SSS (Slowsilver Sash)

Hello summoners!! First time posting here, so please be gentle. Before we get into the nitty gritty of this post, first let me clarify a few things. Firstly: I will spare you the trouble of looking me up, and let you know that I am NOT a high Elo player, I capped at Silver V in preseason 6. Secondly: yes, this post is about the QSS changes. Thirdly: Yes this a very eloquent gripe that will entail everything I think is wrong with doing what Riot! is proposing to do. That said, if you are still with me, let us get into it.

Bopping around the League of Legends community as I do, I read posts and watch content creators to stay hip with the League media as it were. Much to my dismay, I discovered that QSS (And subsequently Mercurial Scimitar) were to receive a MASSIVE nerf, of removing ONLY hard CC and not all debufs. I had been kicking around the idea of writing an article about it, and for the same reason I frequently browse League related media, I decided to go ahead and write one. The shared reason is that I love this game and that my passion for exciting moments is fueled by League of Legends. Now as I have said before, I am not an authoritative expert, but I do have a solid record of thinking outside the Thresh Ult... (Ugh what is wrong with me?)

First let's asses why QSS is getting nerfed. "The reasoning for the change is pretty much that the cleanse offered by these items was able to functionally negate certain champions' ability to fight the owner of the item." As far as any other reason the item is being nerfed, I don't believe Riot as disclosed such information, so this is really all we have to go off of. But hey, I know what you're thinking, "Yes I read the article, duh, so what, get good weeb, etc..." The obviousness of this statement is actually somewhat convoluted, and quite sneakily conveyed. Aside from that, like, dude... of course that is what QSS does, if you didn't want an item to be able to do that, why is there to begin with? That is the one dimensional response to this quote made by RiotRepertoir. But let is look at it from a different perspective here. What if the quote swapped the words, Champions' and certain? Ahhh, see now it makes a little more sense. QSS now affects a champions' certain ability, and does not lend itself to the idea that the whole champion is completely powerless to just one item. Prior to writing this, I did not investigate the amount of debufs in every champion kit, though balance (Darius Alt4) dictates that if a champion has more than a certain amount of debufs and/or CC in their kit, they are sort of OP and this item is mandatory anyway. In my opinion, this statement suggests that there is no level of counterplay or strategy involved with killing the owner of a QSS, you simply can't do it, at all. When the fact is, that it negates only as many abilities as there are debuffs on the owner of the item. This quote also nods toward solo interactions, i.e. the laning phase and does not address what the owner of QSS is to do in a teamfighting situation. The ammount of decision making that goes into using QSS in a teamfighting context is, quite frankly, bonkers. That being said, the misuse of this item negates the fact that you have it anyway. Using it at the wrong time will get you killed or allow the enemy to get away or whatever your original goal was in the first place.

Now that the fun-duh-mentals, are out of the way, let's move on to something a bit more complex. I am sure Riot was looking at certain skills (Mainly ultimates it seems) when they decided to make this change. What I have read up to this point is Fiora and Trundle. To be fair, I sympathize, having your ULTIMATE ABILITY (There is an anime pun in there somewhere) countered by the use of a single item can feel seriously underwhelming for the user of the canceled ability. HOWEVER, I also feel that there are several, non-linear ways to deal with this problem. Because let's be honest, removing this effect seems rather close minded. When we open our minds, we begin to see different alternatives. Open your mind, open your mind, open your mind. (Kuato 2084) Certainly there are other ways to nerf this item to make exchanges with the owner of the item feel less underwhelming. Right now, QSS costs 1300 gold. That is a minimum of six creep waves (These stats are not including gold or experience from kills or assists) which brings your champion to level 5. So by the time your champion is able to buy QSS, the ultimate of the opposing champion (Assuming the laning trades were dead even as far as CS and EXP go) isn't even available yet, and yeah, that kind of sucks if your ultimate can be cleansed. There is a trade off however, QSS doesn't really offer much in terms of dueling potential, unless of course the enemy top laner is building AP (which is not the case for Trundle, Fiora or even gasp Zed!) So the fact remains that the active ability of QSS is the reason it is purchased in most cases. So that opens the door for a nerfing option for QSS. Perhaps nerf QSS with the changes as forcasted, but leave Mercurial Scimitar intact. This change does a few things which ease the worries of laners who absolutely loathe laning against QSS. It makes QSS less of a go to item for people looking to cleanse ultimates. It also prevents ADCs from randomly grabbing a quick QSS mid game to prevent Resonating Strike or a similar ability, and not finishing the item simply because all they needed was the amazing active of QSS (which is a pretty cheap item in the mid game). Cleansing hard CC early game is still pretty good; and who doesn't need a little MR? Of course there are other nerfing options available (because this is a video game and you can do whatever you want), but this is simply one of them. Phew, numbers am I right!?

So now that we took a look at the item, let's delve a little deeper into the supposed interactions that were examined prior to this change. Trundle is up first. Why? Because he is so troll (I know, I am the bad at jokes). As far as Subjugate is concerned, (which in my opinion is kind of a lame ult anyway, but that is a post for another time) the ability can be tweaked to work around QSS if it were to go unchanged. Perhaps make Subjugate an aura, so that if you activate quicksilver, the debuff refreshes anyway, making it sort of useless. Think of it like a Crowstorm, (though with a much smaller aoe) that instead of doing damage, siphons stats from your enemies with similar power and ticks of the current Subjugate. Obviously Subjugating multiple champions would have a reduced effect beyond the first, I hope... Of course this is a pretty hefty overhaul, but it is an option. Now on to Grand Challenge; oh boy. This is another situation where I could comment on the ability as a whole and how I feel it interacts with Fiora's kit, but that is not why we are here. Grand Challenge being cleansed in its entirety does feel extremely crappy for Fiora, in every sense. In this context, with the ultimate as it is, that really sucks. I believe that a constructive change for Fiora's ultimate to partially bypass being cleansed is to have the vitals trigger one at a time. That way, if they do happen to use QSS, it will only cleanse a single proc of the ultimate and not the ENTIRE THING (which as i just mentioned, is not very interactive)! QSS in that exchange will reduce some of the true damage from Fiora and not all of it, seems pretty fair to me. I am only going to briefly address Zed because I feel like only a small percentage of people (if any) have read up to this part already, but also because I don't feel that Zed's ultimate should circumnavigate QSS anyway. Now bear in mind that I am not favoring the ADC in this situation! (WHHAAAAT!?) As an occasional player of Zed, if find it interesting to try and kill an ADC that builds QSS or MS without using Death Mark. It kind of makes you step up your skill as a Zed player and makes it so you can't simply press R then frantically smash keys afterward in order to get a kill, which is interesting, like solving a puzzle. Isn't Zed supposed to be hard to master anyway? Please keep in mind that the above paragraph references the scenario in which QSS remains unchanged.

Almost done, thanks for hanging in there so far.

Again, I am no subject matter expert in League of Legends, but I do feel that nerfing QSS and MS the way they are scheduled to be in the next patch is unhealthy. QSS is an item that delivers clutch moments and allows for such interesting, high skill gameplay. that all of those amazing interactions are simply out the window. In the heat of the moment, even getting QSS used against you is exciting, leaving you thinking "OMG NO WAY!!" It allows for insane 1v1's (Faker vs Ryu) and ridiculous come backs in teamfights, when used properly. Once more I would like to reiterate that the above post is simply a matter of opinion. I would greatly appreciate any feedback about these suggestions and would of course like to know if there was anything I missed. Alternative suggestions are also welcome, because, you know, there is no guy anywhere that doesn't have a team. It is a collaborative effort of creative minds and I would very much like reading about things that had not even occurred to me. If you read this whole article, thank you so much for your time and I wish you the best of luck on The Rift!

Sincerely yours, Buyers.