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Diana Rework, for our Beloved Scorn of the Moon!

Isababa··5 votes·1,160 views

Diana

Diana's problem is her kit, it's hard to balance by nature. The reason for this that I see is that the kit doesn't provide Diana enough tools to be specific type of champion; therefore, she will probably always feel underwhelming unless she's over tuned. Don't get me wrong, Diana has been a solid champion in the meta many times throughout her release, and I loved playing her! However, Diana was always short in terms of specific tools that Assassins or Bruisers would have, but was either strong or weak numbers wise.

Specifically, Diana's problems as an Assassin lies with that she does not have an escape. If she goes into the fight, she better win and kill her target, or she's going to die her self. She's not a Zed, or a Talon, that can decide whether to save their W or R respectively for their sweet getaway, or to further close in on their target. Diana literally just shoves herself into the fight, kills (or doesn't) someone, then hopes that she won't die. It just always seems that unless you're winning as Diana, it is hopeless.

As a fighter, Diana's kit doesn't give enough tankiness to make her into a fighter without breaking her. The problem with this lies within the mechanics of her shield and the lack of having a second source of tanky stats. She has her CC, her gap closer, and a shield, that's all really awesome! But, she definitely lacks compared to other fighters. As I said, her shield's a problem. Shield's are instant rewards and are crazy when trading in lane and should not be given to fighters. Shields are affected by its user's resistances, it allows you to regen under it, and heal, shield's are tools for Assassins or hard tanks, or should just be a reward for a good ultimate.

Let's bring some well-rounded fighters into this: Irelia, Xin Zhao, Jarvan IV. Irelia has 2 heals and a tenacity buff, all of this revolves around how often she's auto-attacking, how many champion's she's hitting, and how many enemies are around her; what makes this work is that Irelia NEEDS to be active in the team fight to gain anything out of her kit while Diana just has a shield that would arbitrarily reset if she gets close to the fight; however, Shield's are INSTANT rewards and do not promote any sort of counter play, just clicking a button by reaction. Xin Zhao has a heal and an AoE that grants him tank stats per target hit. Again, rewarded for being active in a team fight. Jarvan has a shield, similar to Diana; however, his shield is significantly weaker, doesn't deal damage but instead CCs enemies, and it shields for a low amount unless he slows many enemy champions with it, also, Jarvan has his armor buff from his flag.

The problems with Diana's shield is that it does too many things. It deals damage, shields, for a crazy amount, and it refreshes itself if you use it effectively. Oh, and when it refreshes itself, the cooldown ticks again and it'll be up in no time at all. The reason I feel this is as troublesome as I claim it to be is that it just does too many things and all it rewards is being in the thick of things. That should be great for a fighter designed Diana, but even when compared to a current top tier fighter like Irelia, that spell simply does too much and would always need to be undertuned.

So what are Diana's problems to fix?

  • Spread out the effects of her spells, and make them reward a certain playstyle
  • Reduce her snowballing and allow her to still be useful when behind
  • Supply options for different playstyles, and reward each in its own way
  • Give Diana more counterplay, instead of instagibbing every squishy

ASSASSIN DIANA

Passive - Ascendant of the Moon - NEW - Make the Moonlight stack that appears above their heads a Crescent, Gibbous, then a full moon.

Diana's basic attacks and spells apply stacks of Moonlight. At 3 stacks of Moonlight, enemy champions are then affected by Full Moonlight and are revealed. Diana's basic spells gain bonus effects when used on an enemy with Full Moonlight. Diana cannot gain more than two bonus effects from the same target every few seconds.

Additionally, when an enemy champion affected by Full Moonlight is slain, Diana uses the Moonlight to bend the light around her, granting her stealth for 2.5 seconds.

Q - Crescent Strike - SIMILAR, reduce damage and cooldown, but allow it to deal the same or a bit more damage than it does in LIVE on enemies affected by Full Moonlight

Diana unleashes a bolt of lunar energy that travels in an arc. Enemies struck take magic damage and are afflicted with Moonlight. This spell deals X% extra damage to monsters (and minions).

Full Moonlight: Crescent strike deals X% more damage to enemies affected by Full Moonlight

W - Pale Crusade - TWEAKED, should increase the base shield's power, but lower the damage dealt significantly, or even remove the damage.

Diana gains a temporary absorption shield and creates three spheres that orbit her, both for up to 5 seconds. The spheres detonate on contact with an enemy unit, (dealing magic damage to all nearby enemies) and applying Moonlight to the first enemy champion that breaks the sphere.

Full Moonlight: When a sphere detonates on an enemy affected by Full Moonlight, the shield is reapplied and the duration is refreshed. This effect cannot occur more than once in each spell use.

E - Lunar Rush - Moved to her E spell, reduce damage significantly.

Diana becomes the living embodiment of the vengeful moon, rushing at an enemy and dealing magic damage to it.

Full Moonlight: Diana gains bonus movement speed when dashing to an enemy affected by Full Moonlight.

R - Moonsilver Blade - NEW

Diana gains the max amount of attack speed (2.5 attacks per second) for her next 3 basic attacks, changing her basic attack damage to magic damage. These attacks cleave nearby enemies for magic damage.

Full Moonlight: Diana's 3rd attack with Moonsilver Blade will draw all nearby enemy champions affected by Full Moonlight into her location while dispersing all other champions that are not affected by Full Moonlight.

What are the reasonings behind my specific kit proposals?

COUNTER PLAY - With the proposals I've made, Diana must ramp up her damage and utility potential throughout a fight.

Her Q, instead of being a heavy nuke, is now changed to be a simple poke/harass spell, but will deal significant damage to enemies that have taken damage from her previously.

Her tweaked W would also provide less damage, while being more focused on granting beefiness to Diana, focusing the tool of this spell in one direction rather than it being a spell with too many tools.

Her old E is now gone and has been replaced with a weaker version of her ultimate. The new Lunar Rush will grant Diana better early gank/full engage methods early on in the game while not making her too snowbally in lane once she hits 6. Additionally, the new Lunar Rush would provide Diana with escapes as well as stickiness without robbing from her target's mobility.

Her new ultimate is her old passive, but is now a steroid. A huge effect should take place when this is used that should hopefully not impair her mobility, maybe a cool line that she would say as well as a strong moon shining on her and empowering her blade. Why I felt like her passive should be her ultimate is that I feel it is what defines her as a champion, and I felt it could be tweaked in a way to make her feel more impactful in teamfights, also, 3 attacks at max speed, gives her target's teammates enough time to retaliate and peel Diana off of their squishies.

Finally, Diana's passive should not just describe a marking mechanic that she has in her kit (she'd just be like a Renekton 2.0) but should provide her an escape WHEN an enemy champion affected by Full Moonlight dies near her range. This will allow her to further ramp up her advantage in team fights to clean up, or make a sweet escape.

PLAY STYLE - This new kit provides a lot of potential for play style nuances between unique Diana players. It also provides a lot of options for Diana players. Because of the extra spell effects Diana gains from targetting Full Moonlight enemies, she is able to flex her play. Say, if Diana players wanted to play her as a tanky fighter, they could opt to use the Full Moonlight effects of her W and R, rather than an Assassin's E and R. By placing a cap of 2 bonus Moonlight effects by target, Diana players have to choose which tools they are going to use, and it also allows them to further ramp up in a team fight if they are successful.

For example, let's say if you're playing as a Fighter-esque Diana. You would opt for the bonus shield from your W and the CC from your R. If you're playing as an Assassin, you would opt for the haste on your E and the CC of your R or the bonus damage from your Q. If you're behind as Diana, you could opt to use your E to make an escape, or opt to use your Q for more poke damage and your W to shield you in a losing engagement.

ROLE IN A TEAM - Diana was always meant to be a Assassin-esque Fighter that could jungle or solo-lane according to Phreak's champion spotlight, so, I modeled this rework to allow her to be more versatile for her team's composition and her player's play style; therefore, that is why I support both the Assassin and Fighter play style and making the use of her spells essential to the way she would perform in a team fight.

This new kit would allow Diana to jungle through the use of her shield and the extra damage from her Q. Relocating her ultimate to become her E spell also allows her to have more consistent gank potential pre-6 rather than needing to walk up to enemies and cast Moonfall.

For solo lanes, Diana will be allowed to poke and harass when behind in lane or take advantage of her lane opponents. However, she will lack sustain as compared to most other top laners, which will be her weakness. Diana's goal in trading in lane will be to take advantage of her poke and significant use of her shield.

In the end, this may not be the best solution for fixing Diana. I actually built up a ton of ideas for how Riot could change her mechanics by writing this thing. Anyway, I hope that this read was interesting, and that through this, maybe I could have brought new ideas to Riot's design team. Regardless, Riot has been doing a great job reworking many champions this year, and I just hope that whatever they do to Diana, she ends up being a well-balanced champion and sees competitive play again :)

EDIT: I will probably add to this afterwards with a fighter kit I have in mind!

9 Comments

SmokingPuffin3 votes

I think a fighter Diana can work. I don't think this one will.

I don't think this Diana is an assassin. Very hard to burst anything with this.

In particular, this Diana is very not sticky. The only way to stick to a target here appears to be E with full moonlight, but it's very hard to see how to actually generate full moonlight on a target without using E in the first place. Feels like most enemies can just walk away, even if they lack CC or dashes. That's a bad sign.

I like the full moonlight concept but I think the mechanics need work:

  • Q is fine, if a bit boring
  • W is hard to use properly -- you somehow have to get 3 stacks on a target before pressing W and that sounds pretty awkward. Shields like being used early and often.
  • E's bonus is very hard to access, as you will probably need to burn E to get to 3 stacks.
  • R is just impossible. How are you going to get full moonlight on the right targets and not on the wrong ones? Feels like it punishes you for putting moonlight on things, and that feels bad. Then you have to get 3 attacks off, so it's highly unlikely you'll be hitting more than one or two targets with the effect.

I have concerns that this kit is becoming too generic fighter. New W and new E are just vanilla fighter buttons, and new R has quite a few similar fighter buttons too. Need to have a more unique value proposition, a way to stand out from the pack.

ImHerVoice3 votes

I like diana the way she is. Give her E damage or old knock up/slow range problem solved.

Riot doesn't know how to rework. Diana's kit is fun for me and i want NOTHING changed. build upon whats there. Not restart. Ty.

Cale0171 votes

As someone who's currently trying to learn Diana better, and actually pretty well enjoying her, I came into this hesitantly, but the more I read the more I agreed with you. The one issue I have is her ult. It sounds nice in theory, but three boosted AAs and then a pull isn't all that great, especially since it means that she'd be pulling enemies who were affected by moonlight on top of her. In a team fight if she tries to dive for a carry after hitting them with her Q, there's a good chance she'll be pulling two or three more champions on top of her, all of whom could easily destroy her. To top it off, three max speed autos is something that Jayce has access to, but much more frequently.

So here's my suggestion to add on to what you've done here:

For the passive, make it so that once she's stacked the moonlight debuff, Diana's auto attacks deal extra damage scaling with her AP per level on hit. It certainly doesn't have to be a lot, but enough to make a difference.

Change her E to the auto attack steroid, and have it pull in any enemies nearby. However, flip the order. Have it pull in enemies, but if the enemies are afflicted by full moonlight she then gains max attack speed for three attacks and cleaves an area around her. The point here would be to get in close to them with your Q and R and apply the stacks you need, so by the time they're trying to run you can hit the E to suck them back to you to lay down a bit more beat down off three boosted auto attacks. Have the stacks apply to large minions and monsters as well, so that it assists her with her jungle clear speed.

Have her ult remain how it is, with a few exceptions. First, to maintain that she scales well with attack speed, have her gain passive bonus attack speed for every rank in her ult. Second, have it retain drastically reduced cooldown when used on someone marked with moonlight. When used on a target who already has full moonlight, have it also grant a movement speed boost. In this way as an assassin, she can choose to simply rush in without worrying about initial stacks and blow them up before they can react. If she's playing as a fighter she can get stacks on someone before rushing in with the ult, and use the bonus movement speed as well as the on hit bonus of striking someone with three stacks of her passive to stay on them during the ensuing duel.

Isababa1 votes

@Caleo17

Thanks for the constructive criticism. I pondered a lot between which between my proposed E and R should be her ultimate. The reason I chose the the Moonsilver Blade as her ultimate is because Lunar Rush should be able to be accessed earlier on and that having Lunar Rush being her ultimate would more than likely force the spell to be somehow resettable. I also saw that as a problem with the Diana we have today.

Diana's resettable ultimate and its high damage is what makes her instagib targets, to be honest, her passive hasn't even really been a core part of her play style besides it being just a pushing/farming tool because of how Diana's designed and played. On the note of making Lunar Rush accessible early, I feel that it will allow her to become a stronger jungler as well as a more consistent laner.

Now, the reasoning behind Moonsilver Blade being her ultiamte is that I feel her weapon is what makes her unique. I decided that this would also be a good time to introduce a new mechanic for Diana, it makes her next 3 blows devastating which is just enough time for her target's team to react to the situation. As I said before, the dash was problematic because not only did it allow her to instantly kill someone, it took counterplay away from her champion design since she could repeatedly close the gap, you could hardly peel her. Also, the additional Full Moonlight effect is a lot more devastating and feels a lot more like an ultimate than a dash and a haste.

Isababa1 votes

@smokingpuffin

After your review, I would have to agree the skillset I proposed isn't sticky at all, maybe a strong minislow on the Q at full moonlight would work better.

The W is supposed to be difficult for use because its present form is broken in my opinion. My opinion is that the shield should be a bit weak because it is one for an Assassin, and it should only be prioritized in the dire situation, or in the situation you find it better than the damage or stickiness trade off of the other upgrades.

For the E, sacrifices have to be made, you're not supposed to have access to every bonus effect. I purposefully made E's bonus a haste because it should mostly work in a clean up or in an event where you can duel your opponent.

R is not impossible, it's a basic attack enhancer, so the 3rd hit would always be in Full Moonlight.

Another thing to note is that you can have all champions marked under Full Moonlight, the thing is that you can only take advantage of 2 bonuses per champion at a time.

Also, what do you mean by fighter buttons? I'm basing the kit off of what Diana currently has, just rearranging the utility and increasing the potential of each spell when used at Full Moonlight.

SmokingPuffin2 votes

After your review, I would have to agree the skillset I proposed isn't sticky at all, maybe a strong minislow on the Q at full moonlight would work better.

Many solutions are possible. Gonna need one if the kit is going to work. Up to you where to put it.

The W is supposed to be difficult for use because its present form is broken in my opinion. My opinion is that the shield should be a bit weak because it is one for an Assassin, and it should only be prioritized in the dire situation, or in the situation you find it better than the damage or stickiness trade off of the other upgrades.

My main complaint here is that you're working against the nature of shielding. You compare with Jarvan's shield mechanic. He slows people, which works naturally with a shield mechanic -- you want to open the fight with a shield, and a slow is natural on an opener move.

Your mechanic is more natural on a %missing health recovery move, something that encourages you to delay use of your survival mechanic.

R is not impossible, it's a basic attack enhancer, so the 3rd hit would always be in Full Moonlight.

Enemies are going to scatter and this kit lacks a button for getting them back into AoE range. You will frequently end up attacking one dude twice and he will use his escape, leaving you a third auto on someone else or nothing. Feels bad man.

Also, what do you mean by fighter buttons? I'm basing the kit off of what Diana currently has, just rearranging the utility and increasing the potential of each spell when used at Full Moonlight.

The standard fighter kit contains a targeted gap closer, a cc effect for sticking to the target, a sustain or mitigation button, and a steroid button. Your version of Diana now has 3 of the 4 buttons in that list. In particular, W and E are problematic here because they don't do enough other than the basic outline of the button.

  • E is now a vanilla targeted gap closer like Fiora Irelia Jax MasterYi Pantheon XinZhao.
  • W is now a standard shield mechanic, also present on many fighters like JarvanIV Riven Rumble Shen Udyr Vi.

These buttons were considerably more interesting in the old kit. Now, if you look at the execution of the gap closer and shield mechanics in the above kits, you'll find that there's some different angle on each of them that adds interest to the kit. In general, you've replaced Diana's unique mechanics with generic ones present on many other champions.

0fficerJenny1 votes

^This guy I have seen to many champs get reworks that just destroys them (Cass and Skarner come to mind right away) I really like Diana, I play her top and as a fighter who if I see a open ADC I can either kill them or force them back. To me she is in a good place but could have a few tweaks. Honestly my biggest problem is when I get ahead my q kills minions in one shot and I can no longer Q>R to them.

DaraX591 votes

Diana is probably the first champion I played and honestly love to death. As a Diana main yeah her kit does screw her over because once she goes into a fight she has a little chance of escaping (i mean you could just press R to another enemy champ and use your flash to get out but that's just me), but it's so rewarding at the same time when you get to the point where you can 2 shot a champion. I just feel that maybe her E could use some work but everything else is fine.

baetoevn1 votes

I love this its just the fact that this wont happen until alonnggg time, people like Poppy, Taric, Anivia actually needs one

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