Thoughts on Riot's Udyr changes from an Udyr main perspective and some Improvement Ideas
TLDR; New suggested passive sucks. Give him other % stat modifiers and scalings.
I made a post about Udyr, but I can't seem to find it. I made quite a bit of suggestions on Udyr, and riot did deliver one, so I am going through it later.
First of all, yes, I am gold 3, 2 hardstuck, make fun of me all you want, I have a stubborn head that stops me from climbing. But I am a 600K Udyr main, I know this champion like the palm of my hand. And if any higher elo Udyr main who is still playing Udyr has a disagreement, their input is quite appreciated in this discussion.
**1. Why I think the new Passive is horrible for Udyr jungle **
Here is the suggested passive :
> Base movement speed increased from 345 to 355 Inner Beast (P) reworked - "When Udyr changes stances during combat, he gains 4% attack speed, 4% cooldown reduction, and 6% base attack damage for 7 seconds (effect stacks up to 5 times)"
Part 1: Stacking of Passive:
The stacking mechanic is interesting, but it is not quite well thought out. It gave interesting ball of stats, some are still necessary, some are not. But most importantly there is one more thing they added, is that the passive gets stacks_ while in combat only_.
All fine and dandy, however Udyr is a Jungler. At what point in time during any game do you sit and stack 5 of Inner Beast and then have 7 seconds of window of opportunity to gank a lane?
Many jungler has the capability to sit and wait for the perfect moment to initiate a gank. But Udyr, who already is not a perfect ganker, is given 7 seconds holding 5 stacks(his damage) to initiate a gank? And if he doesn't have those stacks, his damages are wet noodles. Forget that he has no gap closer, or that he needs to ramp up quite a lot. Riot made this game to be burst fest, with quick damage outputs, but wants to make Udyr cycle 5 times during a gank?
Jax also has a stacking mechanics, but Jax also have a lot of Bursts, and he can easily stack his passive, by, guess what? AUTO ATTACKING.
Aatrox has this as well, but Aatrox is a Manaless champion with a Gap closer. Udyr is gated by Mana, Lack of Gap closer and Cooldowns. Aatrox is getting changed anyway.
Udyr has to cycle through 5 spells, with relatively high cooldown before his Attack Speed and Spell Damage are up to par, during a gank. We were excited that yes, you have to cycle to 5 spells before ganking instead of 3, but you have to do this WHILE IN COMBAT, is completely ridiculous. Does riot want to rework a champion and make him even worse, rather than up to date with current metas?
No champion has to be in combat to gain his passive. Well, maybe Graves, but Graves has high damage output and is ranged with a gap closer, two valuable Assets Udyr will never have. Plus Graves stacks are defensive stats not offensive stats, something we can eschew during a skirmish, and valuable during teamfights, where he can permanently keep up with E and auto attacking from a distance.
Udyr is hard to gank in Midlane, due to lack of gap closer, and you have to burn Flash to do so every time, or have a decent mid laner initiate a trade and keeping the cc until you reach. Similarly in Bot Lane, where bot laners time their wards, and keep the common routes warded all the time, making him Hard to gank there. And the distances between a camp and botlane are too far, by the time you reach your destination, your seven seconds are already over.
The only place where ganking is feasible is toplane, and that's due to its length. So Ghost and E combination will allow you to catch up to anyone over extending. But this gets over once the top laner is relatively tanky and thus harder to kill and force out of lane.
This is what lead Udyr to be a Farm Jungler, with stacking Jungle items, where Riot gladly removed it out of this game. Where Riot deemed it unhealthy, yet Riot encourages Junglers to be more engaging in team fights and ganking, rather than counterjungling and split pushing, and then we see Udyr being changed to make it even much harder for him to gank as efficiently.
His suggested passive is suited for long drawn battles for split pushes. But Riot forgets that Udyr is not a split push duelists, any Fiora, Jax, Camille, Riven, Trynda can easily match Udyr and defeat him, via their Kit, Toplane exp and item advantage. And split pushing is kind of really punishing in this teamfight oriented meta. If you split bot, and enemy team decides a baron or force a fight, you can't do it, unless your team is themselves ahead and can handle a forced fight.
If Riot wants to implement a stacking mechanic, then make it a permanent stack rather a ephemeral 7 second window of being depressed not being able to reach your target with 3 dashes and escapes(I am looking at you Kayn developers).
I really would like Riot rethink the passive.
Part 2: New Passive Stats
This will be short. Don't give Cooldown, a lot of items give CDR. Only certain item combination don't give CDR. And those builds are oriented on having a lot of AS outside of Trinity Force, so changing stances and being on a single stance won't feel as bad as constantly changing stances. If anything you want to give, give Tenacity(New Runeastry?), or just bring back movement speed.
As for the Base damage growing to 30%?
How about actually giving him base damage stat as a buff.
He has one of the medium level 1. But if you toggle growth per level and at level 18+, top 8 champions are all Juggernauts(which Udyr is supposed to be a part of), only one not there is Nasus, but Nasus has a permanent stack mechanics. And all of those 8 champions can really make use of Trinity Force and even Sterak's Gage to its full potential due to their natural growth.
Udyr doesn't need this 30% stack, give him similar growth stat as the rest of the Class(4+ per level), and a higher starting base for clearing camps and ganking.
Part 3: Addition of AD/AP Scaling
Riot's decision to add AD scaling to, without removing AP ratios on Phoenix is quite appropriate. And here is the reasons. (I think this is one of the things which I have suggested as I pointed out earlier).
- When you play Tiger, which you normally build AD, and you are maxing Phoenix last, this will help Phoenix to be a great clearing spell(rather than a damage spell), even at lower levels at 1 point Phoenix instead of spending 1200 gold on an item, spend a level in R.
- Helps in Building some interesting item combination, like On-Hit items that has AD in them like Bork.
2. Tiger and Phoenix with the new Passive
> Cooldown lowered from 6 seconds to 5 seconds. > Attack speed duration increased from 5 to 6 seconds. > DOT Damge changed from [30-150 + (120%-160% total AD)] to [78/126/174/222/270 (+90% bonus AD] >[new effect] DoT deals +6% damage for each Inner Beast (Passive) stack Udyr has at time of application. >[removed] DoT no longer deals clipped portion's damage as a burst if DOT is refreshed.
I will get smacked for this, because I haven't researched Tiger well, I am not a Tiger Udyr player.
But few Tiger player I spoke to(Branix - EUW Diamond TIger only player) ay that his current Tiger iteration is the best at the moment, and this is just reverting to his old version. His current version works good with both On-Hits, since it scales with On-Hit Attack Speed, as well as AD, as it has a good scaling to his DOT as well as its base AD.
> Phoenix Stance (R): > Cooldown lowered from 6 seconds to 5 seconds. > Active duration increased from 4 to 6. > Flame Aura Damage: Damage changed from 40/80/120/160/200 to 60/90/120/150/180 Scaling changed from [100% AP] to [120% Bonus AD]. > Flame Cone Damage: Damage changed from 40/80/120/160/200 to 50/75/100/125/150 Scaling changed from [45% AP] to [30/40/50/60/70% bonus AD] > [new effect] Fire cone deals +6% damage for each Inner Beast stack Udyr has.
I can't find where they made the both Aura and Cone damage keep their AP ration, but let's just say it is there.
I really hate how the made the bases so low to accommodate for the Inner beast stack
Current Phoenix Cone at Max Rank is 200, and it is lowered to 150, and becomes only to 195 max Inner Beast Stack. How is this a buff to the champion? Sure he has the AD scaling, but you have to have 5 stacks of inner beast, on top of it, to build AD on a Phoenix max build?
This is completely removing Udyr out of the game, until a new rework team comes in 2019 to fix him.
Although, I do like the change in Bear stance where it is 3 seconds at all ranks, making it a 1 point wonder. Would love that the stun duration is increased, or turned into a mini knock up instead.
As for Turtle, yes the current one is good for tank Udyr as well as AS on-hit Udyr, but I don't understand it being shipped with the live iteration of Tiger, since Lifesteal scales better with AD, than with on Hit.
- **Suggestions **
You guys probably seen those "new effect changing from one stance to another, with 12 possibilities of new spell effects", but there is no need any of that, Udyr needs base changes that was nerfed out or removed from item nerfs.
- More Movement Speed. Most Juggernaut either build something that will slow, or a Phage item, notably black cleaver, and trinity force is jack of all trade item for Udyr, but the current Jungle meta favors Junglers that are low economy rather those who farm up for a power spike item, and this is a very late power spike item, and Junglers don't have the luxury for it. He needs more movement to catch people, to gank, to move between lane to lane that is. Assassin jungler can build first build Drakthaar and they will be fine with it, meanwhile AD caster junglers can easily get Warriors and be strong with their suite of spells and mobility. Udyr gets punished for making plays, but other jungler gets rewarded for doing mistakes and silly invades into him. The only item that was good with Udyr was Sated Devourer, and that was removed, and replaced with an Item that On-Hit Phoenix hardly can capitalize. And it is not a scaling item, so it doesn't suit Udyr's new scaling either. Bloodrazer is so bad on Udyr, only certain circumstances it is ever good.
- **% Missing Health Physical Damage on Tiger **and % Maximum Health Magic Damage on Phoenix, both tanks and juggernauts either have good scaling, good base stat scaling, and percentage damage to keep their damage relevant, but Udyr's damage falls off really hard unless he is snowballed. Doing this will make up for his lategame weakness.
- W Shield scaling with Armor and MR. Would be really dandy if Turtle has a scaling based on MR and Armor, this is to make Offensive snowballing based builds more vulnerable while Tank builds more valuable with W second max and actually make Udyr a reliable frontline, rather a weak wet noodle who gets one shotted given his vulnerability to Kiting.
- Consider having reach level 20, would be nice having all maxed. :D
- **Remove Vayne and Fiora. **Nuff said.
Bro, I don't care what my rank is, or what people think of my champion, but I am passionate about it, if Riot is willing to roll out a good version, they better rethink something about that passive, and make it stronger for ganks and skirmishes and teamfighting, not make it solely for splitpush, and a weaker one at that.
If Riot really wants to Push Udyr into Splitpush, give him a dash, and % true damage.
