An Honest, Unbiased Discussion about Vayne

Okay, the Vayne QQ threads have gotten a little rough to read, so let's just calm down for a moment and take a breath.

Let's discuss, point for point, why Vayne feels frustrating to play against as a champion, and why Vayne feels satisfying to play for Vayne players.

Frustrations: Vayne's mobility maneuver deals physical damage. Vayne is literally the only marksman that has this. Tristana's Rocket Jump, Caitlyn's .90 Caliber Net, Ezreal's Arcane Shift, and Corki's Valkyrie all deal magic damage. You could argue that Lucian's Relentless Pursuit gives him a proc of his passive, I guess, but the physical damage granted there is significantly lower than Vayne's Tumble. When a champion is repositioning, the reposition should be the primary benefit of that active, which is why AD champions generally deal magic damage with it that scales with AP (so it's usually just a small base with no penetration). In Vayne's case, her mobility is not only on a low cooldown, but it has great AD scaling and synergizes with her Last Whisper.

Vayne's CC deals physical damage. When you compare this to Ashe's Enchanted Crystal Arrow, Caitlyn's .90 Caliber Net or Yordle Snare Trap, Tristana's Rocket Jump or Buster Shot, Jinx's Flame Chompers, Twitch's Cask, Varus's Chain of Corruption, Miss Fortune's Make it Rain, Kog'Maw's Void Ooze, and Graves's Smoke Screen, you see that the large majority of CC in marksman kits deals magic damage, as the primary focus of that ability should be the CC itself.

Comparatively, the only marksman abilities that CC and deal physical damage are Ashe's Frost Shot, Jinx's Zap!, Draven's Stand Aside, Urgot's Terror Capacitator, Varus's Hail of Arrows, and Vayne's Condemn. Most of those are slows, and of the two hard CC's, at least Draven's is a skill shot. Vayne has a point and click hard cc that cannot be reduced by Tenacity unless it deals double damage and stuns you instead, and it deals physical damage with an AD ratio.

Now, you would think a kit that deals nothing but physical damage would be easy to itemize against, but armor items are getting nerfed and attack speed slows are being removed from the game left and right. (Gragas, Lee Sin, and Darius have all lost their attack speed slows, I imagine Nunu's will be next and Nasus's has been nerfed significantly).

Being able to rush Cutlass while Vampiric Scepter itself is so weak and most other carries don't get BT until third or fourth item feels really bad. Cutlass itself is almost stronger than BFS in farm lanes when the enemy carry is just trying to stall you out.

The percent health damage on every 3 consecutive hit or ability is definitely frustrating to play against, but it does require some skill on the Vayne player's part (if you accidentally click a minion or a different champion you have to start your stacks all over).

The stealth is pretty annoying, but it's very binary, just like all stealth abilities are. Mostly Vayne players use this to interrupt an opponent's focus in the middle of a team fight, making themselves temporarily untargetable and interrupting a player's pathing towards them so that when they reappear it takes a lot of effort for the enemy player to refocus them, especially if they spent that second using skills and attacks on a different enemy.

Satisfaction Vayne is the epitome of late-game hyper carry. She feels good because you feel like you're fighting an uphill battle. Her harass in lane is limited and lots of carries have better early games than her, so she just farms primarily and tries to avoid dying. Then late game hits and she feels incredibly strong and that's really what being a marksman is all about. The feeling that you were losing all game but now you can 1v5.

The skill required to operate Vayne's kit (her auto resets, the aiming of her Condemn into walls, and her stealth repositions) all have very good rewards in the kit for completing them (high damage on Tumble, double damage and stun on collision, and enormous self-peel potential) so you feel like you can genuinely make plays when you do well as Vayne.

Vayne's dueling potential and genuine sustain damage (and her overall lack of burst) make her feel like more of a ranged fighter than a marksman (like Quinn if Quinn weren't awful).

Vayne's scaling with attack speed satisfies players who actually liked the idea of Runaan's Hurricane (they don't build it on her obviously but the feeling of stacking attack speed and having a machine-gun like attack pattern that works is an important fantasy to satisfy).

The Problem Vayne isn't the problem, itemization is the problem. Carries who rush Infinity Edge do nothing against carries who rush BoRK, because you can't catch them, can't kill them, and they outtrade you every day because they have consistent sustained damage and lifesteal while you have random burst damage that isn't very reliable. Professional marksmen players did say at the beginning of these changes that if Riot made IE the proper rush bot lane matchups would be decided by RNG, and unfortunately for these players, the RNG isn't good enough against carries who can build guaranteed sustained damage.