Future MF change ideas @RiotStatikk

Hello all, this is a little repost of mine that I thought would be relevant to put up as I saw that @RiotStatikk would be working on more Miss Fortune Changes in the future. These were ideas I had tossed up right after the initial rework was shown and would like to hear thoughts from everyone, especially Riot's, on the ideas.

Here's the thing, MF is a lane bully. You have to win lane because late game you haven't got the mobility to stay safe and you aren't as strong as, let's say a kog'maw or Jinx who similarly don't have dashes and blinks. Late game you lay down some AOE goodness and hope no one jumps on your face.

So with that in mind, here's what I would have done to the MF rework to help her out with some of her issues:

Passive; Strut What it does now It's a great tool to help MF get to a fight or back into lane. What's wrong with it? Nothing really, this is about getting to a fight / chasing your bounty so it fits thematically with MF. Could it be better? Yes, but I wouldn't want to push her into being OP so I like the changes they made to it. What I'd change I'd give Strut a scaling value at levels 1/6/11/16 along with the ult. Something along the lines of: This bonus movement scales up to a maximum of 25/50/75/100 Why is this a good change? Early game it's a nerf, which I know is bad since I myself said MF is a lane bully and needs to win her early game. Late game strut is rarely ever up during team fights, but the increased movement speed helps MF get to the key objectives such as dragon/baron and towers which is good. Also if you continue reading my suggested change to W : Impure shots goes very nicely with this scaling move speed from strut.

Q : Double Up What it does now It's her bread and butter skill, everyone max's this first because it's that good. It fits her thematically and helps identify her as a lane bully being able to poke you through minions. What I would change If MF falls behind in lane, she's gonna be in trouble later in the game. So any MF player that falls behind tends to use Double-Up as a farming skill. When they're ahead they use it to poke for easy damage. I'd add the following: Every kill scored by double up reduces the cooldown by 1 second. Why would this be a good change? If you're ahead with MF this change won't affect you, you're using Q to poke the enemy champion which won't kill it. In late game teamfights your double up usually won't kill anything there either, you're using it between auto attacks to maintain higher dps. But in that last scenario where you're behind as MF using this skill to get farm, it's now off cooldown far more frequently helping a good MF last hit caster minions which would otherwise be out of range. It's a nice buff to her ahead/late game as well by shaving off 1 second of cooldown, but it's most noticeable when MF is behind using it to last hit creeps to take 2 seconds off the cooldown. As a character meant to win lane I think giving her the tools to stay in the game when she doesn't is a nice touch.

W : Impure Shots What it does now It's MF's steroid. Every ad needs one and this provides her bonus magic damage on hit along with the potential to activate it for attack speed. What's wrong with it? The new change seems interesting on paper, cast W to activate strut, nice. In practice however it never really ends up working that well. As MF if you're using W to gain attack speed you (hopefully) aren't getting hit yet so you already had strut anyway. You want to use this at the start of the teamfight to maximize your damage before the enemies jump on you. If however you're saving this in order to regain strut/using it to try and escape, well it's usually too late. You're squishy and in attack range already, odds are you'll regain strut only to lose it immediately. If someone peels for you, you've committed to running from the fight and are losing out on your steroid. It's a conflict between the 2 parts of the ability where 1 is offensive in nature and the other is defensive. This conflict results in the player never (except for very rare scenarios) getting the most value out of their skill. What I'd change Slightly rework the new effect of Impure Shots to focus it more on the aggressive nature of a steroid ability. Change the wording to: When impure shots is active, Miss Fortune gains the strut movement speed bonus while moving towards affected enemy champions. Why would this be a good change? It no longer gives MF the option to run with her W, instead re-purposing it entirely as an aggressive skill. It helps the bounty hunter theme of Miss fortune where she has a target and she is hunting it down. By giving MF her passive movespeed while moving towards any targets she's hit she can mark and hunt weakened enemies after a fight. This movement speed buff is also phrased in such a way that it's not giving MF strut which can easily be taken away, rather it's only granting her move speed while hunting her target. This means you can chase an enemy even if their minions/towers/allies are hitting you, things which would normally remove strut's movement speed bonus. It also leaves plenty of room for counter play since MF has no escape, if she's hunting your team-mates down using impure shots then her team has either A)already won the fight, or B)is putting herself into a very bad position to get them.

I'd even toy with the idea of giving Miss Fotune vision of marked targets to help her hunt, it would fit the bounty hunter theme, but vision is a strong thing to give someone. Might push this skill into OP territory. And while I'm on impure shots, it needs some indicator to show how many stacks are on each champ. (I like CatSaber's suggestion of a heart that fills up as she builds stacks on a champion).

E : Make It Rain What it does now It's MF's worst skill, I was seriously hoping this would get reworked/changed completely. But since it hasn't I'm here to share my thoughts on what could have been. The problem Make it rain just has so many things going against it, the biggest one being that it has a cast animation and tickles enemies. Seriously, I'm sure any MF players can vouch for me when I say it's common to see make it rain deal something like 15 damage to an enemy. It's just not worth casting it for damage and instead is used entirely for it's slow. Which is nice that they've buffed the early slow, but there's more they could've done for this skill. What I'd change Because I like the idea of make it rain (thematically) I wouldn't swap it to an entirely new skill. Instead I'd change it into a line skill shot, similar to Viktor's death ray. Now why would I do this? Well: 1)It front loads the damage. (enemies accidentally stepping into it are going to feel the hurt.) 2)By making it a line shot instead of a round area, the skill can be given more range, allowing for more harrassment in lane/farming minions from a safe range if you've fallen behind. 3)This really helps her early game lane bully feel by allowing her to mix in a make it rain into her combo to help burst. It might even make players rank it up to level 2 or 3 before deciding to max impure shots.

Next I'd also change how the skill levels. Instead of just being 1 line of bullets with plenty of damage, I'd change it to shooting additional waves of bullets every time the skill is levelled. What does this do you might ask? Well: 1)It allows for counter play, if we were to front load all the damage of MF's make it rain right now it would hit like a truck which isn't good. So by adding additional waves instead of damage when the skill is levelled we're giving enemies a chance to get out of the AoE before the next wave strikes. 2)By giving the skill additional waves we're increasing the duration that the skill remains in play for. This is useful because late game MF can now use make it rain as a slow in narrow chokes and have it last longer than her current 2 second AoE while also doing more damage (because once again we've front loaded the damage on the waves so the average case will have enemies taking more damage than the current live version where they can escape after 1/2 ticks.).

So her new E would look like this: Miss Fortune rains 1/2/3/4/5 waves of bullets down in a line, which begin landing after a 0.5-second delay. Each wave will fire 0.5 seconds after the previous wave has finished dealing 60 +0.1Bonus AD +0.8AP Magic damage. Enemies in the area of effect are slowed 40/45/50/55/60.

The overall damage is roughly the same as her current Make it rain deals: 90/145/200/255/310 +0.8AP where this version deals 60*5 waves=300 +0.8AP. And I've given it a +0.1 bonus AD ratio to help compensate on the final 10 damage at the highest level.

Why this is a good change In lane this 60burst damage will greatly help MF in trades despite being less damage than the current 90damage at level 1, but the more points you put into it the less reward you will get since enemies can easily leave the slow before the next wave strikes. Late game the new change actually causes the AoE slow to remain on the field longer which can help MF and her team hunt down kills or escape. By changing the shape of the skill into a line we can also make it larger allowing MF to use it in more choke points if angled properly.

R : Bullet Time What it does now What it does now is make MF the best Wombo Combo ADC there is and she gets to laugh while doing it. It's one of the best tools she has for late game letting her hit the entire enemy team from a long range which is something she desperately needs, because as I've said so many times, if she gets caught, she's done for late game. You have 0 escapes. What I'd change in this skill Nothing. Seriously, MF is doing fine with this skill let's not change anything and risk ruining/breaking it. Sure we could tweak numbers and scaling but that's not what I'm interested in with this post. I'm interested in the mechanics of MF's skills, and mechanically/thematically, this skill is awesome.

Other Now here's the thing, in all the above stuff I've been mentioning interesting mechanics to give MF an identity and better niche, but there's another problem that she has, and it's been said so many times, I'm just going to say it here as that extra hit on the dead horse; fix her scaling, And that's all I'm gonna say about it because I don't really care to discuss theoretical numbers, without testing it's almost impossible to make numbers end up balanced so just, yeah.

Suggestions/credit Leu07: I like his idea of Make It Rain triggering impure shots instead of a +0.1bonus AD since this could help her setup for a stronger ult late game and give her a stronger poke in lane due to being able to stack her shots faster. I'd have to tone down Make it Rain's base damage to compensate however. Since this would only trigger when the waves of bullet strike however (using my version of the skill) I don't see the damage needing to be completely eliminated as he suggested. (this was taken from my original thread where Leu07 suggested replacing the 0.1Bonus AD with impure shots)

Tl/Dr Strut: Scale maximum move speed at ranks 1/6/11/16 Q: Reduce cooldown by 1 second for each target killed (helps her farm when behind, doesn't really help her when ahead) W: Gain Strut move speed bonus while moving towards enemies hit by impure shots. Bonus only applies while Impure Shots is active and cannot be removed by taking damage/anything else that would normally remove strut. E: Turn it into a line skill shot which shoots in waves instead of a constant AoE. Allows for better burst early and a longer lasting AoE slow late. R: Don't touch it, the skill is fine thematically, of course number tweaks and scaling changes would be nice though