SummonersLab, Part 8: Plants
Quiet some time has past since the plants have overgrown the Rift. But did those actually improved the Rift, or should we get out the weed killer?
Currently those are the topics and their (hopefully) release date: SummonersLab, The Introduction Here SummonersLab, Part 1: An additional Crit Item Here SummonersLab, Part 2: Crit Algorithm Improvement Here SummonersLab, Part 3: Tower Changes Here SummonersLab, Part 4: Ohmwrecker Here SummonersLab, Part 5: Support Role Improvement(1) Here SummonersLab, Part 6: Wits End Here SummonersLab, Part 7: Smite Buffs Here SummonersLab, Part 8: Plants Here SummonersLab, Part 9: ** Support Role Improvement (2)** _ Here _ SummonersLab, Part 10: ** General Improvements (1)** Here _ SummonersLab, Part 11: ** General Improvements (2)**_ Here
Ill put links to the posts here, so you can easily view all of them.
Introduction
Welcome back, I delayed this one on purpose, since i was working on more parts, which i can now happily announce! There will be the 2nd Part of the Support Role Improvement and a General Improvement Part, which contains alot of ideas that werent big enough to make an own post. Without further ado, lets get rolli'n!
For those of you, who havent seen the plants yet (so mainly nasus mains ;P), there are 3 Typs of Plants:
The Honeyfruit: http://imgur.com/TEBQNac
- spawns in the river, gives Hp and mana, 3.5% maxHp/fruit or a flat amount 14 - 116 based on lvl/fruit if this is higher then the %.
- spawns first at ~5min, takes 5-7 mins to respawn. Max 2 plants in each river half
The Scryer's Bloom(which is still need to google how to write that xD): http://imgur.com/HpdXg21
- grants true vision on a large cone based on the attackers attack angle. It shows even stealthed Champs and wards for 12s(3s for champions)
- spawns at ~3min, takes 5 - 6mins to respawn, only 1 per quadrant
The Blast Cone: http://imgur.com/Y2CpYrt
- Knocks everbody away from its center, you can go some walls with this
- spawn at 1mins and 2mins, takes 5-7 min to respawn, 2 per quadrant
Every Plant takes additional 60 seconds to fully grow and be useable when they spawn. They leave some withered remains behind, like a destroyed ward, for 30 seconds. They all have 1 HP and the locations are fixed. http://imgur.com/LsKThey
The Problem
Many of you may not know, but the original version included way more spawnpoints and far more plants on the map. This was reduced to the current version, which lead to a less overflooded map.
I still have concerns about their possible abuse left. Mainly coordinated teams might abuse this on a regular bases! Therefore its not that important for soloQ, but still a problem.
Those concerns are:
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** Plants are highly feast or famine**, ether you are stonger/ahead and get the all the plants, or they get cleared by the enemy or even worse, used against you! If nether is ahead, then you can atleast make use of the Blast Cone or the Scryers bloom. But if the enemy is ahead, they can use them to futher snowball! Currently the tactic of really trying to abuse the plants as much as possible, is extremly rare. Which might increase when pros use them. Then they will become more frequent.
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Plants and the removal of Smite Buffs go hand-in-hand, they are not seperate! Some of the powerbuget from them got transferred into the plants. Raptor and wolf were put into Bloom, heal/sustain into smite and honeyfruit, only the blast cone is a unique addtion. But all of these are not limited to the jungler, or "safe"! They can all be taken by everyone! So basicly the team behind, gets further behind, because their plants can be used against them, and they also dont get some defensive options(wolf, raptor to clear own jungle from enemy wards). Which makes this double troublesome for the team that is behind.
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There is absolutly no tactical decision making with these plants! You get them for free, with no real tradeoff, they can and will easly get popped by roaming sups etc., they will get cleared before teamfights in 90% of cases, and teamfights are to short nowadays so they will not even be useable in teamfights...
The Changes
The feast or faminie can hardly be changed whithout complettly remodeling everything. Nevertheless we can:
- give Smitebuffs again, even tweak them so they dont get to crazy with plants!
- make them have tradeoffs when they are used!
- make them more strategic!
Smitebuffs
General changes to smitebuffs: Here
Additionaly tweaks:
- Raptors range and duration needs to be lowered to -20%range and to 60s duration. But an Unused Raptor buff will counter the Blooms reveal! The buff gets triggered and removes the reveal from Bloom on everybody in range! So you will not be revealed by bloom, even if you were in the Cone. This works on monsters too, but they will get spottet for a briefly moment, but not you!
- Honeyfruit gets more important since the smite doesnt give HP back, so values might need to be looked at.
Trade-offs
Currently the "Trade-offs" are close to nonexistent, only Scryers Bloom has a bit of a trade-off, if the cone gets seen be the enemy, you revealed your location temporaliy. But the reveal of stealthed champs and wards is pretty powerfull!
To show you what i mean, lets take a look at ** smitebuffs**:
- you have very limited smite charges
- 15s cd between them
- camp needs to be there, not taken, but even then an enemy could smite/contest/steal them!
- only junglers can get them and you have a huge varity of buffs, and even smite vs champs!
- you give up a summoner spell, but get powerful cheap items, clearspeed, the buffs, and potential steal enemy epics. - ontop ether better warding, slow or dmg and dmg reduction!
THOSE are real tradeoffs!
if you read closely alot of them are tactical decisions too! So why dont we combine them to balance the plants? lets do it!
Make them strategic (again)!
How can we make them strategic? They are more or less random in their spawn time and get cleared easily!
The Answer to that is: ** Those are Plants! Why dont we get our green thump out and simply replant those!?**
Hold your horses, you will not be able to purchase plant seeds, even if that may be interesting, this could get out of hand pretty easily!!! Its a nice idea, but inventory space and the locations make this troublesome! I spent more hours on trying to make this possible and balanced then i can remember(one of the reasons why this took so long), but the worst case was far to uncontrollable. ill put the most fleshed out version after the TL;DR: if youre interested.
No, the keypart are the withered remains! They stay for 30s after a plant was taken. So, if the enemy used one of the plants, and you walk by that place within those 30s, then you can "replant"/"rescue" the plant, making it spawn again! Remember it still takes 60s before they grow and you can use them! But this helps with the "just walked by" and "everything cleared before a figth could start" issues.
The stragetic decision behind this is: Do i take the risk of the enemy beeing able to use them again, or do i get its benefits? Only your team can "rescue" a Plant that was taken by the enemy and the other way around! This is more of a risk/reward thing, but it is a decision nevertheless! And only those who didnt get the plant have the choice!
Jung and Mature plants
The rescue stuff is pretty nice, but we can do a bit more!
Lets give those plants 2 growth stages. The first, the "jung" stage, should be already usefull, but noticable weaker then the 2nd stage, the "mature". This includes, next to weaker values, some additional debuffs or weaknesses! The goal is to force you into a choice: Ether take the weak version now, or wait and get stronger benefits but with the risk that the enemy might snatch them away! The plants will grow from jung to mature in 60s, and the timer starts as soon as they spawn.
You may have noticed, I like giving players some choices :D This makes the game generaly a bit more complex, but it should be worth the tradeoff.
1st Stage: Jung
Honeyfruit:
- still 5 fruits, but the healing is about 25% less
- still slows while eating
- since the fruits arnt fully ready yet, eating them gives a debuff:
- "dmg vs champs reduced by 10%", for 10s- 15s or
- "healing reduced by 50%" for 15s - 20s or
- "tenactiy by 25%" for 20s - 30s
Blast Cone:
- deals 50-100 physical Dmg to all "users" (no free escapes!)
- 20% 0.5sec slow after landing
- possibly a small Mr/Ar reduction, 5 - 10/lvl, for 5s
Scryers Bloom:
- cone range and width smaller, both -20%
- doesnt reveal wards/stealthed champs, but a 3s red shadow tracing could be ok.
2nd Stage: Mature
Honeyfruit:
- 5 fruits, but +25% more heal value then currently, fruits possible bigger
- still slows while eating
- no additional debuff
** Blast Cone:**
- deals 100 - 200 physical Dmg to all users
- no slow
- possibly a small Ar/Mr reduction, 10 - 20/lvl, for 5s
Scryers Bloom:
- cone range same as currently, width increased by ~10%
- reveals wards, stealthed Champs etc.
#TL;DR:
- smitebuffs back, but with small tweaks
- Plants can be respawned, by clicking on the withered remains, but only if the nemy killed it! Doesnt work if you destroyed it!
- 2 growth stages, "Jung" and "Mature", takes 60s to grow from Jung to Mature
- Jung is weaker then the current version, mature a bit stronger
- This reduces Feast or Famine of the plants and additionaly gives strategic decision making!
I hope you liked this idea, tell me what you think about them! Check out other neat Ideas, they can be found at the top, just click on the links, I would love to hear your feedback on them too! That concludes todays topic, see you all in the next one! should be out till saturday!!
And a little tipp: Search for "SummonersLab" in the Search field in the top left, and you can find this series instantly :D
#Extras
Planting Plants:
- You can purchase plant seeds for 200g. It takes 60s for them to grow and they start in the "Jung" stage, so additional 60s till they get to the "Mature" stage.
- Plants cant be planted next to each other! The range in which you cant plant other plants is about of a trundle icefield. Honeyfruits can only be planted in the river. You cant plant any of them in the base.
- You are limted to 1 typ of seed in your inventory, possibly the seed can be stored in the Sightstone and all Jungle items or TracksKnife only.(personaly tend to Trackers Only)
Possible abuse:
- Blast Cone extremely effectiv for Traps/ Engageds/ Sieges
- Scryers gives alot of Vision Control, to much to be balanceable.
- Honeyfruit can be used as a sustain ressource when contesting/poking near baron/drake pits.
Possible solutions:
- limits to how many plants of a typ can be in a Quadrant, this is an extra limit to the "normal" limit from the plant spawing mechanism.
- pretty limited inventory space, specially lategame
- takes 60s before usable, so counterplay is possible, but the timeframe might be even to high! making them to unreliable. possibly reducing to 20-30s, but the "growing to mature" should stay at 60s!
- price can be a bit higher 300g but should not be higher then 500g!
All in all, this idea can be good, but especially the Vision Control from Scryers is to troublesome to be balanced! A limit to max 2 per quadrant is 100% needed! (1 "normal" and 1 planted). I need your feedback on this one! (And the other stuff obviously too :P)
