ADC main here, advocating for a small Lucian buff. (hear me out!)

metaworldpeace10··1 votes·586 views

I'm a Lucian main, have been for the tail end of season 3 and all of season 4. I have over 150 games on Lucian. I watched many hours of Doublelift stream when he was playing Lucian almost exclusively. I learned a lot about his positioning I love Lucian and his playstyle, he's one of the funnest ADC's on the League roster for me. He was strong before his mini-rework, then he was broken for a patch, then brought back to being the "fits in every team comp" ADC. He crowded out other picks severely. It took much time and work, but he finally got the nerfs that he deserved. His passive duration from 6 seconds to 3 seconds and his passive AD ratio damage from .5 at all ranks to .3/.4/.5. Since this nerf his winrate has dropped almost 5% and his pickrate has dropped to 10% and is continuing to drop. Lucian's strengths previously was his early game laning power that could snowball into his mid game power spike. I don't think he falls off late game, but in order for Lucian to do significant damage, he needs to get into range and at 500 range its pretty risky for him and it allows for large gap closers and targeted CC to reach him and (hopefully for the enemy) kill him. I believe he is over-nerfed, but close to being a competitive and contested pick with a small nudge or two, but Corki/Sivir/Graves/Kalista are a step ahead of Lucian when it comes to the AD caster class. Each of these picks have a strong early game and spike during the mid-game. (Kalista is probably the only exception) Lucian doesn't have that strong of an early game anymore because of his passive AD ratio nerfs, also his mid game power spike takes longer and is more conservative as opposed to Graves/Sivir/Corki/Kalista. I would love to see him once again as a contested (not over-bearing) pick amongst the AD caster class. Although, pickrate and winrate aren't exactly the best measures of champion balance, they do influence thought provoking balance decisions in order to bring certain champions in line within their own specified role.

My proposed change to Lucian would be to change his passive from (.3/.4/.5) AD ratios at level 1-7-13 to (.4/.45/.5) at levels 1/7/13. I feel this would help him keep up within the AD caster class, while allowing him to smoothy transition into his mid game power spike as Graves/Corki/Sivir/Kalista already do. What does the community think? Would this make him over bearing? I understand he was in the spotlight for a long time and I understand ADC's like MF/Ashe/Varus/Quinn need more attention than Lucian, but I hate to see champions being nerfed into oblivion (Evelyn, Elise, Syndra, Gragas to name a few) never to be picked up again. It would be an easy fix to bump him up a notch in the short-term, rather than letting him rot at the bottom of the winrate chart like Elise/Evelyn/Zac for 6-12 months.

2 Comments

Abyssphere2 votes

Lucian has hardly been nerfed into oblivion, just because he's not a top pick in the LCS doesn't mean he's unplayable. He's only just fallen out of favour and a 10% pick rate is hardly bad, it's entirely average. He could not be much further away from Elise/Evelynn cases.

A champion doesn't need to be in the top 5 of its class to be in a good spot, and as you said there are plenty of ADCs in much worse positions. Lucian should not be the Lee Sin of ADCs, who is never allowed to fall out of the spotlight.

metaworldpeace101 votes

{quoted}

Lucian has hardly been nerfed into oblivion, just because he's not a top pick in the LCS doesn't mean he's unplayable. He's only just fallen out of favour and a 10% pick rate is hardly bad, it's entirely average. He could not be much further away from Elise/Evelynn cases.

A champion doesn't need to be in the top 5 of its class to be in a good spot, and as you said there are plenty of ADCs in much worse positions. Lucian should not be the Lee Sin of ADCs, who is never allowed to fall out of the spotlight.

I didn't say he was nerfed into oblivion. He just was overnerfed. His pickrate will continue to decline. I do agree that he shouldn't be the Lee Sin of ADC's, but I also think the whole OP > nerfed hard> UP type of process is unhealthy. I think a way to curb that is to throw small buffs towards champions in order for them to keep up with the strong champions. Thanks for your input though!

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