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My 2 cents on the Janna "fiasco"

Fisher No Chains··17 votes·8,171 views

Okay, so, we all saw the Janna nerfs that made it to live. For people who don't know:

MOVEMENT SPEED 320 ⇒ 315 -W - Zephyr BASE DAMAGE 60/105/150/195/240 ⇒ 55/100/145/190/235

What I don't understand, though, is why Janna gets treated differently from other champions. She's NEVER been under 50% WR in the past 4 years, as you can see here. Other supports/enchanters have had a below-50% WR for some patches, but Janna LITERALLY hasn't been since early S4.

A common excuse is "but she's braindead easy to play!", but as I said, it's just an excuse. Let's take a look at Sona for example. Currently she has a 4% WR in Plat+ (1/5 of Janna's) and a 51% WR (-2,3% compared to Janna). But we all know what Riot did to Sona. Basically she was nerfed... 4 times in a row? just because new runes synergized too well with her and was left weak because she was considered too strong/frustrating to play against. Well, Sona isn't that hard to play (I'd say she's not harder than Janna) but she was nerfed to the point where she had a consistent 48%WR and a laughable playrate.

So... Why can't you do the same with Janna? Stats speak for themselves: Janna is not a "op hehe" champion, she's definitely broken and the fact that she's been receiving nerfs non-stop for 6 years is a clear sign of that. At this point it doesn't matter how many nerfs you throw at her (even though they're usually ridiculous love taps), she'll still be the #1 enchanter both in winrate and playrate because she's just too good at doing everything an enchanter should do. Even when she's "out of meta" (I doubt it really happened during the last 3 seasons but still) she still manages to mantain insane stats.

Other champions in other roles are instagutted the moment they reach a 52%+ WR, despite having low playrates, and left in the dust for months, or even years (looking at you, Viktor). But Janna? Apparently she's not a priority pick in pro play so it's okay to leave her disgustingly overpowered for SoloQ. People who say "spam Janna to D5" are right. It takes little to no effort to do good with her and being able to protect her carry requires nothing but a 3-buttons spells chain that does everything with low skill involvement.

Can you just admit that Janna is broken by design and that nerfs won't fix her core issues? Just put her in the tier 1 list for VGUs and do something serious about her, nerfing her damage or movement speed by 5 won't solve the issue and never did in the past seasons.

Not a rant, just wanted to point out how Janna avoids gutting whereas other champions get gutted for a patch or two in which they're good.

Tl;dr: Janna never dropped below 50% WR for 4+ years and all she's been receiving are love taps that don't fix her core issues. She needs some major work because she's the best pick in every situation, regardless of how many nerfs she gets.

9 Comments

Vekkna11 votes

Honestly, the problem with Janna right now is the speed and amount of damage across the entire game. In the past, an instant tornado with a .25 second knockup would be useful for little more than interrupt/peel. But damage scaling is high enough now that .25 seconds is enough time to counter-engage and turn the fight.

Also, the AD buff on her shield is benefitting from all the damage multipliers on runes and items. It has always done that, but there are more multipliers now, like the entire first row of Precision, Alacrity, PTA, etc. Celerity is also converting her passive MS to allies into bonus AD/AP.

Revitalize is another abuse rune that has nothing to do with Janna's actual kit. For example, Janna and Maokai are on a team together and both take Revitalize. Mao has a Spirit Visage and Janna has an Ardent. Once Mao is below 40% hp, Janna shields him and ults. The combined interactions between runes and items result in +39% shield value and +81% heal value.

My point is that Janna this season is more of a canary in the coal mine than an actual champ balance failure. She has insane hidden power in some situations and almost all of it comes from other players' rune choices.

Fisher No Chains3 votes

But since most of those problems won’t be addressed (I highly doubt that they’ll remove some runes because they interact that way with Janna), they should at least address the way she works so she can’t abuse them anymore.

You can’t say that Janna is a balance issue solely because some runes have insane synergy with her kit. Even when keystones weren’t a thing she was a high winrate/playrate champion and the best peel support in the game.

Now she’s still THE BEST peel support in the game, but is also stronger because of runes reforged. At this point changing interactions for Janna alone would be a mistake, so working on her would be the best and most logical path.

Vekkna3 votes

I don't necessarily disagree, but my point is that her kit isn't fundamentally problematic. The layers of invisible scaling power are the problem more than anything. Her enchanter qualities are perfectly fine.

The #1 issue is that she has all that on top of her AD buff in a fast-scaling snowball meta. Think about a mirror matchup in bot lane where both ADCs are nearly even and both Jannas are maxing E. One of the ADCs is down by a few CS and has to come back to lane when the other ADC finished infinity edge.

That crit damage gap is significant on its own, but this season you have a lot more damage and modifiers coming from runes that make the gap even larger. All of those modifiers are then applied to the AD from Janna's shield, meaning she's scaling off her own runes and the ADC's runes to a degree that has never been possible before this season. That double scaling snowballs super hard because Janna's income makes her defensive utility stronger while her ADC's income adds multipliers to the value of her shield AD.

The problem with nerfing Janna is that a ton of that offensive power is completely intangible to the Janna player. Nerfing her own damage and utility just makes her feel less satisfying.

I think the proper solution would be to remove the AD bonus and replace it with a similar effect that's more visible and less subject to ADC scaling, like the on-hit effects from Nami and Lulu.

PhantomGG9 votes

shes also the only enchanter to regularly break win rate records year by year : ^)

Fisher No Chains7 votes

Well her "weakness" was that she provided nothing but peel, but Riot decided to make her laning more interactive by giving her a point and click poke ability that scales with, guess what, movement speed, that stat Janna gets in abundance!

She's now a better Nami with lower risk and way higher reward.

flibitydoo2 votes

Riot's balance team on the whole is afraid of nerfing supports (or tanks) since they actually hold the title for most unpopular/desired role (you literally get autofill protection for filling or supporting and the game itself tells you that) so to prevent people from avoiding the role they keep buffing them or keep making sure that when the nerf them, they still "feel useful".

I know everyones on the -5 dmg meme about the current Janna nerf, but the -5 movespeed nerf is actually kind of a big deal IMO. It means she has a harder time dodging blitzcrank/thresh and on the whole makes her less safe as a champion to things like ganks which is one of the main reasons why she attains such high winrate (it's much much harder to feed and still contribute on janna than say, on braum due to her innate movespeed bonuses).

I don't remember the statistics, but there was a time when they gave ziggs (who was the best mid laner at the time due to his waveclear stalling) a -5 movespeed nerf and that actually shut him out pretty hard (and damn near everyone dropped him) because mid lane is full of skillshots and the movespeed nerf actually had significant influence on it.

SanKakU1 votes

If armor scaling were a more universal feature in champion kits, there would be more natural Janna enemies. As it is, probably the best way to nerf her is to take a hit to your team's chances to win by taking a Mage lane partner for her.

hhaavviikk1 votes

I'd call sona an exception due to the nature of her kit, if she's strong, not OP, but strong then you can't beat her harras in lane, Q is auto targetted and prioritizes champions and can't be dodged and then her enhanced blue AA can't be dodged either leaving the only option to be ''stay out of range'' which isn't good counterplay which is why sona shouldn't be strong in that regard

Bob the Toastr1 votes

Honestly, Riot needs to decide whether she should be a peel support or a heal/shield support. If they want her to be a peel support, they need to take away power from her shield and ulti, or if they want her to be a heal/shield support, they need to take away power from her q and w, possibly with an increased CD or reduced damage.

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