Can we talk about Quinn?

This is something I wrote a little while ago. I didn't think that it would receive any attention, but a friend of mine read it and told me to post it on the forums. So here it is.

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As it stands, I feel that is a very niche champion with the potential to be a strong pick. She has amazing burst potential, she can duel many auto-attack reliant champions and come out on top, and her roaming potential is amazing. However, there are a few problems Quinn faces; much of this has to do with her identity crisis (and QOL + her bugs. Using Vault can stop you from being able to auto-attack for up to 1-2 seconds, and her AA animations are atrocious)...

Is Quinn an AD carry? Is Quinn a top-lane bruiser? Is Quinn an assassin?

I feel that power needs to either be added or shifted to more clearly define Quinn’s roles in order for Quinn to become a more viable pick.

(Digression: If Quinn gets straight-up buffed, I'm afraid of the potential toxicity she'll bring to the game. A fed Quinn is not fun to play against - she simply ults into Valor form, E->Q->Auto->Ult, you're dead. Then Quinn would be flavor-of-the-month for being OP and then she'd just get nerfed into the ground a couple patches later.)

Here are a couple of suggestions that I feel would improve Quinn without making her too powerful. I’m not saying that any of these should be made, but I’m just throwing them out there.

• Strengthen her ADC-Killer (henceforth referred to as counter ADC) identity.
• Strengthen her Assassin identity.
• Strengthen her burst damage ADC identity.

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COUNTER ADC IDENTITY BUFFS

… Blinding Assault blinds for a longer duration late-game

• This really pushes the counter ADC identity Quinn has. Her blind is decent for trading, but it never actually gets stronger. Ranking this skill up currently only gives 40 more base damage and shorter CD. The scaling doesn’t even go up. Change it to something like

Blinding Assault blinds for [1.20 seconds or 1 autoattack/1.35 seconds or 2 autoattacks/1.5 seconds or 2 autoattacks/1.7 seconds or 2 autoattacks/2.0 seconds or 3 autoattacks]

… Blinding Assault blinds for a longer duration if the target has been blinded by it in the past X seconds

• This is a similar idea to the previous suggestion, but allows for more counterplay. Decreasing the duration of the blind and rewarding players for being able to land it consecutively by increasing the duration should make for more interesting interaction. This allows Riot to be able to make Quinn’s early game weaker by lowering the initial blind if they so wish, but also rewarding skilled players with longer blind durations.

For example, it could be

Rank 1: Blinding Assault blinds for 1.35 seconds. Affected units dealt damage by Blinding Assault within the next 10 seconds will be blinded for an additional 0.05 seconds, up to a total of 1.40 seconds.

Rank 2: Blinding Assault blinds for 1.40 seconds. Affected units dealt damage by Blinding Assault within the next 10 seconds will be blinded for an additional 0.15 seconds, up to a total of 1.55 seconds.

Rank 3: Blinding Assault blinds for 1.45 seconds. Affected units dealt damage by Blinding Assault within the next 10 seconds will be blinded for an additional 0.25 seconds, up to a total of 1.70 seconds.

Rank 4: Blinding Assault blinds for 1.50 seconds. Affected units dealt damage by Blinding Assault within the next 10 seconds will be blinded for an additional 0.35 seconds, up to a total of 1.85 seconds.

Rank 5: Blinding Assault blinds for 1.55 seconds. Affected units dealt damage by Blinding Assault within the next 10 seconds will be blinded for an additional 0.45 seconds, up to a total of 2.00 seconds.

In return, the cooldown of the ability should be adjusted to compensate; 11/11/9/7/7, perhaps? or, 11/11/9/9/7? This would ensure that if a Quinn user wanted to enjoy the bonus blind time, its power would also be gated by CDs, making the ability less powerful unless it was maxed first.

COUNTER ADC IDENTITY CHANGES

… Make Blinding Assault into a piercing skillshot (similar to Ezreal’s W, but still able to deal damage to minions like Vel’koz’s W)

• Makes it easier for Quinn to actually utilize her blind. The width or AOE of the skillshot would have to be narrowed to compensate.

BURST DAMAGE ADC IDENTITY BUFFS

… Quinn receives a bonus to additional movement speed (W passive) from runes, items, and masteries

• Would help with mobility pre-6. This would mitigate her low attack range and assist in escaping and harassing. Ties in with the theme of increased mobility for lack of range.

… Let Harrier stack (e.g. if Harrier is already on a target, Vaulting the target in Quinn form, will add another stack of Harrier. Procing the stacks will give damage, movement speed, and attack speed equivalent to procs of two passives

• Allows Quinn to build up her burst damage and fire it off in one shot; the animation for procing Harrier is clunky and feels slower than firing an autoattack. Instead of speeding that animation up, this change could be implemented in lane. It would make people more wary of Quinn’s passive and give her more presence in the lane, kind of like Vayne’s silver bolts.

… Killing a target with a proc of Harrier will extend the movement and attack speed duration by (scaling x) more seconds. Cannot be stacked multiple times.

• Gives incentive to maxing W first and greatly strengthens the bonuses in ADC form. Similar to Varus' passive. Mitigates low attack range and unreliability of Harrier. The big question is whether this can be stacked; I feel that being able to kill a minion with passive, proc it on Vault and kill another minion, and still have another 8 or so seconds of bonus speed and attack speed all before Harrier came into play again, would be very, very strong strong. Therefore it shouldn't be able to be stacked.

… Casting Skystrike brings up a stack of Harrier on enemy minions and monsters that were damaged by it.

• Gives extra mobility when coming back from Valor form. This shouldn’t apply to champions, as it would result in a lot of damage, but it would let a Quinn who’s just assassinated a target with Skystrike the ability to guarantee procs of Harrier in the jungle or in lane for lifesteal and movement speed.

ASSASSIN IDENTITY BUFFS

… Casting Tag Team removes all existing slows

• This allows Quinn to be able to guarantee an escape if she is slowed. It will not, however, be a get out of jail free card, ala Olaf or Yi.

… Casting Tag Team gives invulnerability for (0.x) seconds

• This allows Quinn to be able to utilize Valor without dying immediately. There are a lot of times where I’ll try to ult to escape but take a lot of burst damage and die, wasting my ult completely.

… Casting Tag Team gives 25% damage reduction for .50 seconds

• A more reasonable version of the previous suggestion.

… Casting Tag Team also provides vision within 2100 range for 1 second, but does not reset the cooldown of Heightened Senses

• Allows Quinn vision of her surroundings so she can plan how to utilize her ult, and also allows her to be able to use Heightened Senses again for additional vision when counterjungling/hunting an enemy champion/splitpushing/backdooring

… Casting Skystrike also applies a persistent 20% slow in the AOE for 2.5 seconds

• Gives Quinn a bit more breathing room post-Skystrike. All of her mobility is only present in Valor form and this allows her the possibility of escape after a kill/if a kill goes wrong.

… Dying while Tag Team is active will automatically trigger Skystrike

• Ensures that the usage of her ult is maximized.

ASSASSIN IDENTITY CHANGES

… Change Heightened Senses into a skillshot in Valor form, Valor will dash to a location and THEN provide vision

• Resolves the problem of having to wait for Vault to come back up after assassinating a target for Valor to be useful again.

… Allow existing stacks of Harrier to persist in Valor form. Autoattacks will proc the bonus damage, movement speed, and attack speed, but no new stacks of Harrier can be applied in Valor form

• Gives the passive purpose. Harrier is largely where most of Quinn’s burst is, and it’s a huge part of her identity and damage. Not being able to apply it is dissatisfying. Of course, Skystrike would probably have to be removed.

… Make Skystrike deal more damage depending on Quinn’s missing health percentage, not the enemy’s

• In duels, would make Skystrike into a veritable equalizer as well as give users the choice of using Tag Team to run away or fight; A Quinn could turn the tides around if she gets engaged on by an enemy, or she could choose to retreat. More risk vs. reward when using the skill instead of using it at full health to take down targets with little counterplay. As a bonus Maw of Malmortious would be an better item on her.

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So yeah, what do you think? Also, post your own Quinn changes/buffs/etc.

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From a later post:

Thought of a significantly different skillset for Valor, inspired by the experimental Blade Waltz changes from 's potential rework.

This came about with some thought put into what role Valor plays. As I see it, Valor is a mobile unit meant to out-duel auto-attacking champions (and, if sufficiently fed, Valor can assassinate mages and other assassins). The potential problem with Valor is that, when fed, he presents many of the same problems Leblanc/Zed/etc. do. Did.

Additionally, you don't really use Valor for a long time. Often, by the time you've E->Q->Autoattacked->R'd, less than ten seconds have passed, leaving Valor on a higher cooldown. Once he's on you, you're not going to be able to retaliate. The Q burst is high, the E is a targeted gap-closer, and there's an AOE ultimate that bests a flash.

The changes I propose aim to reduce Valor's excess power (excess, in that it's an unnecessarily versatile buff because it can be used to split-push, pressure lanes, movement, etc.) and focus it into extended dueling and skirmishing against multiple enemies. This would centralize Valor's role and reward the player for using the skill as intended, although it could also be used for other purposes.

(!) All numbers are experimental, I honestly have no idea what I'm doing.

Blinding Assault

• Reduced cooldown (0.75 seconds)
• Reduced blind duration (0.5 seconds)
• Heavily reduced damage
• Reduced blind range (?)
• (!) Cooldown reduction does not reduce the cooldown of this ability.

This change would give enemy marksman a breather from Valor's overbearing presence in the late-game - they would no longer be able to be bursted down without fighting back due to the reduced damage, and they /are/ able to retaliate if they're able to reposition and outwit Valor. However, the longer they stay in the fight, the more of a disadvantage they're at due to the constant blinding.

Yarak

• (!) New passive for Heightened Senses
• When an enemy champion takes damage from Valor's abilities, they receive the debuff Yarak
• This debuff stacks up to 10 times, and lasts for 5 seconds
• Skystrike consumes the debuff to deal up to 10/20/30/40/50/60/70/80/90/100% more damage per every 50/55/60/65/70/75/80/85/90/95% missing health.
• (Numbers aren't concrete, I wouldn't know jack squat about that.)
• Uses the same VFX as Harrier

Yarak is a falconry term that describes the condition/mindset a hawk is in when it hunts. I thought it was appropriate, and I really do think that Valor should have his own form of Harrier since it's his trademark ability.

Heightened Senses ( & Valor / Valor)

• Increased cooldown (55/50/45/40/35 seconds, or longer/shorter)
• Cooldown decreased by 10% for every enemy detected with Heightened Senses

Rewards users when they use the ability and catch someone out. Vision is very binary - either you see someone (or something), or you don't. The cooldown reduction will make it a more impactful and rewarding experience when you catch multiple targets.

Heightened Senses passive (Valor only)

• When Heightened Senses reveals enemy champions in the fog of war, Valor receives 30/40/50% movement speed for 10 seconds for every champion detected
• It does not give the movement speed buff if you could already see them
• This buff rapidly dwindles down to 15/20/25% after 1 second if moving away from enemies (even while in combat)
• It is increased to 60/80/100% when moving toward enemies
• (!) Cooldown reduction does not reduce the cooldown of this ability

-like movement speed steroid. A core part of Valor's identity is that you'll never escape him if he's chasing you. Changing Heightened Senses to this ensures that users are encouraged to use it to fight rather than split-push/farm/escape/etc. It strengthens Valor's ability to skirmish and hunt, and lessens his overall speed such that he can't run away as easily as he used to.

Vault

• Reduced cooldown (5 seconds, reduced to 2.5 seconds when used on an enemy champion)
• No longer slows enemies
• Increases attack speed by 60/70/80/90/100 for 2.5 seconds when used
• (!) Cooldown reduction does not reduce the cooldown of this ability.

The change that truly makes Valor into an assassin. This keeps the attack speed buff from Heightened Senses, but divides the ability so that Heightened Senses is no longer your general mobility/attack speed/adc ability. Now you have a choice - W increases movement speed and vision so you'll be able to hunt down targets more, and Vault is your attack speed steroid.

If you're in combat against a champion, you'll constantly have the attack speed buff, so no worries there. But now, Valor's ability to backdoor isn't as strong (especially with the change to Heightened Senses). You're still able to do so (you could Vault a minion and use the attack speed to take down a turret), but the change (and buff) to attack speed in combat encourages players to fight.

Having a slow with such a short cooldown gap closer is unnecessary.

Skystrike

• No longer AOE, only attacks targets that have stacks of Yarak (?)

Maybe this has to be done to allow for power to be placed on W/the execute.