@RiotRepertoir, and Others - About the Quinn & Valor Rework
http://i.imgur.com/1nJk3rb.jpg"
Introduction
Before getting into the heart of this post, I just want to clarify the following:
I understand Quinn is in a better spot now competitively than she ever has been prior to her rework and yes, I understand that the old kit was problematic for several reasons, which I'll go into further detail about below. What I want to discuss in this thread is why I believe the rework fell short thematically and why the goals of the update itself don't seem to have been met.
Also, I know that Quinn's rework is still very, very new and that expecting another one to take its place immediately is out of the question -- this is not what I'm proposing. However, if there's a compromise that we, the players can make with Riot to get her to where she deserves to be at least sometime in the future, then better late than never, right?
I've been holding off on making a thread like this for a while now because I didn't want to come across as snarky or rude to RiotRepertoir, or to any of the other awesome people at Riot who were involved with Quinn and Valor's update. If any of these Rioters do happen upon here to read or participate in the discussion, please know that I'm not trying to shoot down your hard work -- I just want to get a conversation going about this Champion and why I think her current iteration just isn't doing her justice (takes wing).
Quinn, Before and After
Now that that's out of the way, I'll go into detail about Quinn. For those of you who don't know, Quinn got a rework that shifted her play style on both a strategic and mechanical level. Here's a rundown of old Quinn:
Passive: Valor periodically marks a nearby enemy at a time. If Quinn auto-attacks this target, the mark is consumed and bonus damage is dealt. Q: Quinn sends out Valor in a line, dealing damage as well as blinding all enemies in an AoE around him, colliding with the first. W: Passive: Valor gains bonus attack speed per rank. Additionally, Quinn gains a burst of movement speed and attack speed whenever she consumes a Harrier mark. Active: Valor reveals a large area around Quinn for a brief time. E: Quinn dashes towards the target enemy, knocking them back upon colliding with them and then leaping back towards her maximum attack range, 525. Applies passive. R: Quinn leaves the battlefield for 20 seconds to be replaced by Valor, a melee version of Quinn with bonus movement speed and attack speed (scaling with ranks of her W), as well as an alternate set of abilities: Q blinds and deals damage around Valor in an AoE; W's passive and active remain unchanged; E remains a targeted dash with a knock-up, but does not cause Valor to leap back; and R causes Valor to swap back with Quinn before raining down a hail of arrows in a large AoE around them, dealing damage based upon enemies' missing health. Passive disabled during this time.
This iteration of Quinn had an incredibly strong early-game and performed exceedingly well against auto attack-reliant melee Champions (i.e. Riven, Master Yi) due to her blind. At Level 6, she could use her ultimate to turn into a very fast yet squishy melee assassin for 20 seconds, diving in on enemies during ganks and executing them instantly with the reactivation of her ultimate. Essentially, you wanted to stay as Quinn when fighting tanky melee Champs or any other characters you were required to kite back to successfully deal with, while using Valor to quickly assassinate high-priority targets with low defenses, and making these kinds of decisions on the fly were part of Quinn and Valor's learning curve.
Here is a brief overview of the changes made to her kit after the marksmen update:
Passive: The core of this ability was left mostly unchanged, save for number-tunings and the fact that its cooldown now scales with crit. Also, major bug fixes were applied (which were much appreciated!). Q: Applies a nearsight debuff to the first target it collides with rather than blinding enemies in an AoE. Also applies passive to this target. W: Passive: Valor's passive bonus attack speed removed. Active: Unchanged. E: Mostly unchanged, aside from bug fixes and improved functionality. R: This was the most dramatically-changed ability of the rework. Instead of switching with Valor, Quinn channels for 2 seconds to unite with him, gaining an immense amount of movement speed. Any damage will interrupt the channel. Offensive action taken by Quinn will end the effect, raining down a hail of arrows in a large AoE around them that deals regular damage rather than missing health-based damage. Champion or turret damage taken by Quinn will also remove the buff. Minion damage massively slows Quinn and Valor.
This iteration of Quinn, while not as overwhelmingly strong early-game, scales more gracefully into the mid- and late-game than the previous one and is less oppressive against auto-attack reliant melee Champions due to the loss of her blind. She's able to roam and gank far more often than old Quinn was able to once Level 6 hits, but will run out of mana quickly unless she gains access to blue buff and/or Essence Reaver early on. Her burst is also a bit slower than old Valor's because she now relies on chaining passive procs and no longer has an execute she can hold onto for ending ganks quickly. But due to her new ultimate, her split-pushing power is strong and she can show up to contest objectives with great speed.
On the Removal of Valor's Kit
The most relevant point to note about these changes is that you can no longer 'physically' play as Valor with new Quinn; all of his skills have been removed from her kit. She retains her burst damage potential (chaining and consuming two to three of her passive marks in quick succession is key) and between the major bugfixes and near-constant uptime of her new ult (which was turned into a pure, out-of-combat mobility tool), she's doing better now in terms of power and reliability (not to mention she's solely a ranged Champion now).
Yet, in spite of these things, I feel like the changes made to her ultimate were too drastic and unnecessary for a character whose whole gameplay premise revolves around, 'two playable champions in one - an agile falconer and her speedy bird-assassin'. From the very start, Quinn was set out to be uniquely different from the other heroes and heroines in League who boasted of an animal or companion in their kits, simply in virtue of Valor -- I'll quote LoLWiki to put it into perspective:
Valor was the only pet to actually replace the champion on the battlefield instead of fighting alongside them (such as Willump and Bristle) or summoned to assist for a short duration (such as Tibbers and Voidlings) until patch 5.22.
Whereas Willump, Bristle, Tibbers, Beatrice, Pix, Malzahar's Voidlings and Elise's Spiderlings serve only as particles or 3-D models to their respective kits, Valor was actually a playable companion that possessed his own set of abilities -- player's actions were Valor's actions during Tag Team, and vice versa, which created a unique gameplay experience that no other individual Champion could provide.
"But wait, other transformation Champions such as Nidalee, Gnar, and Shyvana provide a gameplay experience very similar to the one Quinn had before."
That's not entirely true. While it's correct that these Champions can gain access to a whole new host of abilities at the click of a button like old Quinn could, she's the only one of these Champions to possess the falconer thematic (neither Nidalee, Gnar, or Shyvana can play as a blinding bird-of-prey with +80% movement speed and bonus attack speed when they switch forms). Not to mention that, at least storywise, she doesn't transform into Valor, she simply swaps places with him; the two are separate entities, and that was a unique, central, and previously-unexplored space that was not worthy of removal by any means. After all, what we want is for Quinn to feel unique, not standard.
Another Quinn player named "and Valor" drives this point home quite nicely, as well:
and Valor: "First of all, it's important to understand that Quinn's ultimate is important not JUST from a gameplay perspective, but also from a lore and thematic perspective. There's been a lot of talk about that already, but I'll summarize my feelings here.
On release, Quinn was named Quinn & Valor in game and in the loading screen (this is obviously where my name comes from). This had huge implications, as it was the first time a champion had ever had two names within the chat and loading border. This had the effect of really depicting the two as a team: Valor was just as important to the champion as Quinn was, and the two were a team that worked together. For what I remember being an issue with name length or spaces, this was eventually shortened in game to just "Quinn," which took a lot away from the champion and was an unfortunate change.
This aspect of a "two-for-one" champion is what made Quinn and Valor unique and fun for many (me included). Their original kit was perfect at portraying this, and it was amazing how much playing as Valor felt like playing as an eagle: you became a swift predator. Carries would do anything they could to get away from Valor, and using E to swoop down on them before Qing and using Skystrike to claim your prey feels simply amazing. Even if you were using the ult for other purposes, such as the out-of-combat movement speed or attack speed increase, you still felt like you were flying. Valor's auto attack animations are some of the most fascinating in the game to me, and I'm sure I'm not alone when I say the thought of never seeing them again is saddening. The entirety of Valor's kit kept this crisp feeling from before too: the sharp dash from E, the sound of Valor's autos, Skystrike itself - everything felt powerful.
The fact that the new kit throws all of this to the wind in favor of . . . more mobility is really sad, as it portrays Valor as more of a tool than a half of the champion."
Here's some food for thought: "In terms of Quinn, I'd probably really re-explore why she has to be an ADC. I'm not sure we fully explored the melee version with enough rigor or time. I'd love to break her back down, find that core fundamental and build upon that." - IronStylus
Of course, I'm not saying Quinn's current ult should be identical to her previous one. It would need a lot of tweaking and rebalancing. Part of what made old Quinn so controversial and problematic to use was that she had to be in melee range to take full advantage of the steroid offered to her by her ultimate, given little to no survivability. One idea is to passively grant Valor additional resistances while he's on the battlefield (similar to Jayce's "Transform: Mercury Hammer") so that players using Valor don't have to worry about getting murdered so easily. Another idea is to perhaps make the benefits from her ultimate function on a conditional basis.
There is a plethora of potential design routes Quinn's old ult can go in, it doesn't necessarily have to involve the removal of Valor's playability and kit.
Conclusion
The truth is, Valor doesn't deserve to be a mere model or particle to Quinn. There's a reason Quinn's name was "Quinn and Valor" during her time on the PBE: It's because they were both slated to participate in combat on the Rift as two individual fighters, unlike Sejuani and her boar or Nunu and his yeti, who -- gameplay-wise -- simply work together in different ways. Playing Valor was the cool and fun hallmark of playing Quinn -- for better or worse. One of the main goals of the rework was to preserve that, but instead it removed something essential to the Champion and caused a lot of pain to committed players.
I know that there must be some way to bring Valor back into the fray while also ensuring that, as a Champion, Quinn remains uniquely powerful with healthy and meaningful gameplay, as well as a more clearly-defined team role which her pre-rework version was lacking.
If you made it this far, thanks for reading and please let me know what your thoughts are.
TL;DR: While objectively better and fun in its own right, Quinn's new ultimate doesn't fulfill the fantasy of being a falconer in control of a swift and powerful eagle. "Behind Enemy Lines" is better suited to another style of Champion, such as a gryphon rider or aerial unit. The goal of the rework was to emphasize what made Quinn cool and fun; instead, it removed the hallmark 'high moment' of her kit which was diving in on vulnerable prey as Valor. From the start, Quinn has been 'two Champions in one' (hence her original name on the PBE, Quinn and Valor) but with the update, Valor has become mere VFX in Quinn's kit, instead of the individual fighter he was always meant to be... leaving Quinn as practically half the Champion she was before. Maybe we can work to bring Valor back into the picture and do justice to the duo known as Demacia's Wings.
