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The hell should Riot do with Rek'Sai?

For Carthage··4 votes·1,323 views

So after playing 20 freaking games with Rek'Sai and about as many against her as well, I've discovered she is about the most inconsistent champ in the game.

Playing in a lane against Rek'Sai, generally disabling champs with the ability to poke kick the ever-loving crap out of her (thank god Gragas is free). This tends to result in Rek'Sai becoming probably the most useless champ in League for the rest of the match. Good job shutting her down.

Playing against Rek'Sai without reasonable poke or disabling skills results in you getting your ass handed to her up and down the street. She will snowball harder than Akali on steroids (and sooner as well) and will roflstomp the shit out of your team until 20 minutes due to her ability to both 1v1 duel very well and do an absolutely atrocious amount of area damage in a stupidly large radius on top of having insane amounts of mobility and a pretty drastic displacement if we're looking at recent champs.

Rek'Sai in the jungle is inconsistent as all bollocks as generally it relies upon you being able to kite camps well to heal up damage during your first few levels and is entirely trusting in the game not having the AI fall asleep on you and decide to reset the camps each time you move more than an inch away from them (seriously, god damn it every time this happens). After that, the rest of the snowballing rests upon either catching the enemy jungler alone in their jungle (and I mean just catching them; it really doesn't matter who that jungler is, they're fucked) or getting off one really good gank. Getting killed early yourself generally just spells good game for you and you might as well go make some toaster strudels and kick back to watch your team get stomped because when Rek'Sai falls behind, she does it with aplomb.

Which brings up the question: What the hell to do with this champ? It really is a problem that she snowballs that hard - stopping her past a certain point requires about 8 different kinds of CC and a pack of now&laters to gum up her teeth, and 1v1'ing is almost absolutely out of the question (unless, as an assassin, you manage to get yourself fed and instagib her during the period she's building damage before tank). But seeing as she can fall behind so harshly means that nerfing her would make her the riskiest champ in the game.

So I'm going to ask some actual opinions here - how the hell can she be made more consistent and less of a god-tier-or-bust champ? It's not necessarily bad to be a high risk/high reward champ, but when it's to such two polar opposite extremes, there's a bit of a problem.

10 Comments

Jamaree3 votes

So she has clear downsides and upsides, what is the problem?

For Carthage5 votes

Being able to tell if you're going to win or lose 5 minutes into a game is an issue.

Having a game boil down to essentially a roll of the dice at champion select is also an issue.

Jamaree2 votes

[{quoted}](name=For Carthage,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=PaU4IBXq,comment-id=00000000,timestamp=2014-12-14T15:56:57.481+0000) Being able to tell if you're going to win or lose 5 minutes into a game is an issue.

Which boils down to every match up...ever.

Having a game boil down to essentially a roll of the dice at champion select is also an issue.

And this isn't a thing for every other champion in the game...why? When you are a Try and see a Rammus, you might as well GG then. Or if you are a Varus and see a Blitzcrank and your support is Soraka, have fun with your life.

For Carthage2 votes

  1. It's not a matter of counters. It's a matter of if the person got a single kill.

  2. Again, it's not a matter of counters. It's a matter of Rek'Sai being, herself, the biggest gamble champ in the game that either pays off more than a lottery jackpot or puts you further in debt than college.

If you'd have read anything I said (or at least came out with the correct message), you'd realize I was saying that she's the hardest snowballing champ in the game and can do it considerably sooner than most other champs (the majority of assassins taking until lvl 6 to actually get rolling enough to do work while Rek has all the tools she needs at level 3). This comes with the offside being that if she gets behind her lane she will not win duels, she will not win trades, and is generally grade A fucked from then on out unless somebody graces her with several spoonfed kills.

This kind of eclectic gameplay is toxic. It's either faceroll until 20 or struggle until the surrender, with no in-between. A Vayne could get 3 kills early and still wind up losing the game with some support from your team, but when Rek'Sai is up 3 kills in her own lane, it's an almost guaranteed loss for the enemy. On the flip side, a Vayne could be out 5 deaths and still wind up carrying the team in the end, while a Rek'Sai could be out 2 with no kills and she won't see anything other than her own fountain every single time she tries to engage for the rest of the game.

Raja Chachki3 votes

I feel like your post has its points, but I also disagree. I feel like(as any champion besides perhaps ADC) any champion can come back as a tank if they fall really behind. It is an essential rule that you abandon all damage and go to full tank if you feed like 3-4 kills before 15 min. Rek works well as a tank, as she can just throw herself into the enemy, knocking up some, and just generally annoy and target the ADC to help her team. Ahead though, SHE IS GODLIKE(I agree with you). So she has clear risks, similar to quite a few champs, so I honestly think she is a well done champion.

AbodyHUN6661 votes

is she really that much hit or miss champ? I guess they can alter some of her numbers at least, so she will have higher bases and less scaling damage, so she snowballs less.

For Carthage1 votes

She's reportedly a problem toplane due to the larger array of tanks that get abused by her fighter/sustain playstyle. Generally assassins do well because she's pretty squish, and friendly bruisers also do well. But even so, regardless of who you play or how, it continues to boil down to whether or not she got a kill.

I have yet to see a middling Rek'Sai out of ~40 games. She either blows chunks or carries the team single-handedly, and that includes whenever I've played as her.

Im so bad yuck1 votes

Rek'Sai in the jungle is inconsistent as all bollocks as generally it relies upon you being able to kite camps well to heal up damage during your first few levels

What the actual fuck. You don't need to kite camps to stay above 60% health. Maybe the mistake is you try to do the chicken camp too early?

Igotlazy1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Im so bad yuck,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=PaU4IBXq,comment-id=0003,timestamp=2014-12-14T18:56:34.019+0000) What the actual fuck. You don't need to kite camps to stay above 60% health. Maybe the mistake is you try to do the chicken camp too early?

I kinda agree with this guy. I've never really had an issue clearing the jungle with her. I start Toad (Smite it for Poison Buff), take Blue, take Wolves, take Red (Smite it for Heal) and then Birds. After that I go back and get the jungle item and then there's no problem for the rest of the game.

For Carthage1 votes

I've cleared each and every camp before backing to hit four and gain both boots and Stalker's.

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