Whats wrong with Rengar, the changes, and a better way to tone him down and iron out his design.
Season 5 Kitty: https://youtu.be/GM2T7-annUI?t=1m23s Season 6 Kitty: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxUYEtBf2Mg
Sad kitty.
So the Rengar nerf was a failure.
He feels just as ridiculous in the early/mid game, and frustratingly impossible late game regardless of the Rengar's skill or the enemy's skill.
Why is the E nerf a failure?
- E will cast in the direction the mouse is located when the cast time is COMPLETE, not when it was CASTED.
- E cast time is roughly the same time that leap takes
From this, lets say a Rengar has ulted towards a Vayne. He leaps, presses Q, aims E a bit behind the Vayne to make sure it will go in that direction, then mouses over the Vayne (which is also right over Rengar himself) so that he can get the Q's off. E then casts very shortly after but Rengar's mouse is already right over the Vayne because his leap just ended. What Happens?
If you guessed already, the bola actually fires BACKWARD (sometimes), to the SIDE (90% of the time), or RIGHT OVER HER (when the bug happens because Rengar still uses the old code base) because Rengar's mouse is directly over his champion when the E cast finishes.
Note: this does have some benefits, top players can move their mouse over to where someone flashed in time to re-aim the bola SOMETIMES.
Now, why is this an issue?
- Its random for pretty much everybody, using the same combo will make your bola fly in random directions even though you aimed it correctly.
- It feels extremely clunky, much like Zed does.
- It still doesn't alleviate the problem of Rengar being way too good, it just makes it a lot less fun to play him, and still not fun to play against him.
The change had a net negative impact on fun across the board.
How can we change this so that it can be fun?
Revert all the changes first of all. E NEEEEEEEEEEEEDS to be consistent and useful for Rengar to do ANYTHING late game above silver elo
Then, looking at Rengar's old problems, like being able to 1 shot people unless they had a zhonyas or 3.5k health or spammed pink wards everywhere or had a Poppy, we can find some new better changes.
So we've established his problems, now lets look at fun
What is FUN about Rengar?
- High damage output combined with the very interesting idea of hunting players, done in a much more enjoyable way than Rek'sai.
- Very cool looking animations and fluidity as well as character design.
- Versatility in play style, allowing people to spam him and do at least pretty decently in any game assuming they are skilled enough to know all the ways to play him effectively and don't make too many mistakes.
So, we have to keep the high damage output, cool animations, fluid controls, versatility, and still make Rengar revolve around hunting players.
Rengar isn't fun to play against due to the 100-0 nature of the champion and the difficulty in catching the kitty for most average players. Still have to keep what makes him a fun champion.
- Lets make normal Q do 50% of Rengar's AD, and another 70% of Rengar's AD depending on missing HP, adding another 30% of Rengar's AD if empowered, remove the attack speed bonus, and put it on trophies because that bonus early game is ridiculous. (This makes Rengar much worse at 1 shotting people, as this will take an entire Q more just to do the same damage as before, but it makes Rengar still do just as much if not more damage if he is chasing people down with ult instead of waiting for an ADC to leave their base to kill them inside their team and walk away with 800 movement speed. Overall this will make Rengar's 1 shot turn into a 2 shot, but chasing people who are half health becomes a lot easier)
- ** Q is not able to be cancelled by Rengar when Q'ing champions.** (Just a quality of life change)
- W makes Rengar's Q's ignore 10-35% (+5% per W level) of armor for the next 2 Q's, remove the current resistances, keep the emp heal. (Allows Rengar's W to not be useless but take away that hefty tankiness that lets him survive after diving into the middle of a team. His W right now gives him almost double the survivability if he had built 0 resistances that whole game due to how resistances are calculated. Also adds in some needed skill in picking targets in correct order as your first kill will be easier)
- R only sees targets in the full radius if they are below half health, and requires Rengar to be closer the higher health % they are. (This takes off that annoying to play against feature of Rengar where he can see you from River while you are in your base, jump in to your base, kill you and walk away. Now you will need to be lower health before he can see you, forcing him to use his brain to find you when you are just walking around trying to farm.)
Trophies [3 = +50 ms while moving towards enemies with their back turned, better chase and worse escape]
[6 = Thrill of the hunt duration is +2 seconds (move to 6, but reduce the length from 5 seconds)]
[9 = jump range increased by 125 (move to 9)]
[12 = +1% damage based on missing health, with every trophy after this adding another %]
[15 = Rengar's empowered Q gives the old attack speed]
[18 = Rengar's ultimate gives him double movement speed if they are running away from Rengar, gives him chase without giving him escape]
[21 = Rengar gets +1% speed in ult, and adding +1% for every trophy after this]
Goal with changing these is to allow rengar a more SMOOTH scaling path, as it is right now, as soon as you hit 12 stacks you can obliterate anyone coming out of their base, but with 11 you can't, and pre 11 stacks you can't do so much.
Also, with putting power into rengar's trophies and away from his skills, you can tone him down according to different points in the game. As these changes put it, Rengar has a harder time allining you early game, harder time 1 shotting mid game, and an easier time getting damage off in late game although heavily reduced if you are full health along with it being much easier to deal with him if the rengar messes up due to the reduced resistances on W
This irons out Rengar at all stages of the game and balances him by adding weaknesses but adding strengths if played correctly in skilled ways. Rengar in season 5 and 6.1 was too easy to play for new players and the gap needs to widen, as this does.
Of course these numbers would have to be adjusted through PBE use (assuming Riot knows how to do that?) but you can see from the types of changes I have suggested it would bring Rengar in the right direction making him more fun to play by making the FUN part of his play style stronger but less frustrating to play against by making the frustrating part of his kit disappear.
All doing this without ridiculously complicated math and weird interactions like the bola change.
And some say "too big a change" but thats pretty much exactly what Rengar needs to be considered healthy.
If theres some major flaws in what I propose, bring em out, I want to see them!
At bronze elo - Less frustrating to play against and the Rengar needs to be a better player overall to find people to jump on, since ult doesn't last as long and you can't see full health carries from river while they are just now leaving their base, forcing you to ward better or use your brain.
At silver elo - same as bronze, but people might do better at counter warding
At gold elo - easier to have an impact on teamfights and better at chasing low health players down even if they are relatively tanky, but can't 1 shot the carries anymore if they are near their team, but if they are playing badly then they will die anyway. (need more of that in league, mistakes should be mistakes, and should be punishable)
At plat elo - irons out the game, Rengar isn't so feast or famine by reducing the feast if you get fed early and allowing Rengar to be more consistent through ability changes even if he lacks 400 AD by 35 minutes.
At diamond elo - still gonna be fucking hard, like it should be
