There's a slightly significant nerf to Janna on PBE that I don't think anyone's noticed.
With all the hupplah around the significant indirect nerf to Thresh on the PBE I wrote a post about, and the significant indirect buff to him on the PBE Zeepy made a video about in response, I figured I'd write about the nerf to Janna on PBE.
Turrets have nearly doubled HP on the PBE, going from 2000/2300/2300/2500 to 3500/3500/4000/4000 for tier 1/2/Inhibitor/Nexus turrets respectively, while they all went from 100 armor and MR to 0 of both. As 100 armor or MR is exactly 50% damage reduction, turrets are only slightly squishier. This a good change for clarity - towers now take exactly as much damage as one deals them, while the changes have fewer consequences than you’d think. Unlike monsters, turrets have an equal amount of armor and MR, so this doesn’t change relative effectiveness of physical or magic damage against them, and they are also immune to all forms of penetration, so armor pen is no more or less effective against them. However, it does have few subtler interactions. The flat 30 damage reduction towers get against attacks before 7 minutes was applied after armor, so it is much less effective now, and thus towers are much easier to take early. The 200 armor and MR towers get while no enemy minions is noticeably more effective; while 300 armor takes half the damage 100 armor does, 200 armor takes a third the damage 0 armor does. This works out to turrets taking 8000/9200/9200/12000 pre-mitigation damage on live vs 10500/10500/12000/12000 on PBE, so nexus turrets are just as difficult to take without minions, while all other towers are harder on PBE. Of note, because turrets now have half the damage reduction, Janna’s shield on them now breaks twice as easily. There’s yet another change - the ratio that AP damages towers has been increased to .5 from .4, so AP champions can take towers easily.
This means that while AP Janna can't defend turrets as effectively, she can now take turrets like a boss! At level 18, with 102 Base AD and 700 AP with a Lich bane, her empowered auto will do (102 + 700 x .5) +(102 x .75 + 700 x .5) = 452 physical + 426.5 Magic = 878.5 Damage, just over a quarter of a t1 or t2 turret's HP. But wait! She can shield herself for 50 + (700 x .1) = 120 bonus AD, and ready another lich bane proc, for... 878.5 damage again.
Turns out the bonus from AP overrides the effect of your bonus AD if its higher, and vise versa. Hybrid champions have always been punished by this, but at least now it’s more readable - the number you see when you hit a turret should be the higher of either exactly 100% of your total AD, or 100% of your base AD + 50% of your AP, and Spell Blade if you have it, of course. I guess Jax doesn't really need any help taking towers, but I've always been disappointed hybrid champs will never reach the capabilities of marksmen, or their AP counterparts, at taking towers because of this.
Zeepy (or is it Zeepeh?), I'm expecting another video. Great catch, my friend. I noticed that Thresh couldn't proc energized strike with Kircheis Shard or Statikk Shiv myself, but didn't even think of Rapid Firecannon.
_(This is a heavily edit copy pasta from my The State of Marksmen, part 3; (What, Why, and How the Preseason Changes the Game.), a very long ramble on all the systematic changes in the preseason, and the effects they have in the game.) _
.
