Why remove Irelia's unique strengths?

Moody P·Jan 15, 2019·38 votes·11,124 views

Irelia

Ionian Fervor (Passive) [Removed] No longer deals bonus damage to shields at max stacks
Vanguard's Edge (R) [Removed] No longer disarms enemies passing through the wall

Removing Irelia's unique strengths that help define her niche as being a strong answer to marksmen+enchanters and then..

Vanguard's Edge (R)

wall damage increased from 75/125/175 to 125/200/275
slow potency increased from 60% to 90%

...increasing her generic strengths which are arguably the more annoying across the board unless you're one of the 2 above who she's meant to counter

these aren't good changes. the opposite should have happened

71 Comments

RagnaveilJan 15, 201915 votes

Makes you wonder if they have a toplaner on their live design team.

Death by GlamourJan 15, 20193 votes

shes getting played nearly as much in the midlane as top

RagnaveilJan 15, 20193 votes

Ok, but as it stands she is way better mid than top (due to her questionable burst nature and conqueror's stating vs mid champs) They clearly want her to be more geared towards top, which will be hard if the only thing that is keeping her damage afloat is a singular rune.

UnvictusJan 15, 20191 votes

Yea these changes will definitely push her further away from top and make her practically only viable mid. Especially with the change to her ultimate. It deals more damage and gives a 90% slow to all the imobile mages, this making it almost impossible to miss your stun afterwards.

RagnaveilJan 15, 20192 votes

And I recall them saying..."We want to make her more viable top, so we will do some changes so she can make that possible" Then immediately took a 180 and said fuck toplane. Hopefully some changes are coming today or tomorrow that gear her for top. If not, people need to request to know who on the live design team is what role, or request more toplane players get added to live design.

SaltyCauseBadJan 15, 20192 votes

{quoted}

Makes you wonder if they have a toplaner on their live design team.

Ohhhh. All this time im wondering why it feels like shooting myself in the leg everytime I play top

RagnaveilJan 15, 20192 votes

Like, fixing tanks would have been simple, which that fix would then allow fighters to actual be able to do something to tanks until tanks got items, which would then require them to grab a pen item. Then off topic, you see their handling of the BE capsule shit, and I honestly think the passion for this game is dying from the inside and slowly becoming that of a neglected EA title.

Linna ExcelJan 15, 20199 votes

At this point I don't think the live balance team knows what it is doing or knows how to balance a modern champ. Riot either needs to find new people to balance the game or change their design philosophy to accommodate what their people are able to balance.

AltiverseJan 15, 20191 votes

They know all too well what they are doing. They could not possibly hit the mark for bad balance decisions two years in a row by sheer luck.

SithesisLordJan 15, 20197 votes

Because she's an overloaded champion, and the only way to actually, meaningfully nerf overloaded champions is to remove parts of their kits, as number changes rarely do anything to them.

Case in point: Camille after the E base damage nerf and base AS nerf.

Now Riot needs to apply the same things to Akali, starting with her Obscurity, and 9.2 may well turn out to be a very good patch.

Moody PJan 15, 20192 votes

Then nerf her generic strengths. Removing things that stand out only waters down the already homogenous roster.

Death by GlamourJan 15, 20195 votes

likely the passive was solely added because enchanters were pretty strong at the time of her development.

Her R was fine imo.

getting to the point where im actually thinking it would be better to give sheen/triforce passive a nerf as a lot of its users are really overperforming right now, or maybe give her stun (forget which key) the diana QR treatment.

Honestly who the fuck knows how to balance these bursty divers

RagnaveilJan 15, 20194 votes

Its funny, because pretty much all the problematic conqueror users are bursty fighters (which the set that uses it are divers). Trynd, Jax, Yasuo, Irelia, Yi to name a few (there are more). But yes, these champs should use the item as a power spike, and not a power pinnacle. I'm down with nerfing the sheen proc if it means less champs are chained down to the bloody thing for a power budget.

Hayaishi2Jan 15, 20195 votes

Because what else can you nerf? Her dashes (the most complained part about her) it's the core of her identity. She is designed around them. Irelia is impossible to balance.

Moody PJan 15, 201915 votes

you could nerf her dash speed, you could let it not put her behind you, duration of her marks, her cooldowns, her generic utility like slows and stuns, her E's stupid hitbox

there's plenty of ways you can address her

saltranJan 15, 20193 votes

You may think that I say that as a biased ADC and while it's true Irelia is my most non ADC played champ:

I play Irelia to dash around and dance in fights with the marks that give you Q resets, the fantasy of playing Irelia is not countering enchanters or tanks with shields, at least not for me.

Nerfing other parts of her kit to mantain that she destroys shields would be awful imo.

Moody PJan 15, 20195 votes

that's what you play her for, but is that what she's good for? no, her value to her team is being able to chew up shields and heavily cripple AA based champs; the latter is somewhat hindered by the fact that she kills adc so fast the disarm barely comes into play, but that would have been solved by not letting Irelia be a pseudo-assassin with no downtime on her passive once it's activated as long as there's a fight

AxzariousJan 15, 20191 votes

She kills ANY squishy so fast the disarm isn't really relevant. Hell, she can miss everything and still come out ahead.

Moody PJan 15, 20192 votes

they buffed her dmg to champs so she'll kill you faster with her full rotation

3TWarriorJan 15, 20192 votes

I believe they meant: Why does a champion that has high kill pressure and is extremely mobile...also have two forms of crowd control and long range, zoning and various other hidden forms of power

HotarµJan 15, 20194 votes

Yeah, I gotta agree completely here. As much as I dislike Irelia, the problem with her kit is her constant dashing, her W, and the hitbox on her E.

There were so many other things to tackle and they chose the most odd, unimpactful ones.

Moody PJan 15, 20193 votes

as far as her dashes go, i'd really like it if she either didn't jump behind me on her leaps or the dashes weren't as fast; it's very hard to disrupt her once she starts unless your champ can't miss their displacement

Raid Boss MordeJan 15, 20194 votes

Because her kit was overloaded from the start and they're finally realizing that newer kits have so many unnecessary things tacked on. I do think her ult should keep the disarm, since it's just a weird version of Thresh's ult now, but the extra damage to shields shouldn't have been there in the first place. She already had a strong passive without it

Bob the ToastrJan 15, 20193 votes

Because they gotta keep her dashy-dashy-dashy. How else are they supposed to have fla$hy LC$ play$

3TWarriorJan 15, 20193 votes

I can kind of understand the ult thing(except the damage, come on...), but really, why the shield? that has got to be the LEAST OFFENSIVE part of her kit

thing about shields, they tend to hold unless they're broken anyway. She might get one instance of damage out of her passive against that shield...

the fact that they think either of these are her problems...is a problem. Unparalleled mobility and versatility are her problems, whether items or situations at hand, she has the potential to deal with any problem...

jocomotionJan 15, 20192 votes

I feel like there was no reason for those to be on her in the first place. They seemed more like gimmicks than anything else.

old Irellia didn’t have shield busting or a disarm
the disarms only real link to Irellia was in her lore
She’d still be a great duelist without those properties and still be known as the bladesurge resetting late-game terror she is.
Increases counterplay against her, which will hopefully make her less frustrating to face.

I think this is more trying to let some of the load go in an overloaded kit. Which, at least in my opinion, is a good move because...

it brings some of the newer champs down, making them rely more on their main kits rather than anything else that was tacked on.
allows Riot more room to make new champions who’s kits would actually make sense with these gameplay features (say for example an corrosive style champion for breaking down shields)
it makes it so older champions who don’t need a full VGU can keep up without being overbuffed stats or riot just racking on new effects. (Let’s not forget old Nunu W giving AS, AP, Movespeed, being up permanently, and giving on hit magic damage because he couldn’t keep up for so long)

Plus no Irellia main would realistically drop her from these changes, and who knows, maybe she’ll end up too weak and just get simple number

BârdJan 15, 20192 votes

The passive bonus was a dumb gimmick and I'm glad to see it go.

I think they should keep the disarm. Hell, I think they should make it an even more prominent part of the spell.

3TWarriorJan 15, 20191 votes

considering it was the only part of her kit that was actually unique, the bonus damage to SHIELDS was not her problem

her endless mobility and versatility are her problems

NevrankroatonJan 15, 20192 votes

The shield thing was out of place in the firdt place, it was here to give some of you boners because we had ardent meta last year...

You play irelia so you can attack shield? Most of you would forget that shit and it was stupidly strong for no reason.

The disarm mechanic make me far more surprised to be honest but again ireliea was always about her mobility and sustaib/on hit style before, she alreafy destroy adc so the ult was like an even bigger win button for it.

Rather see the disarm mechanic on a support or a tank, make more sense.

You cant want to nerf irelia overloaded kit and just say "damage damage dmage" when some of you said -3ad nerf on graves was nothing when it effectively reduced his winrate....

WoΘxerJan 15, 20191 votes

Do you understand that Irelia Ult mechanic is made for top champs to fight bruisers and availability to win the lane?

Now she will be played only mid, PRAISE THE CRYING MAGES now.

haaaaaaalpJan 15, 20192 votes

She has 200 attack range on a 125 range kit. Her "unique" factors either has to be the mobility and auto attack range or everything else. Riot is choosing to keep the autoattack range. While having an extended range melee character can be interesting, it should probably be put on another kit and let irelia keep her other parts.

Wild GeeseJan 15, 20191 votes

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RagnaveilJan 15, 20193 votes

[{quoted}](name=Wild Geese,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=p8mdORro,comment-id=000b,timestamp=2019-01-15T04:38:52.586+0000)

Remove 's lifesteal and don't make his ultimate revive him.

Then from that, a festering pile of shit. Aatrox without his E passive is like Vladimir without his spellvamp q.

Moody PJan 15, 20193 votes

aatrox barely heals in a fight anyway

RagnaveilJan 15, 20191 votes

Which is the sad thing.

MorgManBasherJan 15, 20191 votes

Because she is overloaded af already, she needs stuff taken away from her kit

Abibyama IIJan 15, 20191 votes

#BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE

According to ICU on his stream:

9.2 Changes:

Ionian Fervor (P) Removed :: No longer deals additional damage to shields at maximum stacks

Bladesurge (Q) Deals double damage to minions >>> Deals 45/60/75/90/105 bonus damage to minions

Vanguard's Edge (R) Blade Wall Duration :: 2.5/3/3.5 >>> 2.5

Blade Wall Effect :: Disarm and 60% slow for 1.5s >>> No longer Disarms, 90% slow for 1.5s

Blade Zone Damage :: 75/125/175 >>> 125/200/275

9.3 Changes:

Passive will have Healing on-hit that will be halved vs minions (like old w)

Healing on Q will be removed, however Q still applies on-hit so you will heal from the passive healing with Q

Possible Attack Speed Buff on Passive (50% Rank 18 >>> 80% Rank 18)

Conqueror removed from the game and replaced with something else? It might be more like the old Fervor of Battle.

RagnaveilJan 15, 20191 votes

Uh, how would ICU know? Was he there for the discussions on what to do about Conqueror?

Abibyama IIJan 15, 20191 votes

He was in contact with them, after all he helped with the rework

RagnaveilJan 15, 20191 votes

Well, hopefully Conqueror gets replaced. It was an issue from the get go once they released it with true damage.

DyrreahJan 15, 20191 votes

Because she is ungodly broken and those mechanics are so unlike any other in the game that the only time you play against it is when u play against her.

nelogisJan 15, 20191 votes

these aren't good changes. the opposite should have happened

You mean Ryze'ing her?

She just does way too much, trimming off the fat and making the champion generally more powerful is a great way to reduce the gap between skill-cap and skill-floor and thus making it possible for the champ to be viable in high and low elo (well more or less)

1800NICECLIENTJan 15, 20191 votes

I would put money on this "nerf" actually is a buff. That extra damage and slow on top of an already broken champion.

The disarm rarely mattered, and was more an annoying inconvenience anyways.

Dr DogJan 15, 20191 votes

"we removed one thing from her ult, so we're going to give it a ridiculous slow and MORE dmg in return" just stop, we dont need compensation buffs for her in any way and we definitely dont need more dmg on her which is one of the MAIN PROBLEMS with her

AS I LAY FEEDINGJan 15, 20191 votes

should just have removed conq

VekknaJan 15, 20191 votes

TL;DR: Assassin-tank is now an AOE teamfight assassin-tank.

HügöJan 15, 20191 votes

Because they don't want to nerf her damage so they start nerfing everything else in hope that maybe people will take the bait and be quiet.

ZevBenjaminJan 15, 20191 votes

Fuck these nerfs to Irelia im so pissed. Fuck this shit.

SukishooJan 15, 20191 votes

I know, I thought they gave these things to champs to make them unique, and now they come in and remove it all?!!!

BrightWîngsJan 16, 20191 votes

because something needed to happen yeah they were kinda cool ideas but not NEEDED you know what? I mean she can work well with out those things its not like she is unplayable still shes still strong but taking away some things might make the champion more bearable to play against. I enjoy play Irelia shes really fun but she was overloaded and had things that wernt needed for her to work as a champion, like if they removed the reset on her Q that would make the champion useless but taking away damage to shields and disarm she can live without.