There's a reason why Janna is so hard to balance

Cloud273·Aug 22, 2017·5 votes·365 views

There's been a lot of hate for Janna lately (I myself admit to this), but it's for the wrong reasons. People say it's the current itemization that's causing problems. But even without all the broken support items (ancient coin before the nerfs, ardent censer, redemption, etc), Janna was still a problematic champ. Yes she is a ball of stats, but the real problem is that her cc abilities have no channel time and are almost all targeted abilities (almost no skillshots). With her 'q' she can instantly knockup anyone who gets close to her or her allies, and no matter how you look at it a knockup is very powerful cc. You can nerf her damage and her items all you want, but as long as she has access to numerous cc abilities with no channel times she will always be a problem.

1 Comments

YrzenAug 22, 20172 votes

She has two targeted abilities, one of which is slow that lowers her movement speed when used, one of which is a shield.

Her job is to peel the adc and basically nothing else. She has little damage (Frequently the lowest average in the game, the only competitor for that title being Soraka) and little durability most of the time. Putting her cc behind a timer at close range (It already is behind a timer at long ranges) will reduce her ability to perform the only thing she does perform.

This isn't even the reason Janna has such a high win-rate. (And thus, not the reason Janna is "so hard to balance") It's because she's an extremely forgiving champion, who in addition to being able to peel her adc, is capable of peeling herself just as well. She has high movement speed as long as her W is up and her passive grants a lot of mostly invisible power to her allies if they're trying to disengage, with almost no input from the Janna player.

The current Janna changes that were on the PBE (Significantly higher mana costs, W restores mana if used on enemy champions- note that W is the ability that gives Janna movement speed as long as it isn't on cooldown) is a step in the right direction; it means Janna has to interact with the enemy to keep doing things, but doing so puts her at risk. It's a way to make her less forgiving, but as many have pointed out, more could be done.