My thoughts on the Aurelion Sol changes
The draw and appeal of Aurelion Sol, has always been that he's an unconventional strange champion. His W is meant to feel effortless and elegant, stringing them together to whittle them down. It's always been one of the most enjoyable and fun things about him to me. This rework, yes, changes the aspects that he struggled with, namely being shut down completely by a single stray CC ability, but the cost of doing that was removing the aspect that everyone enjoyed about him.
I've played this iteration before it went to live, and made my complaints known that it just wasn't good or enjoyable, that it removed the entire thematic and playstyle of the champion. The best thing I can equate it to, imagine getting rank 4 Urgot W, and never putting the 5th point in it. His current W is designed to be on constantly, and forcing it to automatically turn off just ruins all of your positionings and makes you just kinda do nothing for the two seconds that its down. It frontloads his damage, and if you don't kill them with the immediate proc of the W, you're basically guaranteed they'll escape.
While I can understand he had issues, this is simply not the way to fix them. Unlike his previous W where I enjoyed turning it on, and using it, every time I use W on the current iteration I'm just dreading it wearing off. I actively dislike using it, imagine if, for example, Anivia's R was changed to spawn at max size, but only lasted for 3 seconds because people were complaining about her laning being too un-interactive. Do you really think they would accept a change like that? Or what if Singed poison was changed to be a 5 seconds active ability, then wore off automatically.
If the issues were that Sol's laning phase was not healthy, he lacked options against CC and people getting on his face... There are other ways to fix it. Namely, change his W so that it automatically turns off IF you don't hit a champion within 3 seconds, and it is not disabled immediately by CC. What this does, makes it so Sol can't just turn on his W to mindlessly clear waves, and needs to actually use it to hit people, while not forcing it to turn off after 3 seconds in a fight. Additionally, should you actually manage to CC A-Sol, you can position so that his stars will turn off due to not hitting people, instead of just immediately turning off and leaving him upstream without a paddle.
As for the E / W MS changes, it's really up to Riot how they want to handle that. They could keep this version of the E, and keep the W MS upon de-activation to give Sol players the OPTION to turn off their W for the MS, rather than being forced to turn off their W and use the MS to reposition. I don't really see the E changes as necessary personally, especially when there are other champions in the game who have passive MS when out of combat (Taliyah, Talon, etc) that helps them roam, but if you think the backing part is too unhealthy, perhaps disable it temporarily after a back. Though, I do think its old iteration was far better for building up Q's, and felt incredibly satisfying to build up MS, and was implemented so that Sol's model looked more fluent and consistent in motion.
However, I 100% stand by this iteration of Aurelion Sol basically being a lobotomized version of Sol that streamlines him into a basic burst mage, with frontloaded damage. Riot's tried claiming he's still a battlemage and that he still deals sustain, but nearly every person I've seen referring to him called him a Burst-Mage with frontloaded damage, even people unfamiliar with Sol trying him out. I know I won't be playing this version of Sol (Much less League at the moment, but that's from a plethora of other problems), because it simply isn't Sol. It's a watered-down version of the champion I know and love. While a part of me hopes Riot will revert these changes, seeing the lack of communication they've had thus far on the changes and the complete disregard for the Sol players input, I'm extremely doubtful it will happen.
I genuinely want to like Aurelion Sol, League, and these changes, and I gave them a fair shake, tried them out on PBE, and didn't like them. Most people who tried it didn't like them. Yet they still shipped. So, do the right thing /please/, and listen to the community.
