The Psychological Aspect of Nocturne's Ultimate

l Helios l··3 votes·1,022 views

Okay so I'm not entire sure how this idea will be received but here it is.

Nocturne's ultimate marks a major power spike for the champion, not just in terms of map presence, but also in terms of psychological presence. What I mean by that is that when Nocturne's ult activates and people lose vision, players can panic because they have no idea where he is going or even if he is nearby. This can really influence how players play once they know the Nocturne is level 6. The modification, if you will, that I want to propose isn't based on any type of damage nerfs or buffs or anything tangible within the game.

What I want to propose is this. Have Nocturne be able to activate his ult, but if he does not use the dash then his ult is placed on a fixed cooldown reduction such as 50% that wouldn't scale up on its own(the math would be 75, 67.5, 50, not counting any other form of CDR). The two CDR values would be calculated separately, so if he had 40% CDR and didn't dash, his total cooldown would be 30 seconds, 20.25 seconds, and 15 seconds at each respective level. This would allow for the Nocturne to essentially fake his ultimate and create a false presence on the map without even being present to actually act on it (sort of like the 'farm alarm' that Rek'sai has or the invisibility aspect of Evelynn). This type of action will cause players to act differently because of a much stronger factor of paranoia (see what I did there?). You would have no indication of whether Nocturne was there or not, which would force laners to act in a much more passive manner, unless they had vision present to know where he was. With this aspect present, no actual damage or anything like that would be different, but it would add more to Nocturne's character concept as a paranoia-inducing (that time wasn't intentional) creature of darkness. It also offers him some return for using it in this manner (a reduced cooldown and a potential to reduce lane pressure for his time while not putting himself or the laner at a direct risk) and gives the enemy team an opportunity to exploit such a usage (he is now much less mobile and impactful with it on CD, as he normally is without it). His ult essentially remains the same, just a side-effect to him trying to play at the psychological aspect of the game that can even be ignored completely if the Nocturne player wishes.

Let me know what you guys think! Like it, hate it, or meh. Thanks for reading!

14 Comments

supes the lost3 votes

This is an interesting concept, and while I don't own or play Nocturne, I personally know the feeling of being scared passive by a Paranoia, and think it's a clever way to make Nocturne better without just modifying the stats of his abilities.

l Helios l1 votes

Thanks for the input man! :D

HentRex2 votes

Um think about that. In Game Chat.

TM1: Noct just sit in base spamming ult, we're gonna take baron. He Reduces the vision for 4 seconds, 11 seconds later bam again. Over and Over and Over. The rest of the game. Gets blue buff and now he can run free and do it, while pushing a lane. The sheer lost of vision ever 15 seconds should allow any team to win. Love the mind set you had to think about this, tweak it a bit and I'm on board.

l Helios l1 votes

The CDR isn't solid. That value was more or less based on cho ult cdr thing with minions/monsters. It does offer that additional aspect to blinding the enemy consecutively.

Maybe make true vision able to see through the darknessssssssssssss? Good way to make people buy pinks and oracles. Reduce the CDR to like 30%? Make it less frequent but keep the vibe it gives? Any suggestions are appreciate pal! Thanks for the support! Honestly I love this champ and would love to help contribute to him in some aspect :D

HentRex1 votes

Honestly? Got no idea how to work this. Awesome idea though.......ok so I stopped this post halfway through and looked up Nocturne's wiki for details about it. Basic CD 150/125/100 so with 40%CDR it would be 90/75/60(roughly) if you tacked the 50% bonus on after CDR you'd have an extremely reduced cd with some breathing room in it, ending it at 45/37.5/30. Maybe could work but, not sure. It ain't "much" better than how you did it. Maybe make it 25% reduction for not casting could work better. Just spitballin now really.

l Helios l1 votes

Yeah with 25% it would be around 67.5/56.25/45 counting the 40% cap. Of course, most nocturnes shouldnt reach that unless you have like youmuu's, frozen heart, and spirit visage, or some combination or cdr from runes and masteries. If youre going for max cdr, it gives you a lot more pressure opportunities, which is sort of the point of this change. Im totally fine with giving the enemy team more breathing room to work with when the ult is actually down.

HentRex2 votes

Cool, always love talking about this kind of thing, but I have zero programming skills so I could never work doing this lol.

l Helios l1 votes

It's okay. I can only do basic loops and printing programs via Java! xD

Summonerrr 12 votes

The only bad thing I can think of that would come for this is it might make it TOO easy for him to save teammates with the vision loss (you can't AA what you can't see) with little to no physical presence since it's global.

I still agree wholeheartedly with the CDR on not using it though, if Xerath and Caitlyn get CDR on their near-global ults, Nocturne should too.

l Helios l1 votes

You could add that true vision will still work for it, and that is sort of the purpose of it: to add extra pressure in the minds of the enemy team that Nocturne can't actually follow up on. I think making true vision work for negating the darkness would counteract against the proposed issue.

PSYCOsanches5892 votes

Nocturne mains unite! We shall bring darkness across this land!

l Helios l1 votes

JOIN ME BROTHERS!

Trundle Bundle1 votes

Riot actually tried this change about a year ago, but it was scrapped.

l Helios l1 votes

Really? Let's being it back! 😃 It's really immersive if it is done right. I actually felt I came up with this on my own lol I never knew

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