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A lot of Rek'Sai's kit doesn't make much sense anymore

HeazonZ·8/8/2018, 1:36:51 AM·21 votes·7,468 views

Why does her bite scale off of fury when you can build it up so fast? There's basically no point where you'd ever have to use it early. Before the rework, it made sense for it to scale because it took much longer to build up to max fury, but now you hit max in an instant. Why not just make it deal max damage all the time? The interaction between her E and her passive is kind of unnecessary now.

Her Q used to be a way for her to build up fury faster by hitting multiple targets. That was a large part of why it did AOE damage. Now that that interaction is gone, it's lost a lot of depth and is an ability that deals barely noticeable damage to surrounding enemies for seemingly no reason. Its aoe portion is useless now, just being used to boost your damage against your main target.

Her current passive: At full fury, burrow for 3 seconds to heal 20-190 health based on level. I understand why it has to be much weaker since you build up fury so fast but 20 health at level 1 is ridiculous. Before, her sustain was much greater but now her passive barely helps her stay healthy in the jungle even though that's its whole point. There's also lane-sai who could abuse the passive if it were any stronger, due to how fast her fury generation is now.

Her tremor sense got nerfed because of pro play, so moving enemies leave a tremor every 1.5 seconds now. That is a pretty large delay in information, especially if you are tracking someone who's just around the middle of your detection radius because they could basically go anywhere and you have to wait that long to find out. This can make chasing people in burrowed form quite tedious and frustrating even though you should have the upper hand. The benefit you get from blinding yourself is 15-30 bonus ms but that simply isn't enough to compensate for that huge loss. You feel like an idiot, chasing after where someone was and trying to predict where they might move only to be lead around for an awkward amount of time before finally catching them or giving up. It'd be better if enemies who were closer to you left behind tremors slightly more frequently, like maybe if they were at your inner half of detection radius it would be a 1 second interval. There could be problems with that idea but it's just a thought.

Last of all her tunnels. Aside from being used as a dash, leaving tunnels around the map was meant to open up locations that you could teleport to with her old ultimate. You were rewarded for creating tunnels in useful locations all over the map. Now that she has her new ultimate, which i do like, the interaction there is also killed. Before, putting tunnels all over the map gave you power in a way. Now there really is no point in doing that. They just make neat little shortcuts.

https://i.imgur.com/8Msdny3.png

TLDR: Rek'Sai lost a lot of depth as a champion after her rework with the removal of her old ultimate and the ability to build up fury so fast. The resource has become so easily attainable that her Q's minimal aoe damage and the scaling on her E are no longer necessary.

The main point of this post isn't at all to say that rek'sai is weak, but to point out things in her kit that simply feel out of place now after she was reworked and her change from being a champion with more depth and a kit that better interacted with itself to a more generic damage dealing champion.

20 Comments

KoKoboto8/8/2018, 1:41:23 AM10 votes

I agree. Rek'Sai has pretty trash gameplay and thematic cohesion now. Doesn't even feel like I'm playing an actual champion.

BLIGHTBRINGER8/8/2018, 9:20:40 AM5 votes

I actually really love Rek'Sai as a champion, she is really unique and interesting.

But ever since I recently got into playing her, I find myself having no success what so ever (haven't won a single game). She is just too complicated, she is suppose to be a somewhat tanky fighter (or used to be), but now she's just an assassin of a some-sort. Who even lacks the damage to even do that.

I think Riot just needs to make a decision on what she is suppose to be and just rework her.

TheThrillionaire8/8/2018, 10:57:07 AM5 votes

Just jumping in here to add my 2 cents. I've played a little bit of Rek'sai, mostly during the time in which she was built as a full tank, or moderate AD Bruiser, so I don't have too much recent experience on her, but from what I have seen and out of the couple of games I've played with her in the past few weeks she does seem like more of an assassin type threat now. Shes very feast or famine in the early game, and has to snowball early to be even moderately relevant in the mid to late game. I think this could be fixed by possibly making her burrowed healing scale off bonus hp, or adding an armor/MR stat boost when burrowed (something along those lines)

Also when she's not ahead her combo does feel a little lack-luster late, shes very easy to kite, and even with the full ad build thats more popular now, even an adc can just wait for her ult to land an kite away. Possibly giving her e a DOT at max Fury similar to an Udyr tiger proc or something to at least give you the hope of securing a kill and not just landing attempting to tunnel through a frontline to get a lucky knockup on a priority target just to get chain cc'd and do no damage anyway. And if you're lucky enough to get your ult off, by the time you land, you have minimal hp and no other means of sticking to a target, because your cc has already been proc'd and you finish your ult unburrowed anyway.

I still enjoy playing the champ, but i definitely think there's a little more they can do with her. I understand that they adjust champions because of how the are played professionally, but this game isn't concetrated on premade 5's for the masses.

Child of the Pit8/8/2018, 10:34:48 AM4 votes

Rek'sai main here, i agree with everything you said, the rework made her better, no doubth in that, however everything feels out of place now and chaotic.

The Q AoE should apply the effect of item 1039 and does slightly increased AoE damage, and slightly decreased target damage to make it feel like it was made for being AoE, not just a comfy AA reset and Sheen proc.

I actually quite like the idea of your tremor sense changes, i can imagine that there would be 10 small rings in the tremor ring, and every ring deeper, they get detected 0.1 seconds earlier.

the bite in itself, i could imagine a good change would be that the E after reaching max furry gains increasing damage by up to 100% over 3 seconds, a higher AD scalling, and gets the true damage part removed.

I love the current execution ult, even if it makes the tunnels less important, but thats ok, the amount of tunnels that saved my life because of it's new cooldown is really high, so i can forgive that part.

Teridax688/8/2018, 6:29:39 AM4 votes

I agree with this. Rek'Sai's kit already struggled to retain coherency on release, as it's always been loaded with a ton of different mechanics, but as she's been rebalanced and pushed in different directions over time, much of her doesn't feel all that great or useful anymore. Her unburrowed abilities in particular feel mediocre, particularly since she's got this spread of minor AoE and some single-target damage that doesn't do much for her playstyle anymore. Meanwhile, her heal while burrowed is still crap at higher levels, and her ult simply doesn't really do anything for the rest of her playstyle. She's a mess of different abilities where only one or two truly stand out, and the rest feel like filler. It might help to reevaluate her in her current state, and see what her gameplay niche truly is, since that was never really made clear to begin with.

DorkunedAuras8/8/2018, 3:49:54 AM3 votes

As a Rek'Sai main since her release, I fully disagree.

The bite cannot be instantly cast at the start of a combo, given that you almost always start off at 0 Fury. You have to build it off. That's the main reason for still being this way. The old E was nearly impossible to get the true damage bite off, which made it felt really annoying.

The AoE damage (40 + .5 bAD (120 + 1.5 bAD total)) per hit is quite notable. It's quite helpful in jungle clearing and the damage adds up fast when waveclearing or even 2v1ing (something she definitely can do)

Her passive is designed to be used multiple times in a camp. If you burrow down, kite away a bit, you'll get the heal off. Rek'Sai stays extremely healthy during her clears if you take advantage of the far, far more frequent heals.

A lot of the skill in managing Tremor Sense is in the prediction and reading the tremors. That's the cost you pay for seeing over walls and through stealth. Also, varying the timing of the tremors would feel awkward, as opposed to standardized timing. I still support buffing the timing a bit, but it'd have to be a standardized buff.

Neat little shortcuts ARE power. They're buffing to your macro game. The faster you can get around the map, the more efficient you can be and the more you can get done, which is EVERYTHING to junglers. Also, good tunnel management can get you in and out (and even back in) of with a single tunnel that was already down.

Also, the rework removed a lot of the free, skilless power from her. The free AS on her ult and the AoE knockup meant that building Tank + Titanic was the best way to go, which was incredibly safe, reliable and easy. Now, with her high AD ratios and little innate tankiness, she is now a high risk, high reward early game monster. You are heavily rewarded for building AD instead of tanky.

You also ignore the massive amount of skill expression within her ult. Going untargettable is huge for outplaying, especially when it has the delay.

Personally, this current iteration is my favourite version of Rek'Sai we've had thus far (even if she's definitely OP atm).

Icy Hot Shoto8/9/2018, 11:38:22 AM2 votes

Honestly, I just miss my land shark zipping past people on a jet ski. :c

Ironkhight8/8/2018, 7:57:35 AM2 votes

Honestly hate the tremors seeing as how your supposed to travel burrowed I gotta hope they dont chase me after I see them cause, idk if they're full health or almost dead. And you can forget about landing a q to actually see them

Bonipherus8/8/2018, 2:44:36 PM1 votes

I liked her way more before the rework. I'd like her reverted but to still only have a single target knockup

Iręlía8/9/2018, 4:12:58 AM1 votes

I used to play her A LOT, but stopped because her first clear is practically suicide.

They truly gutted that champ. Shame, was in my Top 5 champs.

RekSai CoffeeCo8/8/2018, 8:42:40 AM1 votes

Rek also has best coffee as is fresh ground.

Meta since 8.10 has been unloving tho with a low pickrate(one of lowest) and winrate compared to other junglers.