@Riot Thoughts on Lucian's power level?

metaworldpeace10·Aug 12, 2015·4 votes·2,988 views

Just saw a bunch of red posts and wanted to see where Riot is at in terms of how good or bad Lucian's power level is and if he needs changes? I personally am of the opinion that he needs some minor buffs in order for him to compete in this meta. Champions like Vayne and Jinx, while not as big of lane bullies as Lucian, have a relatively safe early game and scale harder, much harder, than Lucian. It's hard to pick Lucian when his power (early game lane bully) is mitigated by the safety and power spikes of Jinx/Vayne.

6 Comments

RiotMeddlerAug 13, 20154 votes

We think he's a little on the weak side, so are putting some small buffs to him in 5.16. Most significant one is that his W movement speed bonus is stronger and, while its duration has been shorted, it can now also be procced for Lucian by his allies.

Ixyn SeniorAug 13, 20152 votes

Have you guys ever considered making his passive appy true damage with chance to crit? This would help him to deal with late game tanks/juggernauts. I think that Lucian's biggest problem is at late game, where he gets outshined hard by the other carry since he delas like no dmg to frontlines...

metaworldpeace10Aug 12, 20151 votes

bump

AviouslyAug 13, 20151 votes

I used to (somewhat still do) main Lucian and he definitely is weaker than most when it comes to late game (unless he gets super ahead and even still he is outscaled if the game doesn't end quickly). Currently he sits at the very bottom of Tier 2 when it comes to ADCs with Urgot, TF, Kennen, and Thresh being in the tier below him. Even Twitch is higher up on the list than he is. I think his main problem is his ult. First of all, it scales badly. It does 400% damage to minions which makes it more useful for waveclear that actually fighting. A lot of the time I use it just to proc my passive, but that's also his problem. His passive's second hit does more damage to minions than to champions also making his more useful for waveclear. Even if he's not powerful right now, he's still fun to play and I still consider him my favorite champion. But I'd love to see him get more attention because he's very weak later on in the game and can't really compete with the other ADCs.

Jaywalker39Aug 13, 20151 votes

I think the new W and Passive buffs are good, especially since he gets the original passive increases earlier than before (At Levels 6 and 11 instead of 7 and 13), gets a another useful power spike at 6, and it scales better into the mid-and-late game in terms of damage output. As much as I hate to be the guy that brings up the Range issue, I'm starting wonder what justifies that Range now if he is being geared to scale better into the mid-and-late game because I only see the 40% Lightslinger shot at Level 6 helping his slightly-weak laning phase.

I understand making his Range shorter than 550 to make his hit-and-run gameplay more risky than before, but I always wondered when Riot began his update why his Range was brought down directly to 500 instead of trying out 525.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgKM9tYLe1g#t=6m35s

Edit - To add on to that, I went back and watched the 4.12 Patch Rundown to maybe see if I was missing something or if it was already explained. I think Snoopeh made a good point when they were discussing the Range nerf (Of course, his mobility and damage was relatively high at that time), saying that he could possibly have a hard time against many longer-ranged champions and Statikk says that it allowed them to "amp up the strengths of the character". After several of those were nerfed, it definitely shows in some lane match-ups.

It's good that they are bringing some power back to him now, but that brings me back to the earlier question of "Then, 500 Range made sense. Now, it doesn't. Why 500 and not 525?"