's correct if you build tank with frozen mallet on her, which i consider a pretty bad build that tries to adapt on soloQ clownfiesta rather than what shyvana should and must do, i have a different playstyle that i'm not gonna type here because it's a tl;dr but since i build boots>razor>bork>trinity>tank maxing Q second is the most optimal choice.

Of course everybody is free to adapt their build, but this blindness and lack of critical thought kills me.

ThefrostyvikingFeb 9, 20181 votes

I don't like Frozen mallet on shyv either, feels slow, clunky and not really effective either to me x)

If i am still looking for damage at that point i usually go either titanic or trinity second, otherwise armor then titanic into magic resist and whatever i need after that.

Has happened that i just went full on tank after razor in case i am the only frontline or my supposed helper for the job is doing poorly.

But with you build i see why you´d max Q, the onhit from botrk takes priority.

TitanAnteusFeb 9, 20183 votes

She didn't need a hard nerf though. Just a soft one.

xelakerFeb 9, 20183 votes

because the balance team has no idea what they are doing lol

Sire HippingtonFeb 9, 20182 votes

Agree, shyvana should be a fearsome beast in the lategame, but for a long time now, she mostly snowballs on the back of redicoulous early cleartomes and drops like a rock later on. What she'd need is shifting some power from early to late rather than an overall nerf. Also, we really need to get the overall issues of lol adressed if shy ever wants to life up to a powerfull lategame fantasy again, with the current amount of damage and CC in the game, she'd need to be grossly overtuned to be anywhere near as powerfull in the late as she was in S2/S3...

SwiftKitten88Feb 9, 20181 votes

[{quoted}](name=Sire Hippington,realm=EUW,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=6AXyOkQr,comment-id=0004,timestamp=2018-02-09T03:35:10.097+0000)

Agree, shyvana should be a fearsome beast in the lategame, but for a long time now, she mostly snowballs on the back of redicoulous early cleartomes and drops like a rock later on.

this part i can agree with... except the "dropping like a rock" later on... i dont know if thats true or not because my games never reach that point. (escpailly when then enemy has a Shyvana )

also keep in mid these changes also come with HUGE buff to ap item versatility and a an absurdly strong buff to the jungle item mana regen on item 1039

i dont mind her powerfarming to a strong late game...

the issue i have with there not being a damn thing you can do to stop her form doing that while at the same time being near impossible to 1v1 in the jungle or even defend your own camps from.

right now shjyv is my 100% ban champ and has been the entriety of 8.2 and will likely bee the entirety of 8.3

i only hope that this change in 8.4 will allow me to ban somone elo for a change.

(because it looks like its going to have to be Volibear or Diana in 8.4)

BlåbæretFeb 9, 20182 votes

{quoted}

this part i can agree with... except the "dropping like a rock" later on... i dont know if thats true or not because my games never reach that point. (escpailly when then enemy has a )

also keep in mid these changes also come with HUGE buff to ap item versatility and a an absurdly strong buff to the jungle item mana regen on

i dont mind her powerfarming to a strong late game...

the issue i have with there not being a damn thing you can do to stop her form doing that while at the same time being near impossible to 1v1 in the jungle or even defend your own camps from.

right now shjyv is my 100% ban champ and has been the entriety of 8.2 and will likely bee the entirety of 8.3

i only hope that this change in 8.4 will allow me to ban somone elo for a change.

(because it looks like its going to have to be or in 8.4)

Shyv has always been able to powerfarm and 1v1 most champs. Nothing new here so I don't what game you've been playing throughout all these years.

Linna ExcelFeb 9, 20181 votes

Yeah, this is the sort of rebalance I'd expect for a dragonlady: slightly weaker early and turns into something a little more scary later.

NeoAndersonFeb 9, 20182 votes

Because the lead designer doesn’t play the game. Stop questioning their awful decisions. It’s been happening for years.

BârdFeb 9, 20182 votes

It's almost like the boards have been moaning at riot to "Cut all damage by 20%" or "Do nothing but nerf for a couple patches" for the last few weeks.

no to toxicFeb 9, 20182 votes

Dude if you havent seen late game Shyvanas go in and die then you have no reason to complain. They are monsters with the way their hp drops to 0 before they evene reached you. It`s like watching and man with an axe run at you but then got run over by a truck.

RainbowIceeFeb 9, 20181 votes

the jungle item change should be enough for an indirect nerf for her though

General Esdeath Feb 9, 20181 votes

You're questioning the same balance team that nerfed Jinx and then reverted those nerfs because she wasn't doing too well.

That speaks volumes more than 2 seasons of changes ever will

xGunna1Feb 9, 20181 votes

because she is op and deserve a nerf ?

SlythionFeb 9, 20182 votes

...it's like you didn't even read their post, are you ok?

Recon1212Feb 9, 20181 votes

Things like this baffle me. Like there just some obvious problems in league, and instead of hitting them directly, they try to solve the problems in the most round about ways. Like, Shyvs problem is here ability to farm so well with her W and the rest of her kit. So, in turn why not do something to nerf that, not nerf something as trivial as a part of her kit that isn't part of the problem.

ChawooraFeb 9, 20181 votes

Honestly, what probably should happen is a tweak to Catchup Exp. Yeah, I know everybody complained about it last season. Last season if you were down 2 levels, you could get 360 bonus Exp just from Raptors and now you have to clear 4 full camps to get 400 bonus Exp. If you look at the current win rate charts you see few tanks and lot of farming champs (Udyr, Skarner, Shyvana). 2 of the 4 tanks currently in the lolalytics top 10 win rate list (Nunu and Mundo) have very farm/counter jungle playstyles. Only Rammus and Amumu are in the top 10 (Sej is at #12).

I have given up on Sejuani and been abusing Shyvana in low elo this season (and some Warwick). If a vs a tank I know I can get a 2-3 level lead and make them useless. You can nerf Shyvana but I could do the same thing with Warwick or Skarner.