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What was the point in giving Janna her new passive?

Lucifer·9/15/2017, 1:59:46 AM·7 votes·1,184 views

When you literally just take all her (already low) AD away?

Base AD lowered from 49 to 46 Attack Speed per level increased from 2.61 to 2.95 AD per level lowered from 2 to 1.5

Zephyr (W) Cooldown lowered from 14/12.5/11/9.5/8 to 12/11/10/9/8 Bonus movement speed changed from 5/8/11/14/17% to 6/7/8/9/10% (results in even more of a damage reduction from her new passive, which already does very little until late game).

(these are actually even more nerfs, since her AD per level already just got gutted last PBE patch). This is in addition to Ardent getting nerfed this coming patch.

Janna needed nerfs, not a gutting. Can you just stop, Repertoir, and see where the former changes land her before you take any more stabs at random stats.

You can't expect to make Janna a risk taker when you take away all her aggressive abilities and trading potential. It's getting so frustrating watching these PBE changes as a Janna main.

I think it would be enough to: [*] Nerf her shield CD, base, and shield duration (these changes hurt Janna a LOT, especially with the ardent nerfs. This is a good thing, because it stops her from being overbearing in lane.

[*] Keep your Howling Gale changes (they're good), and they incentivize aggressive plays

[*] Leave the W changes alone (good to incentivize putting points in W), and it feels better maxing it as the CDR gets lower (it used to be that way a few seasons ago, and I'm glad to see it finally reverted).

[*] get rid of the new passive on old tailwind and revert the AD per level nerfs. Keep the new AA range, and reduce her base AD. Her new passive is super confusing to even itemize for, because most MS items scale manipulatively. Alternatively, change this to a %AP scaling to encourage Janna to build AP oriented (squishy) rather than tanky.

17 Comments

Rustling Bush9/15/2017, 2:03:22 AM2 votes

Hecarim: i think the changes are pretty good.

Chembaron Yamada9/15/2017, 3:16:48 PM2 votes

As far as I know, these changes for Janna are not supposed to ship with the next patch, because of the same reason you mentioned. They are nerfing Ardent Censer and want to see where her winrate will be after this change.

This is basically just a try run for a possible change, if it turns out that the Ardent Censer nerf was not enough for her. Personally, I would like them to try to force Janna to interact with her enemies directly.

The Yetii Rider9/15/2017, 3:41:26 PM2 votes

"Janna needed nerfs, not a gutting."

False. Janna is incredibly powerful and incredibly brain dead easy to play. Granting a high amount of mobility to the rest of her team will never be balanced. She belongs in the trash can just like old Soraka.

Anu3isII9/15/2017, 1:07:09 PM1 votes

The only reason I can see for the new passive is to make Janna not use her W at the start of the trade, and force her to use it only when the opponent backs up, or she wants to finish the trade.

Number wise, idk how good this change is. However, the aim of this change is to make Janna use her Zephyr more as a chasing tool (or finisher in some cases), not just "a random point-and-click one target nuke + slow".

If a Janna wants to kill somebody, now she has to think between slowing the target early to decrease their chances of escaping/being helped and losing DPS, or slowing the enemy late and keep both her MS and DPS.

One more thing that I want to add (and you missed in your post) is that her base MS has been reverted to 335 along with this change. Moreover, her passive increases her own MS by 5%.

Compared to old Janna, she got 2% bonus MS until level 10, and lost 2% from level 13. Compared to previous changes, she lost 7% MS from level 13 while she got 15 base MS for the whole game (which increases the bonuses from %MS passives/stats).

I prefer to trade a bonus stat I get in the mid-late game to have 75% of it as a base stat from the start of the game.

And the last thing, I don't really get why should we get rid of the new passive? There are enough AP items that give MS (and those are the best items to increase damage if she really wants), and through her Zephyr Passive, it already scales with AP. Making it scale directly with AP is against Riot's aim to make the use of Zephyr a real decision.

What I would personally do is wait and see their final list of changes. They are now only testing things, and trying multiple directions. They said changes on PBE can be sometimes extreme, in order to see which things they really want to change. Just reverting things from the start doesn't allow them to see possibilities to improve her.

The Yetii Rider9/15/2017, 3:36:51 PM1 votes

You can't nerf Janna's shield duration. That is most of the damage in her kit. Janna's ultimate and her current passive deal no damage. In order to meet the current minimum of champion damage, she needs to have a lot of damage on her E. If you lower the duration, you will need to increase the AD bonus in order to balance that out. That completely changes the ways that the ability is used.

A champion who has higher AD ratios benefits much more from Janna's shield.

A lower duration means it's weaker on champions that want to auto a bunch even if it's the same amount of AD total.

A higher AD on the shield means that turrets kill individual minions attacking it faster which actually makes it even harder to push against her.

With the stated higher AD ratio, Janna actually will prefer using her shield on divers in team fights instead of marksmen. Which means she's going to get closer to the diver as he dives, which means that her passive is actually being used as an initiation for the rest of her team instead of a retreat for the diver.

Just by lowering the duration you are going to completely change the way Janna plays without even realizing it. The shield is balanced on the edge of a knife. This is one of the reasons that ultimates that deal no damage are such a big problem in the game (look at Taliyah and how often her Q needs to be changed).