[PBE] Poppy's W changes (Hooray!)

So this is just a little thread to talk about the changes coming to Poppy's W on potentially the next patch.

Steadfast Presence (W)

    [New] If Poppy stops a movement ability, the enemy is grounded and slowed by 25% for 2 seconds

    Duration lowered from 2.5 to 2
    Movement Speed increased from 30% to 35%
    Cooldown changed from 24/22/20/18/16 to 24/21/18/15/12

So obviously this is a big buff for her against some of the tougher hyper mobile matchups. The issue her W has in live is that against someone like Riven or Yasuo it will stop one dash, but then they can just dash around freely afterward. Against Riven this can be played around by saving poppy's W for the final Q jump since that prevents the most damage from Riven, but against others like W it does basically stone nothing. By grounding (and slowing) the opponent after a knockdown, it makes her much stronger against dash-reliant opponents. Especially so against the aforementioned Riven, as now Poppy can stop Riven's entire Q sequence from hitting.

So how about the other components of the changes? Is the higher speed and lower duration an overall nerf or buff? Keep in mind that not too long ago Poppy got hit hard with nerfs to W's movement speed and resistance bonuses as well as to her solo snapcast R combo with the lower duration knockup. We're just comparing the values to live though, not to her previous iteration.

30% speed for 2.5 seconds is the equivalent speed boost as 75% for 1 second, in terms of additional ground coverage or gap closing

35% speed for 2 seconds meanwhile is equal to a 70% boost for 1 second

So when it comes to using the move to cover the ground between lanes or chasing an opponent down, W will be that little bit weaker, at least in the early ranks.

Which is where the cool down changes come into play. Keeping in mind that 75 and 70% value from earlier, we can divide them by the cooldowns to get the overall % boost per second when using W to get back to lane or roam. Doing so reaches a value that at once W hits rank 3 on the PBE, she will be roaming and getting to lane faster than live (3.888% speed per second vs 3.75%). At max rank the difference rises to a little over an extra 1% MS (5.8333% vs 4.6875%) 1% might not seem like a lot, but recall the other nerfs she received when her kit got a mini rework. In addition to changes in her kit, she got a -5 movement speed nerf, from 345 to 340 ( breaths heavily). While this nerf was a joke when applied to someone like Irelia, with Poppy it severely hampered her ability to both roam and position in lane for her E. That nerf was eventually undone resulting in a whopping 0.05% increase in poppy's winrate thereafter, but the point is that it made a big difference in how she could manage lane.

With tier 2 boots as her only MS item (Obviously she can build or viably, but let's just go with the minimum), Poppy has a base Movement speed of 400. With W maxed, the difference between live and PBE is an additional 4.6 MS, quite close the the value which rendered her feeling sluggish and unpalatable.

I just hope these make it through to the next patch. It feels like complete shit to be playing a tank specifically made to handle mobile carries and losing because they are too mobile.