Discovering Blitz W Change

RocketRelm··25 votes·2,451 views

I remembered reading about the blitz w being changed from a continuous stream of speed to a quick burst, then a slowdown afterwards. I highly approved of this change and the direction it was in. Skip forward a couple weeks later, and actually using blitzcrank with his w. What I experienced was this, for reference to those who have heard of the blitz change like me and assumed it was worthwhile, but never played as blitzcrank using his w.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gH1mvNRrBpo

Pictured: Blitzcrank's Max Rank W, compared not to pre-nerf W, but to standard walking.

Riot has a thing about "if it doesn't feel good, it shouldn't be in the game". Right now Blitzcrank's W doesn't feel good. I literally couldn't tell I was using his speed up most of the time, and I felt scared using his w as the slow outweighs the speedup. I love the intent behind the bliz w, but in practice I feel like they removed the skill. Here's what I'd do to get the feeling that they were going for with the speedup, without making w feel bad and be unusable.

Blitz W Changes: Speedup lasts for 1 second at full strength (this is important): Decays after this at the same rate it does now. Always has a minimum of ~10% move speed buff until the ability wears off.

Simple as that, you have a skill that you can actually notice is being used, with the intended tradeoff strength-weakness set riot said they intended, rather than the weakness-weakness set riot gave blitz.

28 Comments

Laraso8 votes

I've been suggesting for a while now that we should have decaying movement speed actually decay fluidly. Right now you get 0.5 seconds of high movement speed, 1.0 seconds of mediocre movement speed, and 3.5 seconds of pretty much absolutely nothing, and then you get slowed.

So instead, it should start out with the full movement speed, and then decays at a STEADY, UNCHANGING rate, reaching 1% at the very end of the ability.

junglerboy162 votes

...or just remove the decay altogether. The self slow already makes it about a "window of opportunity" (as Riot puts it) and the decay in any form is just bad for the gameplay that they want from it.

Maybe it could work if it only decayed to only about half effect (i.e. it gives a massive but very short burst of MS (70/75/80/85/90%) before decaying down over 1 second to 40/45/50/55/60%, 25/30/35/40/45% after 3, and then becoming slowed after the remaining 2 seconds).

I'd also say make the self slow decrease with rank (something like 40/35/30/25/20% self slow).

YOU BEEN WARNED2 votes

item 3070 Zilean E & Skarner W pls item 3070

#bringbackconsistentmovespeednomoredecays

straight4free3 votes

Blitz deserves even bigger nerfs. Don't get me started.

YOU BEEN WARNED2 votes

OK look, you had 0 upvotes and I made you 1 for a reason.

I agree Blitz is beyond retarded to play against as it takes only 1 hook to change the game, put aside his ability to force it by running into the enemy to an E.

But champions should be enjoyable, Blitz might as well not have a W spell. If they really wanted to nerf him, they should've done something about his Q hitbox/speed or his ability to run in and force a hook.

RocketRelm2 votes

This is another possible solution and what I imagined the ability would be like in the first place. Riot clearly didn't like that, and it doesn't provide as much of a 'burst nao' spike. Though from my experience it's worse than what you suggested, I think we both agree that Blitz W is not healthy right now.

Laraso2 votes

Completely agree. I actually think it might not even be worth putting a point into it until you've already maxed both Q and E. It does almost nothing other than slow you down and burn your mana.

TrueECP2 votes

If you want to get more attention on this, go upvote

http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/gameplay-balance/2OX38rAx-five-reasons-and-one-emotion-why-blitzcranks-new-w-needs-to-go

since it got a MASSIVE number of downvotes. Currently sitting at only +10

It's gotten over 1.1k views so far, but no riot response, if we can get the +votes more maybe we can get a real response for why we got this gutted ability

Celeste Benal1 votes

If its at +10, then clearly it got more upvotes than downvotes.

TrueECP1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Celeste Benal,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=En49f2v9,comment-id=00020000,timestamp=2015-04-27T17:31:37.474+0000)

If its at +10, then clearly it got more upvotes than downvotes.

Having more upvotes than downvotes doesn't mean it didn't get a massive number of downvotes.

It had spiked to low 20 and one point, but then the tides of anti-blitz types rolled back in.

junglerboy162 votes

The self slow is a good change, because it reinforces its use as a positioning tool. The decay on the MS boost is bad though, it needs to be a high speed mobility burst before a slowdown. It should be rewarding for a Blitz who runs out, positions, and gets a hook, but useless for a blitz that is using it to bum-rush you without his hook.

Right now it doesn't help with positioning, it only makes you slightly faster for a second at most, and then after that is nearly useless before the slow actually hits.

WarlockLaw1 votes

The problem I see with the self slow on it means that with diminishing returns on speed boosts blitz loses more numerical move speed than he gains at the start of his boost with tier 1 boots runes and masteries. It seems like if I want to use his w I have to not build move speed items at all. this change makes his w seem more useless than wild cards is on ad tf

Rinky Dinky1 votes

I honestly think it is bugged.

The slow decays way fast than it should, you literally only have +1 movement speed for a good half a second.

RocketRelm1 votes

@Laraso: It's literally only useful for charging tear now, and even that's probably not worth a rank in your other skills. @TrueECP: I think some of the reason that got down voted a lot is because it was spread out all over the place, like his lanes, leaving people to debate 'but the reasoning behind the w is good, now it's a positioning tool'. I made sure to make the point and focus of my post "Blitzcrank literally does not have a w anymore". Still donated an up vote though. @Cameron2325: Funnily enough when I talked to a friend about it after the game, he told me to check the red posts about the bug fix cause he assumed it was a bug. Maybe it 'is' a bug and riot just didn't pay attention afterwards.

GuiltyGecko1 votes

I like the direction of putting more negatives on abilities. It allows you to put some crazy abilities in league that couldn't exist without some kinda downside. For example, what if there was an ability that fired a true global 2x width Lux laser, but after using it you were locked out of your abilities for 10 seconds.

For Blitz, perhaps the burst of speed needs to be higher to justify the huge downside it has.

Grouchy Poro1 votes

Man I knew the change was bad, but that's really bad. Apparently a rolling golem can gather rust.

+1 for Red visibility

Zouave1 votes

even pro don't level up that skill at lvl 18. So yea it's the worse abilitiy riot created since lol history

Akeydel1 votes

Can you link a game where a diamond, or even plat, didn't level up the ability all game?

MLDzXnRRR1 votes

Why play blitz instead of Nautilus?

YOU BEEN WARNED2 votes

The best ability in the game is blitzcrank's Q, that's why.

Venowolf1 votes

Need at least 1 second to full power then start the decoy.

Celeste Benal1 votes

As much as I hate blitz and think he needs to be completely gutted or removed from the game, even I have to agree that video looks pretty bad and just about pointless. Also I want to point out that it did not include the self slow, which was only just visible right at the end. If he's gonna have a speed boost, it should actually be worth having.

HlkT1 votes

Did they not remove this exact trait from his W in a patch one or two seasons ago???? I believe they said it was anti-fun to be punished for using skills and removed this exact thing...

RocketRelm1 votes

I think they changed their philosophy on that front, and allowed the spell to have a weakness as long as it has a codifying strength. Issue is that currently there is no strength. What I expected was to be Max Rammus Qing for a second or so. What we got was … a 125 range blink would have been better.

What we need is "Man, that was awesome!", not "Um, did I cast the spell? … … Oh, I'm slowed, I guess I did?".

Centuros1 votes

Revert it to the ORIGINAL form, where it gave movespeed and then a slow, without decays (yes, he had a slow way back in the beginning of League, but it was removed because it made him bad...)

TrueECP1 votes

{quoted}

Revert it to the ORIGINAL form, where it gave movespeed and then a slow, without decays (yes, he had a slow way back in the beginning of League, but it was removed because it made him bad...)

I'd be fine with this, really.

Although, honestly, W isn't where you nerf blitz at.

They reworked an ability before applying more marginal ganks to his existing kit.

Hell, if it was all about uptide they could have just made the cooldown start at the end of the ability

NinjaToad991 votes

I've been playing Blitz a lot recently and there is one thing that I've done to make W good.

item 3009

Seriously, it really helps. You're still slowed, of course, but it's not nearly as bad and the boots still give you plenty of movement speed.

RocketRelm1 votes

Well, looks like Blitz w is going to be fixed to feel good. I'm not sure how much they're changing it, but I'm trusting their stated changes'll work out fairly well enough. Here's hoping.

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