An Alternative to the New Lissandra Changes
I thoroughly enjoy playing Lissandra. She is one of the champions that I personally consider genuinely fun to play, and I think she has 2 of the most well designed simple abilities in the game (Q - Ice Shard and E - Glacial Path). I would also agree that her passive (On the Live Server) is poor, to say the least, and her W - Ring of Frost isn't necessarily intuitive.
Lissandra scales well into the late game with pretty good damage and good follow-up CC in team fights/skirmishes. I feel like a question stems from this state, however: Is Liss primarily a damage dealing, Psuedo-Burst Mage with some CC, or is she a CC mage with a bit of burst damage?
I would say there's Utility mages, (Karma, Lulu, Zilean) but not a full on CC mage. I personally think maybe Liss should be on the side of the latter, a CC mage with some damage. The problem here is that, if she's a CC mage, why not just build her tank and get someone with more damage? Well that's a good question that I'm sure you asked, reader, which is why I have the following concept for a Passive and W change. Just concepts, so bear with me.
Passive - Iceborn Queen
The duration of Lissandra's movement-impairing abilities is increased by 0.05 seconds for every 45 AP. This effect does not apply to movement-impairing effects from items.
Q - Ice Shard
Damage would have to go from it's current .7 AP ratio to .65 or .6. I haven't done a number check to see exactly where that would go, but it's a concept. Additionally, the slow duration would go from 1.5 seconds (Currently) to 1 or 1.1 seconds to account for the passive.
W - Ring of Frost
Lissandra deals damage in an area around her, briefly slowing enemies and charging her own power. After 1.5 seconds, the energy in her implodes, dealing damage again and rooting all enemies within range.
Rough estimations of numbers, haven't done a hard crunch Effect Radius: 450/400 --- 450 for the first application, which is the same on Live, and 400 for the second application Slow %: 12/14/16/18/20 --- This can't be high, as the enemy needs some opportunity to escape if they can Slow Duration: 0.1 seconds --- Remember that passive? This is where it can hard scale, theoretically Initial Damage: 30/55/80/105/130 (+0.2 AP) --- This ability damages twice, so just hitting one application deals much less than the current Live ability Delayed Damage: 30/60/90/120/150 (+0.25 AP) --- The total possible damage is 60/115/170/225/280 (+0.45 AP), up from Live's 70/110/150/190/230 (+0.4 AP), however the damage being split and having a margin leaves a little room for something like this Root Duration: 1.1 seconds --- Remember, this scales, so it's down from Live's current 1.1/1.2/1.3/1.4/1.5 seconds Mana Cost: 30/40/50/60/70 --- Currently a flat 50 on Live, this ability is far less effective at rank 1 Cooldown: 17/15/13/11/9 seconds --- Currently 14/13/12/11/10 seconds on Live, quadrupling down on this abilities scaling potential
E - Glacial Path
Nothing. This ability is wonderfully simple, and it's fun. Nothing changes here because nothing NEEDS to change here.
R - Frozen Tomb
Ultimately, the Ultimate stays the same ability, but gets a reduction to the enemy stun cast to be 1 or 1.1 seconds since it scales, and I personally think the slowing field should have a weak, short-duration slow that retains after enemies leave the area, cause right now enemies are only slowed while on the area.
These changes, more in concept than numerically, would be about making Liss a scaling CC mage rather than a damage mage. Alongside this, so she can stay in fights if she decides she wants a W root, a bit of an increase to her scaling HP and Armor would be in order, not much though. This would also leave the opportunity for E -> Insta-Root by properly timing her E and W, but in doing so loses W's first damage application. Early on, it won't mean anything, really, but as the game goes on that loss of anywhere from 150-300 damage (based on game state) could be a fairly big loss that is gained in an instant root.
As far as the passive's AP scaling, .05 per 45 AP isn't a set-in-stone number. it could be .05 per 40, or .1 per 100, or .07 per 60 or whatever. The point being that it ultimately scales. I personally chose .05 per 45 because, on a somewhat-standard build of Liss, you can plausibly get up to 900 AP, which would be a full 1 second increase on ALL of her inherent abilities' CC. However, it's more likely this number is around 700-800 IF the Liss builds Rabadon's, which would leave the increase at a 0.75-0.9 increase in her CC duration, hence the number of 1.1 second CC's durations.
I like the idea for the new passive, but it goes in the opposite direction than I am, making Lissandra more focused on damage by giving her bonus teamfight nuke-age after killing at least one enemy. I also think it's a better ability on paper than it is in-game, and I think it's going to fall into a category where, 9 times out of 10, it didn't make a difference either because Lissandra's team won the fight so early on that the damage wasn't necessary to winning the fight, or Lissandra's team loses the fight so early that, by the time an enemy might fall or one of her Thralls would pop, it has no effect on the end result.
Thanks for reading! Remember, this is just a concept, and I am by no means more qualified than the RIOT balance team. I'm just a fan with an idea.
