Thoughts on the Leona Changes

I feel that Leona is getting hit too hard in the damage department with too little to compensate. She is losing 45 damage on her passive, 30 damage on Q, 40 damage on W, and 100 damage on R. This is not a small nerf to her damage at all. That is minus 215 damage. 115 of this is taken off of basic abilities. Her ult deals some more damage but it requires you to hit a lot of AAs in order to do so and doesn't deal that much extra damage. Now, don't get me wrong I like the extra CC and feel that Leona will love this but is this huge nerf to her damage really a justification for that CC? Does this fix her major issues?

Leona already has a pretty rough early game because she has no sustain and can only go all in. She already has a serious problem that when she falls behind a little she has a hard time staying relevant and this seems to me like it will just exacerbate the problem. I don't completely mind making her damage harder to deal (with ult) but shouldn't it be a much greater bonus for an ultimate? Maybe/maybe not. I was still pretty uncomfortable even with the ult damage changes but I thought "hmm that is a lot of CC upgrading I think I could apply most of it." However, they have even lowered the damage of the ultimate! I would also like to point out that it is EXTREMELY RARE that a support gets to level 16. It happens, but only in very long games.

CONTEXT: Solar Flare (R) bonus magic damage with Incandescence charge lowered to 30/40/50 from 30/50/70.

Total changed from: 190/375/600 to 190/335/500

Old Ult Damage: 150/250/350

R From Old to New: +40/+85/+150

Ultimate is on a 90/75/60 cooldown.

Q and W are normally the two abilities first maxed on Leona (not always). As most cases have these two abilities max I'm going to point out that at lvl 11 60-70 damage is missing for +15-+25 damage with 4 AA (not counting nerf to passive putting it around -20 damage). At level 16 Leona will finally see an uptick in damage but I have played support for a long time and I can say with certainty that it is a rare game I hit level 16 as a support. This is because the level gap bonus EXP shuts off at higher levels because people cannot go above level 18. A good team-fight and some kills in a late game and sure you can hit lvl 16 but normally that means the game was just won.

Leona is a CC master and it is hard to put an exact number on how powerful the 2 second CD reduction is on her Q will be. It will have a great impact but Leona suffers from having a timed armor/MR buff that if she falls behind it is rare that she can survive in team-fights for longer then 1 E Q. It is an absolute terrible feeling to fall behind as Leona because you will feel useless. This brings me to what I feel Leona needs with her changes, I agree she doesn't need the damage but she does need survivability. I want to propose an extra tanky bonus when ulting. This will allow her to stay relevant when behind as a tanky support like Braum and Alistar can when behind. I don't know what numbers exactly but anything like bonus Armor/MR for each Incandescence change or just straight up bonus Armor and MR for x seconds. Whatever the case it would help Leona a lot to be able to actually hit a few AAs in the mid game when behind a little.

I fear greatly that the proposed changes will hurt Leona more then help and turn her into a feast or femine support. I used to play her a lot before the META became swamped with Namis and Zyras. I know how hard it is when you fall behind on Leona because she is very item dependent as a support. This is because a portion of her W defensive ability is put into scaling with current armor and MR. I want to play Leona again and I don't think these changes fix the major problems she has. They fix some minor issues like having stuff to do after blowing her CDs but that wasn't really the issue she had as a support. Time will tell what will happen after these changes and I hope I am wrong but I can't help but be afraid.