Are we ever going to see Janna nerfs?

48983507DEL1·Jan 18, 2017·20 votes·1,465 views

People keep on complaining about Mages replacing traditional Support champions.

Yet somehow, Janna has been the #1 Support for an endless amount of patches. She consistently has the highest win rate with either the highest or second-highest playrate. If Lee Sin or Zed had these kinds of numbers, EVERY boards member would be begging for them to be nerfed.

I'm not saying that these numbers specifically mean she's overpowered, since no one really seems to have issues with playing against her. My problem is that she is an extremely safe champion to pick in almost every situation, and these kinds of statistics show that you have a higher chance of winning by doing so.

If the issue is that she's the only "true" support that's good ATM, then other champions need to be buffed. Right now, I'm absolutely sick of playing against her. I would really like some variety.

30 Comments

Espy PsycheJan 18, 201713 votes

Do you know the reason Janna doesn't get attacked on the boards? Because it's really hard to notice when a Janna is carrying a game.

Everyone knows when an assassin/fighter is carrying a game ( Zed Yasuo LeeSin Riven ) -- they're 15/0 or some similar scoreline, they do a million damage, they kill people in 0.5 seconds or less, and they're basically unkillable while they solo your team 1v5 by being immune to skillshots. You feel like you never had a chance, like they entered the game 5/0, and like the champion is just unfair.

Everyone knows when an ADC is carrying a game ( Caitlyn Lucian Vayne Draven ) -- they hit you with 2-3 auto attacks and you die. They crit you for over a thousand damage a hit. They can face tank your team because their lifesteal is higher than the damage you deal. That one good teamfight you get, you think you have a chance, but that's only because your Sejuani finally hit an ult on said ADC and you blew her up while she couldn't lifesteal. But then you never get another fight like that and they wreck your team fight after fight.

Everyone knows when a burst mage or an artillery mage is carrying a game ( Syndra Ziggs Lux Cassiopeia ) -- you get hit by a CC and you know you're instantly dead. Magic resist doesn't seem to matter -- they already have a item 3135 before you have two MR items. They're always able to kill 2-4 members of your team. You manage to kill them in a lot of fights, but once they're dead, the fight is 1v4 or 2v4 and you have no chance of winning anyway. Everyone on your team's like "focus <insert mage>" and everyone's like "she's dying but it's not enough, the <insert ADC> is still killing what's left when the mage goes down".

When a Janna is carrying a game, nobody really notices that Janna is the one behind what you're experiencing. You notice a team that always outrotates yours (because Janna's passive gives them movement speed). You notice that you can never quite engage right (because Janna's ult knocks people away). You notice that people are always escaping with a sliver of health instead of dying (because Janna's shield is keeping them alive). You think your support isn't warding (because Janna and her team have vision everywhere). You just assume their team is universally better than yours in every position.

1.4 million people died in car accidents last year (2016). Compare this to the figure for plane crashes (most recent one I could find is 2014, with 992 people). Despite this, most people feel safer driving than flying. This is because any individual plane crash is a huge, noticeable event that makes world news no matter where the crash occurs or what airline it occurred on. Any given car crash, even when fatal, only makes local news. Very few car crashes make national or world news, and when they do, it's almost universally because of harsh winter road conditions (an ice storm that hits a major freeway in USA) or an engineering failure (a large bridge in a major city collapses during rush hour). Though it's never happened before, terrorism would also fall on this list (imagine someone setting off a bomb in a high-traffic tunnel).

Assassins, marksmen, and mages are the plane crashes. Janna is a car accident.

48983507DEL1Jan 18, 20171 votes

Yes and this is why I wanted to make this thread.

Janna hard carries games, and wins more than 54% of the time, while maintaining an excessively high play rate. Yet no one notices.

Troll for TrumpJan 18, 20172 votes

Supports don't carry.

If it's a good support, that's all it is. A strong support. Similarly, tanks will always just be tanks, and not carries.

Carries are the damage. Always.

EfficientDynamoJan 18, 20173 votes

Depends on what you mean by carrying. Traditionally yeah, the support can't do much on their own. But many games are won or lost by whether the support knows how to peel and protect the damaging carries from an assassin.

Mecha MaIphiteJan 18, 20174 votes

I honestly would be okay with Janna if she had a decent skill floor. That way, at least I'd know I got outplayed, instead of her just double tapping Q on me.

Ulquiorra995Jan 18, 20173 votes

I'll ask it again: how's Janna double-tapping Q different from any other support doing so? I can do that with any support champion - I can say "I'd be okay with Thresh's overloaded kit if I knew he outplayed me, instead of him just clicking E on me". Exchange Thresh in that sentence with Bard, Zyra, Leona, anyone with a basic CC skill or Tahm Kench and it'd make as much sense.

Besides, Janna's Q by itself is actually less effective than aforementioned abilities since double-tapping it is less than a second CC. Thresh will create an additional gap and slow you. Zyra's snare lasts longer and it'll also create a slowing plant next to you. Tahm makes you have to burn through twice a tank's HP bar to even get to his ADC etc.

GULAG 4 UJan 18, 20174 votes

if you think the opinions of the boards actually matter and are not just a bunch of salty people complaining, you need to rethink that.

48983507DEL1Jan 18, 20174 votes

My point is that Janna is always overlooked when it comes time to rebalance the game.

GULAG 4 UJan 18, 20172 votes

she is the most nerfed champion in the entire game though.

It's just her kit is perfect for supporting. There's literally no actual flaw in her kit other than her aggressive plays aren't as good as thresh or alistar.

48983507DEL1Jan 18, 20172 votes

How is she the most nerfed? It's been forever since I've seen her in the patch notes. If you're referring to her Zephyr getting changed so she can't stack AP and get a 100% slow, then that's just a ridiculous statement.

CasterGilgameshJan 18, 20175 votes

Janna has been and almost will always be the most nerfed champion as she has had tons and tons of nerfs ever since she was first made her passive used to be global then when it only worked on allies around her they nerfed it again by making it not work on her then when they did that they made it so it only works on people walking towards her lol and this is only a part of the long list of nerfs to her she got ONE buff which was giving her a healing effect on her ult

McFatalJan 18, 20173 votes

Janna + summoner 3 + item 3107 + Caitlyn

XDD

"im a support i deserve to negate melee champs from the game xD"

GoatfishJan 18, 20173 votes

[deleted]

48983507DEL1Jan 18, 20171 votes

She's the only thing keeping ADCs alive, aside from maybe Lulu; except she doesn't have nearly as high of a playrate as Janna.

ADepressedLeonaJan 18, 20173 votes

When we take care of the mages who can 2v1 bot lane, then we can start nerfing actual supports

I'd rather play against a Janna any day then play against a Zyra who's mere presence says "You can't play bot lane today"

XinCrinJan 18, 20172 votes

I just ban this annoying champion. I hate playing against her, and I am pretty sure people who play her don't actually enjoy playing her but want elo.

Ariel the CruelJan 18, 20173 votes

I enjoy playing her. I have no problem playing against her.

I don't care about elo. I don't even play ranked.

XinCrinJan 18, 20171 votes

I have problems playing against her as she literally beats out every assassin in the game and makes it very difficult to kill the ADC.

She is incredibly simple to play and while I under stand some people enjoy simple kits, Janna's kit is build on really pressing very few buttons at specific times. No real mechanics.

resumedJan 18, 20172 votes

im pretty sure janna is one of the if not the most nerfed champion in the game

just wait

The Yetii RiderJan 18, 20172 votes

Can't exactly nerf Janna.

Thing about Janna is, she gives her team move speed. And it doesn't really matter if that move speed is 10 or 100. As long as your team is consistently faster than the enemy team, you've got a huge advantage.

So, yeah. Nerfing her doesn't accomplish much. She's actually been nerfed more times than every other champion in the game besides Ezreal.

floppy1000Jan 18, 20172 votes

Janna's a really tough champion to balance.

Riot's SUPPOSED balance philosophy is to accentuate a champion's strengths and weaknesses so that both are very obvious.

Janna's strengths: She can peel. She can peel more. She can speed up rotations. She can peel more. She can boost someone's AD.

Her weaknesses: She's SUPPOSED to be squishy. item 3107 item 3190 item 3069 but all the support items that have appeared over time have made her reasonably tanky as soon as she leaves the lane phase. She can't engage without the opponent being complete idiots who blunder into casually fully charged tornadoes. No damage She's SUPPOSED to have long cooldowns, but CDR is so easy to get relative to a couple seasons ago that this really isn't relevant anymore.

The reason Janna's power has crept up over the ages is because EVERYONE's power has crept up.

CDR is very abundant, and support itemization is no longer Boots, Sightstone, Green Wards x 5, Pink Wards x 2, and an Aegis if you're really really really really really fed.

Support items that have been introduced have made Janna tanky and made her peel more readily available, which makes her really strong now.

Unfortunately, if you take the nerf bat to her cooldowns, then she becomes extremely weak because everyone else is now so much stronger than before as well.

Power Creep, HO!!!!

Sugar MommaJan 18, 20171 votes

The problem is with the amount of mages bot lane, you'd expect Janna not to be doing well, because her weakness is supposedly poking her down as she has no sustain. However, that isn't the case as you mentioned. This is indicative that her weakness isn't working as intended.

Therefore, I'd propose either making her shield a 12 second CD (it's still the strongest shield on a basic ability in the game, and the difference becomes negligible with CDR) and/or decreasing her mana pool/mana per/lvl (she has the greatest amount of mana at lvl 1 and the second most at lvl 18).

Ariel the CruelJan 18, 20171 votes

because her weakness is supposedly poking her down as she has no sustain.

Incidentally, she's been considered a sustain support for a long time. (>_>)

5000000000000000Jan 18, 20172 votes

She has bad sustain only if she can't shield properly. Or split focus and split the damage in fights so that Janna can't shield some of the damage, but if you do this you'll most likely end up losing the trade.

Ulquiorra995Jan 18, 20171 votes

There's something defining the game more than mages bot lane: the shitfest botlane has turned into. As you know, bot tower lacking defenses + first tower gold + proximity to dragon + ADC being farm reliant has produced the "whoever does a succesful 4-man gangrape bot first wins". It is more than logical that queen of peer will be #1 in that kind of meta.

Sir PoodleJan 18, 20171 votes

As a Janna main, I honestly agree. I don't think she's OP in the conventional sense, but she is an annoyingly safe pick- there's lots of counter play (q is one of the slowest skill shots, w is generally minor, e can be bursted down and she has to anticipate damage, R is an ultimate) but she's not punished when she does poorly.

I think that mana regen needs to be hit, but that her abilities are mostly fine.

Ariel the CruelJan 18, 20171 votes

The thing with Janna is that she's hyper specialized. And she specializes in one of the games most significant support aspects: Peel. Safety is the reason she's always been strong. It's the same reason Cait has always been strong (The damage amp after update she could live without). Safety is one of the game's strongest strategies. As long as that's the case, Janna will continue to be strong unless Riot out-right invalidates her.

tseiheiJan 18, 20171 votes

Simple: She excels at peeling and disengage. She sucks at engaging

She is supposed to be good at screwing over anything within close combat, its just that itemization changes have made her good at doing more than that.

item 3190 item 3107 are both op right now, which only makes things worse as she can help her entire team instead of just the back line allies. item 3050 Other support items suck, so all around support itemization just needs to be fixed. Being an enchanter, Janna can build such items and use them better than other supports, making her have a higher winrate.

That being said, she does need some nerfs, but not to mid/late game. Her early game is too safe; You could solve this by either making her E Cooldown decrease by rank, For example Rank 1 is 16s, 2 is 14, 3 is 12, 4 is 11, and 5 is back to 10. Alternatively you could make it so that Janna would need to make trades to win the lane, item 3301 and 3 biscuits means no poke support (what most claim to be her counter,) are never getting her out of lane because any attempted trades ends with a Janna q,w, she shields herself and just autos you twice before backing off.

Janna's early sustain issue are also partly to blame for warlords allowing no poke support to really strive much in bottom lane, making it harder for anyone to win.

PokladnicaZlaJan 18, 20171 votes

I agree Janna is on the stronger side,but one factor that actually makes her stand out is that people love to play assassins (Rengo,Kha etc.),divers (Camille..), champions that just jump on their target Heca & Vi and to peel them off is one of her mains strengths.

As long as those champions are strong and Janna's niche will be to peel she's going to be viable.