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PBE Exhaust Nerf Discussion

Sw4de·3/1/2017, 10:34:55 AM·4 votes·1,300 views

Exhaust as a summoner spell is very obviously overloaded, the nerfs currently on the PBE remove the attack speed slow and the flat AR/MR penetration, leaving behind the movespeed slow and a 40% dmg reduction which all lasts for 2.5seconds, i would like to offer a different solution, and the reason why is simply to allow bursty all in champions to be less risky of a pick for the competitive game

The start of season 4 saw a number of changes that stand till today, that makes the life of an assassin/all in burst champions in teamfights and the rest of the game a real nightmare, scaling shields/heals, exhaust buffs, systematic changes to nerf splitpushing etc that all occurred during the beginning of s4.

Riot either needs to make it so these champions have a purpose outside of teamfights (Fix splitpushing somehow as a viable strategy outside of just pushing minions to turrets), or use this opportunity to nerf exhaust since it is currently under Riot's radar to reduce its influence, you can nerf it in a way that allows these champions to function in teamfights at a high level

In soloq, even with exhaust as broken as it has been over the past seasons, assassins are still possible to succeed with because of the nature of soloq, people make mistakes -> assassins punish those mistakes, in competitive, everything is more structured and safe, big mid/late game fights can often decide the game, winning off of laning phase is very rare in the current state of the game, even with 3 winning lanes, you get all 3 outer turrets, and then there's a stall in the game as the enemy team knows they cant fight and that they can just defend tier 2 turrets without too much risk, and the team that's ahead has to wait for baron to spawn because its the only objective that will force the team that's behind to contest and thus start a fight

I'm not complaining about the state of the meta even though i dont like it for the competitive game, i think soloq is quite fun right now, but competitive is still quite dull, very little dragon contestion and whether riots data says they are all equally powerful or not, if players dont value them in the same way then they wont contest -> no dragon fights, a topic for another time perhaps

So these objective fights become some of the most important aspects of the game, and its in these fights that all in champions are so risky, as getting exhausted while jumping into the enemy team to do your burst rotation simply makes your champion entirely worthless, as you only get one opportunity to go in and do dmg, which is why the thing i think needs to be changed most of all about exhaust,** is the damage reduction returning from 40% back to 30%**

I think even 30% is quite strong, imagine a summoner that increased your damage by 30%? everyone would agree that is far too powerful, so why shouldn't it work the opposite way, its one of those things similar to teleport, where riot buffed teleport to tell everyone, hey guys check out this summoner, its pretty good, and since then teleport has not only been reverted to pre-buff, but was even further nerfed, and still remains an absolute necessity for toplane in pro play, obviously meta changes and the evolution of pro play has played a part in these things

But as it stands right now, even with these nerfs, both TP and exhaust will remain a dominant choice in summoner spells as the meta currently stands, and i think for the foreseeable future, Riot has shown no intention of returning to a solo carry meta where getting ignite kills in laning phase (and im not sure ignite would actually even be better in lane even post nerf) is impactful enough to not want exhaust for its insane later game impact, quite the opposite in fact, with riot continuing to introduce even more rubberbanding/comeback mechanics with their recent attempt to remedy support level disadvantages.

2 Comments

Jbels3/1/2017, 11:10:20 AM1 votes

I honestly think Exhaust needs to give the damage reduction that it does. Assassins would be too scary if it didn't. They already inflict a good amount of damage from their rotation before getting exhausted because most assassin damage happens faster than you can react to (Rengar, LB, Rengar...)

SociopathFriend3/1/2017, 4:10:00 PM1 votes

Exhaust and TP are always going to stay relevant because in comparison the other summoners are already taken summoner 4 Already taken by everyone summoner 6 Taken by the few who get more mileage out of it than Flash summoner 11 Jungler staple summoner 7 A spell that targets two people will always go bot summoner 21 Used on a few midlaners who are too immobile and need that extra safety

or the other summoners just aren't very good summoner 13 Rarely seen as managing mana makes it an almost-worthless spell summoner 1 Very, very situational in terms of matchups and still isn't used since it requires good timing summoner 14 Has fallen out of favor since everyone can put out that much damage anyways and grievous wounds is readily available to both damage types now. Not to mention the short range requires you getting closer than most people care to go.

So everyone has Flash. That leaves 5 summoners for the rest of the game. Either the Support or ADC is going to run Heal- no question. Top is going to run TP- no question. Jungler is going to run Smite- no question. That leaves two players with even the option of not using Exhaust.

What's the ADC going to take? Probably Heal- enables them sustain and fits with them making the call to go in or get out- plus Supports generally have a healing or shielding ability of their own. What's the Mid going to take? Mid's have usually had the most freedom of Summoner spells so they're typically very based on the champions they're playing and facing. So, that really only leaves Exhaust+Heal as viable for botlane Summoners. The only contenders would be Barrier and Ignite. Supports generally have Barrier-style abilities of their own. And Ignite just isn't necessary botlane since healing has fallen out of favor plus utility-wise it does almost nothing.