The Conundrum of Poppy

Prologue

Poppy has become like old Ryze, and will likely be due for a rework in the future. Why? Cause her design currently leads to too much binary power caused by a buff or a nerf. In addition, she is one of the clunkiest champs to play in the game. When I say clunky, I mean her abilities are not fluid with one another, but we will get to that in a moment. First, let's talk about her binary power.

Poppy was designed with several abilities all in one: a ranged passive ability that grants a shield when in effect, a Q that does a slow and max percent damage AND hits twice its damage if she can keep them in it, a W that is basically overloaded to hell with resist steroids and an anti-dash wall, an E that is situationally a stun and a targeted dash, and an R that whose best case scenario barely happens. At the current moment, Poppy has a lot going for her. When we saw her resurgence during her new rework, she was suddenly seen in meta for the first time. She was basically kept around for a good part of the season, until Riot decided to gut her. Their reasoning? _ > Poppy's popularity has skyrocketed since her rework, and it's not hard to see why. Though it's taken a bit of getting used to, Poppy's proven to be one tough yordle, with massive damage and even bigger utility, no matter the position. Stopping dashes and ejecting threats out of a teamfight is all well and strategic, but Poppy's potential to chain-CC her opponents for 5+ seconds all while murdering them is a pretty big no-no from a counterplay perspective. On a secondary front, Poppy's got a lot of high base damage abilities, letting her put out serious numbers without actually buying the items. We're adjusting there._

The Tank Problem

So let me bring up what is called the tank/ damage problem, which Riot knows all too well after nerfing base damage across the board of tanks like Maokai, Shen, and Ornn. Tanks were running rampant with nice damage added to their kits. Nautilaus was once a big contributor to this notion. This was no coincidence. Riot had an adage a couple of seasons ago where they wanted tanks to be an actual threat instead of a damage soaker due to the increase in assassin and adc power. To help combat this, tanks were given better items and juggernauts were introduced into the game. Then the boards and reddit started to become plagued with a problem: complaints against tanks being too strong while being too hard to kill. This then led to the string of nerfs to tanks. Tanks like Sion, Chogath, Singed, and Maokai (and the juggernauts by design) remained the only relevant ones in a solo lane, mostly top cause they have self sufficient power to survive the laning phase against your common top laner (I omit Ornn cause he was made after this whole mess). In addition, some tanks are pushed out of the jungle due to their slow clears compared to meta junglers that have all the attributes necessary for a great jungler. There was a time when this was circumvented by allowing Blasting Smite to be a thing, but after its removal, you saw the disappearance of most champs right then and there.

Let's determine which champs are tanks to begin with (don't worry, I'll be getting back to Poppy in a second. This is important in consideration of her)

Alistar, Amumu, Gnar, Gragas, Leona, Malphite, Maokai, Nautilus, Ornn, Rammus, Sejuani, Sion, Zac, Braum, Galio, Nunu, Poppy, Shen, Tahm Kench, Taric, Volibear, Trundle (ult wise), Yorick, Urgot, Dr. Mundo, Singed, Nasus.

Juggernauts are tanks, also, but are considered the immobile versions of them to emphasize their power and toughness, according to Riot. Super bruisers might be a better word for them. They are: Darius, Garen, Skarner, Illaoi, and Mordekaiser.

As you can see above, there are tons of champs available to the average player. Some have their niches, but generally, you can have a champ pool that covers all you will ever need from a tank champ. CC, pick potential, bodyguard potential, solo laning, jungling, and just being a frontliner.

So Why Pick Poppy?

Here is what Riot says about her during her reveal:

_>When it’s time to transition to more teamplay, Poppy joins the frontlines as a strong tank. With the passive stats from Steadfast Presence, she’s surprisingly durable while still capable of outputting damage in the right situation. In early mid-game teamfights, Steadfast Presence’s active effect will keep the backline from using dashes to flee as her team collapses on them. A well-timed Keeper’s Verdict can turn a 5v5 scrum into a 5v4 slaughter, but she’ll have to pay attention to enemy crowd control. Because Keeper’s Verdict is channeled, it can be interrupted by opposing champions.

>As enemies acquire more armor and health, Poppy smoothly swaps roles to take on the responsibility of keeping her friends alive._

The reason Poppy was picked substantially during season 6 was mainly due to her not only being able to hold lane, but also deal out a good chunk of damage. She was playing more like a bruiser than the tank that they set her out to made as. And in a way, Riot really should have kept with this identity and moved her stats and power more in that direction. Unfortunately, after patch 6.3, she was receiving nerfs after nerfs until her win rate dipped at a sub 40% and she fell out the meta like that. See, when a tank is nerfed enough, they become irrelevant simply by the nature of losing their damage or lane control. Whereas, champs like Jax still thrive even after being in league this long simply due to having a superior kit. Even if his numbers are nerfed, his identity and abilities are still relevant to the game. The same goes for the tanks who haven't been moved from top lane despite their nerfs: Cho, Sion, Singed, Garen, Darius, and Illaoi particularly. Whereas, tank junglers like Gragas and Sejuani instantly see a decline the moment they received nerfs. They lost their place in the game, and are currently on the backburner to bruiser and assassin junglers. In fact, it seems the support roles is where any tank champ goes to die essentially since they become basically CC slaves to try to get their team through early game before their lack of gold catches up and they becomes sitting ducks to most dps.

Poppy offers far too little compared to the other tanks. Her CC is situational, her tankiness is insignificant (way more with the nerf to her resist steroids), and her damage is subpar. This is all because of the clunkiness of her kit.

Poppy's a Klutz

Poppy's kit does not synergize at all. It is one of the clunkiest kits I have ever played with. At least in her old version, her rotation/ playstyle was straightforward: ult someone, use W to reposition (with ghost for extra movespeed), E them to a wall, Q them.

Her current play style: optional passive shield (which is ranged so you already stopped yourself to throw it in the first place; alternatively, it's lying on the ground or you proc'd it off a minion, but now you have 3 seconds before it goes away, W to speed up and reposition (WAIT you cannot always use this ability cause it not only has a long cd, but if you want to be able to block dashes, you have to save it, negating Poppy's ability to reposition until the right time; also has only a 2.5s duration), if you're in range, use Heroic Charge on them. The ult...well, you actually cannot put this into her rotation except during situations where she can pull them off (let's not forget that if she even tries to use her charge version of R, it CAN be interrupted). Snapcast knocks up the person for 0.75 seconds (0.75 secs for just an ult cd ability; although the ult has quite the power, it's way too situational to have a big impact, mostly due to the interruption property).

Poppy is one of the few champions where she does not get to use all her abilities optimally without very specific circumstances, which results in why she fell off in the first place. Her damage was all she had going for her. Now she is just this weird combination of a champion that exists solely for having experimental anti-dash and "knock enemy toward their nexus" abilities, both completely underpowered to matter in making her competitive (if you really want to make her competitive with these abilities, the best thing to do would be to allow them to be up more, especially her Steadfast Presence). Poppy is being disallowed to have a place because Riot hasn't solidified what she is. As a support, she's lackluster cause when her abilities are down, and they are a lot, she is useless for the next 10-12 seconds. She doesn't get much done at top cause if you only needed her to hold lane, you could choose champs with either much better tank potential or bruiser potential. In jungle, she has a better role to give to the team, but again, there's better clearers and gankers in the meta than she ever will be. And again, with how clunky her ability set is, she will never be truly capable of holding her own against the likes of Lee Sin, Shyvana, Graves, Warwick, etc.

Conclusion

So what does this all mean? It means that Poppy's rework has failed. It isn't the developer's fault. They didn't realize where the game was headed. But it seems the best course of action is going to be to rework her abilities to fall in line with a more solid identity. If they want, they could even do a story tie-in where she finds out she's the one that the hammer belongs to, her abilities become unlocked, and then they can change her into a completely different champion: The Yordle Hero. Think about it, maybe the reason she is so clunky with her abilities is because she currently has no idea how to use the hammer to its full potential. Wouldn't it be great if she finally realizes it (like how Gangplank got his rework after the Miss Fortune story change), and consequently becomes a new champion?

Oh well, that was my rant. Maybe Poppy will forever be doomed as a damage-dependent champion.