"Rumble's doing somewhat decent in the jungle, so we're going to ignore his 42% top lane win rate"

Koechophe·Feb 29, 2016·6 votes·1,024 views

Is pretty much what I got from riot's last set of patch notes. He's literally game-breakingly horrible in top lane, and isn't actually that brilliant in the jungle (48% win rate, not accounting for the fact that a disproportonately high percentage of players are experienced with him). He's not tanky, he doesn't have excessive mobility, his CC is meh at best, and he can't stay relevant in damage while building tank like others. It's frustrating that his massive failure in his primary role is being ignored because his Q doesn't do reduced damage to monsters, giving him an overloaded clear time.

17 Comments

Best KhaZix VoidFeb 29, 20166 votes

Kha'Zix hasn't been viable mid for over 2 years yet he was originally meant to go there

yet no one is complaining about that

. . .

ErdamonFeb 29, 20161 votes

He was originally meant to go jungle, your argument is invalid as hell

Dominick DestineFeb 29, 20161 votes

Jungle Rumble, hmmm looks like a good idea.

Critmaster GarenFeb 29, 20161 votes

truth to be told, im ok with him being a shitty top laner. hes almost as anoying as teemo to deal with.

any time you want to go in for a minion he just sits there with his stupid laugh, activates flamespitter and makes you take damage for it. whenever you want to trade back against him he hits w and runs away plus his e spam to kite you around. when you turn back to get another minion he hits flamespitter again. that thing is far too spamable. hes so frustrating.

ErdamonFeb 29, 20162 votes

Are you just randomly popping under any Rumble-related thread just to bitch about him?

Either way, honestly Rumble is one of the easiest champions to deal with when it comes to the laning phase, given how his main damage output (Q) is dependant on enemy laner doing absolutely nothing about it, it's not that you can't come up to lane whenever he uses it, you're just doing a bad job of forcing him out of the lane. The W isn't even remotely close to being good as an escape mechanism, pretty much any other speed boost/dash/blink is much better and will easily let you outrun him. And while the E does have quite hefty of a value, it's a skillshot with a fairly low range for such an abillity, and it's on a squishy melee champion whose only other defense abillity (W) is hella weak early on, and besides, if you sidestep that (which isn't hard to do) he's either dead or forced to use ult to escape.

Then, even if he does get a lead early on, he's literally shut down by a single magic resistance item ( item 3211 or item 3155 , pick one), which are cheaper than his core mr pen items on top of that, 1600g for Haunting Guise vs 1300g for Hexdrinker or 1100g (!) for Spectre's Cowl, given the fact how horrible it is to last hit as Rumble is quite ridiculous if you ask me.

And for the love of god, your name suggests that you main Garen/play him fairly often! He wins the matchup vs Rumble on an autopilot!

Critmaster GarenFeb 29, 20161 votes

{quoted}

Are you just randomly popping under any Rumble-related thread just to bitch about him?

Either way, honestly Rumble is one of the easiest champions to deal with when it comes to the laning phase, given how his main damage output (Q) is dependant on enemy laner doing absolutely nothing about it, it's not that you can't come up to lane whenever he uses it, you're just doing a bad job of forcing him out of the lane. The W isn't even remotely close to being good as an escape mechanism, pretty much any other speed boost/dash/blink is much better and will easily let you outrun him. And while the E does have quite hefty of a value, it's a skillshot with a fairly low range for such an abillity, and it's on a squishy melee champion whose only other defense abillity (W) is hella weak early on, and besides, if you sidestep that (which isn't hard to do) he's either dead or forced to use ult to escape.

Then, even if he does get a lead early on, he's literally shut down by a single magic resistance item ( or , pick one), which are cheaper than his core mr pen items on top of that, 1600g for Haunting Guise vs 1300g for Hexdrinker or 1100g (!) for Spectre's Cowl, given the fact how horrible it is to last hit as Rumble is quite ridiculous if you ask me.

And for the love of god, your name suggests that you main Garen/play him fairly often! He wins the matchup vs Rumble on an autopilot!

hs easy to deal with because his numbers are undertuned right now. but youre asking for buffs, which would make him not easy to deal with anymore.

either way, im not talking about the power levels of the champion, but the frustration of fighting him in lane. his lane pattern sucks, because its similar to teemos. he zones you from minions with constant flamespitter spam and runs away at the prospect of direct confrontation.

it feels like youre not really beating rumble in lane. you just outsustain his constant harass. if you want to get minions you cant avoid taking damage from him, because he has very short cooldowns on all of his base abilites.

the downtime of flamespitter is 2 seconds, and hes not going to overheat only from flamespitter spam.

i think he needs more than buffs. he needs a slight rework.

ErdamonFeb 29, 20161 votes

Honestly, no champion should be "easy" to deal with, at least they shouldn't be easy to deal with just by purchasing certain items (which just so happen to make certain champion useless), you should put some effort of your own into winning fights and not rely on raw stats.

Besides, if your entire point is "well Rumble is annoying, that's why he should stay as a trash champion forever"... then it's a pretty lame point. His entire lane pattern as you said, can be annoying, but it's the only way Rumble can actually survive the laning phase, especially nowadays with all those bruiser-adcs/Fioras/Juggernauts flying around, since he's way too squishy to come up in someone's face for an early trade and his W doesn't help much in this regard.

And then I can also see that your major complain is that "he zones you from lane", geez, isn't it like, a job that A CONTROL MAGE should do? Which happens to be Rumble's role? You're pretty much trying to justify a champion being bad for the game because they're annoying and are fullfilling their role, well, that's pretty much what every single champion in the game does. They all try to kill you, and prevent you from killing them, that's how the entirety of the game works, and you can't really change that.

Critmaster GarenFeb 29, 20161 votes

{quoted}

Honestly, no champion should be "easy" to deal with, at least they shouldn't be easy to deal with just by purchasing certain items (which just so happen to make certain champion useless), you should put some effort of your own into winning fights and not rely on raw stats.

Besides, if your entire point is "well Rumble is annoying, that's why he should stay as a trash champion forever"... then it's a pretty lame point. His entire lane pattern as you said, can be annoying, but it's the only way Rumble can actually survive the laning phase, especially nowadays with all those bruiser-adcs/Fioras/Juggernauts flying around, since he's way too squishy to come up in someone's face for an early trade and his W doesn't help much in this regard.

And then I can also see that your major complain is that "he zones you from lane", geez, isn't it like, a job that A CONTROL MAGE should do? Which happens to be Rumble's role? You're pretty much trying to justify a champion being bad for the game because they're annoying and are fullfilling their role, well, that's pretty much what every single champion in the game does. They all try to kill you, and prevent you from killing them, that's how the entirety of the game works, and you can't really change that.

i didnt say hes suppsoed to be a trash champion. i aknowledge that hes too weak.

but im also saying he needs more than number changes. they need to tune his overheat mechanic and his cooldowns so his opponents have more of a breathing room between getting poked by flamespitter in return for more power overall.

or they make the damage scale with distance. having the ability deal more damage at close range and less further away. so if he just activates it to harass his opponent at maximum range he would get less out of it.

maybe they should change the mechanic of flamespitter alltogether to deal less damage when he hits multiple enemy units, like garens spin.

just something that would reward him more for all ins and less for sitting there spamming the thing to zone his opponent from minions and otherwise playing passive.

plus it would allow to keep flamespitters power down in lane this way and have him be stronger in teamfights.

ErdamonFeb 29, 20161 votes

Honestly, I don't see this many changes work out in his current state. If you want to tinker with his heat mechanic, then the mains will have way too many problems with trying to play Rumble, not because he'll be weaker, but because the heat generation might be off the pattern that many of us managed to grow over the years. If you'd want to change his cooldowns, then his damage would have to be changed accordingly, but then, if he had longer cds, his damage would have to be more instantaneous (since his low cds are currently a balance factor for his damage being mostly dealt over time), which is not the gameplay thematic of the champion. And again, heat management.

First Rumble could use something that would give him edge over "that single magic resist item that makes him useless" in his item build department (I don't find it problematic for someone to stack up only mr items and take heavily reduced damage from him, I find it ridiculous that one fairly cheap item is enough to shut him down for good), then we can talk about any direct changes for him.

Critmaster GarenFeb 29, 20161 votes

{quoted}

Honestly, I don't see this many changes work out in his current state. If you want to tinker with his heat mechanic, then the mains will have way too many problems with trying to play Rumble, not because he'll be weaker, but because the heat generation might be off the pattern that many of us managed to grow over the years. If you'd want to change his cooldowns, then his damage would have to be changed accordingly, but then, if he had longer cds, his damage would have to be more instantaneous (since his low cds are currently a balance factor for his damage being mostly dealt over time), which is not the gameplay thematic of the champion. And again, heat management.

First Rumble could use something that would give him edge over "that single magic resist item that makes him useless" in his item build department (I don't find it problematic for someone to stack up only mr items and take heavily reduced damage from him, I find it ridiculous that one fairly cheap item is enough to shut him down for good), then we can talk about any direct changes for him.

well then making flamespitters damage dependent on the distance to his opponent might make more sense. similar to graves buckshot.

so it does more damage to someone directly in front of him than now, and less damage to someone at maximum range. this would reward him more to actually get close to his opponent and all in, and less for spam poking flamespitter at maximum range, and running away from direct trades.

this might already be enough of a buff early game combined with a change in playstile. less passive and pokey/kiting and more all in and agressive trades.

ErdamonFeb 29, 20161 votes

While it does kinda sound like something that could be cosidered an actual thing, the next problem arises, Rumble is still too squishy to come up to anyone's face early on, and even flamespitter damage rarely helps. Now I don't mind buffing Rumble's tankyness alongside that, but Riot does, since that would put his jungling out of control (that wouldn't be a thing if they didn't try to kill him with the preseason 6, but I digress).

And then, that would be pretty questionable when it comes to late game, Rumble's kinda meant to be squishy because of how much safety he has, that would still require too much balancing all around.

Critmaster GarenFeb 29, 20161 votes

{quoted}

While it does kinda sound like something that could be cosidered an actual thing, the next problem arises, Rumble is still too squishy to come up to anyone's face early on, and even flamespitter damage rarely helps. Now I don't mind buffing Rumble's tankyness alongside that, but Riot does, since that would put his jungling out of control (that wouldn't be a thing if they didn't try to kill him with the preseason 6, but I digress).

And then, that would be pretty questionable when it comes to late game, Rumble's kinda meant to be squishy because of how much safety he has, that would still require too much balancing all around.

rumble has a base movement speed of 345. maybe it would be possible to fiddle with that.

decrase it to 340 and increase his shield. this would affect jungle rumble more than lane rumble, since junglers have to roam large distances and it would make ganking harder.

meanwhile lane rumble would get a larger shield for all in trades.

chezwickcheeseFeb 29, 20161 votes

He'll be nerfed because of this sudden spike in popularity and success in the jungle, which will further hurt his top lane performance.

BadmoonBCFeb 29, 20161 votes

It's crazy how his increased cd in his ult killed his win rate top lane that bad. He used to be one of the best top laners in the game.

KaxiFeb 29, 20161 votes

Honestly, he's supposed to be a bully, but he falls to duelists once they start scaling (Fiora, Jax, etc). The ADC bruiser top lane matchups are also horrid for him, as well, since he can't reach them. If they buffed him to deal with ADC bruiser top laners, then he would be VERY abusive in normal other matchups to the point of being a priority pick (since any buffs he'd receive to deal with ranged tanky champions would make him overpowered against melee champions).

The re-introduction and normalized appearances of the whole tanky duelist bruiser ranged top lane has screwed over a LOT of champions. Treat Rumble top as a counterpick. Overwise, take him in the jungle; he's awesome in the jungle right now, as you've stated, because he can avoid extended confrontations with these abusive harassers.

Blue KaoziFeb 29, 20161 votes

I think rumble's biggest issue in lane is that most forms of CC spin him around, making his entire q miss. That is the most infuriating thing to me.

SohleksFeb 29, 20161 votes

The meta put a wrench in rumble's top performance since bruiser juggernaut duelists took over top lane. Before that it was just Gnar Gnar Gnar making his life difficult but Rumble was still relevant.

The nail in the coffin was season 6 itemization changes. Hexdrinker OP. Spectre's cowl cheap. Haunting guise now 300/500 gold more expensive than both of those. lol. Zhonyas & components nerfs.

These days if you wanna play Rumble top his best options are abyssal or rylias first IMO...

His resourceless high sustained dmg kit gave him a unique build, but those items got slammed hard and new stuff was brought up over him..

plus rumble is an incredibly unique champion with a high mastery curve; he's mostly just dmg, a bit squishy and dies instantly if caught out. I like to compare him to Riven, but an AP version.