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Udyr big issues and possible solutions (kinda long)

Lord Creazil·7/23/2017, 4:55:27 PM·12 votes·1,069 views

Udyr is a champ I've always been fond of, but can feel really lame to play sometimes. Sometimes downright painful. His pickrate in jungle is under 1%, ban rate is the lowest in the game, and his win-rate is around 49%. He's widely considered a trash champion that's wildly outdated, yet he never sees any discussion. He's not even on the list for big changes!

So I just want to say what I think some of his big issues are and some ideas I have for changes. Starting with what I think are his biggest: no real ultimate (r) skill, and basically only 3 skills total.

  • Firstly, not having an ulti is a pretty big deal. Ultis lead to some fun high points, so if a champ doesn't have one they need something to make up for it. Take Nidalee and Jayce for example. In return for not having a true ulti, they get a new form with 3 new skills. So they get more variety and things to do instead of a big cooldown. That's a fine trade off for most. Udyr however, is stuck at his 4 skills. In fact it's basically 3 skills because...

  • Udyr's Q and R abilities are pretty exclusive. You're going to level one or the other, and put no points into the other until you have to. There's just no reason to level both, or you'll be hurting your ability to do damage, apply CC, or shield/heal yourself, in addition to burning through mana even faster. This gives the beast man essentially 3 skills to work with, and no big cooldowns.

  • A small issue I have is that he has some weird scalings in my opinion. For a melee autoattack oriented champ, it seems odd that he only had 1 AD scaling and 2 AP ones. More on this later though.

  • A last small issue I have is that his passive is really boring and not very noticeable. It's not particularly bad, just a little bland.

**All that said, I still like him and have a few thoughts on changes for him. **

  • Honestly not sure about not having an ulti, it's not really in his design. Instead, I think it's better to allow him to reach his high points earlier by maxing a skill sooner. By this I mean make have 2 or Udyr's skills (preferably Q and R) have 4 ranks instead of 5. Keep (roughly) the same start and end effects, just up the scaling so that he hits that peak skill power earlier. This allows him to max out all skills by level 18.

  • To make his Q and R abilities less exclusive, I propose 2 things. First, give them similar scalings (more on this next bullet). Second, give them synergy. For example, the fire from R could do more damage to an opponent currently afflicted with the Tiger Strike debuff. Something to make is wise to weave between the 2 offensive stances.

  • So about that scaling those scalings. I like the idea of full AD scaling on his R like the PBE had up for a while, but what I like even more is full hybrid scaling. That's right, AD and AP ratios on all his skills, or and least Q and R. He's already a hybrid kind of guy, why not let him embrace it? And it's not like have both scalings is unheard of, champs like Jax and Katarina have several skills that scale off both. Riven even has an AD scaling shield, so I don't think that's an issue either.

  • Lastly, that passive. The PBE changes to his passive were an interesting shift that I'd like to see, but I do have one idea of my own. Have changing into a stance give a buff to the next stance at random (or in a set cycle). For example, you use Q to shift into tiger stance and get a small indicator over your champion that says turtle stance will be buffed next. You can switch into any stance you want, but turtle will get a small bonus. This gives you something to look out for, kind of a small minigame that Riot seems to like. Bonuses would probably just be a % boost, like more attack speed/tiger strike damage, more shield/lifegain, more movespeed, or more flame damage/range.

Anyway I hope some of these ideas at least get some Rioters thinking about new stuff for Udyr. I'm personally really fond of those hybrid scalings! Let me know what you think about the current state of Udyr, and any ideas you have!

21 Comments

inplane7/23/2017, 8:42:43 PM5 votes

I feel like the only thing stopping Udyr from getting a full-on VGU at this point is his Spirit Guard skin. It's basically what he should be if he was re-imagined into a more awesome champ.

WalterTM7/24/2017, 1:13:03 AM3 votes

I would absolutely love to have both ad and ap scalings on all of Udyr 's skills. My absolute favorite time with Udyr was in season 5 (if I remember correctly) with the devourer jungle item (rest in peace old friend) + item 3124 and item 3146 . I'd LOVE to see something like that coming back.

Sire Hippington7/24/2017, 4:27:20 PM3 votes

to be honest, i think Q and R beeing exclusive is like the best part of udyr, it enables him to choose between distinct playstyles(ambient aoe damage from R for teamfights, high singletarget damage from Q fir skirmishies and 1v1/splitpush), and theoretically if balanced properly, he can go ad for a skirmisher playstyle, ad-bruiser for a fighter playstyle, AP-bruiser for high aoe damage in teamfights and fulltank with some aoe in teamfights while beeing a nasty stunbot that is just annoying enough that you want to focus him, but tanky enough to make focusing him a mistake. I honestly think if they put more worke on him, they should put more focus on him haveing differnt playstyle option depending on built and wether he goes tiger or phoenix.

Imo his current kit+passive and the recent changes don't fit to well together, which is one of the bigger issues. His kit and specifically passive want him to dance between stances, yet all his stances have been turned itnot every 3 hits effects, with the first hit after switch applying it, so you need a total of 4AAs in a stance to get benefite past the first hit, which ust won't happen in a real fight. The old Tiger and Turtle effects did benefit you with every hit you could land befor switching into another stance. Now you are torn between getting another proc and the necessity of switching into another stance for mobillity/survivabillity. Though one of his two biggest issues is beeing a not very mobile melee with no anti cc tool nor strong defense steroid. As soon as teamfights come in, he's just gettin kited into oblivion while not even beeing a big meat shield unless fed. The other is not haveing an ult and basically capping out at lvl 15 allready.

So what i want is to have atleast Tiger beeing changed back to dot on activation and ad-scaleing on-hit damage as ongoing, so every single tiger AA you get off after the first matters. He certainly should get some mechanics that help vs cc, especially in teamfights, but for that to work without him beeing an annoying splitpusher that can run away from everything, his E needs to get changed into a small ms-boost base and a larger boostwhen moveing towards enemy champions, like Voli Q. For the ult issue, i think there are two ways to solve it: give each abillity 6 ranks, so he can just max out 3 with no point in the 4th, maybe even grant speciall effect at rank 6. However, this would kinda force him into a midgame powerspike, as he'd reach two break-points back to back at 11 and 13. Other option would be to make it a bit like kah, give him at lvl 6/11/16 a 'mastery-point' rather than a skill point that allows him to master one of his stances, giving aditional boosts to it, maybe also upgrade his passive at those ranks, giving him proper lvl 6 powerspikes. The aditional boosts could be something like %hp damage on ongoing-onhit and a short ranged leap(~300) for the dot-proc on tiger, 10% slow resist per neraby enemie champ on and increased dash range for the stun on bear, 25% tenacity on turtle and an aditional 10%+5% per champ duering the shield+maybe small %hp scaleing on the shield, stacking %armor/mr shred on phoenix aoe dot and maybe bigger aoe for both the cone-proc and the dot. Obviously hsi overall numebrs and maybe his passive need to be looked into with such changes, but he really should keep the split between phoenix and tiger with distinct builts and playstyles, and he needs more ways to play around peel and mobillity in teamfights.

TL;DR Phoenix and Tiger beeing exclusive with distinct playstyles is a good thing and a big part of Udyrs identity for me. His biggest issue is not beeing able to play around mobillity and cc, especially in teamifghts, so he's only useful for splitpushing or bearslapping assasins later on. Another big issue is not only haveing no ult, but but maxing out at lvl 15 already. For potential fixes, read the post.

TonyTonyMordecai7/23/2017, 7:55:37 PM3 votes

I feel like the Sona-esque bonus on another form would add more "skill expression" to Udyr and help him be a better stance dancer, as Riot described. The problem is, I liked the PBE changes because they seemed to help him be more in line of what a juggernaut would have for scalings, but on the other hand, what else can he do besides run at people, or run away at super sonic speeds? He just needs a full update to his idea, because mobility is now too prominent. Either that or make it easier for him to catch up to those targets and not be kited as often

MLDzXnRRR7/23/2017, 5:21:58 PM2 votes

Udyr's issue is that he runs after people. The last time this was a viable strategy was in like season 4-5. I picked him once in normal blind pick and got permakited by the random champions. Imagine him vs all the fotm champions with many dashes in ranked when you can get counterpicked. Udyr, Voli, Xin, Trundle, Olaf are decent only when their stats are OP compared to the flashy champions and usually get nerfed after 2-4 or 6 weeks every time when they become good. Still, they are pretty OP in Ascension.

FFiresoul7/24/2017, 2:57:22 AM2 votes

It comes down to the fact that Udyr needs a buff to his base damage and/or scaling on both his Q and R.

Like you said, for a champ with no ultimate, and a limited set of abilities, he needs to make up for that power somewhere.

Playing as Udyr, it is really important that you are able to...

  1. do relevant damage even if you (need to) build full tank.
  2. do meaningful damage if you (need to) invest in offensive items like warrior, ravenous hydra, etc..

Currently, he is simply outclassed in both these categories by most champs, and does not bring nearly enough utility to make up for it.

Sujiren7/24/2017, 5:05:42 PM1 votes

New r phoenix stance active effect for the next 5 seconds udyr can fly over walls and terrain, kappa. Now on serious note even if Udyr had a gapcloser, hed still be an essentially worse Jax. Jax can gapclose and dodge melee attacks, actually have ulti ,the only thing udyr has on him is a better early clear, and note jax isin't even a good champion so that says a lot.

Thefrostyviking7/24/2017, 8:10:01 AM1 votes

Doesnt he have a update to his passive on the PBE?

Frightning7/24/2017, 3:05:16 PM1 votes

He was good until riot finally nerfed tiger stance to not be dumbly strong. Now he's got nothing worthwhile. I think his current passive a BIG missed opportunity, why not give him something that interacts much more interestingly with his stance-dancing style of play? Maybe every 3rd skill has a much stronger effect? So that Udyr has to think about what stance to take when? (This worked pretty well for Sona's design with her Power Chord having different effects based on what skill was used last).

dreamstalkers7/23/2017, 6:28:26 PM1 votes

upvoted, good post.

Also what if each of Udyr's abilities evolved like Khazix except with more of a wow factor.

I wouldn't make it exactly like his evolve, cause it should be original, but you get what I mean.

PentaDenier7/23/2017, 9:41:53 PM1 votes

At least disable him from ARAM if they can't do those fixes lol