@Riot: My input on the mage update (Massive post)

Riot asked for input, and as an avid player of three out of six targeted champions, I feel I should share my thoughts on the update. A bit of relevant information on me: I have reached level five mastery on Brand, Malzahar and Vel'koz out of the six, and I love playing mid lane, especially immobile mages. This will be a long post, but I'll provide tl;dr in the end of every champion.

Vel'Koz

IF YOU'RE TIRED OF READING VEL'KOZ SHIT, JUST SCROLL BY

I will start by saying that I trust - based on what Riot already has said on this champion - that they won't do any massive harm to Vel'Koz' playstyle or kit, and that other players have pointed out similar things with varying degrees of depth, but I do have a few thoughts I want to share anyway.

This is my very favorite champion in all of LoL. From the moment they released the teaser, I knew I'd love this champion. As I said, immobile mages have always been my thing, and before Vel'Koz, my favorite champions were Viktor and Swain. I have slowly drifted away from the two for various reasons, but I still enjoy them. Anyway, I saw from the ability preview and the champion spotlight that Vel'Koz had a kit that was made for people like myself; mid- to high range, lots of AoE and immense damage when played well, while being very dependent on good positioning, solid aim and reading of the other players. In balance terms, and as Riot has already stated several times: a very healthy kit. Riot's concern is that he has no niche that isn't covered by other poke mages, comparing him to the likes of Lux, Ziggs and Xerath. I wholeheartedly disagree, and I will list the four champions and point out their characteristics:

• Ziggs is the guy you go to for zone-control and safety. His minefield, general circle AoE and the only one out of the four with some mobility in their kit helps to solidify this. Probably the one out of the four with the strongest, most original characteristics. His weakest trait is damage consistency. Out of the four, he is the one that will have the hardest time to consistently hit his poke.
• Lux is the gal you pick up if you want to best compliment a pick-comp. Her snare is amazing for making picks, her ult lets her aid skirmishes in the river and parts of the jungle from lane, and her shield has amazing supportive qualities for a number of situations. Her weakest trait is (prolonged) teamfighting. Her teamfighting isn't bad as such, but with a part of her powerbudget being invested in short ranged autoattacks, and being the only out of the four without a low cooldown skill, this is her weakest part.
• Xerath is the pokemaster, at least that's how I perceive him when compared to the four. Xerath gives up the control of Ziggs and the supportive qualities of Lux for more reliability in consistent damage. His Q is relatively easy to hit, has an immense range, and deals a very fair bit of damage. All his skills have immense range and damage, but little else. We could discuss for eternity if his ult is well designed or not, but I digress. His weakest trait is safety. His Q roots you while casting, slows while channeling. His W also requires a short animation before it is cast. The E stun duration scales off of length of travel, and his R roots him in place for the duration. If he gets jumped, he most likely dies.
• Vel'koz is the teamfighter out of the four, and probably also the least pokey. Vel'Koz can, with a well set up teamfight, single-handedly kill the whole enemy team more or less, or at least take a hefty part of their health away. This is technically true for all four, but what Vel'Koz has that the others don't is: possibly a team-wide 3.5 sec 20 % slow, the highest damaging ult out of the four without even counting the passive, the only one out of the four with a passive that doesn require an auto-attack (this is huge, the others all have to put themselves in danger to utilize their full kit, and Lux and Ziggs for their full damage potential.) and the only one with consistent true damage. In a perfect teamfight, Vel'Koz will have gotten off his passive 4-5 times on a target. If it's on a tank, that is no less than 1000 raw damage at level 18 not counting the other abilities, which is absolutely insane for a mage. I will give you this, the other four are good in teamfights as well, and Vel'Koz requires a lot more thought and care than the others because his ult leaves him vulnerable and he can't frontload his damage in the same way as namely Lux and Ziggs, but being difficult to pull off does not warrant a rework of any kind. In fact, I find it peculiar that Riot compares Vel'Koz to poke mages, while they rework him together with the likes of Brand, Zyra and Vladimir; They acknowledge that he is the one of the poke mages with the teamfight and damage of a regular immobile mage, yet they act like he doesn't have his own niche. To answer Riot's direct concern: I pick Vel'Koz when I see that massive teamfights will ensue, the enemy is picking juggernauts and tanky champions (seriously, Vel'Koz' kiting is ridiculous), and/or a good poke is gonna do wonders for our team. Yes, other champions can fill these separate needs, but only Vel'Koz can do all three effectively at the same time. I can understand how they want to underline this "knowledge through disintegration"-thing of his to a greater extent, but Riot has to remember, as was made clear with the initial massive failure of Fiora, that the playerbase gets attached to the concept they are presented with, not what Riot had intended for it to be. No one has , to my knowing, ever complained that they don't get any "knowledge" from disintegrating their opponents as such. His abilites, and his passive and ult in particular, really fulfill the fantasy we were presented imo. Putting Vel'Koz on the rework-list just feels like an impending forced attempt to make Vel'Koz something "different" just for the sake of it. Yes, he is a mage in the purest sense, but why is that a bad thing?

That was tons longer than I intended it too be, but oh well, kudos to whomever read it through.

TL;DR: Vel'Koz DOES fill his own niche, read the bullet points for clarity. Although I don't think Riot will actually ruin him as some fear, I do fear a rework will feel forced.

Malzahar

Ah, the void prophet. This won't be as long for sure, as I do agree that his kit is, albeit fun, kind of iffy.

First of, I'll point out what I like about his kit. His Malefic Visions is so much fun. The bouncing mechanic, and how you have to play around it is just great. The way the voidlings act with it, and how you have to time it with voidlings in order to be certain you have good waveclear, or maybe you just want that intense harass with Malefic Visions and his voidling. I don't even think that it's a bad thing that it's point and click, tbh, but I find the general aversion towards such abilities understandable. It will need some sort of compensation if it is to be made a skillshot though. The voidlings are also tons of fun on their own. The way you always have to manage your voidling-stacks to maximize his potential. You don't want to spawn a voidling when you know it's not gonna do much for you, because that means more than a full spell rotation before your next voidling, and that is a lot of mana. Really really fun. His ult is kind of his niche as a pick in a teamcomp. I can understand that it will have to be changed, but frontloading his full kit onto someone, and especially locking someone ontop of the W feels great. It's really hit or miss in a pretty extreme way: in a 1v1 it's basically a free kill-mechanic for malz, but as soon as someone else shows up, it suddenly turns into a suicide skill. Knowing when to use it always separated the good Malz from the bad, but the only real way of playing around it is avoiding it. My proposal is somehow making it a skillshot, really. His Nullzone is a cool thing too, but is kinda useless if his ult is changed to something completely different. Its cohesiveness in the kit is amazing, really ties it all together, but it has no use if he doesn't retain his cc. It's a great skill on its own too, but has nothing to do in Malz' kit if he loses the ability to easily lock someone down. His Q is the most meh of his abilities. It doesn't really serve much purpose beyond being his only long range harass. I'd honestly want to see his Malefic Visions with its bouncing be made into the main harass by making it more reliable as such, and make his Q something that helps him do it more effectively. Generally, I think he should carry on with his DoT style of play. It's a fresh alternative to all the burst-oriented mages, and it's kind of his "thing".

Beyond those abilities, there are a few things I want to point out. First of all, he was my go-to when I knew I had to face an obnoxious assassin, mainly Yasuo. I'm not gonna complain about them, for the most part I know you can play against them effectively with other mages as well. But Malz was the only real fun way of doing it imo. Yasuo and Zed are notorious for garnering much hate by those who enjoy immobile mages. Do I think they are overpowered? Not at all. Are they oppressive? Hell yes. Malzahar was equally oppressive against them. Do I think oppression is good game design? Not at all, but I think Malzahar should retain his reliability against such picks. At last, a few QoL changes: His auto-attacks are atrocious, and as a DoT mage, that makes his farming at times kinda unreliable. It isn't a huge problem for him, but gating mages by their auto-attacks is an outdated balancing mechanic, and it's just annoying. Also, let Malefic Visions deal instant damage. At the moment, he has no real instant damage to secure an assist or a minion, and the closest ability is his W. Please let him have an ability or auto-attack that deals instant damage.

TL;DR: His Malefic Vision are definitely his most fun mechanic, and how they work with the voidlings. I could see the other abilities change to varying degrees, but I think his general style of play (and ability to face assassins without fear) should be retained.

Brand

The final of those I have played a substantial amount. The burning vengeance... that doesn't really burn, but rather explodes. I am gonna go ahead and slap a disclaimer on this guy: I am fairly certain there are players that are more attached to Brand than I am. I enjoy his playstyle, but I don't think it fits his theme as such, so my thoughts will be influenced by this.

I am not gonna go through his kit in the same way I did with Malzahar, because I personally think his biggest fault is the disparity between character and kit. I do realize I said earlier that they shouldn't change a champion based on what their perceived vision for him/her is, but this is just my take on it, and I am going to propose something drastic: Take Brand's kit, rework it to be a bit more reliable, and slap it onto a new, more fitting champion. Give Brand an entirely new kit that is actually about burning the world around him. I know they have done this in Smite with several Gods. While it allows you to retain the kit that many people have grown to love, it also allows you to fulfill your visions for a champion. When that is said, I don't know what Riot's vision actually is, but I think it's a bit strange that the burn effect in a fire-based guy that is all about burning is a mere bonus damage/tank burner.

The pros of Brand (or his kit) is that it feels great to frontload it. Unload your whole kit in a single rotation and watch your enemies explode. Maybe you'll die in the process, but either you take your enemies with you, or you set your team up for an easy cleanup job. I genuinely really like his burst. R>E>W>Q. Tons of damage, tons of fun. I also genuinely enjoy how his passive works with his abilities. It makes him a great harasser in lane. The enemy laner got out of your W in time? No problem, just E the minion they just walked back next to. Then watch them burn. I genuinely like that you have to forgo one part of his kit in order to proc his passive and reap the benefits of it. It makes his kit more intelligent than just pure burst. His passive burn is really great, and is definitely something that they should focus more on if they are to keep him the staple fire-guy. The spells' interaction with it is, as I've said, really cool, but although the burn is strong, Brand himself is kind of more of a burst-or-die kind of champion. What I also miss about him, is the ability to set more than just living things on fire. A majority of the map is grass or jungle, let him set fire to it. Let his fire be able to spread. For instance, off the top of my head, let him and his passive set fire to bushes, which lights them up for his team and deals damage to enemies inside while it lasts. Maybe burning enemies can spread in the same way as Varus-ult (although in a smaller radius of course). My proposals may be absolute shit/impossible to balance, they're just things I came up with as I wrote this. I generally really want to see more focus on the fire part though, and not so much pure, frontloaded damage.

TL;DR Brand's kit isn't really a bad kit per say, but my biggest problem with him, is that he's visually all about fire, but the DoT and fire-aspect is underrepresented in his kit. Let him set terrain on fire, let fire spread like fire should.

To anyone who read it all: holy shit, kudos.

Please don't hesitate to point out any factual or logical fallacies in my post, but keep it polite. Any discussion that isn't inherently hostile is a good discussion.[slayer-jinx-wink]