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Some champion balances that needs to be address (Big thread)

Kaiquion·5/25/2015, 2:15:21 PM·13 votes·2,170 views

No this isn't a QQ thread or anything but a serious discussion on some balancing.

----------------------Annie--------------------------

As I seen earlier threads about annie, one thing that I do agree with is this. Currently annie is pretty oppressive; High base damage+AP scaling abilities. Reliable stun and Ult. Her mere presences is scary. The thing is her damage is fine and understandable, she's a short range mage, however one thing that needs to be addressed is her Ult/Passive, starting with her Ult.

Her ultimate is pretty hefty; bulking High damage with great synergy with her passive, can obliterate a team. However because her ult is a instant cast and usually always combo'd with her passive. It's pretty oppressive, leaving no room for any sort of healthy counter play. Like other threads suggested, make her ultimate a aoe skillshot, aka she throws her bear to a target location, upon arrival it does its thing with the firey entrance. Now because her ultimate is turning into a aoe skillshot, this calls for increasing her ultimate range, but only by a little. The travel speed of the bear should be about the same speed as anviva's Q but faster or as fast as ziliean's Q. This will add interesting gameplay/mechanics and healthy counter play to her kit, while not touching her damage output.

A second suggestion is addressed to her support role and this will affect her mid lane role. Now any passive is strong without a doubt but when it comes to support annie this makes it possible for her but it's oppressive mainly for this reason. She can sit on her passive. What I mean by that is once she get it charged up, she can just have it until she decides to use it. While this isn't has big of a issue compared to her ultimate being a instant cast, it could use some tuning to its mechanics. What Should be done is adding a degrading effect to it, similar to ryze's new arcane mastery, the degrade time for her passive should be between 8-12 seconds; when ever she uses a ability it refreshes the degrade. This makes it so annie can't just simply sit on top her passive, making her support/mid lane manageable.

Overall these balance changes for Annie will keep her strong without touching her numbers ( damage), and add healthy Game play to her kit as a mid lane mage and a bot lane support.

-Edit-: For the stack degrade, upon reaching 4 stacks, Annie must use her stun (In the given degrade time), if she fails to do so, she loses all 4 stacks. (Her stacks is still affected by degrade).

--------------------LeBlanc-------------------------

As everyone knows the hate for Leblanc, I believe people are going about it the wrong way. While a zed treatment to her would be a nice hotfix to her, it wouldn't exactly solve the problem. We all know the problem with LB is her W and her W damage. Now Leblanc is a assassin, She's required to have single target burst damage, a way to get to her opponent and get out; Leblanc has all of this. However her mobility move is particularly the problem. Now first question that everyone should be asking is this, "Why does a assassin mobility ability is doing this much damage?". Now when looking at every other real assassin in game that has a mobility move (non ultimate) that has high damage AND can allow them to escape at the same time. Her W having 85/125/165/205/245 (+0.6 per ability power) scaling and having a 18/16/14/12/10 seconds is pretty overtuned. In fact this ability has been buffed so much that Leblanc users are actually taking it first and maxing it first. While this isn't exactly a problem to those might see, this actually removes some of her "suppose" to be weakness aka weak waveclear. But thats not the point on this. The point being is that a move that's suppose to be her get in/get out, and proc her Q (or stay in range for her E) is doing too much damage. Now I'm not saying her W shouldn't do any damage, it shouldn't be doing this much, this also applies to her Mimic W which is doing 150/300/450 (+0.9 Ability Power) damage on impact. What I suggest is to nerf the damage and AP scaling on both abilities; for her Regular W: 75/105/135/165/195 (+0.45 per ability power), and for Mimic W : 150/275/400(+0.5 per ability power). This will take away the overtuned power she has with her current W and mimick W, Also Reduce her teather range (after landing E) by 100, making it so that she has to stay pretty close to get it off, adding room to fight leblanc, And make her missile width smaller to match the actual misslie. Overall this will keep her theme of deceiving enemies, while not adding insult to injury for having a mobility move that can do high damage on its own.

-Edit- : Due to the fact she will be losing some power, Leblanc will get small compensation In her Q and E

Q will increase from 55/80/105/130/155 (+0.4 Ability Power) on both damage output to 65/90/115/140/165(+0.5 per ability power) on both damage output. And for E from 40/65/90/115/140 (+0.5 per ability power), to 50/75/100/125/150(+0.55 per ability power).

-----------------Cho'Gath----------------------------

Not much to be said about this terrifying void beast but one thing that is not okay is Full ap Cho gath and have 3.2k Hp from 1 health related item (Rod of the ages) and doing around 1.2k-1.4k true damage. This needs to be address, have the ability to just walk over to someone and deal that kind of damage in TRUE damage meaning nothing can be done about it is unbalanced. especially due to the increasing popularity of AP Cho and the buffs riot gave to make it easier for cho to stack awhile having his ult ready in 40 second or less. What will fix this is to first nerf the ability power scaling on his ult from a 0.7 to 0.5 and the base dmg from 300/440/580. While I don't have any real ideas for this, i suggest adding a scaling that scales the health gain from his ult that he'll get better hp per stack if he's already building tanky (aka hp items). But I don't know.

Any thought?

47 Comments

Sona Ping5/25/2015, 4:09:14 PM12 votes

I get why people could complain about Leblanc, but Annie and Cho'Gath? Seriously Cho'Gath? If he has the audacity to use his ability at level one a single time, he uses a third of his mana. It's like I'm level 20 again and people are banning Warwick.

Rinky Dinky5/25/2015, 6:07:09 PM7 votes

Cho'gath is not able to do 1400 true damage to a champion target without at least 1000+ AP

This qq circlejerk shit needs to stop

Annie and Cho'gath are fine. They are both immobile and squishy. All you people are doing is looking for champions to cry about.

After cho, you'll just cry about Brand.

After annie, you'll just cry about vel'koz.

After vel'koz and brand, you'll cry about malzhar.

People always bitch about mages because they don't know how to position.

Edit: 3.2k HP without resistances is not a lot. That is still squishy. Very squishy under focused fire.

I feel this thread is relevant

http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/gameplay-balance/ahiUhEvE-permaslow-passive-point-and-click-harass-that-can-crit-aoe-global-ult-huge-heal-cleanse

Permaslow passive, point and click harass that can crit, AOE global ult, huge heal + cleanse and an aoe buff that boosts his allies stats with a passive that increases his AD and MS.

Gangplank

See? If you only name strengths, the functions of a kit and neglect to acknowledge or speak about the champions weaknesses and counterplay all together, you can make anything sound overpowered. And this is one of the worst champions in the game currently.

Please be mindful of this when discussing champion balance because it's hard to have any real discussion with anyone when they refuse to accept or acknowledge basic counterplay and weaknesses. If you refuse to do this, it's plain as day you aren't trying to actually discuss anything but that you're trying convince very narrow minded people that you're right with shortsighted skewed information.

Thanks friends

-HateDaddy

Slamurai Jack5/25/2015, 8:55:07 PM3 votes

The only thing I don't like about Annie is that as any squishy carry, I cannot teamfight until someone very tanky or long range on my team deals with her first. Especially as a mid laner, Annies burst and stun is so strong and nearly unavoidable that I can't be within 800ish (1200 if she has flash) units of her as an adc if she still has her ult, or I die instantly. Pretty much the only counterplay to an Annie with a ton of AP is to send someone like Mundo after her to force her to use her stun to defend herself, or to just explode her from range with someone like Xerath. Frankly, Annie pretty much autowinning against every other carry that enters into her range is dumb.

Drunk Rummate5/26/2015, 4:33:17 PM2 votes

This is a really good thread, you've addressed pretty much all of my concerns with the above champions and given reasonable suggestions to fix/improve them. They may not be the correct answer in the end, but I certainly think they're good approaches. And I **certainly **think that the 3 champions you've listed are problematic and need tweaks.

Lugg5/25/2015, 5:01:53 PM2 votes

Riot just needs to put a 10 second limit on how long Annie can hold her stun and she would be balanced. That way she can't hold it forever waiting for a perfect engage.

I agree that LB and Cho need major nerfs. Both are stupidly OP.

ChaoticPinecone5/25/2015, 11:01:29 PM2 votes

i dont play much annie, so i wont comment on it.

Let me ask you something - do you really want her W to do less damage? Because lets be honest here - its her main spell. its her waveclear. its half of her poke. its her mobility. Leblanc revolves around her W, and if you NERF it, you would need to compensate somewhere else for balance (unless you want to just Elise her).

For example, if you took her W scaling and put it on her Q - you have an easier laning until 6, but then all hell breaks loose. Q-R for targeted, instant poke. And if she doesnt need her W for damage, she can use it to get the Q-R poke from 1300 units away. At the moment, her W is her biggest strength and biggest weakness. Forcing you to use your gapcloser to get into Melee range to do damage is a MAJOR weakness in leblanc's kit, especially since its the spell you max first. Put that damage anywhere else and allow her to use her W for gapclosing instead of damage, and she becomes absolutely obnoxious - almost as obnoxious as when she had her silence.

Cho has an oppressive laning phase agasint any short-range caster, but other champions can deal with him provided you dodge the Q. Having a true damage ult is strong, but realize its 175 range - he should never get in range to Feast you if youre a squishy (unless, of course, you dont dodge the Q. He can Q-Flash-ult if you dont dodge the Q). If he ults a tank, well, that means the APC wasted a single-target ult on a tank: other APCs can do so much more with their ults than a Cho gath.

IF you can survive the laning phase going even, Cho falls off after 2-4 items, depending on the build. He is one of the few midlaners that a equally-matched ADC can destroy. He is a good blind pick, since he doesnt really lose lane to anybody, but he isnt OP or anything.

DarksideEric5/26/2015, 2:48:20 AM2 votes

It's so odd to see people claim Annie as being "oppressive" or "overpowered" when she hasn't been either of those like... ever, except for when "regular" Supports were weakened and she was moved down to Bot Lane, partially because she had zero presence in Mid Lane.

Her Ultimate is an instant cast? So are many others. and many of those other instant cast Ultimates have some form of CC attached to them.

She can sit on her Passive? Awesome, so can many others. Funnily enough, those other Champions don't have to do a single thing to earn their Passive ability, they especially don't have to cast 4 Abilities just to get access to it. Nor do they have a visual indicator that their Passive is active. I've never understood why you folks think she should have her Passive degrade over time, when, unlike many other Champions, she has to build up just to use her Passive and when her Passive is up you are visually alerted to it.

Pisdov5/25/2015, 3:56:23 PM2 votes

i clicked on this thread intending to reply there are only a few champions in the game that are truly what i'd call broken. and these are the 3 i had in mind.

Best Darius KR5/25/2015, 9:20:31 PM1 votes

No,stop calling Cho'gath overpowered

Ace Access 5/26/2015, 5:49:01 AM1 votes

from playing Annie I understood one thing, enemies shouldn't try to solo you if they can't take you down quickly

the only real way to beat her is to have at least 2 people attack her, also they should maintain a wide distance between each other when attacking so as to prevent her stun from hitting both of them, if one of em gets stunned the other can attacked without worrying about it

Kaiquion5/26/2015, 12:38:35 AM1 votes

I forgot to edit this before I posted it, But due to the fact that if Leblanc W is getting nerfed like this, she should gain some compensation that also reinforces on the moves she should be focusing on. While that said, her Q and E will be getting buffed; Q will increase from 55/80/105/130/155 (+0.4 Ability Power) on both intences to 65/90/115/140/165(+0.5 per ability power). And for E from 40/65/90/115/140 (+0.5 per ability power), to 45/70/95/120/145(+0.55 per ability power).

qetzel5/25/2015, 5:50:51 PM1 votes

I disagree with your first suggestion for Annie. It wouldn't fix much at all. She would still have the instant Flash-W at ~75 less range. It wouldn't really help. Your second change is a really big nerf. It would probably have to come with some compensation (obviously not to her burst - it is high enough already).

On Leblanc I would be more interested in changing something to give her slightly more obvious counterplay. Given how short the W cooldown is, giving it a delay would be far worse for her than it is for Zed, so if that is done it should be done with caution (remembering that she can't be compensated with numbers if she needs it due to her already high burst). I don't know what that would be. What I do know is that if she loses too much burst she will become useless... Leblanc is a difficult champion to keep balanced...

For Cho, having a high true damage spell is actually fine, I htink. Given its short range and cast time it has a large amount of associated counterplay. His damage seems to fall off late game anyway - do we want to exacerbate that? What I think needs toning down is his lane pressure - early nerfs to his passive or W could do wonders.

chipndip15/25/2015, 6:13:11 PM1 votes

Actually, the Annie suggestion is just a good idea. The stun-degrading one. That sounds like something Riot should have done ages ago.

Clockwork Madoka5/25/2015, 5:11:59 PM1 votes

Make tibbers an AOE skillshot?

....It may be considered a nerf, but as an Annie main that sounds awesome, throwing a fireball-like object across the floor at your face.