Boards›Gameplay

Isn't Rammus just a symptom?

Passionlip·11/24/2015, 9:45:32 AM·66 votes·2,655 views

First off, my native language is not English, so sorry for some grammatical errors and such.

I'm not a 'Rammus main' or anything, I just have a certain pool of champs that i love to play and Rammus is included. Now I'm not outraged by or complaining about the last rework on the PBE or something like that, I just want to express an opinion of mine. Rammus, unlike what some people say, isn't weak against team comps who are not full Ad. For instance he is pretty good at ganking early, and the taunt can be hard for anyone to deal with. The taunt is also suicidal for the auto-attack-based champs in particular. BUT he's especially strong when up against teams where AD/AA based champs are predominate, as Rammus kit is built around that whole idea. So isn't his strength in this patch make sense, because of the shift in champions who are heavily focused on AA/AD? So isn't Rammus' just a good counter-pick and a necessary existence? It doesn't seem unhealthy as he also has his own counters. It's not necessarily or unbalanced as everyone thinks. So just to clarify I'm not whining, i just want to share my point of view with everyone, because it's on my mind after i read the patch notes recently.

Thanks to LatetotheRace for the corrections.

25 Comments

ProfDrDeath11/24/2015, 11:00:37 AM22 votes

Him being strong on 5.22 is at least partially a symptom of everyone rushing to try out the new AD items and the resulting pure AD comps, true.

Another part to him being strong is, however, not just tied to the prevalence of AD comps: In general, the changes to Last Whisper have made tanks, especially ones that synergize well with Armor, stronger. On its current values, the target needs to have 7 times their base Armor as bonus Armor for the penetration to be as efficient as the old Last Whisper. This makes it more difficult to deal with high Armor targets. On top of that, Tenacity has been nerfed, as well. There is only one option for purchasable Tenacity now, and its value was lowered from 35% to 20%. This automatically makes all CC stronger, but especially things like Rammus' Taunt or Fiddle's Fear, which have been nerfed from 3 seconds to 2.5 seconds max duration. With the changes to Tenacity, the duration on someone featuring the effect is now the same as before that nerf - roughly 2 seconds.

Critmaster Garen11/24/2015, 10:00:23 AM10 votes

yes he is.

they buffed adc so much, its stupid. naturally their hard counters are seing a spike in winrate. thats what happens. nerfing rammus is entirely te wrong reaction. they need to tune down adc instead.

Akenero11/24/2015, 12:06:20 PM3 votes

Malphite is stronger in terms of countering ad comps, but rammus has stronger ganks! But yeah, rammus needs complexity added to his kit

Rozzeta11/24/2015, 11:04:40 AM2 votes

He is, but to Riot the ADC dominating the game is not a disease, but rather the intended result which will dominate season 6.

Psyturkey11/24/2015, 9:59:47 PM1 votes

People have already covered the changes to Last Whisper having pushed him over the edge.

There's another reason Riot may be nerfing him. For a lot of ADCs, there is no counter play to Rammus.

He is crazy fast and if he taunts you he will solo kill you, hell with his ult active if he just stands next to you he will probably kill you and you can't really fight back because his W passive and Thornmail will kill you.

Also worth noting: The change to Thornmail. It used to deal damage equal to 30% of the physical auto-attack damage you dealt to him, now it deals damage equal to 15% of the damage plus +15% of your bonus armor. For most tanks this was a net nerf to the damage it could deal, but Rammus gets 120 bonus armor from his W basically for free and most of the time he's going to build a ton of armor too, making Thornmail more deadly on him compared with similar tanks who do not get such a massive armor steroid.

Ardziv11/25/2015, 2:58:46 AM1 votes

There are two reasons rammus is super op right now.

  1. A lot of ad/auto comps (yasuo, tryn, irelia, yi, jax lots of adcs). Mainly due to guinsoos and fervor of battle along with adc changes.

  2. New thornmail is ridiculous on rammus

If you buy thornmail and taunt an adc hes dead before taunt ends (in a 1v1)

Don't think rammus is the issue. If you nerf a champ because of the environment instead of his kit, then he will be weak once the environment changes and will need buffs... it'll never end. Instead it would be better to try and alter the environment if possible. And don't rush nerfs because people trying out lots of adcs will naturally give rammus a better winrate that will go down in the next few months once its not new anymore. (i.e. there are a lot of 2 adc or 3 adc comps atm even in ranked at plat 1 so naturally rammus SHOULD have a higher winrate regardless of him being op or not)

Plus there's no reason mercs should have been nerfed to 20%. CC is just too strong in this game, the nerf was just too big especially when there are a lot of other really good boots (lucidity and sorc boots). I never build mercs anymore I'd rather rely on banshees and dodging.

As for last whisper, yeah it makes him tankier than he would be, but the issue is adc's will die before they kill a rammus with the new thornmail even if they did more damage. But if you had a good magic oriented team with just an adc as physical it's not so bad I think, but it's too hard to tell right now because of how popular ad is atm.

Juicyman11/25/2015, 9:48:47 AM1 votes

Just noticed a slight stealth nerf to Rammus this patch. His model was increased in size, which will make getting around objects with Q harder, then again he'll absorb more damage for allies.

Edit: Nevermind, hitboxes were not changed.

ZzEslIolZQ11/25/2015, 1:28:14 PM1 votes

Yeah a symptom of Riot's incompetence. They're literally nerfing a bunch of champs who haven't seen play in seasons cause ghostcrawler just needed his WoW masteries in this game

Passionlip11/25/2015, 2:15:59 PM1 votes

Guys, could we avoid the riot bashing? I would like Reds to feel welcome to comment there without being instantly downvoted and criticized to oblivio :) I want to promote discussions and understanding, not to just stand there and say 'Riot is bad'.

Phuc Dat Bich11/24/2015, 1:55:15 PM1 votes

Rammus need nerfed because

A-L.W-40%bonus penetration (Make him WAY TOO STRONG) B-20% Tenacity C-Masteries

Yeah he become too strong he need some tune down and more than the one second slow on his Q his W armor/mr need to be tuned down too

LatetotheRace11/24/2015, 8:12:07 PM1 votes

Hey, here's a fix for the grammar in your post. You did pretty well, but feel free to copy and paste it.

First off, my native language is not English, so sorry for some grammatical errors and such.

I'm not a 'Rammus main' or anything, I just have a certain pool of champs that i love to play and Rammus is included. Now I'm not outraged by or complaining about the last rework on the PBE or something like that, I just want to express an opinion of mine. Rammus, unlike what some people say, isn't weak against team comps who are not full Ad. For instance he is pretty good at ganking early, and the taunt can be hard for anyone to deal with. The taunt is also suicidal for the auto-attack-based champs in particular. BUT he's especially strong when up against teams where AD/AA based champs are predominate, as Rammus kit is built around that whole idea. So isn't his strength in this patch make sense, because of the shift in champions who are heavily focused on AA/AD? So isn't Rammus' just a good counter-pick and a necessary existence? It doesn't seem unhealthy as he also has his own counters. It's not necessarily or unbalanced as everyone thinks. So just to clarify I'm not whining, i just want to share my point of view with everyone, because it's on my mind after i read the patch notes recently.

Robbit Mang11/24/2015, 8:26:10 PM1 votes

Him being strong in 5.22 is 100% because of the changes to last whisper.

his w gives him 120 bonus armor and magic resistance if I'm correct. So imagine lategame he has 3 armor items, we'll pretend for the sake of argument he has 200 bonus armor from items, and 120 from his curl. His base scaling armor value totals to around 105 base armor. In total he would be having 320 + 105 armor, where the new last whisper would penetrate ~120 of that due to 320 of it being bonus. 325 - 120 = 205 armor he still has after armor penetration, plus 105 base so 310 total. Compare this to the old last whisper where it penetrated all armor, where he would be having around 225 armor left after lw was built.

thats 225 armor (old) vs 310 armor (new).

The new dominiks regard bonus damage is not enough to close this difference, and rammus would usually have more armor than 200. Tanks like mundo, rammus, malph, taric, shen, are stronger than ever right now.