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Senna's kit is revealed. Doesn't power creep worry you too?

GelsominoKiller·10/29/2019, 7:26:41 PM·50 votes·17,205 views

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8RDnVYT0rw

Disclaimer one: usually I don't criticize champions before release; not because I believe that any consideration made without direct experience is necessary invalid, but mostly because of prudence.

Disclaimer two: I love Senna's kit, because it brings many interesting ideas and mechanics to the table. It's not my intention to hate on anything new or different.

**That said, I share with many a worry. Isn't she... a tad bit overloaded? **

  • Her passive giving pretty much every core stat an ADC would want, with minimal gamplay attached. That's pretty big.

  • Her Q being very versatile: it can be used for long-range poke or finisher, saving allies, and even self-sustain!!

  • Her W is a reasonably easy to land AOE hard CC. As long as it doesn't kill a unit, it's delayed, sure, but we're talking HARD CC on an enchanter/marksman hybrid!!

  • Her R is... pretty bonkers, considering that it is a GLOBAL ability that has has much "interference" power as Khartus R or Soraka's heal. It also packs good damage and nice shielding in an AOE.

  • If her spell list ended up here, she could be... balanceable. But what's most mind-boggling to me is that Senna has what's the power budget of an ULTIMATE ABILITY on her E. Everybody loved Akali's shroud, didn't they? What about AOE camouflage for the team?? Movement speed on it, and allies exiting it become unclickable????** That's an ultimate ability that you build an entire champion around, and think twice about long forgotten design concepts as "power budget" and "how to introduce counterplay?"**

I fear we're heading towards another train wreck of a champion that will end up being nerfed and buffed and trimmed one patch out of two, for the next two years. Senna will be immense in proplay and in the end, NO ONE will be able to enjoy her. Sounds a lot like Aatrox, don't you think? **I don't want this to happen, I DON'T WANT TO HATE SENNA! **

**My point is: is all of this avoidable? **

Let's consider all the releases of the past two years, and let's ask ourselves how many of those champions proved to be a balancing nightmare, or a major point of frustration for the community? Pantheon Qiyana Mordekaiser Yuumi Kayle Sylas Nunu Neeko Akali Pyke Aatrox Irelia Kaisa Swain Zoe Out of 15 champions, at least 10 sank unnumerable hours of design work trying to fix them, and the most recent ones sure promise to give their share of trouble. Many of those champions are packed with agency, options, and effects.

Shouldn't champions designed after 10 years of experience actually be less of a burden for the game? Why do they need to soak up so many resources, and be so so overloaded, compared to older ones? Why do they so often end up needing a neverending stream of iterative changes? Also, while balance might eventually be achieved, even to this day two years after release you won't find a LOL player that doesn't consider Zoe to be PURE CANCER to play against.

I want to post this to tell Riot to start once again following old design and balance principles that made this game succesful. Innovation is always welcome, but must come with thought.

105 Comments

5050BS10/29/2019, 7:53:08 PM25 votes

Riot Jumped the Shark with Yasuo. Everything after him is just down hill slop.

Baby Ghoul10/29/2019, 9:40:50 PM23 votes

I think the issue with Riot's new balance principle is that they're trying so hard to minimize the weaknesses of each class, but for some reason they're not understanding that weaknesses make a champion balanced. Yuumi was the perfect example of Riot's new balance philosophy.

An enchanter is squishy and needs to constantly consider positioning because often times they're the number one target due to their protective abilities.

Riot: Let's completely eliminate the importance of positioning for this class and make them safe to play. Yuumi

Not only was that a disaster for solo queue, but the few people who found Yuumi fun to play are now stuck with a fundamentally broken champion that cannot be buffed because of the problems she presents due to the safety she was given. She's still banned in proplay after being a must pick/ban earlier in the year. If you liked Yuumi, you're just kind of stuck with a champion that isn't satisfying to play in solo queue.

It's hard to get attached to these new champions knowing they're not going to be consistently viable for solo queue because Riot will cave to justifiable outcries and nerf them, or they'll be permabanned. Pyke

If you're a longtime fan of a champion and they get reworked, then you know they're going to create a busted kit, nerf it, and never revisit your champion again. Aatrox

We see the same thing happen over and over again with Riot's balancing.

Aatrox Eichmann10/29/2019, 9:21:49 PM16 votes

honestly

overloaded mechanics on her kit need to be massively toned down or changed most notably her E and R. the railgun global isn't only a global lux/soraka ult, but it has a HUGE radius, making it almost impossible to miss given you're aiming at the general direction of a fight, allowing her to have fight presence from the spawn fountain.

Her E basically makes every teammate who emerges from it an untargettable, undistinguishable mess of a ghoul, allowing them to either engage with ambiguity or walk away while being UNTARGETTABLE until they do damage.

to me this is the most important issue with her kit, she has 2 of the most-complained about abilities in the game mashed into one ability. Pyke's W and Graves's smokescreen W. people complained about pyke's ghostwater dive because the movement speed and stealth allowed massive playmaking and escape potential making it nigh impossible to punish a pyke player in conjunction with his E phantom undertow dash. people also made a big deal out of Graves' smokescreen since it always allows graves to have the first engage or auto attack advantage over an enemy from the shortsight. as a jungle/support main I really understand both of these mechanics and personally hate playing against it. Pyke's survivability along with a truly 0 counterplay stealth field on a marksman support. no doubt this sounds like the most fun thing to play in recent months but also sounds horrible to lane against, who wouldn't want to play an overtuned champ?

CØulrophobia10/29/2019, 9:44:00 PM9 votes

Yup she is extremely overloaded. If her ratios are good, I fear she wont be a support marksman, but marksman/marksman. And with a lot of AOE in her kit and an escape, I can see her as a midlaner too.

RipReviveFkRito10/29/2019, 9:16:51 PM8 votes

yet another reason to not play this game ever again

Lolipoppers10/30/2019, 12:04:44 AM7 votes

Its concerning to me that the newest 3 (hybrid) champions Kaisa Pyke and Senna seem to be given everything with no glaring weaknesses. Im not opposed to champs getting abilities that you normally wouldn't see on others in their class, but they need to give up something to get it.

Pyke was pitched as an "assassin support". So why does he have several forms of hard cc? An aoe stun and hook are abilities you would want to see on a tanky support or tank. He is also given high sustain which is something other healthier mobile assassins lets say, Talon, are not.

Kaisa has an invisible ms buff. This isnt a problem on its own but when you give her a giant dash with a scaling shield that scales with her dmg it becomes problematic imo. A shielded dash is something that belongs on a bruiser or tank and really takes away the weakness of being fragile and in need of protection (as ADCS should)

Senna appears to have high damage, range, sustain, a sheild, an aoe stealth mechanic and a root. I realize that this is only on paper, but doesn't that seem like way too many differing strengths to have on the same champion? If we view her as an enchanter adc and compare her to others in those those classes, its clear she has many of their best traits and looks overloaded in comparison.

Soraka Nami Sona sacrifice having damage and elusiveness for their healing ability. Ashe Caitlyn Jinx have high dmg and range, while being fragile, generally immobile and without healing. The root, self-heal and stealth serve to minimize two of the biggest weaknesses of the adc and enchanter classes, being their squishyness and general lack of mobility.

Also I get that a characters' weapons/powers being cohesive with their actual gameplay style and abilities isn't a big deal, but does anyone else find it strange that a character using a GIANT RAILGUN, is healing, shielding, rooting, and stealthing people?

TheUrbanKitsune10/29/2019, 7:48:02 PM7 votes

Honestly she's a lot less overloaded than Kai'Sa and Akali. Her kit seems pretty reasonable for a support all things considered.

The only abilities that worry me are her passive and E. We'll have to wait for numbers on the passive. And with E you can still hit shrouded enemies with skillshots, but overall it does seem like a very strong ability. But it's just that one ability that seems a little insane. it could probably be reasonably balanced so long as it has a long cooldown that you can play around. Senna seems pretty immobile otherwise and lacks any other form of reliable peel/escape since her W has a delay.

The Q and W are pretty standard. Q seems no more broken than Nami W (and perhaps even fairer since it hits in a line instead of bouncing). And her W seems to be worse Zoe bubble. Supports usually need some form of CC to be good, and delayed CC like that has a decent amount of counterplay.

The ult looks insane visually, but if you step back and really look at the ability's impact in the trailer it looks like it provides a small shield and a bit of damage at the center of the ult only. It doesn't look like anything too crazy, honestly. Just something you'll have to take into consideration when you fight just like any other global ult.

Pika Fox10/29/2019, 7:28:50 PM4 votes

No, it doesnt worry me, because you have no idea what overloaded or powercreep is.

The kit doesnt even remotely look overloaded, and we have no numbers to know if shes even going to be good.

Her passive completely cripples her chances at being a core ADC, as it guts her interaction with AS from what we can currently tell. She has no innate multipliers for AD damage, which an ADC practically requires. No AS steroid or damage steroid of any kind.

Q heals and deals damage, which means its going to be weak at either individually. It also relies on passive for range scaling, letting her scale through the game for range safety, but will likely have short range early.

Yes, a support has hard CC. Most supports do. And, again, she is limited in the role of ADC through passive.

R appears to have travel time, and we dont have numbers to go with it. It also only deals damage in the center of the ability.

E gives team camo, which is nice, but she is otherwise immobile, and likely will only have mediocre damage. You also know where she is inside it at all times, as shes in the middle, and can likely just send in an amumu to press Q and R inside it to get a free teamwide CC off on the enemy if they all group inside it. Or hell, free malphite ult.

Smyrage10/30/2019, 11:12:17 AM3 votes

The thing is: mechanically complex champions are easier to balance, you just don't notice it, because you are not the one doing it. Sure, they can get overloaded sometimes, but it's easier to pull power from specific mechanics of a champion, then do raw statistical changes without ruining the champion altogether. You are flaming Riot's approach to new champions, but the thing is that if the game remained at the state of one dimensional champions like Annie Garen DrMundo Tryndamere MasterYi etc., then the game would have died out because they are not entertaining at all and can't be balanced at all.

Also those one dimensional champions you really like are extremely hard to balance, because they can only do limited things. Like you see what happened when they buffed Garen. Garen is just a one dimensional champion, who is easy to play, but I believe nobody really supposed to play him after Gold rank. He can only do one thing and if balance breaks him, he can do the same thing way too good, which will result in him being extremely oppressive.

Sure you don't like that they have less weaknesses than those adored one dimensional champions, but apart from you, nobody really likes when the game is decided at the draft and everyone likes to have impact on the game.

Saezio10/30/2019, 4:05:04 PM3 votes

Do you guys know what powercreep means? In champion context it means getting a new champion that is better or equal in every way compared to an older similar champion. Powercreep doesn't mean overpowered.

What older champion is the same as senna but basically worse?

Starcraft243ver10/30/2019, 10:37:37 AM2 votes

Hey she has no dashes and no knockup ? Hourray !

Illabethe10/30/2019, 7:20:59 PM2 votes

No. Why?

#1. Her Auto attack speed is HEAVILY gated. Although they are bad at describing it, she has a .5 second delay between auto attacks that you CANNOT REDUCE. Most champions have a .2-.3 Second Delay so this is SIGNIFICANT.

Here's my problem with your assumptions:

I've actually played Senna on PBE. Here's what I found:

#1) In a controlled environment, it takes Senna about 17 minutes to hit 20 Mist souls, 22 minutes to hit 40, .... etc, and about 31 minutes to hit 80. IN A CONTROLLED ENVIRONMENT, aka when players aren't making her life hell.

2) This is what people are scared about: her massive range gain from stacks. Although her rate of fire is slow and cannot keep up with other adcs at all, she's insane at killing RUNNERS...... ONCE STACKED. In a perfect environment, 80-100 stacks results in a range where Senna can outrange turrets, and Q can extend to hit what seems like 2 adcs away. In other words, you can't peel.

Still.... this is controlled environment scaling. So far on the PBE, the most I have seen is 48 stacks, which is insignificant.

I've actually hit and failed to kill a 20% Lucian with a fully built Lucian with her Ult. It's 500 base at tier 3, with a small bit of scaling. The primary benefit is it adds 150% of Mist souls to the barrier. The 100% AD is misleading because it doesn't crit, and her AD numbers stay small.

In real play: I have yet to see a Senna be more impactful to a PBE game than an Ekko or Pyke. Ekko and Pyke are slaughtering games so fast Senna is irrelevant.