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@Riot My Opinion On Upcoming Janna Buffs As A Janna Main

Breezy Boyy··1 votes·1,041 views

I've played Janna for about 2 years, and since then she quickly became one of my favorite champions, and one of my go to picks, from Ranked games to Normals. Remaining as unbiased as I possibly can be, I think buffing Janna is the right choice, as she has been a bit behind for awhile now, and has been in need of buffs for about the past 2 patches. However, I think Riot is going in the wrong direction with her buffs.

They have confirmed that they're testing on buffing her damage overall, specifically on her W and her passive. This isn't the problem, though. What has been the issue for Janna for awhile now is that she's an Enchanter that sucks at "enchanting." Now, I know some of you might immediately be taken back by that comment, but here me out. Being an Enchanter is all about utility, healing, shielding, things of this nature. Janna has great crowd control, some of the best in the game, and at one point had great utility to go along with this, but for those who don't pay attention to support champions, she was severely nerfed awhile ago. Her E, her shield, had its cooldown increased to 18 seconds at first rank, which was an incredibly strong nerf to her laning phase, and now her shield only shields for .75 seconds before diminishing over the next 4 seconds, which was just a nerf on top of a nerf.

Riot has made it apparent that they want to shift Janna from pure defensive Enchanter to a much more aggressive role, something akin to Nami. The issue with this is that Janna's kit is, by its very nature and design, is meant to be defensive, and borderline passive. Until Janna gets a Gameplay Update, trying to push her in to an aggressive play style simply won't work. Personally, I'm all for being able to play an aggressive Janna, it just seems that Riot is doing a complete 180 with her. I just hope that they put her into a position where the player has the choice between playing defensive or aggressive.

Back to the main issue,

What Janna needs is a buff to her E, her shield. The best way of doing this without reverting her to a shield bot is by simply lowering the cooldown at early ranks, giving her much needed laning strength that she has been lacking lately, as well as increasing the grace period before her shield starts to fade away, at the very least to 1 whole second. Any buff to her W is completely unnecessary, it's perfectly fine and balanced, and any buff to it would make it far to strong. The buff to her passive is a welcome change, and probably a decent way of letting her play more aggressive without having to sacrifice any defensive capabilities.

7 Comments

D357R0Y3R1 votes

When Soraka/nami can make enemy adc her bitch for the first ~~12 min, and Janna is everyone's bitch you know there is a problem in the enchanter balance department

No, Janna DOES NOT NEED a shield buff, she protects really well what she needs it to actually be relevant in lane instead of making the lane 1v3 for her adc

ModThe Djinn1 votes

What Janna needs is a buff to her E, her shield. The best way of doing this without reverting her to a shield bot is by simply lowering the cooldown at early ranks, giving her much needed laning strength that she has been lacking lately, as well as increasing the grace period before her shield starts to fade away, at the very least to 1 whole second.

Meddler address this issue in his latest post:

A question I saw crop up quite a bit last week we when first talking about buffing Janna's AAs and W was why we were giving her damage instead of buffing her protective/peel spells, given those are why you pick her. We do often target a champion's defining traits when buffing them to try and get/keep distinction between different champs. In some cases though we'll get to a point where adding more power to those strengths starts creating other problems. Adding too much peel and shield to Janna or healing to Soraka for example can lead to excessive safety for the allies they're protecting and low interaction/consequence play for extended periods as a result. That means if we want to buff them that finding other places to put that power's sometimes the way we think we should go.

In this case I tend to agree with him -- Janna's a problem in lane when she becomes able to provide too much safety, and a buff to her shield is a direct safety buff that also has no skill required in accessing it. Increasing her harass potential, on the other hand, doesn't give her additional safety and scales directly with how skilled you are at finding opportunities to use that harass, so it's a nice buff to skilled Janna players without pushing her too out of line at lower MMRs (which a shield buff might definitely do).

Breezy Boyy1 votes

Yeah, I read the post, I know what he said. The problem is that her shield is just.. awful now. Now, instead of being able to choose between maxing E or W first, I'm basically forced to max W now, and hope my ADC doesn't int and knows how to dodge skill shots. Maxing E first simply isn't worth it anymore, which if anything limited the amount of ways you can play her.

DuskDaUmbreon1 votes

Tbh, I'd just like Riot to adjust her E decay a bit. Make it decay faster if needed, but only down to 20-40%.

Frosted Tips1 votes

Janna is the most balanced she has ever been she needs no buff.

chipndip11 votes

The issue with Janna isn't "not enchanting well". It's the fact that, with the way she's built, if she's "kinda good" she becomes the only Enchanter in the game. It's pretty telling when other enchanters get either marginal or 0 pro play presence regardless of solo queue strength except her and Lulu.

Riot has 2 ways to solve this: Either they keep her downtrodden so she doesn't overshadow everyone else (bad idea), or they do something about their enchanter designs as a whole so Janna can be better in the game without it meaning she's the only enchanter anyone will want to use ever (better idea). However, Riot's going to do neither of these. They have a thing when it comes to letting issues fester for too long. Enchanters are just one of those issues.

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