Regarding Kennen's Current PBE Nerf

On the PBE right now, Kennen has received a pretty interesting nerf to his ult. They've decreased the base damage and scaling on his ultimate, but they've removed the damage falloff with continuous ult ticks. This means that, while his initial burst will be lower, the end result will be a bit higher with all 6 ticks. I'd like to explain why this is overall a nerf, and why it seems unfair and unnecessary.

First off, I realize this isn't going to destroy Kennen. His ult is still going to be alright, he will still have a lot of initiating power, and he does have the potential to be stronger in a few situations. In most situations, however, this is going to make that teamfighting ability quite a bit worse. This nerf seems a bit unfair and untimely, as he has recently been indirectly nerfed by the nerfs to revolver, the nerfs to protobelt, the nerfs to Rylais, and the buff to tanks. These have taken a considerable edge off of his power, and he's been hovering at a consistent 50%~ win rate for a while. To me, it seems unnecessary to nerf him any further, as he is in a very health state right now. Generally, you would only want to keep a stream of nerfs like this for champions that have little to no counterplay. It may seem hypocritical as a Kennen main to brag about how hard it is to flash ult their entire team and get the pentakill, but jokes aside, there are honestly a lot of counters to Kennen's ultimate. QSS, GA, Zhonya's, and tanks are his biggest counters, and they can easily rend a significant portion of his combo, save their squishies, and end up getting Kennen killed. Kennen goes in hard, but once his ult is over, he has a long refractory period before hes safe and useful again.

This leads me to why this nerf is an issue for him. Right now, Kennen excels at bursting squishy targets on the backline. His job in most situations is to burst high priority targets and hopefully kill them. However, because of the options I just gave, it's critical to get in that initial burst, as people have a plethora ways of getting out of your ultimate if they are smart. There is very rarely a situation where a squishy target is in your ultimate for more than three or four ticks, which means that those initial three or four ticks have to be your strongest, lest your entire combo be rendered useless. This is why this nerf is an issue. It nerfs his biggest asset. By lowering his initial combo burst, you are significantly nerfing his main asset to a team, which is bursting down high priority targets at the beginning of a fight. There are simply too many options available for getting out of a Kennen ult or getting a Kennen ultimate off of you to be hit by it for all three seconds. Some of these are restated but again, Kennen's ultimate is countered heavily by: QSS, GA, Zhonya's, Mikaels, flash, stuns and roots (Caitlyn traps, grr), and knockbacks (notoriously Janna, Lee Sin, Poppy, and Tristana ults). There are more, but those are the ones I encounter the most. That being said, I think I understand why Riot is adding these changes as a possible good thing. The tank meta means that fights are going to be longer with all the tanks, so you do end up doing more damage to them if they stay on you for long enough. Also, this does boost your 1v1 ability by a bit, which is nice. But these buffs are going to worse in more situations than they will be good, so they're mostly unpractical and unnecessary. With the buffs to guise, I've already been building Liandry's against tanky teams with a lot of success, and colossus was slightly nerfed as well, so there are ways to survive tanks with Kennen. **In 90% of situations, this change is going to make Kennen a worse character. ** In fact, as a result of these changes, I imagine I will have to result to building Luden's just to be able to burst their backline fast enough, and that actually ends up helping tanks in the long run, as assuming you leave room for core items, you wont be able to build Liandry's or Abyssal. This just makes you squishier and less able to fight tanks.

All this being said, I know PBE changes are all tentative, but I thought If I gave my two cents it might give the balance team something to consider with these changes. I did manage to get Diamond V last season with Kennen, so while I'm not the best authority on these changes, I do think I know what I'm talking about. I hope it wasn't too ranty, I just had a lot to say. Kennen is my absolute favorite champion, and I would hate to see him go through a rough patch as soon as he stopped getting banned every game after worlds. If I could get some clarification as to why this nerf seems necessary, I would really appreciate it.