The Great Big Taric Rework Round-Up Part #1
The Great Big Taric Rework Round-Up Part 1 of 4
http://37.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m038ff4C7m1qe5ugfo2_500.gif (Steve Carell from the "Carell Corral" on the Colbert Report)
Originally, I was going to wrap this post into one big post, but it felt nicer having specific parts of discussion for the Great Big Taric Rework Round-Up. To be clear, let's state the order of business. First on the agenda is Taric's history as a champion, his past reworks, and his current state. Then we'll move into a potential rework for the flamboyant paladin. Speaking of flamboyancy, we'll discuss Taric's theme and place within the League. To wrap it all up, we'll discuss some loose ends and what-nots. That leaves us with four parts of one great big rework round-up. Every part will end in a TL;DR, but do not try to comment if you have only read the TL;DR. With that out of the way, here we go!
Today will we discuss Part #1, Taric's Past and Present. Taric has undergone quite a few changes over his span within the League of Legends. We will talk about his inital kit and it's flaws, the evolution of the kit, and the live one we have today.
--Taric's Past & Present--
Taric's Past: Upon release, the Gem Knight did a number of things differently than he does today. Most notably, his ultimate was vastly different. Rather than provide flat AD & AP to all nearby champions after the initial hammer, it did a number of over things. The old tooltip read, "Taric emits a brilliant light, healing himself each second by 30/40/50 (+0.2 per ability power) and increasing his attack damage by 30/60/90. Additionally, it grants half the attack damage bonus to nearby allied champions and 5/10/15 attack damage bonus to minions. The cost to sustain Radiance increases each second". His ultimate was a sustained heal and empowering aura, similar to Maokai's ultimate. The ultimate seems powerful on paper and could easily turn a fight. This was then changed into the modern ability of a small, flat damage explosion and aura tha lasts 10 seconds. His passive was also slightly different. Before the new Gemcraft passive, Taric's basic attacks refunded a percentage of his mana. It was then shifted to deal damage equal to 2% of Taric's maximum mana upon basic attacks and double damage against champions. With items such as Manamuna, Frozen Heart, and Iceborn Gauntlet, Taric ended up feeling like less of a support and more of a "Blue Build" wannabe. Now, we have his passive deal 20% of his Armor upon basic attack following a spell cast. Taric has always kept his heal, armor buff/debuff, and stun even though they have had slight changes.
Taric's Live Passive, Gemcraft: As of right now, Taric's passive is extremely awkward for a number of reasons. Assuming you have no CDR at LVL 18, after cycling your E->W->Q the cooldown of your abilities remain on cooldown, just slightly reduced. Even with CDR, your abilities come up at different times and ultimately throw your combos off or encourage you to spam. Spamming abilities with Taric's is not a good idea either. This same issue happened with pre-rework Skarner. the cooldown reduction was nice, but they still came up at different times. Plus, you burn through your abilities too quickly and lose too much mana. A full combo of all of Taric's abilties abilities drains around 25% of your maximum mana at LVL 18. The core issue with that is his ungodly Imbue (the heal) cost. Sitting at 140 mana per cast at the final skill point, your heal sucks your mana extremely quickly, meaning you should only use it in dire situations. On the contrary, your passive enables you to use it more. You either drain your mana by constantly healing low targets (and yourself) or waste the cooldown refund system of your passive. It leaves Taric players in an awkward, unhappy situation. As for the damage aspect, since it scales with Armor, the ability deals very low damage early on. Typically, you will lose any and all trades early on with your already weak (damage-wise) abilities. Later, the ability can deal quite a bit of unexpected damage, especially with a Spellblade proc. However, because you must use abilities to activate it, we encounter the mana drain problem again. With high sustain and mobile champions, Taric will either lose his target, lose the fight/trade, become kited, or run out of mana leading to any of the prior outcomes. This leads to difficult, frustrating play for a Taric player. Not to be a stickler, but the name makes no sense for what the passive actual does. "I'm going to use an ability, then bop you with my hammer for added damage." = Gemcraft? It does not make a lot of sense. His passive is weak, ill-suited, and leads to situation that make Taric players feel as though they either must make full use of their passive (leads to mana drain) or not at all (wasted passive).
Taric's Live Q, Imbue, the Heal: As mentioned before his heal is also a bit of an issue. It has a massive mana cost that leaves much to be desired. The self heal can result in a huge gain, but the ally heal is frankly not worth the huge cost it has later in the game. It is far too costly when used on a separate target and does not mix well with Taric's passive.
Taric's Live W, Shatter, the Armor Buff/Debuff: Taric's Shatter has always felt like his trademark ability, such as Garen's "Spin-to-Win" (Judgment) or Kassadin's Riftwalk. The Armor buff aura and debuff active sounds great on paper, but proves frustrating in game. Unless you have the 625-range circle memorized, it can be difficult to know if you have the Armor buff or not when playing alongside Taric. Even with that, the problem of "unnoticed power" comes into play. Comparable to Sona's old issues, you are unaware of the aura's effect and it's range. Playing against Taric can also be frustrating because it is unclear to the enemy on how far the Shatter explosion radius actually is. Modernization is key to making sure players are aware of what Taric's auras can do and where the end/start. The rest of the ability is otherwise solid. A PBAoE magic damage armor shred is very nice and welcomed in any part of the game.
Taric's Live E, Dazzle, the Targeted Stun: The Dazzle is something of an issue. While a point-and-click stun is nice and all, it leads to very little counterplay. If Taric wants you stunned, it's happening unless you have a spell shield. It's annoying to deal with playing against Taric. Early on, the ability can be annoying for even Taric players to use. If an early Mercury Treads is bought by an enemy, you may not be able to capitalize on the stun in time. This is happens because of a couple reasons. For one, the range on the lock-on stun is quite high. Taric can nab a target from a long distance without really doing much work. If this is the case, the target can typically still get away because of the low duration and Tenacity passives available. In addition, the dazzling sphere gem thingy has a low projectile speed. Enemies can typically see the magic gem of doom coming and run a distance away before the spell hits them, further increasing the distance Taric must sashay to his target. To sum that all up, the spell has a huge range and low projectile speed, making the spell difficult to follow-up with.
Taric's Live Ultimate, Radiance, the Hammer-Time Aura: Taric's ultimate Radiance, has always felt highly underwhelming. Alone, the hammer smash deals very low damage and the empowerment gives Taric very little. His low AP ratios and weak basic attacks give his ultimate aura little to work with. Even with allies, the bonus is "meh" at best and Taric has to remain close by for it to take effect. I almost prefer his old ultimate to today's version.
TL;DR Taric's old kit brought far too much power for it's time, but his current kit has fallen between the cracks of today's supports. Other supports can do Taric's job better. Taric's kit is weak in any role and gives little counterplay for enemies and little cooperation with allies. It is a very mismatched group of abilities by today's standards and leaves Taric players with a sense of awkwardness and disappointment.
If you read it all the way, great job! Part #2 (Potential Kit and Abilities) will make it's appearance sometime (EDIT: "SOON" tm; I still need time to practically design the kit multiple times over. Please forgive and thanks for your patience). When it does, I'll hyperlink it from here to make it easier to find. Thanks for coming by!
"Gems? Gems are truly outrageous. They are truly, truly, truly outrageous." - Taric, the Gem Knight
