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The Purpose of a Rework

Dediguise·4/12/2016, 11:03:48 PM·2 votes·355 views

There is a discrepancy in expectation between Riot and it's players in regards to the effect a rework is supposed to have on a champion and by proxy what class scale reworks are supposed to have on a role(juggernauts, marksman, mages).

Firstly let's talk about individual reworks. The goal is to create more options for the balance team to work on to control an individual champions game state and to create a strategic niche for each champ. The goal IS NOT to make that champion stronger. Now that may be a side effect, especially if that champion was intentionally left in a underpowered state due to the relative power in their kit. Veteran players will remember revive eve who was nerfed to the point where she was considered a troll pick for 2 seasons until riot revisited her kit. For newer players, Poppy was the same prior to update. Aatrox and Yorick are currently in a deliberately underpowered state, pending eventual updates.

Now when riot does a class update the goal is to accomplish the same thing, but the update can be expanded to itemization and larger scale changes that ultimately impact the general game state on a larger scale. These changes allow riot to expand upon concepts that were experimented with in individual updates but with a much more substantial impact. With the Poppy release they experimented with anti mobility abilities. For those that have been paying attention Cassio's rework is experimenting with the same thing. I have no doubt that these are the beginning of changes being implemented to combat the Mobility Creep that the boards have been bitching about for years. The best part is that these changes are combating problems that have pervaded the game as a whole BY creating strategic niches for different champions. And this is only one element being worked on in the mage update. Riot is redefining the purpose and power of mages at all levels in the game. Just like individual reworks though, the goal is not to Buff an entire class of champions. Rather it's to give them an identity that no other champ can replicate exactly.

2 Comments

D3m37r14/12/2016, 11:42:33 PM1 votes

What about when a funMordekaiser , balanced Gangplank champ is reworked and subsequently nerfed into the ground?

Choten4/12/2016, 11:53:14 PM1 votes

If what you're saying is true, then Riot isn't doing their job right. Rather than reworking a character and changing nearly all of their skills, each one of the 4 skills + the passives should undergo SMALL changes over time.

The fact that game breaking bugs can be found of a character, hours after it's release, is unexcuseable. Leaving characters in a purposely underpowered state is even more unexcuseable. Either change the character or disable them if they're really that much of a problem. I mained Evelynn since Season 1 and I have no idea what they're even doing anymore. First she was hybrid, viable as AP or AD (same as Twisted Fate) and over time, more and more emphasis has been pushed towards a mage role to the point where relatively newer players have "always" known Eve to be a mage/assassin.

With this Taric rework, Riot has no idea if this is going to be a totally broken OP release or a completely nerfed rework like Evelynn. It's basically a new character coming out and you can guarantee certain aspects of the old Taric will be incorporated into a soon to be released champion. The same way Rengar, who was released after the Evelynn rework, took her role of stealth assassin with hard CC. (They could've reworked Eve the same way they reworked Twitch's stealth by making it on a low duration but that would clash with Rengar.) The same way when Sivir's Q became physical and lost it's magic damage and AP Sivir became impossible to play, riot soon released Ahri.

Also, "anti mobility abilities" is just CC or crowd control. Poppy has the exact same amount of CC as Zac. 1 soft CC, 2 hard CCs, plus percentage of max health damage. If they're going to introduce more of that, then they're basically just creating tanks or tanky dps to deal with mobility and the last thing we need is more fighters.