Isn't it time to take a look at Janna?

Dedrius·3/28/2016, 6:21:54 PM·2 votes·747 views

Janna has been one of the best supports for a long time now, seen great success in both high elo and Pro play. She is currently sitting at a 53.5% winrate in Plat+ with an 18% pickrate which is second in both categories for a support. I feel as though she has been hovering around 54% winrate for a long time now and has never seen any changes.

Just because she can't 1v1 an ADC like Tahm could when he was nerfed, doesn't mean she doesn't bring too much to the table right now. She is extremely strong and always has been and I feel that she could warrant a few minor changes.

Thoughts?

4 Comments

67chrome3/28/2016, 6:58:23 PM3 votes

Thoughts?

Janna is seeing some pretty regular nerfs and has been since pretty much forever. It's not like Riot hasn't touched her with the nerf-bat.

Also: I feel a bigger issue with Janna is more about what supports are allowed to do in LoL and how support kits are set up in general. Generally speaking, having good bases that stay relevant through out the game is the most important thing: as due to solo-lane balance, good scaling and low bases just means being weak the entire game when playing a champion as a support.

For whatever reason everyone has AD or AP ratios on everything and in pretty much every case those are proportional to the base damage a skill offers, which mostly makes kit-power devoid of AD/AP scaling (most CC, knockbacks, MS boosts) the only real option in regards to picking a support champion that will remain relevant throughout a game, and Janna is simply the embodiment of tons of utility and no-damage to begin with, making her a natural choice.

In several regards Janna feels like a better support than most more for reasons like a champion with a good kit being bad because they lack decent itemization. She isn't game-breaking so much as hardly any champion in LoL is actually optimized to be a support. This is especially true since Riot added carry-scaling on the utility of several supports, exacerbating the problem of support's capacity to abuse solo lanes and thus being nerffed to the point they're only a support because they can't do anything else and they're really weak at the roll, and champions like Janna that don't have a lot of utility to cram ratios on are naturally going to be better because she doesn't have a lot of nonsensical ratios. When you have the option of running a carry, carry, utility carry, carry, or Janna as a support: the choice is pretty obvious.

Abyssphere3/28/2016, 6:59:10 PM3 votes

They nerfed her just this patch. What is wrong with you?

Hethalean3/28/2016, 6:28:10 PM1 votes

Didn't they just nerf her a little bit recently? I believe they shaved 10 AD at max rank for her shield, and reduced the CC time of her ult.

Ant Reformed3/28/2016, 7:51:36 PM1 votes

She is overpowered, but hey that's mainly because the support role is subject to low income, so only supports that can be useful without a lot of items are the ones that are the safest and well...most useful. Imo supports need some kind of income buff and more items suited towards them. They could also make some supports like Thresh and Blitzcrank less toxic by offering more utility items geared towards them, rewarding them for playing the role of support over the role of tank with a lot of utility.