Removal of Raptor Cloak and consequences

Scarfang··33 votes·12,986 views

Hello there Riot Games and anyone else reading.

I am, in general, very happy with the changes you guys have made throughout the reveal of the preseason. That said, there is something i would like to touch on and maybe discuss it or at least raise my voice, on why i think it is a bad decision. Raptor Cloak. I understand why it would technically make sense to remove it, since it builds into nothing due to the removal of Ohmwrecker and Zz'Rot Portal. So let's talk about those two first.

Ohmwrecker was described as an underwhelming item by the devs as an argument to have it removed from the game. Now I don't necessarily want to argue with that, since it is not a core item on any champion, but building it when ahead on certain champions makes perfect sense and feels extremely empowering, since you can break the barrier (being the turret) that is in between a successful dive and a failure without risk.

Zz'Rot Portal is an item, that promotes little to no champion interaction if used in the way it usually is. Or at least this is the reason it is being removed. What happened to diversity in games? Where did the 'win whichever way is fit for your playstyle' go? I understand that teamfighting is more entertaining to watch for outsiders, e.g. on broadcasts, but i don't even really remember seeing it in competitive ever since 60+ minute games were the norm. So is it really all that hurtful to have it stay in the game? Besides, i think i can speak for a lot of people when I say that there is someone who makes excellent use of this item and he is extremely fun to watch. He goes by Trick2G.

Now, to the reason I am even making this post. Raptor Cloak. I am a Darius player, and as many of us will probably tell you, Darius makes excellent use of Raptor Cloak, as it is very cheap armor and HP/5. The movement speed you get under tower makes it less painful to lane vs ranged champs, because they can't just sit and poke you all game but instead need to watch out for an engage from under tower. The armor and the regen help with sustaining poke as well, and it would be a shame to see this item go, as Shojin is soon being removed too and top lane will turn into ranged mage vs ranged mage, with the occasional Gnar and Jayce in between. I don't play these champions much but it also would make sense to build Cloak on champions like Singed, Volibear, and of course Udyr (I'm sure there are more that I am just not thinking of right now). I don't think it would be too much of a bad idea to leave the 900g item in the game as it is, even if it's two finished items are removed, since it provides utility and is not bad to hold on to even into later stages of the game.

If there is any chance this could at least be brought up in a meeting, I would already be satisfied. Please take every playstyle into consideration before removing items from the game, it hurts to have your options cut as a result of other people not utilizing them.

Thanks for reading and have a nice day, Scarfang [darius-angry]

Edit: To the people that vote for 'Remove all', please leave a comment and explain your point of view, I would like to hear some arguments against mine. Thanks!

19 Comments

arowin24222 votes

even if a item is not part of a 'core build' even if it is extremely unpopular. Is that a reason to reduce options? i don't think so. if anything wasn't this game build upon experimenting?

even worse, as far as i know there are no bugs or other technical problems linked to these items, making them extremely-low maintenance for the dev team: unless there is another tank item update they will never have to touch them.

so uhhh yeah, riot. leave them in the game.

That's all.

NuggetMilk1 votes

{quoted}

even if a item is not part of a 'core build' even if it is extremely unpopular. Is that a reason to reduce options? i don't think so. if anything wasn't this game build upon experimenting?

even worse, as far as i know there are no bugs or other technical problems linked to these items, making them extremely-low maintenance for the dev team: unless there is another tank item update they will never have to touch them.

so uhhh yeah, riot. leave them in the game.

That's all.

Yeah, I like having diversity in my item builds.

TwitchInMyPants4 votes

I think the only actual reason Riot cited was "Cleanup", which might make sense if you consider the perspective of it being a noob trap. Someone not understanding builds might use the item and have a really bad experience... though then again even from that angle there's a lot of ways to be inefficient with an item build while experimenting, so it's unfair to single these items out IMO.

What's worse is that there were basically no attempts to make these items viable. Ohmwrecker got a few nudge buffs. Zz'Rot was OP when combined with Banner, got overnerfed despite Banner's removal, and basically wasn't allowed to exist as an item except in really niche circumstances. They basically were left in the dust and all of a sudden, Riot decides they need to be removed. Its basically the Treeline situation but on a tinier scale.

Kat Smurf3 votes

Actually, it's the single tankiest item in the entire game for turrets(Builds that 'never die' under turret commonly have several Ohmwreckers), and the 'noobtrap' is it's reputation. There are many items that are used less frequently that are 'sleeper' and for some reason, Riot likes to remove them and constantly cite 'viability' as the excuse of it's removal, when they are good to begin with.

When Riot created this game, they envisioned nerds stat checking every single item, and running numbers, to find the value of items. Instead, we get players building Dirk on the Release of Pyke so much, that to compensate for how -stupid- that is, they must give Pyke lethality scaling so that he's not utter trash, and rebalance the entire champion to what people want to build on him instead. To be completely blunt, lethality scales terrible, and on support income, and 'in any circumstance'(meaning recommended from ahead or behind), it's literally so obvious that Dirk was terrible on Pyke at it's release, but you know, this one guy this one time, was 5/0, and in professional play, and so he built a dirk to abuse his lead, and boom, the 'standard' pyke build was born, despite none of those other environmental conditions being necessary for people to attempt to copy that build, they would rather be complete idiots and not have to think about what is good conditionally, they just want to know what to build at 5/0 and they will do this every game is the attitude.

And so the nutshell is that people are too stupid to use Ohmwrecker, despite it's massive effenciny, they barely can keep up how basic things work(they cant fucking tank correctly, they can barely build dmg, a much easier role), and want a predetermined build with no-thinking involved. Something ohmwrecker will not easily ever be.

That being said, it's absolute horse-poop that ohwrecker is currently a bad item. It's bad if you're bad at math, and using actives appropriately, sure. But it's actually pretty OP, SirChez is currently spamming it on Nasus atm, but as a Katarina player, I honestly cannot tell you how many times it's been insanely valuable to me. The fact it works on the two nexus turrets simultaneously speaks for itself in power, but apparently you have to spell out for Riot this is a good thing and not useless.

The fact Riot cannot even distinguish it's actual viability verses the meme that it's bad is what concerns me most. Is Riot Playtest team in silver or something? The justification this is a bad item, is a low-elo mentality. Champion synergy? Have you even once tried it on Fizz Riot? You know, who the Wiki recommends it for? Gnar? It also is just completely unnoticed that it stacks with ingenious meaning you can use it almost every minute; the idea this is a bad items is people who suck at the game lol and cannot understand how to creatively make a build that works, and need probuilds to accompany them every game or else they feed. THAT is who thinks it's bad, since when do we listen to them? Oya, all the time since s5+. Apparently, stupid is the new smart. And Bronze confucius-say montras like "never gank a losing lane" and "ohwrecker is bad" is the new medium of strategy.

The item isn't even bad, no one uses it because everyone SAYS it's bad, that's it.

The entire community works like this. Pyke page to this day still says Dirk is lowest winrate, yet it's THE MOST RECOMMENDED ITEM because solely of it's pickrate. People that play Katarina constantly just build morello into any single matchup and it's spammed on her OPGG to the point the pickrate is just cyclical. She shouldn't be realistically be building it so much, but all the noobs see the previous katarinas build it, and so the trend just continues.

Tomoe Gozen3 votes

The problem with Ohm was that it had a good active but it ultimately doesn't need to be on a tank - a champion naturally built to take damage. The active could very well be made into a support item somewhere down the line but the problem with that is that the active then becomes so good that you're going to start seeing it as frequently as a Stopwatch on literally every champion, just to bait fights.

Imagine every support now has the ability to dive the enemy with their team, by simply turning off your turret for a few seconds. As if turrets already aren't inconsequential after mid-game for champions.

Buck Strickland8 votes

Save ZZ'Rot! Split pushing and ignoring the enemy is a proper strategy.

SheikhEleazar1 votes

ZZ'rot should be buffed. The reason people dont use it is because its not powerful enough to make a difference. Those little purple voidlings need to not have a timer.

As an idea, its a great item so I hope it doesnt get removed.

Scarfang1 votes

ZZ'rot should be buffed. The reason people dont use it is because its not powerful enough to make a difference. Those little purple voidlings need to not have a timer.

I heavily disagree with the timer removal, as it would make the item completely broken and way too hard to deal with. I don't think its active is massively underpowered. It's just more of a situational item imo.

Metal Janna3 votes

I <3 Ohmwrecker. I didn't build it much before its removal came up but once I gave it a try it turned out to be pretty useful. Helps supports do more under the enemy tower even if they forget to use the active.

Spôôked2 votes

riot removes two tank items and adds another lethality item (this time with lifesteal, hurray), and AD support items, after releasing a new ranged AD support. all of the items synergize well with this said support, coincidence ? [sg-lux-2]

riot is rly pushing the burst dmg meta down our throats...after experiencing the new items in pbe (havent been killed by the unnecessary elder execution buff yet), i honestly dont know if i will play season 10. all of my friends hate the game and have quit due to season 9 anyways :/

Buck Strickland2 votes

{quoted}

riot removes two tank items and adds another lethality item (this time with lifesteal, hurray), and AD support items, after releasing a new ranged AD support. all of the items synergize well with this said support, coincidence ? [sg-lux-2]

riot is rly pushing the burst dmg meta down our throats...after experiencing the new items in pbe (havent been killed by the unnecessary elder execution buff yet), i honestly dont know if i will play season 10. all of my friends hate the game and have quit due to season 9 anyways :/

You can't show a replay of a tank getting an objective 30 times while someone screams about it.

Blue Shift2 votes

Why remove it instead of just fixing it?

Are they that scared to try and change things like what they did with Banner of Command that they just opt to not even try?

Pretty pathetic.

Cdore2 votes

The truth is that none of the riot devs play top lane or play any role other than mid, adc, and support. Why do you think they always balance those roles, screw up jungle everytime, and ignore the imbalance of top lane?

XJ999999999999991 votes

darius was op due to it may he rot

Play from work6 votes

Of all the things which made Darius powerful, rest assured Raptor's cloak/Zz'rot wasn't one.

XJ999999999999991 votes

[{quoted}](name=Play from work,realm=EUW,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=FYgJZKg0,comment-id=00020000,timestamp=2019-11-18T22:23:35.817+0000)

Of all the things which made Darius powerful, rest assured Raptor's cloak/Zz'rot wasn't one.

yep. so lets not give him it because hes already broken and was given a dumb buff to his healing.

SoryInAdvance1 votes

...he's had the ability to get it for years and still doesn't because it doesn't work that well for him.

Z3SIeeper1 votes

Zz'Rot core item on Darius pls give compensation buffs lul.

Buck Strickland1 votes

zz'rot could have like 3 charges so you can build them up and turbo push a lane or put one in each. lower the stats to make it more defined in what it should be used for though.

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