Quinn Rework Feedback(5.22/5.23) @RiotRepertoir

Hey there, I’ve been playing Quinn and Valor a fair amount on both Live servers and PBE and I’d like to bring forward a few points, problems and suggestions based on my experiences thus far, a fair amount of this is likely to be opinion so feel free to question it.

The first things I’d like to discuss aren’t related to balance but more feel and visual effects mostly related to the ult:

1. The first thing I’ve noticed while playing is that Quinn hardly ever seems to use her ‘enhanced movement’ animation, y’know that animation every champion has since Thresh(?) that they do when their movement is increased by an effect. Not sure why this is but I do miss it.

2. On to the ult, the animation could do with some work as it really feels a bit rushed out in some areas. The first problem is that when moving Valor doesn’t flap at all which isn’t always an issue, when you have a large speed boost or you're at level 16 and you’re going fast enough this feels okay, it’s like you’re soaring. When you only have one or two ranks in it and you don’t have homeguards or something similar up it feels really bad because you aren’t going fast enough for that animation to make sense. My suggestion is thus: Have the current effect for when a certain MS barrier is hit like with other champions and high speed animations and have him flap occasionally at other times, when slowed he should flap more often but more slowly like he’s struggling to stay in the air, should be a simple enough change but would make the ult feel better tbh.

3. The next thing is about pathing immediately after the ultimate, it seems like Valor always wants to fly straight forward after the ult and movement commands given during the channel seem to cancel after a second, not usually a big deal but it’s clunky and irritating.

4. I personally feel like Woad Valor could do with some work visually, when he was small he looked fine but at that size the model doesn’t look right at all, maybe it’s just me but he looks comical.

On the gameplay side of things 5.23 is a vast improvement that fixes a lot of problems I’ve been having in 5.22 and with her role overall but there are two abilities I’d like to discuss, the first is a minor problem with Harrier:

1. Really the only thing that feels off about Harrier at the moment is the crit scaling, I remember when the rework first hit PBE Repertoir saying that it was so that she built ADC items. The issue is that Quinn is either going to do that or she isn’t, the scaling on Harrier doesn’t tend to factor too much into build paths and doesn’t seem to matter much at all, you just get a 5 second CD on Harrier some time around the mid game most of the time. Crit is a great stat for DPS and the reward for building crit is more damage on your auto-attacks, you don’t need extra incentive to build crit on Quinn and in many cases all it does is punish Quinn for being behind or having to go for more defensive openings. Remember Riot wants her to be a midlaner now and a lot of the time you can’t afford to go for early crit because you need a hexdrinker, or maybe you need to get a LW early because someone is stacking armour really hard, Quinn is already punished in the damage department for having to make these concessions and punishing her further by holding the CD of what is her bread-and-butter at the moment hostage seems redundant and silly. Just make it scale down to 5 second CD with levels, it’s pretty simple, is better for the health of the champion and eliminates the complex multiplicative scaling(which is confusing enough you had to specifically mention it in the patch notes).

2. Another small point about Harrier is that it’s cooldown now starts when triggered not when applied like it used to, I’d mostly just like to hear the reasoning behind that change considering it does less damage anyway.

Alright I could write for days about the ult but I’ll try to keep this as short as possible(ha):

1. Give it a cooldown. Not a long one, I actually have some ideas for this which I’ll get to in a bit but the fact is at the moment the ult is so weighed down by the power of no CD mobility that it has to hamstring itself in other areas. The other issue with no CD is Quinn’s effect on the game’s health, someone who is able to be at any fight, respond to any gank or split push any lane in a matter of seconds will always be a balancing nightmare because if the champion is strong then their omnipresence will make them overpowered and if the champion is weak then the omnipresence counts for very little.

2. Influenced by Blitzcranks ult and taking the general idea of mobility only ultimates from Rek’Sai and Tahm Kench my suggestion is this: 30 Second CD at all ranks(maybe more), 50 mana cost at all ranks and no channel time but the movespeed ramps up to full speed over 3 seconds. The speed should be rebalanced to 80/100/120% because honestly the level one ultimate is too slow. Being hit by a champion or turret will reduce your speed bonus to nothing then it will ramp back up to full speed after not getting hit for a few seconds but hard CC will still cancel it, minions no longer affect the ultimate.

3. Add a passive that is disabled while the ult is on CD, the idea here is that Valor is ready to assist Quinn in combat but after ulting needs time to recover. To pull a suggestion out of my ass: When the ult is off CD Harrier is enhanced with bonus damage over the standard effect. What this means is that Quinn has some kind of level 6 spike in threat for her laning but because it doesn’t function when on CD she can’t turn that power into ganks thus limiting the threat she has to lanes to a reasonable amount, while also punishing poor use of the ultimate(something she currently lacks).

Well that’s just my feelings at the moment, 5.23 is a step in the right direction and we’re almost there, if the ult can feel less clunky and have more of an impact while curbing some of her potential for abuse we could have a very nice champion that still fits the role Riot envisioned her in.