Rammus and Malphite are in much greater need then Sejuani or zac for such a mid season rework

agbudar·May 2, 2017·75 votes·3,500 views

all sejuani needed was a boost to her 1-3 lvl clears thats it. and she would have been a viable pick again.

zac... why did he get reworked? he sees/saw so much play already. super viable tank champ had no need for any form of rework at all.

edit: im seeing a lot of people say that Rammus and Malphite need/will get full VGU. and that a simple class update would not be sufficient.

then i ask you this. is sejuani's kit updated or basically reworked? they completely changed her W and E and to a lesser extend her R and Passive, that's on the level of a complete rework. zac only his Q and ult but the same principle applies

maokai the least but they arguably had to do something with his ult.

these were not updates to kits these were semi to nearly full reworks. if they were going to do this why not spend your resources on champions that would actually benefit a lot from these things?

87 Comments

RalanrMay 2, 201766 votes

So much greater need that a roster update cannot provide them with what they need.

Jeddy017May 2, 201742 votes

People forget Mordekaiser is what happen when you do a big roster update on a champ who needs a VGU.

MistroTTCMay 2, 201723 votes

And Skarner .

ElikainMay 2, 201716 votes

Nice oldschool Rift Scuttler icon. :^)

Velzard of KozMay 2, 20172 votes

That's a very angrily looking Rift Scuttler tho - probably second stage of void addiction. And gender-bent since Riftie is confirmed to be female. Learn her pronouns!

Big LincolnMay 2, 20174 votes

2 of 3 of these updates needed bullshit justifications to rework them

only maokai was an acceptable pick and they threw out his ult for more le CC

ElikainMay 2, 201717 votes

Despite what people think, Sejuani needed one as well. Overall, i am pleased with her changes. Her old kit was bland and too much dependent on her AoE lockdown ult. Not to mention that her ult ate her entire power budget of her kit, which resulted in bland gameplay if you managed to miss it or your team didn't engage when you did.

Big LincolnMay 2, 201710 votes

her old kit was completely functional

too much dependent

blatant lie perpetuated by riot

MistroTTCMay 2, 201715 votes

I always thought her w was boaring.

Velzard of KozMay 2, 20175 votes

Isn't her Q boaring tho

AnidanMay 2, 20173 votes

The real problem is that we need moar boar.

chipndip1May 2, 201711 votes

Functional =/= Well done

Old Sej is a walking stat stick with a massive amount of kit power tied to her ult. The new Sej has more variables to play around.

PB4UAMEMay 3, 20173 votes

How was she a stat stick with literally nothing giving her any stats anywhere in her kit?

She doesn't stat check anyone, she just CCs and disrupts teamfights with pretty consistent AoE damage.

chipndip1May 3, 20174 votes

Rather: She WAS until she got nerfed into the grave. Now she's just a stick. A stick with some ice at the end of it.

Regardless, being so heavily consistent in her damage output is what makes her a stat stick. A stat stick of tank stats and gradual wear-n-tear. If you make her less about being an Alolan Sunfire Cape, with things in her kit that can miss, you can up her reward in success cases and make her a better champ overall. That's what Riot is doing here. Less consistency in output means greater possible output.

My Waifu VanillaMay 3, 20171 votes

Pre-Nerf Sej threw an ult that 90% of the time stunned your entire team because it was so generous and then she just kind of W auto'd you for A LOT of % health damage and walked around you doing a lot of unavoidable damage (pre-nerf Cinderhulk+pre-nerf W).

HalcyonDwellerMay 2, 201720 votes

"Rammus and Malphite need a rework more than Sejuani and Zac because Sejuani and Zac didn't need it."

Why not talk about Rammus and Malphite in your post about why Rammus and Malphite need a rework?

Sejuani and Zac reworks are in the past, as good as done. Complaining about them serves absolutely no purpose towards getting Rammus and Malphite updated.

SlythionMay 2, 201723 votes

but the boards are for complaining, nothing else :^)

HalcyonDwellerMay 2, 20175 votes

Nah. Boards are for discussing ideas, and Rioters use them for that purpose as well. See below for recent examples.

https://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/developer-corner/3T6FmAWY-quick-gameplay-thoughts-may-2

https://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/gameplay-balance/jIEZxfck-heimerdinger-changes-for-710-request-for-comment?show=rundown

SlythionMay 2, 20175 votes

it was sarcasm, my good sir (well, more satire due to the excessive amount of pure complaining that goes on here, but it was a joke nonetheless )

hence the ":^)"

HalcyonDwellerMay 2, 20177 votes

Ah sorry. My mistake. Carry on, you hilarious bastard!

[slayer-pantheon-thumbs]

(I'm not being sarcastic, my sense of humor is just off-kilter today)

137434May 2, 201712 votes

They already stated that both Rammus and Malphite need more work than what can be accomplished with the resources available for the MYU.

Zac was reworked to be more interesting to play as and against then just E in and start mashing Q/W/R.

TormentulaMay 4, 20171 votes

But instead we got a zac who just E in and start mashing W, and R to disengage with the enemy wukong coming with you into your team.

ThefrostyvikingMay 2, 201711 votes

The issue is simple really, The big 3 this time didn't need that much of a push.

But some of the others who were untouched needs a whole lot more than some small polishing.

Kinda like Akali and kassadin in the assassin update.

ElikainMay 2, 20171 votes

I like the new Akali. A lot of her "mains" didn't when she was changed. But despite this, i do think that she needs more changes (to her model as well and perhaps VO?). Mainly because she's too dependent on Gunblade to be strong and that her kit doesn't allow her to be entirely squishy (as assassins tend to be). At least, i never managed to be successful with her squishy builds.

She reminds me a lot of Eve where her diver builds (tanky builds) are more viable than her squishy builds BUT she falls off super hard in long games because her stealth is no longer a factor and her kit doesn't allow for teamfights. Akali isn't as terrible as Eve gameplay vise but i still think Riot could do more for her.

ThefrostyvikingMay 2, 20171 votes

As i see it Akali has two primarily issue's.

One as you mentioned, gunblade, however like with Irelia and trifoce i am unsure if there is any "easy" fix to this. For a large issue streaming from this kinda reliance is that whenever the item is strong the champ becomes oppressive but if the item is bad then the champ becomes mediocre instead.

And as you mentioned again, her inability to endure teamfights.

While not bad her stealth doesn't really help a lot in a classic teamfight with frontal collision and all that and her damage is usually not enough to get past the support and she will die instead not really having archived a lot. Which kinda pushes her into this gamestyle where she has to snowball like hell from early on and end before anyone on the enemy team has a chance to fight back.

Naturally this is actually kinda toxic because when it does work it´s oppressive to play against so to balance it out she´s taken a lot of hits (from the nerf bat) that make her unsuitable to the general playerbase kinda like Azir. But even so she has a few really good mains who absolutely crush games with her but that can't be changed without crippling her for others.

So like with Kata she would need larger scale changes to open her up and make counterplay possible without rendering her useless, but this is far from easy to do and as such she is sitting somewhere far back on the rework que :(

LankPantsMay 2, 20171 votes

While not bad her stealth doesn't really help a lot in a classic teamfight with frontal collision and all that and her damage is usually not enough to get past the support and she will die instead not really having archived a lot. Which kinda pushes her into this gamestyle where she has to snowball like hell from early on and end before anyone on the enemy team has a chance to fight back.

Except she also lacks the early game power to facilitate a snowball properly, so you actually just work around it and go a bruiser build since the bruiser build actually scales fairly well anyway and starts off with a Gunblade rush and as such gets a similar spike to the assassin build.

ThefrostyvikingMay 3, 20171 votes

From watching some akali onetricks on youtube i get the impression that she has to struggle for a early snowball but IF she gets it then she becomes super strong. Her Ability to fight melee assassins and skirmishers early is really quite good from what i could tell. So to stand the best chances of success she probably works best as a counterpick.

Brusier and tank builds....i dislike them for while they work quite well if fed it quickly stops if a enemy carry gets ahead or if they have a black cleaver or a wits end etc.

Akali is not innately tanky enough to endure ramping damage so i find it best to go for oneshot builds and end quick as mentioned. You wont stand a chance slowly grinding against the opponent.

That early aggro and high damage builds is something the koreans do as well so i think it seems good^^

LankPantsMay 3, 20171 votes

From watching some akali onetricks on youtube i get the impression that she has to struggle for a early snowball but IF she gets it then she becomes super strong.

And in the ~15% of games where that happens it's great, just remember though what you watch on Youtube is selected out of a pool of games. Most games go much worse than what you see.

ThefrostyvikingMay 3, 20171 votes

Which is exactly why i spelled out "IF" in caps, i am aware that it's hard, really hard, to actually snowball in such a way and so early in higher lvls of elo.

But since she can only be this way or broken ...as far as i know that makes it hard to do anything without a full on VGU.

PapaGreg21May 3, 20171 votes

Akali's problem is that all of her power is in autoattacks now, which is awkward and slow to use compared to her power a few seasons ago in R and proccing her mark with her E. If you have played Akali for the last few years, this is the worst version to use. If you want to pick somebody that dashes and uses autoattacks for damage, Irelia does everything she does better.

ThefrostyvikingMay 3, 20171 votes

You exaggerate, while irelia is indeed extremely tyrannical with a triforce she won't get much stronger than this after. Akali on the other hand becomes able to do proper oneshots with items. And her burst is a lot quicker and higher than Irelia.

It's just that irelia is better all around due to superior durability, CC and dueling capability while akali can only handle going after squishies after a point.

But you are not wrong about that her power has shifted a bit to her autos and that being slow and clunky as well as somewhat frustrating to use but many seems to have adapted to success. If they could play her before most still can.

SpecterVonBarenMay 3, 20174 votes

What new Akali? Her playstyle is virtually the same as it was before.

Skins ProjectMay 3, 20171 votes

Well, I was an akali "Main" I can't say I dislike the rework as much as it was just hard to get used to.

It just feels more clunky, less fluid if you will. I'm still adapting to her kit, but as of now Diana is closer to her old playstyle then the new akali. It used to be more "All in" then w out. Now it's more about whittling them down a bit more before going all in...

Just my perspective.

I don't think the longer cd's are bad, I just feel that they were really hard to get used to after what akali USED to be.

ElikainMay 3, 20171 votes

Well, Akali didn't have a rework yet. It was more of a mini-update. I don't like the term "clunky" being used when describing certain champion's playstyles. This is what the word "clunky" means. And people use it almost all the time to describe less fluid play style they think a champion should have.

Someone like Yasuo and Fiora have fluid kits that match their play style. These champions are not at all "clunky" by this definition and yet, they seem to get all the hate from the boards for being strong when being played by an experienced player. So, champions who have fluidity are always looked down upon and are being mocked as "worst balance cases". On the other side, champions like Jinx who are basically AA oriented, are often perceived as "clunky" when they're not top picks because they have less things to do in a situation.

"Clunky" isn't a bad thing. Not all champions can have seamless and perfectly fluid kits. These champions do often bring with them a lot of complexity and if every champion in League was as complex as Fiora and Yasuo, League wouldn't be as diverse as we have it today. Some people like playing Annie, some like playing Yasuo. Most of the champions are somewhere in the middle.

Now, onto the Akali discussion: Akali never had a fluid kit, in my opinion. As an oldschool assassin (assassins before their update), their efficacy was measured in how fast they can kill a target before the enemy managed to respond to them. This wasn't engaging gameplay at all. It felt good for the assassin player to instantly delete an enemy champion from a fight but for the other side, it wasn't fair to disappear in a fraction of a second, robbing them of any kind of counter-play they could've had.

Even i (not Akali player before her mini-update) also had issues when it came to adjusting to her new playstyle. Because i remember that Akali used to start being hard to deal with after 6 (her power spike) and i was instinctively engaging, hoping i could kill people before they drop me. Overall, it was fun learning that Akali wasn't having an easy job with deleting people anymore and figuring out how to plan ahead but her update also had a side-effect. She's more of a hybrid of an Assassin and a Skirmisher now. Skirmishers are champs like Fiora and Yasuo where Assassins are champs like Zed, LeBlanc and Fizz.

Akali can work as a squishy assassin but her all-rounder builds are mostly tanky on the side, with a Gunblade. Fizz is doing exactly the same thing but with BorK again. Inherently bypassing his squishiness and trading burst damage for DPS that can still kill people in a reasonably short period of time.

On the side note, I always considered Akali as a hybrid champion (AD and AP respectively) so if Riot ever decided to put her on an official rework list, i think it would've been great if she could utilize both pure AD/AP or mix between both builds.

Skins ProjectMay 3, 20171 votes

yeash 2 tired to go through all this, it just doesn't feel as smooth as it used to. I'm getting used to it but it still kinda sucks in that regard.

ElikainMay 3, 20171 votes

Understandable, i didn't meant to comment that long but i wanted to make sure i was pretty clear in what i was thinking there. Somehow, i don't think that "my opinion VS your opinion" type of an argument was appropriate there.

I don't think that the point of Akali's mini-update was meant to alienate Akali's playerbase and for the most part, it did a decent job. However, her engage pattern has changed and some people don't like that she no longer is super bursty early into the game.

Skins ProjectMay 3, 20171 votes

I'll read through it sooner or later..

Just tired atm..

Been a long day.

ElikainMay 2, 20178 votes

Malphite and Rammus are in a need of Reworks, not Class Updates.

Variks the LoyalMay 2, 20175 votes

Malphite and Rammus are probably slated for VUs, which is why they didn't get an update now.

MunchCrunchLunchMay 2, 20172 votes

{quoted}

Malphite and Rammus are probably slated for VUs, which is why they didn't get an update now.

at this rate. in 3-4 years. its fucking absurd. there are near 15 champions that need a rework according to riot. we get what. 3 reworks per year?. so 5 damn years?

ElikainMay 3, 20171 votes

How is it absurd? Steady champion releases/reworks are coming out regularly, at a pace of 4-5 a year individually. Might be wrong with these numbers, forgot the actual statistic a Rioter mentioned a while back. And this needs to be the case or else the quality of the work goes down. And Riot is even doing roster updates and champion mini-reworks now.

They're doing a lot to update the champion pool and it's not an easy task. You're not going to see 15 champions reworks in a year even if Riot stopped EVERYTHING else to divert resources here. The progress made here isn't linear. It's exponential. Which means that there's a break-point where putting exponentially more resources into something like this actually brings very little improvements in quality/time needed to do the work.

warpenguin555May 2, 20173 votes

I think they want to VGU them

AcidTheWarlockMay 2, 20173 votes

There's Rammus stuff on the PBE, they mentioned working on him.

One Ashe OnMay 2, 20172 votes

{quoted}

There's Rammus stuff on the PBE, they mentioned working on him.

Rammus stuff are huge nerf to lane rammus and in general..

ManwalrusMay 3, 20176 votes

The Rammus stuff on the PBE is just god awful though.

SpecterVonBarenMay 3, 20171 votes

In what way? The passive change is a straight buff since everyone has less MR than armor, thanks to the passive change the E change is also a buff since the armor reduction wouldn't boost his passive and means you can get more autos out on a taunted enemy, and his ult lost champion and minion damage but now has a stacking slow which makes him better in teamfights and can allow him to auto his enemies more.

The only two things that look like straight out nerfs are the self slow on his W and his Q being stopped by being CC'd with all the other changes to his Q and W looking more like power shuffling.

ManwalrusMay 3, 20177 votes

They've nerfed his W and his Q, his Q being not only being the most fun part of his kit, but one of the most important (it's also been consistently nerfed for the last few seasons now). It also seems like they're changing the Q just for the sake of changing it. The 60% self slow on the W is really clunky and frustrating (tested it out on the PBE myself) and also seems to be there for no apparent reason. The E changes are just generally pointless too, the armor reduction wasn't so Rammus could do more damage, but so his team could. Rammus isn't exactly a damage jungler and unless you're going full AD/onhit Rammus for some reason I don't see how the attack speed is really that important it's just like "Yay? I can auto people more on my full tank jungler." your E is mainly used for CC not damage anyways so it's just kind of there. The ult changes are nice and the passive is a bit better now but all around it just seems incredibly pointless. How is this rebalance going to do anything to fix Rammus's problems? His current issues include that he's only really effective into heavy AD comps, his clear is really meh, he's not extremely mobile, he feels a bit clunky if you're not familiar with him and he's outclassed by most good junglers in terms of damage, mobility and utility to name a few. Which of those does the rework address exactly? Nothing new was added to his kit. He still does the exact same thing, they've just given him some new problems with some random attack speed to compensate. Doesn't make much sense at all considering that there's a pretty clear consensus that he's going to need a full Gameplay update at some time in the future and until then he's just going to remain a meme champion that's really fun to play when you're going fast but is extremely simple and outclassed and this wonky rebalance isn't going to help. Hope that covers it.

Nummoner SameMay 3, 20173 votes

NotmyRammus

TheDelightedMay 2, 20172 votes

I think a rioter discussed this somewhen between preseason 7 and release of camille or sth. He said that rammus, malphite and many more champions like them require much more work both visually and gameplay wise that a simple roster upgrade would eventually postpone their full vgu.

Sire HippingtonMay 3, 20172 votes

i certainly agree on The 3 current reworks, they were not really in that much need of work and i'm not sure if mao and zac actually profit from it in any way.

However, Rammus and Malph do need some more worke than a rooster update alows for once they get updated.