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3/9 PBE Rumble changes: Still fine...-ish, still completely missing the mark. (+ a request to Riot)

Erdamon·3/9/2018, 10:11:08 PM·24 votes·2,069 views

(In case you've missed out on the context, here's the current PBE patch with all the changes)

Hello everyone, and welcome to my another Rumble-related discussion post.

First of all, I'd like to thank RiotWittrock for a rather quick response to my last thread, kudos to you for that and for listening to the feedback.

But, as you might expect from the title, this post might get pretty ugly really quick, but I hope that you still hear me out on what I'm trying to say. Rumble has been in a rather bad spot for several months now, to some, since Runes Reforged, to some since 7.12 nerfs, to some he's been dead ever since 5.16 came along. Rumble mains have went through a lot of rough stuff on our journey that was League of Legends, we had our ups, we've had our downs, but we pulled through and have patiently waited for the day that Rumble gets to have some serious time in the spotlight, after years of continuous nerfs, adjustments, MR and AP item revamps (that have always more or less left Rumble in a more and more awkward spot, but I digress), with the game evolving this much, both in its general sense of gameplay, aesthetics and philosophies behind them, to communication between Rioters and players and general transparency.

So seeing League's development go in such a promising direction, it feels tedious, at times flat out disheartening to see that apparently all of those things when applied to Rumble are still stuck in 2011 when Riot was a small indie company with no certain position in gaming industry. Whenever Rumble had any changes planned to him, they were almost always purely number-based, or bit-by-bit stripped Rumble from his identity and niche (most noteably his lane bully identity is pretty much non-existant at this point) to eventually get dumbed down to an ult-bot with no meaningful incentive to play like an actual short ranged battlemage which he seems to be marketed as. So now to see that when Rumble is possibly at one of his lowest points of performance in history, and with the overall concern of Rumble players rising with each passing day, when you have the chance to actually take a closer look at his kit, revamp it, improve with some of more modern solutions and technologies, make it more fun for both the Rumble players and their opponents, we're still stuck with "slap a number on an ability" set of changes. And while today's PBE build, which is as follows:

Flamespitter (Q) Total Damage increased from 135/180/225/270/315 (+110% AP) to 150/200/250/300/350 (+110% AP) Damage to minions lowered from 75% to 70% The Equalizer (R) Total Damage (over 5s) increased from 650/925/1200 (+150%AP) to 700/1000/1300 (+175%AP)

Isn't as controversial as the last one, and might somewhat help Rumble slightly climb back up in statistics, (mostly because the last one in reality ended up to be more of a nerf), it's really not the right time to just brush off Rumble like that. Historically Rumble's been known to just get the nerfbat swung at his way the moment he's proven to be slightly above the average due to his damage numbers, and as the time passes on, Rumble's kit becomes more and more outdated, keeps up at a lower pace with all the other changes happening around him, becomes much easier to counter/outplay/render useless, just dumbing down Rumble to a ball of stats that only wins because his damage numbers just so happened to be higher than his opponents' is the worst that can happen to him. It's not only a lazy solution, but also doesn't meaningfully help in the long run, in fact all it does it breed even more problems with Rumble becoming completely dependant on outnumbering his opponents in damage values, and getting completely destroyed if he can't get ahead, but as we've also noticed, getting that advantage on Rumble has become even more difficult to acquire.

With his Q cooldown being massively increased, giving him less opportunities to actually fight his opponent, and at the same time increasing the amount of ways to prevent him from fighting in the first place (Doran's Shield, Second Wind, Spirit Visage/Adaptive Helm all on top of each other feel too overbearing to deal with even with all the penetration Rumble can get), while Rumble himself still stays at his piss-poor levels of base stats (champions like Draven, Swain, Veigar, Vladimir, Teemo, Jayce and such all have comparable/higher base Health/Armor than Rumble with the additional benefit of being actual ranged champions, better early game kits, while more or less doing the same job that Rumble wants to do in lane but better), further discouraging him from engaging in a trade, all he has left is to farm for 20 minutes in lane, hope that his opponent is incompetent enough to somehow die to him before they get access to their defenses against Rumble, while also clinging onto another hope that the said Rumble player doesn't get immediatly outscaled by enemy bot lane due to how much faster they can spike than he ever will. And now that there's also waveclear changes coming making minions harder to clear due to their increased hp values, and his Q's damage to minions still being kept at reduced levels, it might make his time in lave even harder.

In the era when champion mains get to heavily influence the future of their favourites, Rengar/LeBlanc reverts are happening, Quinn is finally getting looked at in terms of both game health and satisfaction, and Ahri gets revamped purely because her playerbase cried loud enough, I feel like Rumble is just being left out in this whole thing, and in a way, I'm left out as well as a player and a member of the community. Which is why I'd like to ask one thing of Riot's Balancing Team/Whoever is handling the Rumble changes (I'm gonna assume it's Wittrock but you can never be sure), let's take a deep breath, sit down, and actually talk in-depth about Rumble. Not just these Rumble changes, I'm talking Rumble as a whole, what do you think Rumble's place in the game is, how do we as Rumble mains percieve it, what kind of support can we expect from you moving on, exchange ideas on how Rumble could be rebalanced, it really doesn't matter how we'd do it, discord, skype, reddit AMA, private conversations, smoke signals, whatever, the point is, it's time Rumble finally got the spotlight he deserves, for your and our good.

16 Comments

Ninjako3/9/2018, 10:55:14 PM10 votes

These changes don't make any sense at all, they're still either blind the the issue or ignoring it by given other solutions.

Revert the Q and heat changes for the love of god we've been screaming this for months but still refusing the aknowledge us.

Axantucar3/10/2018, 4:01:14 AM8 votes

I've been playing League for three years. Rumble was my favorite champion. And then 7.12 gutted him. I've barely been able to play him since.

He was once a champion effective in the right hands, very rewarding of skillful play, tons of fun to master and tons of fun to play as. 7.12 ended that. That's been the almost universal sentiment among the Rumble mains I've polled. The loss of DFT and the recent AP item rework were simply nails in his coffin.

I loved playing Rumble in both roles, particularly jungle. Please, please, just revert the 7.12 changes and give us the old Rumble back. And then approach balancing from there. 7.12 was a failed rework. It killed the champion, both in terms of fun and in terms of effectiveness. Band-aids won't make a difference.

Alzon3/9/2018, 11:32:40 PM7 votes

I picked up Rumble not long after I started playing League in S4 when I got my hands on an RP card and thought, “Which champion’s skin is the coolest?” I had recently seen a Super Galaxy Rumble in a ranked spectate game (RIP) and drowned in the awesomeness.

Over the next couple years, I put a lot of effort into learning this difficult champion. Managing Heat, last-hitting, watching my E timer, etc. I was indifferent when Electro Harpoon was made into a charge ability, since I had no problem with using the small recast window. I was, however, rather upset when the cooldown was increased because the removal of skill expression without a numbers nerf made him too powerful.

The biggest change came when Q cooldown was increased to 10 seconds. That ruined everything. I couldn’t stack Heat level 1, meaning I had no pressure in lane and a drastically worse jungle first clear. To make matters worse, the changed Heat decay reduced the amount of spellcasts I could use throughout a game by a good third, at least. The skills I had learned were now worthless because Rumble became worse than mana-gated - he couldn’t ever cast both Q and W at the same time without overheating, since he needed E in order to farm.

I still attempted a few games. Most of them were in the jungle, where the Heat decay changes weren’t as big of an issue. However, the sudden onset of early gank chain junglers due to catch-up EXP and super weak turrets made jungle Rumble rather ineffective.

Then Rumble lost DFT, and with it a rather sizeable chunk of his damage due to how Flamespitter reapplied the first tick of DFT faster than the keystone itself ticked, effectively multiplying its damage. To make matters worse, lane sustain completely outclassed any sort of harass an immobile melee champion with no burst could output. Rumble still has no early lane pressure because he can’t stack heat level 1 or use all of his spells to trade at later levels. Everyone except Pantheon outscales him. His damage is universally shrugged off. So, I quit playing Rumble. DPS has no place in League anymore outside of the bot lane.

I want to be able to use my spells in lane. I want to be able to stack Heat level 1. I want to be able to deal damage that’s actually greater than the number with a plus sign at the end of my opponent’s HP bar. Late game will come as it may - just give Rumble back some semblance of an early/mid game.

Muscat3/9/2018, 11:33:14 PM7 votes

See, we are civilized, let's talk with us about Rumble ! Rumble

71022187DEL13/10/2018, 12:28:37 AM6 votes

I just want them to revert the q and heat changes from 7.12 they made Rumble worse along with making him much more clunky to play. Don’t know why those changes ever went through whoever made them probably should stay away from Rumble from the future.

BratwurstZ3/10/2018, 3:34:51 AM5 votes

Okay, Riot needs to decide what they want to do with Rumble.

Do they want him to be a lane bully? Do they want him to scale into late game? Or do they just want him to be an ult bot?

They definitely need to shorten his Q cd, and change his W to either provide more speed or a dash. Currently his W is just outdated. Another idea would be to include the old DFT (or a variation of it) into his kit. The removal of DFT broke Rumbles neck and made him as weak as he is right now.

I just want something else than these small number buffs, which would achieve absolutely nothing.

Rezlac3/10/2018, 12:12:37 AM4 votes

I just wish Rumble would have the heat mechanic reverted back to a year ago. It feels so awkward to play him now after being so use to his heat beforehand. Rumble is one of if not my favourite champ and I would love to see some love sent his way.

Also the hyper of a new rumble skin is almost too much to handle and it would be great to see rumble in a good spot when the skin is released.

Moh3/10/2018, 10:27:50 AM3 votes

Let's have the Rengar treatment ! We need this more than he did ! Revert the Q and Passive changes !

Kulgoth5/21/2018, 3:20:27 AM1 votes

In regards to rumble as a champion. I believe his kit needs to just be slightly revised, in other words keep most of his kit the same just change the effects. It's all about his flamethrower, most engaging and damaging tool he has. So base his kit around it. His rockets become aoe until rumble "burns" his target, then all a sudden his rockets turn to heat seekers!

His speed and shield? Swap that out for a mini jump jet, good for disengage or suprise engage. And his ult? He turns into a siege weapon, mortor rounds landing in an area of his choosing while channeling. In the zone the targets suffer "burn" That way there is more of a build around his kit but he's also versitile and fun to play. And lastly his passive, when he overheats he "burns" targets that are in an area around him, but he can't use spells until he's done overheating. That way everything about his kit slowly ties into itself

Passive: Overheat- burns enemies while near rumble.

Q: Flamethrower- does damage in a cone and burns targets.

W: Jumpjet- rumble jumps to an area doing impact damage/ if overheating he lands doing explosion damage around him and applies "burn".

E: Rocket/Heatseeker- shoots up to two rockets aoe/ shoots a target with "burn" on it doing double damage.

R: Barrage- Rumble channels becoming a siege engine shooting mortors that do continuous damage while in the zone.

This is just something off the top of my head but it sounds unique and ties into his kit

Ahristocats3/9/2018, 11:38:16 PM1 votes

i don't think they miss the mark at all

the buff is good because it doesn't make rumble good each 2 min unlike the previous buff

DaStapo3/10/2018, 1:36:25 AM1 votes

I actually like the PBE changes. Rumble is simply not a forgiving champion. If you do a mistake in lane and fall behind, it will be a really shitty game for you. He's not the only champion who is like that (I guess any champion that is only damage and no CC), so it's not necessarily something that has to be changed. He used to be stronger, I'm sure you didn't think anything was wrong with rumble back then. He was a no brainer, you just pushed 24/7 and 1v1'd anyone. Right now you need to play smart, which is not a bad thing. With those buffs he will become stronger again and you will have more fun playing him.

Tychusfindlay9183/10/2018, 3:44:17 AM1 votes

True, I remember back when Rumble was super meta the dude would just stand there with flamespitter on me all day and there was nothing I could do to hope to retaliate. It honestly felt kind of stupid.