Current state of Rek'Sai and why Riot's way of approaching her is wrong

FunkmasterZ·9/8/2016, 11:19:11 AM·4 votes·271 views

So, ever since the queen came out of the void into the summoners rift, she's been in top 5 junglers almost constantly. 9 nerfs over 2 years, with no buffs later, she's still in the same spot, and I think its time that riot realize that it's not the sheer numbers that are making her strong, but it's her mechanics. By doing whats riot doing - nerfing her into oblivion, until she's so trash that her mechanics wont even matter any more, we are just slowly losing a unique champion, nothing more. So, instead of making her thrash lets sit down, see why is she good, and what could we do to make her viable, but still not "a must pick or ban in competitive". So, lets look at what makes the queen so good. First, her global presence with her ult. Achieved by tunnel management , which depends on players game sense, and, to a certain extent your own reksai training (you tend to learn which tunnels work better, by playing her more). Second thing is her being a cc bot. Mostly dependent on player mechanics, as I see it. And, decent sustain and a semi-reliable gap closer helps alot. Also, her base stats are ridiculously bad (after 10 nerfs, what did you expect?), and her scaling are pretty terrible too, making her pretty shit unless you build her the only way that you can to make her playable - full tank. So, instead of making her weaker and weaker, all of her core traits are mostly untouched, and she is only getting harder to play for casual players, and players that dont have 50+ games of reksai training. How to fix those things? Let's go over her traits now. Global presence. And that semi-reliable gap closer, lets talk about them together here. This one got a nerf recently, but still there is few ways to deal with that. Instead of just making her use her ult way less often early game, why not make players use her ult smarter? Why not give her a range on her ult that would become global on lvl 3? And keep the cd same/similar trough the lvl's. That would still make her a roaming menace with a lot of mobility, but she would be counterable by good vision and communication. (specially early game) Also, the tunnel mechanic rework could help, but, for the time being, i have no idea how to do anything about that, so I'll just leave that open for discussion. Next thing, the CC bot. Also, lets pump in the scalings and build path here to. So, you know this new trend where reksais buy an early tiamat, so they can turn the fights around and surprise the enemy with the huge damage they deal? Of course you dont, that one's strictly for more sustain, and faster clears, so she can get fat faster. She's still a cc bot and the success of a reksai is mostly viewed by how successful tunnel/flash unburrows she does, and how many people she hits with it. And an occasional well placed prayseeker. I think its a good time to mention the scalings again here. Reksai gains way too little by going ad, specially because after all the nerfs, she is just waaaaaay to squishy for her to actually use her damage. How could all this be fixed? Tune her scalings. Tune them alot. And by tuning them, give her at least a few option how to build her. Lets try it like this. her passive (sustain) first. With defense masteries, and a spirit visage, the queen can gain more than 600 HP in a few seconds. And she's already building full tank, so those 600 hp are way more valuable than 450 on ad reksai. My idea for this? Lower her base heal, lets say 250 hp, and give it ad scaling. That will make tank queen way less a pain that can come back in fight with most of her hp returned, just to cc you again, but will give an option for ad reksai to actually go in and out of the fights dealing decent damage. Her q. Give it some love. Just a bit. Also, get rid of the ap scaling on her burrowed q, since you already gutted it so people wouldnt play ap reks. Why not give it hp scaling? Ad reks is good unburrowed, tank reks hits hard burrowed. W. Ok. CC bot. A simple one. Increase her on-target cd. So she still does the job, just not as often. Also, make it interact with CD. More cd - more knockups. Also, a bit more generous ad scaling (paired with lower knockup duration) would actually make her playstyle vary from tank going in to knockup once, and then sit there and be a wall, to ad (cd) reks going in-out, burrowing/unburrowing all the time. I dont have any suggestion for her E, its ok as it is. So, that's my 2 cents about the current state of the queen. Sorry for the long post, but I think its sad that we have a unique champ that will get gutted, and be just shit to play, only because she has unique mechanics that actually - work well. Would love to hear your thoughts about it. TL;DR: Rito is handling Reksai's uniqueness the wrong way by gutting her. Better tune her to give her more options about both the build and play style.

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