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Champion Redesign: Taric

Good Golly·10/10/2014, 6:10:16 PM·5 votes·1,678 views

Hello all, I'm SergeantFreedom and I've been working on a couple tweaks and changes to some of the older champions for some time now, that I thought might be a neat solution to their out of date playstyle or lack of cohesiveness. However I was recently inspired to really take a crack at Taric thanks to IronStylus's post a few days ago. http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/story-art/a7ulBkBM-so-what-do-you-guys-wanna-do-with-taric-part-ii-pics-or-it-didnt-happen

Anyways, here is my thoughts on how the Gem Knight COULD be redone. This is a very VERY rough draft of what will eventually be my final product.

Intro: Taric, The Gem Knight is an iconic character in League of Legends. He is the soft spoken knight who for a somewhat muddled reason has a large affinity for gems. Taric, unfortunately tends to be the butt of everyone's jokes because he just a little bit too fabulous. Our goal is to shape him into more of a refined, but humble, knight without taking away from what everyone loves about him.

Taric The Gem Knight Primary: Tank Secondary: Support

Direction: I wanted to focus Taric into more of the iconic paladin role by allowing him to retain his healing but also getting increasingly tanky. That is not to say he can't lay down a little hurt on his own to help out his team. With Taric's new ultimate he will really shine in team fights without becoming entirely useless while on cooldown. I also wanted to differentiate Taric from Braum, he isn't the man to stand in front of you and baby you. Taric is a man who will stand beside his allies to help them achieve victory. I also wanted to thematically tie his kit in a little better, Taric isn't some form of Geomancer because he doesn't control gems. Taric utilizes them in a strategic and functional fashion.

Base Stats: Health: 480 (+80) Attack Damage: 50 (+4.0) Health Regen: 7.0 (+1.25) Attack Speed: 0.625 (+2.02%) Mana: 285 (+50) Armor: 22.5 (+3.0) Mana Regen: 4.0 (+0.5) Magic Resist: 30 (+1.25) Range: 125 (Melee) Move Speed: 335

Abilities: Radiant Embrace (Passive): Reason: Radiant Embrace is replacing Taric's old passive Gemcraft. Gemcraft felt next to useless on Taric but also would force you to walk into melee range to take advantage of it. With his new passive it really enforces that Taric is a team player and more of an AoE tank.

Cooldown: 155 Seconds Range: 1000 Duration: 10 Seconds Ratio: (+3% of maximum bonus health)

Death: Upon death, Taric's gems release the magic they have absorbed in the heat of battle and grant his allies bonus ability power and attack damage based on 3% of Taric's total health.

Imbue (Q): Reason: Imbue has remained virtually the same as it was, except for a few number tweaks. The cost has been slightly increased while the cooldown was decreased. This is to allow him to heal more often, but at a greater cost. The AP ratio on his heal was also reduced to prevent him from becoming a top lane AP bruiser with infinite sustain. The cost/cooldown change does leave him a little bit more mana hungry, which I think will actually help to balance out his kit and force him to make more tactical decisions.

Cost: 70 / 85 / 100 / 115 / 130 Mana Cooldown: 16 / 15 / 14 / 13 / 12 Range: 750 Heal: 60 / 100 / 140 / 180 / 220 Self Heal: 84 / 140 / 196 / 252 / 308 Ratio: Heal (+15% AP) (+5% Bonus Health) Self Heal (+21% AP) (+7% Bonus Health)

Active: Taric heals a targeted ally and himself, or if Taric chooses to just heal himself the healing effect increased. (Unchanged).

Refraction (W): Reason: Taric's old W Shatter was all about gaining bonus armor and reducing the enemies armor, which is fine, but visually it just didn't fit in. Once again, he is the gem knight, so it doesn't make much sense for him to raise a protective gem barrier out of the ground. Now Taric can take advantage of the gem on his shield to redirect a single projectile in the direction he chooses. This allows for some interesting play and fits really well with his overall gem theme.

Cost: 40 / 45 / 50 / 55 / 60 Mana Cooldown: 22 / 20 / 18 / 16 / 14 Damage Reduction: 40% / 42.5 /45% / 47.5% / 50% Damage Refracted : 50% of the damage dealt to Taric at all levels. Duration: 1.75 / 2.0 / 2.25 / 2.5 / 2.75 Ratio: (+15% Armor) (+45% AP)

Active: Taric plants his shield into the ground, aiming it at a target location and refracts the next incoming projectile spell at target location. A percentage of the damage is still dealt to Taric, but his allies remain unharmed. Also, crowd control effects are applied to both Taric and the first champion hit by the refracted spell.

Dazzle (E):

Reason: If a Taric is played but doesn't dazzle is he truly Taric? I don't think so. This move has remained relatively similar to it's namesake, minus the fact that it is now a skillshot. This change should make sense because light, no matter how dazzling, does not follow a target. This ability does ignore minions.

Cost: 40 / 45 / 50 / 55 / 60 Cooldown: 16 / 15 / 14 / 13 / 12 Range: 875 Stun Duration: 1.0 / 1.2 / 1.4 / 1.6 / 1.8 Ratio: (+25% AP)

Active: Taric raises his hammer skyward and shines a blinding light in target direction, stunning the first champion hit.

Shatter (R): Reason: Taric's new look is encrusted with beautifully cut and refined jewels, but when he unleashes his ultimate ability he drops his shield and all the gems on his armor shatter. This shows us that Taric does contain a wild, less reserved side when the situation calls for it. This ability allows Taric to shine brightest in teamfights. Asthetically, he is now more of a warrior, he wields his hammer in two hands and his armor takes on the more raw crystalline look of gems. But functionally, he becomes an AoE frontliner that that needs to be taken more seriously, rather than a tanky healer subtype that can be ignored and picked off when his damage dealers are dead.

Cost: 100 Mana Cooldown: 160 / 130 / 100 Range: 200 Bonus Armor: 20 / 35 / 50 Attack Damage: 10 / 12.5 / 15

Passive: Taric is granted increased armor. Active: Taric drops his shield and shatters the gems on his armor, losing the ability to target any of his abilities, causing them to become close range and area of effect. Taric also gains increased attack damage.

I'll come back through and change/edit some things as it comes along, I'll also add pictures eventually! I am super open to constructive criticism. So let me know what you think.

I'd love to see a red's take on this, I plan on making more of these and would like to see how your thought processes work when you are working on a champion.

10 Comments

Harunsi10/10/2014, 8:43:54 PM3 votes

i like it : D following, would like to see the art :) and more champ ideas ! :D Wink Wink Akali

Invictrix10/17/2014, 5:36:55 AM2 votes

It has my approval.

JC DarkOmen10/24/2014, 12:30:11 AM2 votes

Honestly, I don't like these changes. When champ changes roll through and the mains complain I usually scoff at them, but this wouldn't feel like Taric to me anymore.

As for his passive, I love his current passive, and the new passive in reality would be useless. You're giving Taric an incentive to go all in on his enemies, and his enemies a disincentive to kill him, meaning he'd have to be able to put out massive damage with his ultimate while building health or else you get the "ignore Taric and kill his team" problem that you said you wanted to avoid. As it is now, he does plenty of damage if built right, and I just wait for the part of the game where after being a team player the entire match, the adc catches me alone and tries to kill me and gets crushed instead.

And don't say that's not fair, because supp Lulu can 1v1 a fed Udyr no problem. To say he shouldn't be able to do damage and build straight tank is a bit hypocritical. The way it is, Nasus farms, Galio builds MR, Ryze builds mana (which is often coupled with health and magic resists), Hecarim builds movespeed, and Taric builds armor. His passive fills a necessary slot to keep up diversity, and right now you're giving him a Sion-like incentive to die, an expensive and relatively weak heal with a high cooldown, a Braum shield with an interesting mechanic, and an ult that sounds like a weaker Sion passive that also changes his kit.

I really think Imbue is in a good place. If we are gonna keep the heal, the only problem with it is the mana costs. I understand the infinite sustain top laner would be a problem, but if you made the mana costs higher for healing himself (or just keep them where they are because it's pretty punishing already) and lower for healing allies, it'd really help.

The new W is interesting, but raises his skill cap massively (think Braum's shield, but there's a good chance you'll accidentally put it out in the wrong direction). I could get behind this, but only if you have time after the skill is thrown to redirect it. It would take lightspeed reflexes to realize a skillshot is coming, decide where to redirect it so that it hits an enemy champ, and get your shield down all before it actually hits. In teamfights, Taric would presumably use his ult, which makes his spells AoE. So does that mean the damage and affect of the skillshots he reflects goes in an AoE? That'd be cool, but maybe not fair. This should have a different effect in his ult, if not be different altogether.

I'm sorry to see one of the last targetable ranged stuns in the game go, but I suppose it's for the best. RIP Taric/Sion bot lane, you (and your new stuns) will be missed.

As stated above, when you make a passive like the one you proposed, it means Taric has to give his enemies a really, really, really good reason to kill him or else the passive will be as useless as a no-kill Draven's. 10-15 AD is nowhere near enough if that's how you wanna remake his kit. Making his skills AoE isn't quite enough either, because to make his spells 200 ranges means he has to be right next to his allies to heal, right next to his enemies to stun, and have 1000 movespeed to effectively reflect anything, not to mention the cooldowns on his skills without his current passive would be too high for him to cast them more than once. Attaching his current passive to his ultimate, even instead of the bonus armor, would do the trick nicely, though...

For his kit in general, you're taking away part of his identity. He's the Gem Knight, and you're taking the Gem part out. The changes you're proposing give him incentives to build health, and while gems might give him some health, they would definitely give him armor. Taric's armor is made of gems, so if he gets more armor he gets more gems, and if he gets more gems he gets more magical properties from gems. So since his magic comes from gems, it'd be perfectly reasonable to make his heal, stun damage and/or duration, and bonus ult AD scale off of armor.

JC DarkOmen10/25/2014, 10:11:33 AM2 votes

Holy hell, my opinion might actually make an impact on one of the world's biggest MOBAs... let me take deep breaths into the bag and plan this out carefully lol.

But seriously, looking at what you've proposed, you seem to want to give Taric's ult to his passive. That's a great idea, but not when tied to death. Instead, we can do something like Rengar's roar: the more affected players, the more powerful it gets. Let's say Taric is alone. His passive might give him 5 base AP and AD. If he's supporting, it could give him and his ADC 10 base AP and AD. And let's say his whole team is sitting right next to him (Malphite Yasuo >:) he could be giving his entire team 25 base AP and AD. This would of course have to have a pretty small range, like somewhere between Amumu's Tears and J4's Cataclysm, in order to not break the game (or lower those stats, because they are completely off the dome) but would tie in with his identity and the idea you have now. He's supposed to be a protector, not a suicide bomber KogMaw.

For Imbue I suppose I was thinking more early game mana costs and not later on. I'm kinda still in bronze, so I'm forced to decide between putting more points into my heal and never being able to support fights or letting my ADC get sniped by every skillshot known to man while my heal, which is based off of my 0 AP and the minuscule amount of health i have, barely amounts to 3 autoattaks. Later on in the game, yeah, the mana costs are fine and can even stand to be raised, but when you look at pretty much any other support with a heal they can heal faster for less mana in the early game.

For Refraction I looked at it more as a "hit the enemy with their own shots" than a "make sure your team isn't hit, and if you're good enough, hit the enemies with their own shots" kinda deal, and with this new mindset it actually does make a lot more sense. But the damage reflected should be more than the 25% (before Taric's resistances) of what Taric receives, because depending on what he's intercepting 25% could be nothing, especially when the skill required to hit someone with that is so high. In terms of this spell while Taric is ulting, it would be incredibly complex. Best case scenario, he catches something like a Pantheon spear and deals that damage in an area; worst case scenario, he catches something like Jinx's ult. In his ultimate, as you described it, this would make it a variably powerful spell. Do you decrease the damage he refracts? Because then the spear does 5 damage in a relatively small radius. Do you leave it? Because then he's doing tons of execute damage to anyone he's brawling with. The most viable option is to put a cap on it, but even then what about all the crowd control effects that could go along with the projectiles? If you're willing to have that nightmarish web of decisions, more power to you, but the simplest solution is to give him a completely different W ability in ult form, or perhaps just a stat boost. After all, "Taric drops his shield" shouldn't synergize well with "Taric plants his shield".

I like the idea of giving his Dazzle some extra utility now that it's a utility. Scaling the damage based on how close Taric is seemed weird to me, and I get surprised by it every time I read the tooltip. Instead, it'd be cool to have the stun duration increase based on how far away the target is. Taric's a melee champ; if he's further away, he needs more time to walk into range. But there's tons of other options and I'm sure Riot can come up with even better ideas.

If you do attach the current passive as a passive of his ult, every single hit will be brutal. If you keep the CDR part of the passive then after every spell will be enough. As is, I can 1v1 a Vayne as long as they're not too fed. If you get rid of it then every 2-3 hits would be better, depending on how much you want to buff that damage. I don't dislike your idea at all, the range is just too small. Tweak that and it would put Taric in a great place.

doubleguac10/24/2014, 12:39:36 AM1 votes

The passive needs work. It has a few pretty serious problems:

  • the numbers would get insane late game. Imagine Taric stacks 4k health (which is a lot, but by no means impossible in the late game). His death would give all his teammates 120 bonus AD and AP. That's a LOT.
  • It feels like the ability is impossible to effectively utilize. It scales off tankiness, but only activates on death. It rewards you for stacking health, because it increases the value, and punishes for stacking health, because it makes you harder to kill and less attractive to focus. Generally speaking, tying a team wide buff to death on a tank feels weird--by the time he's dead, it's unlikely that there will be many teammates left to make use of it.