Why these mages?

HoboMcJoe·1/22/2016, 4:35:43 AM·49 votes·39,903 views

Riot recently announced that the mages they will be focusing on in the mage update will be Malzahar, Vel’Koz, Brand, Vladimir, Cassiopeia, and Zyra. While it's nice to finally see who they will be changing, some of these choices are confusing to me. In my opinion, only Cassiopeia and Zyra are the two champs here that are in dire need of some changes. The rest, especially Vel'Koz, feel less in need of changes than some other immobile mages that are not on the list, such as Galio, Swain, or maybe even Annie.

I don't think that, for the most part, they picked the right champions. Choosing Vel'Koz of all mages to change just mystifies me, especially with all the people asking specifically for him not to be changed. There are other mages struggling and I'm wondering if I can get any insight as to why they picked these 4.

259 Comments

RiotMeddler1/22/2016, 5:21:16 AM54 votes

Statikk and the other folks working on the mage update will be talking in detail about why these particular champs. At a high level our goal with these class updates is to increase distinction between characters. With the mage update especially we're also looking at some champions that are distinct, but when functional aren't healthy for the game or are in an ok spot already but have a fair bit of untapped potential for differentiation.

Ought to bring more distinct things to a team:

Vel'Koz - Really distinct to play as, cohesive, feels fair to play against. Doesn't bring enough distinct to a team though, so lacks a clear strategic niche or specialized tool offered. Goal with him will be to offer clearer situations where he's the right pick when you want AP poke.
Brand - Pretty similar to Vel'Koz overall, in that he lacks a clear enough niche, so primary gameplay argument for picking him is when he's the most damaging AOE mage. Needs a somewhat more distinct toolkit basically.

Distinct, but have significant game health challenges:

Vlad - Does distinct things, but can be really unhealthy. Work on Vlad's going to involve a lot of 'how do we preserve the core of what he does while adding ways to play against him'.
Malz - More game health issues than anything else. Counterplay's not great in particular, with Malz needing to just click on you and kill you given his squishiness, immobility, lack of reach, vulnerability to item system counters. Has a lot of distinctive stuff going on though.

Untapped potential/Confused identities:

Cass - Confused identity, unclear niche (sustained damage almost marksmen like pattern, versus poison spreading potential, versus stacking power, versus counter initiator etc). Work on Cass will need to start with constructing a clear picture of what her concept should be (suspect that'll include stripping out the stacking gameplay, though that's a guess).
Zyra - Does reasonably distinctive things, but has the potential for quite a bit more. Also ends up either a strong bully or struggling to function a bit too often.

Finally, as with the marksman update in preseason, we'll also be making some small tweaks to a number of other mages at the same time as these bigger changes (things like the Q reset on Twitch for example).