Dear Stashu, if Vlad turns out weak numbers-wise are you…

Over Innsmouth · 2016-04-30T11:02:36.290Z

This is something I've seen whenever Vlad has come up lately. People are saying his new kit is excellent but a little underwhelming. Bear in mind I don't have a PBE acc, so my opinion on this is hopefully taken with a grain of salt. His new kit on the whole looks really good, as I've said before in threads and comments. New levels of counterplay and decision-making are present that would've been impossible with the current Live Vlad. I understand that the decisions to lower his AP ratios and raise his synergy with health-focused builds have been towards the effect of making him closer to his newfound "Juggermage" identity (which I personally am wholly in favour of), and that's all great. But if it turns out that he's lacking too much in damage/sustain (his primary tools) then would you be open to buffing his numbers? I know that the patch immediately following large updates is sure to be filled with unreliable data due to people being inexperienced with playing/playing against the updated Champions and items, so I understand if it takes a patch or two to smooth things out as it did with the Juggernaut update. If you find this Stashu (or any Rioter with the place to say), I hope you'll consider it. Sincerely, A Vlad main.

Over InnsmouthApr 30, 20162 votes

Thanks so much!

I look forward to when the Mage Update finally hits Live and I can fully test for myself how Vlad feels.

kaltenashesApr 30, 20164 votes

It was said that uf old quinn mains didnt like her new ult it would be reversed....

But it was changed for 'hey new players are enjoying quinn now, stfu old quinn mains'

NαgmaApr 30, 20161 votes

maybe if pbe had a larger amount of players you could use more data to fix champions . but pbe accounts are so hard to get these days

DecritApr 30, 20167 votes

welp, that would not help aniway. Many people do not even fight properly in PBE because they test stuff. If you increase the number of people, then you increase also the amount of these kind of people that focuses on mechanic interaction and bugs rather power: once at least one on five of these players is in a game, the game balance goes already out of the window.

And that is not a fault. Instead, it is a good thing because that is the primary reason of the PBE existance! Also, to properly gauge PBE balance feedback, you would need a FAR greater population, considering that live balance goes around a population of millions of people, so even if we pose that every player plays """"competitively"""" then you would have an absurd cost to mantain huge servers for few people with little resurl. Plus the whole problem about separating live and pbe.

TurquoiseYoshiApr 30, 20169 votes

Not only that, but since everyone wants to play the reworked things, you're not getting a realistic view of what the changes are. Nobody wants to play ADCs right now, since there are no changes to ADCs on the PBE other than the Rageblade changes. I'm guessing nobody wants to play AD assassins like Zed because there are no real changes to them. And when you take out certain classes from play, the results of champions in matches is skewed very badly.

DecritApr 30, 20167 votes

true, good catch.

ahferroin7Apr 30, 20163 votes

That and if people actually treated it like a beta and actively tried to break things and find bugs/loopholes/broken as hell combos...

Photos of GhostsApr 30, 20167 votes

Can you also answer to why Stashu can't be found anywhere since 8 days ago?

HighH1Apr 30, 20164 votes

Working on PBE most likely. Rioters in game development don't have much free time I'm guessing.

ModKnightsKemplarApr 30, 20164 votes

What HighH1 said. He saw the feedback, and went back to working on it.

You guys probably can't give feedback on what he has in his pocket right now, because it isn't even on PBE. That being the case, he doesn't feel a need to talk to you. He's trying to address the concerns he already heard over a week ago. He listened, and he's working on it.

I understand the community wanting comms, but I also understand Riot not giving it every single day. You say "8 days" like it's a really long time, but speaking as someone with a steady, somewhat intense job (like I imagine game development is), it isn't a long time. Getting good work done is time-intensive. If it wasn't, we could have all the champs in league reworked every year. That just isn't possible.

I guess my TL;DR is, be patient. He heard you guys, and he's working on it, and you need to wait now. You'll see what he came up with soon.

Photos of GhostsMay 1, 20161 votes

It's a LONG time when the PBE patch before live lasts 14 days. That's over half of the time he has to fix stuff.

ModKnightsKemplarMay 1, 20161 votes

It takes that long, man. Don't know what to tell you. Your expectations are just too high. That's all there is to it.

WitchQueen AnnieApr 30, 20163 votes

{quoted}

Not Stashu but I can answer this.

The answer is yes, the champion update teamwill be heavily monitoring and tuning the new mages for the first month after release. After that they go over to the live gameplay team. If you look back to the juggernaut or marksmen updates you will see tons of changes that got made in the first month of release. Quinn even got a new reworked blind added.

In some cases if a champion is significantly struggling or significantly powerful we may even hot fix them immediately as seen with Skarner and Darius right after juggernauts were released.

While the PBE is a great place to get feedback on kit feel and design it is a hard place to judge balance. This is why most of the changes were "feel" changes like the change to the way the E works to clear minion waves Stashu implemented. Our internal play test team feels that he is pretty balanced right now so we are waiting to see how he looks once he hits live.

Would a representative of this ''internal play test team'' step forward and offer some comfort/perspective to the people in the PBE thread or elsewhere?

I'd love to hear how he is supposedly balanced right now when his damage, sustain, reliability, and AP ratios were Nerfed all across the board in exchange for absolutely nothing in compensation in a context where Spell Vamp is removed.

What do you mean he is pretty balanced right now? Does this mean you aren't really interested in dramatically tuning his numbers?

Then Vladimir is truly finished...

EROTIC RAID BOSSApr 30, 20162 votes

I've seen people say he was op as fuck on the pbe too. Give it a chance and try it yourself when it comes out. And like reav3 said if he's really weak or really strong obviously they'll adjust.

WitchQueen AnnieApr 30, 20164 votes

[{quoted}](name=Monado II,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=YLA8mbXy,comment-id=000200040000,timestamp=2016-04-30T15:36:55.819+0000)

I've seen people say he was op as fuck on the pbe too. Give it a chance and try it yourself when it comes out. And like reav3 said if he's really weak or really strong obviously they'll adjust.

there's just absolutely no guarantee of that...

Skarner is still licking his wounds, and it seems to have taken MONTHS to fix the mess with Cassiopeia considering this is her SECOND rework

I suspect I might be able to finish a law degree before they finally finish with Vladimir, if he's not lying in the forgotten dust by then...

WoonStruckApr 30, 20164 votes

While the live server will definitely be a more accurate place to judge his power, I feel like he'll have the same issues as old Vlad. If he's weak, he'll get buffed. Then nerfed because he's over-bearing, then never looked at for a buff again because it'll make him over-bearing.

The issue is his reliability. I'm not even talking about his new kit changes. Vlad has ALWAYS has problems making an impact because he needs things to be within 600 range of him, and he can't force anyone to be there. Worse yet, he's primarily AoE, meaning he optimally wants to be in the middle of a fight.

Essentially, unlike every other champion, his kit has nothing to enable itself. People have to LET him be successful. It doesn't matter how strong or weak this champion is. If the enemy team is decent, Vlad does not function.

Considering his functional unreliability, along with his skills being made less reliable, he should have gotten something in his kit to enable itself, like every other champion in the game. This could have been anything from an actually powerful Q MS buff (whole CD duration) to ult slowing on cast, similar to Eve ult.

As it stands, Vlad will still be forced into being either overwhelming or too unreliable to use, and that hasn't been touched with this rework. It actually made that issue worse.

WitchQueen AnnieApr 30, 20161 votes

{quoted}

While the live server will definitely be a more accurate place to judge his power, I feel like he'll have the same issues as old Vlad. If he's weak, he'll get buffed. Then nerfed because he's over-bearing, then never looked at for a buff again because it'll make him over-bearing.

The issue is his reliability. I'm not even talking about his new kit changes. Vlad has ALWAYS has problems making an impact because he needs things to be within 600 range of him, and he can't force anyone to be there. Worse yet, he's primarily AoE, meaning he optimally wants to be in the middle of a fight.

Essentially, unlike every other champion, his kit has nothing to enable itself. People have to LET him be successful. It doesn't matter how strong or weak these two champions are. If the enemy team is decent, these champions do not function.

Considering his functional unreliability, along with his skills being made less reliable, he should have gotten something in his kit to enable itself, like every other champion in the game. This could have been anything from an actually powerful Q MS buff to ult slowing on cast, similar to Eve ult.

As it stands, Vlad will still be forced into being either overwhelming or too unreliable to use, and that hasn't been touched with this rework. It actually made that issue worse.

Exactly.

Now that his kit is made SUPER unreliable (and let's face it... it is super unreliable now. E has REAL health costs now AND it is blocked by a single minion... Q does no damage unless its an empowered Q and the empower mechanism is just too clumsy with too fleeting a window to exploit)... now that its so SUPER unreliable; the only way to balance it is to raise the numbers even more. But doing so will just create an over-bearing scenario...

On the reverse side, leaving it as it is just becomes a straight out nerf

EROTIC RAID BOSSApr 30, 20162 votes

It's ridiculous actually. His whole problem is that he is too reliable on live.

If the only counterplay is stay out of range forever that's a bad design. I can't tell if this guy is complaining that vlad is still too reliable or not reliable enough? But if staying away from a champion were such easy counters anyone could do it, you'd never have seen darius with high win rates and a champion like malzahar would never be able to function

I agree his problem right now is that if you buff him and he's over bearing then that's a real problem. I don't know how well solved that is in the rework but when you complain about the things that were done to solve it, the changes to q and e that make them less reliable, it's like well what did you expect?

WitchQueen AnnieApr 30, 20163 votes

[{quoted}](name=Monado II,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=YLA8mbXy,comment-id=0002000500000000,timestamp=2016-04-30T15:44:45.681+0000)

It's ridiculous actually. His whole problem is that he is too reliable on live. If the only counterplay is stay out of range forever that's a bad design. I can't tell if this guy is complaining that vlad is still too reliable or not reliable enough? But if staying away from a champion were such easy counters anyone could do it, you'd never have seen darius with high win rates and a champion like malzahar would never be able to function

Yet his win rate speaks for itself.

Do you see Vladimir first picked at tournaments?

He's never been Meta. Yet he is being nerfed to the ground.

Blood MagicksApr 30, 20163 votes

The new E slow and damage are very welcome actually.

I like the direction of the changes, reliability exchanged for damage/utility. I just don't think the compensations in damage/sustain are enough so I feel the need to ask for buffs here and there.

But the E hits like a truck mate.

WitchQueen AnnieApr 30, 20162 votes

[{quoted}](name=VaynexVlad OTP,realm=EUW,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=YLA8mbXy,comment-id=000200050000000000000000,timestamp=2016-04-30T15:52:02.549+0000)

The new E slow and damage are very welcome actually.

I like the direction of the changes, reliability exchanged for damage/utility. I just don't think the compensations in damage/sustain are enough so I feel the need to ask for buffs here and there.

But the E hits like a truck mate.

The new E does less damage than fully stacked Old E (in addition to being blockable and being subject to a real health cost now that Spell Vamp is gone). And contrary to popular belief, it was NOT troublesome to keep E fully stacked when Spell Vamp was around.

Unless I am mistaken about damage?

Blood MagicksApr 30, 20161 votes

See my other post. New E hits way harder.

WoonStruckApr 30, 20161 votes

E hits harder.

Meanwhile, Q weaker, W weaker, R weaker. Hell, even passive is weaker.

He lost damage, face it. Its just all frontloaded into E now.

DoubleTongueApr 30, 20161 votes

3rd Q hits like a truck as well

EROTIC RAID BOSSApr 30, 20161 votes

And its actually every other q as long as you keep using it

WoonStruckApr 30, 20163 votes

Old E hit like a truck too. I could literally ult EQ an Ez and he would die after ult popped.

Can't do that even with empowered Q and E now.

He lost damage, he lost reliability. He lost utility. His CDs were nerfed. He lost his good AP->HP ratio.

However, I don't even care about the numbers. Vlad's going to have the same exact issues as before the rework, and then they'll see his problems don't stem from WotA. They stem from his kit having no way to enable itself, unlike every other champion in the game.

You see, outside of melee, every champion in the game has more range than him. Nearly every champion has more CC than him. Nearly every champion has more mobility than him, and those that don't are melee, so they can utilize DMP well. Because of this, you'd assume Vlad much greater damage than the majority. However, he doesn't. His damage/dps is middle-ground at best.

Even when he did have damage, he still had the core issue of 'I can't do anything unless someone wants to come in range of me'.

Every other battle mage has tools to chase, hold people in an area, etc. Every juggernaut has MS buffs, itemization to rely upon, or CC. Vlad has nothing to allow him to access his kit's potential.

Blood MagicksApr 30, 20162 votes

How does it hit less?

Look at a lategame Vlad, I haven't reached super late game in a while but I would go something like 3800 HP 700 AP (may vary from game to game).

Old E, fully stacked: 320+315=635

New E: 130+490+380=1000

Although new Vlad will build differently.

I keep seeing screens of people going more than 1k on E so it hits like a truck, yeah. And good luck getting away from the next EQ with the Rylai slow and the 60% E slow.

Overall I see a lot of room for good things. This kit has "PLAYZ" written all over it and Riot should make use of that cause damn it looks good on stream.

I can somewhat agree on the rest but to be honest I go early Rylai all the time and people rarely manage to run away from me.

ForeverLaxxMay 1, 20162 votes

When they nerfed Vlad's original Q range, that effectively killed him off. Then he kept getting more nerfs on top of that, and I decided Riot has no idea what they're doing with Vlad. This new rework is just more evidence of that fact compounded with the design team's current focus on building champions for the lane instead of the game as a whole. I'm not necessarily against a champion design that requires outside influence to use properly, but when that outside influence has to come from your allies AND your payoff for getting to use that influence isn't worth the investment, then I have a problem.

And to think I had a redesign for my old main that would have allowed Spell Vamp to remain in the game while granting Vlad some actual soft CC potential in Rylais. Oh well. Riot would rather rework him into something that has the exact same problems he currently has on Live.

QuephaApr 30, 20162 votes

{quoted}

Yet his win rate speaks for itself.

Do you see Vladimir first picked at tournaments?

He's never been Meta. Yet he is being nerfed to the ground.

He was meta at one point and Riot nerfed the crap out of his base stats to make sure that horror would never visit us again. Live Vladimir is one of the "Urgot-tier" champs that Riot will nerf the instant they threaten being strong.

EROTIC RAID BOSSApr 30, 20161 votes

He can't be made meta cus he's too stat checky. Giving other players the ability to avoid his e and his empowered q gives them the ability to ramp up his damage and ability to bully you early game, which is what riot did

WitchQueen AnnieMay 1, 20161 votes

[{quoted}](name=Monado II,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=YLA8mbXy,comment-id=000200050000000000000002,timestamp=2016-04-30T21:08:44.162+0000)

He can't be made meta cus he's too stat checky. Giving other players the ability to avoid his e and his empowered q gives them the ability to ramp up his damage and ability to bully you early game, which is what riot did

I am okay with reliability being reduced so long as we get extreme damage or sustain as compensation (in fact, Vlad needs both to be Vlad). Sustain should have gone up and not down... since we are removing Spell Vamp right now. Yet sustain has gone down, way down...

Right not, they're turning him into an AP Graves that has to pay with his life points to fire a blood-based shotgun that gets minion-blocked... For most of the game he'll have close to no HP and that's just ridiculous since he was supposed to be one of the characters with the most sustain. They even said on the main page that they wanted to keep his sustain characteristics... well with the numbers right now, I'm not seeing how it has been kept.

Sustain has gone down, in addition to the removal of spell vamp.

EROTIC RAID BOSSMay 1, 20161 votes

his reliable sustain was part of the problem. he still has strong sustain, the empowered q heals a lot, his ult heals him, etc. I think his damage is higher too

WitchQueen AnnieApr 30, 20163 votes

[{quoted}](name=Monado II,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=YLA8mbXy,comment-id=0002000500000000,timestamp=2016-04-30T15:44:45.681+0000)

I agree his problem right now is that if you buff him and he's over bearing then that's a real problem. I don't know how well solved that is in the rework but when you complain about the things that were done to solve it, the changes to q and e that make them less reliable, it's like well what did you expect?

More damage... more sustain... SOME kind of positive concession in favour of Vladimir to account for the fact that Spell Vamp is now completely GONE + the fact that you're making all of his abilities less reliable

I mean, the Rework just feels like its not being done in good faith when all that is being done is nerfing Vlad. I mean, generally when you make a character LESS reliable, you add something else to balance it out. So fans don't feel like this is completely unfair. And we're dealing with a champion that wasn't even Meta to begin with, was rarely ever played, and has a less than 50% win rate at all eloes.

EROTIC RAID BOSSApr 30, 20161 votes

His e does a lot of damage

WoonStruckApr 30, 20163 votes

Relative to what?

Have you played the old Vlad?

Considering how much damage was shaved off Q, W(yes really), and R, E really isn't making him do more damage.

WitchQueen AnnieApr 30, 20162 votes

{quoted}

Relative to what?

Have you played the old Vlad?

It has doubled CD, so MUCH less DPS considering its less than a 25% increase to burst. Not to mention the health cost tripling and sustain being lower.

the loss of sustain is HUGE...

EROTIC RAID BOSSApr 30, 20161 votes

A little bit. Something you might not be aware of is that his empowered q takes 2 qs to ramp up to buy your previous empowered q counts as one q towards the next one. Meaning if you keep using it you get that empowered q every other q. It hits really hard and gives you a speed boost to help you land it. It makes him much stronger early game, from what I understand.

From what I've heard from a friend who used to be a vlad main, his sustain feels less dependable but his damage is better

You might want to watch someone play the new vlad to give you a better idea of what you can expect

WitchQueen AnnieApr 30, 20162 votes

[{quoted}](name=Monado II,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=YLA8mbXy,comment-id=000200050000000000010000,timestamp=2016-04-30T15:59:42.948+0000)

His e does a lot of damage

His old E at max damage (you always had it fully stacked at the right times if you were a good Vlad so its basically always dealing the max damage)...

320 + (0.45 AP) every 4.5 seconds

His new E

130 (+0.1 HP)(+0.7 AP) every 5 seconds

...

Actually, you may have a point. I mean 0.7 AP is actually pretty good.

Still not convinced he has the sustain and the damage necessary now that Q's damage, ratios, and sustain have been nerfed and in a context where there isn't Spell Vamp.

Champion SkinMay 1, 20161 votes

Vlad need to land 4 Qs to deal as much damage as Vlad currently does with 3 Qs.... however the damage is the same if Vlad is able to use his empowered Q on the target And I believe it heals more

Though yes his E seems a lot less reliable but maybe the damage will make up for it... I dont really know

HigeApr 30, 20162 votes

and then there's Graves... :/

WoonStruckApr 30, 20162 votes

{quoted}

and then there's Graves... :/

And Kindred. And Ekko. And Zed. And Lucian. And Corki.

Ironically, Graves does what Vlad was designed to do better than Vlad.

EROTIC RAID BOSSApr 30, 20161 votes

Is lucien even that strong his win rate ain't great ever since the range nerf on his ult. Corki has plummeted too

ZT XperimentorMay 1, 20162 votes

Nice to hear they'll be kept in view. However it's concerning you mention specifically for the first month; is the entire project of fixes just going to be scraped, from some arbitrary short time-frame running out?

Also regarding balance; some things were bloody obvious that they shouldn't have been forced onto live, yet did anyway and made players leave. Something to keep in mind.

RiotReav3May 1, 20161 votes

1 month is more of a rough timeframe then a exact timeframe, if the mages need more time we can give them more time.

ZT XperimentorMay 2, 20161 votes

Ok, though that's not exactly what I was asking for. If the timeframe 'runs out', are the fixes just going to be dropped?

WoonStruckMay 2, 20161 votes

Like always, yes. :/

"Resources" will be the excuse Riot throws around.

As if they don't have the resources to properly manage their game.

ZT XperimentorMay 2, 20161 votes

Yeah . . . I wonder if the main reason they won't make a sandbox mode, is because they're afraid of their pride being hurt from some random player making a more balanced game XD

WoonStruckMay 2, 20161 votes

If you recall, their idea of 'sandbox mode' is a mode where you can train specific mechanics, not what you're thinking.

ZT XperimentorMay 2, 20161 votes

I'm well aware of that; but a 'training' mode is what the tutorial should be doing, and it's not what we've been asking for since they said they would make a replay system.

Dear Stashu, if Vlad turns out weak numbers-wise are you open to raising his bases and/or ratios?

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